Five Miles to Paradise

3

That was one of the many conversations Heck recalled as he surveyed the scene. The sheriff could hardly imagine someone hurting the old man because he'd trespassed to fish for his dinner. That didn't make sense. He'd talked with many of the land owners in the area through the years. They knew the old man and treated him like a mosquito.

A nuisance perhaps, but one that you just had to put up with. T-Bone and mosquitoes came with the territory. And it wasn't like the old man tried to sneak around and do his fishing. He always drowned his bait in the daylight hours.

That's what bothered Heck about finding T-Bone's truck like he had. In all his years as sheriff, he had never known T-Bone to spend one night out of doors fishing or camping or anything that didn't involve a woman and some cheap liquor. And even if it was tying on a bender with a friend, the old man would do it under a roof. Even if it was only a lean-to shed. Heck suspected T-Bone was afraid of the dark.

The old man was forever saying that decent folks needed to be inside 'a right smart 'fore nightfall.' T-Bone said if you weren't decent, at least you ought to at least have a roof over your head. 

And for all the years Heck had known the old man, nightfall had always found him inside, away from mischief and harm. Too many bad spirits, spooks, shades, or whatever the hell T-Bone called them, roamed about under the cover of night's ebony shadow.

Heck recalled the old man saying the devil stomped about, waiting to trap souls 'dumb enough not to see him a' standin' right there.' And T-Bone was positive that the old scoundrel did his best hunting at night.

"I ain't gonna be eat up by no devil at the cross roads at midnight," T-Bone was fond of saying, "Not if I can help it. Naw suh. I shore ain't. Ain't gonna give Lucifer no chance to try to get me to sell my soul. He tempt me, I might take 'em up on his offer. Can't never tell. Naw suh. Can't never tell what a body might do if the be tempted."

So for T-Bone at least, it proved the more sensible thing to go inside early, stay out of harm's way, and avoid trouble as much as possible. Trouble came on its own. You didn't have to go sweep it out from under the rug or beat the bushes to find it. It would find you sure as shooting, sooner or later.

"Man's gotta be a mighty big fool to go hunting up trouble come night. Dat's what I t'ink. Best let trub'some kettles boil on the fire," he'd say. "No sense stirring up the stink if the stink be sleepin' peaceful. Go stirrin' up stink, no tellin' what bound to happen."

So when Harley Bardwell, a local long-haul trucker, phoned Heck before five a.m. from the diner to say he'd spotted the old man's truck by the mill pond, the sheriff thanked his friend and told him he'd drive right out and check on T-Bone.

"Yeah, he might need some help," Heck said groggily. "A flat tire, maybe. He might even be sick. I'll go see."

The cogs in his brain were dusty with the cobwebs of sleep.

"Thanks, Harley. He could have gotten hold of some shine. Might be sleeping one off. Maybe, he died in the cab."

"Oh God, Heck, I hope not." said Harley's disembodied voice over the receiver. "But I was thinking along them same lines. I'd check it out myself, but I really can't spare the time. I gotta be in Shutahville by noon, and I'm in the hole before I even got started, today. Darlene wanted a little more nookie before I left the house. Hell, I couldn't say no, you know what I mean?

Now, I'm runnin' later than a sharecropper with two hundred acres to plow 'n summer comin' on. I hate I can't help you, Heck. But, I gotta be twice as good as the next guy to keep this job."

"I hear you, Harley."

"Ain't much of a haul, but it pays the bills. Least for this month. Time's ain't what they used to be, Heck, but what good does it do to grouse? Take it easy. Hope it turns out he's gotta a flat tire. I don't wanna think nothing bad's happened."