Being Sheriff of Tuckahoe County, Tennessee means I get to see a lot of things. I say, âget to seeâ, but sometimes, Iâd rather they just left me out of it entirely. Some of the things Iâm called upon to take care of arenât much fun, like when Clarence Uptonâs boy wrapped his old blue convertible around that big oak at the end of Millerâs Lane. Not pretty, that one; not pretty at all.
Sometimes it can be really hard to keep a straight face. One Wednesday night, Mabel Harrison called me from Janet Masonâs house and asked me to drive over. Mabelâs married to the town Mayor, Dwight, and sheâs also the president of the library board. Janetâs the town librarian, so I didnât give it a second thought. I figured Mabel had gone to Janetâs house to talk about some library business. She was standing on the front porch when I arrived, said her car wouldnât start, and asked if could I help her.
âIâve got some jumper cables, Mabel, but why didnât you just call Bob down at the station?â
Mabel fidgeted a little, looked through Janetâs living room window and then back at me. She started to say something, then looked back through the window and smiled. I thought her lips pursed up just a bit. She made a little waving motion with her hand, and turned back to face me.
âSheriff Thompson, I canât trust anybody else. If Dwight found out I was here tonightâŠ. I love him and all, butâŠ.You know how people talk in this town.â
I said I understood and got her car started for her. As she drove off, I just had to chuckle. Janet had been looking out that window at us. That wasnât all that odd, but the black net negligee she had on was. It didnât leave much to my imagination, and I doubted it was her normal evening attire. Iâd always wondered why Janet never seemed interested in any of the young men in town. Mabel didnât seem the type to be a member of the girlâs team, so I figured she might have just climbed over the fence for one night. I havenât seen her back there since, but they do seem to go to a lot of library conventions together.
Other things I see leave me wondering. Six years ago, I stood on Mose Beasleyâs front porch for three hours before Hazel took the shotgun barrel off Moseâs crotch and gave the weapon to me. Mose breathed a sigh of relief, and Hazel ended up giving him a big hug. Sheâd got it in her mind that Mose was messing around with the new schoolteacher who moved to town that year, and was gonna blow away his privates. Thankfully for all those involved, Hazelâs sister, Emma, had been visiting for a couple of months, and called me when all the ruckus started. All three of them were standing on the porch when I drove up.
Mose swore heâd only been over there once, and that was to give the schoolteacher some tomatoes. Hazel claimed heâd been there a lot more than once and had been giving her a lot more than tomatoes, too. It seems that Mose hadnât been performing some of the duties of a good husband lately. He hadnât been able toâŠ, well, to put it in Hazelâs words, âhis dickâs as limp as a wet dishrag. He ainât done nuthin' ta me fer the last month. I jest know heâs giving it to her ever chance he gits and if he canât keep itân his pants, Iâm gonna fix âim soâs I donât have to worry âbout it no moreâ.
Well, I listened, and talked, and listened some more. Virginia Sharp, the schoolteacher in question, was the subject of a lot of the gossip in the little town of Buck Lick. All the women were carefully watching their men. Virginia was generously endowed, so to speak, and seemed to enjoy the attention all those curves produced. She always did her yard work in a loose halter-top and little shorts that showed her butt cheeks when she bent over.
I kind of had to side with Mose, though. It just didnât seem possible that heâd been banging Virginia. I finally convinced Hazel that since Virginia was about twenty-three and Mose was seventy-one, there was probably nothing for her to worry about.
She gave me the shotgun, and hugged Mose for all she was worth. Mose looked at me over her shoulder and smiled. I was patting myself on the back for my negotiating skills, when I realized he really wasnât looking at me. Mose was looking at Emma.
Iâd thought Mose was probably just slowing down a little in his golden years, you know, but now I wasnât sure. Emma was a real looker, or at least she had been at one time, and she was five years younger than Hazel. The quick little smoochy face Emma made at Mose caused me to wonder a little. When Mose grinned back at her, I was suspicious. When he stuck his tongue out and wiggled it up and down between his pink, toothless gums, I decided Iâd better hold on to that shotgun for a while.
Anyway, I see a lot of things.
Buck Lick is the county seat of Tuckahoe County, and it isnât much different than most other small towns. Down at the end of Oak Street, Spring Crick runs into the Red River and thatâs where Burtonâs Park is. Itâs named after Jesse Burton, a Tuckahoe County girl who served as a spy for the Confederacy. She posed as a lady of the evening to steal information from the Yankees about troop movements and battle plans and such. Apparently, Jesse was a pretty good spy, because the Yankees never found her out. She must have been pretty good at her cover trade too. She came back from the war with a suitcase full of money sheâd liberated from the Union officers sheâd met. When she passed to her reward, back in thirty-three, she owned about half of the town. Thereâs a statue of her down in the park right beside the flagpole and the old cannon we fire on the Fourth of July and Veteranâs Day.
Down the street there is Masonâs Grocery, Jeffers and Son Hardware, and Fredâs Barber Shop. A few years ago, Betty Jane Bailey went to beauty school down in Johnson City, and now she runs the Clip ân Curl beauty parlor. She started it in her trailer, but last week, she moved her chairs and sinks and dryers into the old jewelry shop across from Masonâs.
If you look up the street, right there where the highway goes through town, thatâs Bobâs service station. Joleneâs Diner is on Main, just across from my office and next to the library, and down at the other end of town is the local watering hole that goes by the name of The Saddle Club.
