Chapter 1

“OH, MY GOD!” I shouted when I looked at the newspaper on Monday morning. I had won the lottery big prize for this week. I had won $10 million on a $1 ticket. Dammit, I was so excited that I spilled my breakfast coffee all over my front.

“What’s the matter, John? You look like you have seen a ghost.”

“Jo, honey, we are rich! You know how I like to buy a lottery ticket just for fun every Friday. Well, it just paid off. I have the winning ticket for $10 million.”

“Oh, wonderful, John. Now you can afford to get your hair cut and buy some decent clothes. I am so happy for you. What do you have to do to get the money?”

“I don’t know for sure. I’ll call the lottery office in Montgomery and ask later on today. You know how those government offices don’t open this early. I have to leave pretty soon for work. I don’t want to be late on the day I quit that fucking job!”

“Now, John, I know how much you hate working on cars, but it has paid for us to keep living here since Ma and Pa died, so don’t be mean to the shop boss.”

“Jo, you are a dream! I am so lucky to have you to keep me on an even keel. Okay, I’ll be nice when I quit, but I ain’t never going to darken that door again.”

I got up to change my shirt to one that was not covered with coffee. I wanted to look my best now that I was independently wealthy. Hell, I had been lucky to get that job when I got out of high school. Ma and Pa had been killed in a car accident when I was a senior in high school, and Jo had received a near-fatal brain injury and some serious internal injuries. Jo had to have a hysterectomy as a result of the accident, and she spent a hell of a lot of time in rehabilitation as they tried to help her recover from her injuries.

The accident had been caused by a truck driver who worked for a large company, and their insurance had paid for Jo’s medical care, but that money ran out when she came home. Fortunately, Pa had owned the house we lived in, and I was able to get that mechanic’s job right out of school, so we had been able to get by, but we had to pinch pennies wherever possible.

I drove my old pickup to the shop and punched in on the time clock just for old-times-sake. I looked up the boss and said, “Mr. Johnson, I need to tell you something. This is my last day working here. I just won the big money in the state lottery, and I am quitting this job. At last, I have enough money to do what I want to do, and being a mechanic ain’t it.”

“Okay, John. Thanks for telling me early like this. You just saved me from making a painful decision. You know that business has been slow lately, and I was going to have to lay somebody off. You quitting just saved me from doing that. The whole crew will thank you for that. Go say goodbye to the boys while I make up your last pay check. You can pick it up from me in the office.”

Well, that went a hell of a lot easier than I had expected. I wasn’t the best mechanic in the shop, and I would probably have been the one laid off. I guess that I am even luckier than I thought.

When I got home, I called the state lottery office and asked what to do about picking up my check. The woman I talked to said that they were just getting around to looking for the winner. They knew that they had one, but they didn’t know who it was. She said that I had to take my ticket to the local lottery office and they would verify that it was the winner.

If they agreed with me that I had the winning ticket, then I would have to show up in Montgomery with the ticket in hand. There would be a presentation ceremony with the news media there to record the event. I said that I wanted the money all in one shot, and that was when she told me that I would get only about $6 million. Hell, I had been operating so long on so little that $6 million was enough to satisfy me.

That afternoon, Jo and I went down to the local lottery office, and they verified that I had the winning ticket. The clerk called the home office and verified that I was the winner. She said that I would hear from the people in Montgomery in the next couple of days about when I should show up to collect my money. She reminded me that the check at the presentation was just a dummy, and the real check would be deposited electronically in my bank that day. I thanked her, and we left.

At Jo’s insistence, the next place we went was to a barber shop to have my hair cut. We then went to buy me a suit and Jo a proper dress for the ceremony. While we were at the store, Jo insisted that I buy some casual clothes. My old stuff was about worn out and permanently stained with oil and grease. I wanted to get some new clothes for her, but Jo insisted that she was fine for now. She would get her new clothes when the check came in.

Two days later, I heard from Montgomery. They were sending me two round-trip plane tickets to Montgomery and had made a reservation in Montgomery’s ritziest hotel for Jo and me. They were under the impression that Jo was my wife, and I didn’t argue with them.

This week was full of the excitement of getting the lottery money, so I didn’t notice the void in my life, but come the next Monday, I was at loose ends because I didn’t have anything to do. The money was in the bank, so I didn’t have to worry about that. The only thing I had to do was to have our telephone disconnected to cut out the calls from people asking for money. A lot of them were long lost relatives that I had never heard of, so I had no trouble turning them down, but I was soon tired of Jo or me having to answer the phone. I finally got smart and picked up two cellphones, one for Jo and one for me.

By Wednesday, I was so bored, I was almost pining for my job as a mechanic. Jo looked at me and said, “John, you have got to get out of the house or you will go crazy. Let’s go for a ride. Your pickup don’t look like much, but it is in tip-top condition.” Jo may be brain-injured, but sometimes she knows just what to do to take care of me.

“Okay, Honey, where do you want to go?”

“Oh, I don’t know—anywhere. Wait, I know, let’s head east toward the Chattahoochee River on some of the back roads. That way, we shouldn’t be bothered by traffic. Don’t forget your shotgun in case we run into some wild hogs.”

She was right, and I put my fully loaded pump shotgun in the rack in the truck cab. Just to be on the safe side, I put in a whole box of 25 “hogload” shells as a safety precaution. A “hogload” is a #00 buckshot shotgun shell that has the shell casing cut almost completely in two at the wadding. That way, the shell will break when the shell is fired and act like a solid slug with the buckshot held together by the paper shell. It will shatter when it penetrates the hog and act like nine .33 caliber pistol bullets fired into the hog’s body from the inside. There is no hog that could survive such a hit.

Jo could use the shotgun if she had to, but she hates the recoil of a 12-gauge shotgun. It is really too heavy for her smaller body as compared to me. I am 6’-1” tall and weigh 183 pounds, while Jo is 5’-4” tall and weighs 92 pounds.

Anyway, we had driven south and east of Dothan for about five miles, and that was when we saw the first wild hog. It was rooting in an abandoned peanut field. We wondered if the field was abandoned because of the danger from wild hogs. Wild hogs had become a major threat over the last few years, and all citizens were warned to be careful whenever they were where there might be wild hogs.

The local newspaper had started calling wild hogs “Alabama’s new Big Game.” They actually were very dangerous, probably worse than lions in Africa or tigers in India. A wild hog, especially a boar, would attack an adult human on practically no provocation, and an adult hog could easily outrun a human, so running would be no help.