Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 2x19: Tales from the Bottom Part 1 - Let's Not Meet

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Part 1 of 3 of Tales from the Bottom by Injunwerks. A collection of stories from Kenefick, Texas leading up to the final conclusion featuring untold stories by the author in next week's season finale. Follow Let's Not Meet: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/433173970399259/  Twitter - https://twitter.com/letsnotmeetcast  Website - http://letsnotmeetpodcast.com  Patreon - http://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast  Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/crypticcounty    

AT&T Fiber presents a straightforward moment. Your wine? Thanks. I'll pretend I know what I'm doing before saying it's good. And I'll pretend I don't know you're pretending. Are you a Gagillionaire? Yeah, I have AT&T Fiber. The straightforward pricing has inspired me to be more straightforward.

Me too. Ugh, this wine. I'll fetch you a better one. Straight forward is better. No equipment fees, no data caps, no price increase at 12 months. Live like a Gagillionaire with AT&T Fiber, limited availability and select areas, visit ATT.com slash Hypergate for details. My name is Andrew Tate and this is Season 2 episode 19 of Let's Not Meet a True Horror

Podcast. episode 19 of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. Sometime ago during Halloween, I told a collection of stories titled Tales From The Bottom. I told it in two parts. Now this was during the first run of Let's Not Meet that is no longer available on the RSS feed. However, there is a third Tales From The Bottom. Two additional stories for part three. I'm going to be telling those in the conclusion of Season 2 next week for

the big finale. However, to catch those up that I've not heard, Tales from the Bottom, and those of you that need a refresher, I'm going to be airing Part 1 this week, and then Part 2 in conjunction with the conclusion of Part 3 next weekend. Keep in mind that these recordings are a couple of years old, So the sound quality is going to be quite a bit different. I made a lot of upgrades in the last couple of years and I've learned a lot about recording and performance. However, I am proud of what I was able to accomplish with what little I had at the time.

So I do hope you enjoy part one of Tales from the Bottom by Reddit user, EngineWorks. part one of Tales from the Bottom by ReadyEaser Engine Works. In the mid-70s, my family lived near Trinity River Plaza and the little community of Kenifick, Texas, about 40 miles north east of Houston. We moved there because my parents were able to buy five acres of land at a really low price. My parents also bought a new single wide trailer house and moved there in 1974 or 75, so I was about 6 or 7 at the time. I remember that house.

It was my parents first home that they didn't rent. It had only one bathroom, but it had three bedrooms. And after living in a two bedroombedroom apartment in Baytown, it was like moving into a majestic castle. It came fully furnished with beds, dressers, appliances, a living room set, and a new color television. I can remember my mother doing a little dance in the kitchen because she had a real refrigerator and a washer. It was set up on railroad ties with wheels removed, and my dad had put up this curtain thing along the bottom to keep the animals from getting underneath.

The week before this particular incident happened, I could a gash out of the side of my hip from running around the front of the house and not remembering that the tongue of the trailer frame was sticking out about five feet. The little latch that secures the ball hitch into the receiver is what got me. We lived there for about a year when this story takes place. We bought a section of land that was at the entrance of the road that went to the plaza. It was a dirt road and it followed our property line to a corner where the road made a 90-degree turn

and followed our property line up to the state highway. About a half mile past the entrance to the plaza, the state highway came to a dead end. It was an isolated community. There was very little traffic there that wasn't a resident. You should know a little bit about the plaza or the bottom, as it was called. The road to the bottom was the same dirt road that passed our house. That dirt road was one of my mom's biggest gripes. Everyone drove too damn fast, and the damn dusty dirty air covered every damn thing in the damn house. This was our first house with an air conditioner, and I guess she was afraid she'd wear it out, because she usually left it off and opened the windows unless it was just too hot. All of the houses in the bottom were built on stilts because the river flooded every year.

