CHAPTER 25

Everyone knew that Sheriff Quincy Ball was depraved.  But they voted for him every election, their collective reasoning being that anyone, no matter how upstanding they may be before holding office, would succumb to the pressures shortly thereafter, so why make one more person morally corrupt when they could simply keep the same guy in the position and save everyone else the trouble. 

With the savvy that could only come through being an urbanite from Billings, Quincy figured to head off what could have been a running joke by making sure his campaign signs advertised “Q. for Quincy. Ball: the Man For the Job.”  Thus imprinting himself in the hearts and minds of the less-worldly residents of Jerkwater.

As a young man, Quincy Ball had been chiseled, like a statue made of stone with strong arms, a flat stomach, and a sharp, clean jaw.  Now he was big and burly, his stature had grown with his reputation.  That and his wife, Lydia’s, food obsession had rendered him a six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-seventy-five pound obstacle in the path of any would-be miscreant in the greater Jerkwater area.  

Lydia, aka Lucky Liddy, and Quincy made up a social strata unto itself, she being one of only ten women in the county to attain an education beyond the twelfth grade (the others were school teachers) and he holding the keys to the jail.

They had met in Sioux City in 1946 when she was a senior at Kansas State and he was attending his first Chief’s convention as the newly-appointed Chief of the two-man sheriff’s department in Jerkwater. 

It had been homecoming weekend and Liddy was a princess riding down the street in a sky-blue convertible.  Her five-foot-eleven, hundred-and-seventy-eight pound body was irresistible.  It was love at first sight.  He had skipped that evening’s banquet and keynote speaker in order to follow the crowds to the school dance where he began telling her why she was going to be his wife.  

Liddy had read Robert Browning, she was prepared.  And even though he often forgot to count the ways, after twenty-eight years of marriage, she considered life with her husband as livable in that she could endure whatever he brought to the table.

And besides, he was terribly sweet,  bringing her that beautifully delicate chez lounge to rest her two-hundred-and-forty pound body on, because he said it made him think of her at a rummage sale in Billings.