A Hot Louisiana Morning

A Rough Start

I hate my husband. He is worthless no-count trailer trash. I, at least, come from old Louisiana farming people.

Ten years ago, I was all of fifteen when a spring fling with the then good-looking pitcher for our local American Legion baseball team left me pregnant. We ended up at the alter marrying under the disapproving gazes of our families. Neither family had any money or much education, but by God, they both agreed a pregnant daughter meant the boy had to do the "right" thing by her.

After a couple of months, I had a miscarriage, but we were stuck with each other "until death do us part." Though I always liked school and did well, I never went back and ended up waitressing at the truck stop up on the interstate. My husband was a couple of years older and out of high school by the time we got married. He was able to get a job at the paper mill across the river in Mississippi. He always came home stinking like the mill where he worked. We got by and lived in a rundown, roach-infested old trailer. It certainly was not the life I had dreamed of as a little girl.

At first, we did go out dancing and juking with other folks. And initially, I took to married life and married sex like white on rice. However, as my husband started just sitting around drinking and getting fat, my joy and my lust turned to loathing,

My folks were killed in a car wreck some years back, and I inherited the farm and the little 2-bedroom house where I grew up. The house had originally been a dog-trot layout, but my Daddy enclosed it and screened in a back porch when I was little. It's nothing fancy, but it is comfortable. I have lots of good memories of growing up there and sitting on the back porch with my folks shelling peas and butter beans while we sang gospel songs.

It ain't much of a farm, just ninety-five acres of treeless Louisiana gumbo clay about a mile from the Mississippi River. My Grandma and Momma used to tell me that our family settled here not long after the land was bought from the French back in 1803. The farm was much bigger then, but wars, depressions, and the boll weevil just left us this little remnant.

The farm is in the river's flood plain so it's good cotton land though. My husband is too lazy to farm it, and I won't sell it. Instead, I lease the farmland to a neighbor, and we live in the house.

My husband might have been a "hunka hunka" of burning love when he sweet talked me into spreading my legs for him ten years ago, but now he is a fat slob who repulses me just to look at him. He is a tad over 6-foot tall with a prominent beer-belly and must weigh well over 300 lb. His idea of a good time is going to the local hole-in-the-wall joint every night and drinking with his buddies until he can't see straight. At home, his only activities consist of eating, drinking beer, watching TV, and reading the sports page of the paper.

My husband used to be a glib talker and always had a funny joke to tell. Now, his communication with me is limited to curt orders to get him another beer or food. Multi-syllable words and coherent conversation seem beyond him.

We were married maybe two or three years when he tried to slap me around about some smart alec thing I said or did. I do have a sassy mouth, but I forget now exactly what it was I said or did to set him off.

I am only a tad over 5-foot tall and weigh barely 100 lb so the advantage was all his in a fight. He had hold of my left arm with his right and punched me in the face a couple times with his left hand. I reached back on the counter and grabbed the big kitchen knife and drove it with everything I had at his already fattening belly. Unfortunately, he got his left arm in the way, and instead of gutting him like the pig he is, I sliced his forearm down to the bone for six inches or so. He was bleeding like a stuck pig and hollering up a storm retreating out the door. I followed, threatening him with the knife and dispensing a stream of cussing that would have done a mule skinner proud.

Some of his drinking buddies took him to the emergency room over in town to get stitched up. The hospital called the cops because of my husband's wound. He and a deputy showed up back at the house a couple of hours later. The deputy wanted to know "just what in Sam Hill is going on here?"

I told the deputy, "That worthless piece of shit was slapping me around so I took a knife to him to make him stop."

I had a big bruise on my face and a black eye where my husband had punched me so I didn't need to convince the deputy of anything. He began cussing my husband and hauled him off. Unfortunately, they let him loose the next day, and he came back home like the cur dog he is.

I told my useless husband if he ever touched me again I would castrate him while he slept and laugh while I watched him bleed to death. I meant it, and my husband had the good sense to believe me too. He never touched me again.

Breakfast

It was one of those infernal hot August dog days in Louisiana. By eight o'clock in the morning, the heat and humidity were already rising beyond miserable levels. The air conditioning was broken again, and we didn't have the money to fix it. Even nude, it was too hot to sleep in this heat at night. Needless to say, I was in a foul mood.

