Bombshell Read Free

Depression they got going on makes ’em mean, you know that. You just let my deputy go now.” Calaway gripped the shotgun with both hands now, but that empty space where Earl Brown’s brain should have been precluded him from taking the warning. The big man gripped Deputy Stamp’s collar and gave it a twist.
    Calvin Stamp gave a choke and tried to gasp. “No problem, Boss. I got him right where I want him.”
    Calaway aimed the shotgun in the air and fired off a round that sent a thunderous BOOM echoing across the heartland. Earl Brown didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t do much more than let his snarl grow into a demonic growl.
    “I said ain’t nobody foreclosin’ here!”
    Calvin glanced over his shoulder with bugging eyes and half-nodded to the sheriff. With one lightning-quick move, he broke free of Brown’s vise-grip and whirled him around. Calaway adjusted his grip on the shotgun, and in a flash slammed the butt of the weapon straight into the big man’s forehead.
    Earl Brown’s eyes rolled back into his head. A furious knot, already purple-red and pulsing madly, sprouted on his forehead. He collapsed to his knees.
    John Calaway bent down to inspect his handiwork. “I hated to do it, Earl, but you have to understand we all have our jobs to do. Calvin, if you would be so kind as to cuff this man, I think we can be on our way.”
    While Calvin Stamp and the other deputies finagled the big man’s wrists into a set of handcuffs, Sheriff Calaway licked the tip of his pencil and paused for a moment to compose a note.
    Dear Mrs. Brown,
    My sincerest apologies. I trust your Pa will take you and the children into his care. Earl decided to get feisty, so he’ll be with us for a while.
    Sheriff John Calaway
    He tacked his note next to the foreclosure notice and silently wished damnation on the banks and the men who ran them.
    ****
    Annalee guessed she’d gained ten pounds or so since her body became home to the little surprise visitor. At least five of those extra pounds pressed against the waistline of her dress, but the remainder chose gravity’s course and ended up in her feet, which now throbbed in swollen agony. It wasn’t so long ago she’d danced a marathon on a lark. Now she was forced to stop and rest every hundred feet or so, simply to calm the pain in her legs.
    “I’m in big trouble when you really start to grow, Kiddo.”
    The smell of the river hung heavy in the warm, early summer air. Not an entirely unpleasant smell, but Annalee could not remember a time when her sense of smell was so sharp.
    Nor could she remember a time when she’d come across so many dying towns. Life among the rich and famous had sheltered her from the ravages of the Depression. She’d heard stories and had seen pictures in the national news magazines, but until she began her trek eastward and saw the farms and livestock devastated by dust storms and drought, saw the starving people waiting in long lines for soup and a hunk of bread, she hadn’t a clue what poverty actually meant.
    So many people going without, so many children going hungry, while folks in Hollywood got paid enormous sums of money to sing and dance and read lines other people wrote for them.
    It was depressing.
    Walking around with fifty thousand dollars in her suitcase and a belly full of good food when she stopped for the night had a tendency to make her feel guilty. She prayed that this little town called Summer Hill would have fared better, that somehow the guilt of her good fortune would somehow be assuaged.
    But as Annalee drew closer to the town proper, a sick feeling started to gnaw at her. Along Great River Road, businesses were shuttered, abandoned by their destitute owners. A feed store, situated across from the sporting houses and saloons that catered to the river men, stood empty. A sign on the door read “Gone Fishing.”
    Across from the feed store, along the riverbank, stood what appeared to be a diner of some sort, a two-story