Roadkill Justice E-Book

Terri Martin

• Herausgeber: Modern History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 236

Beschreibung

Featuring Yooper Woodswoman Nettie Bramble!
Nettie Bramble lives with her ma in Upper Michigan in a cabin that's slightly off the grid. She claims to "subsist" off the land and prefers to do so without the benefit of hunting or fishing licenses. Nettie is bound to have a clash or two with the local woods cop, CO Will Ketchum, and the chronically cranky Judge Nightshade. Most places that Nettie goes, her "citified" nephews, Wanton and Wiley, tag along to muddle up her plans. Nettie will meet up with Church Lady Bea Righteous, as well as Tami and Evi Maki (thrice-removed cousins) in an erratic road rally with a cash prize that brings out the worst in everyone. No spoiler alert for the surprise ending in this collection of short stories featuring a strong dose of the Yooper way.
"Terri Martin writes fast-paced little tales peppered with humorous disasters following one after another... If you live in the U.P., you'll have heard plenty of fish tales and hunting sagas from your outdoor friends. Some of them may be whoppers, but none as big as the ones Nettie Bramble tells."
-- Jon C. Stott, author of Yooper Ale Trails
"Roadkill Justice has to be among the funniest books I have ever read. Our heroine's ongoing battle with the law, the clever use of malapropisms and the caricature of a now-gone culture had me laughing several times on every page."
-- Bob Rich, author of Hit and Run
"Roadkill Justice's" unlikely heroine, Nettie Bramble, is rough-edged but 'big-hearted, with 'sisu' to spare. Author Terri Martin does a fantastic job of capturing the spirit and the spunk of the Northwoods character in a plot that sweeps her reader along, like a fast-running trout stream, on a delightful ride filled with twists, turns, laughter and the occasional explosion."
-- Nancy Besonen, author of Off the Hook

Leseprobe

Roadkill Justice: Featuring Yooper Woodswoman Nettie Bramble

Copyright © 2023 by Terri Martin. All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-61599-774-9 paperback

ISBN 978-1-61599-775-6 hardcover

ISBN 978-1-61599-776-3 eBook

Published by

Modern History Press

www.ModernHistoryPress.com

5145 Pontiac Trail

[email protected]

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

Tollfree 888-761-6268 (USA/CAN)

FAX [phone]

Distributed by Ingram Book Group (USA/CAN/AU/UK)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Dedicated to those Woodswomen (and men)

who live slightly off the grid.

Also by the Author

Children’s

The Home Wind (age 9+)

Voodoo Shack: A Michigan Mystery (age 8+)

Adult

Short Stories-Humor

Church Lady Chronicles: Devilish Encounters

High on the Vine: Featuring Yooper Entrepreneurs Tami & Evi Maki

Full Length Novel

Moose Willow Mystery

Contents

Hook, Line & Stinker

Roadkill Justice

Prom Bomb

Cross Wired

Left Dangling

Stinkhole Fishing

Road Rage Rally: Part I

In a Snit

Twisted-Tree Hideout

Turkey and the Law

Road Rage Rally: Part II

The Bramble Beast

Flying Blind

Banzai Bozo

Lucky Strike

Bramble Lake

About the Author

Hook, Line & Stinker

Me and Ma live off the land. That and her government check. My name’s Nettle Bramble, but folks call me Nettie for short and it just burns my kindling that a body’s gotta have a license to put food on the table. I call it substance living. My snooty sister, MarshMarigold, says it’s more like sub-standard living. Just because her husband, Tag Alder, has his own septic pumping business—he calls it Tag’s Honey Wagon—and makes a bundle out of sucking up folks’ you-know-what, doesn’t mean that using what God puts there for the taking isn’t a fair way to live. I’d much rather be in the woods or on a lake somewhere than to be driving that smelly ol’ truck around and charging folks to tear up their lawn and stink up the neighborhood.

Me and Ma have an outhouse and when the pit gets full, we fill in the hole and dig us a new one then move the outhouse over it. Not my favorite thing to do, mind you, but it smells a whole lot better’n that truck of Tag’s. He’s had a lot of complaints from the neighbors about parking the Honey Wagon in his driveway, so he’s been putting the thing in the gravel pit a ways from me and Ma’s cabin. Tag pays Ma with a few bottles of hooch for the deal.

