Shelton Family Saga

Chapter 23

Live Wire
February 1978

Alex was blazing hot. Something like a live wire. The thought of being setup infuriated him. Hoochie was going to pay for this shit. Alex noticed every time he had something big in the works, it would go awry and whenever the dust settled, it was usually Hoochie who turned out to be the one who prospered. Alex was really getting tired of this. In fact, he was livid now. How was it that ever since that night he and Hoochie had fought outside the club in Hardin and ended up in jail, Hoochie had been using Alex's dad to smuggle Peyote across the state lines and into areas where it was illegal. Peyote was a drug with a hallucinogenic effect, and it was illegal everywhere and to everyone outside of the Indian reservation. His daddy, whom everyone called Chief had regular access to it, being that he was an Indian Chief and used it routinely during pow wows and other ceremonial rituals. Alex remembered the time he had accidentally blown his face off experimenting with a few other drugs. It had been in the wee hours of the morning and he ran to the reservation where his momma found him and he told her he'd been working under the hood of his car when the battery exploded causing the acid to burn his face off. His mom had suggested they go to his twin sister Averie's house, cause she was a nursing student and would know what to do. When they got there, his mom told Averie that Alex burnt his face off popping firecrackers in his hand, so he just went along with the story. But Hoochie had gone too far this time. He was going to pay and there would be no one to take the fall for him since Hollywood was already back in prison serving time.

It seemed Hoochie had acquired quite a disdainful following by a lot of folks lately. Although, not many people knew it, he was currently behind bars at the local Helmsville jail. He had been locked up for the past forty eight hours for a misdemeanor of illegal street racing. Averie had been in the car with him so when they arrested him, she drove away in his beloved Cadillac for safe keeping until he could be released.