3 Little Pigs

By Bill Beaman

Sometimes the rural life isn't as peaceful as one might expect. When Benjamin Willoughby takes the job as sheriff of a southern Iowa county, he finds himself dueling once again with his nemesis, Roydel Nuxton.

In 3 Little Pigs, the third book in Bill Beaman's Iowa Farmer's Wife Trilogy, love, death, and even humor collide as people try to find their perfect place in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Beaman
• Release date: Oct 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301428557

Bill Beaman

The Beamans own and operate a livestock and grain farm located in Southwest Iowa. Purchased in 1982, the farm has survived: the "Farm Crisis" of the Eighties, a 1986 bank failure, the 1988 drought, the floods of 1993, and too many other dilemmas to mention. Through it all, the Beaman family has maintained a sustainable farming operation, raising livestock using grass-based pasture production and a grain, legume crop rotation. Their farm, like all of Iowa's farms, has a million stories to tell.Bill Beaman loves to write and is passionate about sustainable farming operations and how they can become more accessible to new, young, beginning farmers.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Roydel slipped the eye patch over his forehead, adjusted it to a comfortable position and turned to the mirror on the bathroom wall. A little too much light from the fluorescent bulbs made his eye squint, but in moments it adjusted, and he took a good look at himself. Not bad. The patch covered the disfigured and useless eye socket on the left side of his face, but still visible was the scar tissue radiating out from under it, traveling down toward his mouth and outward to his ear. Maybe it did look kind of cool in a way. Yeah, Roydel thought, damn sure—it looked really badass mean. Roydel imagined what people would think when he gave them a glare, lips parted just a little. Some of the girls might like this look. It just might turn them on.

He turned from the mirror, walked across the bedroom floor and looked out through the window, seeing mostly trees. Trees covered this secluded area of rural Missouri and made it a better place for hiding. That’s what Roydel was really tired of, the hiding and waiting. He figured a lot of people were looking for him, probably even the FBI. He worried about that but then, was kind of proud of it, too. It said something about Roydel Nuxton. Said maybe he was a bit of a bad boy, maybe he’d killed a few too many people, but the supposed pros at catching his kind weren’t getting the job done. No sir, they weren’t.

Roydel had been on the run for almost two months now. Ever since the affair in Taylor County, Iowa last October. Ever since that podunk county sheriff, Benjamin Willoughby, fired a shotgun through his windshield while Roydel was trying to run him over. He shook his head. That was his one big mistake—not getting the job done on that county sheriff. That had been the start of a chain of events that ended up with him hiding here in this godforsaken hellhole living with these meth-manufacturing zombies.

As he stared out the window lost in thought, he recalled it all. He played it over in his mind, not letting himself get worked up or too hung up on the revenge that would have to be carried out. He reviewed his life, wanting to avoid making the same damned stupid mistakes all over again.

Things really went wrong last October up in Iowa. Sure, he’d had some problems before that and had spent a little time in prison for grand theft, but he had that shit behind him. He’d landed on his daddy’s abandoned farmstead in southern Iowa and had developed a very successful career as a professional drug runner. He moved product up from this very location where he now hid, delivering to upline brokers in Des Moines and Omaha and occasionally Kansas City. He almost exclusively delivered crack and occasionally a little high-class weed when it became available. He never, never smoked any of the crack himself but enjoyed weed when it pleased him, which must have been a little too often, Roydel reminded himself, remembering some of the stupid ass stunts he’d performed when under the influence of weed and wine.

A prick at a convenience store had made Roydel mad, and he shot him—gunned him down because he made Roydel wait too long in line to pay for his pizza and then made a smart ass reply when he asked him to hurry up. Well no, he didn’t ask, he told the dumbass to move. Anyway, the guy wouldn’t be treating Roydel like that anymore—no, the guy laid there and bled to death on the floor.

