Chapter 2

This particular turn has ... had a sturdy guard rail ... and I knew where I was and knew the turn was coming. But ... there’s always a but ... the tire tracks in the snow left by the logging truck didn’t turn and I was confused. Log truck drivers travel this road at least twice a day and they know where they are. And of course it was slippery ... really slippery. When I realized that I was supposed to make a sharp left it was too late.

I’ll admit I tried ... maybe I shouldn’t have ... but survival took over even if it was too late.

On first graze the frame, engine and running gear slicked off like someone was cutting butter with a hot knife. The under cart went under the van body and stopped on the boulder but the body kept going.

Knock knockety knock

“Mom! The Sheriff is here.”

“I’m right in the middle of this seam. Whats he want?”

“He wants you.”

“Is it JimBob ... or a deputy?”

The sheriff said, “Cora ... it’s JimBob. May I come in?”

The sheriff was well acquainted with my wife. Usually it was her calling him. Sometimes it was rustlers but once in a while it was for some damn would be rapist or child molester ... or maybe it was a combination. She answered the door to strangers with her S&W Model 66 in stainless and loaded with .357 magnum shells I had reloaded with mercury infused wax capped 90 grain hollow points loaded out to 2400 feet per second in her hand behind her back.

The first time it happened she was hanging clothes out on the solar powered linear dryer. The sheriff didn’t appreciate the blood trail from the clothesline to the porch.

“I didn’t want him to get away, sheriff.”

“Jesus H. Christ, woman. You splattered brains all over the backyard. He wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Just making sure, sheriff. Just making sure. I was right pissed. I had to wash half the clothes again. Blood stains are hard to get out once they set.”

He stood there with his mouth open while she opened the safety pin holding the tear on her blouse together. The bruise on her breast was just turning from red to blue.

“Sheriff, I’m an east Kentucky hill girl ... you know ... one million people and two last names? That wasn’t meant to be funny,” she said. “We’re taught to shoot and carry about the time we learned to walk. Guns in school? Everybody carried ... the students, the teachers, the administration, even the janitors. The high sheriffs of both Letcher and Pike counties came to the school and printed all us. He wanted to be able to identify the bodies. There’d been a rash of that.