A Crime of Murder
Jul 23 '08
The Bottom Line Just how far would you go for a friend? This may be taking friendship beyond the norm.
It shouldn’t have happened. But, it did.
JD fell to his knees as the knife he had just used landed with a soft thud on the thicket of leaves in the woods. He could only stare at the body in shock. There was so much blood he was sure some of it must be his, but knew with a sure certainty none of it was.
Elliot hunkered down beside JD. Without a murmur of protest, JD allowed Elliot to remove the knife from his hand. Elliot wiped the blade on the side of his old faded overall’s, flicked the blade back into position, and placed it inside his pocket.
JD Arlinger and Elliot Franks grew up together in the Kentucky hills. Where JD was tall, lean, good looking and had jet black hair women loved to run their fingers through, Elliot was short, stout and had been cursed, or blessed, depending on how you looked at it, with flaming red hair and so many freckles they tended to block out the pure white color of his skin.
Both were mean as snakes, drank like fish and had the biggest moonshine still in the hills of all the eastern region.
Still, it was rather shocking to see a strange man lying on the ground with his throat slit from side to side. The blood had gushed from his throat like a dam bursting. It flew everywhere. The smell of death merged with the smell of their moonshine still.
Elliot looked at JD and finally found his voice asking, “What happened?”
JD seemed mesmerized by the man lying on a carpet of leaves in the woods. So much blood, so much blood. Without conscious thought he moved his head to the side and vomited up half his guts (or so it seemed).
Wave after wave of nausea kept him mute until he finally flopped onto his back and covered his eyes with the bloody sleeve of his left arm.
The stillness of the deep woods ceased as the buzz of flies filled their ears.
JD said, “I kept hearing faint cracklings of twigs in the yonder and at first, I thought it was you.”
Elliot snorted.
“I knew as soon as I thought it, it wasn’t you so I slipped around the wild blackberry patch and down the side of the ridge. He was down wind of me and I smelled him before I saw him. He had the stink of Old Spice blowing in my face.
I watched him as he slowly climbed towards our still and just as slowly I inched my way back up the ridge and was hiding behind the blackberry bushes when he finally stopped. He was looking at our still and I could tell he was up to no good. I figured he was going to turn us in to the sheriff or blackmail us for free ’shine the rest of our days.
Just about the time I figured this out, I realized I’d left my shotgun down by the creek where we’d been working earlier. Dad blast it! I wasn’t expecting some nosey posey to come slinking around.”
There was a sharp pounding in JD’s head. Something his Mother said to him a long time ago seemed to make perfectly good sense now.
He knew he couldn’t remember it exactly as she said it but he knew, at the time, she was trying to make an important impression on him. Mom had said, “Inside each of us are two person’s--one is generally benign, a social creature that represents everything positive we as a species are capable of. The other person within us can be a very destructive force. It causes trouble, murder, war. Usually it’s under control. In some cases it can be partially controlled, but for that brief span of time when it’s loose, it’s a clever, crafty, murderous thing.”
Mom was good at remembering things she’d read and repeated them to her family. She was really fond of quoting the Bible. She seemed to think her son’s needed a lot of direction in their lives. She’d noted they didn’t function very well on their own, or even with someone. She tended to blamed their behavior on the moonshine her husband’s family was famous for.
A crack in her heart would have broken her spirit if she’d given consideration to the possibility her son’s were the makings of their father.
Generations of Arlinger’s had owned the land where moonshine was king of their mountain and bread on their table.
JD shook his head trying to clear the image of his Mother from his head and continued, “He didn’t look armed but you never know. I pulled out my knife and after thumbing the release button, held it down beside my pants leg so he couldn’t see it.
He was really spooked when I stepped out from behind the bushes and snarled at him. I told him he had no business here and by trespassing on private property, I now owned him. He was mine.”
JD sat up, stopped talking and looked at Elliot. For the first time in years, Elliot saw fear in JD’s eyes.
“I panicked. That’s all I know to say. I just panicked. I could feel my body rushing towards him and before I could even think, I had twisted his head back and slit his throat. God, it was awful!”
JD and Elliot looked at the man’s body again. Neither seemed to recognize him. He was dressed country poor just as they were. Overalls and a long sleeved shirt with a baseball cap on his head. Baseball cap? Both looked at it and then again at the man. Dang.
It was Carter James, a drinking man who, if the rumor’s were true, beat his old lady, Terry, every Sunday night after being gone all weekend getting drunk and spending his money on whiskey and women. Terry was too scared to leave him so she sat at home and delivered a baby every year. Life with Carter had aged her faster than a pig eating slop.
JD moaned, “What are we going to do?”
Elliot had been thinking fast as he listened to JD and came to only one conclusion. One conclusion that would keep JD from going to prison for the rest of his life. Elliot would say he had killed Carter, but it was in self defense. There was no one to contradict his story except JD and Elliot was sure he wouldn’t. He had too much to lose.
