EXCERPT FROM- Shane,Stabb, The Big Man, The Driver and The Wind

Shane, Stabb, The Big Man, The Driver and The Wind.

Chapter 19–Strix Farm

By: Preston Leigh

CHAPTER 19— Strix Farm

Huff returned to The Smoking Den about a liter lighter and toting a fresh bottle off Yauh. Stabb had closed the recliner and sat upright as he sucked air in from the stone pipe. Shane dropped the last drips of the spent bottle of canyon whiskey into Huff’s mug.

The Big Man set the new bottle on the floor next to Shane as he turned to sink back into his bag of beans. A purple-gray smoke filled the sitting area when Stabb released another held drag. The old Indian's hand once again presented the pipe and lighter. Huff took the tools from the hand-shelf and plied them with developing deftness. The smoke exited his parted lips and the cradling sack of Lima beans consumed him.

“So, Doctor, tell us. Who is this man that pulled you from The Hollow?” Stabb prodded.

“The man who drove us north that day…”

“Aha! H. Stockton Thompson! I knew it!”

“No, Stabb. . .That man was not Dr. Thompson. It was, though, his nephew. He would introduce us to the old man later on the next…”

“Doc?” Shane politely interrupted. “When all ‘is goin’ on? I reckoned yuh said ‘at art’cle wit’ Kincaid was in nineteen-oh-nine, ‘at’s pert near fitty years ago… Whut years yuh sayin’ ‘is ‘ere happen’t?”

“Excellent question Shane.” Stabb echoed the thought. “What year was it you were forced to leave The Hollow?”

“Ah, let's see… that was nineteen-thirty-four, was the year.” Huff said, a still-longing in his eyes.

“Ahhh, yes. nineteen-thirty-four… A good year.” Stabb swirled his Yauh. “I spent that summer in The Age of The Raccoon.”

“Rac…? Never mind. Yes, it was a good year. In hindsight, as I said. For James and me at least, it was bittersweet. We’d gotten all cleaned and settled the next morning and Dr. Thompson’s nephew, sat us down for a long talk.”

Huff ripped another long toke from the stone pipe, holding the smoke in his lungs he thought back to that conversation. He remembered how Thompson’s nephew, Doyle Reed, laid it all out for them.

Everything.

He told them how Old Man Miller was owed a favor by his uncle, and that the two had a long standing business relationship. The Big Mountain Man supplied the hooch that Dr. Thompson’s organization distributed to clients all over Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

Huff’s lungs exhaled the smoke then wretched themselves into a powerful, violent coughing fit.

“WWWHHHUHGGHGHGHGHG.” The sound rumbled up from his convulsing diaphragm.

(#)

“Easy does it, Doctor.” Stabb feigned concern. “You are liable to suffer some extraneous extrapolation.” He laughed at his own nonsensical quip.

The Big Man cleared his throat from the quaking cough. He held his copper mug out and Shane was quick to add a splash to it for him. Huff downed a gulp that burned on contact and stifled the coughing fit.

Stabb was just coming out of his hysterics and tried to comfort The Big Man. “There, there, Doctor…”

Huff sat hunched forward with the paddle of hand rapping on his back.

“Whoa, didn’t think I’d make it there for a second.” He chuckled through watering eyes.

“Indeed Doctor, that truly was quite a story.” Stabb said in a dramatic and heartfelt tone.

Huff thought the comment was a chide from his impatient host. “I was getting to it…” He snapped, getting fed up with the old Indian’s warm-then-cold demeanor. “Lemme clear my throat.”

He glanced at Shane and saw a single stream of tears running down his right cheek. The second bottle of Yauh he’d brought down with him from his restroom trip was all but empty. He felt confused.

“Okay, where was I?” Huff thought about where he’d left off before he’d been attacked with coughs.

“ ‘Ere’s mo?” Shane asked, disconcerted. “Heck Doc, I done reckon if-n I kin take much mo’ a stor’es like ‘at.”

Huff grew more perplexed. There were tear-inducing twists to his story; he’d played them out and borne the tears himself many times that he’d reflected on them over the years. But, he’d barely introduced the scene. He hadn't given any details to put his listeners off or induce their tears by the point he was at in his tale. He was sure of it.

