Redemption
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2017 by MysteryWriter

trailer rentals larger $75 mid size $60 small $50
John Boyd 28yrs old
Alice Boyd current owner of the Gatehouse
Edwardo world famous catfish chef (according to mom)
Joy and Jen wait staff for Alice Boyd’s catering

“So John, why do you want a job so far from people?” his mother Alice Boyd asked.

“To be honest, if I don’t get this job I will most likely be living on the streets of Jackson or some other town. I am honest about who I am, prison did that to me. I am a hard worker and being alone will be good after being locked up with so many hard cases. I probably shouldn’t be so honest, but I’d rather not lie just to have you take me on, and then have you fire me when I disappoint you,” I replied. “I have zero ambition. I just want to be left alone to work a little and keep learning about myself.

“Fair enough, I’ll show you around, and then see if you are still interested,” Alice suggested. “I know you grew up around this place, but it’s changed some since your uncle left.” Alice had been running the place since Keith Boyd disappeared seven years earlier. She had made, what she thought were improvements. I followed her back up the drive to a cluster of tightly packed tiny buildings and trailers.

“This place is called simply the campground,” she explained. “There are three travel trailers and five cabin tents. I’ll take care of renting them and arrange for any purchases you need to keep it going.”

She turned and walked back to toward the Gatehouse. “This is where you would live, if we decide it’s a good fit for us both.”

She pointed out the cooking appliances and the propane tanks. She also pointed out the hot water on demand system in the shower closet, and then the outside toilet. Since it was summer the outside flush toilet didn’t bother me. I had known that it was how Uncle Keith lived.

From the gate house we went to the large tent type building with the plastic frame. The tent covering was sagging here and there, but the most prominent thing about it was the advertising sings. They were part of the tent material itself. I knew about the building’s construction because I had helped erect the giant tinker toy.

Inside that giant advertising tent were many power tools, a large chest freezer, and a large refrigerator. The refrigerator explained Mom’s comment inside gate house.

“Don’t worry about the dorm refrigerator.” she had said.

When I finished the tour she asked, “So can you live here or not?”

“Just as long as you give me my own space,” I said.

“That was the idea of having you take over your Uncle Keith’s place,” she admitted. “I was going to hire someone this year anyway. If not you, someone else. It’s gotten to be too much for me.”

“I’ve been out a month mom. I have applied for every job I even had half a chance of landing. To be honest it’s this or living on the streets. So yes I want the job, and I will be a good employee.”

“Okay son, your old truck is parked out back of the circus tent. See what you need to get it started and we will do something to make it work. You can move into your Uncle Keith’s house today,” Alice suggested.

Mom drove me to an auto parts store just outside of Greenville Ms. There I bought a hundred dollar battery since my old one was at least six years old. However when I removed the old one I hooked it to one of Keith’s chargers. It took a while to figure out which one would work best there so many of them but I managed.

Only after I did all that, did I take a drive in my old pickup truck. It looked like hell but it ran. I drove the three miles to the public access boat launch ramp. I had promised mom I would start cat-fishing again.

Since I had other things to take care of first, I just marked my territory by take a whiz in the port-a-potty sitting in the parking lot. I returned to the campground first with a list of things mom expected me to do first.

My first afternoon began by carrying trash to the county dumpster park. It was still daylight when I finished with the trash duty. I returned to the Gatehouse for a frozen dinner. Instead I got surprised by one of mom’s famous wild boar with macaroni and cheese casseroles. Mom went heavy on the hot spices, but it was delicious.

“It’s just like old times. Your Uncle Keith loved this stuff. He also loved you and Gabby. He would be thrilled that you are taking over this place even if it’s only temporarily,” she said.

“I don’t know about that. He seemed pissed the last time I spoke to him. He also seemed to know what I was involved in. He offered to help me get out of it. I should have listened instead of blowing him off,” I admitted.

“He did know and understand a lot more than any of us thought,” mom said.

After supper I made a note to get a TV and have the Satellite system hooked up. I also had to have the Internet connection repaired or whatever it needed. With no entertainment available, I sat on the porch with a large glass of Sam’s cola and looked at the stars. Until I was tired enough to sleep.

It was actually still hard to sleep without the prison sounds in the background. It was just too quiet. There was the sound of a car or truck driving out at 6AM. Mom had warned me about the hunters and fishermen’s early morning departures. That morning they were either fishermen headed to the river, or guests headed home. Either way the noise was comforting.

