The LawDog Files

by D. Lawdog

  We got her ’cuffed and stuffed into the back of the sheriff’s cruiser, and were taking stock of our various injuries, when Joe Bob bounced over, just as excited as a litter of puppies.

  “Holy [deleted]! That was better’n Monday Night Wrasslin’! That was like a comic book! Wow!”

  “Joe Bob,” muttered the sheriff, trying to staunch a nose that was gushing with blood. “You are a moron. I oughta flat whip your butt. Go home, get something to lock your diner up with, and come get your steaks at the office later. Let’s go.”

  Believe it or not, that was the shortest serious fight we ever had with one of Big Mama’s offspring.

  FILE 7: Two Beers

  If you ask anyone who’s been in Law Enforcement long enough to wear the first coat of polish off of his boots, he’ll tell you about “Two Beers.”

  It’s pretty much a trope.

  Somebody needs to show me these two beers.

  I have heard about them all of my law enforcement career, usually at about 3 o’clock in the morning, but it’s obvious that someone is actively engaged in hiding them from me.

  * * *

  There I was, driving along minding my own business, when I noticed the bed of a pickup truck sticking out of a house.

  Now, this is the sort of thing that naturally draws an observant cop’s attention, what with our training and all, so I stopped and got out to ponder the architectural statement of a bloody huge Ford tailgate protruding from between a couple of very large bay windows.

  As I meditated upon this, I notice a pair of trenches cut into the lawn that led from the street to the pickup truck.

  This discovery, together with the bisected hedge and the mysterious disappearance of the Mama Deer lawn ornament that had previously been located between the Daddy Deer to the left of the trenches and Baby Bambi on the right, caused me to believe that my professional services were probably required.

  I called dispatch and had them run a 10-28 on the license plate prominently attached to the visible part of the pickup, then further informed them that I required the services of the Volunteer Fire Department, a mentally flexible tow-truck driver, and possibly EMS.

  After that, I scrambled up onto the bed of the pickup, ducked under the collapsed eaves, and crab-crawled into the living room.

  The first thing I noticed in the glare of the one remaining headlight was Mama Deer looking at me reproachfully from somewhere betwixt the radiator and the fuel pump.

  The second thing was the gentleman who was steadying himself against a bookcase with one hand, warbling a country song as he relieved himself into some kind of potted plant.

  Ah, I think to myself, here is Person of Interest Number One! It’s all that training, you see.

  I looked into the cab of the pickup, but I didn’t see anyone else. Behind me, George Strait left his saddle in San Antone, and I padded into the kitchen.

  A quick twist of the taps produced no water. I remembered that the owners of this house were summering in Colorado, and it looked like they hadn’t come back yet.

  A quick trip through the bedrooms revealed only dust and a musty smell, thank God, so I returned to Mama Deer and Person of Interest Number One, just as dispatch returned the name and address of the registered owner of the pickup.

  I approached the gentleman, who was occupied with firmly levering an unoffending branch up and down, from behind and I cleared my throat.

  “What’s on your mind, sir?”

  “Summbeesch won-wonn—won’t flusdht.”

  “That’s okay, sir, ferns are bad that way. Want to tell me what happened here?”

  “Welsh, I’s tak-taken a whizz, ’n the thin-thingie won’t fllushdt.”

  “Ah,” I say, “And how much have you had to drink tonight?’

  Behind my back, I extended two fingers.

  He looked at his own hand, counted unsteadily, and then waved a victory sign at me.

  “T-two beersh!”

  Damn, I’m good. I should give lessons to Miss Cleo.

  “You do realize, sir, that you have succeeded in parking your truck in a house?”

  “G’wan funnymaansh… wa-wait minnit. Yoosh a copdt.”

  Hello, higher brain functions! I waved the flashlight beam around the living room, revealing the pickup grill, the various bits and pieces dangling from the ceiling. The decapitated plaster deer.

  “Oh-o-oh, chidt.”

  “Succinct, yet pithy observation. Let’s go outside.”

  “Way, way, wayminnit! Yoush ’rrestin’ me? Whafor?”

