In The Belly of Hell

In the Belly of Hell By Timothy C. Phillips Jonah has a hump back, and a huge mole on his brow. Jonah is not sad. He is young yet, and dreams of marrying an ugly girl from the poor side of Motion Gulch. Ugly, yes; ugly will do fine. Jonah owns land.... More

In the Belly of Hell By Timothy C. Phillips Jonah has a hump back, and a huge mole on his brow. Jonah is not sad. He is young yet, and dreams of marrying an ugly girl from the poor side of Motion Gulch. Ugly, yes; ugly will do fine. Jonah owns land. He has a place on Lake Awatchee, out past Willow Bay. He also owns a boat, and goes fishing after dark, when the world is the color of the algae in the backwater, and strange sounds writhe around one in the marshes. His only friend is Theodore Roosevelt Funk, an old black man who lives on a houseboat on the marsh. Funk, when sober, with his blood hounds, is periodically employed by the Motion Gulch Police Department, finding drowning victims or homicides who have been dumped in the lake, for seventy-five dollars a day. At other times, he is their guest, as he sometimes drinks himself into a stupor, and exposes himself to some of Motion Gulch’s more jaded citizens, who are not so jaded that they no longer take offense. On a certai Less