Uncivil Seasons Read Online Free PDF Page A

Charlene called….”
    I kept straightening my bow tie. “Jesus Christ, Cuddy, how do you know all this?”
    “These are my people, white boy. My grandma’s sister married a second cousin of the Popes’. That’s why I don’t have the heart to go over there alone and arrest Preston for whinging off two of Luster Hudson’s fingers with an ax outside the By-Ways Massage Emporium, which is what hot-to-trot Charlene—who was whinging Luster, as was well known to everybody in East Hillston
but
Preston—just got through telling Sergeant Davies took place. Now, Officer Davies says we ought to close the By-Ways, says they’re showing obscene motion pictures in the back. I says, ‘Ummmm, are they ever! But doesn’t it make you so mad, Hiram, how they blip off every eighteen seconds, and you got to plunk in a few more quarters to get to the good stuff?’”
    Sergeant Hiram Davies was past retirement age and a rigid Baptist deacon. “Okay, Cuddy, force yourself to hang up, and I’ll be right over.”
    “I knew you couldn’t stay away. You love this low-life blood-and-lust detective work, doncha?”
    “That and the long lunch hours.”
    •   •   •
    When I skidded scared in the slush around the corner of East Hillston’s Maple Street, I could hear gunshots, and then I saw Cuddy hiding down beside his patrol car. I braked next to him and yelled, “Get out of here!”
    “They’re not shooting at me!” he yelled back.
    “Jesus Christ! Who are they shooting at?”
    He was twisting his arm around inside his neon-blue parka. “How the hell should I know? I just got here! Where the hell is my gun!” He didn’t always wear his revolver, and often couldn’t even find it.
    Up and down the snowy street, lights popped on in the duplexes. People cracked their doors and stuck their heads through. Cuddy hollered at them, “Will you folks please get on back!”
    I rolled out of my Austin, slid into the patrol car, and flipped its siren on. Mrs. Mitchell was hiding under the dash. In about five seconds, the shots quit. As soon as they did, a young woman ran out the door of the Pope place and jumped down the cinder blocks that they used for porch steps. She slipped face first in the wet snow and started to scream as loudly as the siren. Cuddy and I scurried to her. It was Charlene. She hissed at him when Cuddy asked her if she’d been shot, and then she went back to screaming. I’d pulled my gun from the shoulder holster I always wore, because once when I hadn’t, a drunk at a KKK rally had shot me in the calf and splintered a bone. I crouched, ran toward the porch, and yelled into the door. “Police! Come out of there!”
    I heard things banging around inside. From next door I heard a man call out, “It’s the police for the Popes.”
    A door at the back slapped shut and Preston Pope came running across the driveway, headed for a van that had white horses in blue moonlight painted on it in iridescent color. Shoving past the metal junk piled on the porch, I leapt down and got to him in time to grab Preston’s leg. He kicked like crazy, and we whipped back and forth in the snow until Cuddy ran up and shook him off me, yelling, “Preston! Cut this shit! I’m gonna hurt you!”
    The youngest Pope went limp then, so quickly Cuddy almost dropped him, and mumbled “Mangum, don’t listen to that bitch! I swear …” But he gave up the effort and just stood still. We were all three panting, and puffs of smoke from our breath blew all over the place.
    Charlene Pope was still out in the middle of the yard hugging herself. Charlene looked like somebody on the cover of one of the magazines you could buy in the By-Ways Massage Emporium. She had bleached white hair and black eyes and breasts hard as apples, and she was somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five. A black acetate bathrobe was slipping down off her shoulder; the only other thing she had on was one pink, fuzzy bedroom slipper.
    Cuddy scooped her other