by D. Lawdog
Okay. No problem.
I was laying there in the bar-ditch, pulling goat-head stickers out of my limbs and very carefully not wondering about how much a face being slammed into the bottom of a stainless-steel toolbox sounded remarkably like a church bell, when said face appeared over the edge of the pickup bed and peered down at me in an accusatory fashion.
“Ju brogd by dode.”
I concentrated on removing a particularly ambitious sticker.
“By ond brugga choosts be in de ged, and deen de gops breg by dode.”
I rolled to my feet carefully ambled back to the cruiser, and fished around in the back seat until I found a handkerchief, walked back to the pickup, and handed it to Dobie.
“Thakds” he mumbled, dabbling the blood flowing down his face and revealing several dozen dark gray pimples. They were suspiciously leaden in color.
I sat on the bumper, fishing around in my vest for a badly needed stick of gum, “Hunting accident?” I hazarded, minutely studying a paleolithic stick of Juicy Fruit clutched in my ever-so-slightly trembling paw.
“Dumg fezant tookt off betweeg us, and by dumg chit brugga wagn’t looging where he was chooging.”
“Quail, Dobie,” I said very firmly. “Pheasant season is still a couple of weeks away.”
“Dugn’t magger. By dumg chit brugga goodn’t git a bull in de bugt widt a figgle angyway.”
I look at Nug, who was cogitating intently, “That about what happened, Nug?”
“I’m pretty sure it was a pheasant,” opined Nug reflectively. “It had a long tail and a ring around its neck, and it was a lot bigger than one of them little quail.”
“Nug, don’t say anything. Now, nod your head. No, keep nodding. Did you accidentally shoot your brother while hunting birds? Good. Take Dobie to the doctor and get him patched up.”
“Dumg chit brugga goona neeg a goctor agger I gicg his bugt.”
“Oh, yeah? You and which army?”
Which was the last thing I heard as I abandoned the two intrepid huntsmen and went in search of a badly needed, soothing cup of tea.
FILE 11: Communion
This story isn’t funny, but it is one of my favorites. Being a Peace Officer, particularly one in a small town, isn’t anything like what you see on the TeeVee.
Well, it’s a bit like Barney Miller. A little bit.
It’s actually a lot more like this story: a little bittersweet, with no real rewards besides that warm little feeling at the end of the day.
* * *
“Really,” I said, trying to fit as much disbelief and sarcasm as possible into those two syllables.
“Yes, sir.”
I stared at the 16-year-old boy for a good while before allowing my eyebrow to lift.
“You’re visiting your girlfriend, whose last name you can’t quite recall at this time, whose first name is either Stacey or Shelly depending on when you’re asked, and you’re not sure what her address is, but it is—and let me quote this—“On a street’.”
Long pause.
“Umm… yeah?”
“Ah. And as far as romantic gifts go, your lady is perfectly happy with a gym bag packed with,” I pulled each object out one at a time, “a ski mask, a pair of leather work gloves, and—goodness—a crowbar!”
The kid was looking at everything in the vicinity except me.
“We all need to be honest here, so let me be the first: You, sir, are a thief. Ah! Let me finish. The fact that you do not have a criminal history attached to your name merely tells me that you are a heretofore lucky thief. You’re not here to visit your girlfriend because any girl young enough to be dating you will be at tonight’s homecoming football game. Where, coincidentally enough, much of the rest of the town is located. Which leads us to yourself, wandering the empty streets all by your lonesome with naught but a bag of burglar’s tools to keep you company.”
I could hear him swallow, so I took a step forward, crowding his personal space.
“So there are two ways this is going to settle out. The first is that I take you and your stuff back to the office, I call the football stadium, and when a member of the West Podunk High School faculty shows up, I tell him what I think is going on, give him you and your bag of goodies, and wave bye-bye.”
I didn’t think he liked that idea.
