Louisiana Loco-Motive

Chapter 11

The family secret

Ranger Brown had missed school on that fateful day, on account of him not having his full strength. His mother, a white lady by the name of Abigail Sue Prejean Brown, had taken him into town with her mid morning to get some cough syrup from Mister D's hardware store. She thought he had the rickets as weak and frail as his body was. The D in Mister D's stood for Deshotel, the surname of the stores owner, but not everyone could properly pronounce it, so they just referred to his hardware store as Mister D's. It was also a drugstore, and a grocery store, as well as a cafe, too. Yep, that lil hardware store served multiple functions. Although Abigail was white and married to what was referred to as a colored man who had a "high yellow" skin tone; nevertheless, he was still a colored man and the townspeople didn't like her colored family members out roaming freely about the town. Although, they didn't
like it, nobody messed with them. So while Abigail was shopping for her son Ranger's cough syrup inside Mister D's hardware slash drugstore, Ranger had decided to wait outside. Since she was taking longer than usual, he decided to wait under the big Oak tree in the towns square since it was just a hop and a skip over from Mister D's. All the children in town, both white and colored, liked to play under that tree.

As soon as he reached the tree, he could hear the soft chatter of school children in the distance. Now mind you, Ranger went to school with his own people in a little wooden building that doubled as a church house for weekly worship. He knew the chatter he heard was that of the caucasian children in town, cause it was around eleven o'clock in the morning, the same exact time his body usually felt the pang of hunger before the schoolhouse teacher would announce it was break time for lunch. When he saw the group of school children approaching from across the street, he didn't want to be seen so he hurriedly climbed up as high as he could, disappearing into the leaves that were held by the trees thick and sturdy, branches. As the school children neared closer, their chatter became muffled and drowned out by a chugging sound further away. The louder the chugging sound became, the clearer the engine of the locomotive expressed itself until it was fully audible.

Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, chooo-choo. Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, chooo-choo.

The locomotive's engine was so loud, Ranger could feel his eardrums vibrate.

Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, chooo-choo.

He wanted to stick his fingers inside his ears, but he couldn't out of fear he may fall out of the tree, especially since he'd been feeling too weak to go to school. Alas, the locomotive had finally passed; but, he heard a voice from below approaching the tree from the backside. It took Ranger a second to make out the sound, but when he did, he recognized it as the voice of Earl Prejean, who was the local sheriff. Now Ranger's daddy, Roger, didn't care much for Sheriff Earl and repeatedly told Ranger to steer clear of him whenever possible; although, Abigail felt different and didn't have any worries about the Sheriff. Why should she? The Sheriff was her uncle. But Ranger's daddy
had a run in with Sheriff Earl years ago, and there'd been bad blood 'tween'em ever since.
"What happened, Sugar?"

"Marvin, you have got to have some patience. I'm gonna tell you ever thing I know 'bout it, but there's an art to storytelling, now quit interrupting me, please."

"Okay, Sugar."

"You want s'more coffee?"

"No, this is fine, thanks."

"Okay, now where was I?"

"Sheriff Earl..."

"Oh yes," she continued, the school children were almost to the square. Careful not to be seen by the school children or his great Uncle Earl, he remained still, careful to just listen and watch.