The water from the river sometimes got as far out as our yard, but it was rare. When the bottom flooded, the only way in or out was by boat. For about three weeks every summer, there'd be 20 or so cars parked on both sides of the road in front of our house, and everybody would come and go in the boats. The cars were left unlocked and some even had keys in the ignition. I was warned by my father on the threat of death and dismemberment to stay away from those cars. Another thing you should know about the bottom is that most of the people who lived there were unemployed or under employed and mostly uneducated. Everyone down there hunted and fished.

There was also a still or two, and pop plants actually grew in wild places, as well as in five gallon buckets on the occasional deck or elevated porch. The best way to politely describe the general population of the bottom is hillbilly. Oh, and lots of guns live there too. It was a community where if you got caught doing something wrong,

it was as normal as getting the snot slapped out of you and by the time you got home, they'd already called your parents and told why you'd been slapped. For my brother and I, that meant to whooping on top of the slap or chastising or whatever we got in the first place. All of us kids knew each other because we all rode the same bus to the same school. And since the bus couldn't navigate the redden roads at the bottom, on a good day, all of the kids waited for it on our front yard. My father eventually built a bench with a roof on it for everyone. On the night

of this incident, my brother, me, and my mother were all alone at home. I was maybe six and my brother would have been four. We were in the middle of a big south Texas Thunder Boomer storm. Lightning was flashing everywhere. The accompanying thunder would literally rattle the entire house. The rain hitting the metal roof on the trailer made a steady dull roar inside of the house. You had to talk louder than normal just to be heard. My mother was busy getting candles and matches ready because such a storm normally knocked at the power

for at least two hours and usually four or five. My father worked shift work at a steel mill and 35 miles away so he wasn't due home for another hour or so. Now this was a time before Atari and Nintendo or CDs, DVDs, and VCRs. We had an aerial antenna that pulled in a grand total of three channels that were clear on the best of days. My brother and I were standing at one of the lower windows watching the lightning strike. I was watching a car come up the road from the bottom. The road was just loose gravel over compacted clay, and it had got slick in places where it

rained. About once every three months someone would come home drunk or high and try to take that 90 degree turn too fast, and they would end up in the ditch. It was the first year that we lived there. I must have seen the bottoms of five or six cars and trucks. They would get sideways in the turn, then hit the ditch and roll over. It was always good fun to watch the tow truck roll them back over and haul them off. Sometimes I would sneak up to the fence on our property and watch everything

from a front row seat through the barbed wire. Then, after the car or truck had been hauled off, I'd go and look for change that had fallen out of the car. I even found a box of bullets once. I got a spank in for bringing it home. Anyways, I'm watching this car come up the road from the bottom. I can tell he's being safe and not driving too fast. Just as I made this realization, my brother screamed bloody murder in my ear.

He was screaming so hard that his body locked up and he lost his voice and just made this rasping noise. When he screamed, it scared me, and I screamed. My mother came running from the kitchen, her bathrobes spreading like Batman's cape. She grabbed my brother who was still trying to scream and asked him what had happened. At the same time, she was scooping him up with one arm, she was pushing me away from the window with the other. When she pushed me, she accidentally hit my bandages from my encounter with the tongue

of the trailer. It hurt and I started crying too. So now we're all around the couch. My mom is doing her best to comfort both of us. I'm okay after a few minutes, but my brother was still hysterical. He had to hiccup some was trying to tell her what he had seen. He could only say, Buddha. Buddha, which was his word for monster or

booger, as it turns out some cows had gotten out and there was a big bull in our front yard. As my mother held my brother and was at the window showing him that it was only a big cow, she suddenly stiffened and backed away from the window. How? She suddenly stiffened and backed away from the window. She put my brother down and went to the phone. She picked up the phone and started to dial. We were on a party line with two other families, an elderly couple who were seldom on the phone and a family with a teenage girl who was seldom off the phone. I could hear my mother whispering into the phone. I guess she was trying not to scare us, but she was so scared herself that I could hear all of it. Debrake it off the phone. I need to call the police. Yes, the police. Will you please hang up so I can

call? I have an emergency. That's why. Finally, my mother was able to call the police. She told them that she was looking at the window to show my brother that it was only a cow in the yard when the lighting struck and she could see a man in the tree in our yard. Yes, he's in the tree. Watching the house, please hurry. No, the doors are all locked, and I have several pistols. Turn out the lights? Are you crazy? No, the doors are all locked, and I have several pistols. Turn out the lights? Are you crazy? Oh, okay, that makes sense.

