Free Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill Page A

Bishop’s when he was younger. Sanded to a smooth pale-wood finish. Only Bishop’s now bore the age ofuntreated graying lumber; sanding it would only make it age quicker.
    â€œTold you he’d not miss his mother’s cookin’.”
    But her words were lost as Bishop’s fork rattled against the ceramic of his plate and his chair scooted backwards, making the wooden leg bottoms scream across the linoleum as he fake-coughed and barreled to the front door. He was up in Fenton’s face, straight-eyeing him, twitchingwith anger. The madness Bishop had discovered at the Blue River grew into a swarm of bees being disrupted from nurturing their nest of honey. “Where you been, boy?” Bishop growled.
    Silence, then: “Drivin’.”
    â€œOut with that Beckhart boy again, don’t you work no more?”
    Fenton shuffle-danced around his father, insolently staring back into Bishop’s eyes, and his boots trailed mud across the scuffedlinoleum to the sink. Melinda shook her head. Fenton turned on the water and began lathering the bar of soap in his quaking hands. He’d watched his father wring many a chicken’s neck, shoot rabbit and squirrel. Divide their white bellies with a blade in one hand while the fingers of his other hooked and ripped out their purple and opal guts. He’d done the same with bass and bluegill. Forms oflife taken to place meat in the freezer or on the table. He crimped his eyes shut, knowing he’d never seen his father take the life of a person until today. And driving the back roads of the county for the past hour, he tried to make sense of what his eyes had watched his father do, murder Christi.
    Between the Formica counter and the pearl fridge, Fenton said, “I was off from baggin’ groceriestoday. So I went drivin’ around the county.”
    Bishop spoke before he thought and asked, “Where at around the county?”
    Fenton hung the towel back on its hanger, imagining how cold that water must have been, blanketing those forty-year-old bones. Watching from the dying weeds had stiffened his own into a totem pole of panic. He turned and stared at this man he’d called “Father” for twenty years,wondering what drove him to kill his own. A disagreement? Money? He couldn’t see that, he’d never witnessed a cross word between them. Always laughing and cutting up. Christi was the only female he knew that drank beer, fished, and even went hunting.
    At that moment Fenton told Bishop, “I’s down around Blue River, stopped to see you—”
    And Bishop saw it in Fenton’s eyes, fear of what he’d seenhis father do, and he raised his voice and said, “Around Blue River? Been out drinkin’ and drivin’ again, ain’t you?”
    Melinda stood blank, paralyzed by the tension in the air, closing in and suffocating each of them, and she demanded, “Fenton, you gonna answer your father?”
    Not believing the reaction from his mother and father, Fenton stood confused by his own name. His lips formed an expressionas though he’d eaten a spoiled piece of fruit that had rotted his insides. And Fenton tried to finish, said, “I seen you down in Blue River dragging…”
    Stepping closer to Fenton, Bishop focused on the bottle of Early Times behind him on the counter, cut him off again, louder, with “Boy, you are sick, comin’ in here liquored up ’fore the sun has even set, ain’t learned your lesson yet, have you.”
    Fenton tried to speak again. “I seen what you did…”
    Hard and rough as droughty earth, Bishop’s palm drew blood from Fenton’s mouth. Bishop pinned Fenton against the counter. Ashes and tobacco dispersed as Melinda dropped her remaining cigarette to the linoleum. Bishop reached over behind Fenton to the counter. Grabbed the Early Times. Pushed it to Fenton’s face.
    â€œYou seen what I did, been niceif