Sawdust and Bark

Suzi made us some pasta for supper and I stuck with coffee the rest of the evening. No, I didn't stay the night. I did need the GPS to get back home.

I started to spend much more time in Boaz, which seemed to make Stan and Barbara happy. Although I had no interest at all in making ceramic figures like Suzi did, I was interested in learning how she did it. Of course, all this time I was not getting any woodcarving done.

I spent several days improving the trail from the clay pit to the shop. I was also able to get a two-wheel heavy-duty cart to replace the wheelbarrow, which I felt was a bit tipsy.

The main way to control the burn rate on her sawdust kilns was by regulating the airflow. The type of sawdust available and the texture of it also affected the firings. I was able to rig up an old lawnmower to reprocess the sawdust into finer pieces which resulted in slower burning. Suzi was ecstatic at my efforts.

One thing led to another and eventually I ended up spending the night in Boaz. Suzi and I became a lot closer. By that time we were also talking about personal things. I carefully explained my marital problem, trying very hard not to be vindictive. She was not too concerned that I was married.

Her situation was a little bit different. Suzi was married for thirty years. They had no kids. Her husband, Dave, had just retired from TVA. Shortly after they moved in, he had a heart attack. He had been out on the back of the property when it happened. By the time she found him, he was too far gone to save. Their sole income was from his TVA pension. If and when he died the pension would stop. So she made sure that he never died. She showed me his resting place and I am sure that I noticed a small tear in her eye.

Suzi had been keeping him alive for over three years. The joint federal income tax was a problem, but being in the computer age, it was easily overcome. The pension check came every month and everybody was happy. One of the nice things about living in Boaz is that nobody bothered you.

During the week I lived in Huntsville and continued to work for Stan. On the weekends I was with Suzi. She was as fascinated with my bark carvings as I was with her ceramics. I had a small corner in her shop all to myself. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time for whittling. The house that she had shared with Dave, needed some serious repairs. Between helping her in the shop and fixing things around the property there was just not much time.

OooOOOooo

"I got a call from Dad in Ocala, yesterday." Stan caught me before I started my rounds on Monday.

"Is everything okay? Is Mom all right?"

"Yeah! They are fine. He called to let me know that they received a letter from a lawyer in Pennsylvania about your divorce. Sherry didn't know where to send it, so she had it delivered to them. I told him to forward it to me and I would see that you got it."

"Damn! It's nice to get a little good news for a change."

"What are you going to do?"

"I guess I'll just sign it and send it back. Maybe it would be a good idea if I got somebody to look it over first. What do you think?"

"We got a lawyer on retainer for the business. I'll have him check it."

The divorce was pretty straightforward, so I just signed it and sent it back. She got to keep everything that was there and I got to keep everything that I had with me. Now it was just a matter of waiting ninety days.

Suzi seemed pleased to hear about it but was careful not to gush over it. I felt a bit relieved.

oooOOOooo

About three months later I was living in Boaz full time. I still worked for Stan, but I had to join the morning caravan to Huntsville. Like thousands of army ants, the residents of the rural areas south of Huntsville migrate North every morning. To keep everything in perspective, thousand of the same ants were flocking down from the Tennessee hill country at the same time. Work and employment in Huntsville were booming and folks were willing to travel for the great wages. Bumper-to-bumper cars going North in the morning and returning every evening. Live was good.

I was no longer married.

Suzi was active in the crafts community and kept a schedule of all of the craft shows and fairs in the area. At least once a month she attended some type of event to sell her critters. With a little encouragement, she also started to sell online. The only problem with that was that the shipping costs were so high it limited sales. It was many a time that I heard her silently cursing Amazon. She just could not understand how they could ship things for next to nothing, and it cost her an arm and a leg.

I usually didn't go with Suzi to the sales.

By this time, I had accumulated a fairly large collection of bark carvings. I did give a few to Stan and Barbara, but I kept most of them. I never considered them good enough to sell. Suzi asked if she could take a few to her next show and I agreed.

I had supper ready when she returned from the most recent show.

"How did it go?"

"Pretty good. I sold twenty-eight pieces. I'll have to work to replace the stock for the next show." She reached out and gave me a handful of bills.

"What's this?" I counted out over five hundred dollars.

"I sold your fairy houses, and I have orders for more."

"Wow! I didn't expect that. I was hoping you could sell a couple, but never expected you to sell all of them."

"The good part is that I sold them. The bad part is that I sold them way too cheap."

"How do you know that?"

