.....PHSST!
.....The chilled Red Bull spat at Mary Ziegler as she popped the top. She tweaked the stay-tab back and forth until it snapped free from the mouth of the thin can. Dropped the tab into the trashcan by the toilet.
.....It was force of habit, a passive-aggressive protest that began with the demise of the pull-tab back in back in the '70s. She just couldn't get with the stay-tab replacement. Hated them, even.
.....They never seemed to open a can of anything all the way up and were just as liable to dribble the pop or beer all down your chin. Or even worse, on your clothes.
.....Besides, pull tabs rocked.
.....You could make jewelry out of them and use the tongue to launch the ring off into... she shook her head.
.....It had something to do with the stupid seagulls, she recalled vaguely. They liked to eat them, but choked on the thingies. At least that’s what she thought the reason for the change was all about.
.....Not that there was any seagulls in Wyoming, so Lord only knows why the whole pain in the tucous happened here.
.....Wrinkling her nose at the chemical smell that filled the small upstairs bathroom, she set the aluminum can down on the edge of the sink and opened the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet.
.....He won’t eat right but he can drink that nasty stuff by the gallon, she mused.
.....The small brown vial was stashed inside a Vagisil box, free from discovery by the nature of the radioactive-to-male-hands container.
.....She dropped a 20mg capsule of Prozac from the vial and unhalved it over the open mouth of the energy drink. The granules fell free and the liquid hissed slightly as the chemicals merged in alchemic harmony.
.....She felt a little guilty about sneaking the boy his medicine this way, but Lord only know he needed it and the one time she had brought up the subject he had nearly thrown a fit. It was for his own good, she had agreed with her friends. It was either that or the Ritalin, and he had seemed more depressed than hyper lately, so there you go.
.....She’d had Doc Taylor double up on her own prescription a couple of weeks before, claiming that those old spells were returning and she didn’t really want to go through that again. Not that she had ever really had any spells, but Steve’s medical covered the regimen and she would have been a fool not to give it a try herself.
.....All of her friends had told her that the little pill had changed their lives.
.....While it hadn’t changed her life as much as she had been led to expect, it had helped her drop a few extra pounds and added a little more zing to her day. Not that she really cared all that much, because she didn’t.
.....Not much.
.....She kicked the bathroom door shut behind her and hung a right in the hall to Mike’s room, can in hand ready for the turnover.
.....She knocked.
.....No reply.
.....She sighed; maybe he had the headphones on again as he played those video games. The boy could spend an entire day locked up in his room, tapping away on his keyboard and killing cartoon characters on his computer.
.....Frankly, it had been starting to creep her out.
.....The headphones had been a compromise to stop the sounds of gunfire and screams and explosions from filtering down the stairs into the rest of the house at all hours, but even when she couldn’t hear them she still knew that they were going on, just in his head now.
.....So the sneakiness with the Prozac.
.....She raised her hand to knock again and was paused by a trio of raps.
.....KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
.....She blinked at her hand... it didn’t do that.
.....She eyed the door... was Mike on the other side messing with her?
.....KNOCK. KNOCK... KNOCK!
.....Mary realized that someone was down at the front door. She frowned at the can in her hand, and looked around for a place to put it. She couldn’t just leave it in the hallway; someone would knock it over on the carpet.
.....KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
.....Mary shrugged and took a sip as she turned to answer the door. Shoot!
.....She winced, dabbed her lip. The jagged spur of the missing tab had bit her.
.....Darn can. She shook her head and took another sip of the energy drink. Carefully. That was some nasty stuff, but at least it made her noise tingle...
.....Meanwhile...
.....Sheriff Crawford stepped out of his office onto the balcony and looked down to the sidewalk one story below. He fished his cigarettes out from his shirt pocket, batted one from the pack and lit it. Inhaled the tar and nicotine with eyes closed.
.....With a practiced one-handed flourish he snapped the Zippo shut.
.....Halfway through the cigarette there was a knock on the door inside his office.
.....The door cracked open.
