Or the cell I found myself locked inside.
“I shot him, but only in the leg!” I shouted, stomping my foot like a toddler. “He barely even screamed.”
Buck rolled his eyes and removed his wide brimmed sheriff’s hat, revealing his receding hair line that made him look twenty years older than his nineteen years, and a red mark around his forehead from where the hat had been squeezing his head too tightly. He wiped the sweat off his face with a handkerchief. “Either your head is getting bigger than it already is, Bucky, or that hat has shrunk. Either way, it needs a coming to Jesus, or at least a resizing before the brains you might have left in there get squeezed out through your ears.”
“Deputy DOUGLAS!” Buck corrected again. This time slower, enunciating all the syllables in dramatic fashion. He sighed. “You sound real sorry about all this,” he said sarcastically.
I wasn’t. Not one bit.
The only thing I would change about what happened would be next time I’d take into account the slight wind from the impending storm, something I usually considered when shooting cans off the fence post, but had oddly forgotten when my target became the living, breathing, human kind. “The only thing I’m sorry about was that my aim was off.” I huffed. I was being a brat, but I didn’t care. I’ve been ‘adulting’ since I was fourteen. As far as I was concerned, being locked in a cell by someone who I used to share bath times with, was a perfectly good occasion to cash in some of my unused bratty time.
“Thia, you’ve won every shooting competition over three counties since we were kids. You nailed him square in the thigh. I’d call that pretty dead on,” Buck said, leaning forward and pinching the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t the first headache I’d caused him over the years.
“I wasn’t aiming for his leg, I was aiming for his balls!” I shouted, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning back against the bars. I blew out a breath of frustration.
“You can’t just go around shooting people,” Buck said, like I was a child that needed to be scolded and taught a lesson.
That’s not necessarily true I thought, my mind wandering to the pond in the middle of the grove that now held more than algae and old fishing lures.
I hated being talked down to. It had been a long time since Buck and I were real friends and a lifetime ago since he knew what I was going through or anything about my life that gave him any sort of authority to judge me or talk down to me like I was a kid. I flashed Buck my best fake southern smile. “You know as well as I do that county law states I can shoot anyone on my property for whatever damn reason I want. That law is the one and only good things about living in this backwards town. So LET. ME. OUT.”
“I’m pretty sure the law doesn’t say that,” Buck said, putting his hat back on his head and standing up.
“I know it’s not those exact words, but you know what I mean, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Everyone around here knows that one. In the eyes of whatever hillbillies wrote that law, and whatever other hillbillies kept it on the books, I didn’t do anything wrong.” Instead of unlocking the cell, Buck turned and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked in a panic. “You can’t keep me in here!”
Buck shook his head. “I may not be taking you to see the judge in the morning, because as much as I hate to admit it, the law is law and you’re right, I can’t arrest you.”
“Okay so unlock this cell,” I said, reaching for Buck through the bars, putting on my very best pouty-save-me-face.
“But I am going to hold you until your appointment to see the sheriff, make sure you don’t go anywhere until we can get what happened up at your parents’ house squared away.” Buck sighed. “Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped. I could have done something, but instead you ran. Where did you go?”
“I just went away. I went to…” As I tried to come up with something I absent-mindedly ran my hand over Bear’s ring.
“You went to HIM didn’t you?” he asked and I looked down to where he was staring and took my hand off the ring like he’d caught me doing something seedy.
“Buck,” I started to explain and then I realized why Buck was really holding me in that cell.