When a rat-fucking son-of-a-bitch like Ed Horne turns up dead there's two things for certain.
Ain't nobody going to be real surprised.
Ain't nobody gonna be real sorry, neither.
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From the Sulpher Springs Telegraph Sunday July 20, 1924:
MAN DROWNS AS WIFE LOOKS ON UNABLE TO HELP
James E. Horne, city employee, latest drowning victim.
Stepping from shallow, into water ten feet deep as he seined for minnows in the levee "bar pits"along the Trinity River a mile and a half past Grauwyler Bridge, James Edward Horne, aged 38, a foreman in the city street and bridge department, drowned late Saturday as his wife and daughter looked on, helpless to aid. John Price, negro and city employee, who lives on the Horne place, tried unavailingly to save the drowning man's life.
Horne is the eleventh person to drown in this county this year. Price asserted that Mr. Horne was able to only swim a few strokes and that his heavy shoes and clothes hampered him in his effort to regain the shore and dragged him down to his death.
"We had been in the pit just a few moments, using the little seine when Mr. Ed went under all of a sudden, " Price declared. "He came up twice and got hold of the seine, crying for me to help him. I tried to pull him in, but his hands slipped off, he went under, and I couldn't find him anymore"
Couldn't Locate Him
The negro and Waylan Macon, 5317 Ash Lane, who was attracted to the scene by Mrs. Horne's frantic screams for help, dived for close to an hour in an effort to bring him to the surface. "I saw him near the top once, but he sank from sight when I went in after him and I couldn't find him again" Macon said, " I'm pretty sure he was already dead."
Horne and his wife and their little daughter Doris had gone to the bridge on a fishing trip Saturday afternoon. After reaching the bridge, he decided to seine for minnows before beginning to fish.
Saw Him Lose Grasp
Mrs. Horne, who stood screaming on the bank, waited until she saw her husband go under a second time before running for help. She raced through more than a mile of dense underbrush before reaching Old Maple Road where she was able to use the telephone of W.W. Stor to call for help.
Deputy sheriffs found her in the pits just a hundred yards of where her husband's body was finally located, crying broken-heartedly. She drove her automobile back to their home where she fainted and was put under the care of physicians.
Both the emergency ambulance and automobiles from the sheriffs office carrying Deputy Sheriffs Bob Jones, Earl Sypert and John Heffington answered the call. The use of grappling hooks by members of the sheriffs office failed to locate the dead man, and diving was resorted to. "I found him face down in about nine feet of water," Adolphus Lee Whatley said. "He, apparently, had been dead about an hour." After the body was taken from the water it was placed in the emergency ambulance. Later on it was transferred to the ambulance of the Smith Undertaking company, which also had responded to the call. Mr. Horne is survived by his wife and two daughters, Nettie Lou, 14 years old and Doris Lee, 12 years old.
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After Ed's funeral, there were a few callers to the farm, offering to turn the field and cut and cord the wood for winter. Alta was amused. She appreciated the extra sets of hands but she had no interest in the rest of their parts.
It had taken her 16 years to be rid of that man and his mess and she had no intention of being subject to someone's ill temper or dirty coveralls again. Still, Esper kept coming around.
His wife Millie had gotten sick just before Christmas and was dead from lung cancer by Easter. When he came to see if he could change the chain on the plough, she had felt sorry for him and invited him in for coffee and some biscuits.
Five years of baked good and home repairs later, they admitted that there was more than just neighborly reciprocation happening and he asked her to marry him one Sunday morning after church. Ed hadn't even asked. Just took her down to the courthouse, put the paper in front of her and told her he'd buy her a used Ford and a new washer if she'd sign it.
When she thought back to that day, she realized she should have flipped the two. She'd have had an excuse to not do the laundry and a car that could have driven her as far away from that damned farmhouse as she could go.
Maybe to California to see Marie, who was writing home to tell about the high life she was living with that mobster she kept calling a businessman.Why would a grown man with a perfectly good name like Benjamin want to be called Bugsy?
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They keep telling me they're going to find out how I did it.
"You left something, somewhere.It's just a matter of time" Sheriff Foster said when he unlocked the holding cell and let me leave with AJ
I don't think I meant to kill him but maybe I did
Maybe I was tired of being called a dumb cunt every time I forgot something at the grocery or didn't finish folding the laundry.
I hated cleaning up after him.
The way he left his clothes right next to the hamper.
The toenails I found flung all over the house.
He told me once that I should take pride in getting the skidmarks off his Fruit of the Loom's because 'That's what a good wife does, Marsh'.
I guess I'm not that good.
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"The RV is a success, Myrna, because it allows women to pee every 20 minutes without ever having to find a rest stop"
Dwayne and Myrna were having Cokes and talking about whether to sink their retirement into a time share down in Port Aransas where Dwayne could net shrimp while Myrna learned to watercolor sea fowl. And they could take nice long walks on the beach and grill the delicious shrimp that Dwayne had caught just hours earlier.
This was what Myrna's picture of happily ever after looked like. The other 50 weeks of the year could be spent visiting her sister over in Tyler and growing those roses that Dwayne swore were costing him at least half the retirement they were discussing.