“The second way is that I hand you this receipt for your bag of burglar’s tools, you take yourself back to the stadium, and I don’t see hide or hair of you outside that stadium for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow, you bring that receipt and a parent to the office, and I give you back your crowbar, your gloves, and your ski-mask.”
I guessed from the nodding that the second choice was a bit more palatable.
“Five blocks that way. You can’t miss the lights. Scram.”
*sigh*
Hopefully, he had gotten enough of a scare to persuade him that the critter life wasn’t for him. Yeah, and as long as I was hoping, could I get a long-legged lingerie model with a bag of grapes? I filed the fink card—excuse me “Field Interview Card”—in the Bloody Idiots file in my briefcase and cleared the call.
It was one of those lovely fall Panhandle evenings, so about ten minutes later I parked the Super Scooter at the end of Second Street, got out, and started checking doors on what passed as the Main Business District of Bugscuffle, Texas.
Three doors later, I smiled slightly as a roar echoed lightly around the front porch. A moment later, the sounds of musical instruments played maybe with a little more enthusiasm than skill followed. Sounded like the Bugscuffle Fighting Rednecks were doing well this evening.
I pushed gently on the door I was facing… and it swung open.
Crap.
“Car 12, County.”
“Go ahead, 12.”
“I’ve an open door at 1201 Second Street. Public service the Williams and see if they can put an eyeball on Dot.”
There’s more than a touch of amusement in dispatch’s voice as she replies, “10-4, 12. You want me to roll you some backup?”
Minx.
“Negative, County,” I said as I stepped into the front hall of the Conroe and Conroe Funeral Home, “I’ll be on the portable.”
A dollar will get you a doughnut that I was going to find the same thing I’d found the last umpteen Open Door calls we’d gotten here, but I was well aware that Murphy hated my guts—personally. So my P7 was hidden behind my leg, finger indexed along the frame as I shined my Surefire through the business office, the guest rooms, multiple viewing rooms, the Icky Room, casket storage, finally to be slipped back into the holster as I found the small, slim figure sitting all alone in the chapel.
Dot Williams was dressed in her standard uniform of hot pink sneakers, blue jeans, and Hello Kitty sweatshirt, one foot swinging idly as she gravely regarded the awful plastic gold-painted, flower-adorned abstract sculpture stuck to the wall behind the altar. In honor of the evening’s football game, a red-and-black football was painted on one cheek, and red and silver ribbons had been threaded into her ever-present ponytail.
Eleven years ago, a college kid with a one-ton Western Hauler pickup truck and a blood alcohol concentration of 0.22 packed the Chevy S-10 driven by the hugely pregnant Mrs. Williams into a little bitty mangled ball and bounced it across Main Street. The Bugscuffle Volunteer Fire Department earned their Christmas hams that evening in as deft a display of the Fine Art of Power Extrication as any department, paid or volunteer, could hope for. A couple of hours after the Jaws of Life were cleaned and stored, Dorothy Elise Williams was born.
I scraped my boot heels on the carpet as I walked around the end of the pew, being careful not to startle the little girl, although, truth be known, I had no idea if Dot had ever been startled in her life. Or if it was even possible to startle her. Then I sat quietly on the bench just within arms’ reach and pondered the sculpture.
Yeah. It was bloody awful.
I reached into my vest and pulled out a pack of chewing gum, unwrapped a
stick and chewed for a bit before taking a second stick out of the pack and—careful not to look at Dot—casually laid it on the bench midway between us. A couple of breaths later, equally casually, and without taking her eyes off the plastic abomination on the wall, Dot reached out and took the stick, unwrapping it with ferocious concentration and putting it into her mouth one quarter piece at a time before meticulously folding the foil wrapper into little squares and laying it on the bench midway between us. After a couple of breaths, I carefully picked it up and stuck it in an inner pocket of my denim vest.
Dot is odd.
Probably not very long after I sat down, but considerably longer than I would have liked—I was sitting in a funeral home, after dark, and I had seen this movie—Dot slid a battered something or other that I think was probably once a stuffed giraffe along the pew toward me, while maintaining a firm grip on one of its appendages with her left hand.
