Chapter 16
Bubba had spent the night in a motel at Warrenton and got up early on Sunday morning. He had decided to stick around for the weekend instead of returning to his office in Columbia. His first objective would be to ride around the Salketcher area, asking questions about the boy who had been run down on Public Landing Road. There were only four houses along the road, and all of the residents had been questioned by Caley or others from the sheriff’s department. His interest was also in the bones that had been found in the swamp and hoped maybe he could pick some information on that issue as well. Many of the people he questioned were in their 60s or older. When he brought up the bones and that they had probably been in the water for some time, he wasn’t surprised that most of them were very forthcoming about racial prejudices during their earlier years in the area. Being a black man himself allowed him to establish a quick rapport with the black residents. Most of his interviews resulted in the people reminiscing about the hard times they had gone through as black people during the earlier years. None had been able to provide relative information about the bones. He got more indirect information about the bones by just listening to their stories than he would have from asking specific questions.
At the final house on the road, he was talking with a resident who said he thought he did hear a truck or car with a bad muffler revving up on the road a few nights earlier. He couldn’t remember the exact night, but he remembers it because the noise woke him up.
“Do you remember about what time it was?” asked Bubba.
“I don’t know precisely, but it does seem like it was late. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, and I still don’t know that it has anything to do with the running down of the boy. Now that I think, it probably was on Saturday night, since we often get kids coming down here to park at the landing late at night. It could have been one of them. Who knows?”
Bubba bid the man farewell and started to walk away, then for no reason at all, he asked, “Could the vehicle have been a motorcycle revving up?”
“Well it’s been a good while now, and I can’t remember for sure, but it certainly could have been a motorcycle.”
Bubba thanked the man and left. As he drove past Flood’s, he saw the small road next to the store that led to the clubhouse in the back of the property. He didn’t know that Oats currently owned the property. Nor did he know it was being used as the Cobb clubhouse. Suddenly childhood memories flooded back to him. He recalled when he was a boy the Jones family lived up the road and farmed the surrounding property. As a nostalgic sentiment, he turned down the road. As he moved slowly along the mile or so stretch, his thoughts drifted back to Sadie Jones. She was the most beautiful girl he ever laid eyes on. Of course, at the tender age of 12 years old, that wasn’t saying much. They liked each other and always sat beside each other on the school bus. Bubba recalled how disappointed he was when her family moved away. He couldn’t even remember where they moved.
Deep into the pleasant memories of his childhood, the old house came into view. It was nestled under a huge live oak tree just as he remembered it many years ago. He saw no one around when he pulled into the front yard. It didn’t appear as though anyone was living in the house now. He turned off the engine, stepped to the ground and looked around, not from a law enforcement point of view, but as a man reflecting on his childhood experiences among familiar surroundings. As he walked toward the house, he saw that the front door was open about six inches. The open wooden steps creaked as he stepped on them. He stopped on the porch and looked around. Then he glanced through the partially open door of the dark room beyond. It was too dark to see anything, so he pulled a flashlight from his pocket.
Being a very old house, the front door had a sag in the hinges that always caused the door to settle and leave a gap. Bubba didn’t think anything about the partially open door since that was that way most old abandoned houses looked. Using the flashlight, he pushed the creaky door open further and paused a few seconds to let his eyes become accustomed to the dim room.
Still sleeping on the couch, Oats was disturbed by the squeaky door. He partially opened his eyes, but just laid still. He had a pounding headache and was trying to remember what he did the night before. His throat and mouth were so dehydrated from alcohol, it felt like cotton. When he fully opened his eyes, a headache was more intense. It hurt mostly behind his eyes.
Bubba swept the flashlight around the room, slowly moving it left then to the right. He observed a bar with stools along the side, a pool table, and several tables and chairs scattered around the room. The room smelled of rank beer and had a musky odor remaining from the previous night’s party. Drying vomit was on the floor near the pool table. Someone had lost the contents of their stomach. A splotch of yellow bile the size of a large dinner-plate was drying out as it waited for some enterprising individual to clean it up. People had tracked it all over the place. He got a whiff of the strong sewage-like odor. It almost made him sick.
He hadn’t fully entered the room when he moved the beam of the flashlight to the right of the couch where Oats was laying. Catching a glimpse of the flashlight, Oats thought it was a pistol extending from behind the door. Instantly he remembered the .45 Automatic beneath the couch and reached for it with his right hand. Bubba continued to walk forward into the room.
Oats found his gun where he left it! Annoyed and disoriented by his hangover he pointed and shot at the light without aim or forethought. The blast from the pistol was like a bolt of lightning in the dark room. Still lying on his back Oats let go another round. He sat up on the couch trying to bring his eyes into focus. A light beamed a ray as it tumbled around on the floor across the room. Oats got up and walked over to the light, which had finally stopped rolling and was illuminating the figure of a man lying face up on the floor. Blood was spurting from his chest where the bullet entered. Blood was also oozing from the man’s left forearm where the second bullet hit. Oats turned his head sideways and squinted his eyes to help with his head pain as much as to focus on the still body. The black face of a man he didn’t recognize lay in front of him. All Oats could think was that he had another Geechee. The hangover was still having an effect on his perception. He envisioned the man’s face fading in and out. It seemed to swirl as though it was drifting upward toward him. With an unsteady and wavering motion, he pointed the gun at the chest of the man and pulled the trigger again. Oats was so shaky he didn’t know that the bullet missed its target and slammed into the floor beside Bubba.
Then Oats went back over to the couch and stretched out. Before he dozed off again, he heard Al’s muffled voice on the floor say, “Who the hell is making all that noise? Can’t a man sleep around here?” Then Al went back to sleep unaware of the calamity that had occurred only a few feet away.