Dwayne had a different movie playing in his theater. One that had quite a bit of golf in places that ended in 'a' and catching fish in rivers that didn't have rattlesnakes swimming in them. He had just pulled up a picture of the new Coachmen Concord and was about to start showing her the kitchen and bathroom features as methods of persuasion when there was a buzzing at the intercom.
It was early. Too early, even for Jimmy Foster, who sometimes dropped off the paper and came inside for a few minutes to hear who was breaking the law and how in Hopkins County.
There was no one there when he opened the back door, but an envelope fell and he bent down to pick it up.
It wasn't sealed or addressed. He pulled out contents and when he unfolded the note inside there was a picture of a farmhouse. The back of the picture was marked 'Winnsboro' and on the paper were just two words
'Horne Witches'.
Dwayne and Myrna were having Cokes and talking about whether to sink their retirement into a time share down in Port Aransas where Dwayne could net shrimp while Myrna learned to watercolor sea fowl. And they could take nice long walks on the beach and grill the delicious shrimp that Dwayne had caught just hours earlier.
This was what Myrna's picture of happily ever after looked like. The other 50 weeks of the year could be spent visiting her sister over in Tyler and growing those roses that Dwayne swore were costing him at least half the retirement they were discussing.
Dwayne had a different movie playing in his theater. One that had quite a bit of golf in places that ended in 'a' and catching fish in rivers that didn't have rattlesnakes swimming in them. He had just pulled up a picture of the new Coachmen Concord and was about to start showing her the kitchen and bathroom features as methods of persuasion when there was a buzzing at the intercom.
It was early. Too early, even for Jimmy Foster, who sometimes dropped off the paper and came inside for a few minutes to hear who was breaking the law and how in Hopkins County.
There was no one there when he opened the back door, but an envelope fell and he bent down to pick it up.
It wasn't sealed or addressed. He pulled out contents and when he unfolded the note inside there was a picture of a farmhouse. The back of the picture was marked 'Winnsboro' and on the paper were just two words
'Horne Witches'.
Witches
Well, now.
That could mean a couple things.
Could be someone was a bit too Christian to use the B-word. Could mean they were hag-like in temperament and stature.
Or
It could mean "one that is credited with usually malignant supernatural powers; especially: a woman practicing usually black witchcraft often with the aid of a devil or familiar"*
Dwayne was familiar with the first two kinds seeing as Myrna's mother was a pageant winner in both, but the third? That was crap. No such thing. There were some people in town who claimed that the woods out at the edge of the county were spooked and that there were meetings out there where people wore hoods and robes that weren't white like normal, but black and red. Meetings that were more like rituals. Sacrifices, baby goats, baby pigs, baby babies, who knew what.
The people who spread these stories tended to be folk like the Twisselmans and George Rose's jar of nuts. Crazy meth-heads who lived out past Horseshoe Road, in trailers with 10 cars in the front on blocks and lawn mower parts everywhere.
If they said there were babies being killed out in the woods it was probably because they were getting mixed up with one of those awful movies Myrna liked to watch on Netflix. He couldn't stand them, all those bright red and pink bits of fake flesh and intestine smashed all over the screen while girls ran around in panties acting surprised.
All them people watched that kind of filth. Every time he had to answer a call out there one of them would have a TV on with something godawful on the screen, or they'd have a bunch of posters haphazardly taped up. Naked women with chainsaws coming out of their lady parts, or clowns, razor-teeth bared, blood smeared all over their grinning, demonic faces. Dwayne couldn't imagine what kind of dreams the kids who lived in these houses must have.
That's who believed in witches, He thought. Looney-tunes on drugs. Not regular people and certainly not the deputy sheriff of the Meadowood Police Department..
*thank you Webster's online
-----------------------------------
Well, now.
That could mean a couple things.
Could be someone was a bit too Christian to use the B-word. Could mean they were hag-like in temperament and stature.
Or
It could mean "one that is credited with usually malignant supernatural powers; especially: a woman practicing usually black witchcraft often with the aid of a devil or familiar"*
Dwayne was familiar with the first two kinds seeing as Myrna's mother was a pageant winner in both, but the third? That was crap. No such thing. There were some people in town who claimed that the woods out at the edge of the county were spooked and that there were meetings out there where people wore hoods and robes that weren't white like normal, but black and red. Meetings that were more like rituals. Sacrifices, baby goats, baby pigs, baby babies, who knew what.
The people who spread these stories tended to be folk like the Twisselmans and George Rose's jar of nuts. Crazy meth-heads who lived out past Horseshoe Road, in trailers with 10 cars in the front on blocks and lawn mower parts everywhere.
If they said there were babies being killed out in the woods it was probably because they were getting mixed up with one of those awful movies Myrna liked to watch on Netflix. He couldn't stand them, all those bright red and pink bits of fake flesh and intestine smashed all over the screen while girls ran around in panties acting surprised.
All them people watched that kind of filth. Every time he had to answer a call out there one of them would have a TV on with something godawful on the screen, or they'd have a bunch of posters haphazardly taped up. Naked women with chainsaws coming out of their lady parts, or clowns, razor-teeth bared, blood smeared all over their grinning, demonic faces. Dwayne couldn't imagine what kind of dreams the kids who lived in these houses must have.
That's who believed in witches, He thought. Looney-tunes on drugs. Not regular people and certainly not the deputy sheriff of the Meadowood Police Department..
*thank you Webster's online
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