The Second Doublewide on the Right, part 36
I’m Fixin’ To Present Part 36 of The Second Doublewide on the Right:
On the way back to his hotel near the Atlanta Airport, Quantavious stopped at a barbecue joint and picked up half a slab of ribs with sides of beans and slaw, all to go. Later on, as he lay in his motel room bed watching movies, he made a game of tossing sucked clean rib-bones across the room, with the trash can as his target. When he ran out of bones, he fell asleep again.
It was well after dark when he woke up and decided he wanted to go home. But just to make sure he called his Uncle Willis’ home number. His uncle had been a jailer, or detention officer, as they were called now, at the Ocmulgee County Jail for 17 years, and he usually knew about all the crap that was going on in the county.
After their customary greetings Uncle Willis said, “Heard you had some visitors early yesterday morning.”
“Yeah, how come you didn’t send me word?”
“Thursday was my day off and it slipped by me, but from what I hear you come out clean.”
“You know I don’t keep nothing in my trailer, Uncle Willis.”
“Yeah, I know, son, but it won’t be that way next time,” his Uncle Willis told him.
“Huh? What you mean next time?”
“What I mean is that the next time they pay you a visit they’ll find some dope and it will belong to you whether you put it there or not.”
“Dang!” Quantavious exclaimed. “What am I supposed to do?”
He could hear the family chatter in the background when his uncle told him, “You keep your cell phone handy, son. Murphy got his tail handed to him by the sheriff for not getting a bust so he’ll be out to get his revenge. But I’m on top of the situation now, and if I ain’t there somebody else will let me know.
“Say, why don’t you come by and have some Sunday dinner with us tomorrow? Your grand momma would be mighty proud to see you.”
“You can count on it, Uncle Willis. Can I bring anything?”
“Heck, yes, you can bring the chicken! Go by the Colonel’s and pick up a couple of buckets.”
Quantavious didn’t leave Atlanta until well after one o’clock in the morning, so it was about two-thirty in the morning when he got back to Apt-To-Miss. When he turned into the trailer park he made note of who was home and who wasn’t. Murphy’s cruiser was there, but both his and his girl friend’s trailers were dark.
When he passed Jimmy Ray’s place it was also dark and his old truck was gone. Quantavious figured that wherever he was, somebody was fixing to go missing a lot of stuff tonight.
On Thursday, the day before Quantavious got raided, the Reverend Ricky Lee Jones, after he had departed Marthalene Benton’s beauty shop with a fresh haircut, realized the lust in his body had invaded his mind and his very being. It was like a dam which had been holding back rivers of water that had finally given way to a niggling little leak, and now he was awash with it, so much so that it washed away his resolve and caused him to abandon his spiritual endeavors of handing out flyers to seek new church members.
Reverend Ricky Lee didn’t try to fight it because he knew there was no use. He was like a reformed alcoholic who had just had his first shot of strong drink and it had burned and put fire back into his life. But this time it would be different he reassured himself. This time there would only be one woman.
The touch of Marthalene’s hand and the sweet scent of her were still fresh on his mind, and he knew he had lost the battle, but he was also confident the Lord loved him and would light his way. He prayed for forgiveness as he drove, and in his heart he believed he would be, because the Lord knew he was weak. Maybe He was even bestowing a blessing upon him for his faithfulness.
The next thing on the reverend’s mind was the new roof for his church. Jimmy Ray Hurd had shown up last week in a rental truck and delivered a load of roofing shingles and rolls of felt, enough to be fixin’ to put a whole new roof on his church.