The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Lizard Man, Part 1 of 2

Mickey Malloy gets all the weird ones. When he is asked to investigate the sightings of a strange creature in the South Carolina swamp, he knows it’s because he stepped on Hoover’s toes with the whole Friendless thing. Now they got him chasing haints and boo hags. And what better person to ask about them than the Office’s consultant folklorist, Doctor Ladybird Ogden?

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, All the Time is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

The Case of the Lizard Man follows close on the heels of The Case of Friendless and the Six-Toed Cat. Friendless is recommended, but not required, reading.

Content warnings: Mild Swearing, Violence, Alcohol Use

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, AUGUST 26, 1942
THE HORSESHOE, THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA

The woman sitting across the picnic blanket from Mickey Malloy looked like she could've twisted his head off as easy as opening a jar. And he'd've let her. She was a full two inches taller than him when she was standing; sitting crossed-legged in the grass, she towered over him. Her posture was perfect, statuesque, whereas Mick slouched like he was melting. She'd sat him outdoors in South Carolina in August. He may as well have been candle wax. He was dripping sweat, but she looked like she was on a beach somewhere, catching every scrap of breeze for herself.

“Missus Ogden,” he started, but she cut him off.

“Birdie, please, or Doctor, I've never been 'missus' to anyone,” Doctor Ladybird Ogden said. “Drink some water, inspector.”

A thermos emerged from her basket. She paused for a second as she considered how to remove the cap with her left hand done up in a plaster cast. She decided to pin it between her busted arm and her chest and twist it with her good hand, like she had it in a headlock. Mick grabbed the sweating glass she offered and downed it in one go. He caught a bit of a smile peeking through her tanned, freckled facade, where she thought the brim of her wide sun hat would've covered it up.

“Mickey,” he insisted.

“Okay, slow down,” she chuckled. She poured him another glass, then sat back. She studied him closely, closer than he liked. It was like she was looking for something, but didn't want to ask. She wanted to find it herself. Mick didn’t feel like getting dissected, so he started:

“Thanks for taking a look at those files. I got to admit, I was surprised when Marge told me you were already in South Carolina.”

“A lot of history here means there’s a lot of spook stories for crazy old Doc Ogden to hunt down.”

“Hey, nobody calls you crazy,” Mick said.

“Sure thing, soldier,” she replied. “Half the time, folklore’s a living thing. Some folks’ll get jumpy if you go poking around in their history.”

“That got something to do with how you got that?” he asked, pointing as her cast.

“That’s an astute observation,” she said with a bit of a laugh. She tapped the hard plaster with his finger and listened for the thunk. “This was a funny story. Since I was already in the area, I figured I'd visit this private collector in Camden, about thirty miles from here. He's been on my list for a while. Folks were saying he had a pearl headdress that had once been owned by the Lady of Cofitachequi. When I mentioned that it might have been stolen, he grew a bit agitated. I knocked him and both his sons through the wall on my way out, but one of them had a harder head than the others.”

“Damn. You think he’s holding a grudge?” Mick asked.

“With his kind of money, he can afford to,” she said. “He got his clock cleaned by a woman and was in possession of stolen property, he’s off the field for a while. I trust he’ll be gunning for me hard once he gets his tail untucked.”

“So who are we distrusting now that’s got us sitting outdoors in August?” he asked. “I am sweating like a fat mouse in a cat house.”

“I don't entirely trust the people inside,” she replied. That got Mick sitting up a little straighter. He'd skimmed her bona fides before agreeing to meet. The Office had some kooks on payroll, but she seemed above-board. Just a little obsessed with the odd, but who wasn't? Funny enough, the files never mentioned her being some kind of Amazonian treasure hunter. “Can't quite say who, yet. Ever since I got here and got out of the hospital, I've felt eyes on me the whole time.”

Mick nodded. He couldn't blame those eyes. Birdie was taller than any other woman on campus, sun-bronzed, dragging a backpack full of who-knows-what, had curves for days, and was done up in pants and boots with a fresh cast. All that and he hadn't even mentioned her smile, like she'd just remembered an old joke that whoever she was talking to wouldn't get. She didn't exactly disappear into a crowd.

“It's probably the hat,” Mick said with a smirk. She graced him with that smile again, then removed her enormous, floppy sun hat. Her graying hair was done up in a braid that had started to come undone. She didn't seem to mind, other than to push away aside wayward wisp that clung to a single bead of sweat on her temple.

