Chapter 2

Tommy effortlessly tossed the fifty pound sack of Purina fortified feedlot grain onto the pallet resting on the forklift's blades. Then he pulled the order ticket from the bib of his denim apron and compared the number of sacks on the pallet to the number on the ticket. The count matched, so he took his pen out of his shirt pocket and carefully made a check mark next to feedlot grain. The grain was the last item on the ticket, so Tommy climbed onto the forklift and carefully maneuvered it through the warehouse to loading dock two.

Driving the forklift was something Tommy had been doing for only a couple of weeks. He was extremely proud that Mister Fricke, the owner of Brantley Feed and Seed, taught him how and then trusted him enough to let him drive it unsupervised.

A mud splattered Silverado pickup truck was backed up to loading dock two. Tommy raised the blades and inched the pallet forward until it was suspended over the bed of the truck before he turned off the forklift. He climbed out of the driver's seat and hopped into the back of the truck. From the truck bed, he plucked the bags of grain, oats and cracked corn off the pallet, and stacked them neatly between the wheel wells.

When Tommy finished loading the grain, Horace Fisher, the owner of the truck, stepped out of the cab with his hand extended.

"Good job, Tommy, tell your stingy boss I said he needs to give you a raise," Fisher said jovially.

Tommy only hesitated a second as he shook Fisher's hand.

"I'll tell him that right away, Mister Fisher," Tommy replied with a grin of his own.

Tommy had hesitated before answering Fisher, because he was trying to figure out if Horace was joshing him or not. Tommy still had problems with figuring out when adults were serious or just kidding around.

Tommy checked the time on his cheap plastic Timex watch as Fisher drove off. It was five minutes before five in the afternoon, and Brantley Feed and Seed closed at five. Tommy pulled down both loading dock overhead doors, parked the forklift and disconnected the propane tank. Then he grabbed a broom and quickly cleaned up around the stacks of feed from which he'd been pulling bags. He swept everything up into a pile, scooped up the pile with a coal shovel, then dumped the sweepings into a twenty gallon trash can. Tomorrow, Mister Fricke would take the can home and scatter the dirt and feed mix around his chicken coop. Mister Fricke did not waste anything.

It was five after by the time Tommy pulled off his apron, hung it in his wall locker and picked a few stray hay straws off his Levis. He walked across the warehouse and passed through a double set of swinging doors into the showroom, then down a short hall to Mister Fricke's office. It was Friday, and this particular Friday was payday.

Mister Fricke waved Tommy into the office and pointed to the chair beside his desk while he finished taking a telephone order. Before he could sit down, the occupant of the other desk in the room stood up and hugged Tommy's neck. Fricke shot the breeze with his customer for another minute or two, before hanging up the phone. He picked a couple of envelopes off his desk blotter and handed one of them to Tommy.

"You are the best worker I've ever had, Tommy, business has picked up since you've been here, and much of that is because of how good you treat folks. The raise is me and Missus Rita's way of thanking you. Oh, and here is your customer service bonus, I had some good reports on you this week," Fricke said, handing over the other envelope.

The customer service bonus was only seven dollars, and was really just money people had given Fricke for Tommy, because Tommy absolutely refused to accept tips for doing what he was already getting paid to do.

Rita Fricke beamed him a big smile and ruffled his hair. Harold and Rita Fricke, for all practical purposes, adopted Tommy three months ago, when he showed up with the help wanted sign in his hand that Harold had just put on the outside of the front door. Harold Fricke had been leery about hiring the young man because of the halting way he spoke. Rita Fricke had no such problem, as everything about Tommy and the story he told them tugged at her heart strings. Tommy ended up filling a big void in their lives, since their own children had grown up and moved off to Dallas and Houston.

Tommy proved to be a tireless worker who needed little supervision. Harold or Rita simple gave him a list of things they wanted done, and Tommy made it happen. After he learned how the warehouse worked, Tommy started taking the initiative and the daily list grew shorter. Tommy also learned about the feed store's products and customers. His cheerful good nature was infectious.

Tommy walked out of the Feed and Seed, crossed the street, doffed his brown straw Stetson hat and entered the Brantley Savings and Loan Bank. He stopped at one of the courtesy tables and carefully filled out his deposit slip, then stood patiently in one of the teller lines. The bank stayed open until six on Friday evenings, and did a brisk business. The line Tommy was in wasn't the shortest, but the teller at the window was his landlady and mother of his best friend. Her name was Betty Lou Grimes.

"Good afternoon Mister Bledsoe, it slipped my mind that today was your payday," Betty Lou said with a smile.

