Almost Midnight (9 page)

Which he did—a week or so afterward. He came by and wished her a happy birthday and she gave him a big hug. Darrell was pleased but at the same time he didn’t want to get his hopes up too high. She hadn’t as yet singled him out for special attention. He couldn’t help noticing that she was hugging just about everybody in sight.

Then Mary started visiting Rocky’s house and hanging out for hours at a time with the ragtag band of outlaws and country grifters that was usually knocking about. One evening she announced that she was going over by Crowder College to look up some old acquaintances. She said that she wouldn’t mind some company. “I bet Darrell’s not afraid to come with me,” she added. Indeed he wasn’t, though he thought it best not to go unprepared. From the way she’d put it, he suspected there was trouble at the other end and she wanted him along to fight somebody. He brought a pair of black leather sap gloves packed with lead dust—just in
case. As it turned out, he didn’t need the gloves. They drove to Neosho and met some of Mary’s friends in a bar. It was a nice time. They didn’t get back to the Branson area until the wee hours.

A couple of weeks later Darrell finally worked up the nerve to ask Mary out on a real honest-to-goodness date. He took her to Old Spanish Cave north of the junction, the very same cave that his grandfather Frank had opened to the public decades before. They smoked a little dope, walked with a flashlight through the damp and murky chambers, and then sat on a flat-topped rock near the entrance holding hands and talking. Toward three in the morning, just before he took her home, he tried kissing her, but Mary playfully moved her head from side to side, preventing him from making flush contact with her mouth. Incredible, Darrell thought. He wasn’t even getting a kiss out of the deal and yet he couldn’t remember feeling so happy, so satisfied.

Over the next several months they were rarely apart for longer than a day. Mary would come to Darrell’s house after work and usually wouldn’t get back to her folks’ place in Branson until well past midnight. Their fledgling romance soon became the subject of considerable speculation. What could pretty, young, middle-class Mary possibly see in Darrell? Here was a guy with five kids and two disastrous marriages in his past, a guy more than twenty years her senior with no money and no game plan. So why was she interested in an unkempt, down-on-his-heels hillbilly? Quite a few people in the area chalked it up to meth. Darrell was into meth in a big way and, probably, so was she. Darrell was her ticket to a regular supply of the stuff. Trading sex for drugs—that would explain it. They had Mary pegged as a crank whore.

Actually, this was far from explaining it. Mary sampled crank a few times after taking up with Darrell—but that was it. She didn’t really like the stuff and she couldn’t understand its big attraction. And even if she were a crankhead looking to swap sex for drugs, there were plenty of other guys in the area who would have been thrilled to oblige her. No need to settle for Darrell: she could have taken her pick.

Crank, it would seem, was only a small part of it. In all likelihood
Mary found Darrell attractive for some of the same reasons others did. He was smart and witty and still capable, despite all his rough mileage, of turning on the boyish charm. And for Mary, of course, there was an added inducement: outlaws fascinated her, and Darrell happened to be one of the more engaging outlaws around. So engaging, in fact, that she was soon entertaining fantasies of becoming an outlaw herself. Some nights they’d sit up late talking about partnering in a life of crime, hitting the road as a latter-day Bonnie and Clyde. It’s possible, of course, that such talk was only so much bluff and blather. Perhaps even Darrell and Mary weren’t sure how seriously to take it.

F
OR ALL OF
his shenanigans over the years, Darrell had somehow managed to keep himself impressively, if not quite spotlessly, clean. There’d been a drunk-driving incident, one or two other minor scrapes—nothing much else. In his most memorable run-in with the law prior to 1987 he’d actually been the victim of someone else’s craziness.

One evening during their first summer together Darrell and Donna had joined Larry and Sophia for a picnic at Big Rock on Bull Creek. Sophia’s two sisters were there also, and a whole flock of kids. They were relaxing in lawn chairs around a small fire on a gravel bar by the water when two men in a pickup blustered in and drove right through their camp, giving Darrell and Larry the evil eye while passing by. Darrell recognized the driver, a low-grade troublemaker named John Wright III who’d recently moved into a place just up the creek. A bit later, more than a little put off by this intrusion, Darrell walked to the edge of the property where Wright was living and yanked up a loose corner post with a NO TRESPASSING sign nailed to it. He carried the post back to the picnic spot and threw it on the fire. Not a bad move, you might think, except ten or fifteen minutes later Wright returned with a .45 semiautomatic pistol.

