Today I did the crossword puzzle and wrote this:
They hung old Davy Capp, the Butcher of Biloxi, from the top of the hill that overlooks the town. The man was near on eighty, and put up no kind of fight, which I think just made it worse when they finally slung the rope around his neck. He’d lived almost half those years right here in Ambrose, a retired schoolteacher from somewhere back east — maybe Pittsburgh or Cleveland — or so everyone in town had thought. We didn’t ask questions — it just isn’t our way — and Capp offered little by way of biography. He was just an old man looking to live out the last of his years on a small parcel of land he said his sister had bought back before the start of the war. He kept to himself, but, for the most part, I think, he was well liked. Turns out, he actually stole that land from one of the poor souls he carved up down in south Texas, along with his name, and lord knows what else. I wouldn’t be all surprised if the man never even had a sister.
When we first saw the warrant, I was with Sherrif Ballard, taking his measurements for a new suit. He’d been putting me off for weeks, avoiding my shop, but the wedding was in less than a month and the groom was going to have to be dressed, like it or not. It was an old warrant, long expired, yellowed at the edges, and with a poor sketch of what Capp might have looked like when he was younger. I don’t think either of us would have paid it any mind if Jimmy Milton, one of the sherrif’s younger deputies, hadn’t pulled it from that morning’s mail and said, with a laugh, “Hey, Abner, don’t this sort of look like old man Capp to you?”
I don’t know that we ever did learn who sent Abner Ballard that old warrant.
I also sent out 70 rejection letters for Kaleidotrope. You know, for the whole crushing-writerly-dreams part of the weekend.
Happy Father’s Day!