She gave them directions to our house and hung up. Before she turned around, the phone rang its little three-ring jingle that was assigned to us. It was Debra's father calling to see if everything was okay. My mother told him everything, and she was running around carrying my brother and trying to turn off all the lights. She snapped her fingers at me and gestured for me to turn off the television. Mr. Trackilex said he'd come over and he'd stay until my dad got home. He said that he would

be there in about five minutes. My mom hung up the phone and told me to come get into the den with her. There weren't any windows in the den. We went to the den and I could hear the rain coming down harder than ever when we got still. She put my brother onto the sofa beside me and went into the bedroom to get one of my dad's pistols. The ammunition was kept in a cabinet above the kitchen sink, probably to keep my brother and myself away from getting into it. The problem was that she'd turn off all the lights and my father had 8 or 10 different pistols, and she couldn't find the right ammunition for the pistols she had.

In frustration, she pulled the cord of the light that was mounted under the cabinet to turn it on and was trying to read the boxes. Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to set the box on the counter and bend over to read the type of ammunition that she had. She would get a box and set it on the top of the counter holding it with both hands and then get another. She was on the fourth or fifth box when she looked at the window above the sink and promptly lost her cool.

The man was outside the kitchen window, looking at her. His face was less than two feet from hers. I remember her stumbling back into the table where she had left the pistol. She grabbed it and pointed at the window and just started pulling the trigger. Luckily, it was empty because it was at this time that Mr. Tracolec started banging on the door. My mother spun towards the door and pulled the trigger some more. Then she heard Mr. Tracolec calling her name and unlocked the door for him.

He stepped in out of the rain with a shotgun as big as he was. He asked what was going on. She was hysterical. She tried to talk calmly but ended up screaming anyways. He's in the backyard. He was looking through the window at me. As she said this, she was pointing with the pistol at the window over the sink. Mr. Trackleck didn't say anything, he just turned around and ran back into the yard. After a few seconds we heard him shouting, and then boom, silence, and then another boom, then silence. By this time my mother was holding me and my brother at her side like an old mother hen, but she was shaking so hard that we had to sit her on the sofa.

After what seemed like hours someone knocked on the door again and called my mother's name. It was Mr. Tracklick. He was completely soaked and the first thing he did was apologize for getting the floors wet. Son of a gun shot at me. He said it like he was surprised, and it had hurt his feelings. He held up a hand with two fingers, spread apart like a piece symbol, and said,

twest, with a T at the end of it. I can't believe he shot at me. My mother got him a towel, and he told her about how the man had pulled out a pistol and shot at him as he came around the corner of the house. He told my mother that the man shot once, then ran and jumped over the chain link fence, then shot again before running down to the bottom. Then he said that the man was the tallest man he had ever seen in his life. Flatfooted, jumped over that darn fence, didn't even break strad.

He said that he'd just wait with us until my dad got home. My mom was making coffee when this sheriff stopped outside with his lights on. He'd just trotted up to the door when my father pulled into the yard. They all started talking, and we're still talking when I got sleepy and fell asleep on the sofa. The next day the sheriff came back to see if he could find anything. He was hoping to find a bullet lodged in a tree or something but he couldn't find anything. The one thing that I do remember that gives me chills to this day was the sheriff standing

outside of our trailer just under the window that was over the kitchen sink. The window where my mom encountered the prowler, the sheriff, talking to Mr. Tracolek, had asked him to go over everything, step by step, for the third or fourth time. The sheriff wanted to confirm that the prowler was standing under this particular window, pointing up to the kitchen window,

