There were very few apartments to speak of in the town of Cherry and during the interview for the Sheriff’s position he had stopped at the local bar/diner, named “Bar,” and asked around. The bartender, a gruff guy named Chuck, had served him a reasonable hamburger and given him three numbers of people who had space to rent. One number was disconnected, the second had seemed promising, and the third was answered by a gentleman who asked Stu if he was “a Jew.”Stu had hung up without giving the man any information, ethnic or otherwise.
The second phone number belonged to Carol Cryer, a nice young woman with a two-year-old daughter named Cassidy who seemed permanently affixed to the top of her hip. Her husband was a soldier, off on deployment, and they had a guest house in the back that was bigger than any apartment Stu had ever lived in. It was dingy and slightly depressing but it was big—three rooms, a bathroom, a full kitchen—the kind of apartment that would go for several thousand a month in parts of Detroit.
Stu took the “guest house” and Carol expressed happiness at “having a man around, especially one with a gun.”
“My Fred, he can shoot the wings off a fly at one hundred yards,” she bragged. “He’s still got thirteen months left on his deployment and we’ve gotten along, but it’ll be nice to have someone close by.”
“I’m not nearly that good a shot, but I’m glad it worked out, ma’am,” Stu said. He almost never used the term “ma’am,” considering it more of a little kid thing to say, but it felt appropriate. Carol smiled and bopped back into her house and Stu drove to pick up his stuff. A quick trip to the Shopman’s Market in Springview for supplies and a six-pack of Lucky Bucket and he was something resembling settled. Stu had moved enough to know home didn’t really feel like home until the TV was plugged in and the wifi was working.
Unfortunately, no one from the cable company would be out until mid-week (though he was surprised at how fast and cheap the available Internet connections were) so he was stuck with his meager DVD collection. On a whim he popped in Robocop and almost instantly regretted it as the connection of “ultraviolence” and “Detroit” brought his “haunting” around. He shut off the movie and dove into his six-pack. Beer dulled the feelings a bit but by the time he finally fell asleep the clock on his bedside was spinning and his last thought was “I hope I’m not hung over the morning I meet the guy I’m replacing.”
No luck.
Grey Allen was ancient. In his ten years as a law enforcement officer, Stu had never seen quite so old a man still in uniform, which hung off Grey Allen like he was a hanger. To his credit, the old Sheriff immediately stood up, firmly shook Stu’s hand and exchanged pleasantries before offering Stu a seat.
“Not much to it, I suppose,” Grey Allen said. “The holding cell is over there. This key opens and locks the cell. There’s a computer over there if you can figure out what the hell to do with it. I sure can’t.”
“So you don’t have electronic files or access to any national databases or anything like that?” Stu asked, realizing how dire the situation was. “What if you have to file a warrant or something?”
“I call Lynda down in Basset off Highway 20, there. She does all that computer stuff for me. Let’s see …”
Grey Allen stood up and Stu kept his breathing shallow for fear that a sharp breath might knock the old fart over.
“I’ll issue you your weapon. That’s important. Every now and again you … you get a call from the State Troopers and you gotta deal with that.”
There was a long, long pause as Grey Allen scratched his head and tried to think about what else his job entailed.
“There’s a lawnmower in the shed out back. You’re responsible for that.”
“I have to mow the lawn?” Stu asked.
“You have to mow the lawn, yes,” Grey Allen said. “The toilet in the back is a bit sticky, too, you might want to look at that if you have any …”
He trailed off again. Stu stared at him expectantly.
“ … any plumbing expertise,” he finished.
Stu had been nervous meeting the sheriff whose job he would be taking over, but never in his life would he have come up with this scenario. This wasn’t law enforcement as he knew it. As near as he could tell, it wasn’t law enforcement as it had once been. There were no computers, very little paperwork that Grey Allen had deemed important enough to tell him about, and a lawn to mow. The theme song from Gilligan’s Island popped into Stu’s head—“no lights, no phones, no motorcars, not a single luxury.”
“Like Robinson Crusoe …” Stu said under his breath.
“What about Robinson Crusoe?” Grey Allen asked, his hearing still sharp.
“Nothing, sir. I have a question for you and I’m trying to figure out how to say it as respectfully as I can.”
“Just go,” Grey Allen said. “No point pussy footing around.”
Stu drew a breath and neither pussy nor footed.
“How do you spend most of your time?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when I was in Detroit I spent some time on patrol, some on paperwork for patrol, I did some investigating using online tools and databases, I spent some time training. I don’t see anything like that here and I’m wondering …”
“What I do here?”
“Yes, sir,” Stu said, careful to add the “sir” lest he seem disrespectful.
“I can tell you,” Grey Allen said, pulling up a chair and slouching down low like an old-fashioned baseball manager. “I always figured a bad day out of the office was better than a good day in it so I spent most of my time out there in my truck. I logged over 350,000 miles on this job just driving around town, driving out to see folks I know, driving back. I know everyone in this county by sight, Mr. Dietz. Every single person is known to me and I’m known to them. That’s how I get around all that paperwork bullshit, to be honest. People know who I am and I know them.”