“Somebody here is hiding something, that's all I know,” she said. “Whether that has to do with the strangers spotted around this campus, I can’t yet say.”

“Okay, sure, I get that,” Mick replied. He looked around. The Horseshoe was fairly open. There were students wandering around, acclimating themselves to the campus before classes started up in full. A few knots of them had gathered here and there, setting up blankets and cold drinks like their contemporaries weren't getting drafted and sent to the base right up the road. Sure, the grass was nice and the oaks were impressive. The architecture surrounding them was classic, with white columns and red brick. If it wasn't August, it might have been a great place to spend time. It was also open enough that anyone who'd want to listen in would have to get close enough to be seen.

“What kind of strangers are we talking about?” he asked, keeping his eye on the closest knot of ‘students.’

“Skulkers, chicken killers, oddly dressed men disappearing from out in the open,” she answered. “Could be nothing, could be the start of something strange. I did not want to miss the chance to be present during the creation of a folktale.”

“That all sounds pretty odd.”

“So what's got you this far north?” she asked him, not letting him follow that thread any further. “I’d heard you were a Florida fixture, and now you’re in Charleston, Columbia. Imagine my surprise when I heard you needed intel on Pawley's Island.”

“You heard about me?” he asked.

“Well, just the stories, but that is my thing, isn't it?”

“What kind of stories?”

“Oh, all kinds. Like one of the First Eleven officials coming back from the dead to fight again, that kind of thing. The younger officials all talk about you. They're saying that say you shot Torsten Brandt yourself, and that you hanged the Father with a tow cable while carrying a corpse on your back.”

“Kids love to talk, don't they?” Mick grunted. No matter how much bullshit any of that was, there was enough there that he didn't want to engage a bit of it.

“It is a scary time out there. And scared people tell the best stories. I love to listen. I love the specificity, no matter how macabre. 'A tow cable,' my God.”

“Sounds like you didn’t hear about my little visit to the Appalachians back in June. They'll send me up as far as Richmond, from what I hear,” Mick said, clearing his throat and changing the subject. “Or wherever a Nazi needs a talking to. The Office is getting spread thinner and thinner these days.”

“'A talking to,' I like that,” she said with a wry smile. “The way folks describe things is sometimes more important than the actual words they use, you know.”

“You must know Doctor Abebe,” Mick grunted.

“Ifa’s a great friend of mine,” she said. “He and I have had many discussions at the Library, well into the night. Getting shushed by cataloguers the whole while.”

“You know, he’d say the opposite, about how the word choice can inform the context,” Mick replied.

“He has, many times. He collects dialects, aphorisms, idioms. I collate folklore, distill it to get to that little nut of truth inside, and then crack it open,” she said. “Recently, my focus has been on more modern, urban phantasms. Especially those stories passed about by the criminal element.”

“Interesting,” Mick said. He was afraid he was going to sweat through his suit out there, and Birdie seemed like she was determined to crack his nut, whether he wanted her to or not.

“Down your way, there's been a boogeyman haunting ne’er-do-wells for about four years now.”

Mick felt his gut clench.

“You don't say,” he grumbled.

“I do. There have been numerous instances of hospitalized abusers, addicts, pushers, and worse, all claiming a man in black who can walk through walls beat the hell out of them. Local news down there ran with it, giving this specter a paper-selling name. Then their 'Billy Club Bastard' got picked up nationally.”

“You know, I might have read about this,” Mick said carefully.

“You know everyone in the Office knows, right?” she asked. He sighed.

“You know, that Bastard character, if he even exists, could get locked up for a real long time,” Mick tried.

“I don't think you could find a jury that would,” she offered.

“Well, maybe the Bastard is just made up, you know? And whoever's under that mask is a different person than that.”

“That's something that whoever that is should talk to someone about, but it's not my field. All I can tell you is that he is not alone. Since the Bastard went national, all kinds of stories have been coming out. There's the Chicago Slugger in Illinois, a woman boxer they named Brassy Knuckles in Philadelphia, a bowman in California who pins Silver Legion recruiters to walls, even a Black swordsman in North Carolina.”

“Bunch of nuts, one and all,” Mick said.

“That may be, but it also may be that whatever is driving them is not so unusual.”

