Chapter 15: Lights Out

Keith Boyd-
Fred Boyd his brother.
Alice Boyd his sister in law.
Nephew John 15
Niece Gabby 13
Jo Anne Wall old girl friend
Windy Wall her ex husband.
Lewis and Ellie Keith’s in laws.
Sarah Marsh retro hippie
General Briggs rd
Doris owner of the consignment shop.
Jo Anne Joyner Wall : Keith’s first girlfriend. Three girls 16 13 10

oldest daughter ginger
Mr Jessup buyer of Keith’s scooter.
Rebecca Avondale deacon and keith’s client.
Marsha stylist to Rebecca
Gulfcrest hotel/casino
Elanor, Mark and Simon family being stalked
Sylvia Amos sheriff’s detective.
Willow goth chick. Computer nerd
Abdi arab family victim of arson.
Ginger Moss Willow’s mother
Mr Serpico client in motel.
Liam Amos hunter.
Jasper Amos Liam’s son
Jerry Geyser first separated man to stay in cabin/tent.
Lou Anne Mason justice dept
Jill one of the federal cops.
Ashley Marcy’s friend.
Nurse Jane at hospital in grenada
Rodney Markham and Marcus Wilbert Deacon’s attackers
Sylvia Simmons (Marcy’s client)

I never ever asked Deacon what happened that night. I knew I didn’t really want to know. I also knew he would lie, any man would.

On Monday the painter finally came to spray the DOJ trailer. He did it two tone. A cream bottom which went over half way up, and a dark blue top. It was reasonably attractive. Like the Painter said unless I clear coated it, there would be significant fading. So I went for the clear coat.

I spent that whole Monday supervising the Painter. Aka pestering the hell out of him. When he left, I handed him three one hundred dollar bills. He had worked all day on the project, and he provided the materials. I felt like it was a fair price, was it? I don’t know, or care. I certainly didn’t cheated. If I got screwed out of a few bucks, I didn’t want to know it. That’s just the way I am.

Tuesday Willow called to inform me the posters and business cards were ready. The new video was also on line. I told her thanks. I guess I didn’t sound enthusiastic enough.

“All you have to do Keith is sit back and rake in the money,” she informed me.

“Honey nothing has ever been that easy,” I said. “But thanks for the rush job. I want everything ready before we head for the crawdad festival on Friday.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Willow said. “I found a motel where we can stay. I booked us a room with two double beds. Before you say anything, it was that or a room with one bed. That’s all they had left. Obviously the crawdad thing is a big deal. Who knew?” she asked.

“I sure didn’t,” I said. “I’ll meet your Friday morning at the truck rental place. It’s the Red Spot Convenience store in Greenville. It’s located on south main street. I can get there by ten, so meet me then. We can load both scooters and you can drive the truck back To Gatehouse. Then we can lock your scooter up in the Circus Tent. I want to take my trike to use as a demo. You know for the people to ride.

You better dress in your work clothes. We need to load the truck and be on our way as soon as possible,” I said into the phone.

I planned to leave home by seven at the latest. I would have to push it even then to make the 10AM meet. We could be back at Gatehouse by 11AM I hoped.

In the mean time I had some things to do. I wanted to replace the catfish limb hooks I had removed the day before. I wanted to move them to a spot in the Yazoo river near where a different creek joined the Yazoo. Traditionally there was good fished in those spots.

That is what I did on Tuesday afternoon. Then I returned home to rest before I made my first tour of the limb hook line. It would be interesting to see how the hooks did. The reason I chose to reset the line was I had been asked to cater a catfish fry. Someone had heard how good the one at my place has been, so they wanted the same. It was for a couple of weeks after than the crawdad festival so I had agreed.

I expected I could get John and Gabby to help with the work. The customer was willing to pay me eight hundred bucks to feed fifty people, more or less. I had already agreed to do the catering before I found out it was a wedding reception and Alice had arranged it. They were still looking for a place to hold the wedding. I did not volunteer Gatehouse. The clean up from my catfish fry had been too much for me. I had no plans to do another one anytime soon.

I needed to catch at least fifty cat fish in the next two weeks. That meant fishing every night until the reception, most likely. Then I still might have to tap my frozen fillet reserve.

When I agreed to the catering, I ordered a deep frying rig I could run on a propane broiler. I was going a little mad when Alice demanded to be part of the crew. She demanded that so that she would get the most from her kids.

Wednesday morning when I cleaned and filleted the ten catfish, I had caught in one night. I felt really good about the deal. The rest of Wednesday didn’t go that well. The six catfish I caught overnight was okay but not what I hoped for. I had decided to feed Hondo his dinner, then go camp out at the boat launch site. Then I could check and re-bait hooks ever couple of ours. Instead of two resets a night I could squeeze in three.

Friday morning I was exhausted. Since I would have Friday and Saturday off, I soldiered on. I drove home in the dark Friday morning so I could clean and Fillet the catfish. Catfish don’t have scales, so the have to be skinned. It was a pain in the ass, but it was necessary to do it before they could be filleted.

After feeding Hondo his breakfast, I called Alice to remind her to feed and check Hondo’s water Friday night and Saturday morning. When I switched the batteries and headed out, the sun was almost over the horizon.

I made it by ten easily. I had all the paperwork done and I had my scooter loaded, I also had the keys in my hand when Willow arrived. It was much easier to load her light in the ass scooter, than it had been to load mine. Mine was more clumsy than heavy, so her little scooter was a breeze. The town where the Crawdad festival was held, was eighty two miles from Greenville. Willow drove under the speed limit and was careful in most other things.