Roydel thought, well there was some satisfaction to that, but then that act of poor judgment on his part had led to him losing his eye. Sheriff Willoughby and a couple of his deputies had cornered him, and that’s when Roydel, while making a run for it, had taken the shotgun blast through the front windshield of his Chevy.

He ended up under police guard in a nearby hospital while they tried to put his face back together. He lay there in that hospital thinking his life had come to an end until his old sweetheart, Erlene, showed up out of nowhere and saved his sorry ass. She helped him escape from the hospital, and then they took off for the sunset, free as birds to fly away from the clutches of the law.

All right, Roydel grimaced. He’d shown a second lapse of good judgment, forgetting how to treat a woman like Erlene. He should have overlooked a few of her shortcomings, her newfound taste for crack being one of those. He maybe should have held his tongue, not threatened her while they were running and not tipped his hat as to what was probably going to happen to her. Erlene knew what kind of a man he was and knew that he killed people when he got mad. Maybe if he’d treated her just a little bit better, she wouldn’t have taken off with half of his money and left him sitting on a picnic table at a rest stop along the interstate in Arkansas. Left him with about $10,000 in cash and his gun, but what was he going to do? He was parked there on his ass, changing bandages on his damaged face every few hours, hoping he wouldn’t get an infection and lose sight in his other eye as well.

Well thank goodness he was such a resourceful fellow. He’d sat there and stewed, knowing Erlene was not coming back, knowing there was no forgiveness for leaving him like that and knowing her death would only come a little bit sooner than planned if she did come back. No, Roydel had gathered his senses, taken stock on his plight and dealt with the situation.

At gunpoint, quietly so as not to draw too much attention, he took an older couple hostage, forced them into their $300,000 motor home and coerced them to drive down the interstate a few miles, turn off, cross the bridge and then head back up the interstate north. He promised nobody would get hurt and everything would turn out fine if they just drove north a couple of hours to get him back into Missouri. He asked the woman to make him a sandwich, get him a cold pop out of their fridge, sit down and relax, and he reminded her husband to keep his eyes on the road and stay five miles under the speed limit.

Roydel remembered, almost fondly, the smooth ride in their mobile home, climate controlled, stereo playing soothing music. It was something you’d hear in an elevator, but still, for a man in pain, nursing a face injured by a shotgun blast and not that long ago feeling hopeless sitting at a rest stop, it wasn’t bad. Pointing the gun at the woman, he’d politely asked her to help change the dressing on his damaged face, and she did a good job, really quite tender about it but not able to hide the look of distaste when she saw his eyeless socket and the blood.

When Roydel decided they’d gone far enough, he asked the man to pull off the interstate. Then they worked their way along a blacktop road toward a little town he never did know the name of, and he quietly asked the man to pull over just outside the city limits. He thanked them and looked both directions, not too worried about traffic out here in the middle of nowhere. Seeing none, Roydel shot the man first and then the woman as she screamed and tried to run to the back of her mobile home. Then he put a shot in the skull of each of them just to make sure. He walked around inside the RV gathering up all the spare cash and credit cards he could find, just in case he needed them later.

Out of the mobile home, Roydel kept to the shadows and before long found what he knew he’d find in a small rural town. Some poor trusting fool, probably never having had anything stolen in his life, had left a set of keys in his pickup, and Roydel helped himself.

Two hours later, he stole another pickup in another podunk Missouri town, wiped the fingerprints off the first one and drove on. Under the cover of darkness, snaking down one back road after another, he finally arrived at his destination. And here he stood, looking out the window of these druggies’ home, outlaws like himself but of a distinctly lower class. Meth-shiners Roydel called them. They weren’t even capable of producing good moonshine but opted to produce the much more lucrative drug that seemed to have taken hold of half the morons of the United States.