“I mean da way ‘at ol’ bur toured up at ‘ol boy out b’hind ‘at firm house… An’ tuh knowed yuh had tuh sees such a t’ing… Welp… ‘at muster lef’ a migh’ scur in yuh Doc.” Shane spoke as a man who had experienced trauma.

“Well, not only that, but the way James went running when…” Huff paused. “I…I…ah, huh? I can’t seem to remember even getting close to that part of the story.” He felt the all too familiar light-headed sensation coming over him again.

“Ohhh, you certainly go into that part alright, Doctor.” Stabb boomed his voice through the den. “I was quite impressed with how you handled that harrowing situation.” Stab rolled his eyes. “Perhaps, I may have been wrong about you…on some level.” Stabb thought for a moment, then seemed to discard the possibility.

Huff was lost. Confused.

“ ‘At sure wa’n’t righ’ how ‘at ol’ man laid up in ‘at bed made yuh tuh bury ‘at feller out ‘ere in da woods like ‘at.” Shane commented.

The Big Man felt sweat cropping up on his bald head.

“I knowed you’s jus’ a boy, Doc… I ‘live I’d teld ‘at ol’ man tuh shove it.”

“And no one would have faulted you for it, Shane.” Stabb consoled, with more than a hint of accusation at Huff. “You cannot fault a man for having the integrity to stand up for what is right.”

Huff knew what the two were talking about. But had know idea how they knew what they were talking about. He had no recollection, whatsoever, of telling them. He thought he must have lapsed deeper into the JuaJua fog than he had imagined. Frazzled at what he might have revealed, The Big Man shifted with his nerves on the bag of beans.

“What seems to be the matter, Doctor?”

“Ah…Nothing, I just think…ah, maybe, ah…I dunno Stabb. I think maybe I’ve smoked too much.” He gazed down into his mug. “Maybe I drank too much, too.”

“Nonsense, Doctor. There is still much to smoke and much to drink.”

“I. I dunno, Stabb…” The room around him spun.

“What DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT, SIR?!” Stabb’s ropey body ejaculated from the La-Z-Boy.

The suddenness and loudness of the lanky Indians eruption startled Huff, and slowed the room’s movement. Stabb towered over the massive ball of a man who hunched in a cradle of dehydrated legumes. An upturned fist slithered out from Stabb’s left side and fingers resembling small snakes unfurled towards The Big Man’s sweaty face.

The stone pipe and Zippo appeared.

“Smoke this.” The old Indian instructed.

Huff reached for them with hesitance. Then, in an obedient daze, he took the items from his host’s hand. As Stabb looked on from his gangly stance in his yellow Lakers shirt, mane of beads, and grimy-loose fitting briefs; Huff robotically put the warm surface of the stone conduit to his lips, sparked the flame, and then inhaled what the Indian prescribed.

“There. See? Excellent, Doctor.” Stabb recoiled his appendage and strode half a stride back to his green, vintage La-Z-Boy.

The deep breath seemed to calm Huff again. He felt his vision narrow, and suddenly an idea struck him. “Hey…wait… did you guys? Are you pulling some kind of prank on me?”

Shane and Stabb looked at each other.

Their glance made Him feel emboldened. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it, isn’t it?… But…How did you know about the bear? And about Thompson being confined to the bed then? …and the burial.” Huff began to doubt his theory.

“I assure you, Doctor, there is no pranking that goes on in The Smoking Den. Please, Sir, calm yourself.” He flattened his hand and pressed down on nothing.

Huff sipped his Yauh.

“Whut’s gettin’ atcha Doc?” Shane asked.

“I don’t…I’m not quite sure, Shane. It’s like… It’s like I lost track of time. Or, not even lost track of it…just lost it.” He looked at his fists, one gripping a pipe and lighter, the other a mug of whiskey. “I came downstairs, sat here,” he looked at the orange sack under his mass. “I … I started telling you guys , I remember telling you how we’d gotten…” The truth, and he knew it, he hadn’t remembered telling them anything on his return other than Thompson and Miller were the supply and distribution chain for illegal liquor in the northern Ohio Valley.

He recalled describing how they binged on food the first night they arrived. He remembers getting up to go piss. Then coming back and sparking the pipe. He’d inhaled and thought about the conversation with Doyle Reed that first morning at Strix Farm, and about the incident with the barn owl. But he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember actually telling Shane and Stabb the crazed set of events that happened soon after that conversation. Nor could he remember, which was more concerning, where the time that it would have taken him to tell that part went.

