* * *
“You little what, Deputy Steve?” Sheriff Tom knew his deputy didn’t think much of him and often referred to him behind his back as “the little idiot.”
“Pardon me.” Deputy Steve’s voice on the radio was cold. “I was distracted by Susie Myers’ little poodle. She’s off her leash again.”
Right. “You can write Susie a ticket later, Deputy Steve. I expect a full report on my desk about the bridge incident before you leave today.”
“Affirmative. Marsters out.”
Poor little Stevie didn’t get to be sheriff. Tom used to feel bad for him before Deputy Marsters showed up in place of Deputy Steve. Everyone always thought Deputy Steve was a bit of a wimp and a kiss ass. But at least he would do what you wanted him to do and he never seemed to suffer the small stuff. Tom and his friends used to get away with murder and Deputy Steve would always let them by, smiling at them with that goofy asshole smile he had before he became dickhead Deputy Marsters with his jock asshole smile. People didn’t like being spoken to as if they were trash or had done something worse than park too long or go a few miles per hour too fast. Most of Sheriff Tom’s job these days seemed to be undoing all the hard work of Deputy Marsters, who seemed to want the people of Stansbury to live in a police state rather than a nice little town.
Stansbury was a nice little town, all things considered. And Sheriff Tom had been elected sheriff with only three votes - his mom, Sheriff Ben and his girlfriend, Mary Beth. They didn’t even want him to win. They just didn’t want him to not get any votes. He told them he wasn’t even going to vote for himself. He voted for Sheriff Ben. Sheriff Ben was supposed to win the election. Everybody knew that. Tom only filled out the paper because Mary Beth told him that the process of running for a political office would mature him and, for some reason, she wanted him to be more mature. When they started dating, she didn’t mind that he lacked maturity. In fact, she loved his comics. He wanted to be an artist for graphic novels. He used to take old Edgar Allen Poe and H. P. Lovecraft stories and draw them out. He always thought he could sell the Poe stuff with no problem. It was public domain. He tried sending the Lovecraft stuff on to the people who owned the rights but strangely they told him his work was a little too graphic and they didn’t feel it captured the essential nature of the kind of psychological horror that Lovecraft created. He supposed they were right, but people loved the graphic stuff and he was getting pretty good at it. He went to a couple of comic conventions and some of the big guys in the field were pretty impressed with his work. But, of course, his mother started to get her claws into Mary Beth and started filling her head with ideas about children and the future and how if Tom would just grow up a little he would be a man and how Mary Beth needed a man if she didn’t want to be a first grade teacher all her life and even though Mary Beth loved teaching the first grade and loved Tom’s comics and told him he was a brilliant artist, she also started talking about the future which she and his mom felt that he needed to grow up and face and that maybe the future would be better if he grew up and did something with his life. For some reason, growing up and doing something with his life led him to filling out the stupid form to run for town sheriff. He found out that apparently you didn’t need any experience, that like running for any other elected office, you just needed a few signatures and a filing fee. He collected fifty signatures to get on the ballot and was amazed at just how easy it was. With the exception of his mother, Mary Beth and Sheriff Ben, everyone said that they would be happy to sign, but they were still going to vote for Sheriff Ben. Sheriff Ben signed with a kind of weird smile and told Tom that he would vote for him and that he hoped he would win. What he hadn’t told Tom is that he had been waiting for someone to come along and get on the ballot so he could leave the job to go and do whatever it was he said that he needed to do that didn’t involve being sheriff. Right up until the day of the election, Ben and Tom had gone along with the charade that it was a real democratic type thing and that Tom could stand a chance of winning. Ben kept stopping in at Tom’s “Election H.Q.” which was his mom’s kitchen and telling him that he better be ready to win this thing what with all the campaigning that was going on. Sheriff Ben said that Danielle, Tom’s mom, had convinced him with her cookies to vote for Tom. His mom had signs made and would bake cookies and go door to door in town giving out cookies and telling people what a fine boy he was. Mary Beth had all the kids in her class make signs and go around to all the stores and ask people to put them in their windows and people did because they thought it was funny that someone was running against Sheriff Ben and they all knew they were going to vote for Sheriff Ben so what harm could it do. What the people in the town didn’t know, what Deputy Steve didn’t know, what Tom didn’t know is that Sheriff Ben didn’t want to win. In fact, they didn’t find out until the day after the election that the day before the election, Ben legally removed his name from the ballot. There was some general outrage, of course, and a lot of anger at both Ben and Tom. People were angry at Ben for not being Sheriff Ben any more and they were angry at Tom for having the nerve to be Sheriff Tom. He was all for not being Sheriff Tom, but his mother and Mary Beth all but moved him into the office. His mom even bought him his uniform and gun. Tom really didn’t have a choice in the matter. He went to Ben and begged him to take it all back, but Ben had this look of someone who had been given a new lease on life and did not want to return it. Ben told Tom to take it slow and that people would come around to him being sheriff. He also said that being sheriff wasn’t too hard most of the time and that Deputy Steve would probably end up doing most of the work anyway. Deputy Steve tried to get a special election held so that he could be on the ballot against Tom and everyone could vote for the “rightful heir” to Stansbury’s badge. That was about the time that people began to warm to the notion of Sheriff Tom. No one really wanted Deputy Steve to be Sheriff Steve. Nobody really liked Deputy Steve all that much and now people pretty much hated Deputy Marsters. When Tom first became sheriff, he kind of hid out in his office, playing on Gil’s Playstation and trying not to do anything so he wouldn’t do anything wrong. Whenever he had a question, he’d call up Ben and Ben would tell him what to do and pretty soon people started telling him that he was doing the job just as well as Ben ever did. Pretty soon he was down at Charlie’s Grill having a coffee and a donut and chatting with the locals. His mom even began to accuse him of growing up and started pushing him to pop the question to Mary Beth. Mary Beth started hinting at the fact that she would like the question to be popped to her. He even called up Ben and asked him what to do and Ben said that he could tell him how to be the best possible Sheriff Tom he could be, but he wouldn’t even begin to advise him on the subject of getting married.
Tom sat in his office and thought that he should go out to the bridge and see what Kurtz had done. Tom sat in his office and looked at his notebook in front of him. Lately he had taken to drawing stories about unsolved crimes, especially those with gruesome deaths. He didn’t know why his special talent seemed to be capturing death so well, but he was good at it. As his eyes drifted over his notebook, he kept coming back to that little box on his desk. He had gone down to Boston without Mary Beth.
“I have to do some research.” Sheriff Tom was not a good liar at all.
“What kind of research, Sheriff Tom?” She loved calling him Sheriff Tom.
“For a case I’m working on.” Such a bad liar.
“What case, Sheriff Tom?” She knew and she was just playing with him. “Do you think I could help you with this case? Maybe advise you on it?”
“I think I need to solve this one by myself, Mary Beth.” He smiled at her in a way to tell her that if she wanted him to do what she wanted him to do that she should probably just go ahead and let him do it.
“Okay, Sheriff Tom. Good luck with your case. Just remember the number six and one half is an important clue for your case.” She winked at him, kissed him, hugged him hard, kissed him again and then l
eft, crying just a little, but he knew from happiness.
He looked down at the box on his desk and knew that he couldn’t put it off any longer. His mother was right. He needed to grow up a bit and by filling out that form, by becoming sheriff, he was an adult now and it wasn’t so bad at all. He picked up the box and put it in his pocket. School got out in a little bit and he thought he’d try to catch Mary Beth in her room after everyone else had gone and tell her that he had solved his case. He knew more than anything that he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
Lakebridge: Spring (Supernatural Horror Literary Fiction) Page 23