“That's a shame, 'cause I'm only here to deal with unusual. Did Marge send you those files?”

Birdie stared at Mick for a moment. She wanted to talk more, but spilling his guts to her was the last thing he wanted. He hadn't talked to anyone about Falkenstein or the Bastard, well, ever. He could feel the dam creaking in his chest. If he let one thing go, he knew everything else would follow.

She sighed and gave him a little smile. It wasn't the good one, that clever inside-joke smirk, but a sad little knowing half-smile that wasn't much more than turning up one corner of her mouth. She pulled a stack of newspaper clipping and photos out of her picnic basket.

“I took a look at what she sent,” Birdie said after moment. “There are plenty of apparitions and other sightings in this region, boo hags, haints, wood boogers, black dogs. Your Gray Man for instance. How did you know he was a Nazi agent and not a ghost?”

“I had help with that one,” Mick said. “I didn't know what he was. Still don't. You heard of this Brotherhood thing?”

“Only from your report,” she replied.

“So, is our scaly friend one of your haints or boogers?”

Birdie pulled one of the first clippings off the stack. The Lee County Ledger, a local rag, had come up with the name: the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp. Despite there being some confusion as to what the creature actually looked like, that's what they went with. The story got picked up regionally, then nationally. Hunters, photographers, and news hounds from all over had converged onto a small town with about six hotel rooms to go around.

One congressman from South Carolina caught an earful about the whole situation and twisted some arms over at the Bureau of Investigation. After the whole Key West thing, Hoover had decided to kick every instance of a potentially strange animal over to the Office. Their new containment facility, run by Doc Cypress, was being overrun by albino coyotes, mangey dogs, and rat kings, each caught by an overworked official who could have been busting Silver Legion cells.

Still, cooperation with the Bureau was important. The Office couldn’t be everywhere, and not every case was in their wheelhouse. They had to be able to communicate and collaborate, even if the director and the inspector general were both short-sighted and petty. In this case, when Klavin caught Hoover’s shit, he was more than happy to let it roll downhill into Mickey’s lap.

“As far as my research has shown, a lizard man has no precedent in the historical record,” Birdie concluded.

“Nothing?”

“It is not uncommon to alligators to make their way here. One was spotted sunning in the canal not three weeks ago. The area the 'lizard man' complaint originates from is deep swamp. If you can find anything in there, I think it'll be an alligator.”

“Don't worry about the finding, I got a swamp guy.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“I'm all too familiar with gators,” Mick replied. “But I never seen one of them attack a car. The kids said it ran on two legs.”

“It could have been a wet bear,” Birdie said with a shrug. “The complainants are adolescent rural males, correct? In my experience, rambunctiousness and boredom often combine into pranks.”

Mick reached across the blanket and took the pile of intel. He flipped through it until he found a glossy of a car fender with long, parallel rends in it. Something had clawed straight through the metal.

“This looks pretty convincing to me. Besides, knowing my luck I'll stumble on some lizard-themed Legion cell while I'm out there. So you're sure there isn't anything scaly and pointy and running around upright in your books?”

“Nothing ever reported before,” she said. “Neither in local folktales or in indigenous legends.”

“You could've told me all this over the phone,” Mick said. He took off his hat and fanned himself down.

“I told you my area of interest,” Birdie told him. “I didn’t come all the way here just for you. Folklore is a living, evolving thing, and it is alive and well in South Carolina.”

SUNDAY NIGHT, AUGUST 9, 1942
HOKE RESIDENCE
BISHOPVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

The truck barreling up Sheriff Harper Hoke's drive was so loud that he was out on his front porch in his skivvies with a shotgun before it even skidded to a halt. He set the gun down soon as he recognized the green Ford with its one gray door.

“Damnit, Bobby!” he shouted over the knocking engine. “Shut that thing off. Now, I said!”

The engine coughed then sputtered out and Bobby Kershaw came tumbling out, drenched in sweat and muddier than a pig. Of course Darren Fairlee was right on his heels, those boys were about joined at the hip. Both of them started shoved past the other to get to Hoke. They were babbling like a couple of nuts, talking over each other and not making a lick of sense.

“It was huge...”

“Long claws, teeth like a 'gator...”

“Came out of the trees...”

“A.B. took a swing at it...”

“Just crawled out of the water...”

