Chapter 3 #2
“Mayrene finally quit screaming, but she wouldn’t come out.
I kept asking her what was wrong. She finally told me Elvis was not in his tank and that she wouldn’t come out until I found that snake.
Then she said that when I did, I had to make a choice; her or the snake.
I’ll be honest, her reaction was unexpected.
As you know, I’ve dealt with the snake getting out of the tank twice already.
I don’t know why this escape suddenly became the end of her world, but I promised her I would find him.
So, I’m still in the hall, naked and bleeding and standing in all that mess when I tell her I need my clothes and my wallet.
I heard her banging doors and drawers and then she opened the door and threw everything out at my feet, right into the broken glass and green beans and bean juice, then slammed and locked the door again.
I knew better than to try and talk to a crying woman, so I picked up the clothes, now sticky with bean juice, shook out the glass, and took it all to the extra bedroom.
I’m still bleeding all over the place and the bean juice was making my cuts sting.
I went back into the bathroom and started picking glass out of my chest, then used up antibiotic cream and a box of Band-Aids on all of it.
I finally got myself cleaned up and went to the kitchen to get a broom and a wastebasket to clean up the broken glass and beans.
I’m still naked, which I consider dangerous since all my manly parts are dangling around all that debris.
Long story short, after I cleaned up the mess, I finally got dressed. ”
“When did you see Mayrene again?”
“Physically see her? I didn’t. We communicated through a closed door.
Right before I left to go find Beau and Razor to help me look for Elvis, I took her a cold pop and some candy.
I set it on the floor outside our bedroom, told her it was there, and as I was leaving, I heard her yelling at me not to forget to bring her dinner and supper.
After that, I took food from Edison’s Eats to her around noon the same day.
I knocked on the door to let her know it was there, then left.
I didn’t physically see her again, but we yelled at each other a time or two afterward, with me in the hall and her inside our bedroom.
It was after dark when Beau, Razor, and I went into town to search, and while we were searching in the park, we caught some teenage couple making out in the bushes.
They had a little screaming fit and ran off.
I was searching along the creek when I fell in.
I lost my phone in the process. I took more food to Mayrene that night.
By then she had quit acting scared, but kept the door locked, and ordered me around to bring her food while lying in bed eating chocolate and watching TV.
Meanwhile, I’m hurting like hell and sleeping on the sofa.
The next day I got up early. I knocked on the door to let her know I was leaving to search again.
I guess I woke her up. She acted like her mama and lost her shit to the point that I told her I wasn’t going to be bringing her food today, and if she wanted to eat, then she would have to get out of the room and feed herself.
She pounded the door, screaming at me for waking her up, and that’s how it ended.
I didn’t talk to her again. I left the house to get breakfast and then went to get a new phone.
I spent part of the day trying to find Beau and Razor to help me search again, but I couldn’t locate them.
I went home because it was threatening rain. ”
“Then what?” the chief asked.
Floy sighed. “Well, it was immediately obvious Mayrene was gone. The bed was a mess. A tote bag with canned food and crackers was on the island. I went down the hall. The bedroom door was finally open. Her phone was still lying in the sheets, and she’d left a faucet in the bathroom partially running.
I saw one of her slippers by the back door.
I stepped outside and saw the other slipper on the back porch, and Elvis out in the yard with the bulge in his belly, I assumed the worst. The rest you know.
Oh, before I forget, Hoot Zander will be arriving at my house sometime today to get Elvis, pig and all.
I don’t know when he’ll arrive, but you need to let the officers know he’ll be taking Elvis.
” Floy’s voice broke, as another tear rolled down his face.
“That’s all I know except that I think I need to lie down.
I feel like I’m going to pass out again. ”
Before Arnold could react, Floy went limp and slid silently out of the chair as if his bones had just melted.
“Help! I need help in here!” Arnold shouted.
Watts was the first one in the room, followed by Dub. They dragged Floy to his feet and returned him to the same jail cell he’d slept in last night.
“That didn’t go as planned,” Arnold said, then remembered the recorder was still running and went back to sign off. Then he radioed Bob and Fred, who were still on guard at the Beaudine property, about Hoot Zander’s imminent arrival.
