Home Fires Read online

  Home Fires

  W. L. Ripley

  Home Fires

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2020 (as revised) W. L. Ripley

  Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Avenue

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  wolfpackpublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  eBook ISBN 978-1-64734-506-8

  Contents

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  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Take A Look At: Cole Springer Trilogy

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  Home Fires

  People sleep peaceably in their beds...because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

  ~ George Orwell

  Godlike the man who sits at her side, who watches and catches

  that laughter which softly tears me to tatters:

  nothing is left of me, each time I see her.

  ~ Catullus

  Chapter One

  Jake Morgan’s first day home in a decade, four thirty in the afternoon, on his first beer in two weeks, he runs into trouble with a couple of guys he remembered from high school.

  And now they were waiting for him, just outside.

  He poured beer from the bottle into a short glass and nodded at the bartender, Hank, who brought him another long neck. There was a mist this morning and now a smoky cast to the murky late afternoon atmosphere through the bar’s windows.

  Administrative leave. That’s what they called it. Guess they couldn’t call it ‘what the hell did you do; get out of Texas’. Jake chose to think of it as a ‘vacation’. The complainant called it ‘Excessive use of force’. Jake thought of it as something else. The guy, full of Old Crow and Lone Star Beer, was working over his wife with a leather belt, really giving it some extra when Jake intervened.

  The rub was it was the second time he had been called in because a different wife-beater complained. Domestics. They were tough. Some guy weighing 250 pounds liquored up wailing away on a woman who weighed less than half that. He tried to be professional, but the guy wouldn’t stop slapping the woman around.

  “You broke the man’s jaw and two of his ribs, Morgan,” said his supervisor, Captain Parmalee.

  The guy came at him with a baseball bat. What was he supposed to do, unfriend him on Facebook? Unfortunately, he said it, not just thought it, unable to hold back. Worse, the woman wouldn’t file charges on her husband. Mark Twain was right. No good deed goes unpunished.

  So, Jake packed a bag and headed back to his hometown to wait it out. Home. Thinking of it as home. That was something. 800 miles away from Texas and 13 years apart. Driving into town Eric Clapton was singing, Someday After Awhile.

  Was it someday yet?

  Life in the bloodstream of his hometown. Paradise was a nice kind of Norman Rockwell town, with third generation homes on the main drag and a red brick courthouse with a WWII memorial and a World War II soldier standing on a pedestal in front of the courthouse.

  Same hometown but the melody was missing.

  This time the melody was a dirge because his long-time friend, Gage Burnell, was dead. He would be too late for the funeral but needed to tidy up affairs for Gage. Gage had been operating as his proxy on the family farm since the death of Jake’s Father, Alfred Morgan. Another funeral Jake had missed. It wasn’t going to be a fun homecoming.

  Thomas Wolfe might be right. Maybe you couldn’t go home.

  And now the two guys waiting outside.

  Sometimes, huh? He hadn’t liked the way the guys, Noah Haller, who they nicknamed ‘Fat Boy’, back at Paradise High School 13 years ago and smaller guy, Tommy Mitchell, a shithead bully, was treating the server, nice young girl. So Jake expressed his objection to their less-than-stellar manners.

  He drank off half the beer straight from the bottle, sat the bottle down. Right through those doors lay a new obstacle.

  What could you do?

  Jake got off the barstool and heard the girl say, “Don’t go out there. I’m okay.”

  Hank said, “She’s right. You’re in town five minutes and this? Use your head, Jake.”

  “Hate to disappoint when they’re all worked up.”

  He walked outside and there they were. They were bulled up and getting ready, confident the two of them would be enough.

  He turned his baseball cap backwards on his head and said, “Well, kids, let’s get things started. And remember, you dealt it.”

  The dispatcher, young guy named Franklin only on the force six months, said to Chief Deputy Buddy Johnson, a tall black man wearing shoulder patches that said ‘Paradise County Sheriff’, “you’re not going to believe this one.”

  Johnson gave him a look, being patient, knowing Franklin loved to relay information and said, “I give up.”

  “Got three guys out front. A fight. Two of them pretty beat up.”

  Johnson said, “Well, tell me about it, I’m busy.”

  “The one guy, Morgan, says it was because the other guys were rude.”

  “Rude?”

  “Said they were hassling the waitress down at Hank’s, you know that bar...”