"Good afternoon to you too, Missus Grimes," Tommy said, barely stuttering at all.

Tommy loved the way that his friend Bucky's mother talked to him. She never talked down to him or treated him like he was a dummy. Bucky didn't either, for that matter, but some other people sure did, including Bucky's older step sister. Of course, she never did it around Bucky or his Mom, and Tommy never ratted her out for it. How could he tattle on her when he was totally in love with the beautiful older girl?

Tommy completed his transaction at the bank and headed home. It was only a couple of blocks to the Grimes's house over on Spring Street. In 1969, in the sleepy little town of Brantley, Texas, pretty much everything was only a few blocks away.

Tom whistled the new Merle Haggard song that he'd been hearing on the radio lately as he walked home. He liked to whistle or sing, because the rhythm of it came effortlessly, unlike his speech. Tommy also reflected on the last three months as he swung down the sidewalk. Even a dummy like him knew how lucky he was when he jumped off that Greyhound bus in front of the Brantley Post Office. It seemed that good things just kept happening to him here.

For instance, on the bulletin board at the post office, he found a three by five index card with a neatly typed message. The card said:

Tommy pulled the card off the bulletin board, and after having to ask for directions twice, finally found the modest two-story home. When he rang the bell, the door was answered by a boy near his own mental age. The boy limped and had a brace attached to his right shoe that disappeared up his trouser leg. The brace was almost exactly like the one Tommy had worn for seven months when he first regained consciousness.

Back at Brantley Savings and Loan, Betty Lou was thinking along the same lines as she reconciled her drawer. Her spontaneous decision to take in the shy and soft-spoken young man was so completely out of character for her, that it defied logic. As a fairly young and attractive widow, she had always been very careful she didn't provide grist for the gossip mill. In fact, the boarder before Tommy had been a sixty-six year old spinster. At first there were some raised eyebrows, but once her neighbors met Tommy, their tune immediately changed. Tommy Bledsoe's indomitable spirit and gentle good nature in the face of all his adversity, won most folks over in one meeting.

Then there was the positive effect Tommy had on her son, Bucky. Well, his real name was Richard James Grimes, Junior, but Bucky was the nickname his father hung on him while he was still in the womb. Bucky had contracted polio at the age of two. As polio went, it was a mild case, but that was a moot point to a young boy who could only walk with the aid of a heavy duty brace. Bucky couldn't do most of the things boys his age did, so he became an unhappy loner. Tommy cured him of that attitude in less than a week. It was hard to feel sorry for yourself when you were exposed to a person who was worse off, but didn't let it get them down.

Betty Lou had been delighted when the Frickes took a chance and hired Tommy down at the feed store. Betty Lou and Rita talked almost every day when Rita came in to do the store's banking. She was as proud as if it were Bucky that Rita was bragging about. And why not? After all, she and Bucky considered him a member of the family within a week of his arrival. Tommy started eating every meal with them. He insisted on paying an extra fifteen dollars a week to help with the food. Also, at Tommy's insistence, she gave him chores like Bucky had. To Tommy, anything that gave him responsibility was a victory for him over those who thought he was hopelessly retarded.

The only friction that Tommy caused in the Grimes household was with Betty Lou's step-daughter, Regina. Regina was her deceased husband's daughter by his first wife. When Richard divorced his ex for running around on him, the ex was awarded custody of their infant daughter. When Regina was ten, the ex suddenly decided a child was too much trouble, so she gave Richard custody and disappeared. Regina was sixteen now, and a beautiful young lady. Unfortunately, she was also a stuck up snob. She oscillated between being embarrassed by Tommy, to lording it over him as if he were a servant. Betty Lou kept a close eye on Regina, so she didn't try to take advantage of Tommy. She knew that Tommy secretly mooned over Regina; he was too guileless to hide it very well.

For all his difficulties being a twelve year old boy in a twenty-four year old body, Tommy was as adaptable as a chameleon. He was talking and acting as if he'd been born and raised in Brantley by the end of his second month in town. If you didn't know him and you saw him walking down the street, you'd swear he was a cowboy fresh off the ranch.

Yes, Tommy was doing even better than he had expected in his most optimistic twelve-year-old moments. But there had been a few bumps along the way. One of those bumps was his sister. Beth was very concerned when Tommy called her and said he was staying in Texas for a while. After that call, Beth had tried to find a way to force him to return to his childhood home in Palmdale, Florida. She called the McCulloch County Sheriff, the Department of Veteran Affairs, and even Major Wilcox from Ward 4B at Brooke Army Medical Center. The VA determined that he was competent enough to make his own decisions. The sheriff knew Tommy was in excellent hands with Betty Lou Grimes and the Frickes.

