It was murder, but she got away with it

Right up at the NW corner of our property there lived some people, and they were just ordinary people. The man got a job at Reynolds when they first built it, and I don't know how long he had been working there, but they had the first TV set in the community. They had a girl that was a year or two younger than me, which was spoiled rotten. Well, one day 2 or 3 of us passed by there, and she asked if we wanted to see their new TV. Since none of us had ever seen one, we went in and looked. There were only two VHF stations in Birmingham, and there was so much snow on the screen that we couldn't tell what they were doing. So, we lost interest in that pretty fast. Then in the late 1940's, they bought a new Buick automobile. Well, it was a 1949 Buick to be exact, with a Dynaflow transmission. I think it only had a forward and backward gear, and you could really hear that thing coming down the gravel road. It had a kind of roar about it, and we all knew who it was. But, we would still all run to the door and watch her go by. Sometimes she would wave, and other times just smile. Well, everything went along well for some time, until somebody got her hooked on dope. That was the first time that I ever had heard anything about dope, and her old man would come home and she would be stoned out of her mind. Since everybody had wells to get their water from, he would just go draw a bucket of water and pour it on her. I don't remember how long this went on, but I do remember one day in January they got into it, and he ran around the house to come in at the back door and she met him there with a shotgun. She shot him through the screen door right in the mouth with that shotgun. I remember one time telling somebody about it and they asked "did it it kill him?" Well, I suppose it blew his head off, but never did hear for sure. He was a good man, and she had some kin folks and a neighbor's son that made him out to be the sorriest person in that part of the country. They all lied until they got her off scott-free. She tried to keep living there, and even had a street light put up. But, she finally moved to Iowa to try to get away from it all. She lived out there for a few years, but eventually came back here and married another man. Years later, she had a stroke and couldn't move anything but one hand. I heard that she was in one of the nursing homes in Russellville, and I didn't live very far from it. One day I was passing by there, and decided I would just go in and see what she looked like. The nurse warned me not to get close enough that she could hit me, or she would really lay one on me. She finally died ,and was buried in the cemetary at Old Bethel Baptist Church. I think that some of the people objected to her being buried there, but allowed it anyway. The old house still stands there to this day. The front porch has fallen off of it, but the house itself is still standing. So you see - she paid for her sin even before she died.