The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
First week of November, 2023. Dripping Springs Road Seymour, Tennessee. Matte Green 2024 GMC Hummer EV, Three-X moving very slow past the trailer homes and turn-of-the-Seventies era single story ranch style brick homesteads that started with a young family all those years ago, but were now inhabited by the aging great grandparents of Knoxville’s upper middle class. Past the small family private Black Angus cattle farms. It slides by Old Man Teague’s junk yard with its rusted out pickups and construction equipment. There’s even a school bus on cinder blocks and a beat up trailer or two in even worse condition than the dilapidated once-maroon sun faded shit hole from which Lonnie sits watching the ridiculous behemoth scratch along the roadway. The damned thing sounded like a yellowjacket nest buzzing its way into his nightmares. The driver invisible through the deep tint, but Lonnie can see him. Lonnie knows the type. He’s been expecting this ever since the sign went up.
Not two weeks ago he’d watched them dig the post holes for the massive plywood-sized commercially printed sign, Acreage for sale – Dwight Price. Another guy from the city thinks he’s a big deal. Acreage, the sign said. Acreage meant only one thing. Acreage meant sub-divisions and people and traffic and noise and outsiders with their money and their kids and their changes. Lonnie’s mind saw this man in the spaceship as it passed him by. He could see his gold watch resting on the steering wheel. He could see his pressed shirt. He could see his stupid shiny smooth bottom shoes. He could see him. Another big deal rolling down the peaceful backroads of America scoping out the hills and the hollers planning how he can cut all those pesky trees out of all them forests and just stuff in as many houses as he can get his dollars on. Lonnie saw him, alright.
The problem is some of those octogenarians had gone on before their eightieth birthdays to that reward they’d prayed for all those years of Sundays at Dupont Baptist. And now their upper-crust kids that Lonnie had gone to school with, they had better, and they had no use for old mama’s fifteen acres out here in the sticks when she passed. But Lonnie hadn’t split. He’d stayed. He had his own boy here, useless as he is. And his boy had a baby here too, nine month old beautiful little girl’s the light of Lonnie’s whole life. From morning to midnight that baby is the bright spot in all his days. All he ever dreams about is hiking these hills and hollers with her, hunting, fishing, feeding the family just like he had always done. The way Cody should’a done with him.
But here come Dwight Price and all his bright ideas. He gotta put him up a big sign says, Acreage For Sale. It don’t say, homestead or house or farm, it say acreage. And that means only one thing. Sure as shit here come the sub divisions. Yeah, over the years the matriarchs and patriarchs had died off, and they left their bit to the kids, and the kids moved in or they sold it to fit-in-families. And from time to time a shiny new wide-load big rig rolled up the valley and new folks moved them in a good clean trailer. Once or twice, especially down toward Ellijoy, a new house got built on site, but nothing outa keepin’ with the rest of us. But that damn thing ain’t in keepin’ with nothin’ around here. And the guy inside it ain’t puttin’ up no Clayton Homes Double Wide, neither.
Lost in his thoughts, he’d let the Hummer get by. And though he could still hear them stupid tires, he got in the truck he’d borrowed offa Jed after they finally took his license last year for his third DUI, hoping he’d catch up to the damned thing at the Wye Exxon. That’s where he’s goin’ to. He’s gonna stop at the Wye. He’ll sit there on his phone and call old Dwight, keepin’ it cool, not letting on he wants to buy the whole street. And Dwight’ll play along too, cuz he knows this guy just finished up down in Hardin Valley, and he need land to put up the next one so the money-tap don’t dry up.
She crunk right up too. Sure they’s a thin smoke and a rattle in that valve, but this is a truck. It makes a real sound. It ain’t that stupid buzz, neither. Can you believe they did that on purpose? His mind ran away with him again. There they was, a couplaa them bureaucrat money pissers and their sycophant corporate lapdogs sitting at lunch on the tax payer dime, comin’ up with problems for every solution. “What if some blind guy wants to cross the street?” the go’ment one asks. “I don’t get it,” the sicko answers. “What if he can’t hear the motor?” And there it was, the birth of stupid. They make them things buzz and hum and beep and all manner of damn fool sounds just so as some fool in the city don’t get run over cuz he don’t got sense enough to stay on the sidewalk till he look both ways.
“Oh Shit!” He barked coming too fast around that bend. He almost smashed right into the back end of that piece of shit Hummer right there at the blind spot leads up in them deep woods that hides Lonnie’s fishin’ hole. Right at the child molester’s place. There’s a story. No shit, this guy, he’s a registered sex offender. Just like all them that just had to get away from small town America. They gotta git away from this boring old place and plug into the city life, this one lost his way. This guy didn’t just lose his way either. This dude found some open gate between reality and a fantasy land the rest of us we ain’t got imagination for. He got him a taste for kids. Who knows – maybe he run across one of them porn sites, and he like what he see. Or maybe uncle Harry couldn’t keep his hands to himself, and the kid came by it honest. Either way he got a taste for it, and he go try it out too, but it’s a sting, and he got caught tryin’ get his hands on a kid. 2008 that was. And here we are, back side of ‘23, and he not only out on the street already these last ten years. He’s a landowner. The story don’t end there, neither. It’s how he come to own the land fills in that third dimension.
2022, he been out a while. Works for his daddy. Lives with his Mama. Them two divorced. And wouldn’t you know it, this guy has a wife. I got no idea how he get a wife with a record like that, public as it is. They ain’t no shortage websites and warning sites and computer screens got them little red dots all over the map show where these molesters live. They gotta register with the state, the county, the city. They gotta see an agent every now and again and prove they not out messin’ with kids. How on earth a good woman meet a man like that, record like a neon warning billboard, keep away! And she fall in love. She not just in love. They got a baby. And they got two of them Rottweiler dogs too. This where the story gets interesting, and how he come own that land. Like I said, Mama bought it. He livin’ with Mama. One big happy family. Kiddy diddler, mama, immigrant wife, little infant girl, and them two dogs. Well, one day, it’s mama watching the baby in the bouncy chair, and them dogs attack her and rip her throat out, and she dead. And we know all this because that’s how the police found them. Baby fat and happy in the bouncy-roll-around seat and them two dogs, jowls covered in blood. And it’s a true story too. He read all about it in all the online archives last year when he saw that red Mitsubishi in the driveway and he looked at the tax rolls. He found the property just changed hands.
Well that Hummer was pullin’ in that same diddle boy driveway when he just about parked his pickup in the back seat. But not Lonnie. Nope Lonnie is a damn good driver. He barely had to hit his brakes and feather the steering wheel left. He hardly even got on the double yellow line with it – smooth as ice. That prick probably didn’t even see it almost happen – prolly on his phone or counting money or some fool shit. Lonnie drove on casual. He flipped it around at the Community Center and cruised past again. What was this guy doin’ down here? He come up to buy acreage, and here he is headin’ up the hill invade Lonnie’s lifetime fishin’ spot.