A Woman Named Dixie by Leroy B. Vaughn
A Woman Named Dixie by Leroy B. Vaughn
The waitress stopped wiping the counter, as she watched the old pickup truck that had just pulled up to the front of the diner in Sunizona, Arizona. It was not unusual to see drifters in this part of the state, she thought to herself as the tall thin man with the pony tail and earrings exited the truck and walked to the front door of the diner.
“Howdy,” the waitress said as she looked at the stranger. The stranger returned the greeting and sat down at the counter.
Before she could hand him a menu, he asked for a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie. “Where you headed for,’ she asked, as she poured the coffee.
“I’m not sure,” he told her. “Maybe Tucson. I don’t know Arizona, so I’m just kinda looking around.”
She saw the Louisiana license plate on the front of the truck and asked how old the truck was. He told her that it was thirty years and it ran like Jack the bear.
She wasn’t sure how fast Jack the bear was, or who or what it was and she didn’t say anything else about the truck.
The waitress introduced herself as Dixie and he said his name was Kevin. Kevin did not appear to be in a hurry, so they talked for over an hour before another customer came into the diner.
After she served the customer his meat loaf sandwich, she mentioned to Kevin that the man at the tire shop at the edge of town was looking for help.
He thanked her for the information and told her he would check it out, before he asked for the check.
She said, “It’s on the house. Just come back and let me know if you take the job.”
The man that ran the tire shop told him he paid ten bucks an hour for a tire buster, and if Kevin wanted the job he could sleep in the attic above the shop. There was a cot and hot plate up there, if he needed it.
The next day, Kevin went back to the diner and told Dixie that he would be working at the tire shop. She told him that would be great and she hoped to see him around town. “I’m sure you will, there doesn’t appear to be much in this town,” he replied.
“There is a little action all you have to do is find it,” she told him, followed by a sly wink.
She met him after work on the third day, and took him to a parking lot behind an old abandoned store and gave him one hell of a screwing, just like she told him she would.
Kevin didn’t ask, but he assumed that she was older than him. She was older by almost fifteen years, but she looked good for her age. Kevin was twenty-five, and not too bright. Dixie didn’t care she liked younger men and didn’t need conversation. Her girlfriends knew that she was ‘A slave to the tool’.
On their fourth date, they went to a saloon in Elfrida and danced and drank beer until closing time.
On the way back to Sunizona, Kevin asked why she didn’t invite him to her house. She replied, “Silly boy, my husband wouldn’t like that too much.”
After a few minutes, she told him that she was on husband number three and he was a complete dud. He was a drinker and he couldn’t get it up. Her husband suspected that she was cheating on him, but she didn’t care she was going to dump him soon.
Kevin had been at the tire shop for four months now and the boss liked his work. The boss knew Dixie. It was a small town and there weren’t too many secrets. He hinted around to Kevin to be careful, Dixie went through men like there was no tomorrow.
Kevin was spared the rest of the lecture, when a man driving a two-tone jalopy pulled up to the shop. The boss told Kevin to take care of this ‘shit-bird’. The man went to the trunk and pulled out a tire with a large metal screw in it.
It only took about five minutes for Kevin to fix the tire, but the Mexican man with a blue bandanna tied around his head gangster style wanted to talk. The man was wearing a sleeveless tee shirt and baggy work pants.
Kevin watched as the man pointed to the fields around Sunizona and told Kevin, “This was all my people’s land at one time. This was the Apacheria, the land of my people the Apache.”
The man paid Kevin for the repair and got into his jalopy and drove away. As he pulled onto the highway, the boss looked at Kevin and stated, “That shit-bird is one hell of a liar. He’s a Chicano from East Los Angeles. The only Apache he’s ever seen was in cowboy movies.”
That night after they made love in the back seat of her car, Dixie told Kevin that she wanted to rent her spare bedroom out to him.
“What about your old man,” Kevin wanted to know.
“What about him. He’s a drunk and he can’t get it up, so screw him and the horse he rode in on. I call the shots at my house,” she informed him.