a good foot and a half up above his head. What was he standing on? The sheriff was looking around for a stack of bricks or something. Mr. Tracolick said that he wasn't standing on anything. He was just standing there with his hands behind his back looking into that window when I came around the corner. He just turned and looked at me and pulled out a

little pistol and shot at me. Then he ran over to the fence and jumped over it, like it was only a foot tall then started running to the bottom. As he was running, he pointed his pistol behind him without looking and shot at me again. He said this like it still hurt his feelings. The sheriff was stuck on thinking about the window and asked again if this was the correct window. When they measured the window, the bottom edge of the frame was over 8 feet from the ground. That meant for him to be looking inside at my mother, he would have to have been at least 8 foot 6. We lived there for several years after that, and even though that was only one creepy

night of several, we never saw him again nor did anyone in the bottom. I still get goosebumps whenever I stop and think about that night. Remind me to tell you about the bloody lady who barged into our house one night. Strange, but true. 18T Fiber presents A Straight Forward Moment That's true. AT&T Fiber presents a straightforward moment. You're wine. Thanks. I'll pretend I know what I'm doing before saying it's good.

And I'll pretend I don't know you're pretending. Are you a Gigillionaire? Yeah, I have AT&T Fiber. The straightforward pricing has inspired me to be more straightforward. Me too. Ugh, this wine. I'll fetch you a better one. Straight forward is better.

No equipment fees, no data caps, no price increase at 12 months. Live like a Giga-Gillionaire with AT&T Fiber. Limited availability in select areas. Visit at ATT.com slash hypergig for details. The next story and the tales from the bottom anthology is titled, Bloody Woman Barges in. The bottom was a great source of experiences, and to be honest, it probably was a lot more sinister than I realized as I was young and naive.

Having grown older, it isn't a place where I would want to raise a family in today's world, but back then was a more innocent time. My memories of the bottom were both sweet and sour, but it was familiar and it was home. Still, I got to see some pretty terrific and occasionally terrifying things when we lived there. I could tell any of several stories to you. There was a teenager who started lighting fires all over the place one summer, who got caught at the wrong house, and nearly got beat to death. There was a long-haired dude who would break into houses and still food and panties,

and he was never caught. There was a kid whose family lived four houses down the road from mine that shot his neighbor in the back of the head with a 357. There was a swamp monster thing that killed a bunch of dogs and chickens. There was a snake caught in the trot line that was confiscated by authorities. There was a kid who wrote on the school bus with me who saw a UFO and was the subject of a television documentary. There were the guys who went noodling and pulled the body out of a hole instead of a fish. We discovered an old, long forgotten slave cemetery

after finding some holes dug in the ground and scattered bones. It was a different kind of community to say the least. I'm happy to share these stories if anyone wants me to do so. This particular incident happened just after school had let out for the summer vacation. It would have been early to mid-June in 77 or 78. I would have been 9 or 10 years old at this time. Of course it was raining, and steady but moderate downpour.

My grandfather would have called it a toad floater. It was a wet, twilight around 5 pm. It was an even gloomier day because I was stuck inside of the house. In those days before cable television, we only had three channels on the television, and at 5pm, the news was on all three channels. My mother was just beginning to start cooking supper. She'd placed a pot of red beans on the stove to cook after soaking them all day, and she was in the process of cutting up potatoes to fry when we heard a truck. This truck was going

way too fast. We could hear it long before it was anywhere near the house. We watched down the road toward the bottom and could see flashes of light from the headlights as they bounced up and down in the distance. My mother turned to me at this point and said, Who is that? We knew most of the cars were trucks by the sound of their engine, but someone driving this fast was a rarity, especially in the rain. Plaza Drive was loose gravel over compacted clay, as I said earlier, and it was slicker than snot whenever it got wet.

After it was soaked through, it turned into a paste that sucked your tires in and left ruts. But the road had been built up over years, so the water would run off of it before it had the chance to soak in. This resulted in a rounded road, more than a flat road, which was fine when it was dry, but a lot more difficult to navigate when it's wet. I don't know who it is, it sure is loud. I replied with my nose pressed against the window.