“Welp, Doc, yuh sat righ’ ‘ere an’ telled it all…Yuh telled us how ‘at ol’ feller who picked yuh up…” He paused for the identification to register. “How he telled yuh ‘bout ol’ Thompson layin’ up ‘er in ‘at room was kindly an ol’ dick taster…, reckon ‘at’s how yuh sayed it.”

Huff’s memory flashed to the face of Doyle Reed sitting at the table and drinking his coffee that first morning. He remembered Doyle speaking slow with the strange sounding words. “Hell, excuse-my-language-boys … But, he can be a goddamn dictator.”

“Dictator.” The Big Man blurted out.

“Yea, ‘at’s whut I said. Dicktaster… An’ Yuh telled us how ‘at ol’ Doc use-tuh make him duh all his runnin’ an’ ‘at yuh bett’ off stayin’ ‘way from him.” Shane seemed unphased by the JuaJua or Yauh and Huff tried to recall if he had seen the young man actually drink or smoke anything at all.

“Yes, Doctor Huff.” Stabb cut in. “I did wonder though, did you ever think it odd that this man, this Doyle Reed, that he thought so poorly of a man whose sprawling home and fancy car he used without abatement?” His long Hopi finger wrinkled around his long Hopi chin as he executed a pose of ponderance.

“Well, uh… I did, actually, Stabb. I did wonder about that. And I thought about it more after he’d ushered us up to meet Dr. Thompson, who he’d said…”

“Yes, yes, demanded your presence…” Stabb cut in again, wielding a scornful tone. “Yes, you have told us all of that, Doctor. What I am still curious of then, Sir, did you take this man’s warning at face value? Had you already installed your trust in him? Did you take his word on the character and temperament of your recluse rescuer?”

Huff thought he hadn’t. The more he contemplated the question though, he thought maybe he had. There had been a fear in him as Doyle led them up a wide staircase. He remembered his young shoulders shivered from the description Doyle had given them, right before they entered the room to meet H. Stockton Thompson for the first time.

“I did believe him…I guess.” Huff rationalized. I mean, I had no reason not to. This man had been the one who picked us up and snuck us out of The Hol…”

“Yes, yes, yes, Doctor…So you’ve said.” Stabb chopped in again. “But, as he claimed in that morning’s warning, under great threat from the invalid despot.”

“Yeah Stabb…Listen, I’m not saying I trusted the guy with my life here, I just believed him when he told us Thompson was an asshole.” He added, with growing frustration. “For crying out loud man, I was like fourteen years old. . . And on the run for murder. Why wouldn’t I be scared of this guy? Especially after what Doyle told us. . . Come on, Shane.” He turned to his left, looking for an ally. “Help me out here. He’s…I don’t even know what you’re doing, Stabb.” He’d looked back to his right. “This has nothing to do with finding those engraved sla…”

“Oh-o-o-o-o, hoho…,” Stabb rudely contested. “I am afraid it has everything to do with why you are here, tonight, Doctor.” A ghoulish and dramatic ‘Muah-ha-ah-ha-ah-ha’ finished his proclamation.

“What? That’s not even what I was going to say. What in the hell are you talking about Stabb?” Huff sat up, rigid, on his orange bag of beans. “Doyle’s successful attempt to scare us worked, okay… But that had nothing to do with what happened to him… Now, what’s going on here, old man?” Huff turned his full frame in the direction of his host. “This is getting too weird, and I want some answers to the things I asked you about up there.” The Big Man looked sternly at the long old Indian, and pointed to the lit opening at the top of the staircase.

“Not so fast, Doctor.” Stabb returned. “You have yet to give us what you promised.”

“Apparently I did! You just sat there and acted like you already knew everything there is to say about it…So, it’s your turn. Out with it. Let’s go!”

“Let us not go, Doctor Huff. Let us stay in nineteen-thirty-four on Strix farm in rural south-central Ohio.” A light brown fan of fingers waved across the line of The Big Man’s brow-creased stare. His powerful hips relaxed and sunk deeper into the Lima beans and he saw the prodigious palm flap into the wings of the vaunted barn owl…

(#)

The purple-smoke dissipated to a far off muted yellow-sunlight that was casting a glow through the single round window, set high atop the curved wall of a staircase. Huff’s vision was of the pale arm of Doyle Reed reaching through the golden spotlight to the knob of a wooden door. Dust particles danced in the illuminated wedge of space.

