Read Online The Election by Jerome Teel - Free Book Online

the job. The one hundred dollars he had in his pocket when he arrived provided for a liquid dinner and more. He didn’t care how he felt in the morning. He had called Ruth earlier and told her not to wait up. He’d be home when he got there.
    The Bad Dog Saloon was a regular haunt of Jed’s. He stopped by every Friday after work for a couple of beers with his buddies before going home. It was an old, dilapidated wooden building, but the regulars didn’t mind, and the health department stayed away. The outside was painted white, and the windows and doors were trimmed in red. Folklore said that the combination kept evil spirits out. The only spirits the proprietor said he wanted on the inside of the bar were the ones in a bottle. Above the outside of the front door was a large painting of the face of a bulldog. Hence the name.
    Jed was the only patron remaining at 2:00 a.m. when the bartender announced that it was closing time. Jed had closed up the Bad Dog on several occasions in his younger days, but never during the week. He staggered out the front door and fell off the small wooden porch onto the gravel and dirt that covered the parking lot. His clothes and body were filthy and smelly from working all day and drinking all night, but he didn’t care. He managed to get to his feet and find his way to his pickup.
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    The bartender locked up at 3:00 a.m. When he saw Jed passed out in the front seat of his pickup in the parking lot, he decided that was the best thing for Jed.
    Sleep it off, Jed , the bartender thought as he pulled out of the parking lot onto Highway 412. He would call Ruth later in the morning and tell her where to find her husband.

CHAPTER SIX
    Thompson mansion, Jackson, Tennessee
    Naomi McClellan had been in the kitchen an hour before Jesse Thompson awoke Wednesday morning at his customary six o’clock. The sun was only half-crested over the eastern horizon, so she knew that Earline Thompson, Jesse’s wife, who slept in the bedroom down the hall from Jesse, wouldn’t awake for a while yet.
    The Thompson mansion was a palatial two-story plantation house northwest of Jackson, just outside the city limits. It took Naomi twenty minutes to drive there from her house in the eastern part of the city. Although no longer an operational plantation, it was still surrounded by the best pasture land in all of Madison County.
    â€œGood morning, Naomi,” Jesse called as he entered the kitchen and sat at the head of the table.
    Naomi was less than thrilled at Jesse’s arrival. She hated him passionately…and feared him. Even so, for the last thirty of her sixty years, she had worked at the Thompson mansion. She had tried to find other employment, but all she knew how to do was be a maid to the Thompsons. And the pay was more than she could have made working at a restaurant or a convenience store or a hotel. She had grown accustomed to wearing the white polyester blouse and pants, similar to ones worn by hospital personnel, which Mrs. Thompson required as a uniform.
    â€œMornin’,” Naomi replied. “The newspaper’s on the table, and breakfast’ll be ready in a minute.”
    Even at fifty-five Jesse was still an imposing figure. But the years were beginning to catch up with him. His gray hair was thinning on top, and some of his scalp was visible. His face was leathery from years of exposure to the sun, and small wrinkles had developed under his eyes. Brown age spots covered his hands.
    The smell of bacon and eggs wafted through the kitchen as Naomi finished cooking the same breakfast she always prepared for Jesse. She sighed inwardly. Her life was relegated to preparing meals and cleaning house for the one man she hated with every ounce in her body. Her plight in finding a job elsewhere wasn’t helped much by the fact that she had never finished the third grade and could barely spell her own name. Her husband had left her with a small child, a son,