Southern Gothic. The Musical.

D-Lilly, as everyone called her, had always been a secretive child. Oh, she did her work on the farm to her daddy’s satisfaction, but when she was done, she had a habit of disappearing like smoke, only reappearing long after the rest of the family had gone to bed. She seemed to survive on very little sleep, even as a teenager. Especially as a teenager.What socializing she did was as the only girl in a gang of boys: her brother, Sam and his friends, Mac, Andy and Trev. When money could be found they went into town to the afternoon movies where one of the guys dropped a frog down the back of her shirt. At first, she was furious but relented when she saw who had made the deposit. Mac was her favourite of all her brother’s friends and, even though he was a few years older, she entertained fantasies of them becoming a couple.As summer turned to fall, D-Lilly found excuses to cross his path, riding her bike past the sawmill at shift change, staying alert to any indication her brother and his gang were about to go somewhere and do something to which she could attach herself.It was after one of their beer league ball games, that Mac stormed off the field without waiting for the others. Wordlessly he walked to his car, and she followed, getting in and slamming the door just as he fired up the engine and burned out of the lot. She didn’t ask why he wasn’t waiting for the others, she didn’t care what the plan was; she was stunned and elated and that was quite good enough for the moment.Their relationship didn’t ever get out of that car. She never knew where it would go but got in anyway.She was 18 when, on the 3rd of June, at the dinner table, her mother dropped the bomb. Mac had committed suicide and no one knew why. The bile rose to her throat and she had to breathe it down because she was pretty sure she knew why and she also knew she could never tell. She kept the secret for the rest of her abbreviated life.It wasn’t even a year later that her brother married Becky, who was ambitious where he wasn’t, and they bought a store a few hours away. D-Lilly stayed on the farm until her daddy died of an aggressive virus that was making the rounds, and her mother became a hollow shell.By then her brother’s old friend Andy had lured Sam and Becky to Georgia where he’d started a small scale residential land development company and needed people he could trust to work with him on it.D-Lilly had no compelling reason to stay home so she agreed to join the team and learn the business.They were all amazed when the business took off and Andy, as its president and CEO, became something of a local celebrity, becoming the darling of what passed for power in the community. There was talk of him running for Police Chief when the current one retired and, in fact, the Chief had already endorsed him as successor. He had loads of connections, but very few friends.Things were going swimmingly but D-Lilly had a niggling sense that there were currents running under the surface which were unsettling and dark. She noticed that little old Becky from the farm country had turned into an aggressive salesperson with a killer wardrobe and a real ambitious edge. At the same time, her go-along to get-along brother, Sam, seemed content to work away behind the scenes, avoiding business networking events and most community get togethers. She tried to talk to Sam about her concerns, but Sam always shrugged his shoulders and made some noncommittal remark about people having their own ways of doing things. Mind you, he did have a habit of taking the gun his daddy had left him and heading out into the hills for some target practice. Sometimes he’d be gone for a week or more.D-Lilly couldn’t leave it alone. She felt her brother needed her protection, that he was a little too innocent to function in this foreign environment. Nothing they had grown up with had prepared him for the competing agenda and treacherous dynamics. Somehow her painful life lessons proved more useful, as did her secretive nature.It didn’t take her long to catch Andy and Becky in the act, confirming what she had long suspected. She knew by now there was no point in talking to Sam; he’d find some way to wash the whole thing, swallow his pain and his pride, and keep on going.She had done difficult things, awful things, before, so the decision to do away with Becky and Andy wasn’t much of a stretch. She caught Becky coming out of the motel a half hour after Andy had left, and disposed of her without any difficulty. What she didn’t count on, when she left Andy lying in a puddle of blood in his own kitchen, was her brother deciding this was the night to confront Andy about the rumours.And that’s when things went horribly wrong.Sam discovered Andy’s body, panicked and fired off his gun to alert the authorities. The house phone had long since been disconnected after one too many prank calls.As is often the case in Southern Gothic, neither the Sheriff nor the Judge had clean hands and Sam was arrested, tried and convicted in short order, and without any semblance of due process. And, as is customary, he was promptly hanged.D-Lilly went off the rails at this point and fled to the city where she immediately married a completely inappropriate hard drinker from Wales. How she met him is anyone’s guess but the blush was off the rose pretty quickly. To be fair, it was mostly her fault and he didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with her rage and incomprehensible grief. She sought solace in a variety of unsavoury encounters, all of them physical or chemically induced. With an abundance of disregard, she began bringing them home. This was too much for her Welshman who, coming home in his cups one evening, spied D-Lilly with her latest paramour, through a window. He waited, and he drank, and he waited until she was finally alone.When the police arrived to inspect her body, with its numerous stab wounds, they found him cradling her, crying, “Why, why, why?” He never did learn the whole story but now you know.And if you don’t know, you’d best click on the videos.Until next time, watch out for Old Testament temptresses, cheaters and crooked law enforcement.Thanks for reading Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe