[This is the first in a collection of stories based on real events in my hometown. The details are all products of my imagination, but the narrative itself is true. All names have been changed to protect the innocent, and not so innocent.]

Folks in Leonard, Georgia could hardly believe the news. Their barefoot, red-dirt town resided now on the cutting edge of modern technology. One of their own had actually installed a telephone in his home. Rev. Roebuck Duncan had prayed and sought the Lord’s will for many days, and finally concluded that a telephone in his house would benefit the community, not to mention his own family.

“If there’s an emergency, I can call for help,” he explained to the deacon board at the Baptist Church. “We won’t need to run over to Sister Teasdale’s and get her to holler for help anymore,” he continued. “Besides, she’s getting on up in years, and her voice ain’t what it used to be.” The deacons all nodded in agreement. “And I’ll be glad to share the phone with anybody in Leonard who wants to call some of their kinfolk, provided they don’t abuse my hospitality, or make calls to distant places like Birmingham.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Deacon Duke. The motion was seconded and passed unanimously. The Baptist deacons, of course, had no authority over matters in their pastor’s private residence, but Roebuck could not afford for his flock to accuse him of putting on airs. A pastor could appear to be worse off than his congregants, but not better.

Thus, the dark-stained telephone with a magneto crank was soon ensconced on the parlor wall in Rev. Duncan’s home. True to his word, he offered to let anyone use it as they had need. Elmer Atwood and his wife stopped by to call their daughter who lived in Atlanta, and gasped in amazement when her voice floated through the earpiece as if she was perched on the sofa in the next room, or, at least, in the back yard. At first Elmer shouted into the mouthpiece, thinking it necessary to cover the distance from Leonard to Atlanta, but Duncan assured him such histrionics were unnecessary.

Other residents came to take advantage of the Rev.’s generosity as well. Sharp England wanted to use the phone to call his mother who had passed away the previous year, and it took all of Duncan’s theological prowess to convince him no telephone, however marvelous the machinery, could bridge the gap between this world and the next. Most townspeople, however, came, not to use the phone, but simply to gaze at it in wonder.

Leon Warren, on the other hand, had no intention of merely basking in the glow of the Preacher’s newfangled technology. “I come to borrow your telephone,” he said after a prelude of expectorating Red Man Chewing Tobacco off the front porch.

“Sure,” replied Duncan, leading him to the parlor.

“Help yourself. You need me to show you how it works?”

Warren gawked at the contraption affixed to the wall like a cow would look at a new fence. “Hmm… How heavy is that thing?” he asked.

“Why do you need to know?”

“Toting it back to my house could be a mite tricky if it’s too heavy.”

Duncan smiled. “Leon, are you saying you want to borrow my phone, as in ‘take it with you’?”

Warren nodded.

“Leon, you’re so dumb you couldn’t pour water out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. A telephone has to be hooked up to wires installed in your house, and, unless you’ve had the Southern Bell Company out to your place recently, this phone would be nothing more than a door stop. Now, if you want to use it to call somebody, go ahead. But there’s no point in you borrowing it.”

Leon Warren’s shoulders drooped as he acquiesced to the inevitable. “Well, thanks anyway, Preacher,” he muttered.

But as he walked heavily down the front porch steps he glanced across the yard to the Rev. Duncan’s tool shed, and his demeanor changed.

“Is that a new hoe?” he asked.

“Sure is,” said Duncan. “Just bought it Thursday.”

“Could I borrow it?” asked Warren. “The handle on my hoe broke the other day, and the weeds are starting to come up in my pea patch.”

“Be my guest,” the Rev. replied. “I’ll come pick it up in a few days.”

“Oh, don’t bother. I’ll bring it right back when I’m finished with it.”

“No, you won’t,” Duncan mumbled under his breath. Warren had played this game with him before. Every time Warren took advantage of Duncan’s commitment to the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:42 – “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” – the good Rev. lost a piece of property. Lord only knew how many hammers, saws, chop axes, and various other tools had been “borrowed” by Leon Warren and had never again seen the Preacher’s tool shed. If Duncan got tired of waiting and hiked to the Warren homestead to demand his tool be returned, Warren would always mimic the look of a child whose dog just got stepped on by a mule, and say, “That there’s my tool, Preacher. Always has been. I’d let you borrow it, but I was just about to use it.” Not wanting to denigrate his standing in the community by punching Leon in the snoot, he always admitted defeat.

Duncan took some comfort in knowing the Warrens were equal opportunity thieves. The entire family was the closest thing to hardened criminals the town could boast. No one could prove Grand Larceny, of course, but any item not nailed down seemed like fair game. Shop owners knew to keep a sharp eye on any Warren entering their place of business. Enough marbles to fill a tow sack had disappeared from the school playground when boys became distracted by an argument or fight. Freshly baked pies perched on the window sill to cool had often vanished into thin air only to reappear later smeared on the faces or clothes of Warren children. Preacher Duncan had watched Rilla Warren, the Mama in the family, on Sundays piously drop a dime into the offering plate with her right hand, and deftly slip two quarters out with her left. So when Rev. Roebuck Duncan brought home his new hoe he carefully carved “R. D.” into the hoe handle. When he attempted to reclaim his property this time there would be ample evidence of ownership.

Later that afternoon Walter Sloop arrived with a load of stove wood for the Duncan kitchen. After stacking it neatly against the wall, Duncan asked, “What do you think of my telephone, Walter?”

“It’s a wonder,” Sloop remarked.

“Feel free to use it if you need to,” said Duncan.

“Thank you kindly,” Walter said, scratching his head, “but I don’t rightly know who I’d need to call. I ain’t got much family.”

That’s sure the God’s truth, thought Duncan. His thoughts wafted back to the day three years earlier when he led the funeral service for Walter’s wife, a tragedy that left Walter bereft of a spouse and saddled him with three young children to raise by himself. Walter’s parents were long gone, and his in-laws lived in Americus, too far away to help. Fortunately, Walter’s farm was large enough to provide a comfortable, if Spartan, income. On the side, however, he cut and delivered wood for the cook stoves of the elderly who could no longer chop it for themselves, or for those residents who happened to be too lazy to be bothered.

Old Man Mitchell, for example, was known to scour his land for a fallen tree, hitch it to his mule, drag it back to his tumbledown house, and deposit one end of the tree in his fireplace while the rest of the tree poked out his front door. As the tree burned, he inched it farther and farther into the fireplace until he could shut the front door again. Various limbs were snatched off for the cook stove during this entire process. When Mitchell heard that Walter was now delivering stove wood he eagerly engaged his services.

Rev. Duncan was not lazy, nor was he elderly. He also had four strapping sons perfectly capable of wielding a chop ax — unless Leon Warren had “borrowed” it. But Duncan felt sorry for Walter, so whenever he could afford it, he bought a load of stove wood, trying to make the sale look like anything but charity. Walter took his payment from the Preacher, assured him he would see him in church on Sunday, then headed home.

After unhitching the mule from his wagon and turning it loose in the pasture, he glanced at his stash of chopped stove wood stacked against the barn and covered with scraps of tin to keep the rain at bay. “That’s odd,” he said to himself. “I could have sworn I had more wood than that.” He could have been mistaken, but it seemed as if the stack was slightly smaller than he remembered. Because he knew every knothole and Dirt Daubers’ nest on this side of his barn, he could not help thinking perhaps the top row of wood was missing. “Maybe Miss Rose needed some and went ahead and took it,” Walter mumbled to nobody in particular. “I’ll ask her,” he thought.

As Walter shuffled into the house he deposited his hat on the rack by the front door and removed his muddy boots. “Anybody home?” he called.

“Evening, Walter,” said Miss Rose as she creaked into the hall on elderly legs that did not seem to want to carry her anymore, steadying herself on her walking stick.

“Where are my young ‘uns?”

“Oh, they’re outside somewhere, probably getting into devilment,” she said, smiling benevolently. Want me to call them in for you?”

“No, no,” said Walter. “I’m sure they’ll be in directly when I call them in for supper, if not sooner. Anything I need to know?”

“Not much. The big ‘un has arithmetic homework he keeps putting off, so you might want to stay on him about it.”

“Duly noted.”

“The middle ‘un got in a fight at school today, so I told him you’d have a talk with him.”

If it was that snot-nosed Bobby Warren, thought Walter, he hoped his son had beat hell and guts out of him. But he kept his thoughts to himself.

“And the little ‘un fell down and scraped his knee. I tried painting it with Mercurochrome, but he squealed like a stuck pig and thrashed around so that I don’t know if I did any good.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Of course he will. Oh, I fried up some okra and chicken for supper if you want it.”

“You didn’t need to do that, Miss Rose. I can cook. You’re nice enough to come over here every afternoon to look after my kids when they come home from school. You don’t have to cook for me too.”

“I know you can cook, Walter. It’s just that… Well, since my children all grew up and moved away, and my husband died, I get tired of cooking for just myself. And, by the way, I really enjoy watching your boys. Besides, you give me free stove wood for my trouble, which really is no trouble at all.”

“Oh, speaking of stove wood, you didn’t happen to take some for yourself, or bring some in here, did you?”

“No. There’s plenty in the wood box over there, and you just delivered a load to my house last week, so I’d have no reason to take any. Why?”

“No reason. The pile just looked smaller to me. Probably my imagination.”

“I hope so. I’d hate to think somebody would be sorry enough to steal stove wood.”

Walter knew the Warrens were sorry enough to steal stove wood, and so did Miss Rose, but neither of them said so. “Well, I’ll be heading home, Walter. See you tomorrow.”

The next morning Walter remained puzzled about the stove wood as he hitched his mule to the wagon. Perhaps he remembered the size of the stack incorrectly. But just to make sure he took a gnarled pencil from his overalls and scratched an almost imperceptible mark on the barn wall. If wood went missing he would know it immediately. After a few deliveries, and the bulk of the day spent dislodging Johnsongrass from his corn field, he returned to the house, relieved Miss Rose, fed supper to his boys, and while they were occupied with arithmetic homework, he stepped outside to inspect his stack of stove wood. When he removed the tin covering the pencil mark on the barn greeted him like an unwelcome guest. Not much wood had been removed — only a few pieces from the top — but the pencil line shouted the truth. Someone was swiping stove wood Walter had chopped and depended on for a fair amount of his income.

Every few days Walter repeated his experiment, and every few days the evidence mounted. As he drove his wagon around the community he pondered what course to take. He was sure the Warrens were behind the pilfering, but he had no proof, and he certainly could not waltz into their home and call them criminals. Everybody in Leonard, Georgia had a stack of stove wood that looked like every other stack in every other house. As he ruminated on the conundrum one day he saw Preacher Duncan’s Model A Ford approaching. Walter tugged his mule to the side of the dirt road and waited for the Rev. to stop.

“Afternoon, Preacher.”

“Afternoon, Walter. Working hard, or hardly working?”

“I could ask you the same question, Preacher. After all, you only work one day a week.”

Both men smirked at the old joke. “But I am in a quandary about something,” said Walter. “Somebody’s stealing wood from the pile of stove wood I sell.”

“Is that so? How do you know?”

“Every day I mark the top of the pile on the barn, and every day there’s wood missing.”

“That’s bad. Have you called the sheriff?”

“Not yet. Got nothing much to go on.”

“Any idea who might be stealing it?”

“I suspect Leon Warren or one of his boys, but I got no proof.”

“I know what you mean. I’m just coming from his place now. Went over there to get my brand new hoe he borrowed. I carved my initials in the handle so I could prove it was mine, and when I got over there that rascal had scraped my initials out of the handle and carved his own initials in their place. Can you believe that?”

“I sure can. There ain’t a one of them Warrens that’s worth the powder it would take to shoot ‘em. I think…”.

Walter stopped mid-sentence and sat upright on the wagon seat. Duncan could almost hear the gears turning in his friend’s head. “Preacher, you’ll have to excuse me. I got something I need to do.”

“What are you up to, Walter?” the Preacher asked suspiciously. But Walter snapped the reins over his mule, and called over his shoulder, “See you in church on Sunday.”