I scrambled a couple of eggs with cheese, then toasted a hamburger roll and made a sandwich. The coffee I made was much better than the prison coffee. I took an hour break on the porch before I washed my own dishes. I walked up to the campground to see if there were any obvious signs of a vacancy.

I removed the burn phone from my pocket in order to call mom. She had offered to buy me a smart phone but I told her, “No thanks”. I just wanted to stick to business for a while. I wanted to do my parole time cut off as much as possible from the world’s temptations.

“Mom, was anyone supposed to check out today?” I asked.

“Hold on,” she said. I assumed she used the two minutes to check her files. “Yes, cabin number three. He drives a Gray Ford Suburban.”

“I heard a truck pull out at six and I don’t see the SUV. So I’ll knock then clean it up before I go fishing,” I said.

“That sounds fine,” she said. I could tell she wasn’t a bit interested in the day to day shit. With that in mind I rang off.

I checked closer, then I went to work cleaning the cabin. I put the trash bag outside, then swept and mopped the floors. Hell I even dusted the furniture.

Since I had been fishing with Keith, I had a pretty good idea of what to do. I carried a big stack of limb hooks and a short fiber glass pole with a much smaller hook. I remembered Uncle Keith fishing with bread dough balls so I carried a couple of slices of bread to try it as well.

I caught a couple of small pan fish. I had an old short piece of 2/6 in bed of the truck, so I used it to cut the two pan fish into bait. I got enough bait to set the six best positioned limb hooks. I paddled the kayak back up river a short distance and baited the six hooks, then headed home.

I circled around to the county Dumpster Dump to drop off the trash bag from cabin three. I was on the way home when I reported to mom that cabin three was vacant again.

“You need to plan to be at the campground tomorrow morning around ten. A couple named Rodriguez will be coming to check out the trailers. They want to spend the weekend somewhere near the river,” mom explained. “If they want to pay cash take it, but call me and tell me which trailer for sure.”

“Got it mom,” I said. “So what do I do with the cash?”

“Buy groceries, call it an advance,” she said.

I spent the afternoon working around the Circus tent. Uncle Keith wasn’t much of an organizer. I couldn’t even get finished before it was time to head back to the river. I did find the frozen bait from five years earlier. It was a frozen mess but I still chopped it up with a hatchet.

I checked the hooks before dark. Of the six hooks I managed to bait, I found only one had been disturbed. The bait was gone, but no catfish. I baited all the empty hooks with large chunks of still frozen fish. The bait chunks were falling apart but it was better than nothing.

I went home vowing to return tomorrow after my meeting with the potential guests. After a supper of left over Wild Boar casserole, I washed the dish. I had the last glass of Sam’s cola before going to the porch to watch the sky again.

I decided it was much better to have a view of the whole shy at once, than the small patch visible from my window in prison. I ran out of cola quickly. Earlier I had found the boxes of seven year old iced tea mix left behind by Uncle Keith. So when I ran out of cola, I mixed up a two litter bottle of it. At first it tasted awful, but after a couple of glasses it began to taste just okay.

Keith’s bed was a lot like my prison cot. It was narrow and almost too short but I managed it. I heard nothing before I fell asleep. I did hear a truck leave the campground early. I assumed it was either checking out or going fishing.

I drifted back to sleep for about half an hour then heard another truck drive out of the camp ground. Finally I climbed from the bed and went outside to urinate in the flush toilet. Since I had slipped on my jean first, I wasn’t nervous about anyone seeing me so early in the morning.

After my shower I placed my dirty clothes in the cloth laundry bag my mom had left for me. She left me a written instruction sheet on how to do laundry. I knew how, but it was her way of telling me I had to do my own laundry. It was cowardly but I got the message.

After breakfast I had two hours to kill before my appointment, but since I didn’t want to be late I put the bag of laundry into the back of my truck. I made plans for the day. It was meeting first, then check the hooks, then do the laundry, finally fillet the catfish and freeze them. If the early morning departures were check outs, I had to clean the two cabins.

Unlike my Uncle Keith, I couldn’t afford to hire locals to do the grunt work. I didn’t mind it so much because I didn’t want to build those stupid electric bikes. Kieth didn’t need to make a profit, but I did. My time was better spent working on the campground and fishing for Mom’s catering business. I was thinking about increasing the campground. I knew that it was landlocked but mom and dad owned the surrounding land. I hoped that I might work out a deal with them sometime soon.