Roydel wrinkled his nose, smelling the odors that permeated the house, wondering how these people could live this way. The smell of the ingredients they used was now a part of the woodwork in a house where a man and woman and their two children lived. The kids were home-schooled. He shook his head. Like their mother had enough shit between her ears to teach anybody anything other than how to reproduce and smoke meth. He thought, as he always did, that she was probably a looker at one time but then had found meth and discovered what it did to people—make them age quickly and rot out their teeth.

Her husband had some sense, and Roydel was told he made some of the best ice in the Midwest. Trouble was he had the same problem she did. He liked to taste his product. So this man and woman he was staying with were on a downward spiral. They had more money than they would ever know what to do with but no future.

A dog barking interrupted Roydel’s thoughts. Checking his watch, he decided it was time to go out and work on a training session with his newest acquisition. Shortly after he’d shown up at his hideout while on the run, Roydel had struck up a deal with the man to buy one of his hybrid killing hounds. The dogs were half pit bull and half something else—what the meth-shiner called his special secret. Man, those dogs were big, and they were mean—really mean. The trick, the man said, was to get a young one, bond with it and then use it like a weapon. Train it to hunt and to attack. Damn good thing to have in the woods if the law was tracking you.

So Roydel, with time on his hands, had paid the man $500 cash to buy one of the dogs, on top of the $100 a day rent he paid to live in this dump. He named the dog Killer and thought the name fit. Killer was not yet a year old but already stood nearly up to Roydel’s waist with a big old pit bull head mounted on a body that looked like a greyhound on steroids. The damn thing could run down a cottontail or a coyote just like that and kill it quickly. The dog loved Roydel, and he’d grown fond of Killer.

So now, he thought, it was time for Killer and him to move on. He was as healed as he was ever going to get, had learned how to shoot his gun with one eye and was just plain bored. He could sit around this dump not one week more. He had depleted most of the money he’d brought with him paying off these dimwits to take care of him. That would be no problem. He knew where they had stashed most of the immense amount of money they’d taken in drug dealing. These people were far too stupid to outwit old Roydel. When the time came, he’d take that money by whatever means necessary. He had to get on with his life and make the best of it as a one-eyed man forever wanted by the law. He would, too. He knew that.

He and Killer would head out west, maybe Montana. He’d become a mountain man and live off the land, but first he had one last task that had to be taken care of in Iowa. Sheriff Benjamin Willoughby must pay for the eye he’d taken, and he wasn’t getting off with an eye for an eye. No sir-ee. Sheriff Benjamin was going to be dead before Roydel headed for Montana.

Chapter 2

Waiting came easily for Jack Mayfield. Sitting high in a tree perched on a small canvas seat, he watched a group of wild hogs move closer to the bait on the ground below. Shelled corn was spread out to attract the wild feral hogs and try to get them within range of his compound bow. He’d make a clean shot, a quick kill, and remove one more of these environmental disasters from this central Texas farming community.

He waited as the hogs nervously sniffed the ground, milled around and tried to get one another to be the first to walk to the bait. They’d been baited before, enough times to know there was no free lunch and somebody was probably going to get hurt. But still, the fresh grain was a delicacy they didn’t often get to taste—not that many grain fields down here. Jack continued to eye the big spotted hog, probably an old sow and a good candidate to take out of the population in order to stop her from producing more litters of these wild hogs. Thousands upon thousands of them ranged throughout a great portion of the United States destroying cropland, pastures and forests. They used their huge tusks and their ability to root for food to bulldoze topsoil, foul waterways and uproot shrubbery of all sorts.

Feeling his heart beat a little too rapidly, Jack took a quiet, deep breath, exhaling slowly to steady his nerves. He would get the shot. He always got his shot. Jack was good at hunting things, sometimes killing them. It went along with the responsibilities of his job as a U.S. Marshal. Working out of the Kansas City office would be his third posting in a 15-year career with the USMS. In a way he was glad to be moving back to the Midwest, having grown up on a farm in the northern part of Missouri and graduating from the state university. That was followed by four years in the Army with a stint in Iraq while George Sr. was president. After being hired by the Marshals, he was initially assigned to Miami but was now being relocated to the middle of the United States to the good old Show Me State.