Careful not to touch the little girl, I grabbed a hold of a fuzzy limb and then carefully stood up. A beat later, Dot stood up herself, and then we started walking toward the exit.
Dot doesn’t like to be touched. As a matter of fact, the only sound I’ve ever heard the wee sprite make is an ear-splitting shriek whenever someone who isn’t family touches her. Learning that lesson left my ears ringing for days. However, as various and sundry gods are my witnesses, I swore that if this little girl turned and waved at the altar, I was picking her up and carrying her out the door at a dead sprint, probably emptying my magazine over my shoulder as we go, banshee wails and damage complaints notwithstanding.
Like I said, I’ve seen that movie.
Fortunately, anything Dot might have been communing with seemed to lack an appreciation for social graces or simply wished to spare my overactive imagination, and there was no waving.
When we stepped out onto the front porch, an elderly man who had been leaning against the guard rail cleared his throat. Not really necessary, but polite all the same.
“Bert,” I said to the owner of Conroe and Conroe Funeral Home. “Thought you’d be at the game instead of listening to the scanner.”
He grinned. “I was. Sitting next to the sheriff on the fifty-yard line when I heard the call over his radio.”
Ah.
“I doubt that anything is missing or damaged–” He raised a hand, cutting me off.
“Of course not. Dot would never be that crass.” He gave a formal Southern nod off to my left, and I realized that I was the only one holding onto the stuffed wossname. Bloody Hell.
“Miss Dot. How are you this evening?”
Dot, who was intently examining a mimosa branch at the end of the porch, ignored him. He smiled and then moved to shut and lock the door.
“Dorothy Elise Williams!” On the street, a Suburban had pulled to a stop, catty-wampus, before disgorging Mr. and Mrs. Williams, the latter of whom was heading for her youngest at full speed. “What have I told you about wandering off, young lady!”
“’Bert, ’Dog, I’m so sorry!” Cody Williams had taken off his Stetson and was wringing the brim. I’m a little shocked. “We were talking to the new pastor and just took our eyes off of her for a second!”
I wave the stuffed whatsit at him, “Cody. Put your hat back on. You look weird without it. No blood, no foul.”
Albert Conroe smiled at him genially. “We’ve had this talk before, Cody. It’s quiet, she likes it, and she’s a very courteous guest. I don’t have an issue.”
At the end of the porch, Mrs. Williams had taken her daughter’s chin and gently turned her to make eye contact. There was an amount of finger-shaking going on when Dot reached out and very gently patted her mother on the cheek before turning her attention back to the branch.
I handed Cody the stuffed thingie. “Take your family back to the game.”
Bert and I stood on the porch as the Williams climbed into the Suburban and took off.
Bert chuckled gently, “Small towns.”
Yep.
FILE 12: Going Home
This is the second-most-popular story I’ve ever written.
After a bad day at work, I had intended to sit down and write something amusing to de-stress, but this came out. Usually when I write, there is a great deal of cutting-and-pasting, I’ll read and reread several times, changing entire sections on a whim, but that wasn’t the case with this one.
I wrote the entire thing in a single rush, just as you see it now, and was quite frankly exhausted when I was done. I read it once and thought it was a decent retelling of the actual event but felt that it didn’t quite make the cut for posting.
I have written several stories—darker in tone, or violent, or sad—that I don’t think fit the overall tone of my site, so I put them into the Drafts folder.
It seems I was tired enough that I hit “Publish” when I meant “Save” before pushing my chair back and collapsing into bed. When I checked my site the next day, the statistics had gone wild.
I have been accused of embellishing this story a bit as some think it’s too Hollywood. Sorry, but other than blurring the identifying details, this is probably the least tampered-with story I’ve written. Not even the editor of this book has touched it.
“Car 10” is the radio call-sign of the Sheriff. I was “Car 12.”