  “I know the place. Wait a minute. You say the name was Morgan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jake Morgan? You’re kidding me.”

  “No. Trust me. It’s him.”

  Deputy Johnson smiled thinking about Jake getting arrested. His old friend back in town and picking up right where he left off. The boy was incurable.

  Franklin said, “The best part is who he beat up.”

  “Beat up? You said it was a fight.”

  “Not much of one. Morgan knocked their dicks in the dirt.”

  “Your language. S
o colorful. Are you telling me Jake whipped two men?” Two against one he came out ahead. Jake had picked up some skill compatible with his attitude. “Is he injured?”

  “Said his hand is sore.”

  “Franklin, is there some reason you want to build suspense? Who was it he beat up you think will interest me?”

  “Tommy Mitchell and his buddy, Fat Boy Haller.”

  That did get Johnson’s attention. Interesting. Tommy Mitchell and Fat Boy had been in rows before where the victims would backtrack and withdraw their complaint or Tommy’s dad would bail him out and sure to happen again. They’d found a guy didn’t play that game. They should’ve remembered Jake Morgan. Sometimes people forget.

  “Beautiful ain’t it?”

  Johnson had to admit it was but knew others, wouldn’t think that way.

  “So, what did Jake say for himself?”

  “Asked if we could put them in the same lock-up. Said he wasn’t done.”

  Call Sue for bail money. Sue was a forensic artist, that’s what the rangers called the position, rather than lab tech, was someone Jake had been seeing off and on, a loose friendship bordering something bigger but never getting there. Sue was cool, like she expected it, when Jake called her from a police station. Asked did he remember he was suspended and what did he expect from her?

  “Sympathy,” he said. “Also, wire money for bail. Otherwise I spend the night and the room service here is unacceptable.”

  She laughed. “You drive hundreds of miles and locate trouble like there wasn’t enough for you back here in Texas. Problem is you think it’s all cowboys and assholes. Get a cowboy hat so we’ll know who you are.”

  “I don’t wear hats.”

  “Not literally, anyway,” she said. She agreed to wire the money and hung up.

  Good thing she liked him. Good thing she was 800 miles away. Jake sipped his coffee and thought about his situation. The server thanked him for intervening with the two creeps. Her name was April. April Armstrong. He knew her family from years ago. Good people. Said she remembered him.

  “Good to be remembered,” Jake told her.

  She’d smiled and said, “Well, for the most part.”

  Then, a familiar face. A very large black man in a Deputy Sheriff’s uniform.

  “Well, well, well,” Buddy Johnson said, flashing a smile reminding Jake why he liked Buddy. “If it ain’t the Jake Morgan, biggest pussy I ever knew.”

  Jake closed one eye and looked at Buddy Johnson, all six and a half feet of him. Jake ran a hand threw his hair.

  Jake said, “What’s up, Buddy?”

  “I see you’re still allergic to this town.”

  “How’s that?

  “You broke out in handcuffs.”

  Jake shook his head, then looked up at Buddy. “Enjoying this are you?”

  “Most fun I’ve had this week. What brings you back to Paradise?”

  “Gage’s death, among other things.” Hedging on the administrative suspension issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety. “Also there seems to be a land dispute.”

  “Land dispute?”

  “Yeah. Some old stuff came up when Alfred died.”

  “Alfred, meaning your dad.”

  Jake gave an affirmative grunt.

  “What’s the dispute?”

  “Complicated.”

  “Well, you’re now part of the criminal element. Heard you engaged in fisticuffs with a couple of our leading citizens. Tsk, tsk.”

  “Wasn’t much of a fight.”

  Buddy saying, “Guess you couldn’t wait to stir up the biggest snake hole around here.”

  “Trying to keep things lively.”

  “Didn’t you have some sort of contretemps with Fatty back in high school?”

  “Contretemps, huh?” Jake said, smiling. “Look at the guy paid attention in Language Arts.”

  Jake did have some problem with Haller back in high school. Fat Boy decided he needed to ‘borrow’ a dollar from Jake when Jake was a freshman and Haller was a junior. Said he wanted a soda, Jake asking why he would give Fat Boy, using the nickname, a dollar since he didn’t like him, and he could do without the empty calories anyway. Haller called him a runt and grabbed Jake’s shirt, Jake kneed the larger boy in the balls and Haller went down puking on the cafeteria floor. Jake spent three days in detention doing his homework and smiling a lot. Worth it.

