Chapter 1

“Mr name is Ed and I’m an Alcoholic.” #1

I had been terrified to admit that for most of my thirty years as a cop. For the first ten years or so, I didn’t know it. I was just a guy who liked to drink a little too much. For the next ten years it was a down hill drift. It was a slippery slope downward. I didn’t hit rock bottom, but I did see the bottomless hole waiting for me. What got me straight was my son finding me passed out drunk on a day I was supposed to be working.

I started climbing up the wall with the help of AA. Those people might have saved me from a worse fate, but to be honest my body gave out at the same time. I developed some serious stomach problems. When I got that cured, I walked away. It wasn’t easy and I still ran to meetings when I faced serious problems with the demon rum. I was one of the serious believers in the program a zealot, if you will.

I wasn’t much of an evangelist for the program, but I sure as shit was a serious believer in AA. I was an old school believer. My wife Lynn, couldn’t hang around while I worked the program, but she would sure as hell tell you that it made me a better man. We even looked forward to being friends after I hung up the badge.

To be honest my new life began when my son John graduated from college. It worked out somehow that I retired two months later. I had been moonlighting as a security guard for a private school. The Haynes Academy for young men and women. In exchange for an apartment, when I wasn’t working for the Sheriff, I had parked my Sheriff’s car by their entrance gate. I also filed police reports with the Sheriff’s office for the school to use for insurance claims.

Since my use of a Sheriff’s car ended with my county job, so did my free apartment. At that time I was forced to begin a new life, ready or not. I had worked thirty years for the Sheriff’s dept of Warren County, so my first thought was to find a place in Vicksburg to rent while I decided where to resettle. My son John was working for the public defender’s office in Jackson Mississippi, so that was a possibility. Hell I should have already found a soft place to land, but I had kept putting it off.

The Haynes Academy gave me till the end of the month to move, but they also made clear that it would be nice if I move as soon as possible. My first decision was did I want to rent again or buy something this time. In theory I owned half a house in Vicksburg. Lynne and I never bothered to sell it. Since I landed at the academy, I hadn’t needed the money, so it just never got sold. Lynne paid all the expenses so as far as I was concerned, it belonged to she and John. I had simply kept paying half the mortgage.

I had patrolled the rural roads and even the small dirt and gravel community roads for thirty years so I knew about every piece of vacant property in the county. There was one I had looked at for about ten years. It was empty and abandoned, but I never saw a for sale sign on it. The property was what I called a heritage place. It was at least a seventy year old country store. It survived those years pretty well because it was a concrete block walled building. It was the simplest building in the world to construct, I was sure.

It was a big concrete block cube with a wooden house type roof. There wasn’t even a chimney penetrating through the building. The chimney was attached to the outside of the building. The roof might had leaked around a chimney if it went through the room, but since the chimney on the store was outside the roof it probably had very little, it any, damage to the roofing shingles.

I have no idea why I waited until my first day of retirement to check on the building, it was just one of those things I put off until the last possible minute. I guess it was superstition or something. I didn’t want to jinx my retirement.

I drove my decade old Hyundai Accent to the closed store’s owner. I had done a little research into the ownership. Actually Lynne had done the research for me. She had told me months ago that Alma Bishop the widow of Amos Bishop was the current owner. There were over three grand back taxes due on the place.

I went through the Sheriff’s department to get Alma Bishops address and phone number. I debated on calling her but decided that I would do better just stopping by. I pulled the accent into the yard of the small white frame house about ten miles from the country store. I walked to the door and knocked.

“Miss Alma, I’m Ed Rollings. I would like to talk to you,” I said as a greeting.

The woman about thirty or so years older than my fifty five years, came to the door. “Talk about what?” she asked.

“About the old concrete block building you own down on the Yazoo River,” I suggested.

“What about it,” she asked.

“I’d like to look around it. I might want to buy it, if you don’t want too much for it?” I said.

“You need to talk to my daughter Sally. She takes care of all the property. It’s going to be hers soon enough,” the old lady said.

“Not too soon I hope,” I suggested. I wrote my cell number on a piece of paper from my note pad. “Have her call this number soon.”