Cat Fight Over Lennon’s BiographyIn my younger days I was a “Beatlemaniac”. As such I tended to read every tidbit on my beloved Beatles. I know for a fact that John Lennon was only married to Cynthia for a few years. And it was a shotgun marriage at that.
My passion died off as I aged but my at-a-glance readings revealed John’s second wife, Yoko, was a bit of a fabricator and was considered the reason for the break up of the Beatles.
Now I find that both wives are writing books/musicals about Lennon’s life. And they differ greatly.
Frankly I’m betting neither one of them get it right.
From Yahoo.com
John Lennon's widows are poised to go head-to-head as they both released conflicting "biographies" about the former Beatle.
The first of these will be a Yoko Ono-approved musical based on Lennon's life, that is due to open in the US in April.
It will be closely followed by the publication of a biography by Lennon's first wife, Cynthia.
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Speaking of Catty …And hey, catty is fine at times. Like the comments below by Rosie O’Donnell, a butch bitch in her own right, regarding two other fat actresses-Kirstie Alley and Star Jones. Seems Rosie thinks Hollywood can’t handle too many fact actresses.
From the SF Examiner:
Rosie O'Donnell performed at a benefit for the Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative in New York the other night and, according to the New York Daily News, the former talk-show host tore into fellow plus-size celebs Star Jones Reynolds and Kirstie Alley. "Star says she's lost that weight through diet and exercise," joked O'Donnell, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, I'd like to see
that b---- do a pushup." About Alley's claim that she topped out at 201 pounds, O'Donnell said, "That woman was over 300 pounds, mark my words."
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Can’t Have Christ on Easter When Desperate Housewives Is AvailableI heard with mine own ears on Fox’s “G-spot” segment that “The Ten Commandments” will not be shown on this year’s Easter evening as is tradition for many years.
Seems there’s a new episode of Desperate Housewives and the time slot is taken.
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Merryland Scrap Reduced to GossipSeems the Merryland Dems are all atwitter over Republican Governor’s housekeeping of the state government offices.
Of course the scandal over Joseph Steffen, an Ehrlich staffer accused of spreading rumors about Mayor O’Malley is giving them a springboard for their complaints.
Refer to my own
missive HERE which was originally in a Delaware post. The whole thing’s gotten so silly that I’m reducing it all to gossip.
From Baltimore’s
WJZ.com we have:
Talk of hearings arose after Ehrlich fired Joseph Steffen, a longtime aide, for using the Internet to spread rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, a potential gubernatorial rival for Ehrlich.
The governor chose his chief legal counsel, Jervis Finney, to conduct a limited inquiry into whether Steffen spread the rumors on state time and whether he used state equipment.
Busch said Finney, because of his association with Steffen, should not be the one to conduct an investigation. He also ruled out the state attorney general's office because O'Malley is the son-in-law of Attorney General J. Joseph Curran.
Ehrlich said in his letter any legislators who had accused him or his administration of firing people for political purposes, who hold state jobs or whose family members, friends or campaign supporters have state jobs should not participate in the hearings.
Busch rejected that, saying, "We're not going to let the governor set the parameters."
Busch says he believes hearings should be held after the General Assembly session ends in April. Some Senate Democrats also are pressing for an inquiry, but Miller has not yet agreed to hold hearings.
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We’ve Been Waiting Forever for the Results…of the Top Ten Morons of 2004. Which involves a bunch of clueless criminals and they are always fun.
The Top 8 Morons of 2004
1. WILL THE REAL DUMMY PLEASE STAND UP? AT&T fired President John Walter after nine months, saying he lacked intellectual leadership. He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not Walter who's lacking intelligence.
2. WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS: Police in Oakland, CA spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them in the police line, shouting, "Please come out and give yourself up."
3. WHAT WAS PLAN B??? An Illinois man, pretending to have a gun, kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines, wherein the kidnapper proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts.
4. THE GETAWAY! A man walked into a Topeka, Kansas Kwik Stop and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small, so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him.