After his vacation of hunting hogs and visiting friends, he’d be back at it with a new position. He’d probably be assigned court duty to get him warmed up to the area, protecting some judge or witness in the KC vicinity. Maybe they’d have him transfer prisoners. Who knew? Jack didn’t think they’d have him hunting fugitives right out of the gate, but he was experienced at that. Who knew what he’d be doing, so why even worry about it? Enjoy this hunt.

Now the hogs were under his tree and forgetting their fear they gobbled greedily at the corn, squealing as they fought for the prize. Jack raised his compound bow, drew back the string and looked through his peep trying to get a bead on the big sow. The hogs kept fighting and milling around, and he was having trouble getting the clear shot he wanted—one that would drop her dead almost instantly.

There! He released the arrow. It flew down from the tree and passed right through both the old sow’s lungs, dropping her on her side. The other hogs heard her shrill death scream, turned and ran in all directions. Jack nocked another arrow into his bowstring but was pretty sure it was unnecessary. Still it was the kind of thing a man in his business did, never left a weapon unloaded. Always be prepared was what they’d drilled into their heads both at basic training for the military and at his USMS training.

Jack watched as the hog’s flailing stopped and determined she was as dead as she was going to get. Unfastening his safety strap, he carefully climbed down from the tree. At the base of it, he observed the hog once again, walked over to it and cautiously poked at it with his foot. He knew what could happen if a vicious animal like this one made one more lunge for life and came after him with those long, sharp tusks.

With the help of the farmer who owned the land he’d been hunting on, the hog was delivered to a local meat locker where the processed meat would be donated to a needy family in the area. Jack liked this, thinking he’d done two good deeds that afternoon. He helped the farmer rid himself of an unwanted predator and helped some family put a little meat on their table.

He enjoyed the hunt and would like to do it again tomorrow, but vacation time had come to an end. He would have to drive up to Kansas City to be ready Monday morning to report to his new office, meet the staff there and get the lay of the land. And, of course, get his first assignment.

After a good long shower, a short nap and a burger from the local joint, Jack left in his pickup heading north for KC. Driving up Interstate 35, he daydreamed about the four hogs he’d shot the past week, reliving each adventure. Thinking about hogs reminded him of the farm he grew up on all those years ago in Nodaway County when his dad ran a hog operation with tame hogs, not wild ones, but still, they were raised in the timber.

Jack and his dad turned out bred gilts in the spring and let them farrow in the wild and then herded the whole bunch into the farmyard late in the fall before the weather turned bad. They’d lure them into the buildings much like he’d baited the wild hogs this past week. They brought hundreds of them in to feed, finish out and sell. They were one big paycheck a year for his daddy, who called it his Christmas money. Semis would show up early in the morning sometime in late November or early December, and they’d load the squealing beasts, fat and shiny now from their domesticated feeding regimen, onto the trucks.

He chuckled to himself and thought of all the changes to the hog industry. Gone were most of the small family farms and the wide assortment of ways they raised hogs. That had all been replaced by modern environmentally-controlled confinement buildings where hogs, though they never saw the light of day, were supposed to be raised quite comfortably and presumably as economically efficiently as possible.

Jack caught himself wondering, if he were a hog, would he rather be running free out in the timber on his daddy’s farm or spending his whole life in a cement condo? Well, hell, it’d probably depend on the weather like just about everything else did in the Midwest, especially when it came to farming.

Thinking of weather also reminded him it was colder up north, and he shivered. The past week’s temperatures in the 70s had been delightful. It was probably well below freezing up north, and likely snow had accumulated on the ground. Jack figured he’d better stop along the way to pick up some insulated boots and a heavier coat.

His cell phone started ringing, and he smiled, hearing the ring tone and knowing it was Chelsea, the one good thing that had come out of his short marriage.

