Chapter 7 #2
Myra glanced at it, noted the price increase, and was reminded that, over and above his disgust with the people of Blackjack, he also had two full-time employees besides himself to pay, and signed her approval to the quote without a word.
Floy gave her a carbon copy and kept the original. “You told me before that you wanted the same kind of shingle, but do you also want the same color?”
Myra nodded. “Yes. I’m old enough to be stuck in my ways. I like what I like. But I need what I like to be sturdy and watertight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Floy said. “I’ll put in the order today. As soon as I get a delivery date from the supplier, I’ll let you know.”
“Do you have to remove the shingles on this roof, or—”
“No, ma’am. You’re good to go,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
She felt a space between them that hadn’t been there before.
He wasn’t rude, exactly. The word “withholding” slid through her mind.
He’d erected a wall between himself and Blackjack.
He’d stayed the course. He’d ridden out the false accusations.
But he hadn’t forgiven a damn thing. Her heart hurt for everything he’d endured as she watched him drive away.
While Floy was at home awaiting delivery notices, Chief Arnold had received the signed arrest warrants he’d been waiting for. He called Tex and Dub into his office.
“What’s up, Chief?” Dub asked, as they entered the room.
“I have arrest warrants for Mayrene Beaudine and Quilla Schultz. I need both of you to take your own cruisers, read them their rights when you cuff them, and bring them into booking in separate cars.”
“At the Schultz address?” Tex asked.
“To our knowledge, yes,” Arnold said. “When you return, don’t take a back street to the station. Drive them down Main Street.”
The officers looked at each other, then at Arnold. “Yes, Chief,” they echoed, and headed out the door.
Quilla was pulling weeds in her vegetable garden when she saw two police cars coming around the bend in the road, and since the road ended at her house, this was clearly their destination, and she was too old to run.
Every bad dream she’d ever had was about to come true, and there was no waking up from reality.
She dropped the hand spade she’d been using, looking down at the dirt under her fingernails and the smudge on the knees of her gardening pants, and wondered if they allowed people to take a bath before being hauled off to jail.
Mayrene was sitting on the front porch watching a Blue Jay fighting a Brown Thrasher for something down in the grass when she saw the police cars. Her pulse quickened, then settled. She’d been expecting them.
She stood, combing her fingers through her red curls out of habit, then walked to the edge of the steps as Tex and Dub got out. She lifted her hand in greeting.
“Morning, y’all. I’ve been wondering when you’d show,” she said.
Quilla was not as amenable. She came stomping out of the garden, ready to go to war, but the officers didn’t give her a chance to fire the first shot.
“Quilla Schultz, we have a warrant for your arrest. The charge is abetting a crime of wanton endangerment. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney . . .”
Quilla saw Tex’s mouth still moving, but the words faded. She looked at her daughter’s complacent expression as Dub fastened the handcuffs around Quilla’s wrists and knew he was about to give Mayrene the same Miranda warning.
“I need to lock up my house,” Quilla announced.
Mayrene smiled at Dub. “If you wouldn’t mind . . . just turn the little thingy on the doorknob, then pull the door shut. It will lock on its own,” she said softly.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dub said, as he put her in the back seat of his cruiser, then jogged up the steps and locked up the house.
“You could have at least let me clean up and wash the dirt off my hands,” Quilla whined, as Tex put her in the back seat of his car, but when he looked up at her through the cage between them in the rearview mirror, she could almost feel his disdain.
“Ma’am, when we hauled Floy into jail for something he was innocent of, he was bleeding from his head in two places. His eyes were black, and he hadn’t changed clothes in two days because everything he owned was covered in bean juice and glass.”
Quilla caught the emotionless expression in the cop’s voice and shut her mouth. She was going to have to be mad about the consequences in silence.
Mayrene wasn’t mad. She was just ready for it all to be over. She rode down the mountain, leaning back against the seat with her eyes closed, feeling the weight of guilt and the pinch of the cuffs on her wrists. She wondered what losing all privacy and autonomy was going to feel like.
As ordered, Tex and Dub’s mini convoy of female criminals moved slowly down Main Street, taking the long way to the station.
Quilla saw people on the streets stop, then look and point, and saw their brief looks of shock. Anger melted into mortification.