5. DID I SAY THAT??? Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn't control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words: "Give me all your money or I'll shoot", the man shouted, "that's not what I said!".
6. ARE WE COMMUNICATING??? A man spoke frantically into the phone: "My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart". "Is this her first child?" the doctor asked. "No!" the man shouted, "This is her husband!"
7. NOT THE SHARPEST TOOL IN THE SHED! In Modesto, CA, Steven Richard King was arrested for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch without a weapon. King used a thumb and a finger to simulate a gun... Unfortunately, he failed to keep his hand in his pocket. Hellooooooo)!
8. THE GRAND FINALE!!! Last summer, down on Lake Isabella, located in the high desert, an hour east of Bakersfield, CA, some folks, new to boating, were having a problem. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't get their brand new 22 foot boat, going. It was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power they applied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, they putted into a nearby marina, thinking someone there may be able to tell them what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed everything in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the out-drive went up and down, and the propeller was the correct size and pitch. So, one of the marina guys jumped in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water, he was laughing so hard. NOW REMEMBER...THIS IS TRUE. Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer.
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Announcing Free Republic's MARCH for JUSTICE II, April 7, 2005, Washington, D.C.!!Recently the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty shall not apply, regardless of state law, to minors. Using foreign law and international opinion as its benchmark!
FreeRepublic is a conservative forum with over 200,000 members. On April 7, 2005, thousands of “Freepers” will march for justice in an effort to impel cowardly Senate Republicans to stop the filibuster of judicial nominees.
President Bush was re-elected by a handy majority. Republicans control the house and the senate. The minority party can’t handle it. So they are inventing their own rules!
Judicial nominees require a simple majority for appointment. Except for now when the Dems are in the minority and can’t get their way. So they’ve come up with something called a filibuster, which requires 60 plus votes to approve a judicial nominee.
They are just so afraid that a new Supreme court makeup might endanger their beloved abortion constituents. Which won’t happen but never mind. Citing foreign law is bad enough in handing down decisions.
The judiciary is the liberals’ last stand. It is all they have to ram their agenda down our majority throat. Hey, they’ve got Soros and all of Hollywood on their side. Far more important people than me and thou, the great unwashed out here in la-la land.
If they have to cheat, then so be it.
Thousands of Lebanese risked their lives marching for the removal of Syria from their country. Same in the Ukraine. Here in the United States of America surely we can march with no fear. Sheer numbers scares the bejeesus out of politicians.
Below a quote about the march. Please visit
this FreeRepublic thread for more information. There is no need to sign in.
The Democrats are desperate because the judiciary is their last hope to force their liberal, unconstitutional agenda on the American people. If the filibuster is broken, they know that President Bush will be able to nominate and get confirmed Supreme Court justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. If the filibuster holds, we'll get justices like Anthony Kennedy who look to foreign law and opinion to support their unconstitutional rulings.
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To Those Who Would Mock California JusticeI know it seems too coincidental that both OJ Simpson and Robert Blake got a few free murders while Scott Peterson and that man who killed the little Van Damme girl got the death penalty. Not to mention that Michael Jackson will likely be set free to molest more children of stupid mothers and dysfunctional families. Some unkind folks are casting aspersions on California’s method of dealing with crime.
Now get a grip folks. Michael is a dancer and singer. OJ is a football player. Ron Goldman never played football. Robert Blake is Baretta for God’s sake!
America needs its entertainers and those California juries are doing us all a service when you think about it.
Okay, so OJ lived in a Caucasian enclave and dated exclusively white women. But he IS black and is thus a revered black role model. Who needs Condaleeza Rice after all? Don’t forget that OJ is still actively looking for Ron and Nicole’s murderer.
And Robert Blake is a cop for God’s sake! With a pet bird. Should we really put him in jail for killing that grifter Bonnie Lee Blakely? Don’t you think that Baretta is just a little bit MORE equal than Robert Blake.
As for Michael Jackson, so he likes to give children wine “Jesus Juice” and chooses victims specifically for their stupidity and dysfunctional families. It’s not like these people really matter. Hell that kid testifying against him now had cancer and was probably a burden on our healthcare system when you think about it.
So quit giving California a bad name.
Everyone’s equal in California. Some, as the saying goes, are just a little more equal.
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Another Public Service Brought to You by The Wise IThe notion of adopting a soldier isn’t new. But what is too often the problem is finding needy soldiers then giving them what they need.
If you or your organization is planning such a project as adopting soldiers, please check out the web site below. Here soldiers volunteer their names and state what they need. Could be a pen pal, could be soap, could be a gift certificate to the PX. It’s a much more efficient way to do it.
Anysoldier.com"And on the Third Day He Arose"From My Book in Process ......"Murder Never Takes a Holiday". A book featuring mystery stories all revolving around a holiday. Since this is Easter week, here's the Easter story.
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"We have to talk about this," I said, as I folded the newspaper from full spread to half.
JoEllen nodded absently. I regarded her from the distance of my arm chair to hers. Married
twenty seven years come this March, and I loved her as much as the day we wed. Her hair, once an ash blonde the color of corn silk, was now shot through with grey. Her eyes, a weathered blue, still shown intelligently, although currently framed by crows' feet. It was time for us to talk about this.
I Just as I thought I was about to break the code of silence, our son Justin bursts in the door, his two kids in tow and already calling for Grandma. Justin himself look harried as he shooed his rascals to Grandma, who was only too happy to go fetch them some cookies. She got away again, I thought.
I chatted a bit with Justin, who then turned his attention to the football game on the television. I turned my attention to the news article that had precipitated my original prompt to JoEllen.
"County Plans Massive Re-Development of State's Red River Area" read the headlines. The text was equally innocuous.
"Building is expected to commence for the re-development of Maryland's Red River area on the Eastern Shore. Government office buildings, industrial parks and middle-income housing are some of the plans to use this previously impoverished and forgotten area of Maryland. Whiting and Turner Construction Company has been awarded the contract to raze the buildings and encumbrances now on the 55 acre triangle located between the Patuxent River and Delaware Bay."
Who would think an uninteresting tidbit such as this would turn my happy world upside down? Who would believe that a husband and wife had been happily married for almost twenty-seven years and had never discussed the horrible secret about to be unearthed with the mighty bulldozers of Whiting and Turner? Who would have guessed that such a ordinary couple as JoEllen and myself would harbor a dark secret that involved murder, grave-robbing and incest?
I was only twenty years old when I lived on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and then I was only a college resident at the small but upscale St. John's College. The college was located about five miles from the Red River area, so named for the tiny river , a combination of the Patuxent river and Delaware Bay, that flowed through the community. The Red River, a tributary really, was always red, the result of the commingling of river and bay waters. Even then, the Red River area was a ghetto. A tiny diamond area in the upper right corner of Maryland, the Red River area was filled with tiny farms and tinier farm houses.
"Come on John. It will be a real hoot! Look, I got rifles....and hunting permits. I even got a real good spot...a blind located in a tree that we can use if we don't get caught. It a rite of passage for Christ's sake! You can't even graduate from St. John's unless you've been hunting over by the Red River."
I had been furiously studying for an impending English Lit exam when my roommate offered this challenge .
"Jesus, Matt, I can't hunt. And I never held a gun in my life. Besides, I plan to be packing on Good Friday, not sitting in some hunting blind with you."
Of course my pleas fell on deaf ears. Matt wasn't far off the mark when he said a hunting foray was "part" of attending St. John's college. Most of the students came from an upper middle class, if not downright wealthy, background. While the college was definitely of an elite ivy league sort, its location near the rural and poor area of Maryland's Eastern Shore seemed to compel its attendees to go "slumming" at some point, even if to partake in a hunting expedition never before a part of the well-off students' life experiences.
My own parents were not particularly wealthy. They were, however, both alumni of St. John's college, whose liberal arts curriculum was exemplary. They had scrimped and saved their whole lives so that I could also obtain a degree from their beloved alma mater. Since I didn't especially care where I earned my degree in education, I chose to indulge them.
I was a senior at St. John's college the year Matt and I threw down the gauntlet and engaged in the hunting activity that would make "men" of us. It would come to be that it would also make murderers of us.
"Man, this is living. Here we are, you and I Johnnie boy, men amongst men. Got us a rifle, a six-pack, this incredible hunting blind...all the comforts of home my man."
Matt was so full of baloney I wanted to knock him right out of the "incredible" hunting blind, which was situated precariously in a tree, about 20 feet above the ground, and very, very leaky. It was Good Friday. Just tomorrow Matt and I were both scheduled to take off for our homes and a well-deserved Spring break. But here today we sat in this leaky blind, in the pouring rain, with two rifles neither of us knew how to use...becoming "men".
"Hey...well, well, well....lookie over there," Matt said, peering through binoculars at some distant object, "I think we got us a deer in sight Johnnie boy. How about that? First time hunting and we bag us a deer!"
Matt set the binoculars down, picked up his rifle, and prepared to shoot....something.
"Jesus Matt!, " I shouted, jumping to my feet and pushing the rifle out of his hand, "how the hell do you know it's a deer? You don't know shit what you are doing....and just picking up a gun...."
I stopped my tirade, grabbed the binoculars, and attempted to focus on the object Matt was about to shoot.
While I was fooling around with the optics of the binoculars, Matt picked up his rifle, carefully aimed, and fired a shot. Within seconds of hearing the shot, I had managed to get the binoculars focused. Just in time to see a man fall from the force of Matt's shot.
I spent about three minutes screaming to Matt that he had shot a fucking man, when we both realized we should scramble down the ladder to go have a look-see. Which we did.
He was very dead.
"Oh my God, Johnnie....why didn't he have on that glow stuff? Jesus Christ...I killed a fucking man! My life is shit, Johnnie...shit!"
Matt was accompanying his histrionics with body language appropriate to this angst. I just stood by the dead body, mute.
"Let's bury him Johnnie. Come on....let's dig a shallow grave and just leave him here. Look, we're both heading out of this state tomorrow. By the time they find the guy, we'll be long gone. Ain't nobody even knows we came out here today. It ain't like there is anything we could do to bring him back alive."
I remained quiet as I listened to all this from my former friend. For I decided right then that Matthew Quinton Langley III was an asshole of the highest degree. I had never deluded myself that Matt and I were even in any way similar. His parents were related to the mighty Duponts of Delaware. While Matt was mostly personable enough, he could be a bit pompous. On this occasion, his pomposity was sickening.
I ended up burying that body. Because Matt made a real good argument that it would ruin our Easter, that the guy was probably a local nobody (we found no identification on the corpse)....that no one would probably know he was gone. His most persuasive argument was that if I told, he would say that *I* shot the bullet. Even though I would deny, it would still drag me into an investigation from which I thought, silly me, I would be exempt. All thoughts that this was a human being, somebody's father, somebody's son, had been banished from my mind. The image was replaced by an image of my own folks, brokenhearted at their son who ruined a brilliant teaching career by murdering some hillbilly in Red River, Maryland.
"Look at the ears on this guy!" Matt said, as we pulled the body down an incline to the shallow grave we had dug by the river. The plan was, we would lay the body in a depression we had just dug with our own hands. Then we would cover it with wet leaves so it would resemble the woods in the surround.
"He's got to be from around here, Matt. Why else would he be out here hunting with no wallet, not even a hunting permit? Someone's going to miss him before we even get a chance to get in our cars and head out of here tomorrow."
Matt dropped his half of the body into the pit, then came around to pull my half into the pit. With great concentration, he covered the corpse with leaves.
"Johnnie, this guy probably lives alone in some shack by the river. He probably goes out hunting for deer when he gets hungry. Hey, Dewy Hankins told me there are bums just like this living all along the river. When, and IF anyone realizes he is missing, we will be long gone from here. Jesus, those ears!"