The next day Dixie gave Kevin a quicky in the kitchen of the diner, after she closed up. She told him, “Give me two hours, and then you come to the house and I’ll tell the hubby that you’re going to rent our spare room.” Kevin had no way of knowing that she had done this with her second husband, and that was how the third husband moved into her house.
Kevin had never been further north than the diner, but Dixie told him the house was easy to find. “Just go north on highway 191 until you stop at the Border Patrol checkpoint. Go through the checkpoint and turn right on Kansas Settlement Road. It’s the first farm house on the right. I’ll leave the floodlight on for you.”
Her husband suspected what she was up to and he didn’t care. He was planning on leaving her soon, but he hadn’t told her yet.
After the first two days Kevin and the husband hit it off well. Her husband didn’t object when Dixie announced to both of them that Kevin was moving into her room, and her husband would be moving into the guest room.
Two months later Dixie and Kevin came home and found her husbands room empty. He had gone to Douglas to live with his sister.
Kevin had been hitting the malt liquor a little heavier than usual, and Dixie warned him that he needed to keep the sex up. She told him that was why she was with him.
One day at work a customer stopped at the shop to buy a used tire. He was on his way to McNeal to try to sell a revolver. Kevin looked at the single action cowboy gun and said, “Isn’t that the same model that Sylvester Stallone used in the Expendables”?
“That’s the one” the man said, as he asked, “You wanna buy it”?
Kevin suspected that the gun was stolen, but the price was right so he bought it. He wouldn’t bother to show it to Dixie. They were growing further apart, and Kevin was drunk almost every night now.
The man gave him a box of .45 rounds with the gun, and after work Kevin took the revolver over to the town dump and shot a few rats, and some empty malt liquor cans that he took from the floorboard of his truck.
Kevin had been living with Dixie for a year now, and they had married as soon as her husband’s divorce came through.
A few days after Kevin bought the revolver, Dixie brought a stranger home. He looked like a biker with long hair and a big earring in one ear, but he was driving a Jeep.
“Kevin this is Tim, he will be renting our spare room,” Dixie announced, as Kevin stood up to shake hands. He could see that Tim didn’t look very comfortable and Kevin knew the real reason Tim was there.
A few nights went by after Tim moved in, and Kevin noticed that Dixie smelled like sex when she returned home from work.
One night Kevin was sitting in his favorite chair when Tim and Dixie walked into the living room, and Dixie announced that she was going to Elfrida with Tim to go dancing.
It was getting late and Kevin was on his seventh can of malt liquor. He was siting on the front porch with his cowboy gun on the little table in front of him covered with a newspaper.
He heard the Jeep as it pulled onto the property. Dixie and Tim were both laughing as the Jeep came to a halt. Dixie approached Kevin while Tim stood a few feet behind her. She said, “Kevin, Tim and I want to talk to you.”
“Okay, talk away,” Kevin said as he pulled the cowboy gun out from under the newspaper.
“Hey, is that real,”? Tim asked, before Dixie told him to put the gun away. She was scared now.
Kevin stood up, pointed the gun at Tim and fanned the hammer, just like Sylvester Stallone did in the movies and shot Tim three times in the chest from four feet away.
The Border Patrol checkpoint was less than one mile from Dixie’s house and the agents at the checkpoint looked in that direction when they heard three shots.
Dixie screamed, “Don’t shoot me Kevin,” before he shot her twice in the chest. The agents at the checkpoint saw the muzzle flash this time and one of the agents picked up the telephone and dialed 911.
His partner jumped into the patrol car and yelled, “I’ll head for the house and wait down the road until the sheriff arrives, to back him up.”
Kevin sat back down and took a long gulp of his malt liquor. He saw the lights on the patrol car turn on at the check point and reloaded his revolver.
He was in his chair drinking another malt liquor when the deputy sheriff skidded his patrol car onto Dixie’s property, followed by the Border Patrol agent.
The deputy and the agent met behind the door of the deputy’s car and watched as Kevin slowly placed the barrel of the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.
THE END
Copyright Leroy B. Vaughn 2021
