The Second Doublewide on the Right, part 71

I’m Fixin’ To present part 71 of The Second Doublewide on the Right:

After Jimmy Ray’s abused little sister had watched him almost slice her antagonist’s finger off and kick the chair out from under him at her kitchen table, she saw him straddle Alvin and grasp him by his hair with his left hand while he rested the deadly blade of his switchblade knife above him as he threatened, “I ought to cut your sorry no-good throat!”

“No, no, please,” Alvin begged as he began to sob. “I promise I won’t hit her no more!”

“You dadgum right you won’t,” her brother had told Alvin. “If you do I’ll find you and cut your liver out!”

Jimmy Ray released Alvin and watched him scoot into a corner of the kitchen, where he curled his other fist around his injured finger and stared at the blood seeping through his fingers.

Jimmy Ray’s little sister had previously packed her bags, so when her brother nodded at her she dashed into the living room and returned with them. They left by the kitchen door, but before her brother closed it he told Alvin that he might ought to wrap a towel around his finger and go to the emergency room.

She had decided that night that every girl ought to have a big brother with a big switchblade knife. Evidently Alvin had told the people at the emergency room that he had cut his finger cleaning fish or something like that, because she never heard another word from him or about him from that day on.

After sleeping on the sofa at her brother’s trailer in Apt-To-Miss for a week, he had found her a little apartment at a complex a few miles away from per previous one. Jimmy Ray had also paid her deposit, paid for getting her utilities turned on and her first month’s rent.

While she had stayed at his trailer he didn’t tell her where he went some nights, and she didn’t ask, but he did share with her the hiding place where he kept his cash.

One morning before she had moved out she had awakened to find this slim leather case lying on the kitchen counter. She had lifted the flap that was secured by a snap, and saw a lot of shiny little metal stems inside that had pointed ends which became fine in shape, and were crooked and bent in all kind of different directions.

Later in the morning, after her brother had gotten out of bed, she asked him what the little tools in the case were for.

He chastised himself for leaving it lying out, but went on to explain to her that it was a 15-piece Slimline Lock Pick Set, and that he could unlock most any type of lock with them. Then he showed her how he used a short piece of duct tape to keep it hidden underneath his coffee table, because he said it was illegal to have possession of one unless you were a licensed locksmith.

She had been in her apartment for two days, sleeping on an air mattress, when her brother had come by and told her he had found her a job. It wasn’t much of a job, but it did pay enough so she could pay her bills and accumulate some furniture. It was working for a janitorial service in the evenings after the occupants of offices had departed for the day.

It wasn’t a career she could be proud of, but it left her free in the mornings so she could go back to school and get her high school diploma. That’s what Jimmy Ray said she ought to do, and she always listened to her big brother, the one with the big switchblade knife.

One of the clients of the company she worked for was the Ocmulgee County Courthouse, which they cleaned on Monday’s and Wednesday’s. She liked that gig because she could observe the lawyers, judges, cops and clerks as they left work. Then she enjoyed going into their offices and imagining what they did all day every day, before she cleaned up after them.

She had coaxed two of her co-workers to switch floor responsibility around so she became familiar with every office, room, closet, crook and cranny on all three floors of the court house.

The main court room was the one she enjoyed cleaning the most, the one with all the varnished wood, jury box, witness chair and the tables where the lawyers sat with their clients. She even discovered the jury room where the jury would hide away while they argued among themselves whether someone was guilty or not.

After that, she found the witness room where the court kept the witness sequestered so they wouldn’t hear what the other witnesses were saying in court. But most ominous of all, she found the prisoner room, where the law kept the prisoners locked in until they took their turn to go out and be fixin’ to face the judge!

(www.teddunagan.com)