.....“Sheriff?” It was Deputy Clyde Kehoe, reporting for his ass chewing.
.....“On the balcony, Clyde.” Crawford called out.
.....The deputy joined him, avoiding his gaze. Clyde Kehoe was one of those big men that seemed trapped in that awkward stage of adolescence no matter how old their bodies were.
.....A few months shy of thirty, he didn’t wear the awkwardness well. Just a buzzcut over six foot, his mustache struggled to assert itself into being a viable badge of authority. It was still struggling.
.....Crawford took a deep drag from his Marlboro and sighed out the smoke to indicate his displeasure.
.....“Kehoe, you fucking idiot,” he finally shook his head. “We don’t need this kind of shit right now. It’s not like we can just wander around blowing up private property for shits ‘n giggles.”
.....“I know...”
.....“You don’t know squat,” Roy snapped. “But can you try and explain to me what the hell happened last night?”
.....“Um...” the deputy struggled. “Did you get my report?”
.....“Yeah, I got the report and the only thing I got from it was a headache. How the hell did you graduate from high school?”
.....“I was on the football team.”
.....Sadly, that was explanation enough for the sheriff.
.....“Oh... right,” Crawford nodded. “Anytime someone throws a football at you in life, you’ve got it all covered.”
.....The deputy looked puzzled. “Is that one of them metaphors or something?”
.....Crawford was surprised. Maybe Clyde was actually capable of retaining some of the input thrown at him on a day-to-day basis.
.....Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
.....Crawford looked at the deputy.
.....“Naw.” He shook his head. “Clyde, you and the boys were dispatched to cover what looked to be a simple armed robbery at the Kwickie-Stop. The Kwickie-Stop is... was a convenience store, not a blow-the-shit-out-of-it store.”
.....“Sorry.”
.....“Sorry isn’t an explanation, damn it!” exploded Crawford, and Clyde winced. “I’ve got a dead Mexican on a slab over at the funeral home, and some punk-assed clerk cooling his heels downstairs until we can work out a story that doesn’t bring the ATF and DHS and FBI and all other sorts of alphabet soup into this mess.”
.....“The perp pulled a gun,” the deputy explained.
.....Perp? Crawford winced. He suspected that the boy had been watching too much CSI: Bumfuck, Nowhere.
.....“A gun doesn’t blow up a mini-mart.”
.....“Well...”
.....“Did he really pull a gun?”
.....“I thought you wanted a good...”
..... “Clyde...” the sheriff cut him off. “I'm the one that gets paid to do the thinking 'round here. Did your ‘perp’ pull a gun?”
.....Kehoe paused, then shook his head mournfully.
.....“No,” sighed the deputy. “But he tried to make a break for his car.”
.....“Last time I checked, one unarmed Mexican trying to run away from six cops armed to the tits is not grounds for deadly force,” Crawford snapped impatiently. “Did a memo come in lately that I didn’t get, saying it was?”
.....Kehoe gave it some thought. “Not that I can remember.”
.....“Of course one didn’t, you ass.” Crawford snapped. “What was the SAM doing there?”
.....“Well, we were out plinking...”
.....“You don’t plink with a SAM, you blow shit up with a SAM. And our SAM blew the shit out of our Kwickie-Stop last night. And how exactly does that happen?”
.....“It was an accident.”
.....“I assumed it was an accident, Clyde,” the sheriff sighed. “You don’t use a SAM to stop a skinny-assed tweaker from running. Do you know how much one of those damned rockets costs the taxpayer?”
.....“Um...” the deputy furrowed his brow, reaching for an amount that he’d never heard.
.....“Forty-five thousand bucks, that’s how much,” Crawford continued. “Or to be precise, Forty-four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that just about what you make each year?”
.....Clyde’s eyes went wide. “Sheriff? You’re not gonna charge me for...”
.....“Did you shoot it off?”
.....The deputy visibly relaxed. “No.”
.....“Just tell me what in the hell happened out there last night.”
.....Crawford paused, then cautioned: “What really happened. We need to have all our stories straight and ducks in a line on this one and I don’t want any bullshit surprises popping up after I send in the report.”