What croaks my goat is that I gotta get a license to catch a fish or take down a critter for supper. Might as well go to a fancy restaurant and have someone else do the catching and cleaning for what a license costs. Well, maybe I mean what a license would cost if I bothered to get one, which I don’t. Not that I don’t strictly abide by the rules of the woods and water. I only take what is plentiful and eat what I take. Mostly.

Can’t say the same for my sister’s two brats, Wanton and Wiley, who get a plate of food then commence to waste half of it. The Alder clan showed up just as I was getting ready to go fishin’ wanting me and Ma to sit the two boys for a weekend while she and Tag went off on some lovey dovey trip where I figure they don’t want their whiny kids around. Ma tolerates her grandsons because they’re family plus the older one favors my pa—rest in peace—and that makes Ma a little soft on him. What it boils down to is that Ma squirms out of it and leaves the babysitting to me. But I go along with it because I’ve been trying to turn my wimpy nephews into real boys.

“Eeewww!” Wiley, the younger one squealed at the idea of digging up worms. Now most boys (and some girls, too) just love crawling around in the dirt looking for worms, which is what you gotta do before you go pole fishing at the creek. When I use my rod and reel, I prefer Circus Peanuts and pork fat for bait, but for catching a couple of catfish, which are your bottom feeders, you need a fishpole and worms. No way am I paying for worms any more than I’m paying for a fishin’ license, so I sent the boys out behind the shed to dig up some crawlers. Ma promised to fry up the fish for us if we had any luck. You’d a thunk I sent my girly nephews out to bury a body or something the way they dragged butt. So I went to show ’em how it’s done and maybe play a little trick too.

“See, boys, you just put the shovel metal part pointing at the ground and push with your foot,” I said. Lord, they didn’t even know what the business end of a shovel was. The older one managed to dig up a few inches of dirt before saying he was tuckered out.

“Ya know, Wanton—and you too, Wiley—I didn’t want to tell yous before, but I’ll let you in on a secret. I heard that folks are getting a lot of gold nuggets out of the creek by huntin’ for them with a fishpole and worms. Story is that my grandpa caught enough gold outa the creek to buy up this land me and Ma live on!”

“Yeah?” said the younger one.

“Uh huh,” I said. “Your granny and me have been waiting for some smart fellas like you boys to help us get more nuggets outa the creek and we can split up the money they bring. You wouldn’t need to go to school anymore ’cause you’d be rich.”

“But I like school,” said the older one.

“Me too,” said the younger one.

“That so? Well you’d be smart and rich then!”

“Yeah!” Wanton said digging with more enthusiasm. “I’ll buy an ATV.”

“Me too,” Wiley said, dropping to his knees to inspect the clumps of dirt. “There’s some worms in here, Aunt Nettie!”

“Well, get them out and put them in the cans and we’ll head to the creek to catch us some gold nuggets.”

Lickety-split we had us a couple of coffee cans full of fat nightcrawlers and was headed down the two-track road to the creek. Normally when I go to the creek, I try to move along quiet so’s not to draw attention to myself, being without a license and all. But the boys were excited about finding gold and they made a lot of racket and that attracted unwanted attention from the local conservation officer, Will Ketchum. CO Ketchum is what you would call over-zealous about his job. He’s related to my sister through her marriage to his (Ketchum’s) cousin’s brother-in-law, Tag Alder. But relation or not he doesn’t care who he arrests and drags to court. I heard he threw his granny in jail for having one too many bluegills in her catch.

“Mornin’ Nettie. Boys,” Ketchum said as he appeared out of nowhere and stood with hands on hips while he glared at us.

My nephews screamed and threw their fishpoles and bait up in the air.

“Nice day,” Ketchum added.

Wanton and Wiley just stared at Ketchum in his spiffy uniform and shiny badge.

“Wow!” said Wanton. “Are you the cops? We can keep the gold can’t we?”

“Gold?” Ketchum said.

“Oh, these boys,” I chuckled. “We were just going to the creek to, er, fish for gold.”

“Yeah,” Wiley said. “Gold nuggets!”

“That so?” Ketchum said, looking down at his fingernails.

