The Norphlet Mafia, Chapter 5, post 6

Chapter 5 Trying to Dodge the Bullet Okay, I’m not the sharpest kid in town, but I knew one thing for dang sure. I had to do something to keep from gettin’ nailed. Heck, Marshall Wing is really a whiz at figuring out who did something around Norphlet, and I kinda figured he had a list of boys who might have squirted the Chihuahuas, and I didn’t have any doubt that I was on the list—probably close to the top. Yep, my mind was just a clicking about what I could do before I was called into the Marshal's office. Then, while I was running my paper route the next day, I just happened to see an empty bleach bottle lying in the ditch. Ha, probably put there by the kid who squirted the dogs, I thought, and then I laughed ’cause I knew the Chihuahuas’ bleach came from my momma’s bottle, and it was still on the shelf at home. But a “what if” just hit me like a sack of rocks. Get a bunch of bleach bottles and put them by a lot of kids’ houses that might be on the Marshal’s list. Wow, I couldn't wait to hightail it to the dump and haul back a tow-sack full of bleach bottles. That night I went through town and put empty bleach bottles at the houses of somewhere around 20 kids. I even put one in the ditch in front of my house. However, I did miss one kid’s house: the home of Homer Ray, the school bully. I knew for durn sure Marshal Wing would be out snooping around, and he’d hafta be blind not to see all those bottles. & Well, I guess the Marshal did his snooping early the next morning ’cause when I finished my paper route the next morning at about 8, he'd already been by Doc’s. Gosh, according to Doc, who’s a good friend of the Marshal’s, Marshal Wing was just all out of sorts, and he was just going on and on about how somebody had planted bleach bottles by every kid’s house in town.... but one. And he didn’t know what to make of that, but he was gonna ask that kid with no bleach bottles a lot of questions. Naw, the Marshal didn’t name the kid, but I knew it was Homer Ray. Okay, so just finding no bleach bottle was going to help, but I needed to do a lot more. It was time to plan more trouble for Homer Ray. He dang sure deserved it. Shoot, Norphlet is a little town, and when the Marshal sent for Homer Ray to come in for questioning, it flew all over town ’cause Marshal Wing called on a party line. And when the bully showed up at the Marshal’s office that afternoon there was a pretty good crowd. I had rounded up a good group of boys, and I was dead sure that every kid there hated Homer Ray’s guts. Since John Clayton is my best friend, I had told him about having to squirt bleach on the sorry dogs. Yeah, he thought I did the right thing, and now since he knew about it, we were in this mess together. We were standing there waiting for Homer Ray to come to the Marshal’s office when I whispered to John Clayton, who was standing right beside me, “Ease over to where Ears and Tiny are standing and tell them and the other boys around them to just start booing and just go crazy when Homer Ray walks up.” Heck, in about two minutes, all the boys were grinning like possums eating green persimmons, and I knew what was about to happen might not be enough to nail—or, I guess say frame—the sorry kid, but it would really put a big question mark in everybody’s mind.