“If a cat jumps up on a hot stove she’ll never jump up on a cold one again.”

Now the man who said that was not talking about one of those modern glass electric cook tops. No he was referring to a wood burning cook stove. He also was not talking about a damn cat!

“Sometimes I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof”

A young Elizabeth Taylor in that white slip! Now that’s my kind of cat!

Virgil backed away from the combine and spat a glob of tobacco juice on the ground, “Boss, she ain’t gonna run right until we puts in new injectors.”

What he is telling me is that I am going to have to make the hour drive across the state line to the tractor supply store and hope they have injectors in stock. If they do we may be able to get them installed in time to start cutting beans tomorrow.

“Virgil, clean up and ride with me. We’ll eat lunch at Thad’s.”

“Sure thing Boss.”

Virgil started calling me Boss when he came back from doing three years in the state pen. Let me tell you a little about Virgil.

He is maybe 15 years older than me. I’m 25 at this time. He stands about 5 or 6 inches taller than me. I’m 6’ 1” so that makes him what? 6’ 6” or 7”. He weighs somewhere around 250 lbs.

Now about him doing time. Everyone in the county knows his story. He was in a honky-tonk one Saturday night and got into a fight. The straight razor he always carries with him came out. He was charged with attempted murder.

At his sentencing Judge Beans asked him if he had anything to say before he was sentenced.

“Judge, I didn’t ‘attempt’ nutnin’. If I wanted to kill that mutherfucker he would be dead. I just wanted to carve him up a little. Teach him a lesson.”

Judge Beans looked at Virgil and knew he was telling the truth so instead of sentencing him to 20 years he got 5 years and was out in three. Virgil said the state pen was where he learned “mechanikin”.

We had just crossed the state line and was passing the “Crossroads Motel” when Virgil said, “Ain’t that Ms. Kat’s car?”

Ms. Kat is Katherine Simmons my fiancé. (About to be my ex fiancé).

I say, “Yes it is.”

I make the block and pull up behind the hotel. I know the car parked next to hers in front of room 110. I take an icepick out of the glove box and start to get out of the truck.

“Boss women are like buses. You miss one wait a few minutes and another one will come along.”

“Don’t worry I ain’t going to do anything stupid.”

Well, not real stupid!

I walk up between the cars and start to punch holes in the sidewalls. In a few minutes both cars are sitting on their rims.

I back up a little and take a picture of the two cars with the room number in the background. I scroll thru my contacts and select a number. In seconds it is sent. Then I walked back around to the truck. Virgil and I head over to Thad’s, best pork bar-b-que in the state.

We were almost finished with our meal when she called.

Not Kat, Becky. My old high school girl friend who is now married to Paul, one of my former classmates, who is in the room with my EX-fiancé.

Before we get into that phone conversation let me give you some background.

Paul, Becky, Kat and I all graduated high school in the same class. Becky was my girlfriend our senor year. I was her first. Know what I mean? She was not my first. After graduation I worked on the farm with my dad for a couple of months. When they started college down at State I joined the Marines. I knew the thing between Becky and I was not going to last. Of the four of us I was the jock, barely passing. Those three were at the top of the class. Then there was that other thing. Becky’s parents were rich. Her dad inherited a law firm from his dad, so you get the picture. Becky was his only child and he groomed her to take his place one day. Paul was his choice for a husband. So why did Becky go out with me? She’ll explain that on the phone call.

Like I said those three went to college I went into the Marines.

Six years later I’m back in town and running the small contract harvesting business my dad left me when he died. Paul and Becky are married and working at her father’s firm as junior lawyers. Sue? Well Sue does not have to work. She is what is known as a trust fund baby. Her grandfather had invented something that went on satellites and she participated in the rewards. Not much but enough that she did not have to work. She lives with her sister and shops a lot. You want to know what I did in the Corps? I was a 0311, knuckle dragger, grunt. I was stationed in Africa mostly as a guard on a secret drone base. Secret? That’s a joke! Everybody on the continent knows we are there. Especially those guerrillas who try almost nightly to get on the base and steal whatever they can pick up and run off with.

Back to the phone call.

“Where are they at?”