The middle-aged couple arrived right at 10AM. “I don’t have a canned sales pitch so do you have any questions,” I asked.

“Do you have air conditioning,” the woman asked,

Typical papered bitch, I thought. But I said, “The trailers do absolutely. the cabins are more for the rough it crowd.”

“Could we take a look inside?” the man asked.

“Sure the big black one is $75 a night. The mid sized green one is $60 a night. The smallest one is $50 a night. All the campers have kitchenettes and air conditioners.”

“Is there a charge for parking our boat,” the guy asked.

“No but you do have to park it away from the trailer. That is so that others can get by easily. There is that large open space behind the cabins,” I explained.

“Okay we want the medium trailer for three nights,” the woman said.

“That will be $180 in advance,” I said very businesslike. The man opened his wallet and handed me two one hundred dollar bills. I gave him a twenty in change. He was lucky I had the twenty. It was part of the money mom had advanced me when she hired me.

As soon as they were settled in I headed to the river to check my hooks. I carried a small amount of fish bait left over from the night before. If catfish could smell, it should attract them from the next county.

I found that twelve of my thirty hooks showed some movement. There were eight catfish on the lines. Some were small but I had one monster. It had probably been over seven years since Uncle Keith had set a hook. In that time it didn’t appear anyone else had either.

The plan was to wash my clothes at moms house. It was her suggestion since my personal wash would be much more expensive than the sheets and towel from the campground.

The cabins required the guests to provide their own linens. The showers were communal. There was a bath house for men and one for women. The bathhouse had three shower stalls each. There were two toilets stalls in each of the bathhouses. The cabins had a bare minimum of services provided.

Anyway while I washed my clothes, Mom invited me in for a late lunch. I explained about the new trailer guests. I didn’t mention my concerns. I thought they might be picking up illegals down river and smuggling them into the country. I kept that to myself.

“Are you sure you don’t want the cash?” I asked.

“No, but keep me advised when you collect something. I need to know for our taxes,” mom explained. “I also need to know that you are getting all you have coming to you.”

“Right,” I said. “I appreciate the lunch, but I need to get back. The clothes should be through by now. I have to skin and fillet last nights catch.”

When I got back to the camp grounds I did the cleanup and carried the catfish into the circus tent. I put them in the refrigerator before I carried the trash to the dumpster dump.

It was almost five when I finished all the chores around the place. I heated a frozen spaghetti dinner for supper. I was finished before dark so I took the kayak to the river to check the limb hooks. There was maybe half a dozen more catfish.

I had well over a dozen for the day. That would give me a nice mess without too much work. I got home just after dark, so I put the fish in the frig, but I left the kayak in the bed of the truck.

It was hard for me to believe that just two months before I had been a prisoner of unit 29 in the Mississippi state prison at Parchman. I found it very hard to keep it together when I didn’t have anyone I had to answer to. I mean if I wanted to go get roaring drunk, I could. I even had enough money in my pocket to do just that.

I fought the urge to go to a bar and try to get laid. I knew I needed at least the Internet for company. I could only imagine the TV shows I had missed over the last five years. I would like to go back and watch them. Well at least the ones I found interesting.

Instead I took a large jug of iced tea onto the porch to watch the evening sky. I found it impossible to think that any of my problems were significant while looking into the clear sky on a Mississippi night.

The next couple of days were almost carbon copies of the one that just went by. Except I didn’t get any more cash. The couple in the green travel trailer left. They did stop on their way out to tell me that they had a great time and would come back again soon. That was nice to hear but of course I wondered if they were playing me.

I also had over fifty catfish ready for mom to fry up for her next catered event. She had promised me a job working in the kitchen, which was always outside in a truck. Which for me was a good thing. I was still working on my rehabilitation. I didn’t feel I needed to be around a crowd of strangers.

Since I had learned to cook a little in prison, I should be alright. She had a head cook, so I would be just an apprentice cook and that was fine by me. I mostly needed to stay busy. I had looked around at all the things Keith had been into and realized it was what he did. He kept his mind occupied so he didn’t have to think about how badly his life sucked. Of course that was probably an incredible simplification.

I woke up on Monday after a weekend of cleaning and fishing. The campground was half full and clean. The freezer was on track to being full of frozen fillets, so it was a success as well as the campground.

After I had breakfast I walked up to the campground with a box of black plastic flex trash bags. I checked the cabin most recently occupied. It was two kids who paid with the boys credit card. I had a little problem with them. Not a morals issue, but hoping they didn’t create any disturbance. Kids had a tendency to seek out places which didn’t ask too many questions. I definitely ran a place with minimum questions.

