Offerings Three Stories

Offerings
—

Three Stories by Mary Anna Evans

http://www.maryannaevans.com

Copyright 2005 by Mary Anna Evans

Kindle Edition

“A Singularly Unsuitable Word” – Originally published in
A Kudzu Christmas

River City Publishing, Montgomery, Alabama.

2005

“Mouse House” – Originally published in
North Florida Noir

Pottersville Press, Pottersville, Florida

2006

“Starch” – Originally published by
Plots with Guns

www.plotswithguns.com

2004

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Kindle Edition, License Notes

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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What People are Saying About Mary Anna Evans' Fiction

For short story "Land of the Flowers", published in
A Merry Band of Murderers
:

"... Three [stories] are particularly noteworthy: Mary Anna Evans'
Land of the Flowers
, Jeffrey Deaver's
The Fan
, and Val McDermid's
Long Black Veil
....
A Merry Band of Murderers
is an admirable anthology of short stories by a skilled company of mystery authors."

--
Mysterious Reviews

For Florida Book Awards Bronze Medalist
Effigies
:

"We mystery lovers who've enjoyed Artifacts and then decided that Relics was even better may not believe this, but Ms. Evans has done it again, and Effigies is the best one yet.  Again, she makes a lesson in our past a fascinating read."
--Tony Hillerman, recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award, and the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award, among many other honors.

For Benjamin Franklin Award-winner
Artifacts:

“
It’s always fun to discover a new Florida voice, especially one who can bring to life the rich texture—the sand, the sea, the moss-draped live oaks, the seedy fishing shacks, the salted boat culture—of the state’s coast…the menace and the history are resolved in a hurricane of a finale.”--
Tampa Tribune

For IMBA Bestseller
Relics:

"A fascinating look at contemporary archaeology but also a twisted story of greed and its effects."
Dallas Morning News

For IndieNext Notable Book
Findings
(starred review)
:

“
This is a series that deserves more attention than it garners
.”
Library Journal

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A SINGULARLY UNSUITABLE WORD

by Mary Anna Evans

I am so old that I remember when ladies didn’t swear or drive automobiles. I recall a time when a young lady was considered fast if she let a boy hold her hand before he slid an engagement ring onto it. I’ll be blunt. I remember Prohibition. How old do you reckon that makes me?

I remember my childhood, too, in a blurry kind of way. There were no hard edges in those days for little girls who were lucky, like me. There was no television to bring the world into my home, so I thought everybody had chickens and cows and vegetable gardens that gave them all they needed to eat. I saw no reason why all children wouldn’t have two or three toys to play with, just like I did. I was Florida-bred so, though I could well imagine that other folks might sweat occasionally—I certainly did—I had no notion of what it might mean to be cold. I went to Sunday School weekly, so I knew that there were bad things that I shouldn’t do. Still, for the first eight years of my life, those bad things were just numbers on the commandment list. What did killing and stealing and taking the Lord’s name in vain have to do with me?

Perhaps my eight-year-old self was aware that I was infringing on one of those commandments when I filched a cookie shaped like a candy cane and crept out into that warm December night. Even now, I’m not sure which commandment covers spying on your sister, but one of them must. I knew that I shouldn’t be creeping around in my nightgown, following Iris as she crept down the river path wearing hers. I justified my actions by telling God (and Santa Claus, whose sleigh was probably on its way to my house right that minute) that if seventeen-year-old Iris couldn’t manage to stay in the house when she was supposed to be asleep, then how could I?

I tried to be quiet as I skulked down the damp trail, but Florida riverbank foliage is lush and overgrown, even in wintertime. Iris should have been able to hear the spider lilies and palmettos rustle like crinolines as I pushed past them, but her mind was on something else. When she reached the landing, I saw what that something else was. Except it wasn’t a “something” else. It was a “someone” else.

He was older than Iris. I would have called him a man, and Iris was, in my eyes, just a girl. And a silly one at that. He wore a driving cap pulled low over his eyes, and a glen plaid vest that was so fashionable that it must have come from a city. Maybe Tallahassee. Pensacola, even.

I was glad to see that he was gentleman enough to take off his cap when he saw Iris coming. Then he tossed that fancy cap into the bottom of his flat-bottomed boat, stepped onto the landing, wrapped his arms around Iris, and commenced doing some ungentlemanly things. After a time, his behavior turned quite ungentlemanly—I’ll refrain from discussing her behavior completely, if you don’t mind—and there I sat, stuck in the palmettos until they got finished with whatever it was they were doing.

When the other boat arrived, they were in no condition to hear it coming, particularly since the two men piloting it came from upstream with their motor off, poling it silently into place beside the dock. With a careless motion, the thin, dark-haired man standing in front tied the heavily loaded boat to a handy cleat.

