I.

Barn, 1939

The mystery is not always a whodunit. Sometimes, like this time, that part is clear and obvious—a man hanging from a barn rafter with a hoisting rope tied around his neck, his legs up to the knees sunken into a busted crate placed underneath his body. According to the police report, Eben Wallace had danced this dance constantly over the course of his marriage. Any time he got into an argument with his wife, Imelda, he’d threaten to kill himself, run off to the barn, hop up on an overturned bucket, and wait with the same hoisting rope around his neck until his wife ran in to beg him down. She did this time after time. Until she didn’t. This last time, Imelda told police she’d finished doing what she was doing in the kitchen before heading out to the barn to find Eben’s dance completed. Again, some scenes are what they appear to be. This one, clearly self-inflicted. But what of this unfamiliar crate and Imelda’s delay. And why was Eben’s trusted bucket hidden so well behind the pump out back?

II.

Parsonage Parlor, 1946

Fifty years later this scene would be overflowing with answers—prints lifted from the door knob, furniture, and any portable objects observed in the parsonage; hair and fiber analysis of all rugs and the victim’s clothing; DNA collected from a rape kit of the victim, the bloody hammer lying just feet from her wounded head, the knife protruding from her abdomen, and from beneath her fingernails; digital dental imprints and saliva swabs of the bite marks covering the victim’s torso. In that room mid-century, though, there would have been nothing but questions. How did this teenager find herself in an abandoned parsonage on her way home from the market after buying hamburger meat for supper? Who had a key for access? How did they know the place had been abandoned for months, its furniture covered, its windows shuddered, mail piling up by the front door? And most importantly, why the sharp animus of the blade, the biting, and the posing of the girl’s body after the hammer blow had done its work?

III.

Three-Room Dwelling, 1937

Some scenes can’t help themselves. Their order of events conforms naturally into one or two reasonable chronologies. One act simply leads to the next until the final outcome declares itself. This scene, though, is totally unreasonable. There’s just no way to fit the pieces together so the moves roll from first to last. A mother dead in her bed as if sleeping in peace, a single gun shot to her face, no signs of alarm or movement. A father covered in blood sprawled face-down on a pallet next to the bed, blood on the mattress where his head should be. An infant shot in her crib, blood splattered on the wall behind it and pooled in a single circle in the middle of the room, a rifle lying on the tile just feet away. Drag marks and bloody footprints leading back into the master bedroom. Mother and baby, clearly victims. Father a possible shooter, except to leave the rifle in the baby’s room after shooting the child and himself, he would have to have blood on the soles of his feet to leave those prints, not just on his toes and heels as the scene clearly shows. And then the gaping hole of the drag marks absent a dragger to make them.

IV. 

Dark Bathroom, 1896

Sometimes murder scenes hold no truth at all. Witnesses make mistakes. Or outright lie. Details misalign themselves irrevocably. The unlikeliest accidents just happen. Take this one: a lady of the night prone to epileptic seizures is found headfirst in a running bath, fully clothed with her feet jutting stiffly out above her. The neighbor who discovered the scene reported that the dead woman had entertained two gentlemen callers with drinks and loud fun deep into the night. Disturbed by the persistence of the running water, the neighbor entered their shared bathroom to find the body as it lay. The decedent here didn’t die of a seizure climbing into the bath. Not fully dressed. Not with the drain stopper hanging innocently over the side of the tub. No evidence of violence. The drunken men managed to exit without leaving a single trace of themselves. An empty liquor bottle and lonely glass left near the tub on the bath mat were the only proof any drinking at all had occurred. Are we left to believe the neighbor’s account? Or should we believe our own eyes when we see the victim’s stiffened legs and know a rigored body like this one has to be placed where it lies.





Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Hawkeye, The Shore, Stone Circle, Psaltery & Lyre, trampset, Some Words and other journals. His work has also been selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Fight Nights (Blue Horse Press, 2025). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.

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