It was 1952 and if Elliot played his cards right, he wouldn’t be in prison for long. Him and JD had to get their stories straight.
JD was too scared to do anything other than listen to Elliot. He had a wife and 3 kids. Who would take care of them if he was in prison? Elliot was unmarried and had no one who needed him.
Some of JD’s fear left him but he was feeling guilty for letting his friend Elliot take the blame for something he’d done.
What choice did he have?
JD cast a sly look at Elliot wondering if he’d go through with it. Would Elliot go to prison for a crime he was innocent of? Would he really do such a thing? JD wondered if he could do the same thing for Elliot and knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t cut out for a life behind bars and as crazy as it sounded, he knew he’d be lost without his wife and kids.
For the first time in his life, JD felt shame for something he was about to do.
It was time to get busy.
With a lot of heaving and cussing, they managed to carry Carter’s body down the hill and piled him into the back of Elliot’s pick up truck. Elliot threw an old tarp over him and drove to his house.
When they arrived at Elliot’s run down shack on Lick Split Road, they managed to move Carter’s dead weight to the inside of his barn. Elliot told JD to go on home and he’d handle it from here. For some reason, JD didn’t want to leave. How was he going to explain all the blood on his clothes to his wife and family? His wife may be a small thing, but she was merciless where he was concerned. He’d felt her wrath more times than he cared to admit.
If he’d given it much thought, he’d have acknowledged he was pure scared of her when she was mad.
Finally, Elliot had to run JD off and threatened him with getting his throat slit if he didn’t keep his gob shut. JD knew Elliot meant it so he took his guilt with him and headed towards his own home.
When he got there, he saw everyone was gone. He suddenly remembered his wife saying she was going to his mother’s for the day. It was canning season and they were spending the day putting up jars of green beans.
He quickly shucked his clothes and after cleaning himself up, he ducked into the toilet and dropped his smelly overalls and shirt down the hole. No one would find them there.
The next morning, it was all over the hills where Elliot Arlinger had killed Carter James to save Carter’s wife, Terry. Elliot said Terry had came running to his house to get away from Carter. He was on another drunk and she just knew he was going to kill her this time.
Terry was already black and blue from her last beating and thought she had a broken wrist, but as they had no money for her to go to the doctor, she wasn’t sure.
She’d ran screaming into Elliot’s yard with Carter on her heels. Elliot had come running out of his barn where he said he’d been mucking the stalls out. He hollered at Terry to get in the barn.
She’d ran towards the barn when Carter managed to grab the back of her hair and slung her to the ground. Before he could do more damage, Elliot had jumped on Carter and slit his throat.
Terry was in shock so it was easy to get her inside his truck where they drove to the Sheriff’s office and reported what had happened.
For once, Elliot wasn’t stinking drunk so the Sheriff decided, after seeing Terry’s condition, it might be a good idea to see if there was any truth in Elliot’s story. If it was true, that was one less drunken, wife beater for him to arrest at the tax payers expense, and just maybe, Terry would live to see her thirtieth birthday.
Sheriff Hobart told his deputy, Roy Couch, to watch the office and he’d be back later.
Elliot was worried the Sheriff wouldn’t believe him so he asked if he could go back to his house with him? He wanted to make sure nothing went wrong. There could be a lot of explaining to do and he‘d feel better doing the explaining on his own turf.
Sheriff Hobart was over six feet tall, liked his ‘shine straight from the jar, and about the only good thing you could say about him (he was a fast talking, double dealing, son of a gun) was he’d married the prettiest girl this side of the Mason-Dixon line. What Amy Sue saw in Hugh Hobart was beyond the ken of everyone in the hills.
Hugh liked his ‘shine alright but he also liked himself. It was hard to tell which he liked better.
Once they’d all arrived back at Elliot’s place, Sheriff Hobart got out of his patrol car and walked towards Carter‘s body. He wasn’t a pretty sight. Elliot and Terry stood beside Elliot’s truck as neither wanted to look at Carter again.
Finally, Elliot decided he’d better go talk to the Sheriff since the Sheriff seemed rather sickly looking. It wouldn’t do for him to start thinking on his own.
Elliot went over his story again and managed to mimic parts of what happened. Terry would nod her head from time to time indicating all that Elliot said was true.
Sheriff Hobart had no reason to believe Terry or Elliot were telling nothing but the truth. Elliot would lie, of that he had no doubts, but he couldn’t see Terry lying for him.
Terry had been afraid to leave her snake of a husband. If she had, her body would never have been found. The hills were full of secrets and if someone wanted a secret to remain a secret, it would.
Sheriff Hobart swallowed convulsively and said, “Elliot, I’m gonna have to take you to jail. Terry, get in the car and I’ll drive you home.”
Elliot and Terry looked at each other but both obeyed the Sheriff. What choice did they have?
Several weeks later, Elliot was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Terry became a regular visitor of Elliot’s and when he was released from prison, they were married. Elliot had decided it was time he became a family man.
Being married, with kids, could come in handy.
©ddustyrose July 2008
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