Matt had covered the entire corpse with rotting leaves and was just about to complete the job by covering the face. With Matt's last comment I had to take a look at the ears. They were huge indeed. They stuck out from either side of his head like handles on a jug.
"John, I hope you understand. Your mother's a wreck. You'd just be miserable here, and besides, I hesitate to say this, but if your grandmother doesn't make it, you'll have to come home anyway. Best you stay there and wait for word."
My father spoke these words gently into the mouthpiece of the phone. I could hear my mother sobbing in the background. My grandmother had a sudden stroke late on Good Friday. My parents wanted to cancel my scheduled trip home so they could tend to my grandmother. So my plans to be far away when the corpse of Mr. Jug Ears was found had gone awry. I would be stuck, right here at St. John's college where the cops could easily find me.
Only the cops never showed up at all that following Saturday and the day before Easter. Although if they could have been worried into existence they would have been there. Because I was beside myself with fear. I wonder if all murderers felt the weight of their impulse more the day AFTER their crime.
On Easter Sunday, I could stand no more. On a grim and cold day, I walked the two miles onto the outskirts of Red River and where Matt had accidentally shot a man, then hid him in a shallow grave. I had determined that I would find the corpse, then walk another mile to the police station to report the crime. After all, I had done no wrong. Eight hours of tossing and turning had preceded this most sensible decision. No matter the scandal, I was better off reporting the incident than to spend the rest of my life in fear.
Only the corpse wasn't there.
For over an hour I thought I was mistaken about the location. I remembered that the grave was by a large Ash tree immediately adjacent to the river. I found the Ash tree easily, and just as easily located the depression that served as Mr. Jug Ears' last home. But when I scooped the leaves out of the grave, that was all my hands found: leaves. There was absolutely no corpse anywhere in the vicinity.
My first thought was, idiotically, that perhaps there are many such shallow graves along the river and perhaps I had picked the wrong one. So I walked up and down the river a piece. Only there was no other Ash tree anywhere as far as I could see. I then traipsed back out onto the road to be sure I had turned into the woods at the right place. I had.
The damn body was gone!
Not that I wasn't freaking, but since there was no one around with whom I could share my concern, there wasn't much more that I could do but leave. There didn't seem any great urgency to head on to the police station either. What could I tell them, that on Good Friday my roommate shot a man and now on Easter, the body is gone? It was too biblical to be believed.
"Man...God loves me Johnnie boy!" Matt said, holding both arms skyward and forming two circles with his index fingers and thumbs. For his part, Matt was not at all concerned about the disappearance of the body.
After the Spring break I had informed Matt about this odd incident. For some reason, I expected to him to be just as frightened as me. His reaction, complete with finger "okay" signs, made it quite clear to me he thought the whole thing a most fortunate event. Which, I should have supposed, it was.
I suffered the fear and remorse all by myself the next few weeks. Whatever kind of closure could ever be found for this? Two spoiled college boys accidentally kill a man, then bury him in a shallow grave by the river because they didn't want to be "bothered" by a police investigation. Only one of the kids decides to turn himself in, but discovers the body buried only two days ago was now gone? And not a newspaper one made any mention of the crime.
It was a Stephen King story with Alfred Hitchcock overtones. I was certain that the gods would avenge. I decided to do a little investigating of my own.
"Well, lessee...there's Jake Willis, Joe Randolph, hmmmmmm, retarded kid lives down the road...forget his name."
I tapped my foot impatiently while Stan Morningstar checked his "records". As a result of my investigation, I discovered that the land on which Matt and I had "hunted" was owned by Stan. Since permission must be granted to hunt on privately owned land, I figured that maybe Mr. Morningstar could provide me with the names of some of the locals who had blanket permission to hunt on his land. This was a common practice, or so Matt told me. In fact, our own permission to hunt on the land had come from Mr. Morningstar, via Matt's influential father.
Stan hefted his shoe box up onto the porch rail to better dig deeper into his records.
"No...nope...nah...here's one...Willie Hampton....," Stan pulled little scraps of paper out of his shoe box file cabinet that, in some manner, provided him with names of those with permission to hunt on his land. As he called out names, I wrote them down.
