The Hillbilly

This is a short story about the dangers of infidelity and a word to the wise for those who would cheat with other men's wives. It's not always the husband who is watching.

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The first man who called me "Hillbilly" was Staff Sgt. Gomez in basic training. I'd been hunting with my father since I was twelve and could fire a gun without falling down. My dad taught me how to shoot, how to dress a deer, and how to stay safe in the woods with all those city fellas running around chasing Bambi. I learned not only to track the deer and where to wait for them to come to me, but how to know where the amateurs were and how to keep from getting shot by some over-excited suit with an itchy trigger finger who goes out in the woods one weekend a year and shoots at the first thing that moves. We've got bear in these woods, but it's the city slickers that worry me.

Anyway, Sgt. Gomez reviewed my first target with a tight cluster of shots around dead center, looked at me, and said, "You've shot before, haven't you, boy?"

"Yes, sir, a few times."

"Don't call me sir! I'm not an officer. Get out of line." That started the game we played.

You're not supposed to smile when the sergeant gives you a dressing down, but I couldn't help myself. That paper target wasn't moving like geese, and it was a lot less wary than deer, so a tight cluster wasn't all that hard to do.

The second time I gave him my target, he just looked at it and said, "Get out of line!' like I was taking up his precious time. The third time cemented the words. He didn't even look at the target and just said, "Get out of line, you damn hillbilly!" Needless to say, I passed my proficiency test.

I did my time in the Army and I didn't re-enlist. I was lucky to serve between two wars, and the targets never shot back, so it was easy duty.

That name "Hillbilly" stuck with me, though, and it followed me through the service.

When I got out, I settled where I grew up in the hills of Western Maryland and I got a job repairing diesel engines. One year later I met my wife, a year after that we got married, and two years later still we had our first child. We named her Becky and we stopped at three. They are all girls. That's okay -- I can teach a girl to shoot, and I taught all three to be effective hunters. All the while, I continued to hunt whatever was in season and sometimes whatever wasn't. Up here, the hunting laws are considered to be more suggestions than requirements if you're a local.

Not many folks here call me "Hillbilly". If they did, too many men would either answer to it or get pissed at the term. Up here, when you see a man on the street with a heavy beard and yesterday's jeans, you don't know if he lives in the woods in a cabin he built himself, or he's a lineman working for the power company, or both. Either way, it's not a term you hear very often. I do still keep in touch with some of the guys I served with, and when we get together that's the name they call me. I don't mind. In fact, I take it as a badge of honor. We all have nicknames and "Hillbilly" is one of the least offensive. Still, some of the locals have heard them say it and I wind up making excuses for my Army buddies. Funny how that name does seem to rankle a few of the locals.

The kids grew up fast and I found that I liked being a dad. Daughters are amazing. They can be shooting a deer as the sun comes up, playing soccer in the afternoon, and dressing up for a date in the evening. They can go from hunter to tomboy to elegant young woman all in the same day and never miss a beat. I am so proud of them, and I give my wife full credit for all of it! I believe a dad's job when raising daughters is to support his wife one hundred percent, show patience, stay calm, set an example for what a husband is supposed to be, and keep them safe. It's that last bit where I get myself into trouble. Becky had a boyfriend once that her mother and I didn't like one bit. He thought he was funny, but he was disrespectful to me, my wife, and most importantly to my daughter. He was trying to get her to drink, and I could smell the pot on him when he came to pick her up. Somehow, she thought he was manly. I thought he was not long for this world. I had a father-of-the-girl talk with him and then he made his big mistake; he told Becky all about it while mocking me as he did it. She finally saw through him and saw him for what he was. He was gone from our lives the next day. Sometimes, a girl just needs to get the horseshit from the horse's ass himself.

I'm proud to say that all three girls went to college. Becky moved to Cumberland and became a nurse, Claire got into selling real estate locally, and Donna, my youngest, teaches grade school in the same town where she grew up. They're great girls.

So this is the point in my story where I tell you that with everything going great and the family doing well, I caught my wife cheating on me. Well, I didn't. I married well and Barb is nobody's fool. She knows what she wants, and she knows the price of infidelity. She would never cheat on me, and heaven help me if I ever cheat on her. I mean, she has a strong moral compass, and she won't cheat, but she can shoot straight if you catch my drift.

No, it wasn't my wife. It was Claire. She fell under the influence of a local businessman. I liked her husband. He isn't much of a hunter, but he is a stand-up guy. He takes good care of Claire and the kids, keeps a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs, doesn't drink more than he should, goes to church on Sunday, and sets a good example for the little ones. More than that, he loves my daughter and that makes him okay in my book. When I heard what Claire was up to, I put myself on her husband's side.

When you've lived in a place like this all your life, you get connected. You know everyone and everyone knows you. Hell, half the cops and game wardens were either classmates or the parents of classmates. That makes Claire's mistake all the more foolish. There was no way her behavior was going to go unnoticed.