“Sure,” I said. “Babysitting my nephews here and just trying to keep them from burning the woods down. Heh heh.”

“Fishing for gold?”

“You betcha,” I said.

“With cane fishpoles and buckets of worms?”

“Well, I told ’em you could catch gold by fishing with the pole,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth so’s the boys didn’t hear. “They’re city boys and believe anything.”

“And you weren’t expecting a fish or two to maybe glom onto your, er, gold bait?”

“Well sir, now that you mention it, I did tell the boys that if that did happen, we had to let the fish go right away because it was illegal to fish without a license. But you don’t need a license to fish for gold, do you?”

Ketchum frowned and I could tell that I had him there.

“I promise we’ll throw any fish back that we might accidentally catch. I’m just keeping these boys busy so’s they stay outa trouble,” I said.

“You still need a fishing license, girlie,” Will said. “You got the fishing gear. I could confiscate it and write you up. I don’t think Judge Nightshade would be at all happy to see a Bramble in his courtroom.”

Judge Nightshade, who’d been the local judge ever since I could remember, was known for having a small, hard heart. Between him and Ketchum, I was always walking on thin ice. Hizhonor didn’t care for us Brambles. Come to think of it, he didn’t care for much for anybody, so it was natural to avoid going before him.

“But,” said Ketchum with a shrug, “I got three boys of my own—the wife says she has four boys because I never grew up, har har. I know what you’re up to Bramble, but I’m not gonna look like some big jerk in front of your nephews there and take away your stuff.” He glanced over at Wanton and Wiley who were collecting the worms that had spilled out of the cans. “I know that PR is part of the job, so I’ll let you off this time. But you need to find some other way to, ah, fish for gold. Use an old pie pan or something and pretend that way.”

I tried not to let Ketchum see how glad I was with the news.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll find some other way to, ah, fish for nuggets and keep these two hooligans out of the slammer. Heh heh.”

“See that you do,” Ketchum said, and just like a whitetail buck, he vanished into the woods.

“Okay boys,” I yelled. “We gotta go back to the cabin and get us some other way to fish for gold.”

“Aw gee, Aunt Nettie,” they both whined.

* * *

I found it wasn’t much different driving a big septic truck than my regular truck. Just a few more gears, plus the brakes were different and the mirrors were weird, and there’s a bunch of gauges that look broke, and some buttons. I tried a few, and the windshield wipers and four-ways came on. There were some levers and a pump switch and other things on it that I didn’t have a clue about. And you can’t see what’s behind you so the rig beeps when you put ’er in reverse, which is what we did when we got the Honey Wagon to the creek. The boys gave me the idea and it seemed like a good one. Made me proud. It was the youngest who said that the Honey Wagon could suck up a zillion gallons of sewage in fifteen minutes. Got me to thinking how if we sucked up some of that creek water, we’d get some fish along with it. Then we’d just go ahead and pump her out on shore and pick out our supper. Of course I promised the boys we’d find us a bunch of gold nuggets and take our loot into the ATV dealership so’s Wanton could have his four-wheeler. Maybe when the boys weren’t looking, I’d throw a couple of coins around to encourage them.

Once the Honey Wagon was backed up to the creek, we had to get the hose out and push it a ways into the water. My brother’n law didn’t clean things up too good after he did his last job and it smelled like a dead skunk in the middle of August. It was Wanton who showed me how to open the sucking thing and turn on the pump. Said he learned about it on take your kid to work day. Anyhow, that part went okay—the sucking.

“So what do we do now?” I asked Wanton.

“Dunno,” the boy said. “Dad always drives the truck somewhere to dump it. He didn’t show me that part because I had lacrosse practice after school. Plus he doesn’t dump it every time. I think he goes to some treatment lagoon or something.”

“Maybe we should go back to the gravel pit,” I said, squinting at the gauges. I looked at the one telling me how full the tank was. It might have been broken though because it was way past full. If it was even half full of fish, we’d have enough to last all winter! I’d maybe slip the boys each a root beer and get them agreeable to learn about cleaning fish. Except the youngest one jumped the gun. Before we could get the hose all back on the truck and head to the gravel pit, Wiley messed with some lever and we heard a loud whooshing sound like when Pickle Dam busted and let go so much water that it filled up the gravel pit and washed away our outhouse.

