Who Is Cletus?

Cletus Darnell Tuggwell learned math from three places: scratch tickets, bait shop receipts, and his Granny’s old moonshine ledgers. He wasn’t raised – he was calculated. While other kids played with Tonka trucks, he played with laundromat change counters and laminated business licenses stolen from flea markets.

By 12, he ran his own raffle scam under a church carport. By 15, he turned a worm cooler into a cash bin and a fishing contest into a smokescreen for gang money. Granny didn’t mind – she called it “entrepreneurship with plausible deniability.”

The bait shop he runs today has no inventory, no prices, and somehow four refrigerators. There’s always country music, always open beer, and always at least two tax forms taped under the counter marked “for emergencies.” He’s got three sets of books, five shell LLCs, and a cousin in Arkansas who pretends to be dead on payroll.

Cletus never carries a gun – just a calculator in a holster and a roll of hundreds in a waterproof snack bag. His truck is dented, tagged, and paid for in untraceable lottery winnings. The CB name’s “Ledgerneck,” and he runs ops from a fold-out table next to a propane tank marked “Not Drugs.”

Sheriff Bo Harper has raided the shop five times. Found fish guts, NASCAR posters, and one suspiciously well-laminated W-9. But never cash. Never drugs. Just a smiling Cletus in a visor, holding a bait bucket full of old receipts and saying, “You want catfish or crickets, officer?”

Word is, Cletus keeps the entire Redneck Gang funded, hidden, and mobile. Some say he moved thirty grand once in a tackle box full of live frogs. Others say the frogs were in on it.

Legacy

Cletus ain’t flashy. He don’t shoot, don’t preach, don’t fight. But without him, the gang runs broke by Tuesday. He’s the numbers behind the noise – the money man with a mullet and a spreadsheet burned into his brain.

Granny calls him her “quiet little felony.” Bo calls him “the itch I can’t scratch.” The rest of the gang just call when rent’s due.

If he offers you bait, take it. If he offers you advice, listen twice.