The Summer House

Chapter 69

Even though it’s his day off, Dwight Dix of the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department — known to family and friends as DD — is not having a good morning. He pulled an unexpected late shift last night on direct orders from Sheriff Emma, and he’s still humiliated by how he was chased away by that slick spic who fooled DD into thinking he had a pistol in his hand.

He paces back and forth in the small kitchen of his double-wide, barefoot, wearing blue jeans and nothing else, drinking a cold cup of coffee. Out in the living room with the orange shag carpeting that stinks because his wife Penny’s two cats keep on pissing there, his son, Morris, and daughter, Tina, are yowling and tussling over some broken plastic toys.

“Penny!” he calls out to his wife. “Will you tell those two to settle down?”

Penny murmurs, “Tell ’em yourself,” and goes back to her late morning, hell, her now daily routine of lying on the couch with the scuffed and worn cushions, watching one of those damn chick chat shows on TV, balancing a bowl of cheddar snack crackers on her swelling stomach, where their third child is coming along.

DD pours the cold coffee down the sink and stares out the grease-stained kitchen window. He doesn’t belong here. He’s never belonged here. But after he was dismissed during his first deployment for some crazy reason due to his temper, he found himself working as a fry cook outside Savannah before Sheriff Emma recruited him. It was a sweet gig when it started — nice pay, bennies, and for once his temper was seen as an asset instead of a liability — but now it’s different.

Oh, he doesn’t mind doing shit for the greater good, like tuning up suspects or planting crystal meth in some toad’s pickup truck, making it easier for the district attorney to get a conviction, but the stuff he did and saw in The Summer House, the shooting, the screaming, and...

That poor baby girl. Why her?

He shakes his head. Enough is enough. It’s time to man up and get a deal, get the hell out of here and bring along Penny and the kids, and if she doesn’t want to move her fat ass off the couch to go with him, well, he’ll figure it out.

DD ducks into the bedroom, past piles of clothes, socks, and panties on the floor, and quickly gets dressed. He grabs the keys to his truck from an ashtray loaded with old coins and paper clips and heads back out to the kitchen.

“Where you going, DD?” Penny asks.

“Out,” he says, tugging on a pair of sneakers.

“Why?”

“’Cause I got to.”

“Got to do what?”

He doesn’t even look back at her when he heads to the door. “Out to finally make things right.”

Penny Dix waits until she hears DD’s truck roar out of the trailer park and then picks up the bowl of snack crackers, puts it on the cluttered coffee table, and, with an “Oomph” and a heavy sigh, gets off the couch. She moves into the kitchen, takes her cell phone out of her purse, and makes a call.

“Sullivan County Dispatch. What’s the nature of your emergency?”

“I need to speak to Sheriff Williams.”

The snotty-sounding woman says, “She’s in a meeting and can’t be disturbed.”

Her bratty kids are screaming again, and Penny sticks a finger in one ear so she can hear better. “Look, missy, this here is her cousin Penny calling, and I need to talk to Sheriff Emma right now.”

The woman says nothing. The line goes quiet.

A click and a reassuring voice comes on the line. “Hey, Penny, hon, what’s going on?”

“Sheriff Emma... it’s DD.”

The reply is quick. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Something’s been botherin’ him these past few days. He’s been using the chaw more than he does, drinking more, and at night he gets these awful dreams. And right now he left the house without even much saying good-bye.”

Her cousin says, “Did he say what was wrong? Or where he was going?”

Penny hesitates. She never got good grades in school, not ever, but she’s not stupid. She knows how Sheriff Emma runs the county and knows DD has to do some things that others would refuse. But if DD is in some kind of trouble... why wouldn’t Sheriff Emma help?

“Sheriff, he said he was off finally to make things right, something like that. Do you know what it means? Is it important?”

Even with the TV on and the damn kids screaming, she can hear her cousin just breathing on the phone.

“Emma, did I do right, calling you?”

And before the call is disconnected, the cold voice of her cousin says, “Penny, you have no idea.”