Low Country Law Read online

  “Them two lazy bastards, Homer Aiken and Henry Padgett better get off their asses and start delivering,” he shouted to himself as he banged his fist on the steering wheel.

  Then he added, “Or else, there will be hell to pay!”

  Chapter 5

  Sheriff Wilson was in his office chatting with Caley Givens, his primary (and only) investigator. Caley was not a newcomer to the area, but being much younger than the sheriff she was always interested in the history of the county, which he was more than willing to talk about freely. She was especially curious about the town of Warrenton and liked the sheriff’s willingness and interest in discussing it.

  He got a kick out of talking about the “old times” which were not that long ago considering his age. She knew many of the stories he told were passed down from previous generations, and embellished by the sheriff. Still, they had a degree of reality. When the sheriff put his spin on them, they not only served as a historical perspective but also possessed an element of entertainment.

  As a special investigator for the sheriff’s department, Caley never did routine patrols. This gave her a lot of face time with the sheriff. More than the other deputies, she knew his personality, idiosyncrasies, and quirks, of which there were plenty.

  Her job responsibilities were to collect, catalog, and retain evidence on the main cases. When other deputies needed assistance with robberies, fires, or cases where litigation was expected, she led the investigation and documented the evidence. She was also part of a 24/7 on-call emergency staff to screen and handle 911 and other emergencies.

  Caley joined the Navy shortly after graduating from the University of South Carolina. Having earned a four-year degree and having participated in the university ROTC program, she was able to go into the Navy as an ensign. Her first assignment was with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, generally referred to as NCIS. Caley served with the Navy for eight years but wanted more out of life. What… she didn’t know.

  On a vacation home one time, she happened to hear about the Warrenton County sheriff’s department opening up a new position for an investigative specialist. She got an interview with Sheriff Wilson who was coordinating the new hire. He offered her the job right away. After a few months, she was released from her Navy contract and was on her way to her new civilian job.

  Caley was in her mid-30’s and single. She had experienced several romances but just never hit it off with the right person for a long-term relationship. She was 5”6” tall and had the physical features of a model. While she was proud of her appearance, being in uniform hid her feminine features, both while she was in the Navy and as a deputy sheriff.

  She didn’t like to play up her female strengths. On the other hand, as a criminal investigator, she did not hesitate to utilize them to her advantage when necessary. Another characteristic remembered from NCIS training is that you must remain flexible to be successful as an investigator. This included being tough when necessary, as often was the case with people she encountered in her job.

  Chapter 6

  Flood’s Place was a well-known honky-tonk about 15 miles south of Warrenton. It was located at the intersection of two major roads and had been the center of the small outlying population since the 1940s. First Al and Doris Flood ran it as a wayside convenience store providing gas, staples, ice, and other items for people who didn’t care to travel the 15 miles to Warrenton.

  In recent years, Oats Schoenfeld acquired Flood’s Place. Right away, he turned the establishment into a honky-tonk. The business turned from one of utility to one of entertainment and drinking. The clientele was from a different segment than those served by Al and Doris.

  At one time, Oats was head of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After a long and fruitless pursuit by the FBI, they finally gave up on trying to tie him to a KKK hate crime and murder of two black men in the late 1960s. More recently, Oats had been mentoring a young man to help manage and run Flood’s Place.

  After hitch-hiking from Southern California throughout Mexico and South America as far south as Panama, Patrick Hudso wound up in the southern states. His plan was to continue his adventure throughout the States and maybe Canada but ran out of money in South Carolina.

  When Patrick wound up in the Lowcountry Oats ran into him. They hit it off, and Oats saw an opportunity to get the long needed help he wanted. He hired Patrick to help him around the place. Eventually, he made Patrick the manager with the understanding that if Patrick could make a go of the place, he could keep all the profits but 20% which he would put in an account for the owner.

  Oats thought the bar would be a failure without his guiding hand. With little to lose, both men decided to see if they could make a go of it. Initially, Patrick had no intentions of working at Flood’s Place for more than a short period. He took the offer of the position, such as it was, as a way of continuing his adventures.