“There’s a rifle in the brush on your heart right now,” he said.
“Make a move, me and my partner will drop you and everybody else here like flies.”

Wright told Darrell to hand over his pistol, a .22 Ruger, and then he marched both Mease boys up the road, speculating aloud as to whether he should call the sheriff and have them charged with trespassing or just shoot them both on the spot and be done with it. If he was expecting Darrell and Larry to break down and plead for mercy, he obviously hadn’t done his homework. Neither one gave any indication of being intimidated. Perhaps realizing he’d jumped the wrong crew, he eventually backed off and let them go. But Darrell was seething. He and Larry had just been kidnapped at gunpoint and the same guy who’d done the kidnapping had also threatened to kill their wives and kids. That evening he put in a call to the sheriff’s department in Forsyth and lodged a complaint. It went against his grain, going the legal route rather than squaring matters with Wright on his own, but this was one time he couldn’t see himself losing. A few weeks later there was a hearing on the affair at the courthouse in Forsyth but nothing came of it. Wright was never prosecuted for the kidnapping and Darrell was left wondering why he’d bothered going to the law in the first place.

But now it was two years later and Darrell was driving over to Rocky’s house one evening in early June to pick up a package that was waiting for him and to rendezvous with Mary. He was excited about seeing Mary but a bit annoyed with himself for not having arranged to meet her elsewhere. Rocky had been getting on his nerves lately—little things, nothing that jumped out at you, but add it all up and the guy had definitely become a full-time hassle. It was aggravating enough that he’d chintzed Darrell out of the profits on a couple of deals, but he’d also been getting in the way where Mary was concerned. Just a week or so earlier, for example, Darrell had been over by Cape Fair, selling fireworks for Rocky out of a tent. He’d been counting on Rocky picking him up around ten and driving him back to Reeds Spring for a date with Mary. He’d mentioned it three or four times, saying he didn’t want to keep Mary waiting, and Rocky had assured him he’d be there. But he didn’t
show up and Darrell was forced to start walking home. He stopped off for a beer at a roadside tavern a couple of miles along and the barmaid drove him the rest of the way. But it was too late. Mary was gone, no doubt thinking she’d been stood up. And Rocky? He was probably off somewhere gloating.

So Darrell was driving down the dirt road off U.S. 160 toward Rocky’s when a Bronco with a big guy in sunglasses behind the wheel, Rocky beside him, two other men in back, shot past going the other way. Darrell didn’t like the looks of this but he drove on anyway, not wanting to be late for Mary. Around the last bend the road was blocked by half a dozen lawmen dressed in black. They pulled him over and found an unlicensed Smith & Wesson .38 Special under the seat and a thimble-sized bud of marijuana in his jacket pocket. They proceeded to cuff him and haul him off to the Taney County jail where he was thrown into a cell with Rocky.

Rocky said that his place was raided about an hour before Darrell came along and that the cops found a patch of marijuana he was growing in the milk barn out back. Darrell could tell that Rocky was upset but he had enough worries of his own right now. The weed-in-the-jacket bust he could live with, a mere misdemeanor, but carrying a concealed and unlicensed weapon was a felony offense. Not only that, but a couple of months back he’d hidden a sawed-off shotgun under a piece of folded carpet in Rocky’s spare bedroom. If the cops found it he could be facing a stint of federal time—providing, of course, he didn’t let Rocky take the rap instead.

Sticky business, but Darrell actually came out of it in pretty good shape. The cops didn’t find the sawed-off shotgun and Taney County prosecutor Jim Justus let him off with a deferred prosecution on the misdemeanor possession charge. The felony weapon charge was dismissed on payment of a $73 fine, not to mention a stern warning from Judge Joe Chowning against Darrell ever getting caught with a gun in Taney County again. He had to cough up a thousand dollars to his attorney, Steve Soutee, for pulling the right levers but, all things considered, it could have turned out a lot worse.