“It stank so bad...”

“It clawed my truck, see?”

Hoke couldn't understand a lick of what these two knuckleheads were going on about. They were chattering a mile a minute and he'd been well into his evening bourbon.

“Hold up!” he shouted over them. “One as a time! Bobby, you first.”

“We were down at the swamp - !”

Hoke cut him off:

“You boys been drinking?”

The pair looked at each other, desperately, silently trying to come up with a reason to be out at Scape Ore Swamp after dark that didn't involve booze. Hoke had grown up in Bishopville; his misspent youth had been damn-near the same. Except when he was seventeen he didn't have the draft staring him down. That kind of stress deserved a beer and an evening of carousing once in a while. Though it seemed like this evening may have gotten away from these boys.

“We was just fishing - !” Darren tried.

“Sir, we would never - !” Bobby stammered, but Hoke held up a hand to cut them both off.

“Forget I asked. Now what's got you tearing up my driveway?” he asked.

“Like I said, we was down at the swamp and this big thing comes crawling up out of the water and it chased us all the way - !” Bobby tried, but of course Darren cut him off.

“It didn't come out of the water, you idiot, I swooped down on us like a dang bird, out of the tree!”

“No it didn't, it was all dripping wet and it stank so bad. You're the idiot.”

“It jumped down and it was huge, never seen a damn thing like it,” Darren said, pushing Bobby side while he talked “Then me and Bobby and A.B. started running and it caught up to us at the truck.”

“Boys,” Hoke tried, but they kept going.

“You see that, sheriff?” Bobby asked, pointing at his rear fender. “It clawed my truck trying to get us.”

Hoke strolled down his front steps and leaned over with his hands on his knees to examine the damage. There were three parallel lines scored all the way through the metal, all right. Fresh, too, with the raw edges sharp enough to cut a finger on.

“Well ain't that something. So you said what did this? A gator?” he asked. Alligators weren't an everyday sighting around there, but it wasn't uncommon to find one out in the swamp.

“Gators can't do that!”

“This thing was on two feet!”

“'Bout seven feet tall!”

“No, it was long, with a tail!”

“Some kind of hairy thing!”

“No, it saw it clear as day, it was scaly, with red eyes and claws long as tent stakes.”

Hoke sighed.

“Boys!” he shouted. “Y’all said you was with A.B.. Where is he?”

The hapless, sweat-drenched pair looked at each other, then looked around. Their mouths hung open.

“He was right...”

“It must've got him.”

“Missus Hoke!” the sheriff shouted. “You boys don't move a muscle. Missus Hoke!”

“Yes, honey?” Betty asked. She was already standing in the open door.

“We got to take a trip down to the swamp, I'm going to need - !”

“Some coffee?” she asked. She held out a steaming mug. The sheriff smiled. His wife knew the business. He practically skipped up the couple porch steps to take it. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and whispered in his 'stay calm' voice:

“I'm going to call the station. A.B. Abernathy's missing. I, uh, might need you to drive.”

“Of course,” she said. She'd watched these boys grow up from rosy-cheeked tykes. Even if the sheriff hadn't been a couple bourbons deep, she'd have still come along to help. She stepped aside so her husband could get at the phone. “Don't forget your pants, hon.”

“Thank you, honey,” he said.

Betty Hoke leaned against the door frame.

“You boys hurt?” she asked.

“No, ma'am,” they both said.

“A little scared though,” she said in her teacher voice.

They were of that insufferable age where boys weren't allowed to get scared, so they just mumbled some noises at her and rearranged pebbles with their shoes.

“Come up here, take a seat. I'll get you some water to wash up, and a bite to eat, does that sound good?”

Both of them nodded silently, then gingerly ascended the steps and sat in the rocking chairs. They were as quiet and as uncertain as the first morning their mothers had dropped them off at the school, all of six years old. The only thing missing was their third musketeer, A.B. the tow-headed prankster. She picked up the sheriff's forgotten shotgun and went inside to get them something to eat. Everyone was always a little more collected with food in their belly.

By the time the sheriff had roused the deputies and emerged uniformed, Bobby and Darren had some color back in their faces. A tomato sandwich can work wonders.

“You boys are going to ride with us,” Hoke told them. “Missus Hoke's going to drive, and we're going to backtrack all the way to where you were, got it?”

“Yes, sir,” the both said.

