Chapter 9: What Do We Do Now?

The man that was trying to force his way into Jared’s house stopped. Jared himself took one step back as he retreated away from the wind and the rain coming in through the door. Jared watched in silence as the man stopped and slowly turned to see who was threatening to blow him to hell. The rain soaked man put his hands up to his rain soaked face and rubbed his eyes to see better. The day outside the doorway he was standing in was very gray and bleak as rain was still bucketing down from the heavens.

“What the f...” the man started to say but never got to finish.

“You heard me fella! Git your sorry ass outa here or I’ll blow yuh head off!”

Those very demanding words were coming from a little mound of oilskin that resembled a raincoat standing only ten feet away in the pouring rain. Sticking out of that crumpled old oilskin raincoat was the barrel of some sort of shotgun with a bore that looked like it could take down an elephant or two if need be. Further up the raincoat was a hood that covered the little old wizened head of Mrs Clusky from next door. The face of old Mrs Clusky peered out of that hood with a silent, grim determination and eyes that had a fierceness to them that could have come from the very pit of hell itself.

Mrs Clusky didn’t speak again but just waved the barrel of whatever it was she was holding down towards the road. She then swung it back and pointed it straight at the man’s head with a rock steady aim that made all the blood drain very quickly from his face.

There was another very sudden clap of thunder that made both Jared and his would be assailant jump. This caused them both to blink but by the time their eyes had opened again that one inch diameter barrel of Mrs Clusky’s gun was ramming itself hard up under the drunken man’s chin. Mrs Clusky stayed completely silent as the man slowly raised his arms and gently sidled sideways and away from that fearsome looking weapon.

“Don’t shoot ma’am” he muttered hoarsely. “I don’t mean no one any harm now. Just looking for my woman and kid is all!”

Mrs Clusky kept staring hard then just quietly said to him in an almost inaudible tone, “Fuck orff!”

The man quietly turned and started heading away from the house. As he got further away from Jared’s front door he started to relax a bit and act just a little bit more confidently again. His arms started to swagger as he slowed down to a halt and began turning his body back the way he had just come. But Mrs Clusky was too quick! Her agility was truly surprising for a woman in her early eighties. She had the muzzle of that gun poking hard into the man’s back in no time at all. This forced him to carry on down the path then on into his car on the other side of the low hedge that ran along the front of the property.

Mrs Clusky kept her weapon trained with unflinching nerve on the man’s head as he quickly drove away. The man flipped then both ‘the bird’ as he sped off but neither Mrs Clusky nor Jared cared. They both sighed a huge sigh of relief when the car finally disappeared completely from sight through the pouring rain.

Mrs Clusky then looked back up the path through the rain to a very shaken man standing in the doorway of his own home. The old lady in the oil skin raincoat that must have been at least five sizes too big for her just waved at him and said, “I think the bastard’s gone now.”

She chuckled to herself as she said this then turned towards the low hedge she was standing by and began talking to it. To Jared who was still back up in the house it looked like she was talking to herself or the shrubbery or some invisible man. It was really weird because he could not hear a word of anything she was saying on account of the rain and the constant roll of thunder over their heads.

If he could have heard he would have heard Mrs Clusky saying this, “You two younguns can come out now. But yuh better git inside quicksmart. There’s no tellin’ when that good for nothin’ varmint will come back.”

There was a brief pause then the wily old woman spoke again into the hedge growth.

“Come on. You can come out now. Ain’t no one going to hurt you now. And if that half brained shiftless bum does show up again I’ll whip his ass good and proper. And he’ll get no warnin’ this time. Come on now. Get out of this storm before you both catch your death.”