As the oak door creaked open, Huff felt his heart’s pace quicken.

Doyle led the way into the room, where a square window shone another beam of the morning’s sunlight. Miller followed, and Huff brought up the rear. The floor groaned with each tender step the three took. As the biggest boy came into the room he took in the sight of an old, balding, crumpled-rag of a man with a yellow-gray beard that was trimmed short and tight. His jaundiced eyes perked up when Huff came into view.

“Ahh…young, James!” He labored a beaming grin at Huff. “Look at yourself, young man,” he coughed,”…spitting image…”

The boys thought the old man seemed happy, not the grump Doyle described. Although, they thought he was a bit confused.

They'd been barely able to get the gist of what Doyle said when he spoke to them in the slow and plodding way, they had no idea what the bed ridden man was saying as he rambled on, but they were both sure he thought Huff was Miller.

The old timer looked at Miller. “And Canton Huff. I knew your mother. In her more… oh, thirty-five years ago…” He laughed, wearing a reminiscing gaze.

The old man coughed a wad of phlegm into his palmed handkerchief.

Sensing the old man's weakness and feeling mysteriously offended at the mysterious garble he spoke, Miller squawked at him, “WHuTCH-Y TawKin Boutch-y Ol’ Timey?” His bird-bone frame puffed out, ready to spring.

“BuhuhuhUhhh,” the old man’s body shuttered beneath his bedsheets.

“Sir, I, I apologize…I warned them, I, I asked them not to…” Doyle stammered to the old man’s bedside. He stopped partway and turned a cold glare to Miller. “I told you,” he scolded.

“Ahahauhuhuh…uh..it’s, it’s…I think I’ll be okay…Just give me a moment, please.” He lifted his wrinkled arm. A clear tube was taped to his skin, it ran down and impaled a veiny hand that gestured Doyle away.

“Please, please young man.” He said to Miller, as he clutched his chest. “Please, no Hill-Speak. My heart simply cannot bear it.”

The young boys looked at each other, clueless.

The withered old man inched up his inclined infirmary bed. “Huh…uh…” He panted. “I must insist. It really is my only condition. You must please…Please learn and use the ways of speaking in the flatlands.”

Doyle looked at them both with a face of reprimand, and teed his lips with his index finger when he sat back down in a white wicker chair.

The old man regained what little strength he had and rose further on his propped mattress.

“Please, both of you, I understand you are scared and confused. Things will work out. You will see that, in time… I have requested you here in my room, so that I may finally meet you, and …well I’m afraid I have the unenviable task of relaying to you some disheartening news.”

H. Stockton Thompson looked off into space with a sad expression. “Doyle,” he said, looking over at his nephew/manservant. “This is not information you need to be concerned with…Although I fear I may need you to sit here, and later as you show the boys around the farm, inquire to their understanding of what I am about to tell them. And speak to them in a way that will clear up any misunderstanding that they might have.”

“Of course,” Doyle complied. “Although, if you speak slowly they seem to be able to catch…”

“Goddamit Doyle! Did you hear a goddamn word I just said? You think I have time to speak slow?” The sick senior lashed out at his caretaker with as much vigor as he was capable of. Doyle shrunk back into the wicker nest.

“Now boys,” he looked at them both. “I am afraid that you will be here on this farm for the foreseeable future.”

They looked at him, still clueless.

“I received a message before dawn, updating us on the situation from which you fled. The Revenuers, frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the locals, had taken to ransacking properties. Warrant be damned. Under a tarp in a shack at your Daddy’s,” he looked at Huff. “They discovered The Beast, trunk riddled with bullet holes, and the back window shot out. The agents knew from spent casings found in the wreckage that the Revenuers had fired numerous rounds at their combatants…” His look to Huff turned solemn. “I’m afraid the Federal Agents went to take your Daddy into custody,” The boys understood nothing the old man was saying. But they could feel the dread in his voice.

“There’s more, I’m afraid. Your Daddy,” His focus stayed on the box of a boy who stood at his feet. “Your Daddy decided he was not in the mood to be taken into custody… The first two agents who tried to grab him went down with split skulls when they were smashed into each other. The third approached with ill intent and suffered a broken neck, but not before he buried three rounds from his sidearm into your Daddy’s chest.”