Then the lights got brighter and the truck came into view. It was a 68 or so Chevy short bed pickup that was jacked up with big mudder tires on it. It was a very bright red color with a blue driver's side door and a white tailgate. It's Billy, I told my mom. She muttered under her breath about killing someone one of these days. She was beating eggs into a cornbread mix extra vigorously and kept on muttering. He knows there's kids here. I told her that he was going way too fast. By now I had my nose and both hands pressed against the window. Billio is in front of our house and there weren't any signs of him slowing down. As he passed the house, I watched for brake lights and sure enough about a hundred feet from the 90-degree turn the tail lights lit up

As I watched the lights lifted a little in the air as the front brakes brought the nose down and then suddenly those brake lights went about 10 feet into the air and disappeared Then I saw one of the headlights and then the brake lights again rolling over and over each other in the rain. It finally came to a stop on one of the sides, but I couldn't tell which side. As I was watching and talking during all of this, my mother half shouted, good lord, what was that? She heard the booms in the crunches, so she came running over to me, wiping her hands

on a dish rack. She came up behind me and looked crunches, so she came running over to me wiping her hands on a dish rack. She came up behind me and looked at the window as we both watched the lower of the two tail lights flickering and eventually going out. Then I heard my mom trotting over to use the phone. She picked it up and listened for a moment before dialing. As I said, we shared that party line with two other families. My mom was lucky this time and there was no teenager on the other line to wait for. My mom called the police and was telling them what had happened and where to go. I was watching the truck. I couldn't really see anything, but that one tail light and that headlights shining on

the weeds in front of it. I was watching to see if someone was going to crawl out, but I never saw anyone. I was watching the truck, and my mother went to go to the closet to get a raincoat and an umbrella. She was shrugging into the raincoat and giving me instructions at the same time. I was not to leave the house, and I was to keep my brother from touching any of the hot items on the stove if he ever woke up. My mom started to leave, then said flashlight. I need a flashlight. And went into the utility room in the back of the house to get a flashlight.

I had just turned back to look at the truck when the front door banged open and a woman half stumbled and half fell into the house. She was skinny with big boobs. That was all that I noticed at first. Being the curious and inquisitive young man that I was. To tell the truth, I really didn't know anything about boobs at the time except that everyone at school always talked about them so I figured they must be important. Then I saw the blood. Her whole head was covered

in blood. Her hair that I initially thought was brown was actually blonde but bloody. It was a short choppy type of cut, and I could see that one of her hoop earrings had been torn out of her ear and it was bleeding. Her nose was fat and at an angle. Her lips were all bleeding and she had blood in her teeth. Her forehead had several small cuts and gashes that were all oozing. She also had a cut under the eye that my dad would have called a rabbit. Her neck was bleeding as well. She was wearing black pants and a light blue button shirt that had a frilly lace collar. A waitress uniform. I had realized when I saw the name tag. It had one corner broken off and it was hanging at an angle with blood staining her shirt behind it. One leg of

the black pants was ripped from about mid-thigh down to below her knee and I could see bits of her bloodied leg. She had blue kicks that were the same color as her shirt, but the whole back of one was cut and there was blood there too. As I was drinking all of this in, my mom came rushing into the hallway wanting to know what had happened. She saw the woman and said, oh my lord, look at you. She had the woman sit at the table and went into doctor mode. She got a bowl of water and sat it on the table with a roll of paper towels and began mopping up the blood of the woman's face. She was asking one question after another, but never stopped talking long enough to let the woman

talk herself. As she got up to get a glass of water for the woman, my father walked in. He started to ask about the blood all over the door then he saw the woman. My mom looked at him and told him that the police were coming. As dad was talking to mom someone started beating on the door. It was Mr. Laird who lived on the other side of the road from us, up from the corner. He said that he saw the accident and by the time he had got to the truck, it was empty. The woman started crying and began telling us about how Billy had beat her. She said that he'd used the small end of a fishing rod and had beat her until she bled. I hissed at this because I could relate. Just the summer before I was riding my bicycle