My husband sleeps on a broke-down couch in the second bedroom. I have not let him in my bed since he slapped me around. When I feel the need for bedroom entertainment, there is always a friendly trucker at the truck stop where I waitress or I go to the bars across the river in Mississippi where there are plenty of pickings for a flirty, cute little girl like me.

I was fixing eggs, bacon, grits, and biscuits for breakfast like I do most mornings (the biscuits are only heat and serve; not from scratch like my mamma used to make). Don't even know why I cook for him; its just what women do, I guess.

I didn't have to be at work at the truck stop until ten; my husband was off work on workman's comp and pulled up to the table reading the sports page and watching TV. It was just a slow, hot, humid, miserable morning and getting hotter and more miserable.

I stirred the rat poison into my husband's grits like I have done every morning for the last two months. He never pays me any mind when I am cooking and is always engrossed in his paper or the TV, so adding the rat poison is easy.

I am sorry to say, my rat poison hasn't killed him yet. Sometimes he'd get bad nose bleeds, periodically throw up, or sit there on the can moaning and screaming holy murder as blood-laced shit poured out of him. He's called 911 twice, and they hauled him to the hospital each time. I sure as hell wasn't going to carry him.

We have a right po'ly hospital, and they never figured out what was wrong with my husband. They would keep him in the hospital a week or so. He would get better. Then they'd ship him back home where I would start adding the rat poison to his grits again. He just got back last week from his second hospital stay.

I was making progress though. He looked like hell. He had lost enough weight that he had folds of skin hanging down all over. He was pale as a ghost, and starting to have trouble getting around. His hair was falling out in patches which made him look really grotesque. He was sure he was dying of cancer - humph, I could only wish.

I put our breakfast plates on the table. He grunted, "gimme some more coffee."

Even in the stupefying heat, we Southerners have to have our coffee - real coffee, not that chicory-laced concoction the Cajun coonasses call coffee. Never have understood how come a hot beverage like coffee still tastes mighty good on a hot morning. On a cold winter morning, hot coffee is about as close to heaven as this ol' gal is ever likely to get.

I went back to refill our coffee cups. But then it just came down on me like a blazing white fury. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was our shitty life, maybe it was my husband's stubborn refusal to die from the rat poison, or maybe ordering me to get coffee was the last straw. Whatever it was, I flew off the handle for sure.

I grabbed up the cast-iron frying pan, stepped behind my husband, and made a two-handed swing at the back of his head that would have done Babe Ruth proud. My husband sensed me or heard something just enough to jerk his head so I only caught him a glancing blow on the side of his head. It was still hard enough to gouge out a big chunk of his scalp behind his ear and send him crashing onto the table. The table collapsed under his massive fat self, and everything went tumbling onto the floor.

My husband was on his back awash in blood, cutlery, grits, scrambled eggs, biscuits, and bacon hollering and kicking at me while I was swinging at him with the frying pan. I was only getting in some licks on his legs and feet as he scooched backwards away from me. I gave up and slung the frying pan at his head and dashed for my purse by the kitchen sink. My husband blocked the frying pan and bolted for the door still hollering to beat the band and bleeding like a stuck hog from the gash in his scalp.

I pulled the pistol out of my purse. This is Louisiana; you just never know when a girl needs to shoot a snake or a husband around here. It's only a little Smith & Wesson 22 revolver. It'll handle a long-rifle round, but this day I sure wished I had hollow points or a bigger caliber gun. But still, it's a nice little purse pistol, all things considered.

I jerked my first shot and splintered the door frame next to my husband's head as he dashed out onto the porch and down the stairs. I have to find time to get out and practice shooting more; my trigger-finger-pull control has just gone to hell.

I followed my husband out the door and leapt past the stairs down onto the gravel driveway. My husband was gittin' it down the drive and was almost to the paved county road. He was still hollering and bleeding, but some of the old athlete I used to admire was coming out in him. He was making real good time, and his arms were pumping like locomotive pistons as his long legs ate up the ground.