“Turn it off you dummy!” yelled the older one to his brother.

But Wiley got scared at the gallons of creek water that was pouring out of the hose onto the bank. And it wasn’t just creek water. You could see them flushable wipes, like MarshMarigold has in her toilet room, swirling around all over the place in a foamy mess, mixing in with doo-doo and whatnot. It came so fast that I was almost swept off my feet and had to climb a tree. Wanton jumped up onto a truck tire to get out of the way, but Wiley wasn’t so lucky and the boy got knocked down into the swirl and was being carried off in the current.

I knew my sister would have my hide if anything happened to her kid, so I scrambled down outa the tree and grabbed the boy. He looked like a mini swamp thing from a late-night movie.

Finally the stuff quit coming and slowed to a trickle. Most went into a ravine next to the woods, some into the creek, and some just oozed around the truck in a sludgy puddle.

Wanton jumped down from the tire he was standing on and started to wade through the goo.

“What are you doing!” Wiley shrieked. He was standing with his arms out, afraid to move. A chunk of something nasty dripped off the back of his head.

“I’m looking for gold nuggets, you dummy,” Wanton snarled.

Then Wiley started wailing and calling for his ma. I grabbed him and headed towards the creek to wash him up.

“Hey! Here’s one,” Wanton yelled.

I drug Wiley over there and looked. It was a bright, shiny fishing lure.

“Good for you, kid. You got something there,” I said. Wanton was grinning ear-to-ear.

“Hey! Here’s a nugget! Look Aunt Nettie,” Wiley squealed.

The boy held up a shiny pebble that was probably quartz. “You’re right there kiddo. Looks gold to me.”

“Wow!” he said. “Cool.”

Wasn’t a dang fish to be found, but we had a couple of small ticked off snapping turtles and a bunch of bloodsuckers squirming around in the goop. We dug out a couple of bucks worth of empty beer cans, a flip flop, a busted fishpole, two more lures, three bobbers, a duck decoy head, a wallet (empty), a cap, three socks, a chain from a bicycle, a broken jackknife, and a buck fifty in change that were mostly coins I’d scattered around.

“Let’s get to the creek and wash up,” I said to the boys, “then we’ll see about getting back to the cabin and we won’t tell granny about this. We’ll just tell her we got skunked fishing.” I gave the boys a little wink and nudge to seal the deal.

“Skunked?” Wanton said. “Like sprayed by a skunk?”

“Nope, though we kinda smell like that,” I said. “It means we didn’t catch any fish. Now get over here and wash up.”

We got ourselves rinsed off pretty good and I was just trying to figure out what to tell Ma about how the boys got wet when ol' Ketchum does his magic act and just steps out of the woods and stares at the sludge puddle surrounding the Honey Wagon. He said something bad and started looking around.

“Duck!” I hissed at the boys.

We all pinched our noses and went under for as long as we could. When we come up I hear Ketchum saying more bad words and see him writing down the license plate of the Honey Wagon.

“I know you did this, Bramble,” he yelled, looking around. “This here’s an environmental disaster!”

Me and the boys ducked back under again and when we popped back up, Ketchum had vanished.

“Wow Aunt Nettie, this was the coolest thing we’ve ever done!” said the youngest.

“Yeah!” said the oldest. “First we get slimed, then find a bunch of treasure and almost get thrown in prison by the cops! Wait ’til we tell Mom.”

“Well, now boys, if we want to keep having—er, fun, we can’t go blabbing to your ma or pa,” I said as we all crawled up the steps into the cab of the truck. I got her started and spun the wheels a tad before we could get going.

“I’m thinking ’specially your pa don’t need to know we took the truck out for our, um, fishing trip.”

“Okay,” the boys said, nodding and smiling.

“We all just went cane fishing and come up with nothing but had fun and if Ketchum don’t take your pa’s truck away, maybe we can try again to get more treasure.”

“Awesome,” said the oldest. “Can we come over again real soon, Aunt Nettie?”

“Of course,” I said. Give me a couple more visits and I’d have two real boys for nephews.

We were mostly dry when we clomped into the cabin.