in front of the house and some kids drove by and yelled something at me. My response was to grab a rock and throw it at them. I was pretty handy with a rock, but the car was going by way too fast and I never had a chance. Worst though, my father saw what I had done and came striding out to me. He asked me what I had done and I told him that I hadn't done anything. Then he said that he saw me through the rock. He thought I'd lied to him, but I meant that I hadn't done anything to make the kids yell at me. I had a white fiberglass whip antenna with a big orange flag mounted on the back of my

bike. It was kept in the holder with a screw that was long gone, but if I didn't jump a ramp or ride over anything too bumpy, it stayed in its holder. But before I could explain, my dad grabbed it and grabbed me by the upper arm and gave me two quick swats. I was wearing shorts and it stung like nothing I had ever experienced. Then he made me walk my bicycle back to the barn and put it away. I didn't need to be having fun on a bicycle if I was going to lie to him. So I knew all about how it felt to get a striper to. Then she told my dad that her name was Margaret, which I thought was strange because her

name tag clearly said Molly, but I knew better than to chime in when adults were talking so I didn't say anything. She said that she and Billy had been seeing each other on and off for the past six months or so. He'd picked her up after work that afternoon and they'd gone back to his place to get high. He wanted to go get some more, but she wanted to go home and change first, and he got mad and went crazy and started slapping her around. She told us that she got mad and slapped him back, and that was when he punched her in the face. She said it knocked her across the bed and out into the hall, and she started to run out the door, but he was behind her and pushed her and she fell onto his coffee table. She told us that he came into the living room and with the short end of the fishing rod, he just started hitting her.

I could see my dagging angry because his jaw was tightening up. I looked at Mr. Leard and he was practically shaking. His lips pressed together so hard that they turned white. He had lost his wife two summers earlier in a bony accident, and was left with a 14-year-old daughter and 28-year-old girls. He was ready to murder. Margaret went on to say that she had kicked him in the balls and tried to run out the door, but before she could get outside, he tackled her and fell into the kitchen. He landed on the floor and she ended up on top of him.

She said she tried to get up and grabbed the oven handle for support, but it just popped open and she fell back onto him. But that's when she saw the iron skillet in the oven. She said that she grabbed it and hit him in the head with it and when he tried to fight back, she hit him in the head with it and when he tried to fight back she hit him again. She said that he bucked his hips and hit her in the ribs and she just started hitting him over and over and over again. He's probably dead.

I hope he's dead. You could practically hear the pity rolling off of my mother's face. They talked for a few more minutes and my mother continued to clean the blood away. My father and Mr. Lear decided to go back and check on Billy to make sure he was still alive and not laying on the floor with what Mr. Leard called, a broke head. As soon as they walked out the door, Margaret changed. At first, she wanted to get her jacket out of the truck, but my mom wouldn't let her leave. She told Margaret that it would be fine and that the police would be here any moment.

Then Margaret said her purse was in the truck and she needed to get her purse. My mother started to tell her that it was okay too, but Margaret insisted that her medicine was in her purse and she needed to take her medicine. My mom is as good as they get. She can be a little backward sometimes, but she's not an idiot. Suspicious now, she asked Margaret what the medicine was that she needed. Margaret stalled, and it was obvious that she was searching for a suitable answer. Suddenly she looked up, and actually had half a smile as she held up a single finger and said, My inhaler. I need my inhaler. Then almost comically, she lost the smile and slumped in her chair and started breathing in a raspy manner. My mother, bless her heart, is one of those old souls who looks for the

best in any situation. A thought of lying to someone especially in the time of crisis was beyond her and for some odd reason, she never could believe that anyone would hide her. Yes, I took advantage of this one or more occasions on my own. I was a kid, not a saint. My mother got this worried look on her face, and she was obviously torn between leaving me and my brother alone with a strange woman, and letting this woman suffer. She looked between Margaret and me,

and my brother asleep on the sofa, and the window and back to Margaret. By this time, Margaret was blowing like a racehorse. Between gasp's a breath, she told my mother not to worry and that she'd be back in a minute. My mother and I watched as she got up and limped to the door,

leaving tracks of blood from her cut foot. back in a minute. My mother and I watched as she got up and limped to the door, leaving tracks of blood from her cut foot. We watched out the window as she stumbled across our yard to the road and then toward the truck. At that moment, the phone rang and I watched as my mom talked to the caller. From her tone of voice, I knew it was my dad. She started to tell him about Margaret going back to the truck, but stopped when he started shouting. I could hear his voice through the tiny speaker all the way from across the room. When I looked back at the truck, I couldn't see Margaret, but I could see the police arrive, and I told my mom. She was finishing the call with a lot of

okays and nods of her head. When she hung up the phone, she went over and locked the door and told me to come away from the window. My father and Mr. Lair drove back into sight. But instead of pulling into our yard, they went to where the police were looking over the truck. It was pretty dark by now and all I could see were the lights from my dad's car. Lights from the police car. And that one tail light on Billy's truck.

I could also see two flashlight shining over the truck and then inside the truck and then onto the surrounding trees and bushes. I watched my father run up to the police and I knew that he was shouting because both of the flashlights whipped up and over him. He was pointing back to his car. Then I watched the flashlights start bobbing up and down back and forth as the policemen went running towards back to his car. Then I watched the flashlight start bobbing up and

down back and forth as the policemen went running towards my dad's car. Then I saw the inside lights come on, and the flashlight beams shining on two men in the back seat. One of the policemen went to the back of the police car and set inside for a minute. Then went back to my dad's car. Nothing else happened for a long time. Then I heard sirens. I watched as a glow of lights appeared at the top of the hill where FM2797 went to town. First I saw only the bright white glow of the headlights of a car coming from town.

And I could hear the siren getting louder and louder than I saw the red flashes. It was another police car rushing to the scene of the accident. By this time, I was sharing the window with my mother who was telling me to stay away from the window five minutes earlier. As the car got to the bottom of the hill and to the entrance of Plaza Drive, I saw that it was a big van. It was actually an ambulance. This was the first time I'd seen one that wasn't on television. They had lights all over the top of it. It stopped behind my dad's car, and two men jumped out of the back with a stretcher that

had a pole with a bag on it. They rolled it to my dad's car, and because of all the lights, I could see everything now. They were pulling a man out of the back seat and laying him on the stretcher. I first thought was that Mr. Laird had been hurt, but then I saw him walk around from the other side of the car. I had no idea who was on that stretcher. After a minute or two, the men rolled the stretcher back to the ambulance and loaded it inside. I remember thinking how neat it was that they didn't

have to lift it up. They just pushed it to the back and the legs folded up. They crawled in behind the stretcher, then shut the doors. The ambulance turned around, then the sirens started again and it headed back to town. After a few more minutes, the tow truck appeared and I got to watch them pull Billy's truck back onto its wheels. Then the man moved the tow truck around to the back of Billy's truck and raised the bed of the truck into the air and then hooked up some more chains and drove away. Billy's truck looked weird, it had a big hump in the middle of it or something.

This left my dad and Mr. Laird talking with the police. They were all standing in front of the police car in the rain. The police man was taking notes on a little pad he pulled from his shirt pocket. Then the police both shook my dad's hand and then Mr. Laird's then everyone got back into their cars. My dad dropped Mr. Laird's, then everyone got back into the cars. My dad dropped Mr. Laird off at his house, then came back home. My mother was full of questions and tried to start asking them.

The moment my dad stepped into the door, but he was covered in blood. She dropped her spatula and asked what had happened. Before my dad could even open his mouth, he said that he was okay. He held up his hands and said that it wasn't his blood. And then glanced over to where I was staring with my mouth hanging open and my eyes as big as dinner plates. He told my mother to let him take a shower and then he'd tell her everything. She started to protest, but relented after a moment as my dad went to their bedroom to get clean clothes.