What do you do when your own daughter is placing her marriage in jeopardy? Do you out her to her husband and risk blowing up her marriage? Do you relegate your grandkids to growing up in a broken home? I did what any intelligent husband and father would do -- I told my wife. Damn it, she got mad at me! I was just telling her what I'd been hearing, and she gets pissed with me! Well, she chewed me out, but she must have taken my remarks seriously because she had a long heart-to-heart with our daughter the next day. Claire denied everything and I was told I shouldn't listen to my drunken friends. According to my wife, my daughter was working on a big sale, and the two of them were just working together. Okay, maybe they were and maybe they weren't. Either way, I tried playing nice. Now it was time to look into things myself.

Talking with the wife didn't work, so the next thing I did was I had my own talk with my number two daughter. She was quite incensed that I would even suggest she was fooling around. All I ever told her was that some friends had seen her about town with this guy and that was enough for her to thoroughly attack my unnamed friends. She threw in an extra, "Dad, you are such a hillbilly sometimes!" Seems like she was getting a little full of herself lately. In the end, she denied it all, but she never looked me in the eyes when she did it. That was her tell and it had been her tell since she'd been a little girl. I knew right then that something was going on. Maybe it hadn't gone too far. Maybe she could pull herself back from the precipice. Maybe, maybe... and maybe she was guilty as sin. I hated the thought. We raised her better than that.

It ain't easy to spy on your adult daughter. She knows your face. She knows the back of your head. She knows your walk, your car, and your clothes. She even knows the hat you like to wear. I started by borrowing a friend's beat-to-hell truck. It fit in perfectly on the streets of my town. Like camouflage in the woods, it mixed in perfectly with every other beat-to-hell truck in town. Then I got a new hat, and I got my scope. I never got close enough for her to see who was driving the truck and I never got out. That truck became my deer stand on wheels and I knew how to go undetected.

What I learned wasn't pretty. She was "running into" that asshat all over town. She met him for breakfast, she met him for lunch, and she met him for coffee. She met him everywhere but at her office.

For the first two weeks I didn't see anything truly incriminating. It was all just circumstantial, pretty much like I'd been told. When my wife told me that Claire's husband was going out of town overnight because of work, alarm bells went off in my head. I decided I'd best play it cool and made an off-hand suggestion that we should have Claire and the kids over for dinner that night. She said, "Oh, we've got the kids, but Claire said she wanted a night off for herself just to relax at home." It was like sitting in the deer stand in early morning when you hear that slight snap of a twig or rustle of a leaf on the ground off to your left and you know, you just know what's coming. I decided right then that I was going to be working late that night.

I tried. I really did. I called my daughter and repeated the invitation for dinner. "Come on, Kid-O, your mom is cooking something special, and I promised to help the kids with their math homework. That alone should be good for a night of laughs." She still begged off.

I was waiting in my friend's truck when she came out of her office and headed straight home. Maybe I was worried about nothing, but it wasn't nothing. An hour later she came out dressed to the nines, got in her car, and headed off. I followed her far enough behind so she wouldn't see me. Claire jumped on the highway and headed out of town while I fell further behind hoping to go unnoticed. Two towns away she pulled into a restaurant parking lot. I knew the place, but I'd never eaten there. It was one of those pretentious, overpriced restaurants with a foreign name where the lighting was too dark to see what you were eating, the portions were small, and the prices were high. When she got out of her car, Asshat got out of his car two spaces over. He greeted her with a kiss that would not pass the spouse test, although to her credit she looked a little uncomfortable with it, and they walked into the restaurant with his arm around her waist. I liked exactly nothing of what I saw.

I wasn't going in because then I know she'd spot me. Even if she didn't spot her dad spying on her, I'd stand out like a... like a... like a hillbilly in a high-class restaurant. I sat in my truck, ate the sandwich I had packed, and drank coffee from my thermos. It was like every deer stand I've ever sat in. They ate slowly. I suppose the seduction of a married woman takes time. It was ninety minutes before they came out, walking hand-in-hand, and they both got into his car. I had a sick feeling that not only was she walking toward the precipice, but she was dragging me along with her. There weren't a lot of ways this could end and all of them were bad.

I continued to follow her, and they went to a little two-story motel by the highway. It's one of those places where the outdoor hallway ran behind all the rooms while the big window in the front of each room looked out on the more scenic view of the mountains. I waited and watched. Pretty soon the light came on in one of the rooms and I saw the two of them walk into view.

As soon as they entered the room, he grabbed hold of her and started kissing her. She seemed to be less than enthusiastic, but then again there she was a married woman in a motel room with an asshat who was not her husband. I had three choices and chose the first. I dialed her cell phone intending to tell her that I knew where she was, who she was with, and what she was doing, and to get her ass out of that room now! My call went to voice mail. Option two was I go to her room, yell and bang on her door until she opens it, and then drag her ass down to my truck. I probably should have done that, but by then I was seeing red. I chose option three.