"Harry Akehurst...., nope...no..," Stan abruptly placed the lid on the shoe box. "That's it. Course a lot of folks apply for permission...mostly out of towners...when the whim hits them. But you only wanted the ones with blanket permissions?"
That was, indeed, what I had requested. Because I was convinced that Mr. Jug Ears was a local that thought no more of picking up a rifle to head out and shoot a jack rabbit then putting on overhauls and changing oil in the pickup truck. Such a fellow, went my logic, would most likely have blanket permission to hunt the privately owned lands along Red River. Such arrangements were very common along Maryland's Eastern Shore...often just a neighborly kind of thing.
Jake Willis and Joe Randolph were both very much alive when I finally scouted them down at the local Gin mill. And Harry Akehurst was hale when I caught up with him weeding his vegetable garden. It was when I came to the home of Willie Hampton that I hit a snag.
She was nineteen, with a head full of ash blonde hair, faded blue eyes, and a young child clinging to her skirt.
"I'm looking for a Willie Hampton," I told the young woman as I approached the tiny shack by the river. It was a dilapidated affair, a jumble of rooms seemingly added to the house with no plan. The porch came complete with sagging steps and a tin corrugated roof.
JoEllen Hampton was hanging diapers on a metal wire clothesline.
"He doesn't live here anymore. My stepfather took off about a year ago, right after my mother died."
The women answered my query with a soft voice, devoid of any Eastern Shore accent. I was surprised at this lovely woman with such an educated voice, living in this shack along Red River and evidently mother of a child then about two years old.
Willie Hampton was the last name I had in my search for the owner of the dead body. And since he took off about a year ago, I guessed that it wasn't him. So it wasn't exactly for investigatory purposes that I accepted her offer of iced tea.
"You live here by yourself?" I asked, as we settled into a pair of old but comfortable chairs on the shady porch.
"I inherited all of this...." she said, moving her arms in an expansive gesture to indicate the sum of her Riverside shack. "Just me and little Jo-Jo here. His Daddy died in the Vietnam war."
I sat quiet with this. JoEllen was a beautiful woman. It would be a lie to deny that I had fallen hopelessly in love with her before I had finished my iced tea.
In the year before we were married, the clues came, sporadically and without warning. But taken as a whole rather than the sum of their parts, their was no denying that my investigation into the death of the stranger in the woods was to continue.
The first clue came as I cleaned the old wood stove in the living room.
The thing had to come out, the real estate lady told us. It was a danger and the bank would never approve a loan to any fool looking to buy the place.
The thing was full of ashes, and since I had to carry it sideways across the room, I thought it prudent to clean it out first. That was when the partially burned photographs fell from the stove's innards.
Almost 90% of the pictures were burned. For some odd combustible reason, a whole sheaf of photographs had ten percent of their images left, unburned and mostly indiscernible. Except the one that had only the top of a woman's head and the head of a man apparently standing by her side. The man had huge ears that sat on his head like handles on a pitcher.
"Willie was all right. He was strange, kept to himself a lot. Mostly he ignored me, both when I was a little brat and again when I returned home after Sam died."
"Did he like to hunt?"
"Goodness, he loved to hunt! How did you know?"
I had broached the conversation in the most nonchalant of terms. I knew that Willie was her stepfather. What I didn't know until the same afternoon of this conversation, was that he had such a huge set of ears. JoEllen was very open and honest in our dialogue, even though I had spent the last several hours in a state of paranoia re my wife-to-be and her stepfather with the jug ears that my college roommate had murdered, we both had buried, and ended up gone from his own grave.
JoEllen had even acknowledged and giggled over Willie Hampton's huge ears. The only time a shadow had crossed her face during this exchange was when I asked her why she had burned the photographs. As quickly as it came, the shadow disappeared.
"Goodness! I didn't mean to burn those photographs. They fell into the fire. I even burned my arm trying to pull them out of the flames." With this, JoEllen pulled up the sleeve of her dress and showed me a very real scar.
