Chapter 21

Work in the morning. Cindy off to school. During pauses in my day, I imagined what HER day was like.

I didn't have that many pauses. The project was getting to the part where we were actually closing switches and introducing electricity into my equipment for the first time. I labored over reports and procedures and meetings. The reports? I'd stayed on top of them, so that was no problem. The procedures? This wasn't the first time I ever did a project like this, so I dipped into my archives well ahead of time and had them prepped. But I couldn't avoid meetings. Interminable meetings where people who knew little asked questions and received answers they understood even less. But that's the way it is.

I was out the gate a half hour late and calling on the phone as soon as my tires hit the highway. I drove into the park to find, as expected, Cindy at the front office yakking with Helen, and the now-familiar form of Charlie Peebles on a chair in the corner.

"Hello, ladies. Hello, Charlie." I shook his hand.

"I just told Helen she needs to get me a better chair," he laughed. "Cindy says ya'll are eating with the Hardesty's this evening?"

"Yessir," I said. "You know, I think that he was the one person who had the most difficult time accepting us being married."

Helen said, "Well, him working at school and seeing a whole building full of girls her age, I can understand some of that."

"Yeah," repeated Charlie. "He's thinking of jailbait."

"I know about jailbait," I said. "You know how many dreams I had that ended in "we the jury find the defendant guilty"?"

Charlie chuckled. "Dan, that's one of the reasons I took an interest when Helen explained. I guess if she thought you were honorable, her words, then I needed to make you legal."

"I was 'jailbait'?" chirped Cindy.

"Oh, no, dear," said Charlie. "You were as honorable as Dan was. With jailbait, somebody's without honor. In it for the kicks. Or for no reason at all."

I smiled. "Babe," I said to Cindy. "If I thought you were jailbait, then you wouldn't have gotten within fifteen yards of my door. And I still had bad dreams."

She smiled at us all. "HAD! As in past tense."

Helen laughed this time. "You don't know how much I worried for the last few years about this girl. Now I can sleep at night, too." She smiled at Charlie. "Of course it's easier to sleep when you have someplace to stick your cold feet."

She started closing down her office as Cindy and I left.

We had just enough time to deposit my computer case and Cindy's bookbag in the trailer, kiss passionately and head back out the door. Before I left, though, I got on line and placed a pizza order, then we headed out.

I liked being married to her. I liked having her sitting beside me in the truck. I liked her red head resting on my shoulder as we drove. I liked her choosing music to listen to, and I liked when she turned it down to let us talk, and I even liked when she said, "hold that thought. I LOVE this part!" and turned it back up.

The music was turned down. "You thought I was jailbait, Dan?"

"Cindy, remember the first time I saw you? Where were we?"

"At the pool. You were wearing your dark green trunks. Swimming laps. And I was wearing the only suit I owned."

"Yeah. And I thought, "Cute. But too impossibly young. Don't even think about it." And I didn't."

"There were other people there that day. It was Sunday. You moved in the day before." I was amused at how much she remembered. "I didn't talk to you that day."

"No," I said. "That was the next day. Monday. Late. And we were the only people there. And I was nervous about you."

"What made you stop being nervous?"

"Baby, I stayed nervous about you until the day we said "I do". But when we just sat there and talked, and the conversation was about everything under the sun, and I found out that you could actually carry on a real conversation, I relaxed. That's when I knew you weren't jailbait. You were my friend. Too darned young, too darned cute. But a real friend."

"Yeah. After about the second week I started talking to Mizz Helen about you, you know."

"I didn't know then."

"You treated me like I was a real person, not a dumb kid."

"About the first time we talked I figured you weren't a dumb kid."

She smiled, holding onto my arm as we pulled into the Hardesty's driveway.

"Let's go see the Hardesty's," she said.

And Jim met us at the door with Ann right beside him. I shook his hand, pulled him to me and clapped him on the back and got a man-hug in return. "Jim," I said. "I'm so glad I can still call you my friend."

"Me, too, Dan. Me too."

Cindy and Ann were hugging too and Ann was making congratulatory sounds. Then we changed places. More hugs, then we went inside and sat in the living room.

Ann was first. "Ya'll make a cute couple. And we're happy for you. But you should've seen the colors Jim turned when he first found out."

