The townspeople stood outsid the store, their tongues moving fluidly.

          “Karma is what it is,” one older woman with thinning white hair said, as she hobbled past the people and into the store, leaning heavily on her cane.

          The younger women nodded in agreement. An innocent bystander might overhear the words, “It’s just a drunk killing a drunk,” and not understand exactly what had occured.

          Maybe a barroom brawl that went too far? But, there weren’t any bars in their small, dry county. The citizens wouldn’t allow it. So, what had happened then?

          Another fragment of whispered conversation between the customers of the only grocery store in town, “Coming back from a bar in Grenada County. Hit him head on. No, Mr. Brownlee was heading to that same bar. Shows you what the Almighty thinks of drinking.”

          It was a drunk driver car crash then, with one dead, obviously the one that wasn’t intoxicated.

~

          “Mom. Enough,” Daisy said, as she tried to remove the bottle of whiskey from her mother’s hand.

          “No. It smells like your father, “her mother argued, without much conviction.

          A quick thought flashed into Daisy’s mind. Yep, it’s why he’s dead now. She usually let thoughts like disintegrate and tried not to think them again

          Daisy wasn’t the type of person to sit by while someone dug their own grave, but she also wasn’t the type of person to step in and tell someone how to live their life. Daisy did only enough so that her conscience was cleansed, and so she could ignore the diminished problem, like with her father.

          When Daisy was younger, she left Alcoholics Anonymous brochures on her father’s dresser. Although, the four times Daisy had done such things, she had received merciless beating from her father, because her mother tattled on her. It was a child’s word, but Daisy could think of no other way to describe it. Her father would have drunken himself into a stupor if her mother hadn’t told. Her father had been more dangerous sobe then when he was drunk, contrary to what people in their small town believed.