Turkey Ranch Road Rage Read Online Free

“right beside the pile of spray paint cans. Must have been fumes or something because the flames just shot up and those cans started jumping like popcorn. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life.”
    “It sure was something,” Leroy agreed, adding a whistle to his punctuate his amazement. “Them cans was exploding like rainbow hand grenades. Made the most awful mess you ever did see,” he continued, his chins jiggling with the telling. “Paint went splattering all over everything, including the protesters. Nobody really got hurt though, so that was good.”
    “It wasn’t good enough for the TV people,” Lucille groused, stomping a golden slipper to emphasize her irritation. “Oh, the local stations came by for a few minutes then played their little ten second clips on the six o’clock news, but that won’t get us noticed in Decatur much less Dallas. We need the big guns out here.” She glanced at the TV again. “They better be showing something again this evening, even one of those little snippets that flashes by like a blink, or I’ll be calling them, that’s what I’ll be doing.”
    No sooner had she uttered the words than said snippet popped onto the screen. Larry grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
    The segment was indeed short, and after I saw the actual scene, it didn’t seem like much of an event at all. It looked like there were maybe forty people, including law enforcement, lizard people and Bible wavers. The camera made a quick pan of the naked lizard girl Jerry had eagerly told me about then lingered on the camper for a second longer. All in all, the clip was twelve seconds, tops, with voice-over.
    “Now, isn’t that just the most pitiful coverage of a news story that you ever did see?” Lucille stood with her arms crossed, glaring and grumbling at the TV. “If they’d had even a lick of sense they’d have come inside the jail house and asked me about the people trying to steal my home, that’s what. But there was not one word about it. Not one. Pitiful, I tell you, just pitiful.”
    I slumped down in the chair beneath the TV and sighed. I had so many questions, but it seemed best to start as much at the beginning as I could—at least the beginning of today’s reason for me being in the Bowman County sheriff’s office. “Speaking of pitiful, exactly what were you thinking when you opened fire on the county maintenance truck?”
    Lucille clamped her lips shut and lifted her chin. “I don’t know that it was necessarily my bullet that hit the radiator. They were out there mowing, and it could have just as easily been a rock that flew up and hit it. You know very well that laser sight isn’t worth a darn out in the sun.”
    Oh, I’d heard that sorry excuse before, the laser in the sun, not the flying rock. My mother is a crackerjack shot and she doesn’t need a squiggly red dot to get the job done either. Even though it was a question that pretty much answered itself, I asked, “Who else was armed?”
    She shrugged and inspected her nearly inch-long purple nails. “Most of us were, I guess.”
    Now, this statement was both said and taken with the greatest of seriousness. Carrying a gun in Texas is part of one’s civic duty, right up there with saluting the flag and knowing all the words to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” I glanced at Leroy. “How many of them were there?”
    “Enough, that’s how many,” she said, her voice building in passion and volume. “They’re not going to sneak around and do things behind my back like I don’t know what they’re up to. I’m going to stop that stupid camper city. Some of us care what happens to our homes and we’re doing something about it.”
    “Yes, we’re all real clear that you’re doing something about it.” I turned to Leroy. “So, do you have any official membership numbers on this subversive group?”
    Leroy shuffled his feet and scratched his head. “The toad people?”
    “She means us, Leroy, SPASI,”