A Long Way From Chicago Read Free Page A

from the other side, and in one place it wrinkled into a wad as if somebody had snagged it. As if a feeble hand had reached up from the coffin depths in one last desperate attempt to live before the dirt was shoveled in.
    Every hair on my head stood up.
    “Naw,” Mrs. Wilcox said, strangling. She pulled back in her chair, and her hat went forward. “Naw!”
    The reporter had his chair arms in a death grip. “Sweet mother of—”
    But Grandma rocketed out of her chair. “Whoa, Shotgun!” she bellowed. “You’ve had your time, boy. You don’t get no more!”
    She galloped out of the room faster than I could believe. The reporter was riveted, and Mrs. Wilcox was sinking fast.
    Quicker than it takes to tell, Grandma was back, and already raised to her aproned shoulder was the twelve-gauge Winchester from behind the woodbox. She swung it wildly around the room, skimming Mrs. Wilcox’s hat, and took aim at the gauze that draped the yawning coffin. Then she squeezed off a round.
    I thought that sound would bring the house down around us. I couldn’t hear right for a week. Grandma roared out, “Rest in peace, you old—” Then she let fly with the other barrel.
    The reporter came out of the chair and whipped completely around in a circle. Beer bottles went everywhere. The straight route to the front door was in Grandma’s line of fire, and he didn’t have the presence of mind to realize she’d already discharged both barrels. He went out a side window, headfirst, leaving his hat and his notepad behind. Which he feared more, the living dead or Grandma’s aim, he didn’t tarry to tell. Mrs. Wilcox was on her feet, hollering, “The dead is walking, and Mrs. Dowdel’s gunning for me!” She cut and ran out the door and into the night.
    When the screen door snapped to behind her, silence fell. Mary Alice hadn’t moved. The first explosion had blasted her awake, but she naturally thought that Grandma had killed her, so she didn’t bother to budge. She says the whole experience gave her nightmares for years after.
    A burned-powder haze hung in the room, cutting the smell of Shotgun Cheatham. The white gauze was black rags now, and Grandma had blown the lid clear of the coffin. She’d have blown out all three windows in the bay, except they were open. As it was, she’d pitted her woodwork bad and topped the snowball bushes outside. But apart from scattered shot, she hadn’t disfigured Shotgun Cheatham any more than he already was.
    Grandma stood there savoring the silence. Then she turned toward the kitchen with the twelve-gauge loose in her hand. “Time you kids was in bed,” she said as she trudged past us.
    Apart from Grandma herself, I was the only one who’d seen her big old snaggletoothed tomcat streak out of thecoffin and over the windowsill when she let fire. And I supposed she’d seen him climb in, which gave her ideas. It was the cat, sitting smug on Shotgun Cheatham’s breathless chest, who’d batted at the gauze the way a cat will. And he sure lit out the way he’d come when Grandma fired just over his ragged ears, as he’d probably used up eight lives already.
    The cat in the coffin gave Grandma Dowdel her chance. She didn’t seem to have any time for Effie Wilcox, whose tongue flapped at both ends, but she had even less for newspaper reporters who think your business is theirs. Courtesy of the cat, she’d fired a round, so to speak, in the direction of each.
    Though she didn’t gloat, she looked satisfied. It certainly fleshed out her reputation and gave people new reason to leave her in peace. The story of Shotgun Cheatham’s last night above ground kept The Coffee Pot Cafe fully engaged for the rest of our visit that summer. It was a story that grew in the telling in one of those little towns where there’s always time to ponder all the different kinds of truth.

The Mouse in the Milk

    1930
    F rom something Dad said, it had dawned on Mary Alice and me that our trip down to Grandma’s