The Second Doublewide on the Right, part nine

I’m Fixing To present part nine of, The Second Doublewide on the Right:

Right after it got dark that night, when Jimmy Ray was finishing off his fifth Old Milwaukee, he heard the sound of a vehicle outside. Peeking though a slit in the flimsy plastic curtain that covered the top glass part of his front door, out in the darkness, he recognized his neighbor’s flashy Buick heading toward the exit of the trailer park.

“Son-of-a-gun’s leaving early tonight,” he said out loud to himself as he crushed the empty can. He figured that was a good thing because it would give him time to go over to Quantavious’ trailer and go through his stuff before he had too many more cold ones.

He had iced down a case in his cooler with rock salt on top of it right after he had finished with the valve job on his truck. It had been a two day job and he figured it was time to celebrate. The cans were so cold now he could barely hold one when he cracked number six, but he nursed this one for a good 30 minutes to make sure his neighbor wasn’t ‘t just out for a quick trip.

It was around eight o’clock when he eased out of his back door and crossed the short distance to the trailer behind his, the last one before the woods began. Something was going on with his neighbor and those woods. He had observed Quantavious sneaking in and out of those woods on several occasions.His first suspicion was that he was cultivating some weed back there, but he had circled around and investigated them once and could find no evidence of such.

The moon hadn’t come up yet and it was almost black dark outside so he had to feel his way around to his neighbor’s back door, where he fished his pen light from his pocket and held it in his mouth to illuminate the lock while he jimmied it.

Jimmy Ray was proud of his lock-picking skills and it only took him a couple of minutes to manipulate the tumblers and open the door. But he didn’t enter immediately. He had learned to look for bobby traps. Some sorry property owners got a kick out of setting traps to injure intruders.

After he was satisfied there were no live wires to shock him, or any steel traps to cripple him, he entered and eased the back door closed. Then he unlocked the front door so he would have two means of escape, if need be.

From experience, Jimmy Ray knew that some folks kept dope in their freezers, but all he found in Quantavious’s was a stack of frozen pizzas and a box of corn dogs. When he moved on to the fridge he didn’t find anything except a partial case of Cokes and a package of wieners. Then he spotted a Styrofoam container. When he popped it open he recognized it as a lunch plate from Granny’s Kitchen. He stuck his finger in the white gravy and scooped out a bit hunk. It tasted really good, but he wasn’t there to eat so he snapped the container closed and then the fridge door.

After he took a quick peek out of the window of both the front and back doors, just to make sure the coast was still clear, he began searching though drawers and cabinets. What he was looking for was cash, drugs or jewelry, but there was none to be found. Every few moments he would stand perfectly still and listen with all his might. He knew to use his senses, and they had saved his tail on more than one occasion.

After another 10 minutes of searching crooks, crannies and any other possible hiding places, he cursed Quantavious for not being like normal folks and leaving something out or hidden for him to rob.

Before he made his exit, he re-locked the front door, just like it had been. Then he eased the back door open and poked his head out and listened very intently. Every thing was quiet and peaceful, so he turned the lock bolt and slipped out into the dark night.

He was halfway down the steps when he became aware of the glare of approaching headlights and heard the crunch of tires on gravel. For a moment he froze, hoping it was one of the tenants up toward the front of the park, but it kept coming.

Jimmy Ray knew he had to move fast, and he dashed around the back corner of his neighbor’s trailer just before the purple car’s headlights flooded the back yard. He remained frozen in the darkness until he heard the car’s engine go dead, the slamming of its door, and saw the light come on inside the trailer, before he ventured on to his own front door.

Once inside he took a deep breath and savored the feeling of the adrenaline rush he always got after getting away. Then he opened his Styrofoam cooler, drove his hand into the icy slush and fished out a cold one. After that he sat down on the sofa, picked up the remote and turned on the big flat screen TV which he had stolen last month.

He had taken it from a big house over on the lake that he had been watching for two weeks. Once he had determined it was just a weekend place for the owners, he had gone in there well after midnight on a Sunday night and cleaned it out. The rest of the stuff he had relieved the owners of was already sold, or in a storage unit he rented up off the interstate.

Once he had surfed around and found the channel where the wrestling matches were coming on, he decided he was fixing to fix himself a bite to eat.