“Ya have you a good time” Ma said. “Where’s my catfish?”

The boys give her a good hug and say we got skunked.

Ma give the air a sniff and said, “smells like ya got skunked all right!”

“Nah,” said the oldest. “Me and Wiley fell into the creek.”

“Just being boys,” I said. I was real proud how quick my nephew could spin a tale.

Ma cackled like she does when she’s had a little hooch.

“Now go out back at the pump and wash up,” she said. “We’ll have us some forest stew for supper.”

“Oh boy!” yelled my nephews as they raced out the door.

“Forest stew?” I said.

“Sure,” Ma said, reaching for her pocketbook. “Here’s ten bucks. Go get a pound of hamburger from the likker store. I’ll throw in some ruttabeggar and onions.”

I took the money and headed for my truck.

“Nettie?”

“Yeah, Ma?”

“Take yer truck, not the Honey Wagon, eh? I ’spect it gets better mileage.”

Nothing gets past Ma.

Roadkill Justice

Let me make this clear, I don’t poach. Not deer, geese, rabbits or even eggs in boiling water. What I did was an act of environmental responsibility, even though the district conservation officer, Will Ketchum, says otherwise. Ketchum says he caught me red-handed loading up a deer carcass into the bed of my truck, which I will point out isn’t easy for one gal to do by herself. Anyhow, it was clear as Lake Superior on a sunny day that the thing had been mowed over and I know by who, or whom.

Whatever.

It was them Maki boys, Toivo and Eino, who, way after the fact, claimed the deer was theirs legally since they ran it over. When Ketchum asked why they didn’t call the police to get a roadkill permit, they hemmed and hawed, saying they was going to, but just didn’t get around to it when they ran home to get a tarp (obviously to cover the evidence!). Then, says the Makis, when they come back, I was loading up the deer and ’bout scared them outa their skivvies when I pulled a gun and told them to back off. Now Will Ketchum and I both know that those Maki boys didn’t call the law for a roadkill permit because of the large quantity of empties banging around in their piece of junk truck, which incidentally is no way street-legal, and you could smell the cheap beer coming off them into the next county. Anyhow, as far as I’m concerned, roadkill is finders’ keepers, even though those Maki boys say otherwise.

So, CO Ketchum gets all bossy, strutting around writing me up a ticket for illegal possession of a deer. Something about possession being nine-tenths of the law, but I guess that is only for persecuting me, because even though I possessed nine-tenths of the critter (with the other tenth being impossible to scrape up), Ketchum took the carcass for what he called evidence. He did let go the fact that I pulled my shotgun on the Makis, since any gal with half a brain would be looking for the nearest weapon when meeting up with those two bums. What really toasted my marshmallows was that he gave the Makis what he called an appearance ticket and said nothing about them having a few and driving on expired everything under the sun, moon, and stars, including their NRA membership cards. And then the two butt-cheeks were still saying it’s their deer, and Ketchum says it belongs to the State of Michigan, not none of us. I point out I’m a citizen of the Yooper part of Michigan and got some legal claim to that deer and other critters roaming the forest. Will said not according to the law and then he wrote me up a ticket for illegal possession of the deer, and that far as he was concerned, that we could all “tell it all to the judge.”

Which we did.

Judge Nightshade fit his gloomy name perfect. He was pale gray, like he’d never seen the sun, and his chin skin hung in folds over the collar of his black judge’s robe in a kind of fleshy waterfall. I wasn’t sure what he had perched on his head—it looked like the pelt of a varmint. And a live one at that because it kept creeping forward making Hizzoner reach up and shove it back up off his forehead.

Anyway.

At first, I laughed when Judge Nightshade reminded Toivo and Eino Maki that he had warned them in the past that he never, ever wanted to see their sorry hides in his courtroom again, and that if his (Nightshade’s) wife, Rosemary, wasn’t a five-times removed cousin of his (Toivo’s) wife, Tami, he’d throw the book at them (Toivo and Eino). When I suggested that it seemed all us Yoopers were somehow related and maybe Hizzoner could go easy on a gal just trying to clean up a mess on the highway, Nightshade banged his gavel and told me I was out of order and said, “I’ll get to you, young lady.” I remember when Ma used to call me young lady, and it didn’t bode well.

CO Will Ketchum come out smelling like a fresh-baked pasty and Nightshade told him to dispose of the deer properly. In no uncertain terms would the animal be distributed to any of us who were giving him indigestion and possibly forcing him to consider early retirement. Ketchum said that the carcass was at Tribal Taxidermy being processed and that the meat could go into the foodbank freezer. Since I was a regular customer of the foodbank, I had to smile because I was thinking I might get some of that venison after all.

But I didn’t smile for long when ol’ Nightshade turned his attention to me.

“Now then, missy, you got caught red-handed with an illegal deer. We can’t let that pass, even if it was roadkill. You can of course go to jail for a few days; we got some room in the women’s cellblock. Or maybe you got $500 to pay the usual fine? I could order both, but I’ll let you do one or the other.”

I considered my options, which I thought were kind of harsh. I didn’t have two nickels to rub together let alone five-hundred smackeroos, and I couldn’t go to jail because of Ma, who would probably burn the cabin down if I wasn’t there to keep an eye on her. Or she could go live with my sister, which would be like putting a badger and a tiger in the same pen and telling them to get along. I swallowed hard, trying not to look scared. I could feel the sweat trickle down my back.

“What else you got, yer Honor?” I said, trying to look remorseful and wondering if I should try blackmail. Everyone knew that Nightshade had a wandering eye. Everyone except his wife. In fact, his eye wasn’t the only part of his anatomy that wandered, and I knew some juicy details. But I figured it wasn’t the time to pull that ace out of the hole and maybe it would backfire anyhow. I wouldn’t put it past Nightshade to legalize the gas chamber just to shut me up.

Hizzoner glared at me over the top of his cheater glasses thinking about what wicked thing to do to me. I figured it was mostly bluster, just to put a show on for the people who hadn’t gone in front of him yet; let them shake in their mukluks a little.

“Well,” he said, shuffling papers on his bench. “Maybe there is another option.” He shuffled some more papers. “Where’d I put that? Sara! Where’s the dang paper from those community do-good people?”

A lumpy woman wearing a rumpled black suit scurried up to him and pointed to something on his bench. “That’s Citizens for Community Outreach, Your Honor. Right here, um, in front of you.”

“Oh yes. Well, Miss, er Bramble,” said Nightshade, “it seems you are in luck. You have a third choice! We call it community service. It’s for people who are just starting out their life of crime.”

I had never considered myself a budding career criminal but thought the idea of some do-good act was better than jail time. I plastered on a smile and tried to look sorry. “So, like do yous want me to shovel the sidewalk in front of the courthouse on my way out?” I asked. “I could even scatter some salt. Maybe help a little old lady like Sara there down the steps and across the street to the liquor store?”

“Oh no,” Nightshade said with a sneer. “Says here they need someone to help out at the Gnarly Woods Senior Complex with some kind of thing called...” He put his glasses back on and squinted at the paper. “Sara! What in tarnation is this?”

Sara peered over his shoulder. “Wrinkle Ranch Rock and Roll Prom Bomb, Your Honor.”

“What on God’s green earth is that all about?”

“It’s all in the name, sir. A prom for the old folks, although I find the term wrinkle ranch in poor taste. Anyway, they dance to an oldies band, dress all up in fancy clothes, have a special dinner, drink—a lot. It’s at the Gnarly Woods Senior Complex. Remember, Sir? You and your wife went last year and crowned the king and queen. It was actually two queens because—”

“Right, right,” he sputtered. “Now I remember. It was ghastly!”

He mumbled something under his breath sounding like “not enough booze in the world,” then peered down at me as if I were a glob of pond scum. The side of his mouth twitched.

“Well, Miss Bramble, it seems we’ve found your redemption.”

I was thinking that jail sounded okay. Three meals a day, a nice warm cell, electricity and running water (two things my cabin lacked), and probably a TV in the rec area. Maybe my Perfect Sister could watch out for Ma who would behave herself if you made sure she had her special medicine.

“Well, I was thinking—” I began.

Nightshade slammed his gavel and bellowed, “You should have done your thinking before you loaded up that roadkill. I sentence you to report immediately to, er, Sara, what the hell does this say?”