886. PROPERTY IS THEFT

PROPERTY IS THEFT
He's that man with the new country ways,
says 'How come I never heard of Mount
Minuscule at all?' Petty criminals end up
in jail, big ones end up very rich. This was
like Preacher Jimmy Allen, straight
out of the Ozarks, to you. 'Shoutin' the
Word everywhere's I can!' - as he said it.
-
'That sleazy fucking Father Knows Best
pervert called me Princess. If he does
that again I swear I'll rip his throat out
somehow and stuff the opening with his
balls.'
-
'He don't mean nothing. He don't know
no better - it ain't anyways like a smoking
gun. He didn't touch you, y'know. Not like the
last time anyway, with my sister Eleanor.
When he was done with her that night on
the football field, she came home with a
big white stripe across the back of her brown
jacket, from the grass on the field, the lime line.
Should'a killed that mother-fucker then, for her.'
-
Two cars rumbled by - dust-jacket silhouettes
right out of some holy Detroit nightmare, thrashing
the dusty road all dirt and gravel, piercing the clear
air with their metal-plastic thrall.
-
'Just like that, I decided I hated him.'
-
One of the cars halted - a dead-black sedan - and
went into reverse. 'Preacher car, preacher car,
answered prayers here you are!' was heard right
before two shots rang out, the glass-shattering
retort heard on window and metal with gunpowder
shock, while inside the now-stopped car (a dead
stop, to be sure), slumped the body of Preacher
Ronnie McClure.