  “Suspected DWI and hunting plaster deer out of season.”

  “Nonono, no. Mansh got ri’, rite to do wha he wnats wi’ his hoo-hou-housh!”

  “Yes!” I exclaim, happily, “Yes, he does! And you are Mr. Jim Drunkard, of Onehorse, Texas, are you not?!”

  “Yeesh! Da’s me!”

  “This is Bugscuffle. Onehorse is about 120 miles that way.” Being a helpful public servant, I indicated the direction.

  “Oh. Chidt.”

  I want to see the two beers that can give a 270-pound man a BAC of 0.27 percent.

  Seriously. Do they come in buckets or what? Is there a secret non-cop beer mug measured in gallons stashed behind every bar?

  FILE 8: The Six-Foot Chickens

  Benny is the subject of several of my stories, along with his perpetually pregnant wife, Jolene. Both of them were as meek as church mice right up until Benny got into the tequila. Which he did about once a month. Once he was good and liquored up, Benny would get depressed and attempt to off himself, but the traditional ways were never good enough for Benny. He’d lay down in front of a farmer’s hay bailer, chain himself to train tracks which hadn’t seen a train in a hundred years, or try to drown himself in two inches of water.

  Which would lead to one of us—usually me—arresting the five-foot-nothing Benny for “Fooblic Intoxidation.” This was reliably followed by Jolene attempting to defend her husband and going berserk.

  Considering that Jolene was, as noted, usually pregnant and about four feet, eight inches tall, we usually attempted to avoid putting Jolene in jail. Not always successfully, however.

  * * *

  There I was, parked in the Allsup’s lot with an an extra-jumbo Dr. Pepper in one paw and a chimichanga in the other. Somewhere else in the county, a rookie officer was doing his first solo patrol. Life was good.

  “SO, car 12.”

  *Chomp, chomp* “Go ahead.”

  “Car 12, car 20 requests backup at Wobble Creek. He’s nekkid.”

  I paused, for a moment, eyeing my chimichanga suspiciously, and then keyed the mic: “Car 12, SO. Say again your last?” Please, please let me be hallucinating.

  “Car 12, I’m just relaying what I was told. The kid needs help and said he was nekkid.”

  I hightailed it to the location, looked frantically for the rookie’s cruiser, and spotted it parked beside a big corral. I whipped in beside the corral, leaped out, and started looking for my newbie. All I saw was a rancher leaning against the corral, chewing on a stalk of something, and staring with bemused fascination into the corral. I looked into the corral, and it was full of chickens. Six-foot-tall chickens.

  “T’ain’t chickens,” grunted the rancher before I could say anything. “Emus.”

  I was about to ask what an Australian bird was doing in North Texas, and then I noticed that about four of these mutant chickens were in one corner of the pen, crawling all over each other and trying to get away from a man in the center of the pen.

  A man who was on his knees, arms held out in supplication to the terrified megafowl, and begging in alcohol-sodden tones, “Birdie want a Benny?”

  And he was as utterly, completely, and totally bare-butt nekkid as the day he was born.

  On the other side of the corral was my rookie. He was crawling frantically for the corral fence while an enraged six-foot chicken jumped up and down on his back.

  It was a Prozac moment.

  “Frank.�
� Could those calm tones belong to me? “Would you mind getting out here? Thank you. Benny, come here. Now.”

  Benny turned and shuffled toward me with an air of I’ve-done-something-wrong-but-I-don’t-know-what-it-is-yet while staying well out of grabbing range.

  Still wondering where this remarkable calm came from, I asked, “Benny, what are you doing in that chicken coop?”

  “T’aint chickens. Emus” grunted the rancher.

  Benny warbled, hiccuped, and waved his arms at me.

  “You’re doing what? Committing suicide? BY CHICKEN?”

  Frank had managed to reach the top bar of the corral, but right about then he was jerked loose and suplexed back into the corral by the emu, which appeared to have World Wrestling Federation aspirations.

  That nice, calm feeling totally evaporated.