"I found out that one of the guys who bought a couple of them had a stand at the show also. I sold them to him for sixty dollars, and he took them to his place and resold them for a hundred. I felt like a fool. I didn't know that they were worth so much."

"Neither did I. I don't know if I should be upset or flattered. In any event, don't feel bad, you did great."

"Next time I'll price them right, and I'll take more with me. That chili smells good."

I better order some more bark wood.

OoooOOOoooo

The problem arrived in late October. Suzi was working the pit and I was further up the hill trying to figure out how to get a dead cedar log down to the house. The cedar wood would be good for carving comfort birds.

I heard him before I saw him. "You are a hard man to find Mister Langford." He seemed to be breathing a bit hard as if he had a difficult time getting up the hill. The excess weight and the beer gut didn't help I am sure. What really got my attention was the large revolver in his right hand.

"What can I do for you?" I was racking my brain trying to figure out who he was. He looked familiar, but I could not place him.

"You already did too much. It took me years to find you, you son-of-a-bitch. I lost my job, my wife, and my life all because of you."

All of a sudden I remembered. It was Malcolm Heard. My wife's old lover. What confused me was the fact that I actually had nothing to do with his demise. I was just a bystander. His wife orchestrated and carried out the entire thing. I was trying to figure out how to explain that to him when I heard a loud thud, and watched as he dropped his gun and slowly fell over to the side. Suzi stood behind him holding her shovel.

She looked over at me, cocked her head, and said, "oops!"

We both sat down on an old poplar log by the path. After waiting a few minutes, we both started to get restless.

"How hard did you hit him? He should be coming around by now." Suzi just looked at me and shrugged her shoulders.

It was a bit awkward sitting there. After a few more minutes I got up, leaned over, and laid my hand on his neck. There was no pulse. I sat back down on the log.

"What the hell are we going to do now?" Her tone was more of an inquisitive nature than a worried one.

"I guess we could just call the Sheriff and claim self-defense, but that could end up being a mess." There was a bit more pondering time.

"We could just bury him with Dave and pretend that nothing happened." I was amazed at how calm Suzi was under the circumstances.

"I know that this is an odd question, but did you keep Dave's wallet and personal effects before you buried him?"

"Yeah! I have his wallet and watch and wedding ring down at the house. Why?"

"Did any of the neighbors know Dave or spend much time with him?"

"No! Not at all. Dave kept to himself. We never even visited anybody. We never went to parties or anything like that."

"Did he look anything at all like Mister Heard? What I mean is, does he look close enough to Dave that he could pass for him?"

"Same age, weight, and body shape. Dave wore glasses. I have them down at the house with the other stuff. What are you thinking of doing."

"I am not sure it will work, but I was thinking that if we could get a declaration of death on this body we might be able to pass him off as your husband and get you out from under that TVA pension fraud situation."

"Isn't that a bit risky? What if somebody recognizes him?"

We sat quietly for a few more moments. "I am going to go get Dave's stuff from the house. I'll be right back."

While Suzi was gone, I took the time to look over the situation. The area was a bit rough and rocky. There was some broken skin on the back of his head and a small amount of blood. I shifted the body over slightly by a medium-size rock and smeared as much blood on the rock as I could. There was not a whole lot of blood, but enough to tell that there was a head wound. It looked like an accidental fall.

I removed his wallet, watch, phone, car keys, and wedding ring. With Dave's glasses on he looked good enough to pass at a glance. DMV photos are not really that good. Suzi called 911.

The EMT people determined that he was indeed dead. They called the local funeral home and the sheriff's department. They both arrived within twenty minutes, and ten minutes later, Mister Malcolm Heard was on his way to be cremated, and Suzi Doyle had a pronouncement of death for her dead husband.

That night, Suzi followed me as I drove Malcolm's car to Birmingham. I left it, unlocked, outside of the Kit Kat club, with his wallet and phone on the front seat.

The funeral home issued the death certificates for David Doyle two days later. After a quick trip to the TVA headquarters in Chattanooga, Suzi was able to stop the pension, and also picked up a one hundred thousand dollar life insurance payout.

We celebrated at Red Lobster that night.

I was amazed at how smoothly everything went. The EMT people were efficient and knew what they were doing. The representative from the sheriff's department was satisfied with their determination of death and did not feel that it was necessary to have the medical examiner come out. The funeral folks just wanted to get the body out of there. No one gave a second glance at the driver's license. I stayed in the background the whole time and let Suzi handle things. She did well.

Since Suzi no longer had Dave's retirement money, she had to find another way to get some supplemental income. She decided that the easiest way to do that was to marry me. I couldn't refuse. She still had that damn shovel.