Chapter 4
Jody was twisting a strap of leather around two pieces of wood forming a cross to mark Bones' grave, down on her hands and knees in the dirt, when the sound of tires crunching on gravel sent her bolting to her feet. A black Cadillac followed by a pick-up truck pulled up in front of the house and Arnold Pigson climbed out of the pick-up and strutted to the steps, followed by two reservation officials. She brushed the hair from her eyes and sprinted toward the house, meeting them at the screen door near the front porch.
"Miss Powers," the reservation official closest to the the door said stiffly. "I'm afraid we're gonna have to come in to search your house."
"S-search the house? For what?" Jody was agog with astonishment. "So you've decided to try to find some evidence after all...."
Pigson swatted a fly from his nose and said grimly. "We gotta search the house, but it ain' got nothin' to do with your complaint."
Jody kept a stiff upper lip, perching her hands on her hips, glowering at the men through the mesh screen door. "What now? I don't know what you're talking about."
The reservation official stepped forward. "Somebody's been selling the Indians peyote. There's a bunch of 'em now up at the reservation in what they call a cult. That stuff don't grow wild up there ... they're gettin' it from somebody ... some Indian sympathizer."
"And just what has that got to do with me?"
"According to our information-we'll just say we got a warrant here to search the premises."
"Some Indians partake in a time-honored ritual for religious reasons like-like Protestants drink communion wine and you think that I-I never heard of anything so stupid in my life!" the girl exploded, almost speechless with indignation. "I'd like to see that warrant and I'd like to know who voiced that complaint!"
"My orders are simply to search the house, Miss Powers," said Pigson, pushing back his straw cowboy hat on his bald, sweat sheened head.
The reservation officer held up the warrant for Jody to read through the screen door.
"They don't come no clearer than this one, Miss Powers. It's signed by the judge himself." A wry smile crossed his lips and he waited for her to examine the typed, officious looking piece of paper before laying a hand on the screen door. He stepped onto the porch, followed by Pigson and the second officer. Jody snatched the document from his hands and stalked into the living room in a blind fit of rage.
Defiantly, she stomped to the refrigerator pulled out a beer and plunked down on the sofa guzzling it while the men plundered about the ranch house. Two hours later, Pigson waddled into the room and stood staring down at her. "We didn't find anything," he said flatly.
"Of course you didn't find anything!" the angry lithe bodied girl boomed without looking at him. "You might try finding sperm on the living room table, though!"
Pigson ignored the comment. "I have one final place to search ... and I know you're not goin' to like this."
Jody turned her head to level her eyes t him. "I suppose you're going to search me next...." she tutted. Then her amber eyes saucered with Pigson's acquiescent nod. "I've never heard of such asininity in my life!"
"Of course, if you don't want a man pawin' over ya, we can take you in to town and have a police matron sent out from Oklahoma City in which case we'll have to hold you in jail until she arrives. We don' have no police women in Beaver."
"You're a little short on policemen, too, I'd say!" she sniped.
Pigson plucked a half chewed cigar from his pocket and plugged it in between his beefy lips, talking around the stubby pacifier. "It's afternoon already, they'd been sending somebody in the mornin' ... so I guess you'd be gone for about forty hours all total."
Jody bit her lip. This was sheer blackmail. She couldn't possibly afford to be away from the ranch that long. There were the chickens to feed and with the mysterious condition killing her cattle, she had to keep a watch on them. Now Bones was gone and trying to herd them alone on horse was hard enough work. Plus half of Beaver would be out in the streets hunkering over each other to get a glimpse at the girl who had sold drugs to the Indians. And Pigson knew all this. The fact that she was innocent of any drug connections wouldn't thaw the icy attitude Beaver's populace had assumed toward the Powers since Martin had struggled to help the Indians find work amongst the ranchers. She had to live in this town which meant she must restore her reputation somehow, impossible as that might seem.