Huff and Miller had blank stares because they knew not a word the old man was saying in what they felt was a foreign tongue.

The decrepit man lay back on his bed, exhausted from his exertion.

“Ah, I think, Uncle…” Doyle stood up, alarmed. He leaned to the bed railing and wiped the brow of his charge with a damp cloth. “Maybe you should take a rest. I’ll…I’ll take our guests around and see if there is anything that needs… clarified. Please, Uncle, just rest now.”

“Oh, Okay, okay Doyley…I’ll just…That sounds like a good idea.” The nephew-nurse cringed at the nickname his Uncle had called him since before he could walk. The old wrinkled eyelids closed down over the worn and worried eyes. Thompson slipped off to sleep.

Doyle nodded to the boys standing at the foot of the bed to move towards the open door. They turned and crept out the doorway and down the stairs. Doyle followed them in silence.

Still not sure if they were allowed to speak, the confused boys walked through the galley kitchen to the foyer they'd stood in on their arrival.

Doyle came down from the staircase, looked back up the curving wall to the closed door then whispered to them, “Yuin’s getch-y on over attaway…” He motioned out the screened door to the spindle wrapped porch.

As they stood there on the white-washed planks Doyle spoke to them in their language, he relayed to them the news the old man couldn’t quite convey.

(#)

Huff recalled the scene from The Smoking Den’s haze as tears of guilt overwhelmed him.

(#)

The young James Carl Miller bounded off of the porch and ran across the white rocked driveway. He ran past the Model J, which still sat parked by the flowing fountain, and then around the side of a white-trimmed red barn, and out of sight.

The Big Man could feel, in his JuaJua trance, his younger self launch his oversized-boy frame off of the steps and on the gravel shards as he ran after his fellow orphan.

He finally caught up to his friend, who’d stopped on the far side of the barn. He leaned against it with his forearm as a buffer between the peeling red chips of paint and his dirty blond mop. The young Huff placed his bulky arm across the sobbing boy’s boney back. They drained their ducts, no words were said.

The rest of that day should have been a blur. The traumatic experiences the two boys from The Hollow had been through in the last thirty-six hours should have left enough of a scar on their memory that would mute the trivial details that Doyle spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon showing them.

But there was no blur. For the boys, memories of the rest of that day stuck fast with them both. Forever.

When they’d finally pulled themselves away from the seclusion they’d sought at the far end of the barn, they found Doyle fiddling with pigeons. They watched as he placed a bird in its coop. The boys were familiar with the set-up, and the handling of the birds. They’d had a smaller version back home, in The Hollow. The sight brought on a fresh round of sobbing tears from them both. They thought of old man Miller attaching small scraps of paper with scribbled lines of code on the gray birds talons before he tossed it in the sky, and watched it fly away, carrying its tightly rolled scrap of cargo.

Doyle allowed the boys to compose themselves and then lead them around the barn to show them the horses and the tools. On occasion he spoke to them in Hill-Speak, but only on points of clarification. He tried to stress the importance of them fixing their words. He made it clear that they could not go back to The Hollow, now or ever. And that they would need to assimilate to life outside of Appalachia.

At the back of the barn, Doyle slid open a door that revealed the largest and most clean looking still the boys had ever seen. Thompson’s nephew had filled them in on the primary operation of Strix Farm was to act as the junction for carrier pigeons sent throughout an area that covers three states, passing messages between moonshiners and distributors. It was a role some member of his family had played, right there on that farm, for close to a hundred years. H. Stockton Thompson had maintained the lines of communication for many years, in addition to his profession of lecturing at The Ohio State University in nearby Columbus.

Doyle told them how Thompson had the perfect cover for his illegal operation with his career in academics. Eventually that career had taken him to The Smithsonian Institute some twenty-five years earlier; that’s when Doyle took over the task of the farm when he was not much older than Huff and Miller had been when they’d arrived there.

“Who knows,” Doyle Reed told them in the new language they were gradually picking up. “Maybe someday you guys will take over for me.”

He filled them in on the inner workings of the still they saw gleaming in the back of the barn. “I run this still on the side…Take care of my own hankerings and those of a few locals as well. But the old geezer’d shit himself if he knew about it.” He nodded his head at the contraption. “So yuins keep yer dirty lil’ cockgobblas shut on nat, ya hear?”