Hey, baby, what ya doing?

Hi, Dad. I’m going shopping with Mom later, but right now I’m just hangin’ around in my room, working on a paper for school, you know. So where are you? Still enjoying your big hog hunting extravaganza or whatever you call it? Did ya get anything?

Yeah, I was able to shoot four of the beasts. Been having a great week, relaxing, hunting, you know.

What the heck are you going to do with all the meat from those things, and don’t tell me you’re sending me any.

Well if you insist, he responded in teasing. Actually, it’s all being donated to families who are dealing with hunger issues, some sort of a program they have down here. I just have to drop the critters off at a local meat locker, and the government picks up the tab for processing them. Supposedly they end up in the homes of needy people. Guess, you know, it’s like killing two birds with one stone, getting rid of the wild hogs and feeding hungry people.

Cool … very cool. I’m proud of you, Dad. I thought you were down there killing hogs just ‘cause you liked hunting and killing but turns out you have a socially responsible side I’ve not seen before, laughing as she said it.

Yeah, that’s the only reason I do it. Hey, how’s school going? You getting along okay? Getting straight A’s?

School’s going good, Dad. Some days it seems too easy, I don’t know. I’m looking forward to college. Can’t come soon enough. Their conversation was interrupted. What …? Yeah, sure, I’m coming …

Dad? Chelsea continued, It’s Mom. She’s in a toot to get going. Maybe we can talk again later, okay?

Sure kiddo. Say hi to your mom for me, although I doubt it’ll make her day.

Will do. Love you, Dad. Bye, bye.

Love you too, kiddo. Talk to you soon.

Putting his cell phone down, Jack wondered how he could love his daughter so much when she’d been born to a marriage that had so much anger. Well, he thought, no need to go down that road again. What was done was done. Still, his daughter was worth far more to him than all the bad things they’d suffered in their marriage.

The cell phone rang again, and Jack picked it up, not recognizing the call numbers.

Hello?

This Mayfield? Jack Mayfield?

Yes.

Oh good, good. This is Ed Bootie at the Marshal’s office here in Kansas City. Found your number here in the database. ‘Course you ring these damn numbers, you never know if they’re any good. So anyway, I’m glad I got hold of you.

What can I do for you today?

Just double checking, making sure you’d be reporting here Monday morning first thing. We’re short of help as usual and really need your help. Your report says you’re very proficient with firearms. That right?

Jack smiled, wondering where this conversation was going. Yeah, I can hold my own. And you already know I’ve shot a couple of bad guys since joining the service if you’re sitting there looking at my record.

Well yeah, it did say something about that. But I don’t see any problems. I mean it looks like you’ve gotten high marks from most of your superiors. Well, except for that one incident. Bootie paused and then continued, Darn good references in fact. But, well, what I was wanting to get at was that we’ve got a special problem that needs attention right away, and you may just be the best man for the job with your background and everything.

Jack was now frowning. What’s the special problem that needs attending to?

We got a bad one on the loose. Roydel Nuxton. You know of Roydel?

Sure I do. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I weren’t aware of people like Roydel. He’s been on the Marshal’s list for a while now, hasn’t he?

That he has. And the FBI is telling us they’re pretty sure he’s up to monkey business somewhere in northern Missouri. He’s probably heading back for his old stomping grounds. And that’s another good thing about you. You grew up in the same area, didn’t you? Around Pickering, Missouri?

Jack felt his vacation coming to an abrupt end. Feeling his muscles tightening and not liking the way this week was ending

Reviews for 3 Little Pigs

[Sheraleehf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ok probably a bit too much God in it for me but that aside it’s a nice little sequel to Second Chances, not as punchy as the first in the series , felt a bit like the writer was coasting on this one and making a point rather than making a plot.

[Cheryl Forney · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After reading all 3 of Bill Beaman's novels, I'm a definite fan and will look forward to future novels.