  “Frank! Quit screwing around with that chicken and get out here! Benny. Get. Over. Here. Now!”

  “T’aint a chicken. Emu.”

  Benny, still on his knees, shuffled toward me an inch at a time, his lower lip quivering pitifully. As soon as he was close enough, I got an arm around him… and slipped right off him. I stared at my suddenly greasy arm, looked closer at Benny, and saw that he was covered in bacon grease.

  Apparently, he wanted to taste good when they pecked him to death

  Bloody considerate of him. Too bad six-foot chickens don’t like bacon. The rancher stared at Benny for a moment and then collapsed against the fence, pounding it with his fist and howling with laughter.

  Frank crawled out from under the lowest bar of the fence just in time to catch an airborne Benny as I forcibly removed his naked, bacon-greased body from the corral.

  FILE 9: Fooblic Intoxidation

  Benny, again.

  A few years back I was passing through my old stomping grounds, stopped in Bugscuffle for a burger, and came across some local residents. I had figured that after a couple of decades, no one there would remember me, but apparently I made more of an impression than I had thought.

  During the course of the conversation, I learned that Benny had Passed On. I thought that one of his hare-brained drunken suicide schemes had finally paid off, but no, he was at work, sober, when a massive myocardial infarction got him. Thankfully, he never knew what hit him.

  I wouldn’t have thought that the death of a drunk I had arrested multiple times twenty years ago would have hit me quite so hard, but I found I was genuinely upset when I heard of his passing.

  Odd, that.

  * * *

  Late one evening—or early one morning, depending on your frame of reference—Dispatch got a prowler call from one of our lake residents.

  I scooted out there, started looking around, and discovered something kind of weird. There was an 18-inch-wide strip of ground going up the driveway that looked like it had been roto-tilled, but it was only about an inch deep.

  A bit puzzled, I followed the strip of torn-up earth up the driveway, onto the front lawn, through the hedge, down the side lot, up a gentle hill, down the backside of the hill, across a miniature beach, and up onto a dilapidated boat dock.

  At the far end of the dock, a small figure was bent over, hands on knees, apparently trying to choose between wheezing and hiccuping beside a fairly substantial pile of something unidentifiable.

  *sigh*

  Being careful to avoid the torn-up planks, I stepped onto the dock and meandered down to the figure at the far end.

  “Evening, Benny” I said, as I extracted a stick of gum from my vest, “What’s on your mind?”

  Benny waved, gurgled, and hiccuped solemnly at me. I took the opportunity to examine the mysterious pile, which turned out to be about six cinder blocks which had been chained together and locked with a rusty padlock. Half-inch rope had been carefully, and thoroughly, knotted to the chain, with about twenty feet of its length neatly coiled on the dock before being knotted, again carefully and most thoroughly, around Benny’s right ankle.

  It was a Migraine Salute Moment.

  “Benny,” I said, gently, as a headache thundered up my spine and flowered beautifully behind my eyes, “What the Hell are you doing this time?”

  Benny blinked and then explained his plan to cast himself into the briny deep so that he would no longer be an embarrassment to his wife and family.

  I shined my flashlight over the edge of the dock. Cracked black mud baked sullenly in the heat of a Texas evening. I swung the light up to Benny and then back down. Still mud. My gum made a faint, but convincing thud as it landed on the ground, one hundred feet from anything resembling water.

  This was one for the notebooks.

  “Benny,” I began, drawing in a breath for what I intended to be a truly epic dressing-down, “This is absolutely the–”

  I paused because Benny had drawn up both fists pugnaciously and was waving them in front of his face as he swayed gently back and forth on the dock.

  Bloody Hell.

  “All right, Benny,” I sighed. “You want some help?”

  Benny paused for a moment as the thought burbled its way through the tequila-sodden depths of his conscious before striking home and causing Benny to nod vigorously.

  “Okay. Lift! On three! One, two, three! Three, Benny! Three!”

  I waved away the small puff of dust raised by the impact of the cinder blocks and then turned to see Benny offering me a small paw. We shook hands, and then Benny patted me gently on the arm, took two deep breaths, held the third, pinched his nose shut, and screwed his eyes closed.

  And waited.

  I opened another stick of gum. Sighed. Pulled out my pocketknife and cut the rope. Put away the pocketknife. Stood beside the gently swaying Benny. Contemplated the life of a small-town deputy.

  After a minute or so, Benny’s eyes opened, and he looked at me in utter confusion, wondering I guess, where the water was.

  I waggled my fingers at him. Benny closed his eyes again. I gave him about another minute before I whacked him firmly between the shoulder blades, barking, “Breathe, Benny!”

  Benny almost collapsed as he drew a massive breath. I lowered my shoulder, which let him fall into a nice little fireman’s carry and started walking toward my cruiser.

  “I swear to God, Benny!”

  “Fooblic… *wheeze* …Intoxidation?”

  “Damned skippy Fooblic Intoxidation. Again.”

  FILE 10: Pheasant Season

  Getting sprinkled with bird shot during hunting season isn’t as rare as one might think. However, the closer-in incidents are very rare.

  Insert appropriate Dick Cheney joke here. I’d like to go on the record as having written this several years before the VPOTUS decided to bag his limit on lawyers.

  The really absurd part of this story is that the same two players in this one did almost the exact same thing about eight months later. Only, the second time, they pulled up to the sheriff’s office while a van-load of federal types were doing their once-a-year show-the-flag tour to the outlying counties. Fun times.

  By the by, translating English into Injured Redneck is more difficult than one might think.

  Ahem.

  * * *

  I had been out west of town settling a dispute concerning the paternity of a litter of puppies and was heading back to the SO on one of those lovely Panhandle fall afternoons. I had the window down and was just generally enjoying myself when I was passed by a 1958 Chevy pickup doing approximately twice the legal speed limit.

  *sigh*

  About ten miles later, I got the Chevy pulled over, when the driver got out and sprinted back to the cruiser. Friends of mine can tell you that I have a real dislike for people doing that, so I promptly tore into him:

  “Nug, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Well,” he said, scrunching and fidgeting with his gimme hat, “I done murdered Dobie, and I thought I might oughta find a doctor for him.”

  “Do you realize how fast you were going? All four of these tires are so bald that they’r
e showing wire, the passenger side front fender is going to fly off in the wind… Wait. You did what?”

  Nug’s expression kind of wrinkled up, and he mauled his cap a bit more. “I kilt Dobie.”

  Oh, God. This, I didn’t need. I found myself speaking very slowly and carefully, “Nug, are you sure you killed Dobie?”

  “We-eeell, I shot him in the face with a shotgun.”

  Oh, yeah. That’ll do the trick. I felt a headache tip-toeing its way up my spine with all the dainty grace of a rhino in steel-toed combat boots.

  “Nug,” said I, still in that slow, calm voice, “Think carefully now. Did you mean to shoot your brother?”

  He abruptly took on a hunted expression. His hands clutched convulsively at the John Deere cap; he knew there was a legal trick somewhere in my words. He sought a neutral, non-condemning answer, an answer which wouldn’t violate his Fifth Amendment Rights. He had it!

  “You mean, this time?”

  *sigh*

  “One felony at a time, Nug. And where’s the body?”

  Nug looked at the truck, “He’s in the back.”

  I pointed at Nug, “Don’t go anywhere!” Then, I vaulted onto the rear bumper of the truck, and sure enough, we had a body lying on a bed of fish poles, beer cans, oil jugs, shotgun shells, and other assorted detritus necessary for the proper operation of a country truck. And, even better, the corpus had slid forward far enough that everything from the armpits up was hidden under the toolbox.

  Oh, joy. I swallowed a couple of times, took a deep breath, latched onto the ankles of the cadaver, and began to pull him out from under the toolbox, when the Deceased promptly spasmed violently in my grip, such spasm together with the deep, sonorous tone of a bell sounding in a place where there weren’t any bells, which caused me to turn loose the ankles of the Dearly Departed and to tumble into the bar ditch.