Breathing hard, she turned to look out the window at the scorching sunlight and the mound of dirt in the garden with the cross marking Bones' grave sight. "Okay," she said, sighing. "Let's get this over with so I can get something done-but not in front of them." She flung her chestnut curls, her freckle splashed nose cringing in disgust.
Grunting with satisfaction, Beaver's Chief of Police stalked to the door, closed it firmly separatiang the living room from the kitchen and came back to Jody. She stood up compliantly and stared woodenly at the wall above his head as he ran his fingers perfunctorily up her slender thighs, patting her under the arms, feeling in her Levi pockets for bulges and evidence, and then placed the flat of his hand between her breasts. Jody sucked in her breath impatiently, but Pigson's touch was brief and impersonal.
"Aren't you going to look between my legs, too?" she taunted, tutting, her brown freckles lost in a splash of anger reddened checks
"Of course," he said briskly. "But first I have to ask you to take off your underclothing."
"No way!"
"I'm afraid it's the law, Miss Powers," said Pigson, trying his best to hide his jubilance behind a mask of officiality.
"That's ridiculous! I've never been so ... so...."
Pigson stiffened with his first sign of irritation. He rested his hands on his hips. "Look, lady ... I've got a job to do and I'd appreciate some cooperation. Now hussy outta them them britches!"
Squinting to hold back the tears of humiliation and rage, the country girl turned her back on the offish police officer and stripped off her Levi's and panties, then unsnapped her western style work-shirt to remove her brassiere and snapped up the shirt again. Pigson placed a hand on her arm and spun her around to face him. Staring over her shoulder, he felt again the wide valley between her milky breasts without unsnapping the shirt, passing his fingers afterwards along the crease underneath each softly swelling mound of flesh. "Hmph," he grunted, frowning. "Ain' nothin' there."
Jody remained silent, gnashing her jaws together impatiently.
"Okay," said Pigson, licking his lips around the tobacco pacifier in his mouth. "Now bend down and let me have a look."
Flushed with mortification, the speechless girl spread her legs and leaned forward, struggling to keep her shirt tail on the right side of modesty. For the second time in less than a week her genitals were exposed to a stranger's gaze.
Pigson left her in that indecent posture while he scurried out to the kitchen, carefully closing the door behind him, and returned with a box which he placed on the round oak living room table. He took from it a single finger rubber medical examination glove akin to the type doctor's used for similar examinations for different purposes. He smoothed the finger glove onto the middle finger of his right hand and smeared KY lubricating cream over it from a tube. With the greased finger held upright, Pigson approached the bent over girl and probed amongst the silky hairs covering the sensitive flesh between her lushly rounded buttocks until he found the mouth to her vagina and shoved the finger in up to the palm of his hand.
"By rights I should have a witness present in case you get the idea I'm tryin' to get fresh with ya. So remember, lady, you's the one wanted me to do this alone," he said as he rummaged around in the sensitive and trembling hole of Jody's genitals.
With a squelching sound, he removed the invading finger and peeled off the glove. "Nothin' in there," he said as he drew another finger glove from the box and greased it. "You'd be surprised what police have found stuck up here." Leaning over her, Pigson thrust the gloved finger directly into the tightly puckered little hole of Jody's anus.
Stars flickered in front of her eyes, and Jody rocked on her heels from the assault. She sucked in her breath and bit her lips to stop from crying out in protest as the finger sank to its full length through the eleastic nether ring and began worming about in the soft buttery depths of her anal tract. Her arms and fingers started to tingle, foreshadowing a fainting stupor from the abject shame of this degrading examination. This was the ultimate! Mac and Chuck's assault was nothing compared to this indignity!
With another loud squelch Pigson withdrew his finger gently and her belly seemed suddenly very empty. Pigson straightened, stripped the glove from his finger and said: "Just one more thing. Please open your mouth."
