day of biscuit

On the northern edge of Greenville, on the lefthand side of Highway 17 as you drive north towards Dunkerton, there is a burned out shell of a building that used to house the local jail, back when three cells were more than sufficient to house the occasionally out of control members of the small town. The new county facility opened for business in Slaterville in 1992, prompting Sheriff Utter to retire six years after he probably should have. He locked the front door of the jail building and took the key with him, knowing that nobody would be following in his footsteps in little Greenville.

For nine years, that building sat empty until the Frazier twins took up residence in the building when their Pop kicked them out for smoking reefer in his double wide. Pop tolerated a lot, but he did not approve of illegal substances and certainly had no intention of losing his entire property in a drug seizure if either of his boys did something stupid. Mama Frazier cried for three days until she figured out where the boys were staying. After that, she took to bringing them fried chicken and biscuits whenever she could get away with it. To the boys, hunkered in the old building with no electricity or water, her visits felt like jail visits and they were always grateful to see her - and the chicken.

It wasn't until the beginning of winter arrived that the twins discovered that living without electricity was even more challenging when the thermometer dipped below freezing. And that's how they came to build a fire in the outer office and, well, you can guess the rest. The Frazier twins survived, but they moved on down to Alabama to live with an aunt who didn't know any better than to take them in. Her house burned down too, but that's another story.

When Shelly ran out of gas that day, her car coasted to a stop just a few yards from that burned out shell of a jail. She cursed, berating herself for not getting the gas gauge fixed, for not filling up at that last gas station she passed, for not saying NO when her sister asked her to drive down to Greenville to pick her up, and most of all, for choosing the particular shade of green painted on her nails. It was ugly. And now she would have to walk down the highway until she reached civilization with her dayglo nails advertising to the world that she had no taste. Well, maybe not. Maybe she could call June and she'd find someone to bring her five gallons of gas. It was worth a try.