My mother finished cooking and had the table set by the time he was out of the shower. We were all sitting there waiting when he came and sat with us. He said that Billy's been shot bad three times, once in the lake, once in the shoulder, and then once in the stomach. He went on to say that the paramedics said it wasn't life threatening, but he'd lost a lot of blood and would be in the hospital for a few days.

My dad said that the police called his family and that his brother was going to watch his house and take care of his dogs. Then he started telling mom about what had happened. He and Mr. Laird went to Billy's house, and when they got there it was a mess. He said that, from the way it looked, Margaret had been telling the truth. They had called his name and heard a moan in the back bedroom. When they went to the bedroom, they knew something was wrong.

Billy was sitting in a pool of blood. His right hand was tied to the bed frame with zip ties. His head had a knot the size of a softball just above his forehead. Billy told them that he'd met Molly, that was what he called her, a few weeks before at a dance club in Liberty. They'd been out a few times and he'd promised to take her someplace nice the next time he was home. Billy did oil-filled work and made very good salary, but he'd drink and party most of it away each week. She was evidently waiting for him when he got home this afternoon.

Billy told my father that he thought it was strange that she was at his house without her car but invited her inside and had just taken a shower and was getting dressed when she attacked him. He had been bent over to get his boots from under the bed and she hit him with a cast iron frying pan. He said that when he woke up, he had been dragged to the living room and she was trying to tie his feet together with a belt. He said that he kicked her away, and he got to his feet, but was too dizzy, and she was going crazy. She kept asking him where his money was. She knew that he didn't trust banks, and he told

her that he always cashed his checks on the way home each Friday. He said that he tried to get to his feet, and she saw that he was still dizzy, and came at him again with the frying pan, but he was able to fend her off, and grabbed her legs and pulled her to the floor when she kicked him in the head. He said that they wrestled around the living room for a minute, and she finally got loose

and ran to the bedroom and locked the door. He kept a 22 revolver on his nightstand and she grabbed that and shot him in the stomach through the closed door. He said he fell and when she heard him fall she unlocked the door and came out with the gun due his head and demanded his money. Billy said that he grabbed the gun but she shot him in the shoulder and then while they were both fighting for the gun she shot him again in the leg. He got the gun away from her,

but before he could do anything, she grabbed the frying pan and hit him in the head again. When he awoke, she was in the bathroom going through the pockets of his dirty jeans. She'd left the pistol on the bed, and he grabbed it and was going to shoot her, but he missed because he was using his left hand and was still dizzy. He told her that and was going to shoot her. But he missed because he was using his left hand and was still dizzy. He told her that he was going to kill her and started trying

to get out of the zip ties. Molly ran out of the bathroom and he kicked it. Then he heard her run down the stairs and then he heard his truck start. He said he tried to get up, but got dizzy and fell again, and the next sound he heard was my father calling his name, Margaret or Molly disappeared that night. The police questioned my father the next day to weigh his story and Mr. Laird's story to see if they jived with Billy's version of the story. Mr. Laird stopped by a few days later and told my father that one of his friends was on the police force and told him that they had gone to her place of employment. But nobody knew anything. She had missed her shift for the last two days and

nobody even knew anything about her. They found a purse in the truck with almost $3,000 in it and another gun and some other random items, but they had no clues about who she was or where she was from. Billy lost his spleen and was off work for about three months. His truck was a loss as well. He kept the bullets they had pulled out of him in a big orange pill bottle. He even showed them to me once. This is a vivid memory for me, on several levels. I got to actually see a wreck as it happened that night.

I got to see an ambulance in action for the first time, and we even had a dangerous woman barge into our house and blood dripped all over the place. I knew someone who got shot. I got to see the scars and bullets. When you're 10 years old, these things stick with you. Now, who wants to hear about the kid who lived four houses down from me? He was the one who shot his neighbor. I even have a newspaper article about the incident. Let me know.

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