.....Crawford waited.
.....Finally, Clyde sighed. “Kyle slipped on a banana peel while moving in on the store. It went off when he fell and, well...”
.....“Kyle slipped on a banana peel,” Crawford repeated. It was a confounded statement, not a question.
.....“We bagged it as evidence...” Clyde offered.
.....Crawford batted out another cigarette and popped it in his mouth. The Zippo shook a little as he lit it.
.....“Did your perp try and pick a pie fight with you?”
.....“Huh?”
.....“I just figured that since I've managed to piss off some God and been put in charge of the Keystone-fucking-Kops...”
.....Clyde wisely kept his mouth shut.
.....After a respectable length of time, he finally spoke.
.....“Uh, could I bum one of those smokes?”
.....Crawford slid the pack across the rail to the deputy.
.....In silence they smoked, casually flicking ashes down upon the threadbare shrubs below as they monitored the inactivity of the town.
.....“You’re pissed, right?” Kehoe finally said, darting a glance at the sheriff.
.....“Clyde, I’m a little bit more than pissed.” Kyle paused, then added, “But I’ll figure something out.”
.....“Maybe we could say...”
.....Crawford gave his deputy a stony look. “I said I’ll handle it. You comedians have already done enough, thank you.”
.....From the west they could hear a car approaching. A dusty seventies-era Plymouth Valiant rolled by beneath them.
.....“I’ve been seeing that car a lot, today.” Clyde noted, relieved to finally find a diversion to direct the sheriff’s attention to.
.....“Well, keep an eye on it.” Crawford replied. “Just don’t blow it up. Unless I tell you to.”
.....“Right, Chief.” Clyde wasn’t sure if the sheriff was joking, so he kept his reply neutral.
.....The sound of the car’s engine lingered long after the Valiant had passed beyond the bend of street. Away from the motel.
.....Crawford launched the spent cigarette butt from between his thumb and midfinger, watching it arc and then spiral down to the street. It exploded in a shower of sparks. He considered lighting another.
.....Inside the office, the phone began to ring.
.....“Kehoe?”
.....“Yeah, Roy?”
.....“The phone is ringing. Someone could be dying out there.”
.....“I'm on it.” The deputy took one last drag from the cigarette and, as he turned towards the door, flicked the butt from him.
.....It fell straight down, bouncing through the naked branches of the shrub before landing to smolder at the base of the building.
.....The sheriff watched it smolder on some dead leaves and shook his head. He poured the rest of his cold coffee down on the butt and the tendril of smoke was snuffed.
.....“Yeah, you do that.”
.....He looked down the street. From the sounds of it, the party down at The Larkspur was picking up steam early. With a tired sigh, he turned to follow Kehoe in, closing the heavy oak door behind him.
.....Back at the Ziegler's...
.....Sgt. Gary Hutchins uncrossed his leg and leaned forward in the lounge chair, rearranging the paperwork spread across the coffee table.
.....Across from him in the sofa, Steve and Mary Ziegler waited for the pitch. They weren’t exactly enthusiastic about sitting through it, but the nice man was from the United States Army and the country was at war, after all.
.....Then the nice man reached inside the breast pocket of his jacket and retrieved a banded stack of greenbacks. Like playing cards, Hutchins began to lay down crisp hundred dollar bills as he spoke.
.....“Nice house,” he noted.
.....He took in the furnishings. By no means new, but still well maintained. The plastic coverings saw to that. Lemon-scented Glade air freshener kept the room smelling citrusy fresh.
.....Steve cleared his throat, looking at the deal being played out. “Thank you.”
.....Hutchins peeled off another Benjamin Franklin and set it on top of the last one. “Is it paid for?”
.....Steve nodded. “Well, yeah.”
.....Mary gave him a sidelong glance.
.....“Mostly,” he amended.
.....“But not quite...” Hutchins nodded his sympathy as another crisp bill went onto the pile. “Trouble on the horizon?”