It was a shock to Margie Wilcox to find that Tommy had jumped ship. The very next Saturday, she gathered up a young nurse new to the ward and drove over to Brantley to personally check on Tommy. She had a year and a half invested on ex-Lieutenant Bledsoe; he was a most special case.

Tommy only worked half a day on Saturday, so he was at home when the two nurses rang Betty Lou Grimes's doorbell that Saturday afternoon. Regina answered the door and left the women standing on the porch while she called for Tommy.

"Some one's at the door for you, Tommy. I think they are here to take you away," she yelled before flouncing into the living room.

Tommy came up the stairs from the basement with Bucky right behind him. At the same time, Betty Lou came dashing in from the kitchen. Regina's teasing hadn't really affected Tommy, but it had Betty Lou's undivided attention. She was just about to say something when Tommy gave a whoop and dashed out onto the porch.

The young nurse with Major Wilcox, Second Lieutenant Barbara Owens, went moon-eyed when a big handsome cowboy burst out the door. Her eyes grew even bigger when he snatched the Major off the ground in a big bear hug and spun her around. Introductions were sorted out and the two nurses ended up having a very pleasant visit with Betty Lou as she filled them in on how Tommy was doing. By the time the nurses bid Tommy, Betty Lou and her family goodbye, Margie Wilcox was convinced that Tommy was in the right place. She told her young protégé just that as they drove off.

"I think Tommy will do even better here than with his sister. I think his sister is too worried about something happening to him to let him blossom as he seems to be doing here," Wilcox mused.

Lieutenant Owens nodded her agreement.

"You are probably right about that. One thing I know for sure, though, is that is a terrible waste of a fine looking man."

Margie snorted in laughter.

"Take it from someone who has probably given him fifty sponge baths. It is a waste of a whole lot of good man."

The second bump in the road was actually caused by someone taking advantage of Tommy's immaturity and trusting nature. That someone was a no account cowhand named Walter 'Shifty' Luznar. Luznar was at the bank one payday Friday, and saw Tommy take a hundred dollars cash when he deposited his check. Since he just spent his last thirty dollars on a money order to pay a traffic fine he had hanging over his head, Shifty decided on the spot that he was just the person to help the dimwit spend all that cash.

Luznar hustled after Tommy as he left the bank and stopped him out on the sidewalk.

"Hey Tommy Boy, rein it in for a minute," Luznar twanged.

Tommy turned around and smiled when he saw it was a cowboy he recognized from the Trevino Ranch.

"Howdy Mister Luzzer," Tommy chirped happily.

Shifty kept the smile plastered on his face, even though it sounded as if the simpleton called him a loser.

"That's Luz-nar, boy, but hell, we're friends right, so call me Walt."

It only took a few minutes for fast talking Shifty to convince Tommy that it was a great idea for the two friends to head over to Dukes Place and shoot some pool. Tommy called home as soon as he arrived at Dukes. In the normal order of things, that should have ended Tommy's evening, because Betty Lou would have chivvied him home pronto. However, at that moment in time, Betty Lou was headed up Highway 271 with two fellow tellers from the bank. The three women were going to Brownwood to see the new Charlton Heston movie, Planet of the Apes. Regina was left in charge of the house, Betty Lou didn't dare say she was baby-sitting, or the boys would have had a fit.

Whatever Betty Lou called it, the results for Regina were the same. She was stuck home with her brother and his creepy idiot friend. Not only that, but she had to break a date with the dreamboat quarterback of the Brantley High School Panthers to do it. Regina was feeling sorry for herself and mad at the world when Tommy called.

"Gina, I'm goofing off with some friends," Tommy said.

"It's Regina to you, stupid. And no one cares where you are, anyway," Regina replied as she slammed down the phone.

So you can pretty much imagine how the evening went. Luznar poured the beer into Tommy while hustling the young man shooting pool. Tommy was having a grand old time, happily stupefied after only three beers.

About nine o'clock that night, Dooley Parker slipped into Dukes Place to pick up a pouch of Red Man. Dooley was checking out the crowd while he waited for old man Dukes to notice him, when he saw his good friend Harold Fricke's hired man. Tommy was drunker than a hootie-owl, sitting at a table with some cowboy and two rough looking women. Dooley knew all about Tommy and liked the boy, so he dropped a dime in the payphone and called Fricke's house. Rita Fricke answered the phone, because Harold was down at the VFW hall, calling bingo.