  “There was something,” Jake said. “Don’t remember much about it.”

  “So, what happened with Tommy and Fatty?”

  Jake told him. Told him about arriving in town and the first thing was wanting to have a beer at Hank’s and abuse Hank, the town curmudgeon and owner of the only bar left in town that wasn’t a chain or a franchise and still located on what used to pass for the main drag; pavement and sidewalks crumbling like a bittersweet memory. Tommy Mitchell and Fat Boy Haller began harassing the server, April. Grabbing at her skirt and making rude suggestions to her. He requested that they discontinue bothering the girl.

  “What’s it to you?” is what Tommy Mitchell had said.

  “I came in to have a beer and enjoy the afternoon. Annoying shitheads wasn’t on the menu. Least I didn’t see it. Is annoying shitheads on the menu, Hank?”

  Hank shook his head.

  “You saying something?” Tommy said.

  “You know, you talk like you’re something special, but the problem is you think I’d be interested in anything you say.”

  And, that’s when it escalated.

  “And so,” Buddy said, “you rode to the rescue. Guns blazing.” Smiling now and shaking his head. “You never learn, do you?”

  “Aw,” Jake said, rubbing an eye with the back of his hand, “you wouldn’t like me if I did.”

  Buddy took a sip from his coffee, sat it down and said, “What makes you think I like you?”

  “Figure you don’t have many options.”

  “Good to have you back,” Buddy said. “Surprised to see you since, you know, you didn’t come back for your old man’s funeral.”

  “No, I didn’t.” He gave attention to some lint on his shirt. “Missed Gage’s funeral too. Nobody told me about it, so I missed it.” Leaving out he found out when he tried to call Gage and didn’t get an answer back until he checked with Leo Lyons.

  “You know your old girlfriend, Pam Kellogg, married a Mitchell? The brother of one of the guy’s you roughed up.”

  Pam Kellogg. Pam had a face and body allowed her to get away with things, the girl most likely. The relationship shifted into high gear teen love for a year. After she graduated, Pam went off to college and they drifted apart.

  He missed her for a long time during a short period.

  What would she be like now?

  Buddy saying now, “Married Tommy’s older brother, Alex, everybody calls him Alex, even though he is Vernon Alexander, Junior named after his dad. Call him “Junior” you want to piss him off. Remember him?”

  “How could I forget?”

  Buddy smiled. “Whole thing’s kinda ironic. Humorous even.”

  “If you’re easily amused.”

  “Whatever happened with you and Pam?”

  “One of those things. She went one way and I went another.” Which was the abridged version.

  “That girl, for whatever reason, always had something for you. Probably still does. You whistle and she’ll run from Alex.”

  “Those days are over.”

  Buddy laughed. “Think so? The one thing I remember was Pam Kellogg always got her way. She decides she wants you she’ll be around to claim what she thinks is hers.”

  “Delusional fantasies the way you cope with your basic ignorance?”

  “You think things changed and you call me delusional?”

  “Leo still around?” Leo was Leo Lyon, Buddy and Jake’s running buddy from high school

  “Leo the Lion? Oh yeah, Leo? He’ll never leave. My wife and I get together with him and his wife from time to time.” Buddy looked away,
then back at Jake. Buddy leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, serious now. “Not the same with Gage gone.”

  Jake nodded.

  Gage gone. There it was. Like a symbiotic mosaic missing a piece. Gage looking at the world with his sideways point of view and goofy smile. Gage assailed the walls of normalcy on a daily basis. Leo the Lion was the brains, Gage was the guy always ready to laugh. Buddy, Leo the Lion, Gage and Jake. Since grade school.

  “What happened with Gage?”

  “Bad deal. Had an accident, wrecked his car. Said he was drinking. You know Gage. No fear.”

  Jake thinking on it.

  “I know that look,” Buddy said. “Don’t conjure up anything that adds to my workload.”

  “Was it ruled an accident from the get-go?”

  “Call came in said there was an accident.”

  “Can I see the accident report?”

  Buddy giving him a funny look. “Well, the sheriff... That’s another story. You’re gonna love this,” Buddy said smiling. “Sheriff Kellogg. Old Doc Kellogg. Almost your father-in-law, wasn’t he?”