"Heyyyy," Jim said. "Water under the bridge."

"Yeah," I said. "And the river flows." Cindy slid a little closer to me. "I got to marry my best buddy."

Cindy smiled at me.

Jim said, "I had to wrap my mind around that one. But you know, I'm guidance counselor at a MIDDLE school. And this year we've had sixteen pregnant girls. In a MIDDLE school. And those are just the ones I know about because they're still students. I probably don't find out about some who transfer or just stay home or whatever."

He looked at his wife. "Ann pointed that out, Dan. Said that I needed to see that Cindy wasn't one of THOSE poor kids. Thirteen or fourteen and pregnant. And how many kids are having sex and in and out of unhealthy relationships and situations, and here you and Cindy are, and you're trying to do the honorable thing, and I think that's about the time that I got hit on the side of the head. Attitude adjustment. You know."

"I know, Jim."

The doorbell rang. Pizza. I heard kids coming down the stairs. We all dove into pizza and then retired back to the living room. Jim grabbed his banjo and pointed me to the bass. Ann showed up with her violin. "Fiddle, thank you! This IS Alabama!"

We practiced, that is, if you can call a roomful of people singing and laughing to the sounds of musical instruments "practice."

"You know they want us to do another Saturday show at the RV Park?" I said.

Ann laughed. "That just means they've had a hundred percent turnover since our last one."

Cindy looked at Teresa, Jim's thirteen year old daughter. "Teresa," she said. "I know you're in chorus at school. We could do a duet. Or you could do a solo."

Teresa twisted bashfully... "I dunno. Maybe a duet?"

Jim looked at Ann, beaming.

I looked at eleven year old son Bill. "Oh, no," he said. "Not me. No way."

"You're missing the fun, Bill. Musicians, like, they have GROUPIES," I joked.

Ann kicked Jim playfully. "Hon, you got all the groupie you need right here."

"Yeah, Dan," he laughed. "Last time I had a groupie I ended up marryin' 'er."

"Actually," Ann teased, "He was the much more rare orchestra groupie, and I collected HIM!" She kissed him, eliciting a "Mommmmm!" from her daughter.

"Come on," Cindy said. She held up a sheet of paper with the words to a song, a simple little bluegrass hymn. "Let's try this one!"

And we played along happily as Teresa and Cindy, honey blonde and redhead, young beauties both, sang. We ran through that number three times, pronounced it good, then worked on another.

On the way home Cindy turned down the stereo. "Dan, babe, THAT'S the way life is supposed to be, right?"

"Supposed to be?"

"Yeah. Friends who love and accept you, families that love each other. Fun that isn't destructive. Like that stuff we just did."

"That was pretty good, wasn't it?"

She purred on my shoulder. "We have good friends. The Hardesty family. Mizz Helen and Judge Charlie. And family. Your brother and sister. Now they're OUR family." She sighed. "Don't you see, Dan, this is the way it's supposed to be?"

"Yes it is." I pulled my eyes off the road to kiss the top of her head. "I never had this either, babe, not like this. You've made us a life beyond riches." I kissed her again. "I love you."

"Mmmmm," she purred, nestling against me. "I love you, too, babe!"

Wednesday was work and school.

Thursday started out as a normal day. It went downhill for me when I got to the job and we started down the list to energize one of my electrical substations. We were rolling along pretty good, as I expected, when the unexpected happened and something operated that wasn't supposed to operate, causing an industrial grade "Oops!" We started troubleshooting. I was pretty sure, almost certain, of the cause, and we were working to reduce it, and I could see that I was going to be working late. At three thirty I called Cindy.

"Babe," I said. "We have a problem." I explained what went on. I didn't have to soft pedal too much. Cindy was forever asking questions and while I wasn't giving her "engineer" answers, she readily absorbed the technical stuff.

"How late?" she asked.

"Eightish," I said.

"Okay babe," she said. "I'll do a TV dinner for me and you can have one when you get home, 'kay?"

"Great, babe!" I said. "Love ya!"

"Love ya, too!"

And I went back to work. Things checked out pretty much the way I'd suspected. We found a problem. A technician who should have known better had made a rookie mistake and this is where it showed up. No equipment was damaged but a few reputations took a beating. At seven-thirty we closed the switch and things were normal. At the job.

