You wouldn’t think a swaggering teenager with an earring in the wrong ear would save the day, but that’s exactly what happened. Of course, yours truly had a big hand in taking down the deranged postman, but I think Lovie, Fayrene, Ruby Nell and my human mom would have sat at the table all day arguing over what to do with the man they’d already scared spitless.
After they told Billy their dilemma, he said, “Shoot, I can take care of that, Cal. No problem and no law.”
“No violence, Billy,” Callie told him. Between Ruby Nell’s gun and Lovie’s butcher knife, my human mom was already a nervous wreck over the outcome. “We don’t want him hurt…”
“I do,” Lovie and Ruby Nell said at the same time, and Billy just grinned.
“Well, half of us do, but the sane half would prefer a gentleman’s agreement so he leaves the Valentine family alone for the rest of his natural life.”
“Guaranteed,” Billy said, and then he walked off with the postman over his shoulder, dumped him in the passenger side of his truck and drove off.
Now, don’t ask me what Billy Jessup did. If I had to guess, I’d say that boy is capable of a Come to Jesus meeting that would rival anything Jack Jones and Charlie Valentine can dish out. Suffice it to say, he took sick leave from his mail route and then rumors got around that he had left Tupelo and moved to Memphis.
The women spent the rest of the morning in the kitchen hashing over what had happened and plowing through fudge and Prohibition punch. They had to sleep off their excitement before they could all go home.
Callie put her furniture back to rights, washed the pots and pans that had been kicked all over the kitchen, and then put fresh sheets on all the beds.
True to his word, my human daddy got back home in time for Valentine’s Day.
Callie was in the tub up to her ears in soap bubbles, and yours truly was on my silk pillow dreaming of T-Bone steaks.
“What did you do while I was gone?” Jack said.
“Not a thing, Jack.”
“Then it’s high time to stir up a little excitement.”
My human daddy stripped off his clothes and climbed into the tub with my human mom. And if you think I’m going to tell you what happened next, then you don’t know this loyal basset hound.
Leaving them to their privacy, I slipped downstairs, out the doggie door, and through a board Jack thought he patched in Callie’s back fence.
Thank you, thank you very much. Elvis has left the building.
––The End––