I sent another round down range, but he was too far away for this little gun to be accurate. I lit out after him as he headed down the county road toward town. I was barefoot, but all my life I have been barefoot more than I have been shod so the gravel drive was not a problem. However, when I got to the county road, I swung out onto the stingily hot asphalt since the goathead sand spurs that grow on the grassy shoulder would stop anybody dead in their tracks, no matter how tough their feet.

I was closing on my sorry ass husband, and he was starting to fade and stagger some. Every few steps he would look back over his shoulder to see me coming with my pistol, and the screeching and pleas for help would come faster and louder, and he'd try to pick up his pace again.

I had closed enough to stop and chance a shot, though between the distance and my heavy breathing from running it was going to be tough. I fired and was rewarded with a frantic scream from my husband as he grabbed his ass and a splotch of blood appeared on the seat of his pants. His ass is so fat, I am sure that little 22 didn't do much damage, but I figured in another 25 yards or so I would be closed up to him and could put the pistol in his ear to shoot him like the cowboys and Indians used to shoot buffalo on the old TV westerns.

I lit in after him again with murder in my heart.

But sometimes a girl just can't get a break. With the whole county to patrol, why did the sheriff have to come driving up from town right now?

I have to admit, it must have been quite a sight: my fat, bleeding husband running screaming down the road with arms outstretched toward the sheriff like the sheriff was the Savior himself returned for the Jubilee, and little ol' barefoot me in my flapping shortie nightie sprinting behind waving a pistol and cussing up a storm - while my reading vocabulary ain't very good, my cussing vocabulary is mighty fine.

The sheriff switched on his lights, slammed on the brakes, and came boiling out of the car with his gun drawn. You don't fool with cops around here. Before he was out of the car, I had dropped my pistol and raised my hands.

Epilogue

My lawyer just left, and things are looking up. She's thinking she can get me released on my own recognizance today, get a restraining order filed against my husband, and file for my divorce from him. Not a bad day's work!

When the sheriff brought me in and interviewed me at the jail, I claimed spouse abuse and self defense. Given the rat poison, assault and battery with the cast-iron frying pan, and attempted murder with the pistol that was about all I could think of to say.

Some fancy dandy women's rights group heard about my little dust-up. Now, I am the state poster child for domestic abuse, and my story will be a featured part of their lobbying the legislature for stronger domestic abuse laws. The women's right group also put up the money to hire this kick-ass feminist lawyer from Baton Rouge. Let me tell you that woman is mean as a snake, and she does hate men, all men! I like her.

Everyone wanted to hear about spouse abuse so I spun a detailed tale of repeated punches in the stomach and beatings on my naked butt where the abuse would not show in public, juicy marital rapes, and threats to kill me. I even blamed the miscarriage on my husband beating me.

Years ago, the deputy, who had checked on my husband's knife wound I inflicted, filed a written report about me being beat up and bruised. He is not available to testify, unfortunately. A few years back, he was killed while trying to stop another domestic fight between a husband and wife. Think it was the wife who shot him to death. At least we still have the officer's written report to bolster my made-up story.

My killer-chic lawyer said not to worry about a thing. We will claim self defense - though she did mention the rat poison and using my husband for target practice makes arguing that line of defense a little more challenging than usual.

The lawyer said we'll load up the jury with as many women as we can. They will take one look at my huge obese husband and little ol' me sitting there in a mousy, conservative dress and believe every word about spouse abuse. The men on the jury will feel all protective over a diminutive, demure little girl like me (well, that is the image my lawyer will paint, and I will project in court for them). The men are likely to give me a sympathy vote.

Nobody will believe my obese husband that I was really the attacker. Poor devil, he is screwed.

The lawyer thinks we can get a hung jury as many times as they try me and have a good chance of winning a self-defense verdict on one of them. Given the situation, my lawyer figures the state is likely to offer some slap on the wrist and probation for reckless discharge of a firearm or the like rather than chance a public jury trial and all the bad press that would result.

A girl just has to love this system!

NOTE TO THE READER

The rat poison, multiple trips to the hospital, the breakfast assault with the frying pan, and the pistol chase into the arms of the sheriff are based on fact. The rest is fiction to make a yarn out of it.