When he arrived home late that afternoon Walter asked Miss Rose to stay on a few minutes more. “Happy to,” she replied. At the barn he grabbed two logs from his carefully stacked pile and ambled inside to the stall where he stored tools and farm implements. With a hammer and chisel Walter deftly hollowed out a square hole in one of the logs about an inch deep. He grabbed a saw and sliced a block from the end of the second log then chiseled it to fit the hole in the first log, except this piece was only one half-inch thick. Inside the wooden cabinet in the corner he pushed aside cans of nails, screws, washers, bolts, and nuts and retrieved the large rusty tin can containing the gun power he used to reload shotgun shells, poured a half-inch pile into the chiseled hole, then carefully tamped the plug fashioned from the second log into place.

Through fading daylight Walter gazed at his handiwork. The plug was so tight, and the wood grain and color matched so closely, his surgical work was almost imperceptible. Walter brushed the sawdust from his overalls, dismissed Miss Rose, fed his boys and got them to bed. For the first time in several weeks, Walter Sloop slept soundly all night.

In the morning the gunpowder laden log had vanished like a Raptured soul on the Day of Judgment.

Late in the day, tired from a full morning and afternoon of gleaning in the fields of the Lord, Roebuck Duncan settled into his easy chair for a few minutes rest as his wife prepared supper. His thoughts turned to his upcoming Sunday sermon, but they were immediately interrupted by what sounded like someone shouting down the road. The decibels of the voice grew in intensity until Duncan was sure he was listening to shrieks of distress. The cries drew closer and closer until he realized the voice was calling for him.

“Preacher! Preacher! Help! Help!”

Duncan sprang from his chair and dashed to his front porch just in time to see Leon Warren galloping around the bend in the road yelping at the top of his lungs. “Preacher! Help! Preacher! Help!”

“What in the name of heavenly glory is going on, Leon?”

“Preacher!” gulped Leon, trying not to faint from his sprint up the road. “Preacher, use that fancy new phone of yours and call the sheriff!”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Somebody’s shootin’ at my wife, Rilla!”

“Shootin’ at Rilla? Whatever for?”

“I don’t know why, but somebody’s shooting from somewhere into the kitchen!”

“Is she hurt? Is she alright?”

“Yeah,” Leon gasped. “Whoever it was missed her, but he blew the top plumb off the cook stove! Call the sheriff, Preacher!”

Duncan’s mind instantly recalled his conversation with Walter Sloop the day before, put two and two together, and deduced what had happened. It took every bit of ministerial reserve at his disposal to keep from guffawing out loud. The most he allowed himself was a sly smirk which Leon, in his agitated state, completely missed.

“Calm down, Leon,” said Duncan pastorally. “Go home and tend to Rilla. I’ll call the sheriff and let him know what’s happened.”

“Thank ye kindly,” wheezed Leon, and turned to trudge the dusty road back home. Duncan let the screen door bang shut behind him as he returned to his easy chair. He stared at the telephone hanging on the wall. Tomorrow he would call the sheriff and explain the situation, and they would both have a few minutes of mirth at the Warrens’ expense. For now he had a sermon to write.

On Sunday Preacher Duncan delivered a fiery sermon on Exodus 20:15—“Thou shalt not steal”—that many worshippers, as they greeted their pastor at the door after the service, said was one of his finest. When Walter Sloop and his gaggle of rowdy boys approached, Duncan leaned in close and said, “Did you hear? Somebody shot at Rilla Warren the other night and blew the top off their cook stove.” “Aw, Preacher,” scoffed Walter. “Who would go and do a fool thing like that?” “It’s a head scratcher alright,” and both men shared a grin.

Bringing up the rear of the line were Leon and Rilla Warren with their brood of amateur thieves. “I called the sheriff like you asked,” said Duncan. “He said he would ask around and see what he could find out.” “I appreciate it,” replied Leon. “Are you alright, Miss Rilla?” “Yeah, but it like to scared me half to death.” “No doubt,” said the Preacher.

Duncan returned to the sanctuary to retrieve his Bible just as Deacon Duke was gathering the morning offering from the plates laid reverently on the communion table. “Offering looks a little puny this morning, Preacher,” he declared. “Oh?” replied Duncan. “I looked at the plates before the service was finished, and I thought it looked pretty good.”

Then he remembered hearing Leon Warren’s pocket jingling as he walked down the front steps of the church.

Copyright © 2019 Paris Donehoo