.....He’d done his homework. The Ziegler’s were getting some support from the county these days. Nothing embarrassing like Food Stamps or SSI, but still...
.....Steve nodded. “I threw my back out at work.”
.....“He delivered kegs...”
.....“Delivers,” Steve corrected. Hopefully.
.....“... for the Coors distributor out of Lumbeck,” Mary con- tinued. “I tol’ him to always wear his brace, but...”
.....“Mary!”
.....“Dear?”
.....“I’m sure the nice man has no interest in any of that.”
.....Hutchins smiled. It was a display of the best tooth work that the Department of Defense could manage. Nothing but the best for the public face of the Army. “Of course I do. So, you threw out your back?”
.....“Yeah," Steve nodded. “The problem is, Disability won’t cover it because that prick...”
.....“Steve!” Mary held no truck with that kind of language in her house, nor anywhere else for that matter.
.....But especially not in her house.
.....Steve paused and cracked his neck. His brow furrowed as he phrased it properly. “Because my supervisor said it wasn’t work related.”
.....Mary patted his leg. “So Steve’s looking for other ways to help ends meet until his back is right.”
.....“That’s too bad,” the recruiter nodded. “Job security these days is so hard to come by, isn’t it?”
.....“Yeah, it sure is.” A cloud passed over the man’s face.
.....“Everyone’s fuc...” He paused, glancing at his wife before continuing. “But everyone is outsourcing these days, is what they call it.”
.....He had heard all about it on Lou Dobbs. Dobbs was the only person he trusted on the Commie News Network. Otherwise, when he needed to know what was going on, he clicked the tube over to Fox. He was pretty well-informed about the screwing he was getting.
.....“All the good jobs are goin’ over to India an’ Mexico now, an’ there’s nothin’ left for us hardworkin’ ‘Mericans.”
.....He shook his head in confusion. “Can’t figure why they even bother to come over the border anymore, what with all the jobs going south on us.”
.....“What can you do?” the recruiter offered. He added another bill, not looking down as he did so, but maintaining his gaze on the man’s face. It was Steve whose attention was focused on the bills.
.....“Yeah, what can you?”
.....The hundreds were making quite a pile, and the Zieglers were beginning to lose interest in the small talk.
.....“Now then, about our Mike...” Hutchins began, cutting to the chase. “I’m sure you wouldn’t like the same kind of future for your son? Uncertainty about the next paycheck, despite a good, ol’ American work ethic?”
.....“Of course not,” Steve agreed. “That’s not what I ruined my back for.”
.....“Of course.” Hutchins nodded sympathetically. “And you only want what’s best for Mike, right?”
.....“Right.”
.....“Now he has an excellent opportunity to attain just that...”
.....As more bills were added to the pile...
.....“Not to mention a college education...” Hutchins looked up at them with clear, gray eyes. He reminded Mary of that new young actor, Josh Hartnett. Just more manly-looking, and smelling of Old Spice.
.....“Oh, yeah... the GI Bill.” Steve nodded. The GI Bill was long gone, but Hutchins didn't feel like mentioning that, or that what took its place was nowhere as generous.
.....Mary seriously doubted that Josh Hartnett smelled of Old Spice.
.....“You have been putting aside for his college education, haven’t you?” the recruiter prompted.
.....Mary eyed the bills building up hungrily. As the kids say these days, that’s a lot of Benjamins...
.....MTV had been a guilty habit for her as of late. They didn't play the music videos on it anymore, but then she didn't care all that much for today's noise. She just liked the reality shows during the afternoon. Although she still couldn’t wrap her head around how those gangster black men got away with advertising their criminal lifestyles like that.
.....“It didn’t last long,” Mary muttered, eyeing her husband.
.....The silence hung heavy.
.....With a smooth play of the hand over the bills, Hutchins spread them from one end of the table to the other.
.....Tightly spread.
.....“Now, then...” Hutchins continued soothingly. “In today’s Regular Army, there is virtually no danger anymore for the type of specialty I see Michael training for.”
.....“Are you sure that Mike will be...” Mary murmured. A look of motherly concern dropped by for appearances.
