Fiction by Eli Allen

Eli Allen is a writer from rural Mississippi who is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of San Francisco. His writing is interested in the types of characters, stories, and oddities that are unique to the Deep South. 

Ronnie’s Blues

or Why Ronnie Boo Is in Jail

Ronnie Boo shot Lindie Morton in the face, but that’s not why he’s in jail.

He got off on self-defense because Lindie was over at his camper trailer when it happened, and you know he had all them cats, probably fifty cats, coming and going because there was no way to stop them ever since the back wall of his trailer burned out,

and old Lindie is known to kidnap people’s cats and taxidermy them, but even though they couldn’t say for sure which of those cats she was wanting to taxidermy or even whether Ronnie was its rightful owner, she was the one trespassing, and they handcuffed her right there, shot face and all,

which was good news for Ronnie Boo because he was already out on bail from the time he got caught stealing Goose Fowler’s side-by-side the night of Halloween, which if he’d known it was Halloween, he might’ve waited another night so’s to not be seen by trick-or-treaters, but Ronnie Boo grew up going to Pine Crest Baptist so of course he never dressed up for Halloween when he was young, plus he’s from out in the country where nobody trick-or-treats anyhow, so it never crossed his mind to wait, and they busted him and took him to the county jail,

where his bail was set at twenty-thousand, but the bondslady up there was way behind on her alimony, so she agreed to get him out for just six-hundred, which I paid even though it was

more than I had, but I figured he needed a favor because if he hadn’t bonded out right then, they would have realized he was already out on parole from when the sting operation had tricked him into showing up at the Big Lots with a lunchbox full of dope,

which I heard he was selling on commission for Deuce Lawson’s oldest boy, name of Trey, who is some kind of bad news, but because the cops had confiscated all that dope, Ronnie still owed Trey, so after he got bailed out, he went back and stole Goose’s side-by-side again on a night that wasn’t Halloween, and he gave it to Trey as payment for the dope,

but the side-by-side was worth so much that it couldn’t be sold, and Trey didn’t know what to do with it, so he traded it right back to Ronnie Boo for Ronnie’s old Honda Rebel motorcycle, you know the one that liked to explode when he revved it up too much, and I was happy about that since he would always ride it around here real loud late at night when he was up on dope,

but then Ronnie Boo had no motorcycle, just the stolen side-by-side, which was real nice but not very practical, and he needed a way to get to work, so for a while, he was riding with his ex-girlfriend Jill Peel because they both worked construction for her daddy, Bill Peel, but then Jill got arrested for dog-fighting, and I mean just betting on it, not participating in it, and that’s when things started to go downhill for Ronnie Boo,

because then he got rubbed up in some bad business with this guy Frank Avery from Texas who took Ronnie out on a job to pull up some old railroad track to sell for scrap, said he’d been digging up the rail line for two states already, but what Frank had thought was public land= turned out to be owned by the county, which I guess is the same thing if you think about it, and the deputy sheriff saw them digging up that track, and he run after them boys halfway to Neshoba, but they was riding in Frank’s suped-up S10 pickup, which even though it didn’t look fast, it was, so they got away, but Ronnie knew the deputy had recognized him, and he knew the law would come for him soon,

so he said he’d go to China, because they don’t extradite, and I don’t know about that, but I told him, I said Ronnie Boo, first thing you’re gonna do is you’re gonna need to get yourself a passport, and to get a passport, you’re gonna need an I.D. plus a utility bill with your name on it, but since he was spliced into the county’s electricity by way of the telephone pole, he hadn’t paid utilities in some time, and he didn’t have an I.D. or the money to get one, even though it’s just ten bucks, which I reckon is less than a plane ticket to China, so he said okay fine,

he’d go by boat, and Ronnie Boo, I told him, I said listen to me Ronnie Boo, either way if it’s a plane or a boat, you won’t get to no China so long as you’re on bail and parole, and he was disappointed, I could tell because he said he’d been trying to do good, and I think he meant it, but he said if he couldn’t get to China,

maybe he’d try Alabama, so he rode with Frank Avery in that suped-up S10 pickup to Woodstock, digging up railroad track along the way, and then Ronnie Boo got a real job up there at the lumberyard and saved some money, and he got him a little truck and moved his camper trailer up there and had a place to keep it on the land of some kin or some friends of kin, I don’t

 know who, and he would call me once in a while,

and he told me he was clean, and he seemed to be doing real good, but when you cut cards with Ron and you get a three, he’ll get a two, you know what I mean, I mean when things is going good for Ronnie Boo, they don’t stay that way for long.