——

O
NE EVENING IN
late fall Mary got snowed in at Darrell’s house. She didn’t make it home that night, or the two following nights. When she finally did get back to Branson, her mom delivered an ultimatum:
It’s either him or me. You choose
. Mary packed some things and drove back to Darrell’s with her two dogs—a pit bull named Slick and a little Benji-type dog named Gretchen Louise. She asked if he’d mind her and the dogs moving in with him full-time.
Mind it?
It was like asking a kid if he’d mind getting the Christmas present he’d been goggling in his dreams for months.

Darrell was badly smitten by this point but he still couldn’t bring himself to say the magic words. He’d been holding back, fearful of looking foolish, and not wanting to expose himself to rejection. He worried that Mary was too good to be true. This sweetheart straight out of dreamland, so patient and tender: What was she doing with him? She’d floated into his world unexpectedly and there was no telling how long she’d stay around. Most things in his life, the things that truly counted, had ended in disaster. Was he setting himself up for another crash now? Within a couple of days of her moving in, his anxieties finally got the better of him and he tried running her off. It’s no use, he cried, practically shoving her out the door. This thing can’t work. Look at the age difference. Look at the financial situation. Look at—
everything
. He stood trembling inside the house, screaming silently over what he’d done, but twenty minutes later she was back, holding him in her arms and saying, “Baby, I couldn’t stay away.” The next night, lying in bed, he told her for the first time that he loved her. She said that she loved him, too.

As a couple Darrell and Mary still weren’t drawing many rave reviews, but not everyone regarded them as hopelessly mismatched. Darrell’s daughter, Melissa, remembers seeing them together for the first time at her grandparents’ house and thinking that they were actually a pretty good fit. “It was right after they’d started living together. They came in, and my first impression was that they belonged together. Mary had curly blond hair and she was really young, just two years older than I was, but at the time the age thing didn’t really hit me. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, very casual,
and she seemed unconcerned about her appearance. I thought, ‘Mary’s exactly like my dad; she’s another Darrell.’ They both looked like they’d just flopped out of bed. I’m not saying they didn’t have their problems, but I had a good feeling seeing them together that day.”

They did indeed have their problems, none more nagging than Darrell’s continued meth use. He hadn’t slowed down since meeting Mary, even though she’d told him a number of times that she didn’t like him cranking and wanted him to cut it out. One evening, disgusted with him for getting high yet again, she said, “I don’t know why I fell in love with you. I could have married a lawyer or a doctor and kicked back.”

O
N ANOTHER EVENING
, a few days after Mary moved in, Darrell was hanging out in Reeds Spring with Leonard Joe Graves. Leonard Joe suggested that they drive up to Spank’s, a one-stop convenience store north of the junction, and grab a couple of pops. Spank’s carried some off-brand soda that Darrell really liked—not to mention the most delicious soft ice cream around. So off they went. Leonard Joe asked Darrell to wait outside with the car while he ran in for the pop. A few minutes later he came back out with Lloyd Lawrence. Lloyd had recently purchased a secluded farm off U.S. 160, not far from where Rocky was living. He was fixing it up, building a new cabin, laying down a road, making a weekend retreat out of the place. He told Darrell he’d put him to work on the property for four bucks an hour. Odd jobs mostly, Lloyd said, “Helping my guys out, handing them nails, tin, lumber, that sort of thing.” Darrell bridled at the odd-jobs part, but he said fine, he’d take the job. He definitely needed the four bucks an hour and, besides, Lloyd wasn’t a guy accustomed to taking no for an answer.

Darrell started the very next day and kept at it for a few weeks, clearing brush, thinning out trees with his chain saw, building chicken pens, helping Lloyd’s guys install a tin roof on the cabin. Lloyd would stop by now and then to check up on things, but
mostly to spend time with his grandson Willie. He had a soft spot for Willie, who was his oldest son, Buck’s, boy. A good-looking eighteen-year-old, Willie had been paralyzed from the waist down in a car wreck a couple of years earlier. He’d had several setbacks since then, once suffering burns to his wasted feet from the overheated muffler of an old jalopy he’d been cruising in with friends. In recent weeks he’d been coming to the farm quite often and buzzing around the property in an all-terrain vehicle. The four-wheeler gave him some mobility—a small measure of independence. Lloyd or Buck would secure him to the vehicle by tying the laces of his sneakers to the front rack, and then Willie would take off in a swirl of dust along the back roads.