“I understand the concept but you’ve got to keep records, sir. You’ve got to have arrest records, traffic stop records, you’ve got to have warrants and paperwork for the courts. I don’t see any of that.”
“Nope,” Grey Allen said.
“Nope? That’s not a question you answer with ‘nope.’”
Grey Allen smiled, stood and put a withered hand on Stu’s shoulder.
“I’m sure you’ll get us all up to speed, then,” he said. “If you run into any problems, you seem smart. You can figure them out.”
Grey Allen made for the door and his feet were hitting the dirt outside until Stu realized he meant to leave and, likely, never return.
“Wait!” Stu said, out of his chair so quick it threatened to tip over. “That can’t be it. You … you’re not going to help me any more than that?”
Grey Allen turned around and looked at Stu with tired eyes. The wrinkled bags seemed to almost glow in the hard light of the autumn afternoon.
“You’re on your own, kid,” he said. “Anything else I could tell you, you’d brush it off. Best figure it out on your own.”
“You’re not staying around town then?”
“Nope,” Grey Allen said. “I promised myself a long vacation a while back. It’s time to collect.”
Grey Allen seemed to shrink as he got closer and closer to his truck and Stu, not sure what to do either in the situation or at the job in general, stood and watched him go. It took the old-timer almost a minute to open the door to his truck, push it, and climb in before he shot Stu a look and one pearl of wisdom.
“I’m getting out of here,” he said. “This town’s not cursed exactly … but … I don’t know. Something isn’t right.”
The door creaked shut, his tires crunched on gravel, and Grey Allen drove away, never to be heard from again.
•••
It took a day or two for the word to get out that Grey Allen was gone, but once it was official Stu’s phone did not stop ringing. First it was the County Attorney who had long ago given up the idea of working with the Barter Count
y Sheriff’s Department.
“That man,” the Attorney, a nice man named Michael Gatliss with a fast mouth and a sharp tongue, said. “He was a son of a bitch, is what he was, if you’ll pardon me. I tried to work with him and I tried to work with him and I tried to work with him and he would never return my calls. How do you run a Sheriff’s office if there’s no office to speak of? How the hell do you do that?”
Stu had assured him he didn’t know but he looked forward to working with Mr. Gatliss and that he would value any advice he could give him. The man calmed down and said he would send him over some documents.
“You could email them to me,” Stu said.
“Email? Email? Are you playing with me?”
“No,” Stu said surely, not sure how to take it.
“That’s fantastic!” Mr. Gatliss almost yelled. “I will send you an email. Sweet baby Jesus, yes, I will send you an email.”
“That’s … that’s great,” Stu offered, not nearly as enthusiastic.
“It’s a brand-new day,” Gatliss said before hanging up.
This conversation, more or less, played out a dozen or so times in Stu’s first few days of duty. Someone would call, feel Stu out, learn he wasn’t a technological neophyte or someone hell-bent on obstruction, they would be thrilled and then they would hang up. In between time, Stu did a few patrols, answered a few service calls, though fewer than he had anticipated, and mowed the lawn. It was a small lawn and the mower was well taken care of.
He was on call, more or less, during the evening hours and he slept with his phone close to his bed. It hardly ever rang and if it did it was most likely Dana. In his fourth day he was called down to “Bar” over a dispute concerning a tab, but once he walked through the door all the yelling stopped and things got resolved pretty fast. In between he would visit his sister, who seemed to genuinely like having him around, he would exercise by running some of the flattest land he had ever run, and once cable and Internet got hooked up he spent time in the embrace of serialized television. Even Carol the landlady came by on occasion, once with homemade casserole with bits of Doritos mixed in it. No one bothered him much, no one asked too many questions and most importantly, he didn’t have to deal with “the look” once. He had one bad day when his “curse” wouldn’t leave him alone but beyond that he was getting the distinct feeling like this move had been good for him.
The only meeting of note came when a Mister Stander showed up, in person, at his office for no reason Stu could discern. The man, who was tall and thin but very polite, sharp in his light-colored suit and bow tie, said he was a visitor to Cherry, there on business, and wasn’t having any luck tracking down some of the people he was trying to find. Stu had told him he was new and that he was still learning everyone’s names and would be little to no help at the present time.
“I would put you on to the former Sheriff, but I got the impression he’s left town for good,” Stu said. “Seemed eager to put us in his rear view.”
Since he started his life in Cherry, Stu had found himself slipping into colloquialisms with more and more frequency. Phrases like “in his rear view” had crept in there but he seemed to be delivering them well. If he sounded like a moron, no one had mentioned it.
“You’re not the first one to say that,” Mr. Stander said in a voice that was both gravel and silk at the same time. “Sheriff Grey Allen was well known but, as I understand it, he’s not missed.”
“No, I get that impression too,” Stu said. “What are the names of the men you’re looking for again?”
“Two men,” Mr. Stander said. “A Mr. Kenny Rathman, known as Kenny Kirk, who owns the local garage and a Mr. Ron Smith, who works with the local grain elevator.”
“Give me a month on the job and I bet I could help you, but I’m not part of the community just yet,” Stu said. “You’ve driven by their houses, obviously.”