The three meandered at some chores and let the four horses out of their stalls, and got them into a ringed fence at the side of the barn. The green bars that made up the pin surrounded a good chunk of bare ground that was pockmarked with hoof indentations. As the horses trotted off kicking up clumps of dust clouds, Doyle suggested they clean up and go to the house for some lunch. They sat at the kitchen table eating sandwiches when Doyle, looking out the window, bolted up from his stool.

“Goddamit, that bear’s back!”

Huff and Miller sat with their backs to the window and so turned to see a black bear stalking on all fours within feet of the pinned horses.

They watched in silence as Doyle strode, cocksure, out the screen door. The boys stood by their stools and peered out the window, their noses nearly touching the glass. They saw their sandwich maker walk past the pigeon coop as he began to raise his arms up over his head. He made low, but loud, shouting sounds at the black bear that prowled dangerously close to the fences perimeter.

“WHuTcH-y tink ‘at gull durn idget gone do?” Miller asked his big friend.

“Heel, yeAin’t reckon ‘at ol’ b-oi tryin’ tetchy…” Huff was interrupted by his own gasp.

The black bear reared up on its hind legs and towered next to the green rails of the horse pen. The bear’s swollen neck had a mane that was greased with pints of its own saliva. Frothy foam accentuated an inflated tongue that crossed the river ove razor-like teeth, and dripped drops of bear spit down on its shoulder. Hairy bear arms flung high, and the animal looked to be impersonating, or mocking, its shewer. A thunderous roar escaped from the gaping black snout and rattled the sun warmed window’s glass. They saw Doyle freeze, his arms dropped to his side as he noticed the bear's rabidity, and a dark spot grew at the inseam of his khaki trousers. The frightened man turned to run back to the house, his movements were slow and sputtering.

The bear charged after its retreating assailant, who plodded with a cumbersome gate. They were the slowest strides the two boys had ever seen and they tried to will him to move faster with their minds. The slow man, Doyle Reed, was barely into his fourth step when the healthy head start he held was overcome by the pursuing black bear. Ten feet from the window that they watched from in horror, they saw the bear pounce on its prey.

One matted bear arm came crashing down on the slow man’s head, and he crumpled to the ground. Ravenous white spikes from the black and foaming jowls punctured cloth and flesh alike. Red spurts shot out from holes, and straps of skin flapped off the victims face. A black blanket of fur enveloped the screaming man, whose wails were gargled by the pooling of his own blood in his throat.

The bear reared up again, exposing a maroon puddle that oozed out all around dismembered hunks of meat. It bent again and rooted its blood coated muzzle into the messy pile. The finished beast backed out of the mass and casually crawled, a contented crawl, back towards the tree line. A limp appendage hung from the bear's clamped mouth, red soaked fabric clung to the tatters of flesh. The owl circled in the twilight over head.

The boys stared— shocked and soundless— at the remains of Doyle Reed scattered in a vicinity on the side lawn of the farm house.

Eventually they coaxed each other from their stupor, partially roused by the old straining voice echoing off the curved walls of the staircase.

“Doyley…? Doyle…What is all of that ruckus? Doyle?”

(#)

Huff twisted in his orange bag-chair, his eyes held closed by a tight squint. “Doyle…Doyley,” he mumbled through a dry mouth.

“Doc…Doc…” Shane reached over and shook the giant shoulder of The Big Man as he cried out. “Doc, yuh a’righ’?”

Huff’s eyes opened, he took in the unexpected surroundings of The Smoking Den. Shane was staring at him with grave concern.

“Doc, yuh okay?” Huff heard him ask.

“Uh… yeah, yes, I ah…I must have dozed off.”

“Yea, I reckon Doc. So’d Stabb ‘ere.”

To his other side Huff saw the tall Indian splayed out on the recliner, bare legs draping off of the chair. A hand was buried to the bottom knuckles in the waistline of his dingy briefs. The old Indians beak honked out a rhythmic sound as he slept sound in the La-Z-Boy.

“Ha…” Huff let out a singular laugh sound. “I guess he didn’t find my story very interesting after all.” The Big Man smirked a smile.

“Welp…I gots tuh say Doc, kindly losed a lil’ fir me tuh the second time ‘round.” Shane rolled over on his big blue cushion and slept.

(#)