To say the news Dooley conveyed angered Rita Fricke was an understatement of Titanic proportions. Rita pressed the buttons on the top of the phone to break her connection with Dooley, then she spun Betty Lou's number on the rotary dial. Regina told Rita that her mother was at the movies in Brownwood, and wouldn't be in until after ten. She also said that Tommy was off with his friends somewhere. Rita mentally tsk-tsked the girls rudeness before dialing the VFW hall. Rita told the VFW Post's Sergeant at Arms what was happening and told him to tell Harold that she was on her way to Dukes.

Dukes Place was a rough and tumble cowboy bar. Bob Dukes let his patrons do pretty much as they pleased, as long as it wasn't something that would attract the law. Dukes did not see anything wrong with the conduct of Shifty and his boisterous friends, so he kept selling them beer and changing their dollar bills to quarters for the pool table and jukebox. As a matter of fact, that was just what Dukes was doing when a very concerned Rita Fricke pushed through the door.

Rita's eyes swept around the room, then narrowed to tiny slits when she saw sweet innocent Tommy sitting at a table with a Lone Star long neck in his hand and a skinny, forty-year-old, teased up, bottle blonde hussy perched daintily on his knee. Rita's mandibles crunched together and her jaw muscles knotted up when she saw Walter Luznar sitting at the table with an almost identical floozy. Rita spun on her heels and hot footed it back out to the feed and seed's pickup truck. She yanked open the drivers door, folded the seat back forward and extracted a mail order Sears and Roebuck, single shot, four-ten shotgun from a rifle rack mounted in the rear window. Rita broke open the barrel and plucked three loose rounds from the floor board. She stuffed a shell in the chamber, then expertly flipped the gun closed as she walked back across the dirt parking lot towards Dukes front door.

Rita Fricke was a medium sized woman in her middle forties. That night she was wearing a blue gingham dress with a white cardigan buttoned over it. Her brown hair had a few strands of grey, but her face was surprisingly youthful. To go with her good looks, Rita was normally a quiet and cheerful person. She'd been born and raised in Brantley, so most everyone knew her. However, most folks knew that sweet and proper Rita was ruthless, fearless and mean as a snake when it came to the well being of her family. Her second entrance drew much more attention than the first as she kicked the door open and marched in, toting the shotgun at port arms.

Who knows what might have happened if Harold Fricke and two of his fellow VFW members hadn't tumbled through the door a few seconds behind Rita. Harold managed to talk Rita out of the shotgun, but there was no way of stopping her from confronting Luznar and dragging Tommy out of the bar. Harold sighed and handed the shotgun to Mister Dukes.

"Hang on to this for me, Bob. I'll pick it up tomorrow," Harold told Dukes.

Rita, Howard and the two VFW men all walked back to the pool table. Tommy gave them a lop-sided grin of recognition when they walked up.

"Hello Miz Rita and Mister Harold, did you come in to shoot pool with me?" Tommy slurred drunkenly.

Rita gave him a gentle smile and shook her head.

"No Tommy, we came to take you home. Tomorrow is a work day, remember?"

Tommy muttered unintelligibly and started to stand up. The woman sitting on his lap stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"I have my car here, Tommy, so I can take you home a little later," she said.

Rita gave the woman a dirty look.

"Oh no, Honey, he is leaving with us. I suggest you get off his lap and make yourself scarce, before I lose what little grip I have on my temper and snatch you bald-headed," Rita said.

The woman's face blanched, and she hopped off Tommy's knee as if someone jabbed her with a cattle prod. She motioned to the other woman and they both hurried to the ladies room. Rita helped Tommy to his feet and walked the unsteady young man out of the bar. She left Walter Luznar for Harold and his buddies to sort out.

Walter Luznar also had the sudden urge to visit the little boys' room, when he saw the looks on the faces of Fricke and his pals. Shifty knew Harold Fricke from down at the feed store. Fricke was about six feet tall and stoutly built from years of tossing around feed sacks. The second man, a wiry, not very tall fellow with a ruddy complexion, Luznar did not know. He knew the third man, though, and that's why the urge to pee came on him. See, the third fellow was Benjamin Amos Crawford, the toughest hombre in at least four counties. Crawford was about six foot six and weighed almost three hundred pounds. He was barrel chested, had muscular arms bigger than Luznar's thighs, and hands the size of a twenty pound Virginia ham. At the moment, one of those big paws was resting heavily on Shifty's shoulder as Harold spoke.

"Give me my boy's money, Luznar. I ain't asking but once."

Luznar gulped and nodded emphatically.

"Sure Mister Fricke, I was just holding it for him anyway," Luznar said as he pulled a wad of crumpled up bills from his pocket.

