The final chapter.

The Idyllic Days Run Swiftly Their Course.

After a few months of either absorbing soap operas while keeping house alone at her brick home in Clinton, or riding in the big van with her husband and his crew -- such trips included the usual dirt bag, roach infested motels whose walls and ceilings sported a ubiquitous sheen of nicotine, that special film of cigarette smoke and body odor, perfume and mildew -- the novelty of marriage did, for Middie Porter, begin its inevitable wane. This surprised no one but Jerry.

Someone schooled in the law can better address the issue of the legality of Middie's presence at the bar in the Out of Bounds Lounge. Was it legal for a fifteen-year old to be in a bar if she were married to an adult? Would the adult be considered her legal guardian? These perplexing questions endure. Nevertheless, Middie became a regular feature at the south Jackson den of iniquity. It is not even vaguely surprising that as her moist cheeks reflected the cold, neon hues of a Miller Lite sign, her close-set eyes would wander from cowboy, to truck driver, to roofer. The girl had entered a sure enough discovery phase, and it did not take her very many days to understand that the grandfatherly Jerry Porter was not the only man in the world who might be interested in her, ahem, charms.

Soon Middie began nurturing a persona of true generosity, her favors becoming familiar far and wide. Jerry-come-lately, never having been known for his mental acuity, at last became suspicious, and his veil of innocence was soon unceremoniously ripped down and trampled. When he confirmed that, yes, his bride of many months had been, was, and was expected to be in the future, unfaithful, he devised a plan for revenge. He would salvage his honor, he would avenge his disgrace, and by God he knew exactly how to do it. (Remember reading that the man was actually bullet proof? Read on.)

Years passed. Wallace had eventually gotten sober and moved far away from his Deep South home, to the mountains of western N. Carolina. Around 1990 he learned that two of his lifelong friends and former siding crew members were dead. One died of acute alcohol poisoning while celebrating a small inheritance. That was John, better known as Meatball, owing to his great shock of orange, wiry hair and a magnificent pirate beard of the same hue. The second was Jim, who in a state of great depression over the death of Meatball, shuffled off this mortal coil with the explosive assistance of lead poisoning in the form of a .357 magnum bullet, self-inflicted to his alcohol-soaked brain. Alcoholism is not a game, but a tragedy, and Wallace had miraculously avoided the fate of his old comrades. Thirty or more years later, another lifelong siding crew compadre moved on to eternity, the primary cause of his demise being liver failure after decades of continuing to imbibe of the poison that killed his and Wallace’s friends. He had been best known as “Hunter Brown.”

The last Wallace would ever hear of Jerry Porter -- this would have been in the late 80's -- he was seen at his old haunt on Ellis avenue, bumping over the threshold in a wheelchair. The slumped posture was intact, and the great hands as able as ever to grasp a longneck bottle of the King of Beers; but the laser-straight, shoulder length hair had gone stark white, its mousy brown color having vanished suddenly, as if overnight. The knock-kneed legs, though, had become the useless appendages of a new-made paraplegic. What, pray tell, had caused this radical transformation?

On the afternoon of his metamorphosis, Jerry had carefully mapped out and planned exactly what he would do to address and ameliorate, once and for all, the shame and disgrace of having become an unwitting cuckold to a teenage girl. Deceiving his bride earlier that morning into believing he would once again be out of town, working, Jerry kissed her (on one sweaty cheek?) and departed in the big van, only to return unannounced, to stealthily approach the door to his adulterated lair. Therein, he knew, another of Middie's surreptitious trysts would be underway and in full fling, so to speak.

Committed -- an action that probably should have been taken against the man by just about anyone -- to his plan, Jerry knew the aftermath would include a not insignificant amount of carnage and blood loss. Whose would it be? Undeterred and prepared, in his massive hands he carried a loaded 30.30, lever-action Winchester rifle, sans scope. (The shooting was to be at close range.)

Quietly entering the residence, he could hear the sounds of love emanating from his master bedroom. The grunts and moans wafted down the hall, probably to the romantic tunes of Buck Owens and his Buckaroos. Standing at the dingy, six-panel door that separated him from his perfidious child bride and her not-so-young paramour, Jerry steeled himself for what was about to happen. Gripping the rifle in both monstrous hands, he kicked open the door and charged into the room.

You will recall that Jerry Porter was not a very good shot. A person unable to successfully blow up his own heart with a shotgun is not a fellow whom one would consider a competent marksman. This dearth of shooting ability he would once again demonstrate that day, to the horror, terror and mortification of the two naked people in his bed. As Jerry rushed into his sullied boudoir, the scene was coitus interruptus like you wouldn't believe, and the startled lovers no doubt thought their end was nigh.

Standing at the foot of the bed, his weapon at a sloppy, inspection arms position, he glared at the two wide-eyed and terrified cheaters who lay trembling in the sweat-damp bed sheets. Remember how Middie, on her wedding day had leapt into the arms of her blushing groom? Well, in an act of unsurpassed outrageousness, Jerry repeated the young girl's technique, and dove headlong into the bed, landing right between Middie and John Doe. As the naked two attempted to scramble from the scene, Jerry then placed the muzzle of the rifle to his OWN CHEST, and, as if to recall that sunny, summer day in the piney woods so long, long ago, he pushed the trigger.

When mentioned earlier in the story that Jerry Porter was actually, not virtually bulletproof, it was not an exaggeration. He would again survive his latest, failed attempt at reverse retribution, but as before, not unscathed. The wayward projectile from the blast of the 30.30 quickly wriggled its way around Jerry's heart and his one remaining lung, to lodge rather inconveniently in his spine; thus the wheelchair.

Enduring as the happy-go-lucky man he had always been, Jerry apparently accepted his new condition with aplomb and without too much regret. After all, a man, especially one living on a handsome pension from the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs need not be able to walk to be drunk. And although no one has ever said, it is taken for granted that the life of the marriage not made in Heaven fared little better than Jerry Porter's legs. Aside from the subsequent bickering over who would pay the lawyers, his and Middie’s matrimonial wonder ended right there alongside the surrender of all of Jerry's would-be hopes for an ambulatory old age. And where today the one-time object of his affection might be is anybody's guess; but it assuredly is not in a red brick home in Clinton, Mississippi.