Floating Twigs by Charles Tabb

Floating Twigs by Charles Tabb

Author:Charles Tabb [Tabb, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gifted Time Books
Published: 2018-09-30T20:00:00+00:00


13

Wednesday, I came to work after having coffee with Hank and finished faster than I had the day before. It was getting easier to clean up because everything wasn’t so filthy to begin with. I spent the rest of the day until I had to be back at work fishing with Lee and Roger. We didn’t catch much, certainly not as many as we caught the day Bones showed up. After cleaning my fish, I stored them in our refrigerator for later, needing to shoo Bones away as I carried the fillets to keep him from eating them himself, though he did enjoy the scraps.

I went to work that afternoon. Hank was there when I went in, drinking a beer, and I went to work without a word to him. My dad was behind the bar and paid as much attention to me when I came in as Hank did.

As I was in the back cleaning the bathrooms, I heard my dad shout, “What?!” I wondered if another fight was about to break out, so I went out to the main area of the bar. What I saw made my heart drop.

Officer Hicks was there, bending Hank over the bar and putting handcuffs on him. I heard Hank’s head thud against the hard wood. I saw him wince as Hicks put the cuffs on.

I thought I might faint when another officer, this one in a brown suit and tie, said, “Henry Pittman, you are under arrest for taking indecent liberties with a minor.”

My dad stared at me as I entered the room. “What is this about?!” he shouted. “These cops say he’s been messing with you!”

“I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “Hank?”

Hank looked at me and said, “Someone lied about us.” His tone was not what I would expect in those circumstances. He sounded as if he were telling me a baseball score.

My face burned with hot embarrassment—not because we had done anything, but because I knew where this came from and I’d done nothing to stop it. I had thought nobody would believe such trash. Not only that, but I was also embarrassed because my dad thought it was true. He looked at me as if I were a particularly disgusting piece of the filth I’d cleaned from the floor.

“She’s crazy!” I shouted. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about!”

“Who?!” my dad demanded.

“How is it you know it was a woman who said anything?” the detective said, his voice echoing menace.

It wasn’t until I spoke to Hank’s attorney later that I realized I was just making it worse. I was having a hard time understanding what I considered sheer stupidity by the police. Of course, I hadn’t been aware of how quickly people accept someone’s guilt, especially when sex was involved. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to get a crash course in how ugly people could be.

I had thought people would ignore Mrs. Polk’s accusations since everyone knew she was a gossip who told more lies than anyone else in town.



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