Snivelling with disgust, the chestnut haired country girl closed her eyes and opened her mouth dutifully, wondering what else this pot bellied man could possibly do to humiliate her. Pressing two fingers on her lower lip, forcing her jaws wide open, he shone a flashlight into her mouth, turning his head from right to left then up and down to peer down her throat. Finally the beam of light flicked off and he placed the flashlight in the box. "Okay, that's it. You're clean. Sorry for the bother, but we have to follow up on reports," he said genially.
The floorboards creaked as he stomped to the kitchen door and opening it, motioned for the men to come in. "We'll leave you now, Miss Powers."
"Wait til I-!" Jody was scrambling into her panties when the two men came prancing through the living room, hungry little smirks on their faces as she, flushing, grabbed her Levi's to cover herself.
In a moment the crunch of gravel sounded again and a cloud of dust announced their departure. Still white with rage, she flung herself down on the sofa and broke out into a storm of crying. She pounded her fists into the sofa, her mouth spewing four letter words that surprised even herself. It was half an hour before she could master her emotions to get up, fix herself a cup of coffee and tidy up the holocaust of turned upside down drawers and opened cupboards the searchers had left her.
The caffeine transformed directly into adrenalin, it seemed, as she stormed about the house, shoving things back into place. They couldn't have searched very hard because there were a million places she could have hidden the contraband-had she possessed it. When she was finished, exhausted, she sat down to think. From the haphazard method of their search, it was obvious they didn't expect to find anything. But, if they knew there were no drugs in the house, why did they come?
Obviously it was a put up job. There had never been any information received ... there probably weren't even any peyote users out on the reservation. This was just another way of making life miserable for her.
The answer to that supposition was blatantly clear. Whoever was trying to persuade her to sell the ranch was taking another tack. Yes ... it was falling into place. Somebody with power was trying to squeeze her out ... somebody with a lot of political clout and money ... somebody who was trying to make her life so miserable she'd put her tail between her legs and yelp for help. "This is no pollyanna they're playing with!"
From this view point, everything fell perfectly into place. It was after refusing Lokken that the bad luck befell her: The murdered bull, the dead calf in the well poisoning the water supply, the dead cattle, the rape, poor Bones ... She had a feeling that whoever was responsible for those heinous crimes had also planted the animal trap and shot her father. To this date the inquest was not as yet completed. "Another crime with no evidence...." It flashed on her. Hadn't she heard Mac and Chuck say something about not using lights because 'they' said not to?
Jody punched a throw pillow on the sofa, her lips drawing into a tight pink line. If that was the case, no wonder Pigson was less than sympathetic about her rape! If Lokken's buyers were ruthless enough to contemplate murder, and rape in their attempts to get their hands on her property, then buying off the chief of police was small potatoes! The incursion of her privacy by the men posted across the road to keep an eye on her, the inexplicable search of her house and property and the insufferable examination of her privates were all meant to harass and humiliate her to the point where she would rather leave Beaver than fight against the odds. And of course if she were to leave, she would want to sell....
Who wanted this land? Certainly Lokken wasn't telling ... if he wasn't one of them himself!
The blood in her veins started to boil, and it wasn't from the ninety-two degree mercury on the kitchen thermometer. This land has been in my family for three generations and if they think I'm going to uproot that tradition, they've got another think coming. Accusing me of selling drugs to the Indians ... then her fervor stopped short. If she was going to fight them, she had to know who they were.
Lokken was too mealy-mouthed to be anything than a vehicle. Pigson was probably bought off. She must find out who was calling the shots....
If she was to defend her property, she reasoned, she had best eliminate it as a battleground. "Even rioters know better than to burn down their own neighborhood," she thought, and if she was to riot against Beaver singlehandedly, she had better take the action into town. Better still, take some over action that would stir things up, get them out into the open and call her tormentors bluff ... then sit back and see what happened and hope she could unmask someone.
A tremendous sense of relief, almost as powerful as an orgasm, swept over her as suddenly she planned her attack. The pulse of Beaver, the point of origin of all gossip and heresay, was the saloon. She would go there by herself and have a drink, something unheard of in the town of Southern Baptists and WCTU advocates.