* * *
“County, car 12.”
“12, go ahead.”
“12, when you go 10-8, contact the supervisor at 2300 Fernoak Road.”
I stared at the cows I was currently attempting to put back behind their fence. Crap. Crap crap crap.
Twenty minutes later I pulled up to the back door of the local nursing home.
I say back door, but it was actually a set of French doors on the back side of the dining room/TeeVee room, opening onto a patio, surrounded by a faux wrought-iron fence about eight feet high.
Just inside the fence, a matronly-looking woman in scrubs, body language giving every impression of annoyed impatience I had ever seen, looked pointedly at her wristwatch as I parked the cruiser.
“It’s five minutes past seven o’clock. I called the sheriff at a quarter ’til. Be sure you put that in your report.”
“Sorry about that, but I was on the far side of the county with a herd of cows when the–”
“That’s sheriff’s business. Mr. Johnson is missing. He’s ninety-four years old, white, last seen wearing a tartan dressing robe over blue pajamas.”
“Okay, good to know. When was he last seen?” Ninety-plus years old, I doubted that he had gotten further than, say, a mile. Unless someone had picked him up…
“What?”
“When was he last seen?”
“Are you implying something?”
What the hell? I looked at her over my Gargoyles in absolute confusion, “When was the last time he was seen? So I’ll have a search limit?”
“Young man, Bugscuffle is not that big.”
I saw how this one was going to be played. “Okay, do you have any idea which way he might have gone or where he might be going?”
“Mr. Johnson has a severe case of Alzheimer’s. Not only do we not know where he may be going, or which way, but he doesn’t know either.” The ‘you idiot’ was unspoken.
I was trying not to show teeth in a smile that neither one of us was going to believe was friendly. “I understand. Can you tell me what kind of footwear he’s wearing?”
“You, young man, should be looking for Mr. Johnson, not standing here, conducting what my lawyer will probably tell me is an illegal interro–”
“Madam. These are dirt streets. We haven’t had rain in months, and there’s a good layer of dust everywhere. I can track Mr. Johnson quite easily if I know what I’m looking for. Now. Am I looking for slippers, am I looking for sneakers, am I looking for bare feet, what?”
She looked at me for a long moment, no doubt cataloging my series of sins and trespasses in her mind.
“I’m sure that an aide will be able to help you. I’ll send one out. You are pl
anning on looking for poor Mr. Johnson sometime today, I hope?”
The amount of saccharine in that one little sentence would probably kill half a lab quota of rats, and I felt my jaw muscles knot up as I gravely inclined my head, “I’ll certainly do my best. May I see Mr. Johnson’s room?”
“He’s not—oh, bother. Very well. 105.” With that, the supervisor threw up her arms and stomped back into the facility, me taking the moment to slip in the self-locking door behind her.
A couple of moments later I was at room 105.
I had been here before. About three weeks back, half-an-hour before the end of my shift, the ambulance was paged out to the nursing home. As was our policy, I had responded and had come to this room from the other direction to find it full of aides and nurses. The bed just inside the door had been empty, bed clothes thrown back as if the occupant had been taken out of the room. The far bed had had two of the staff attempting to resuscitate a tiny figure; then two of our local paramedics had button-hooked the door and taken over, only to gently shake their heads after a brief exam.
What was her name… Viola Faye Carter Johnson. I worked the escort for her funeral later that week. I closed my eyes, and I replayed my courtesy at the service in my mind:
Walked in through the side door. Waited at the door while my eyes adjusted and spoke with the funeral director about the route and location of the grave site. Walked through the line… grandchildren, grandchildren, daughter, son, son, ah-hah. Tall, barrel-chested, big-boned, but no muscle over the bones. Natty bowler hat on top of thin white hair, incredibly bright yellow-and-red feather tucked rakishly in the hat-band, white mustache, good gray suit, malacca cane leaning forgotten against the pew.
Complete and total dazed incomprehension in the blue eyes.