.....“Trust me,” the recruiter chuckled. “He'll be fine. They send in the National Guard and Reservists first, these days. We spend too much money training our regular boys and gals to just use them for cannon fodder...”
.....They never seemed to open a can of anything all the way up and were just as liable to dribble the pop or beer all down your chin. Or even worse, on your clothes.
.....Besides, pull tabs rocked.
.....You could make jewelry out of them and use the tongue to launch the ring off into... she shook her head.
.....It had something to do with the stupid seagulls, she recalled vaguely. They liked to eat them, but choked on the thingies. At least that’s what she thought the reason for the change was all about.
.....Not that there was any seagulls in Wyoming, so Lord only knows why the whole pain in the tucous happened here.
.....Wrinkling her nose at the chemical smell that filled the small upstairs bathroom, she set the aluminum can down on the edge of the sink and opened the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet.
.....He won’t eat right but he can drink that nasty stuff by the gallon, she mused.
.....The small brown vial was stashed inside a Vagisil box, free from discovery by the nature of the radioactive-to-male-hands container.
.....She dropped a 20mg capsule of Prozac from the vial and unhalved it over the open mouth of the energy drink. The granules fell free and the liquid hissed slightly as the chemicals merged in alchemic harmony.
.....She felt a little guilty about sneaking the boy his medicine this way, but Lord only know he needed it and the one time she had brought up the subject he had nearly thrown a fit. It was for his own good, she had agreed with her friends. It was either that or the Ritalin, and he had seemed more depressed than hyper lately, so there you go.
.....She’d had Doc Taylor double up on her own prescription a couple of weeks before, claiming that those old spells were returning and she didn’t really want to go through that again. Not that she had ever really had any spells, but Steve’s medical covered the regimen and she would have been a fool not to give it a try herself.
.....All of her friends had told her that the little pill had changed their lives.
.....While it hadn’t changed her life as much as she had been led to expect, it had helped her drop a few extra pounds and added a little more zing to her day. Not that she really cared all that much, because she didn’t.
.....Not much.
.....She kicked the bathroom door shut behind her and hung a right in the hall to Mike’s room, can in hand ready for the turnover.
.....She knocked.
.....No reply.
.....She sighed; maybe he had the headphones on again as he played those video games. The boy could spend an entire day locked up in his room, tapping away on his keyboard and killing cartoon characters on his computer.
.....Frankly, it had been starting to creep her out.
.....The headphones had been a compromise to stop the sounds of gunfire and screams and explosions from filtering down the stairs into the rest of the house at all hours, but even when she couldn’t hear them she still knew that they were going on, just in his head now.
.....So the sneakiness with the Prozac.
.....She raised her hand to knock again and was paused by a trio of raps.
.....KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
.....She blinked at her hand... it didn’t do that.
.....She eyed the door... was Mike on the other side messing with her?
.....KNOCK. KNOCK... KNOCK!
.....Mary realized that someone was down at the front door. She frowned at the can in her hand, and looked around for a place to put it. She couldn’t just leave it in the hallway; someone would knock it over on the carpet.
.....KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
.....Mary shrugged and took a sip as she turned to answer the door. Shoot!
.....She winced, dabbed her lip. The jagged spur of the missing tab had bit her.
.....Darn can. She shook her head and took another sip of the energy drink. Carefully. That was some nasty stuff, but at least it made her noise tingle...
.....Meanwhile...
.....Sheriff Crawford stepped out of his office onto the balcony and looked down to the sidewalk one story below. He fished his cigarettes out from his shirt pocket, batted one from the pack and lit it. Inhaled the tar and nicotine with eyes closed.
.....With a practiced one-handed flourish he snapped the Zippo shut.
.....Halfway through the cigarette there was a knock on the door inside his office.
.....The door cracked open.
.....“Sheriff?” It was Deputy Clyde Kehoe, reporting for his ass chewing.
.....“On the balcony, Clyde.” Crawford called out.
.....The deputy joined him, avoiding his gaze. Clyde Kehoe was one of those big men that seemed trapped in that awkward stage of adolescence no matter how old their bodies were.
