The sudden blow to my back had knocked the wind out of me and pushed me down to the front porch deck, but my mind remained clear. I was acutely aware of the deadly peril I’d stumbled into. I vainly tried to stagger to my feet, hoping somehow to get to my car and escape, when another blow to my back sent me reeling back down. Before I could gather up my senses and make another stab at running away, I felt the cold smooth steel of a twelve-gauge shotgun barrel lightly resting behind my right ear.
“Don’t even think about moving, friend,” said Sam Baylor.
I froze in position, arms out stretched, then slowly relaxed on the porch floor, spread eagled, in total, absolute submission. Nothing like knowing you’re on the edge of having your head taken off by a shotgun blast to make a man lose all sense of machismo.
“Careful, Sam, he’s got a gun under his arm,” said Zeke. “It’s a fancy one, all bright and shiny.”
Damn, betrayed by my own gun.
“Get it, and you,” grunted Sam as he shoved the shotgun against my head, “don’t try anything smart.”
I was too scared even to answer him. Zeke rolled me over onto my back, reached under my left arm and pulled out my gun. He pushed his hand in my face, then stood up and brandished my .38 for all to see.
“What did I tell y’all!” cried Zeke. “Ever seen such a purty firearm! Like something a girl would wear! I told you it was somethin’ to see!”
I heard low whistles and murmurs of admiration go through the gathering as he showed off my revolver. They passed it around to each other, rubbing it and testing the weight of it in their hands. One of ‘em even looked down the barrel of it, Xerxes style.
Sam saw this and snarled, “Give me that damn thing before someone gets hurt.”
He grabbed my gun and slipped it into the large right front pocket of his overalls.
By this time I’d gathered back some of my senses and had taken stock of the situation that confronted me. In addition to Sam and Zeke, there were five other men surrounding me. One of them was the old man who had earlier given me directions. The other four ranged in ages from twenty to fifty. All were dressed for farm work and all, in one degree or another, looked like pink, weasel eyed, rats. Lucy, eyes wide open in shock, stood behind the screen door, and I could see her young teenage son peeking from behind her.
Finally, I got the courage to speak.
“What’s the meaning of all this?! I’m come here, trying to find out who murdered one of your own kin, and am attacked—”
“Shut up!” yelled Zeke. He viciously kicked me in my side. I gasped and moaned with pain.
“Hold on, Zeke, hold on,” cautioned Sam, “let’s take him out back and deal with him. Don’t worry, we’ll make him pay for his lies about you.”
Make him pay. Those words sent chills down my spine. I knew that whatever these bastards had in mind wasn’t going to be pleasant. I looked over at Zeke and saw that his face was flushed and his eyes were burning in anticipation of what was to come.
He’d changed his appearance a little since I had last seen him. First, he was wearing more than just his socks and a baseball cap, and second, he’d cut his hair. It was a typical “bowl” cut, with the sides of his head and the back shaved close, with hair on top longer and slicked back.
Standing next to his kinfolk, it was obvious he was related to them, but it was also clear that while the blood of the Baylor’s ran deep through his veins, Zeke brought a little extra to the table. The nose was a tad longer, the ears a little less pointed, the eyes a bit wider spaced. Overall, the combination created an impression that was more raccoon vice rodent in nature.
As they dragged me off the porch and back towards the barn, it became obvious what had happened.
I was a victim of mankind’s natural sense of eugenics.
Twenty to thirty years ago, the female Baylor, who was eventually to give birth to Zeke, no doubt realized it was time to bring some new blood into the family. This wasn’t a conscious decision on her part, but some innate, compulsive, unfathomable urge that beckoned her to cleave with some distant, unrelated person, i.e., a male Stanley.
This elementary, primal force of natural selection and breeding has manifested itself throughout history. Royalty, like in Japan or the Hapsburgs of Austria, every few generations would reach outside their family tree to refresh the bloodline, to keep it from degeneration. They had no concept of genetics back then, but these families instinctively knew when it was time to renew themselves.
And so it was with the Baylors of Sharp Ridge, North Carolina. Admittedly, considering what was eventually produced, one can make the argument that the Baylor clan was one or two generations late in responding to this call of nature, but the clan had responded, nonetheless.
A Baylor married a Stanley and begat a Zeke, and for over twenty years, he grew up, away from the influences of his maternal bloodline. Nevertheless, the Baylor blood in him beckoned. Just like salmon swimming blindly upstream to return from whence they were spawned, Ezekiel Baylor Stanley returned to the family fold, to start a new branch on the somewhat sparse and denuded Baylor family tree.
No doubt he was considered quite a catch by some of the Baylor women, with his having a different set of chromosomes and all.
Unfortunately, yours truly here had pistol-whipped the little inbred bastard—and turned him into the law to boot—before he had come home to procreate. And now he was out for my blood.