“Don't you worry about A.B., you hear me? You know him, probably just stuck in the mud, right where you left him.”

The ride to the swamp took about half an hour. After their overlapping outbursts earlier, the boys had grown quiet. They didn't want to see whatever had shook them up again, and they were ashamed for having abandoned their friend to it. There were a couple deputies already there when they pulled up. The spot the trio had been fishing at was well known. Generations of Bishopville's boys had snuck down to the little nook behind that first grove to smoke cigarettes, drink beers, shoot the shit, and get away for an evening under the auspices of casting a line. There were probably more bottles in that particular bend of creek than rocks.

“What do you got, Dig?” Hoke asked Deputy Diggins. Dig was a hand-me-down from the last sheriff and usually resented taking orders from someone younger than him.

“Signs of a struggle, broken branches, scuffs and prints like you wouldn't believe,” Dig replied, unusually straight to the point. Not even Dig wanted to waste time when a kid was missing.

“Four full beers,” Deputy Galloway added. He held up a nearly polished-off twelve-pack. “Kids don't leave beers behind, not 'less something nasty's on their heels.”

“No, they do not,” Hoke said. “What do you see with those prints? Anything recognizable?”

“Right here, but nothing I could make out,” Dig said. He lit their way through the brush with his flashlight. There were definitely sludgy tracks coming out of the swamp. Not a gator, and probably not a bear, but definitely something heavy, probably some old muck boots.

“Let me take a look.”

“Here, and here, and all the way back to the water,” Dig said. Hoke squatted an examined the marks with his light. There was a stink coming up from the dirt that made his eyes water. He tried to ignore it, to force himself not to cough; he didn't want to look a fool in front of Dig.

“What do you think happened here?” Dig asked, shining his light at what would be the toe of each dragging print, where four deep furrows had been cut deep into the mud.

“According to these kids, claws,” Hoke replied. He shook his head and had to walk himself a few steps back. Whatever that smell was was fixing to make him hurl.

“God, what is that stink?” he asked after he'd caught ahold of himself.

“My bess guess? A truck hauling hot turds collided head on with a truck full of rotten eggs, then the whole mess got drenched in Dig's brother's 'shine and burst into flame,” Galloway said. While he ran his mouth, Hoke ran his light around the nearby bushes. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, but he'd know it when he saw it. Galloway kept jabber-jawing: “That there is the ‘eau de smoked egg turd bathtub hooch.’”

“I don't know what it was, but those boys definitely ran from something,” Hoke said. “Any sign of A.B. yet?”

“Langburn and Jever are looking around. They brought Hildie but she took one sniff and ran right back into her kennel. They couldn’t get her to come back out,” Galloway answered.

“I've never seen her do anything like that.” Hoke said. “You two keep trying to follow those tracks, I'm going to look around.”

He meandered away from the drinking nook and back up to the road. He found Hildie in her kennel in the back of Jever's truck. She was curled up in the back corner of the cage, looking like a pile of old towels with bloodshot eyes. She raised an eyebrow as he approached.

“How you doing, girl?” he asked quietly. The old bloodhound didn't make any move toward the open cage door. He leaned into the kennel and scratched behind her big, floppy ears. “Something got you spooked, huh?”

“Honey?” Betty asked him, suddenly a couple feet away. He popped up like he'd gotten caught doing something.

“Where are the boys?” he asked.

“They're fine, still in the truck,” she said, pointing over her shoulder a thumb. Hoke could see the muddy pair staring at him. “I don't think I could've gotten them to step foot outside that cab if I'd wanted to.”

“Fair enough,” Hoke said. He nodded at the drinking hole where the deputies were shuffling around, saying: “It's a real mess down there.”

“I bet,” she said. “Remember when we used to visit here, when we were just kids?”

Hoke squinted at her.

“Can't say I do, honey,” he said after a couple too many seconds.

“Oops, nope, me neither,” she said. She suddenly found the moon especially interesting. Only a sliver of it was shining, about as thin as a thread. “It's so dark out here.”

“Yeah,” Hoke grunted.

“Harp, don't be like that,” she laughed. She swatted a mosquito away from her husband's face and gave him a little hug. “You worried about A.B.?”

“We should call his parents,” he told her.

A little whisper through the trees perked Hildie up.

“You hear that?” Betty asked. Hoke shook his head, but he knew there'd been something.

