“Order up,” Muriel says as she slides my breakfast in front of me. Two eggs over easy, hash browns, grits, bacon, and biscuits with sausage gravy.
The usual.
“Thanks,” I grunt as I pick up the pepper shaker and start to dress my food. Next, I hit it all with some Tabasco while Muriel warms up my coffee.
“Heard a shotgun going off last night as I was closing up,” Muriel says as she sets the pot down on the counter and then leans her elbows there as well. She’s a country girl born and bred and loves to go hunting, so it’s only natural guns interest her. More like her daddy than her mama, that’s for sure.
“Damn coyotes,” I mutter as I start to mix my hash browns and eggs together. “Two of them.”
“Did you get ’em?”
“You know I don’t shoot to kill,” I admonish her with a stern voice. “Unless it’s miscreants come to our town for nefarious reasons.”
“Those coyotes killed two of my chickens last week,” Muriel says. “That makes them both miscreant and nefarious so they better not cross my path.”
I give a grunt of acknowledgment because the coyotes are a problem. Just not mine to stop, although I’ll gladly scare them away from the town proper.
“Where were they?” Muriel asks.
“Behind Mainer House. Lowe came running out the back door when he heard the first shot.”
“He was inside the house?” Muriel asks, leaning in closer. “With her?”
“Yup,” I say, not really relishing in the gossip because what happens between a man and a woman should be just that, but I do relish having Muriel’s attention. She’s a pretty gal. “She had her night clothes on and blue stuff all over her face. Came running out right behind him, and get this…”
Muriel leans closer.
“Lowe had some of that blue stuff on his face, too. Reckon they were kissin’.”
“I heard they hated each other,” Muriel says softly, her eyes fixed in a distant way on my plate as she contemplates. When she raises her gaze back up, she says, “Earl said they really went at it both times in court.”
“I’m thinking that’s been resolved,” I say dryly as I cut a bite of buttery biscuit drenched in gravy.
“Did he stay all night?” she presses, eyes now sparkling with true, gossipy interest. See, this is the part I don’t really like, but I’ve got nothing to report one way or the other.
“No clue,” I say truthfully.
“He probably did,” Muriel says confidently. “Lowe’s got a reputation as a wild boy with the ladies, and you know all those northerners are pretty lax with their morals.”
“That’s not true,” I say after swallowing my food.
“Sure it is,” she says. “You know Della’s family is from Ohio, and they’re all party animals.”
Well, that’s kind of true.
“And that Pap Mancinkus,” Muriel continues. “When I asked him to visit our church, trying to be neighborly and all, he said, and I quote, ‘Muriel… I wouldn’t go see God if he was sitting in the middle of the town square’. Heathens is what they are.”
Chuckling, I cut another piece of biscuit. No sense in responding to that last bit. Pap is a total heathen, but he’s a good man too.