The Ridge: The Whisper of the Leaves - Chap. 4

After the warmth of the building, the cold of the March weather bit at him as he walked through the back door onto the low outer porch. Marshall stepped onto the wooden walk that led straight to the small “one-seater” some fifty feet behind the main building.

In the fall and winter, the short distance to the outhouse wasn’t a bothersome thing, but in the heat of a Delta summer, everyone’s nose quickly told them that the building was too close to the pool hall. Sully had gotten several complaints about it, but he always said if he could stay in the hall all day and stand it, so could others for a couple of hours or so.

Marshall was about halfway to the “outie” when he gazed past the building to the landscape beyond and stopped. Under the low, full moon he could make out the silhouette of the Ridge.

The Ridge, as everyone called it, was an anomaly. Nothing resembled it for over 75 miles in any direction. Some said that it had been formed centuries ago by a great earthquake on the New Madrid Fault which ran from southern Missouri down into Arkansas. Others said the Mississippi had something to do with it (probably because “Old Man River” was such a presence in the area).

The theory Marshall subscribed to, because he had heard it in geography class, was that it was formed in the Ice Age when a turning-plow shaped glacier started inching its way down from the north. Somewhere about eighty miles north of Wynne, the glacier began turning the earth over onto itself, and inch-by-inch continued to move southward

It kept on plowing until it got almost to where Helena would later be founded, sixty miles south of Wynne, then for some reason no one would ever know, it just stopped. So now what had resulted thousands of years later was a badly healed scar called Crowley’s (pronounced like the bird and named for some founding father in the past) Ridge in the Eastern Arkansas area of the Delta.

The Ridge was indeed a thing of beauty. Over a hundred miles long, 300 feet high at its highest, between one-quarter and five miles wide it ran as straight as any such thing in nature ever did. It was covered with pine saplings and rich meadows, wading ponds and bass lakes, Angus and Herefords and Walkers, shotgun shacks and Anti-Bellum mansions, stills and God only knew what else. It wasn’t maudlin to say that it truly was the heart of the area.

The Ridge had always been a glorious presence to Marshall. It broke up the monotony of the cotton, bean, rice, sorghum, and corn fields that he had grown so tired of. He wanted to see and do things in this life, and he would relish any sort of change from the mundane life of a farmer. But the Ridge was the one thing in that life that he hoped would never change.

After a few minutes of staring at the Ridge, Marshall shivered suddenly feeling the March cold. Then he realized that he hadn’t even finished the business that he had come outside for. So, he quickly took care of the matter then hurried back toward the pool hall.

Marshall had gotten almost to the back porch when he heard shouting coming from inside. He ran the rest of the way to the building and threw the door open just in time to see Gerald by the main table burying his right fist into the stomach of a man Marshall knew as Bill Prichard.

A split second later a second man that Marshall didn’t recognize broke a pool cue across the back of Gerald’s neck. The broken piece flew across the room and slammed into a pool cue rack on the opposite wall causing cues and balls to crash to the floor.

“Gerald,” Marshall yelled and started running toward his friend as he saw him fall limply across the table, face down. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sully reaching under the bar for the sawed-off 20-guage Marshall had seen him bring out once. It was shorter than the legal limit, but the barkeep told him once that the cops had always let him slide. The way these two men looked, however, Marshall knew something had to be done quicker than Sully was moving, so he grabbed the coal poker from beside the stove as he rushed forward toward the two twenty-something men.

Some thirty feet from the front of the hall, he sent the poker spinning toward Prichard who had just picked up a stray cue and was positioning himself to bring it down on the back of Gerald’s head. Before he could deliver what surely would have been a killing blow, however, the poker slammed flatly across his open chest. He grunted from both surprise and the force of the blow then crashed backward onto the plank floor; his breath instantly shoved from his lungs. He laid gasping and never saw Marshall until the teen’s work boot landed solidly across his left ear. Then he passed out.

Marshall turned to the other man quickly and saw that he was reaching into his coat pocket. But, before he could get his filled hand free, the teen jumped across Prichard’s limp form and hammered his fist down onto the man’s right cheekbone twice in quick succession. Then in almost the same motion he brought the heal of his left hand up against the man’s chin snapping his head back. He instantly went limp and crumpled to the floor at Marshall’s feet.

Marshall stood for a moment panting, fists clinched, trembling, eyes and nostrils flared. He looked around and saw that Sully as well as the men at the back of the hall were standing or sitting in frozen awe at what they had witnessed. As Marshall slowly unclenched his fists, he heard a moan. It was Gerald.

“Gerald,” He said then turned and put his hand on his friend’s back. “Gerald, ya ok?”

He pushed his friend’s shirt collar down to see if there was any blood. There wasn’t although a huge, blue-black knot had come up just at his hair line.

“What’d he hit me with,” Gerald said as he gingerly rubbed his neck while slowly raising himself off the table. He looked to the side, behind Marshall and saw the men on the floor. “Durn, Marsh, did you do that?”

“The guy with Prichard caught ya with a cue,” Marshall ignored his friend’s second question and answered the first. “Who is that other guy?”

Gerald glanced at Marshall, “If ya don’t know now, ya better off not knowin’ ‘im.”

Prichard began moaning, but the second man had not moved yet.

Sully who had been frozen behind the bar during the confrontation, finally spoke, “Borden, you all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Gerald continued to rub his neck. “I think so.”

“Good,” Sully said, relieved. “Ya know I gotta call tha cops boys.”

“Naw, Mr Sully!” Gerald whined. “Ya don’t have ta do that.”

Marshall said nothing.

“Got to, boys,” Sully answered. “I don’t know what’s goin on between you and these guys, here, but I do know that they’re adults and they jumped a minor. So, unless one of ya’ll’s done somethin bad illegal, I don’t think ya have ta worry about nothin’.”

Sully didn’t say so, but everyone knew that he had had a number of run-ins with Prichard, so it gave him a good deal of pleasure to see him get a “comeuppance.”

“Did he kill ‘em,” Eighty-year-old Eldon Chapman called from the back of the room, but not bothering to look up from his freshly dealt domino hand.

Sully walked over to the two men and looked to see if they were breathing........they were.

“Na, they’ll survive,” He called to the domino bunch.

“Well, let Marsh go,” Gerald pleaded. “He was just helpin me.”

“Sorry, boys,” He shook his head as he walked back behind the bar. “No need for Bentwood to run, anyway. Everybody in town knows who he is and the cops for sure know where he lives. So just make ya self ta home and we’ll get it all straightened out.”

Sully picked up the phone receiver on the end of the bar and spoke into it almost immediately. “June, gimme the Chief’s house, he’s probably left the station by now.”

To Be Continued........