Murder on Dirt Road
By R.A. Jetter & Lance Martin
As I bounced the car into Earl’s driveway, the distant sound of approaching sirens wailed. To my surprise, Arnie was still there. Sitting on the front stoop with his head in his hands like a redneck version of Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker.” I opened the car door.
Approaching slowly, I noticed a revolver fill his hand. Had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well. “Arn, why?” I asked, crouching behind the safety of the fencepost as he raised the pistol. He sobbed uncontrollably, quite a sight for a former football star.
“It just got out of hand,” he yelled. “No one was supposed to get hurt… not even Earl.”
The revolver crept higher.
“Earl never had much… ” he said, “all he wanted was a storefront to sell his wind chimes. I only wanted to help him… and get myself more money than this damned deputy job pays.”
He waved the revolver in the air.
“Where’s Fritz?” I asked.
“In the john.”
“He OK?” I countered.
” ‘Course he is, why?”
“Just wondering.” I felt relieved. Apparently Fritz wanted us back here in a hurry before Arnie did something really stupid. “C’mon, Arn. Let’s go.”
“No! I’m not done explaining. Them old spinsters all had priceless silverware. Earl needed it,” Arnie sobbed. “And my ex-wives are bleeding me dry. The first old lady was an accident. I swear.”
I knew Arnie was playing his trump card, but chopping up Maggie wasn’t an accident. It was frustration. One of us wasn’t going to walk away from this. I stepped out from behind the fencepost hoping I wouldn’t have to shoot.
“The second old lady wouldn’t hand over her silver, she pulled a knife. The third I cut up after she called me Marshall, her hubby’s name, gave me a big ol’ sloppy kiss and told me she was getting even by poisoning my dinner… his dinner. Understand? She was a wacko… I got real scared.”
I walked slowly toward Arnie. “It’s over, Arn. Give me the gun.”
“Can’t,” he said, sticking the barrel in his mouth. I wasn’t close enough to do anything. I turned my face away just as he pulled the trigger.
Laughter erupted behind Arnie. I looked. Toilet paper unrolled and bounced down the porch steps. Arnie’s gun hadn’t gone off. He seemed bewildered. I was too.
Fritz chuckled. “Arnie laid his gun on the table when he phoned.” Holding out his hand, open palm up. “I swiped his bullets.”
Arnie was arraigned the next week on three counts of murder and we buried Earl. The television and news media barrage was like nothing our little town had seen before. Bigfoot hunters from around the world filled our lone hotel to capacity for weeks, the frozen Sasquatch disappeared and I’d heard the Smithsonian paid a cool $7 million for it and Earl’s freezer. They denied it, of course, but sources tell me Sasquatch is in a vacuum-sealed glass case and a team of scientists pour over it inch by inch. I still haven’t figured out who got the money, wasn’t the town. And the feet are still missing.
Some weeks after, The Institute for Advanced Studies released a paper stating Sasquatch is a mutant branch of the evolutionary chain descending from Cro-Magnon and Lucy, but days after it appeared, that report was denied. I don’t know what to believe. I know what I saw and no one, so far, has found Bigfoot’s lair. There’ve been reports they’re still around the area, sometimes seen at dusk… and I still wonder where Earl’s head is. Late at night, I imagine them creatures in caves near Devil’s Slide Lake dancing around a fire, holding a long branch with Earl’s head prominently displayed atop it. Maybe I’ll go hunting for it someday. I owe that to Earl.
###