Mayrene didn’t open her eyes until she heard the engine stop. When Tex opened the back door to help her out, she thanked him for the assistance, even though courtesy had come a little too late in her life for it to matter now. She let herself be led, ignoring the tight grip Tex had on her arm.
Quilla entered the police station, cursing cops, Elvis the python, and Floy Beaudine’s ancestry all the way back to God, while demanding Judge Benton as their lawyer.
Officer Bob was calmly fingerprinting them, as Quilla began shouting about police abuse and still demanding them to call Judge Benton when the chief came out of his office.
“Mrs. Schultz, you cannot have Judge Benton for a lawyer because he already represents Floy, which would be a conflict of interest. You will have to choose another, or a court-appointed attorney will be appointed for you. Furthermore, you are behaving in a manner completely unsuitable for the woman you think you are. One more disrespectful word out of your mouth to any of my men, or to the world in general, and I will add the charge of disturbing the peace to your already less than admirable arrest warrant.”
Quilla’s face turned beet red, and her nostrils flared like a wild horse refusing a saddle.
She looked at her daughter, who’d gone completely mute and was moving through the booking process as if she’d already checked out of Earth.
Quilla took a deep breath and lifted her chin.
Still glaring, she let the rest of the words die in her mouth.
Fred took their mug shots—full frontal and then from both side—before handing them over to Tex to be taken to lockup.
Quilla walked into her cell, horrified at the blatant sight of the toilet in the cell and the faint stench of old bedding, as she absorbed her plight with a mixture of disgust and disbelief.
Mayrene was in the cell on the other side of the aisle. She’d already laid down on the cot with her face turned toward the wall. As soon as the officers walked out of the cell block and shut the door, Quilla ran to the bars of her cell, gripping them with both hands.
“Mayrene, honey! Are you okay?”
“No, Mama, I’m not. The charges against us are felony charges. We are going to have rap sheets. It will hinder every job I try to get for the rest of my life. I hate you for your hard ,spiteful heart, and I hate myself for ever listening to you.”
Quilla wailed. “No, don’t say that. I’m sorry. We’ll be okay.”
“Stop talking. It hurts my head. There is no more ‘we,’ and I will never be okay,” Mayrene whispered.
Quilla stood in the ensuing silence, her fingers still curled around the bars, her forehead resting against the cold iron.
Something was gone between them that she’d never get back. There weren’t enough hugs and kisses to make this hurt go away. In her manic need to prove herself right and Floy Beaudine wrong, she’d destroyed the one thing still bonding mother and daughter. She’d destroyed the trust.
Neither woman had the money to bond out, and there wasn’t a soul within fifty miles of Blackjack who would have offered it.
They spent forty-eight hours in jail, with the dirt from Quilla’s garden still under her nails, before a judge got to Blackjack to hear their plea and set a court date, but once again, Mayrene refused the options and shifted the rules.
“Your honor, I had no idea that what I did was illegal. What I did to my husband was me trying to change a narrative I had foolishly agreed to when we met and married. I thought I could talk him into getting rid of his pet snake, Elvis. When that didn’t work, my mother suggested I try making the snake a problem for Floy, so I opened the tank and let Elvis get out on his own.
Three times. You know what they say about ‘third time’s a charm,’ only it became a nightmare I never saw coming. ”
She took a breath with her hands hanging loosely at her side, like a prisoner standing before a firing squad waiting for the bullet, and then continued.
“I am pleading guilty to whatever the charges are. I don’t want a trial.
I don’t want to be released on bail, because I have no home to go back to.
I just want this misery over with. Whatever the sentence you decide to give me will be what it will be.
Please. My mother betrayed me, and I betrayed my husband because I put her before him.
Truly, the hardest thing about going to jail will be wearing prison orange.
It’s going to clash something awful with my red hair. ”
She sat back down behind the table where the court-appointed lawyer sat and looked out the window to her left.
Quilla was at a crossroads. No matter what defense she offered, she knew her daughter would testify against her.
Pleading innocent would get her nowhere.
When the judge asked her to stand, she did, and then he asked her how she pled.
Still verging on the edge of defiant, she answered with three brief sentences.