Polk Salad Annie Read online

took my chances and let myself into his shack and onto the patio out back.

  I'll never forget the horror that met my eyes that night. There was Gary, drunk as usual, sitting in a bamboo chair with his Winchester at his knee, and below him, at the bottom of the mud hole was poor Annie tied to one of the support posts, whimpering and crying in absolute terror as the gators stirred but a few yards from her. The drunken devil had taken her there and tied her to a pole in punishment for doing the only thing she knew to do when confronted with a man. And there he was, waiting for any gator to approach her, then firing his rifle into their eyes and sending them flopping back into the stinking mud from whence they came.

  The anger that welled inside me was indescribable. I grabbed the drunken brute by his shoulder, spun him about, and planted a fist so deep into his face I thought I might need a crowbar to pry it back out. Then heedless of the gators below, I raced down and cut the girl loose and brought her back into the house. After that I hauled Gary into town and had him thrown in jail.

  That old mud hole must've lost six or seven gators that night. What Annie lost can never be explained. What Backwater Gary would lose, much later, could not have been anticipated.

  Nothing came of the case however, for Annie would not press charges against him, and the judge would not accept my argument that the girl was mentally incompetent and needed someone to speak for her. From this I came to suspect our esteemed judge could be counted among those degenerate lowlifes with whom Gary bartered Anne's services; how else to explain his ability to escape the long arm of the law despite the brute's many run-ins?

  And so things went back to the way they were. Then it happened one night some months later that my legal services took me back to the road by Backwater Gary's place. And as I hurried past, I once again heard screams. But they were different screams this time; the screams, not of a woman, but of a man. My first thought was to wonder if Old Stumpy, in his constant foolishness, had gotten himself in trouble again. I walked on my toes through the bushes at the top of the path leading to the mud hole, peeped through the bushes and saw—

  God only knows how it happened but there was Backwater Gary at the bottom of the mud hole, his arms tied above his head to one of the support posts while above him on the patio sat Annie with the Winchester in her lap, looking down uncaringly at the helpless screaming victim below. How she dragged him down there, or tied his arms above his head (she being much shorter than him) will always be a mystery. In any case, it was too late for me to do anything to help the bastard. Before I could act a large one-eyed gator leapt from the mud, took Backwater Gary in its powerful jaws, and pulled him to the bottom, leaving behind only an upper arm wrenched from its socket, still dangling from the post to which it was tied.

  I was sick then. Yes, the man was a brute and a drunken bastard, but even a drunken bastard did not deserve this. Not that he hadn't brought it on himself, given the way he hazed and tortured those gators over the years. And I told myself I'd defend them pro bono if it ever came down to a hearing.

  Big Don finished his beer and set the glass down as if to indicate that was the end of the story.

  "Wait," I stopped him. "There's no way that's all there is to it. What about Anne? What did the authorities do to her?"

  "What could they do?" Don shrugged apathetically. "According to her testimony, Gary had gotten drunk and fallen over the porch rail into the mud hole. She fetched his rifle hoping to help him, but she'd never been taught anything about firearms and didn't know how to load, aim, or fire it."

  "And they believed her?" I asked suspiciously.

  Again Big Don shrugged. "You have to remember, the judge had ruled earlier that she was mentally competent to testify so they had to take her word for it."

  "They let her go?"

  "Had to. Hear tell she relocated to New Orleans where at least she got paid for what she knew."

  I took all of this in with mounting disbelief. "But what about the man's arm tied to the support post? Surely that indicated some degree of foul play?"

  Don signaled for another beer and took a sip before answering. "Funny thing, that. When the sheriff went to investigate all he found was a severed arm lying in the mud. There was no rope anywhere to be found."

  "You've got to be kidding me."

  "No. Although they did find some footprints. I say prints, but it was really just one foot, as though someone had hopped about in the mud."

  "You're saying Stumpy—?"

  "I'm saying nothing of the sort. Although it could explain how somebody managed to tie Gary's hands over his head. But then for all you know it could have been any number of men who had it in for the guy. Heck, even I could have done it if I had a mind to."

  With that, my friend Big Don got to his feet and bid me goodnight. And it was only then I noticed that he, along with a number of other patrons in the bar, all wore belts made of rope instead of leather. But as I mentioned at the start of the story, people here still regard rope belts and suspenders as something of a fashion statement and an outsider shouldn't go jumping to conclusions because of it.

  17030

  James Hold

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