I took my deer rifle from the rack behind me, quietly closed the door, and climbed into the truck bed. I'd use the top of the cab to rest my arm and take a careful aim on the room. As I scanned the room with my scope, I realized two things. First, I couldn't see my daughter anywhere. Second, Asshat seemed royally pissed. In all my efforts to decide what to do and then get into position, I started thinking that maybe I'd missed something. No matter. As I drew aim on Asshat, and positioned him in the crosshairs, I heard a familiar voice behind me say, "You really don't trust me, do you?"

I raised my rifle, turned, and sure enough, the voice came from my lovely married daughter Claire.

"Well, right now, can you really blame me?"

She just hung her head and shook it slowly. "I messed up, dad. I let him get to me."

"Just how much did he succeed?"

"Too much, but not enough to cost me my marriage."

"It looks like you came pretty damn close tonight."

"I did." she said quietly. "You were right. He's been working me for weeks now and I've been enjoying the attention. At first it was just little things. We really have been working on a big sale. He started with simple complements, but they slowly escalated until they became flirtatious. I should have shut him down, but I didn't. When he learned that Jack would be out of town tonight, he asked me to dinner just to thank me for all the work I've done. I knew if he really wanted to thank me, he'd include my husband. I was enjoying the attention too much. When he suggested we come here, I told myself I'd just enjoy the drive and then have him bring me back, but I was weak. I was lying to myself. I finally came to my senses when I walked into the room. He was trying to get me undressed and I bolted. I ran down here not knowing where I was going or what I would do when I saw you climbing up on the truck. Whose truck is it, anyway?"

"Just a buddy of mine."

"Is he a hillbilly, too?" She was smiling now.

"Yeah."

"Daddy, please tell me I haven't lost my marriage! Tell me that everything is going to be okay."

"I'm not going to lie to you little girl, you messed up in a big way. You messed up about as much as any woman can and still keep your feet on the floor. But, you got two things going for you. You have your mother to give you advice and you have a husband who loves you. I'm guessing that when he learns that you came to your senses without me or anyone else getting involved, he'll forgive you. He might keep you on a short leash for a time, but he'll forgive."

"I hope you're right." Then she looked up at me and with the saddest eyes I've ever seen asked, "Can you drive me back to my car?"

"I can. Can you come over the house and stay the night?"

She smiled. "I can."

"Good. Now there's just one more thing I need to do." And with that, I turned back to that lit room and in one swift movement I dropped my rifle into position, and I put a round through the window and into the wall a few inches above Asshat. He rolled off the bed and onto the floor, never raising his head above the mattress as my daughter and I climbed into the truck and drove away. I don't know if he got the message, but it was the clearest warning I could think to give him.

That night my daughter, my wife, and I played with my grandkids until it was bedtime. Tomorrow was a school day after all. When the kids were in bed my wife and daughter settled in the living room for a serious heart-to-heart between two wives and mothers as I busied myself in the basement. They needed space to have their conversation and they didn't need me in the way.

The next morning we got the grandkids off to school and my very chastened daughter headed off to work. Later that day she would have her own conversation with Asshat and that would put an end to his intentions. The grandkids returned to our place for a second night while my daughter had a very serious and very difficult conversation with her husband. I'm told that voices were raised, mostly his, and there was some pleading, mostly by her; but in the end, he decided that his family meant more to him than revenge. He forgave my daughter and never confronted Asshat. Sometimes, we just need to look over the edge of the precipice to know that stepping back is the wisest move.

I was never sure that Asshat understood the simple message that I left him that night in the motel, so a few days later when he left his office, he found a .30-30 cartridge sitting proud on the roof of his car. If he didn't get that message, I had another round that I could deliver more forcefully. I can be a patient man, but they call me Hillbilly for a reason.

Epilogue:

These days law enforcement can match rounds to gun barrels and even tell where the powder was purchased. Nobody ever came to the door to ask questions. I was never interrogated. I figure the local police spoke with the desk clerk, learned what they needed to know, and decided that the only way one of the locals would miss at that range was if they intended to miss. They just wrote it off as a poaching round gone astray and discarded the round before too many questions were asked. A buddy of mine on the police force, a fellow I'd known all my life, did tell me over a couple of beers about a local merchant who literally had the shit scared out of him one night by a stray round that came through the motel window. He seemed to think it was pretty funny, but he did suggest that it might go badly for all concerned if that particular asshat's luck were to take a change for the worse. I nodded my understanding and bought the second round.

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Some of you are going to complain that the asshat got away without any retribution or so much as a limp. What can I say? Sometimes the predator is the prey and sometimes the prey escapes. Then again, hillbillies have a long memory and word tends to get around in a small town. Revenge can be one big dramatic event, or sometimes just the quiet decline of a business no longer frequented by the locals.