.....A few months shy of thirty, he didn’t wear the awkwardness well. Just a buzzcut over six foot, his mustache struggled to assert itself into being a viable badge of authority. It was still struggling.
.....Crawford took a deep drag from his Marlboro and sighed out the smoke to indicate his displeasure.
.....“Kehoe, you fucking idiot,” he finally shook his head. “We don’t need this kind of shit right now. It’s not like we can just wander around blowing up private property for shits ‘n giggles.”
.....“I know...”
.....“You don’t know squat,” Roy snapped. “But can you try and explain to me what the hell happened last night?”
.....“Um...” the deputy struggled. “Did you get my report?”
.....“Yeah, I got the report and the only thing I got from it was a headache. How the hell did you graduate from high school?”
.....“I was on the football team.”
.....Sadly, that was explanation enough for the sheriff.
.....“Oh... right,” Crawford nodded. “Anytime someone throws a football at you in life, you’ve got it all covered.”
.....The deputy looked puzzled. “Is that one of them metaphors or something?”
.....Crawford was surprised. Maybe Clyde was actually capable of retaining some of the input thrown at him on a day-to-day basis.
.....Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
.....Crawford looked at the deputy.
.....“Naw.” He shook his head. “Clyde, you and the boys were dispatched to cover what looked to be a simple armed robbery at the Kwickie-Stop. The Kwickie-Stop is... was a convenience store, not a blow-the-shit-out-of-it store.”
.....“Sorry.”
.....“Sorry isn’t an explanation, damn it!” exploded Crawford, and Clyde winced. “I’ve got a dead Mexican on a slab over at the funeral home, and some punk-assed clerk cooling his heels downstairs until we can work out a story that doesn’t bring the ATF and DHS and FBI and all other sorts of alphabet soup into this mess.”
.....“The perp pulled a gun,” the deputy explained.
.....Perp? Crawford winced. He suspected that the boy had been watching too much CSI: Bumfuck, Nowhere.
.....“A gun doesn’t blow up a mini-mart.”
.....“Well...”
.....“Did he really pull a gun?”
.....“I thought you wanted a good...”
..... “Clyde...” the sheriff cut him off. “I'm the one that gets paid to do the thinking 'round here. Did your ‘perp’ pull a gun?”
.....Kehoe paused, then shook his head mournfully.
.....“No,” sighed the deputy. “But he tried to make a break for his car.”
.....“Last time I checked, one unarmed Mexican trying to run away from six cops armed to the tits is not grounds for deadly force,” Crawford snapped impatiently. “Did a memo come in lately that I didn’t get, saying it was?”
.....Kehoe gave it some thought. “Not that I can remember.”
.....“Of course one didn’t, you ass.” Crawford snapped. “What was the SAM doing there?”
.....“Well, we were out plinking...”
.....“You don’t plink with a SAM, you blow shit up with a SAM. And our SAM blew the shit out of our Kwickie-Stop last night. And how exactly does that happen?”
.....“It was an accident.”
.....“I assumed it was an accident, Clyde,” the sheriff sighed. “You don’t use a SAM to stop a skinny-assed tweaker from running. Do you know how much one of those damned rockets costs the taxpayer?”
.....“Um...” the deputy furrowed his brow, reaching for an amount that he’d never heard.
.....“Forty-five thousand bucks, that’s how much,” Crawford continued. “Or to be precise, Forty-four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that just about what you make each year?”
.....Clyde’s eyes went wide. “Sheriff? You’re not gonna charge me for...”
.....“Did you shoot it off?”
.....The deputy visibly relaxed. “No.”
.....“Just tell me what in the hell happened out there last night.”
.....Crawford paused, then cautioned: “What really happened. We need to have all our stories straight and ducks in a line on this one and I don’t want any bullshit surprises popping up after I send in the report.”
.....Crawford waited.
.....Finally, Clyde sighed. “Kyle slipped on a banana peel while moving in on the store. It went off when he fell and, well...”