Iâm a little embarrassed to admit that we also have a house of ill repute. Well, itâs really just Lizzyâs home, but she does take care of certain needs for a few men in the community. The sign in her yard says she does Swedish massage to ease away those aches and pains, but if youâve got an extra ten bucks, sheâll massage away that other tension too.
She doesnât bother anybody except the moral members of the Buck Lick Womenâs Bible Society and Social Club. Those uppity women hate her. I suppose they might have something to worry about. According to my wife, Jenny, most of âem consider sex to be right up there with murder and blasphemy when it comes to sin. Wouldnât surprise me if a few of their husbands develop some aches and pains from time to time. Well, actually, I know they do, but what happens in private isnât a concern of mine as long as nobody gets hurt. Besides, Lizzyâs really a nice woman and she showed me a few things when I was nineteen. Iâve never had an official complaint that was based on any factual information, so I let Lizzy be.
All in all, Tuckahoe County and Buck Lick are both pretty quiet. We havenât had a robbery in fourteen years, if you donât count when Billy Hagers stole Donna Mae Cruderâs bicycle. I donât think we really ought to have to count that one, because Billy was only six at the time and he said he was sorry. Funny how that one worked out. Donna Mae married Billy last year.
My job is mostly breaking up the occasional marital dispute, making sure the locals get home OK after a night at the Saddle Club, and keeping the drag racing out on River Road down to a minimum. In my spare time, Iâm kind of a surrogate father to Jimmy Joe Jackson.
Jimmy Joe is the youngest boy of Gerald William Jackson, the daddy of a whole clan of Jacksons that live up on Chelsea Ridge. Old Gerald fathered twelve kids - eight boys and four girls, if I recollect right - all by one woman. That woman, Maude, had one goal in life. She wanted her sons to do something with their lives besides go into the family business. I could understand that. The family business had been the same for generations. The Jacksons make some of the smoothest corn liquor this side of the Smokies. I always get a quart at Christmas. They put a couple of peaches in a mason jar, top it off with their best run of the summer, and let it mellow in their root cellar until Thanksgiving. Goes down real easy on Christmas Eve. Yeah, I know, but just because Iâm a sheriff doesnât mean I canât appreciate good whiskey. They make a pretty good living at it, if you donât count the jail time in Knoxville now and then. It kind of slows down their production when one of them is up there.
Maude tried everything with her first seven boys, but didnât get much of anywhere. None of them had the gumption to improve their lives. Then, along came Jimmy Joe. He had the distinction of being the first Jackson to make it from first grade all the way through high school. It took him fourteen years to do it, but he made it. Maude knew this one was going somewhere, and she was tickled pink.
Now, most folks think thereâs something wrong with Jimmy. The women at the Buck Lick Womenâs Bible Society and Social Club say Maude and Gerald are first cousins, but I donât know about that. Jimmy Joe is a little on the skinny side, and his right eye kinda looks down most of the time, so maybe theyâre right. I donât know. I think Jimmy Joeâs just a little different than most other folks. OK, maybe heâs a lot different, but heâs not a bad guy, once you get past that eye. Since few people in town will talk to him, heâs kind of adopted me. When Jimmy Joe has a problem, Iâm the one he comes to for help. I get lots of practice helping him.
The first time I saw Jimmy Joe, heâd come down off the ridge with old Gerald. Theyâd run out of sugar and came to town for a couple hundred pounds so they could start the next batch of corn to fermenting. Jimmy Joeâs eyes got about as big as soup bowls when he saw the big city of Buck Lick. I could tell, then, that he wasnât cut out to be a moonshiner. He moved to town as soon as he could. Maude staked him to a few dollars until he could find a job.
Jimmy Joe rented an old trailer down on the south end of town, and got a job with Cyrus McClain. Cyrus does all sorts of work for people in Tuckahoe County. If you have a septic tank thatâs acting up, you call Cyrus. If your cow dies, Cyrusâll come out in his old truck and haul it off to the rendering plant down in Adelaide. Cyrus is also an important link in the Jacksonâs moonshine distribution network, and thatâs how Jimmy Joe hooked up with him.
I learned one of the things that brought Jimmy Joe down off the ridge was the girls in Buck Lick. I couldnât blame him much. His cousins were the only single women on Chelsea Ridge, and I knew his cousins. As Jimmy Joe once told me, âThey ainât one of âem got as much sense as a coon dogâ. I guess when you get educated, you raise your standards some.
Now that Jimmy Joe had some money and a place to live, he started looking for a wife. There are several pretty girls in Buck Lick, and Jimmy Joe took after all of them. The only problem was, just as soon as Jimmy Joe laid eyes on one, sheâd haul ass for the next county. The end came when he saw Cindy Jean Davis picking blackberries down by the river. Jimmy Joe walked up behind her, tapped her on the shoulder, and said âHeyâ. The poor girl like to jumped out of her jeans. She ran all the way back home, and didnât come out of the house for three weeks. Jimmy Joe came to my office and asked me to help him find a girlfriend.
Well, I tell you, I didnât rightly know what to say. I mean, like I said before, Jimmy is a good kid and all, once you get past that eye, but the girls in town wouldnât stop running long enough to get to know the boy.
I told Jimmy the first thing he had to do was stop scaring the hell out of every girl he met. He was confused.
âWhyâs they scared? I ainât gonna do nothinâ to âem lessen they wants me to.â
âWell, Jimmy, I know that, but maybe you oughta try not sneakinâ up on âem like you do. Girls donât usually take to that. They like it when they can see you coming.â