  Patrick was a very active person who held an undergraduate degree in business from the University of Southern California. At first, he thought the job would be menial. It didn’t take him long to realize he was totally in charge. He decided to take full advantage of an opportunity to learn about job management. His college professors had often discussed small business models. After thinking about it, Patrick knew this was far from any they might have recommended. Surprisingly, the place thrived, and both owner and manager were happy.

  In college, he had taken several courses in writing and had written a portfolio of short stories, which one day he planned to compile into a book. One of his courses concentrated on listening to conversations and observing others, then putting them into associated real life applications. The students jokingly said were nothing more than fantasies, which they termed, fantamines.

  Patrick heard discussions around the bar daily, which he thought of as fantasies; mind games to help pass the long hours on the job… “fantamines”… material for his book. If Flood’s place was good for nothing else, it provided Patrick with plenty of material for his fantamines.

  Weekend activities at Flood’s Place were popular. Friday nights started with boozing and carousing. A few hard drinkers still around from the Friday night crowd, as well as a few newcomers, gathered by mid-morning on Saturdays. By this time, most hangovers had worn off. Then the blowout started all over again. Thus, the Disneyland of Lowcountry reprobates continued week after week, as Patrick racked up the profits.

  Patrick had proven to be a good manager by giving the revelers what they wanted. He managed the place any way he wanted since his boss let him have total control. There was no one looking over his shoulder.

  Being a successful entrepreneur had proven simple to this smart young man. Profits from the honky-tonk couldn’t have been better and had him thinking about setting up his own business. He might have already have done it had he not enjoyed all the benefits of an unsupervised employee, and none of the disadvantages if he failed. After all, he could continue his sojourn around the country anytime. In addition, banking money every week was an excellent incentive for staying put.

  The Saturday morning crowd at Flood’s Place was always entertained by some kind of sports activity. Three giant TV sets continually played the games of the season. In the summer, it was NASCAR races and baseball. During the fall and winter, football was king. When the day crowd thinned out, Patrick had a string band playing from 9:00 PM until 2:00 AM Sunday. It wasn’t unusual for many of the dyed-in-the-wool drinkers to start up again as soon as Flood’s Place opened at 10 AM on Sunday.

  The most interesting and rancorous groups were those who gathered late Saturday. Today like most Saturdays, several members of the Cobb Club congregated. They were part of the motorcycle clan and a remaining relic from Oats’ grasp on the community when he ran the local KKK. For lack of a better term, they were no more than a bigoted bunch of bullies who existed to carry out any rebellious activity their evil minds could cook up.

  The Cobbs were the social and disruptive bottom feeders of the community---t
hey lived on the edge of legality. Big Al Ramseth, Skeeter Crosby, and Honey Boy Gaskins were some of the Cobbs most notorious members. Homer P. Aiken and Henry Padgett weren’t far behind as far as evil deeds were concerned. As of recently, Tee Becket had also become a lightning rod of hell and destruction.

  Like most of the other bikers, Tee had an abundance of tattoos all over his body. His hairy arms and facial features made him resemble Popeye the cartoon character. He was not a short man, but muscular and had a mole on the side of his nose. Tee wore an old dirty short-billed fisherman’s hat. It was part of his persona when not riding. He always had a wad of snuff in his mouth and around can of “Kodiak” snuff rolled up on the sleeve of his tee shirt during the summer. His lower lip usually bulged with a cud of tobacco. He was always spitting the juice on the ground.

  When Tee sat at the bar in Flood’s Place, his snuff habit was more refined. He had an empty beer can at the ready, and from time to time, would spit the tobacco juice into the hole at the top of the can. His smoking habits were crude at best, but no worse than those of his friends, who didn’t see anything wrong with his style and demeanor.

  Homer and Henry generally wore bib overalls, with flannel checked shirts or just plain tee shirts in warm weather. When the riders rode their bikes, they had the ubiquitous biker’s helmet on their heads. Some of them simply wore abbreviated skullcaps. The skullcaps gave the bikers a rough and ready, safety be damned look, as well as emphasizing their bravado.