Harold took the money and counted it. There were thirty seven dollars in the pile. Harold nodded to the smaller man.

"Make sure that's all he has, Ramon."

Ramon snapped open a leather case on his belt and pulled out a brass bound, rosewood handled Buck folding knife. He flicked open the knife one handed, and with a lightning fast motion, cut off the button that held the flap closed on Luznar's shirt pocket. Luznar sat there dumbfounded as Ramon reached into the pocket and pulled out a ten dollar bill. Harold took the money and hustled after Rita and Tommy, while Ben Crawford and Ramon Salazar escorted a babbling Shifty Luznar out of the bar.

Harold drove the feed store's pickup truck over to Betty Lou's house. Rita rode in the passenger seat as Tommy slept, sprawled out in the cargo box. The Frickes parked in the driveway and waited until Betty Lou returned home. Harold teased Rita about busting into the bar with a shotgun. Now that she was over being angry, Rita was embarrassed about it.

"I'll bet everyone in church will know about it by Sunday morning," she moaned.

The third incident was much more serious than the first two, although according to Tommy, it was worth all that happened. The incident occurred two weeks after the episode with Shifty Luznar. It happened at noon on a Wednesday while Harold and Rita were having lunch at the Bluebonnet Diner. On the second Wednesday of the month, liver and onions was the lunch special at the Bluebonnet.

Tommy and Juan Luna were holding down the fort while the Frickes were at the diner. Juan was the store's delivery driver. Tommy was helping Juan load a big order which was scheduled for delivery that afternoon. Tommy was checking off the loading ticket while Juan was out in his car eating, when a truck from the Y Knot Ranch backed into loading dock one. In the back of the truck was a young, nondescript, medium sized, mustard yellow dog. The dog wore a choke chain attached to a short piece of rope that was tied to the side of the truck bed. A cowboy climbed out of the cab and called out to Tommy.

"Hey, you got something for the Y Knot?"

Before Tommy could answer, one of the cats that scavenged around the store walked by the truck, and the dog jumped out of the truck after it. The problem was that the rope was too short for the dog to reach the ground. It hung there, its paws scrabbling for purchase against the side of the truck. Tommy was horrified when the cowboy started cursing and kicking the dangling dog instead of helping it. Finally, Tommy jumped off the dock and knocked the cowboy off his feet. With the cowboy out of the way, Tommy heaved the gasping dog back into the truck.

The ill-natured cowboy came off the asphalt swinging. Tommy was bigger and stronger than the cowboy, but only had the experiences of a twelve-year-old. Although he was game and got in a couple of solid licks, the cowboy was whipping him pretty good. When Tommy was too dizzy to get back up, the cowboy untied the dog and threw it out of the truck.

"You like him that much, you can have the piece of shit," the cowboy snarled as he climbed back into the cab.

Tommy was trying to get to his feet, the yellow dog licking his face, when Harold and Rita came screeching up in Rita's 64 Falcon convertible. Rita had already raised two rambunctious boys, so she was no stranger to scrapes and bruises. She had more trouble keeping Harold from running off to do something stupid to the cowboy, than she had treating Tommy. Rita wanted Tommy to stay in the office so she could keep an eye on him. He balked about it until she allowed him to bring the dog with him.

Tommy was crazy about that dog and the yellow dog returned the sentiment. Tommy named him Rex, because that was the name of the magnificent German Shepherd whose picture adorned the bags of Purina Dog Chow. There was nothing faintly regal about the young dog, but you sure couldn't prove that to Tommy. Tommy bought Rex a regular black leather collar and tossed the choke chain into the trash. He also bought a leash, but never had to use it. Rex turned out to be much smarter than he looked. It was uncanny the way he seemed to understand everything Tommy said to him. From that first day on, Rex and Tommy were inseparable.

So you can see that even with the rough spots, Tommy was living as good a life as was possible, given his circumstances. Even Tommy's sister Beth grudgingly agreed to that. Everyone was proud of Tommy and pleased at the way he had adapted. Tommy probably would have lived a perfectly adequate life, had he not met Ruth Silverman, the most disliked woman in McCulloch County.

Ruth Silverman discovered what all the experts at Brooke Medical Center had over looked. Yes, the shrapnel that ripped through Thomas Bledsoe's brain housing had erased anything that had happened to him after the age of twelve. The shrapnel and surgeries to remove it had also laid waste to Bledsoe's ability to learn, at least in the conventional manner. Yet the affected area was only about fifteen percent of his brain. The other eighty-five percent was just limping along and getting by. To Ruth Silverman, that was unacceptable.