I Knocked on the door and asked them about their accommodations. I really didn’t care what they thought. I just wanted them to see me. I also wanted to get a look at them. It was obvious that he was at least ten years older than his girlfriend.

Since she looked close enough to pass for eighteen, I decided that it was none of my business. I went to the only cabin that was emptied that morning. I cleaned it very quickly then I headed for the river. It was one of those days when things just worked out. I had twenty fish on thirty hooks. I had never done so well. I went home and had plenty of time to skin and fillet the fish.

“Yes mom.” I said into the phone after lunch when she called.

“John, how do you feel about cooking for a wedding this weekend?” she asked.

“If you furnish the aprons I’m in,” I promised.

“Good you are on at ten bucks an hour,” she promised. “You will be apprentice to Edwardo the world famous Catfish Chef.” There was definitely a smile in her voice.

“I can always use the money,” was my reply.

Later that afternoon, from out of nowhere my mind filled with the memory of Josey. Especially how she looked after Rufus Black finished with her. I suppose it was because I had worked in the cabin where she was killed. He killed Josey and gave me my first real beat down. Of course they say Rufus didn’t look nearly as good when the cops found him. I shook my head to clear it of those thoughts.

I spent the week keeping the place running and trying to finish filling the freezer. I managed to find time to visit my parole officer. It was not something I wanted to do, but something I was forced to do.

The plan for Saturday was to meet up with mom at her house. Help her pack up her car and the kitchen truck. She had the head cook wash the truck because she didn’t trust me with it yet. Far from being upset that I wasn’t trusted to wash a truck, I was happy about it. I told myself that I didn’t have time to wash the truck.

I used the before breakfast time to take a really hot and long shower. I washed my slightly long hair and scrubbed my hands and nails. In other words I was faking it as a professional cook.

After I fixed my own breakfast I went out to circus tent with a freshly scrubbed rigid foam cooler. It was the biggest one I had ever seen. Mom ordered one hundred fillets, which was the output from fifty fish. I threw in one extra frozen ten fillet pack.

At mom’s house I met a couple of teen-aged girls. The only names I remembered for them was Joy and Jen. One was as thin as a rake handle, the other was very attractive in the modern country girl way. She was trying to fake it as an urban goth chick trapped inside a waitress uniform.

My uniform was a white apron over jeans and a white tee shirt. I wasn’t going to be seen, so it didn’t matter. Well it mattered to mom, so it mattered to me. I wanted to keep the job. Proceeds from the day’s off the books job would go for a small flat screen TV. It seemed to be the easiest purchase to make with the amount of cash available to me.

The first thing upon arrival was shake hands with Edwardo. I recognized his prison tattoo. Hell we might know some of the same people, I thought. I introduced myself to him, but neither of us appeared interested in discussing old times.

He had me help with his loading of bags of potatoes and heads of cabbage. There were also file crates and plastic bags from stores to be loaded.

When it was all safely secured inside the truck, Edwardo spoke. “We need to go now. We need to be there at least one hour early to set up the kitchen,” He informed me.

“Sounds like a plan,” I suggested.

He drove the truck and I rode in the passenger seat. The drive was about a half hour, but it was a pleasant drive. We parked on the asphalt parking lot of the a Catholic Church. The spot Edward chose was close to the building’s rear door. The spot he chose was guaranteed not to be near the guests. Well not unless there was a full house. If that happened we were going to be out of fish quickly.

“Scrub the potatoes with the soft wire brush. Then run them through the slicer. I use the small blade. When we cut them, the potatoes don’t look like they came from a frozen bag,” he instructed me how to do it all. When I had them all cut he continued.

“Now wash and slice the cabbage for the slaw,” While I did that Edwardo was busy making the coleslaw dressing.

We mixed the coleslaw and put it in a two inch deep baking pan half full of ice. When it was in the ice, Edwardo covered it with a large towel folded in half.

Then since the crowd had begun to arrive, we cooked the potatoes. I had kept my head down and worked since we had arrived. When I looked up the front of the parking lot was filled.

Edwardo had set up two deep fryers. He kept filling them both with potatoes until he had about half of them fried. He put them inside two more of the baking pans then covered them we a large piece of foil and set them on a burner with low heat on top of our cook top. Edwardo absolutely knew his shit. He was a lot more organized than any of the prison cooks I had known.