“And here I thought your deliveries was slow ‘cause you was cheating me,” said the burly man standing in back with his hand on the rudder. “Shit, Owen. You was just passing the time with this young slut.”

The young man lunged toward him with both fists balled up, but he never got to use them. Fists aren’t a whole lot of good against a revolver.

Owen, who suddenly looked less like a man and more like a boy, went dead still when the burly man pulled his gun. I swear, he stopped moving so fast that he was left standing on one foot, with the other hanging in the air behind him. Iris, who had been busily arranging her nightgown, which was in quite some disarray, started screaming. The sound stirred the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Come to think of it,” the gunman said, “maybe I want to spend some time with the slut, too.” His hand shot out and grabbed Iris by the waist. He showed that he’d spent a lifetime on the water by hauling her into the boat, one-handed, without flipping the blamed thing. Also, it was a mighty big boat.

“Leave the girl alone, Gibson,” his partner whined. “This’ll get us nothing but trouble.”

“Shut up,” Gibson said, and I was relieved to see the gun swing away from Owen toward this man I didn’t know. This makes no sense, since I didn’t know Owen, either, but Iris did (quite well, it appeared) and that made him almost kin.

“I’m done with the two of you,” Gibson said, waving the revolver back and forth between Owen and the other man, who I suddenly recognized. It was Mr. Robbins, who worked at the sawmill in town. “You’re cheating me, the both of you.”

“How can you say that?” Mr. Robbins asked. His eyes bugged out of his long sallow face every time the gun swung his way. “I go over the numbers with you every night. We count the bottles together before we deliver them. We count the money together when we get home. Then we pay Owen and we split the rest. How could we cheat you?”

Gibson’s eyes flicked away toward the woods for a second, and I recognized two things in those eyes that scared me. First, they were unfocused, the way my grandfather’s got when he’d had too much rum. And second, they showed a peculiar mix of confusion and humiliation that I’d seen before.

My friend Jeremy, Daddy’s fieldhand, had come home one day with that self-same look on his face. It was the day he got tricked into paying a dime for a little old candy bar because he didn’t know his numbers. After that, I made it my business to walk to the store with him and look over the clerk’s shoulder while he totted up Jeremy’s receipt. Eight-year-old girls can get away with most anything when they smile, and everybody in town knew I’d been able to add a double-column of numbers since I was six.

I’d been real proud of my tidy solution to Jeremy’s problem, but on that night I felt as cold and rudderless as if I’d been dumped into the muddy river below me. I wrapped my arms around my knees and tried not to shiver. If my shaking set the spider lilies and palmettos to moving, then Gibson would know I was there. I didn’t intend for him to be pointing that gun at me, too.

He was going to shoot them—Owen and Mr. Robbins, and maybe Iris, too. That shamed, angry light in his eyes said that he saw no other choice. He needed the other men to help him run his business because he couldn’t count the money, but he couldn’t trust them not to cheat him…because he couldn’t count the money.

Owen had finally eased his airborne foot down onto the landing, but his stance was odd and stiff, just like you’d expect of a man being held at gunpoint. Still, there was something funny about his right arm. He was holding it about a foot in front of him, with the palm pointed in toward his belly. Since I was situated where I could see that belly in profile, I was well-positioned to see something that Gibson couldn’t—a bulge beneath that glen plaid vest. If Gibson was distracted, just for a moment, Owen might be able to save my sister, and himself, too.

I needed something to throw. A shoe would be perfect, but I wasn’t wearing anything but my nightgown and underdrawers. I would have thrown them and sat there stark naked, except I couldn’t imagine that they would make much noise.

Being as how Florida is nothing but a spit of sand, there were no handy rocks, but our swamps are full of cypress balls. I hefted one of them, a hard green knob about the size of a baseball, and heaved it into the river. It landed near Mr. Robbins’ end of the boat, which turned out to be an altogether bad thing for him. Gibson hollered out a word I’d never heard before and pulled the trigger without a moment’s thought, hitting Mr. Robbins square in the middle of his chest.

Poor Mr. Robbins toppled overboard and sank like a rock. Even though my sister was in the worst trouble imaginable and I wasn’t in a much more secure position myself, there was a long heartbeat when all I could think about was Ginny Robbins, who was two grades ahead of me in school. She didn’t deserve the news she was going to get come morning.

Now, let me tell you about the word Gibson said when he pulled the trigger, because it’ll be important later on. In the years since then, I’ve heard that word several times. Not a lot, because people used to have some discretion about swearing in front of ladies. Certainly not lately, because you’d have to be some kind of a buffoon to swear in front of a doddering old woman like me. But now and then, someone has let it slip, so I’ve heard it and I know what it means, but I’ve only let it cross my lips once. I don’t intend to do it again, so you’ll have to figure it out for yourself. It rhymes with “Love your truck.” And it is a major violation of the commandment about honoring your mother.