I knew my fiancee was an accomplished liar, but I loved her still.
"John...John..." little Jo-Jo ran towards me as I pulled into the pot-holed driveway of JoEllen's Red River shack. We were by now working day and night to get the place into top shape, if that were even remotely possible given the source. Still, JoEllen and I were going to move to Georgia, a bit closer to my parents and site of the new home we had purchased two months prior.
I scooped the little rascal into my arms. His excitement was darn near out of control, what with his Mom's impending marriage and the move further south. Today, Jo-Jo was going to help me put a cap on that old well in the back.
"Too dangerous. Put a cement cap on the thing. Bank will never approve a loan with that thing open and inviting an accident."
So I was about to do the Realtor's bidding. My rented truck contained bags of cement, shovels, gravel and wooden forms. I wondered that Jo-Jo hadn't fall down the thing by now.
No one used the well, although it was the source of running water for the shack. The waters ran about 25' below and were piped into the house. This circular protuberance, about three feet in diameter, served no purpose. Perhaps it was intended to build a decent brick well around the thing. As it was, sticking about four feet into the air, it was a danger and only that.
Jo-Jo carried the forms and the tools until he drove me to distraction. Building forms and pouring cement was not my specialty. I had hung a light bulb down into the well about ten feet. I was going to have repair some of those bricks if this cap was going to hold.
JoEllen came out and fetched Jo-Jo at my behest. Little rascal wanted to hang down into the well head with me.
For another hour or so, I busied myself with shoring up the sides of the well. JoEllen had just left from her mission to see if I needed any sort of assistance, when I saw the corpse.
I was over twenty feet above it and the lighting was dim way down in that hole. There was no mistaking the plaid of the hunting jacket that peaked up brightly from the bowels of the well. I knew beyond any doubt that Willie Hampton was laying down the bottom of that well. And I don't know how he got down there, because the last time I saw him he was laying dead in a shallow grave next to a big Ash tree beside Red River.
"Man, he missed it! You see that Dad. Guy makes three million a year and can't even kick a field goal."
Justin's exclamation bought me back to the present. My granddaughter had climbed up on my lap and my grandson was snuggled on the couch next to his grandmother. JoEllen had scrounged up some cookies for the grandkids and their football nut of a father. I put the paper aside and pulled Susan close to me. It was time for me to tell her the story of the Three Bears.
I mouthed the words to this familiar children's tale to both Susie's and little Justin's rapt attention. They adored for me to tell them stories. I told this tale with only half attention.
During the telling, I regarded my lovely wife of almost twenty seven years. She was a slender woman. One would wonder how she ever had the strength to heft a body up four feet and down into a well.
JoEllen and I had never discussed her stepfather. So far as I knew, she should not have a clue that I had been involved in the killing of Willie Hampton. She knew though.
How could she not? I could only surmise that JoEllen had somehow witnessed the unfortunate accident that killed her stepfather. She had also, no doubt, saw the impromptu burial arranged by Matt and myself. Or, perhaps, she had killed her stepfather herself. Matt had never fired a gun before in his life. How likely was it that he would shoot directly into the heart of a fellow hunter on his very first shot?
JoEllen knew of my participation in the demise of Willie Hampton. I have never fully understood her part in the crime. And I had never asked.
Justin pulled himself up from the bowels of the sofa and gave a hearty stretch. Susan slid off my lap and little Justin jumped up from his grandmother's lap. They were a lovely family. I loved Justin as much as I loved my own biological two children. I've loved him ever since I knew him as a rascally Jo-Jo who wanted to help me cap that well head.
Every time I looked at Justin, and now his two children, I had some clue as to why JoEllen took the horrible actions she took. And though the planned re-development of Red River probably would never unearth the body of Willie Hampton, it was the perfect vehicle to open the dialogue between me and JoEllen.
Justin gathered his children and bade us a goodnight. I could only smile at the sight of those jug ears that stood out on either side of his head like handles on a pitcher. Little Susie and Justin sported the same set of ears.
Just as soon as they left, JoEllen and I were going to talk.
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