“Who's there?” he called out to the dark brush around them. He shined his light around, but didn't find so much as a wiggling leaf.

“Sheriff Hoke,” the raspy voice hissed. He spun around, light up, pushing his wife behind him.

“It's me all right,” he called.

“You got your gun?” it whispered back. Hoke's free hand drifted down the grip of the .38 on his hip.

“You know, I do,” he said carefully.

“Okay, good,” the voice said. It got a little louder, and added: “I'm going to get out of this tree, but you got to promise you'll shoot that thing if it comes back.”

The sheriff swung his light upward to find A.B. Abernathy clinging to an oak branch twenty feet in the air, covered in mud except for two clean lines down his face where he'd been crying. A.B. looked around and tried to reach a foot out, but couldn’t find anywhere to place it to start his descent.

“On second thought, I might stay up here for a while,” he said.

It took Hoke and the deputies half an hour to re-park Jever's truck and pile up enough stuff for A.B. to climb down. When the kid was finally on the ground again, his eyes danced back and forth, watching the dark swamp around them like a nervous rodent. Betty got a wet towel and wiped the caked dirt off his face, while the rest of them waited to hear what he had to say.

“Are Darren and Bobby okay?” he asked after a little while. The pair had stayed back by Hoke's vehicle, unsure of their status.

“They are, they're just shook up is all,” Betty told him. “Boys, come on over here.”

They straggled on over and stood before their friend, sheepish. They stayed quiet, waiting for A.B. to accuse them of abandoning him.

“Guys, did you see that thing?” he asked, a big grin spreading wide on his grubby face. “Wings and horns and big crab claws for hands?”

“Wings?” Hoke, Darren, Betty, and Bobby all asked at once.

“No one said anything about wings,” Hoke said.

“Yeah, big swoopy wings like a buzzard,” A.B. said.

“No way, it was long like a snake, with fangs and red eyes!” Darren snapped.

“No it was wasn't, it was all nasty and hairy, like Darren's dad's back!” Bobby yelled.

“I'm telling you - !”

Hoke shouted and cut all three of them off:

“Hey, can it!” The boys clapped their traps shut. Hoke took a tick to regain his composure, then asked: “A.B., you been drinking?”

“Sir, I would never. We were just fishing.”

“Okay, yeah. Wipe yourself down, Deputy Diggins is taking you home,” Hoke said. “And whatever you tell your momma better match what I come over and tell her tomorrow.”

“But, Sheriff,” A.B. stammered.

“No 'buts,' son. You been stuck up a tree for two hours. Go home, sleep it off, we'll figure this out in the morning. Mister Kershaw, you're catching a ride with Deputy Jever. Missus Hoke and I will bring your truck home in the morning. Galloway, take Mister Fairlee home. After school, I'm taking the whole bunch of you back down here to clean all those bottles up, you hear me?”

“But - !” all three of them said, but one look from him shut them up.

“Every. Single. Bottle. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

Hoke watched his men leave with the exhausted boys. Betty leaned her head on his shoulder.

“They really did see something, you know,” she said.

“I know it,” he said. “They didn't make those prints down there themselves. Or claw all the way through a fender. Did you smell whatever it was back there?”

“I did not.”

“You got to - !”

“I'll take your word for it.”

“No healthy human could make a stink like that, I'm telling you.”

“Maybe they'll remember better tomorrow,” Betty offered.

“That's what I'm hoping,” Hoke said. “Damn, I hope those boys just tied one on. This town is too small to deal with this kind of bullshit.”

“Harper!”

“Sorry, honey, I'm just tired.”

“Let's get you home,” Betty offered. They walked back to their car, admiring the stars and the little sliver of moon. The dark trees around them stayed silent save for the buzzing mosquitos.

“You know, there's beer bottles in that grove going back twenty years at least,” she told him.

“Well, them boys did ruin a perfectly pleasant Sunday.”

“We probably left half those bottles down there ourselves when we were their age,” she said.

“I know I did,” Hoke chuckled. He then took on his very serious tone, “Who were you down there with again, Missus Hoke?”

“Don't you 'sheriff voice' me, Harper Hoke,” she laughed, then punched him in the shoulder. He chuckled, and it was only a couple minutes before he nodded off on her shoulder while she drove them home.

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Bruce Conners.