Page 5 of Marshall

Hugging them both, he was happy that they allowed it.DJ pulled away first, but Grannie clung to him like she needed it.Allowing them both to wander around the large mansion-like house, he made sure that the nurse, who was also carrying a weapon, knew that he’d be back soon.He needed to get some paperwork finished up so that he could be with his new family for the next few days.

“You don’t have much in the way of furnishings, do you, Marshall?”He told Grannie when he returned that he’d been working on that, too.“I’d like to have my old bed here if you’d not mind.I haveall the lumps figured out, and I don’t know that…I had a difficult time sleeping on that mattress at the hotel, something terrible.If you’d rather not, I can understand that too.Even if it’s only for a few days, I’d like to be rested.”

“A few days?I thought that you and DJ would live with us here full-time.I know that DJ has been staying with you to keep you safe at home, but I’d very much like to know that you’re here and being taken care of, too.”Grannie asked him if he thought DJ was doing a terrible job.“Don’t be reading into that, please.I want you both to be safe and here I can make sure you are.If you’d rather live in your own home, I understand that as well.But you can rest assured that I’ll keep you as safe as I can there as well.”

“I don’t want to live there no more, to be honest with you.”He asked her if she could tell him why.“Them sons of mine.They…well, they ruined it for me.Always barging in and making me hand over money that I don’t have.What did they expect me to live on if I’m forever handing them all the money that I have.Nothing, I’ll tell you right now, they care nothing for me but what I can give them.Ungrateful curs.The lot of them can go to prison for all I care about them.I don’t mean to sound like a harpy, Marshall, but I really don’t want to live there where I feel exposed to them all the time.Why, just two months ago, they got into my herb garden and my squash patch and smashed everything to pieces.I just…I just can’t take it no more.And I just know they hurt my MJ.I just…Oh, Marshall, what you must think of me.”

“I think that you’re a wonderful woman that has had enough of their bullshit and now needs for them to pay the price of their hurting you and the girls.”She held onto him while she sobbed about her misery.It hurt him to his core that she’d been put through all that.When DJ came to find her, she led the still-crying woman to the kitchen, where some tea was being brewed, and there were fresh cookies.

Marshall’s household staff were all magical creatures.Even the cook, Pie, was a brownie and had a little bit of sixth sense about her.He wouldn’t doubt for a moment that she’d put on the tea and had cookies ready the moment that Grannie and DJ had joined his household.He was going to make sure that there were plenty of people around just to make sure that they had everything that they needed.

Chapter 3

“You have the right to remain silent.”Douglas cut the man off and told him that he knew the Miranda warning better than he did.“I’m sure you do, but I have to tell them to you again.You have the right—”

As the cop droned on about his rights and shit, Douglas thought about why he’d been pulled over.It was his right, he thought, that he should be able to use the car that his daughter owned.She’d not been putting up any fuss when she drove it around like she owned it.That made him laugh a little.She did own it, he supposed but what he didn’t understand was why she was being so stingy about letting him have it when he needed it.

“Do you understand what I’ve just said to you, Mr.Brandon?”He waved him off, forgetting where he was for a minute.“You have to give me a verbal answer.”

“What’s that?”He explained to him what the word verbal meant.“Yeah, all right.I understand my rights.What I don’t understand is why you pulled me over in the first place.I used my ticker.I even used my arm to signal when I was turning.The lights are all working, too.I checked that before I left the house.”

“I’m arresting you because you took the car without permission from its owner.”He pointed out that the owner was his grannie or daughter and that his daughter knew that he had it.“She’s the one pressing charges against you.”

“Now, that can’t be right.She’s not allowed to do that on account of me being her daddy.That there is against the law.”He told him that he was incorrect.“Well, it should be right.”

It was then that he noticed they were patting down his brothers.Fuck a duck and watch it waddle.They were all three carrying when they shouldn’t have been.As soon as he asked him if he had a gun, he started to lie and say no, but they had already found the one that he had stashed in the back of his pants.He knew he should have probably worn a longer shirt.But his belly made everything shorter than he liked.

They were all cuffed up and put in the back of three different cruisers.If he’d of been asked, he might well have thought that they didn’t have three cruisers in this little town.But there they were, just lined up like they’d been expecting to arrest them.Damned cops, anyway.Didn’t they have better shit to do than to take him away from his search?

