I’m Fixin’ To Play Dead (Part 51)

Sitting on the curb of the parking lot of the little convenience store in Red Hill, still damp and cold, gulping down a stale sausage-and- biscuit, I felt lower than a snake’s belly and had no idea of what I was going to do next.

I couldn’t imagine a worse situation than I was in, that is until I thought about the one Red was in, which served to raise my spirits slightly. But it was not enough to lift me from the depth of my despair. What did lift me up was a shadow. As I sat there in the morning sun with my arms resting on my knees and my head draped low a shadow gently flowed over me. I slowly looked up and saw my salvation. It was a cream-colored Lexus with two angels inside it.

Through the glare of the sun on the windshield I could see Sissy’s lovely face with a look of deep concern on it. I struggled to my feet by pushing down on the curb with my hands, but once I stood up a flood of dizziness came over me. Before I fell Sissy was there supporting me by placing an arm around my waist and draping one of mine over her shoulders. I could feel the welcome warmth of her body as she said, “You just hang on to me, Sonny Boy!”

It felt good to be in the back seat of the Lexus. After I pushed the girl’s overnight bags over to make room for myself, the dizzy spell had mostly faded and I took a quick glance over the back seat and saw that the blanket I had thrown over the suitcase full of cash and my money belt, before they had rushed away last night, appeared undisturbed.

Louise had turned around and reached back over the front seat and I winched as she parted my hair and said, “Oh Lord, Sonny Boy, how did you get this nasty cut on your head?”

“Red sneaked up on me in the back yard sometime before daylight and knocked me in the head with my own pistol. Then he hogtied me, found that map to the cabin in my pocket, kidnapped me and that’s how I ended up here.”

“Lord have mercy on us!” Louise wailed. “We need to get out of here as fast as we can!”

“Just calm down now,” I placated her. “We don’t have to worry about Red anymore, because Red’s dead!”

They were both staring wide-eyed back at me when Louise ominously whispered, “How did you kill him, Sonny Boy?”

“I didn’t exactly kill him,” I responded. “He drowned. I would have saved him, but it was all I could do to save myself.” After that I told them the whole story from the time they had left the house last night.

Sissy gingerly touched my injured lip and said, “Your mouth is hurt, too. When we called the house this morning like you told us to do and nobody answered, we started to call the cops, but then we decided that the best thing to do was come check on you.”

“Yeah, Red and I passed y’all on the road earlier this morning,” I told them.

“You did?” Louise asked. “Then why didn’t you stop us?”

“Uh, I was kind of tied up at the moment.” I could tell they didn’t get it, but Louise kept talking.

“When we got home and found the doors open, that blood on the patio, and the place torn apart we knew something had gone wrong, so we didn’t know anything else to do except come back out here hoping to find you. Sissy spotted you as we were driving by, so now let’s go home.”

Go home. I liked the sound of that. I also liked the thought of being able to rest. The only sleep I had last night was the short ill-advised nap I had taken before Red had given me another short one with the rap on my head. After that I had spent my time being scared, tied up, punched in the mouth, half-drowned and half-freezing.

I woke up to the feel of smooth, crisp sheets over and under myself, and to the aroma of food wafting down the hallway. A few minutes later as the girls and I were having an early dinner Louise said, “I hope you remember where that Dodge SUV sunk in the lake so we can figure out a way to fish your suitcase full of money out of it.”

“Oh, we don’t have to worry about that,” I reassured her. “The suitcase and my money belt are in the back of the car.”

They both gave me an incredulous look before Louise blurted out, “What Car?”

When I told them how I had put it behind the backseat of the Lexus while they were both in the bathroom before they had left for the lake last night, I couldn’t quite understand the reasoning behind how they were both rolling their eyes at each other.

But before I could figure it out, we all about jumped off our chairs when the front door bell chimed out. Startled, we all just sat there wondering who it could be fixing to be.