  If half the evil deeds planned at Flood’s Place on the weekends were carried out, the entire southern half of South Carolina would be in total anarchy. Many of the patrons were independent revelers, but the camaraderie of the Cobbs was tight. Big Al had his own following—worst of the worst. They were always planning or involved in some despicable harm or harassment to the local population.

  This Sunday, a few of the patrons sitting at a picnic table outside of Flood’s were continuing the drinking from Saturday night. By 11:00 AM, the homegrown hell’uns, were on their fourth six-pack of the day and ready for some action.

  One of the favorite pastimes was race bashing, and there was no better (or worse) place than Flood’s Place to engage in discourse on the subject. Sometimes the racial bashing was carried out in actual harmful acts. The latest was to be an incident by which Chester, Patrick’s dog, would attack Strep and Topop, two local black men. From the Cobb’s point of view, it would be just another funny episode. No more than they had done on many other occasions.

  …and the malicious expectations of the bigots were about to be rewarded.

  Chapter 7

  The city of Warrenton was the county seat and center of activity for its residents. Before the 1950s when automobile travel was not as ubiquitous, many of life’s activities evolved around a Saturday trip to Warrenton. To most country folks, the trip to Warrenton was part of the daily conversation. “We’ll get it Saturday. It can wait until Saturday. Put it on the Saturday list.” On Saturday, the town itself was always abuzz with the presence of country folk.

  One store especially, where anyone making the journey visited at least once was the general store. The two-story structure was the only building made totally of bricks. Everyone referred to it simply as “The Brick Store.” It had a huge area out back where people parked while they walked throughout the small town center. The huge lot wasn’t paved. When it rained, it was full of water-soaked potholes.

  In a time when logging was a huge business in the county, Charlie Roebuck operated a small business filing and sharpening saws for the loggers in the lot behind The Brick Store. He had an old pickup with a cover and seats in the back. Charlie lived west of town among a cluster of families in a place known to most as, “Scuffletown.” Every Saturday people would pay him twenty-five cents for a ride to town to do their shopping. At times, the back of the pickup would be packed full. You could see him coming down the road with the overflow standing on the running boards holding on tightly.

  The Brick Store and other small places did a thriving business on Saturdays. More than anything else, the two story Brick Store sold hardware. Many stories can still be heard from old-timers, who remember when earlier generations visited the town with their horse and buggies. To them, life was much easier and more enjoyable. One thing that stood the ravages of time was The Brick Store, where older people shopped and reminisced about times gone by.

  In earlier times, the store carried a good line of small farm implements such as horse-drawn plows, horse collars, bits, bridles, nails, chains, and other assorted equipment. For women, there were wash tubs, soaps, sewing materials, clothe, and all sorts of household items.

  When modern cars and cheap gas made it easy for people to travel to town any day of the week, the Brick Store was still open but was no longer as accessible for the needs of the weekly sojourner. A few small rural businesses in the outlying county were also valuable and convenient for country social life. However, those in Warrenton were the mainstay for the necessities of life.

  More recently, a county complex had been developed which had a large two-story building for various local and Federal agencies, a small law enforcement department and a few state government agencies. The offices of the sheriff’s department and local jail were in a separate building on the south side of the ten-acre plot.

  The county itself was located near the swamps close to the coast in a section of the state known as the Lowcountry. Few people in Warrenton County were wealthy. The culture encompassed mostly conservative political traditions passed down from earlier generations.

  Many of the people in the Lowcountry came from descendants the Gullah and Geechee tribes of West Africa, who were brought to American as slaves in the 17th Century. These people made the plantation owners rich, but never shared in the wealth. History is replete with examples of prejudices and abuses, which were formed in this culture.

  A few of the black people of the area continued Voodoo, mystical, and occult practices inherited as part of the psychic of their ancestors. While many of these people were scattered throughout the county, a large group of ten or so families who carried on the craft faithfully, lived in and around a small village on the southeast side of the county called Shelltown.