We stopped for lunch before searching for the site of the festival. Willow was much like me. She was a people person. She engaged the waitress in conversation over lunch. Along with our monster burgers, we got directions to the county fairground. The fairground was going to host the festival.

I found the organizer and he let me stake out a ten foot by fifteen foot space. He assured me there would be people around all night, so I could leave my samples.

“If you chose to do that, You should cover them with a tarp,” he advised.

I consulted with Willow, before we decided to leave the setup until the next day. I left a poly banner from the Circus Tent to mark our spot. It read simply, Gatehouse Enterprises. We next went in search of the motel.

When we arrived the first thing I did as to explained to Willow I needed a nap. I gave her a chance to leave before I slipping off the leg. After that I Limped and hopped into the bathroom. I took a long shower, then dressed in clean underwear. I slipped my jeans on before I returned to the motel room. I sat on the edge of the bed to wiggle my way out of the jeans. Sliding beneath the covers came next. For some reason I was out like a light inside of thirty seconds.

When I awoke, it was dark outside. I looked at the phone’s clock. Four hours had passed since my nap began. I was hungry by that time. Willow sat on her bed watching something on her laptop. She had an ear bud inserted. She didn’t seem to notice I was awake.

“Willow is there anywhere around here to eat?” I asked.

“There is a strip mall I noticed as we came in. They had a Little Caesar’s pizza. And a McDonald’s in the parking lot.”

“Which do you want?” I asked.

“I could go for a Micky D’s chicken salad,” she said.

“Make it two then,” I replied handing her a twenty dollar bill, just in case.

She left to go for the food. While she was gone I return my leg to the bottom of my stump. I planned to leave it on at least until she went to bed. When she returned I was sitting on the bed watching a TV show from the night before.

“What you watching?” she asked.

“The Black List,” I said.

I used a hand on the bed to steady me as I stood to walk to the table where people like us had our take out food. I hated my accident sometimes. but an accident is just that. Wrong place at the wrong time. I was pulled back from the brink of pity by Willow’s voice.

“So how do you think we will do tomorrow?” she asked.

“I think we will at least talk to people. That’s about the best and the worst we can do. So I don’t have any great expectations,” I answered.

“You know I did apologize for my mom’s visit. I just didn’t know what to say. To be honest she though I had a thing for you. Why she felt compelled to accost you, I don’t really know or understand.”

“Willow you don’t have to apologize. It was uncomfortable, but believe me I’ve had worse confrontations,” I said. “Maybe not with a young woman’s mother’s, but most of the ones that were worse someone wound up dead.”

“I know that mom had to be weird,” Willow admitted.

“Just a little strange,” I agreed.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Willow said.

I leaned back on the bed’s wall to read an Ebay auction advertisement. It was interesting only because I wanted to buy something like the item being auctioned. My plan was to buy it on line from a Walmart store and have it shipped to the store.

Somewhere close to the end of the auction Willow opened the bathroom door and stepped out in a tee and a thong. She was still a plus sized girl but she no longer had rolls of fat around her body. She had obviously had something surgically done to have her body change so drastically so quickly.

I’m afraid I stared at her. Her breast were small compared to the rest of her body, but the change was remarkable. It took several minutes for me to return to my normal breathing. Willow obviously approved of the impression she made. She had a wide smile on her face as she slipped into bed. Since I wanted to work with her going forward over the next few years, I fought off the urge to give her a not so fatherly kiss.

I sat on the bed doing more research until 2AM. When I finally got tired enough to sleep, I only slept four hours. I was up at 6AM. Since I didn’t have any transport, I woke Willow. I did it by shaking her bed.

“Come on kid, we need to have breakfast before we set up our display,” I said.

“You saw me last night, do you really think calling me kid is fair?” she asked.

“Considering I’m old enough to be your father, yes I do.” I said.

“Well you know what the say, ‘incest in best’.” she said.

“Not funny,” I replied. “Now get your ass moving.”

“Hell, you are no fun at all,” she said, as she threw off the covers.

I could see the imprint of her hard nipples through the tee shirt. I turned away to control my body’s reaction to her.

I walked outside into the morning air to wait for her to dress. When she was dressed and standing beside me, we rode to a nearby fancy diner for breakfast. After my first full breakfast in a while, Willow drove the truck to the fair ground.

Set up shouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes, but with all the bickering about placement, it took an hour. Fortunately the coffee wagon opened, so we got to do our changes with a cup of coffee. That one thing might have prevented a murder.

Our display started off slowly, but by eleven we had a fairly steady stream of people coming through. I was wearing desert camouflage cargo fatigues with the blade leg exposed. I got a lot of attention when I demonstrated the ease of mounting the trike/scooter even with no leg flex.

We made a deep dent in ther new box of five hundred business cards. I mainly wanted to get them out, so we could direct prospects to the videos on the website. We must have given away 200 cards, plus we had fun talking to people. The really young market was a waste, but we treated the teenagers with respect. We gave our hardest push to the older customers they seemed to be the most receptive. To them thirty miles per hour was plenty fast.

The clean air point went over best with the college aged kids and young metro employees. The them even the pusher’s ease of installation, and all in one feature was the real selling point. It even had a wireless throttle so it was even plug and play a concept they understood. Pusher’s range just depended on the riders needs, since the battery pack was stored on the trailer nothing went on the bike. There was a great deal of aluminum angled metal and plastic enclosures on the trailers. That accounted for the ease of operation. It was also easy to tow whit the power off.

All the visitor were gone by 6PM. Since dark didn’t arrive until 8PM. we were on the road home when it did happen. We arrived home at about 9:30 PM.

“Why don’t you spend the night in one of the cabins, so you don’t have to ride that thing home in the dark?” I suggested.