My cellphone rang. I answered. Cindy. "Dan!" Tears. Sobs. "Come home quick! I shot somebody."

I looked at my lead technician and the project manager. "Emergency at home. I'm outta here!" And I almost ran out of the building. My golfcart scorched the road to my truck and I was pedal to the metal all the way out the gate.

Halfway to the park the phone rang again. I didn't recognize the number. "This is Dan Richards."

"Mr. Richards, I'm Deputy Stevens with the sheriff's department. Are you on your way here?"

"Yes I am, sir. Is my wife okay?"

"She's fine, Mr. Richards. There's been an attempted break-in. She's fine."

I breathed a half a sigh of relief. "But she said she shot somebody."

"Uh, yessir," he said. "There's been a fatality"

I breathed deeply, trying to control emotions. "Accident?" I couldn't see Cindy PLAYING with our guns. But...

"Nossir. This no accident. I'd say it was pretty much on purpose. We got a 9-1-1 call. I was the first one on the scene."

I rounded the last corner before the park, the truck's diesel howling. "I'm almost there. I'll talk to you in a second." The park was full of flashing lights. Sheriff's department. Fire and rescue. Ambulance. I had to park down the road from my own trailer. When I stopped Cindy was running to me, tears streaming. Into my arms.

"Dan! Oh, Dan. I shot 'im. He tried to break in, and I shot 'im!" She sobbed uncontrollably.

So I had her side of the story, although I didn't know who "him" was. I scooped her up in my arms and carried her to the crowd, meeting a deputy walking in our direction.

"I'm Dan Richards," I said. "I'd shake your hand, but..." Cindy was clinging to my neck.

"I'm Greg Stevens with the sheriff's office. We just talked."

We walked back together. Another vehicle added to the crowd, this one with Judge Charlie and Helen. Helen held her arms open, beckoning Cindy. Cindy reluctantly left my side and joined Helen. Judge Peebles came to stand at my side. Sotto voce he said, "Son's on the way."

"The D.A.?" I paused. "Does he usually come to these things?"

"He does if I call 'im." He looked at me. He was a whole lot more alert than you might expect for a man in his eighties. "You folks're family." He led the way as we pushed through a crowd of onlookers. A shooting wasn't something you saw every day in an RV park, and I think the whole crowd was there.

Judge Peebles got us to the inner circle. There was indeed a body lying on the ground, covered with a sheet. An inordinately large pool of blood surrounded it. Cameras flashed. Several were taking pictures of the door of my trailer and the scarring where somebody'd obviously pried at it. The frame was scarred. And so was the door.

The deputy turned to me and the judge. "Looks like he forced the door and when he stepped in, she shot 'im. From about three feet. With a twelve-gauge. And when he tried to get up, she shot 'im again. Twice. No, three times. That's one messed up dude, there."

"Who is it?"

"Belongs to that red pickup," the deputy said. "Tags are registered to one Larry Strucker. Not the nicest of guys. Record was long enough I had to scroll through it on my computer. You know 'im?"

I sighed and looked at the judge.

"Go ahead and tell 'im. Son'll be here in a second anyway." He eyed the deputy. "I'm Judge Peebles. My son's the DA."

The deputy nodded. "Yessir. I know him. And you, sir." He looked at me. "How do you know," he gestured toward the body being loaded onto a gurney, "this guy?"

"I don't, really. He used to date my wife's mom. They broke up last summer and he's been driving in here since then. Didn't know what he was looking for."

The deputy shook his head. "Well he sure ain't gonna be lookin' any more. That's one dead dude."

Another man joined our little cluster. Judge Peebles introduced him. "Dan. Deputy Stevens. This is my son Jerry. The District Attorney."

We shook hands. I stood silent as the deputy recounted the findings thus far.

"Where's Miss Cindy?" he asked. He looked at me. "Your wife. She was the shooter, right?"

"She was a young lady at home by herself when somebody tried to break in."

He looked at me, then his dad, then back to me. "Dan. Don't take me wrong. I might not be CSI, but I can see enough evidence to tell you that I wouldn't file a case against her if my life depended on it."

"Sorry. My string's stretched pretty tight."

"I can imagine," he smiled briefly. They were loading the corpse on a gurney into the back of the ambulance. "Let's go talk to Miss Cindy."