  Chapter 8

  The wayward group was sitting at a picnic table in the shade of the huge live oak just outside the Flood’s Place. Except for the laughter, hooting, and joking, the morning was a perfect portrait of solitude. It could have been duplicated anywhere in the south.

  The sun hadn’t burned off the low fog, which was still visible about 100 feet above the ground. There was not a whisper of the wind...only the noise of the unruly group of drinkers around the picnic table. The echo of their rancorous conversations in the quiet swamp carried for a mile or more. The road was visible stretching out about a half mile below the dense mist. It appeared to be just the beginning of another peaceful day. It would prove to be anything but for this sleepy Lowcountry community.

  Homer P. Aiken and Henry Padgett had just completed a busy night at their liquor still. They had stopped by on their motorcycles to drop off a couple of jars of moonshine. Patrick knew they often brought by a good supply but didn’t mind as it increased the attendance and helped business. This was especially true on the weekends.

  The conversation had turned from the black situation in the area to football, which was the second most popular subject around Flood’s Place. Big Al, Honey Boy Gaskins, Homer, and Henry were having a heated discussion about the NFL Sunday games. Each man had his favorite team, which he without a doubt was willing to bet any amount of money would win. Finally, bets were placed. Each participant put up five dollars on his team…a lot of money for these poor boys.

  Dressed in a flowered short sleeve shirt and wearing a brand new pair of loose-legged blue pants, Strep Jones, a skinny black man walked spryly along the side of the highway on his way to New Hope Baptist Church. At his side was his good friend Topop Jackson. Topop was dressed in a similarly flowered s
hirt that hung outside the belt of his sharkskin perfectly creased bright green trousers. Strep owned a 1984 Honda that he usually drove to Sunday morning church services. Today it wouldn’t start. Topop joking told Strep, he thought someone had put a hex on it. So, with the weather being nice, the two black men decided to walk the short three-mile distance to the church. They both looked forward to socializing with other members of the congregation, which served as much for their frequent attendance as did the spiritual message delivered by the pastor. They struck an imposing picture of two spirited young men as they approached Flood’s Place.

  Big Al was first to see the couple. At their nearest point across the main highway, they would be within 150 feet of the group of white men.

  “Here come two pricks on their way to church. They look like a couple of clowns. Let’s have a little fun,” said Al.

  “What ‘chu got in mind?” Homer chuckled.

  “Watch this!”

  Patrick owned a ferocious pit bulldog named Chester who was tied-up by the building. He was one of the best guard dogs in the area. Anyone who may have had intentions of vandalism at Flood’s was sure to have an encounter with Chester. On more than one occasion, Chester sounded an alarm late in the night that aroused Patrick to run potential vandals away. Today Chester was relaxing in the shade with his tongue palpitating in and out, and eyes calmly watching for anything out of the ordinary. Big Al walked over to Chester, unhooked the chain from his neck, pointed to the two men, and said, “sic-em.”

  Chester needed no further encouragement. He ran across the road straight toward the men. As he ran, his tongue hung out of the side of his mouth, and he let out a sound that was a cross between a groan and bark. Five seconds is all he needed to close the distance. First, he grabbed one leg of Topop’s green trousers and shook it viciously as he pulled back with all four feet. The sharkskin pant leg tore and gave way. Chester wasn’t satisfied with his progress, so he let go and immediately seized the other leg. His sharp teeth sank into the man’s meaty leg like a knife cutting butter. Topop cried out in agony and kicked unsuccessfully with all of his strength to shake the dog loose. Chester just dug his teeth in deeper and refused to let go. Topop attempted to get away as blood spewed in every direction. He made an agonizing scream while using both hands trying to pull the dog free. The effort was useless. Chester had found his mark, and seemingly, nothing short of death would cause him to let go. In the meantime, Strep who had begun to retreat stumbled over a four-foot board. Instinctively he realized it was their only defense against the merciless animal. Picking up the board, he carefully approached the unwavering dog and swung as hard as he could. It found the mark with a broadsided wallop.