.....“Kyle slipped on a banana peel,” Crawford repeated. It was a confounded statement, not a question.
.....“We bagged it as evidence...” Clyde offered.
.....Crawford batted out another cigarette and popped it in his mouth. The Zippo shook a little as he lit it.
.....“Did your perp try and pick a pie fight with you?”
.....“Huh?”
.....“I just figured that since I've managed to piss off some God and been put in charge of the Keystone-fucking-Kops...”
.....Clyde wisely kept his mouth shut.
.....After a respectable length of time, he finally spoke.
.....“Uh, could I bum one of those smokes?”
.....Crawford slid the pack across the rail to the deputy.
.....In silence they smoked, casually flicking ashes down upon the threadbare shrubs below as they monitored the inactivity of the town.
.....“You’re pissed, right?” Kehoe finally said, darting a glance at the sheriff.
.....“Clyde, I’m a little bit more than pissed.” Kyle paused, then added, “But I’ll figure something out.”
.....“Maybe we could say...”
.....Crawford gave his deputy a stony look. “I said I’ll handle it. You comedians have already done enough, thank you.”
.....From the west they could hear a car approaching. A dusty seventies-era Plymouth Valiant rolled by beneath them.
.....“I’ve been seeing that car a lot, today.” Clyde noted, relieved to finally find a diversion to direct the sheriff’s attention to.
.....“Well, keep an eye on it.” Crawford replied. “Just don’t blow it up. Unless I tell you to.”
.....“Right, Chief.” Clyde wasn’t sure if the sheriff was joking, so he kept his reply neutral.
.....The sound of the car’s engine lingered long after the Valiant had passed beyond the bend of street. Away from the motel.
.....Crawford launched the spent cigarette butt from between his thumb and midfinger, watching it arc and then spiral down to the street. It exploded in a shower of sparks. He considered lighting another.
.....Inside the office, the phone began to ring.
.....“Kehoe?”
.....“Yeah, Roy?”
.....“The phone is ringing. Someone could be dying out there.”
.....“I'm on it.” The deputy took one last drag from the cigarette and, as he turned towards the door, flicked the butt from him.
.....It fell straight down, bouncing through the naked branches of the shrub before landing to smolder at the base of the building.
.....The sheriff watched it smolder on some dead leaves and shook his head. He poured the rest of his cold coffee down on the butt and the tendril of smoke was snuffed.
.....“Yeah, you do that.”
.....He looked down the street. From the sounds of it, the party down at The Larkspur was picking up steam early. With a tired sigh, he turned to follow Kehoe in, closing the heavy oak door behind him.
.....Back at the Ziegler's...
.....Sgt. Gary Hutchins uncrossed his leg and leaned forward in the lounge chair, rearranging the paperwork spread across the coffee table.
.....Across from him in the sofa, Steve and Mary Ziegler waited for the pitch. They weren’t exactly enthusiastic about sitting through it, but the nice man was from the United States Army and the country was at war, after all.
.....Then the nice man reached inside the breast pocket of his jacket and retrieved a banded stack of greenbacks. Like playing cards, Hutchins began to lay down crisp hundred dollar bills as he spoke.
.....“Nice house,” he noted.
.....He took in the furnishings. By no means new, but still well maintained. The plastic coverings saw to that. Lemon-scented Glade air freshener kept the room smelling citrusy fresh.
.....Steve cleared his throat, looking at the deal being played out. “Thank you.”
.....Hutchins peeled off another Benjamin Franklin and set it on top of the last one. “Is it paid for?”
.....Steve nodded. “Well, yeah.”
.....Mary gave him a sidelong glance.
.....“Mostly,” he amended.
.....“But not quite...” Hutchins nodded his sympathy as another crisp bill went onto the pile. “Trouble on the horizon?”
.....He’d done his homework. The Ziegler’s were getting some support from the county these days. Nothing embarrassing like Food Stamps or SSI, but still...
.....Steve nodded. “I threw my back out at work.”
.....“He delivered kegs...”
.....“Delivers,” Steve corrected. Hopefully.
