Willow Tree

Chapter One

Disclaimer: I don't own it. I'm not even completely caught up yet. BTW, I found out about Carl's death by watching 'Jay and Silent-Bob: Rebooted.' Fuck you very much, Kevin Smith.

Author's Note: The town of Willow Tree does not exist that I know of...at least in Georgia. I won't lie to you; I didn't check to see if the town exists in any other state or country. Also, I have not suddenly forgotten how to spell or use the English language properly. The way words are spelled when Merle is talking is the way he would pronounce them with his accent. Trust me, I grew up in Charlotte, and I live in Memphis, southern accents I know...and I also have one...just nowhere near as bad as the Dixon brothers.

"Read about you in a Faulkner novel, met you once in a Williams play. Heard about you in a country love song, summer night beauty take my breath away."

- Pam Tillis, Maybe It Was Memphis

The old chevy impala spluttered to a stop on the side of a deserted farm road and fifty miles outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Now, when I chevy impala, I don't mean some Supernatural looking old-school muscle car. I mean a piece of junk mid-90's impala from when they started looking like old people cars. Vada's 1996 model actually looked like it had seen an apocalypse.

"Damn it!" Vada smacked her steering wheel. She reached over and grabbed her purse off the passenger seat, and dug out her cell phone. "No signal? Are you freakin' kidding me!"

Vada Jones was a twenty-nine-year-old elementary school teacher from Sleepy Hollow, New York. She was moving to Georgia to accept a teaching position in the small town of Willow Tree. She had needed to get away from the cold New York winters for the sake of her health.

So, to recap. Vada was in an unfamiliar place, her cell phone had absolutely no signal, and it was after midnight, and there were no street lights. This was what it meant to be up a creek without a damn paddle.

A knock on her window had her screaming like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.

"Ya alright in there, darlin'?" A deep, raspy voice called from outside.

"The engine gave out," Vada called once she had remembered how to breathe. She wasn't sure if she should roll down the window or not. Wasn't this how the Zodiac Killer once tried to kill someone?

"Sugar, ya gonna have to roll down that window if we gonna talk," the man called back.

Vada reached over and grabbed the pocket knife that she kept for protection out of the center console and opened it, laying it next to her thigh on the seat. Only then did she roll down her window and even then only part of the way. "Sorry," she smiled nervously. "I'm pretty sure the engine just...died completely." She'd only been driving around with the 'Check Engine' light on for the last three years. That was her biggest clue.

"I'm a mechanic. I could prolly help ya out. Name's Merle Dixon." He was leaning over sightly, and Vada could see that he was an older man and fairly tall.

"Vada Jones," she offered back, and it was then that she realized...the only headlights she saw were her own. "I'm not sure how much help you can be. Unless you happen just to have a spare engine lying around."

"Nah," Merle laughed. "Prolly find ya one, though. Right now, I'm more worried 'bout getting' ya off this here road. Round one or two, some dumbass kids start racin' up and down here. Ya can't see it, but I's got me a house over there." He pointed to the left side of the road. He was right. Vada couldn't see it. "I can go grab my rig, tow ya back to my yard, and ya can call whoever ya need ta call. Cell phones don't work for shit out here."

To go or not to go with gruff redneck, that was the question. She was out in the middle of nowhere without a working phone. Did she really have much of a choice?