“It seems I always just miss them,” Mr. Stander said, his voice a fascinating combination of nasal and bass. He sounded like a radio announcer.
“Right,” Stu said. “What’s your business with these men?”
“There’s no way to say this without sounding mysterious, but it’s business between my employer and Mr. Rathman and Mr. Smith,” Stander said. “It’s nothing sinister, I assure you, but it’s nothing that I want out in the community. I’m sure you understand. Keeping secrets in a small community is … extremely difficult.”
“Yeah,” Stu said, standing up. “I understand. If I meet these men I will make sure to mention you. Do you have a card or something I can give them?”
“No,” Mr. Stander said. “Thank you for your help.”
And, like that, he was out the door.
The conversation had sat with Stu all day and the more he thought about it the stranger and stranger it seemed. He had made a point to jot down Mr. Stander’s Seattle license plate as he left and ran it the following day on the computer system he had spent half a day getting up and running. It was a personal car and Mr. Stander (first name William) had no outstanding warrants or traffic citations. Not only was he clean, he was cleaner than most.
Aside from that little mystery, things rolled along for a week, two weeks, then three. He met people, but didn’t make any friends. He spent time on Facebook, he ran through all the seasons of Game of Thrones he had missed, he tried online dating but the nearest match was over fifty miles away. They had a date planned for later in the month and didn’t have much in common.
But the longer he spent in basic isolation, the more he had come to the conclusion that Dana had been right. He was healing. He could feel it. The constant reminders of his curse were gone, his sleep patterns were returning, and he made a conscious effort to cut down on beer, though he and Dana had gotten rip-snorting drunk one night and Robin had tucked them into bed on the floor of the living room. Stu had brought up Mr. Stander to Dana and she had given him some good advice, but in the morning it was gone and replaced with headache, nausea and, eventually, vomiting.
If he had remembered his sister’s advice, things would have gone a lot smoother in the long run.
“You’ve done your job,” she told him between sips of a particularly stiff amaretto and cream. “What you shouldn’t do is let it bug you. What you shouldn’t do is let that whole thing set up shop in that head of yours. You should do your job and not get involved with strange men in bow ties.”
•••
The reason Mr. Stander couldn’t find Kenny was that he had left.
After the events following the scratch, it seemed like the right call. They had all watched Willie pick a fight, Dave take the bait, and things get really ugly, and that’s saying something from a guy who had killed a rabbit with his teeth just a few hours earlier.
Part of being in the pack and living with the world-altering secret that you could turn into a wolf was controlling when you “scratched.” When you have the ability to turn into a hulking creature capable of doing unspeakable things to small woodland creatures, not to mention human beings, it makes sense to keep that power in check. That’s why they broke bread before heading out into the woods, that’s why they checked with each other as to how badly they wanted to “go out,” it’s why they were absolutely honest with each other. Holding back, even with good intentions, could mean both an unwanted transformation and exposure to the outside. Fear of unintentionally killing and/or being found out was what kept them all in check, and honesty and camaraderie were the glue that made those checks possible.
Willie had twisted the system into an outcome no one felt good about. Dave had to confess to his son that he and the rest of them had killed Byron, a family friend that Dilly had known since he was old enough to know anyone. On top of that, Willie had forced Dave’s hand and he had confessed that Byron and Josie were lovers in high school before he was born and that they had rekindled that relationship not that long ago. And that the decision to kill Byron was a group decision that had nothing to do with the affair and everything to do
with something else, something darker, something that threatened to expose that secret and God knows what else.
Dilly didn’t stick around to hear the “something else,” opting to run into the woods in his human form to be alone after Dave told him the truth while Josie stifled tears. Afterward, Dave sat at one end of a picnic table, Josie at the other, both with their heads down, the damage done. The rest of the pack, save Willie, kicked at the dirt and tried to figure out a way to leave.
It was Kenny Kirk who figured it out first.
“To hell with this bullshit,” he said. “JoAnn, come on.”
“I think we’ve got business to discuss,” Ron started.
“Ya heard me say ‘to hell with this bullshit,’ didn’t you?” Kenny said back. “Nothing’s getting solved today, not with everyone flipping the fuck out every five minutes. Nah, we’re getting out of town.”
“We are?” JoAnn asked. “Where we going?”
“We’re going to the corner of the highway and we’re turning left or right, I don’t care which,” Kenny said, almost over his shoulder as he headed to his car, JoAnn running to catch up. “I’m done with this soap opera bullshit.”
Dave said nothing. Seconds later Kenny’s late model Mustang fired up.
“You just gonna let him leave like that?” Willie asked. “I figured you had sack enough to deal with Kenny Kirk throwin’ a hissy fit.”
“No, he’s right,” Ron said. “We aren’t solving anything today. Especially not you, Willie.”
“Whaddya mean, especially not me? All I said was what we were all thinking. Dave’s acting like a pussy over there …”
“If I were you I’d head on home before Carl and I shut your mouth for you,” Ron said, cutting Willie off. Carl took his place next to Ron, who raised his eyebrow at his friend’s assertiveness.
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