Chief Arnold had the statement, wild as it was, but now he needed verification.
He sent Tex and Dub back to the house to check for a wastebasket with broken glass and green beans and then to look for clothes stained with green bean juice in a spare bedroom.
He told them to bag and tag the evidence with dates and time stamps.
Bob and Fred were still inside the house, keeping an eye on the snake in the backyard. They’d already played rock, paper, scissors to see who got to shoot the snake if it tried to slither away and spent most of their time running curious people off the crime scene.
About thirty minutes later, a big box truck arrived with a logo on the side advertising the location of Zander’s Exotic Snake Exhibit.
Bob and Fred glanced at each other and sighed.
Clearly, nobody was shooting Elvis in the head.
It was Elvis’s lucky day. Like the last-minute call from the Governor stopping an execution.
Hoot Zander was too near the size of a small storage shed to argue with, and the three very muscular handlers with him only added to his cachet.
Hoot backed up as far as he could into the backyard, then he got out and approached the house with his identification in hand as the handlers followed. Bob and Fred met him on the back porch.
Hoot flashed his credentials. “We have authorization from Floy Beaudine to remove the snake tanks from his basement and Elvis from the backyard. We’ll get the empty tanks first and then load Elvis last.”
Fred frowned. “How the hell do you load up a python that don’t want to go nowhere?”
Hoot grinned. “We just say, please.”
The other handlers laughed uproariously, then pulled down a huge ramp from the back of the truck, walked up to get inside, and rolled out two oversize dollies across the yard and into the house.
They came out a short while later with two empty snake tanks strapped onto the dollies, loaded them into the box truck, and secured them to the walls. They came down the ramp again, this time carrying a long, rolled-up piece of heavy-duty tarp.
Hoot knew the digesting snake wouldn’t be trying to escape, because when they were digesting, they became stiffer and unable to slither in normal fashion. They didn’t want to harm Elvis, but they were going to give him a ride he wouldn’t likely forget.
Hoot and his men began by unrolling the tarp along Elvis’s length, then laid out nylon ropes onto the grass that hooked into steel eyelets on the sides of the tarp.
Once the tarp and ropes were in place, all four men began lifting Elvis.
First his tail, and then parts of the body, then pushing and easing him, until his entire body stretched out in the center portion of the tarp.
Two of the handlers gently poured water all the way down Elvis’s length, from his head to his tail to keep him hydrated, then picked up the heavy nylon ropes and began pulling the tarp across the grass like a sled, straight up the ramp and into the back of the box truck.
They used quilted padding to protect the python from the jarring ride to his new home and laid more padding on top of him to keep him in darkness, knowing it would be calming.
Then they shoved the ramp back into place and closed and locked the doors.
The handlers were getting into the truck when Hoot Zander turned to face the officers.
“Okay, boys. We’re good to go. Tell Floy that Hoot says he’ll take care of Elvis like the king he is, and that his golden boy is going to be the star of the show. He’s too pretty to hide.”
Fred and Bob nodded, too intimidated by four behemoths who handled snakes like they were babies. They watched the truck until it drove out of sight, then called the P.D. with the phone on Speaker.
“Chief, Hoot Zander and his crew just left. Elvis is gone. What do you want us to do?”
“You’re both relieved of guard duty. Go home, shower, and change, then report to the office. Tex and Dub are on the way to the house to collect evidence. Lock everything but the front door. They’ll be there shortly.”
“Yes, sir,” they echoed, then disconnected and gave each other a look. “Evidence? For what?”
Tex and Dub entered through the front door with evidence kits and a handful of garbage bags but paused in the living room.
They didn’t know what to think about this latest order.
They’d stomped through the woods yesterday looking for signs of an unmarked grave, and all they’d found were rooted-up places in the forest floor from the roaming herds of feral hogs, but the chief was the boss.
“I’ll take the kitchen and the kitchen trash,” Tex said. “You do the bathroom. We’ll both do the bedrooms and go from there.”
Dub nodded as he pulled on rubber gloves, then they split up.