He’d been looking for his kin since he’d gotten out of jail this morning.He was getting mightily sick of being in jail then not.Either they were to keep him so that he could get a good night’s sleep someplace where it was warm or not.

Douglas had an idea that since it didn’t appear to him that anyone was home at the house that he could just move in.Ben and Todd thought it was a good one, too.But almost as soon as they stepped out of their car and onto the land, they were chased away from the house by a big bunch of coyotes.Or whatever the hell they were.They had sharp teeth.That’s all he knew for sure.

Then when he’d had Todd go back for the car, he’d nearly been eaten alive by the biggest fucking bears—not that he’d ever seen any up close like they’d been—but he barely got out with his ass intact.Christ love the lord.He thought for sure that Todd was going to be eaten alive before he was able to get the car out of the driveway.As it was now, there were big scratches on it that the fucking bears had done to it.How was he supposed to ride around in a nice ride when it was scratched to fuck?he asked Ben.

“I don’t know.”That was his answer for everything.‘I don’t know’.He was getting mightily sick of his brothers, if truth be told.They were idiots, the two of them.And since he was the one that had him some kids, even though Ben was older than him, he’d taken on the role of being the smartest one in the bunch.He was, too.He’d finished up the tenth grade, more than two years longer than theothers.Of course, they all spent a lot of time in the grades they’d taken.

Douglas was sure that Ben had spent four years in the ninth grade.Then when he’d aged out, what they called him turning nineteen and all, he was told he would have to have another form of education.At least he’d gotten to the tenth grade before they done did the same thing to him.It made him sound like he was as old as Methuselah.

He couldn’t remember who that was but he knew it had something to do with him being in the Bible.He might well have been the person who had tied his ass to a tree or something, but whenever he thought about that, his ass clenched up so tight that he could barely get a fart out.It must have been right painful to have had that done, he thought.There was no way that he’d of done that on his own.

Once he was at the jail, again, they were each given different cells.That’s another thing that he didn’t understand.Why the hell did they separate them?It wasn’t like they didn’t know everything there was to know about each other.With them being in different cells, you’d think that they’d be wanting to keep the cleaning done down as far as they could get it.

Not that he did any cleaning up but still, it had to be more work for somebody.If’n they were in cells together, he’d just have one of the other two to clean up for him.That’s the way it should have been.Like his daughters should have been doing.

Something that his daughters had been doing, too.Since they’d gotten old enough to read, something that he didn’t like at all—reading was for dummies.But since they’d gotten to be around six years old, they’d come back at him if he were to raise a hand to them.Then when their momma died, Margaret Jane had gotten it into her head that she was in charge of the rent and grocery money.

“How long you thinking it is until lunch, Doughy Dougie?”He hated that, too.Being called Doughy Dougie.Ben had started calling him that since he’d been out of diapers.“I’m durn near ready to eat on my mattress a bit if they don’t hurry things along.”

“It’s only about ten in the morning, you moron.We just ate…he didn’t know what time it was nor what kind of time passed when they’d eaten last.“You just hang on a little bit more, and they’ll be bringing you something.I told you to get enough food that you’d not be starving, didn’t I?”

“You did, you did.But when I found something that I wanted to eat, you done took it away from me.You know, you ain’t the oldest no more.”He told the idiot that he was the oldest.“Right, like I was saying, you ain’t the oldest.I had my birthday just last week, and I know that I’m about fifty years old.”

Was he?If’n Ben was about to approach his fifties, which he didn’t doubt that he was, that meant that he as in his late forties.Right around the corner, fifty was coming up fast.He didn’t want to be thinking about that.Not today.It was depressing.It was Todd who asked him how old he was.

“How the hell should I know, dummy?I have enough trouble keeping up with my own age.”His momma used to send them cards with little numbers on them.It would say something along the lines of ‘happy birthday, dummy you’re’ whatever age he was.She was there, he was supposed.She’d better be right on the date.

Now, he didn’t even get a card with a little cash in it.His momma had surely turned mean in her golden years.He knew why, too.Them damned daughters of his.Poking their noses into shit that didn’t matter to them.He was glad that they watched over his momma.But he couldn’t figure out why they’d not smothered her in her sleep like he’d told them to over and over again.

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