.....“... for the Coors distributor out of Lumbeck,” Mary con- tinued. “I tol’ him to always wear his brace, but...”
.....“Mary!”
.....“Dear?”
.....“I’m sure the nice man has no interest in any of that.”
.....Hutchins smiled. It was a display of the best tooth work that the Department of Defense could manage. Nothing but the best for the public face of the Army. “Of course I do. So, you threw out your back?”
.....“Yeah," Steve nodded. “The problem is, Disability won’t cover it because that prick...”
.....“Steve!” Mary held no truck with that kind of language in her house, nor anywhere else for that matter.
.....But especially not in her house.
.....Steve paused and cracked his neck. His brow furrowed as he phrased it properly. “Because my supervisor said it wasn’t work related.”
.....Mary patted his leg. “So Steve’s looking for other ways to help ends meet until his back is right.”
.....“That’s too bad,” the recruiter nodded. “Job security these days is so hard to come by, isn’t it?”
.....“Yeah, it sure is.” A cloud passed over the man’s face.
.....“Everyone’s fuc...” He paused, glancing at his wife before continuing. “But everyone is outsourcing these days, is what they call it.”
.....He had heard all about it on Lou Dobbs. Dobbs was the only person he trusted on the Commie News Network. Otherwise, when he needed to know what was going on, he clicked the tube over to Fox. He was pretty well-informed about the screwing he was getting.
.....“All the good jobs are goin’ over to India an’ Mexico now, an’ there’s nothin’ left for us hardworkin’ ‘Mericans.”
.....He shook his head in confusion. “Can’t figure why they even bother to come over the border anymore, what with all the jobs going south on us.”
.....“What can you do?” the recruiter offered. He added another bill, not looking down as he did so, but maintaining his gaze on the man’s face. It was Steve whose attention was focused on the bills.
.....“Yeah, what can you?”
.....The hundreds were making quite a pile, and the Zieglers were beginning to lose interest in the small talk.
.....“Now then, about our Mike...” Hutchins began, cutting to the chase. “I’m sure you wouldn’t like the same kind of future for your son? Uncertainty about the next paycheck, despite a good, ol’ American work ethic?”
.....“Of course not,” Steve agreed. “That’s not what I ruined my back for.”
.....“Of course.” Hutchins nodded sympathetically. “And you only want what’s best for Mike, right?”
.....“Right.”
.....“Now he has an excellent opportunity to attain just that...”
.....As more bills were added to the pile...
.....“Not to mention a college education...” Hutchins looked up at them with clear, gray eyes. He reminded Mary of that new young actor, Josh Hartnett. Just more manly-looking, and smelling of Old Spice.
.....“Oh, yeah... the GI Bill.” Steve nodded. The GI Bill was long gone, but Hutchins didn't feel like mentioning that, or that what took its place was nowhere as generous.
.....Mary seriously doubted that Josh Hartnett smelled of Old Spice.
.....“You have been putting aside for his college education, haven’t you?” the recruiter prompted.
.....Mary eyed the bills building up hungrily. As the kids say these days, that’s a lot of Benjamins...
.....MTV had been a guilty habit for her as of late. They didn't play the music videos on it anymore, but then she didn't care all that much for today's noise. She just liked the reality shows during the afternoon. Although she still couldn’t wrap her head around how those gangster black men got away with advertising their criminal lifestyles like that.
.....“It didn’t last long,” Mary muttered, eyeing her husband.
.....The silence hung heavy.
.....With a smooth play of the hand over the bills, Hutchins spread them from one end of the table to the other.
.....Tightly spread.
.....“Now, then...” Hutchins continued soothingly. “In today’s Regular Army, there is virtually no danger anymore for the type of specialty I see Michael training for.”
.....“Are you sure that Mike will be...” Mary murmured. A look of motherly concern dropped by for appearances.
.....“Trust me,” the recruiter chuckled. “He'll be fine. They send in the National Guard and Reservists first, these days. We spend too much money training our regular boys and gals to just use them for cannon fodder...”
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