Chapter 16: Foreclosure

Viola Clanton sat on an old box and watched, helpless and impotent, as the farm she and Anton had worked so hard to hang onto was sold at auction. The whole dam' place including the two raw boned worthless milk cows wouldn't bring in enough to even halfway satisfy that god damn banker and his blood sucking friends.

Their old mare was dead and the soil wasn't sweet enough to make a halfway decent crop of weeds. But it was all they had. It had been home for all their married life. How had a debt of two hundred dollars grown to be almost a thousand? They made the payments every year but somehow all the talk about interest and principle just mixed a body's head all up and left them feeling dizzy.

How can they just come and take a family and kick them off their own property and say, "It ain't yours no more?" And dam' Sheriff Beaudine. He sent one of his bully boy deputies along with the banker and they put up those auction signs. Oh god, what was a person to do?

Three younguns, one a baby, and no place to go, what was a body to do? The old man was sick and the old car the banker let them keep just so they would have a way to leave and not hang around wasn't worth fixing up hardly.

She felt tired and weak as she got to her feet. Viola carried the baby, while the two older girls hung onto her skirts and tagged along. She went over to her husband, Anse, and looked down at him. "How you feelin'?" she asked.

"Poorly, Mama, just poorly. What they going to let us keep?" His voice was so weak she had trouble hearing him.

""Oh, we get the clothes on our backs, the bedding and the old car. We get to keep our young ones, too." Even the little joke caused her an effort. "We'll make do, Anse. I don't know how, but we'll make do."

The banker came over to the dispirited couple. "You might as well go on down the road. There's nothing here for you any more. The Great West Combine bought the place for three hundred dollars. You still owe the bank a thousand and the bill is climbing."

With a snarl she scratched the shiny-faced man with ragged claws that barely missed his eyes. She brought a bony knee up in his crotch and grabbed his head and bit the top off his ear.

He shoved her away and yelled, "Help me, somebody. She's going crazy."

A deputy ran over and cuffed Viola alongside the head and she fell to the ground and sobbed her helplessness. "Get in your pile of junk and get. If you're not gone in five minutes, I'll shoot you." The deputy turned and walked away.

The banker jumped back in his car and drove back to town fast as he could. He swore and whimpered all the way back in to the doctor's office. He had heard about people's bites being more infectious than animal bites. His ear only dripped a little blood, but it hurt like hell.

What was the matter with those animals? They should never be allowed to borrow money in the first place. Finance should only be between proper acting people. Already he forgot the reason for the foreclosure in the first place. The people he answered to ordered it.

Viola Clanton picked herself up off the ground and began to pack the last of their personal belongings into the old four-door sedan. Boxes were tied on top and two gunnysacks were tied to the fenders, one on each side. The back of the car, rear seat missing, was filled with pots, pans and whatever else she could save they might use in the future. As she started to place the old forty-five caliber Colt revolver her Grandfather had carried in the Civil War in the back with other small items, a hand clamped on her arm.

"I'll take that," the deputy told her and reached with his other hand to take the weapon. With a screech she jerked from his grasp. The gun went off and a lead slug whirred between his legs, taking some material from the inside of his left pants leg with it.

"You blood suckers have taken everything else we have, but not this. You try to take it again and you are a dead son of a bitch." her shaking hand caused the gun to discharge again. The Great Western buyers dove for cover and the deputy began to back up. She stepped forward from the back to the car door and got in behind the steering wheel. She placed the revolver in her lap. For once the old pile of junk started right up. She drove away from the farmyard and down the road. Her destination was Woodman.

The Great Western representative asked the deputy, "Aren't you going after her? She's getting away."

"Mister, one old gun just ain't worth the trouble it would take to get her. You want her, so you go get her. I ain't chasing after her and get my own self shot up. It just ain't worth it." The Great Western man looked at the deputy with contempt and turned away to confer with his associate. The deputy looked the Great Western man up and down with even greater contempt. He turned away from the two men and climbed in his county owned car and drove away.

The deputy couldn't really make up his mind what to do next. There didn't seem to be a sheriff's office any more. That damned son of a bitch Duran had fouled up a really sweet nest. Between the big farm outfits and the banks, a deputy could make his wages twice over in the "sweet side deals" Beaudine threw the deputies' way.

Free access to the whores and extra booze on top of being paid to ride shotgun on the moonshine shipments had been a real fine way of life. Then damned Duran came along. After he showed up in town, things all went to hell.

When he got back to the sheriff's office he saw a big padlock and hasp bolted to the door. A printed poster proclaimed, "Closed Conduct All Business With The Police Department Until Further Notice. (signed) Harley Duran, Chief of Police, Woodman, Oklahoma."

"What the hell is this all about?" he muttered to himself. He turned and headed back down the street until he came to the Woodman Police Department and walked in the front door.

Ellie looked up from her telephone and saw the sheriff's badge. "What do you want?" Her tone of voice left no doubt about her attitude toward the deputy in front of her, or any other deputy for that matter.

"Look, Missy, you better keep a civil tongue in your head or..." He began to go around the end of the counter.

Elspeth acted as if she was frightened out of her wits. She reached in the desk drawer and pulled out a thirty-two revolver and pointed it at him. "Get back." she screamed, "or I'll, I'll ... I'll shoot." Her hand shook and all at once she was no longer acting. She waved the small revolver in his direction and the gun in her hand discharged.

A lead slug whizzed by the deputy's head. When he started to draw his own gun, he felt himself jerked backwards as a hand grabbed the collar of his heavy checkered work shirt. He landed on his butt on the floor. An angry looking Lee Roy looked down at him and asked, "What do you want here?" There was only hostility in Lee Roy's voice.

Before he could answer, Lee Roy turned and told Ellie, "Honey, put your gun back. You're a lousy shot. You missed this piece of trash." Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Ellie placed the gun back in the drawer.

"I'm sorry, but he scared me. I saw what he and another one of those trashy deputies did to April Keller last year." She began to cry.

The deputy took the opportunity to stand and draw his own gun. "This bitch is under arrest." he hissed. He took one step and was knocked to the floor a second time.

Ellie ran from behind the counter and snatched the gun from his limp hand. She scurried back behind the counter and deposited it in the drawer with the other gun. She grabbed the phone and called her uncle, the mayor.

Her fear evaporated. "Lee Roy Jones just whipped up on a sheriff's deputy, Uncle." she exclaimed.

"Does he need any help?" the mayor asked.

"Well, no, I don't think so. He knocked him down and I took his gun away from him and then he got up and he knocked him down again and now he's just laying there."

"God help me, you chatter worse than my sister, your mother. Just tell me one thing, is it Lee Roy or is it the deputy on the floor?"

"Why I just told you it's the deputy on the floor. He isn't moving and Lee Roy is rubbing his knuckles because they are bloody."

"Ellie, please don't call me to tell me a policeman hit somebody unless it's a nice person who gets hit. Do you understand?"

"Well. You are the mayor. Don't you want to know these things?"

"No." He hung up.

"You want me to call your wife and tell her you got bloody knuckles?" she asked Lee Roy.

"Now why would I want you to do?" He looked at her in puzzlement.

"Well, can't I call someone?"

"Why?" Lee Roy was very puzzled at her behavior.

"I got to tell someone what happened." She was almost beside herself with excitement.

"Does one of your friends have a telephone?" he asked her.

"Well, of course." she answered indignantly.

"Well, call one of your friends and tell her what happened." He looked down at the unconscious deputy, a sneer on his face.

"Oh but my uncle told me I can't be making personal telephone calls at work. He said the telephone was for police business only."