We had the Catfish in the cooker by the time the two girls came to the truck. We filled aluminum foil pans with catfish and fried potatoes for the girls to take into the recreation room of the church. Mom and I were even pressed into service to play the role of pack mules.

While the girls were serving Edwardo and I were closing the kitchen and cleaning it. At six Edwardo declared the service over. That’s when we really went to work cleaning the ‘kitchen’. The grease from the cookers was the last thing to get emptied. When it was all tied down, I rode back to moms house with Edwardo.

“Do you want a beer?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I replied. “I’m in rehab.” he just nodded as he popped the top on a can of Schlitz.

“Your mom said to go easy on you, since you just got out of the joint. So what were you inside for.”

“For four years and eight months,” I explained.

“Okay, I did three years for assault. I beat a man who tried to give my daughter drugs. Lot of guys in there would have done the same if they had caught the first guy to screw their kid. The guy who also turn her on to drugs.” Edwardo said.

“Yeah,” was my only answer.

“I knew that being a drug dealer on a college campus wouldn’t score me any points, so I had stopped telling people what I did after my second beat down. You just couldn’t explain the difference to a pissed of father. The best thing I could do was keep my mouth shut.

Before Edwardo finished his beer mom drove into the driveway with Joy and Jen in the car. Edwardo and I pitched in to help unload her SUV. Once everything was done mom passed out brown envelops. The two teenagers opened there envelops, put the money in there purses then walked outside.

I walked by them with my envelope unopened. “Do you girls have a ride home?” I asked.

One of them, I still wasn’t sure what her name was, informed me. “We ride home with Poppi,” she said with a giggle. They rode home with Edwardo in his pickup truck. I was even happier I hadn’t told Edwardo why I went inside after that move. I could just imagine trying to work with him after he found out about my time inside. He would probably deep fry my hand or something else.

I drove my old Ford pick up truck to Walmart where I paid ninety nine bucks plus tax for a no name flat screen TV. When I got home I called mom.

I began by saying, “We provide cable TV to the trailers in the campground. Can I tap into that for the Gatehouse?”

“If you look around you might find the box inside the gatehouse. Keith had cable and his computer from the same provider. He wrote off the cost of the service through the company.”

“Okay thanks mom. I bought a TV tonight. I’ll try to hook it up tomorrow,” I advised her.

Now I’m part of the plugged in generation, but I’m no cable engineer. I found the box and the instructions, it took me most of Sunday to figure it out. When I wasn’t fishing that is. Even so I watched the 11PM news on Fox News Network. It was always good for a few laughs, even if I basically was a conservative. I stayed up late that first night watching TV just because I could.

Monday it was back to cleaning the cabins, checking my fishing hooks twice a day, and trying to find something within the hundred channel selection to watch on TV. I got my pay for running the campground mostly from cash payments, but mom did owe me eighty five dollars at the end of the first weeks pay period. She paid me on Monday as well.

On the Wednesday after my first catering job nobody checked in or out of the campground. I used the time between fishing runs to drive to the Greenville Pawn and Bargain Center. I looked at a desk model computer. It was newer than any I had ever owned before. That was true because I had spent the last five years as a guest of the state. I felt like they wanted too much for it so I left.

I stopped by mom’s house for a sandwich. I mentioned to her that I was looking for a computer.

“Why don’t you take that old computer stored in the garage. It’s just in my way. I don’t even know where it came from but someone said it worked,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to send it to Goodwill.”

I loaded the HP desktop computer into the seat of my pickup. Then I drove home. At gatehouse I plugged up the computer. The first thing I had to do was determine if it worked. It had a clumsy old keyboard and mouse but they both worked. There were a bunch of wires in a plastic bag from Walmart. The bag was from Walmart but I doubted the wires were.

I found the password for Keith’s Internet connections still worked. Keith’s password was Gimp and our zip code. His home page was yahoo, but I didn’t even try to get into his email. The account was probably closed since it most likely hadn’t been used in seven years or more.

Just after midnight on Wednesday, I was up and running both with a TV and Computer. I still had a shit load of things to put on the computer but I was thrilled just to be on the Internet. I climbed into the cot and reminded myself how hard I had fought for this shot at a normal life. I promised myself if wouldn’t fuck it up.

To read this story you need a Registration + Premier Membership
If you have an account, then please Log In or Register (Why register?)

Close
 

WARNING! ADULT CONTENT...

Storiesonline is for adult entertainment only. By accessing this site you declare that you are of legal age and that you agree with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.