.....Miles removed from town, the Humvee made its way along the dirt road laid down through the lonesome patch of nowhere. Dust uncurled in its wake, fading off into the miles of nothing that sprawled off to disappear into the seam of land and sky.
.....As the sheriff maneuvered the vehicle along the access road, he foraged a large red McIntosh apple from the box lunch next to him. The frame of the vehicle rattled as if every bolt and rivet were about to shake loose.
.....The volume of the Blaupunkt was only at the halfway mark, but the drumbeat of Faith No More’s “We Care A Lot” felt as if it were about to shake the vehicle into a ruin of nuts and bolts. Windows vibrated in their frames like they were about to explode like the wineglass in a Memorex commercial.
.....Crawford smiled and goosed the volume up a notch more.
.....Up ahead lie the Dead Squaw Mine, an abandoned deathtrap burrowed in the side of a hardscrabble hill. Depleted and closed nigh on twenty years before, currently the mine served only as an annoyance to the more liberal-minded residents of Harding. Even though the mine was nothing more than a hole in the ground and no longer cited on any maps, they still felt that the dubious name was culturally insensitive.
.....Liberal-minded folks being a distinct minority in Harding, there wasn’t much they could do about fighting history...
.....Up until the early twenties the town had no problem being known as as Dead Squaw, Wyoming. But with the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923, the town had taken on his surname as a tribute.
.....No one on the local committee who had voted for the name change knew that it was widely suspected in the Beltway that the President had been poisoned by his own First Lady and White House doctor in a plot to avert the taint of rising scandal.
.....Nor did any of them realize that the man had fathered the illegitimate son of a local girl when he had spent the night in Dead Squaw, during a leg of his first and only campaign as the Republican candidate for president. They only knew that the future President of the United States had spent a day and night in their fair village, and right there that was reason enough to offer up the name change as tribute to the fallen leader.
.....Forty-some years later, the bastard of the local girl and the president would make his way on up the social ladder to become mayor of Harding, and then go on to represent the area in the state legislature. It was short-lived tenure, marked by overt graft and a sexual scandal involving an aging flapper and the girls that resided in her boarding house.
.....Although disgraced from politics at an earlier age than his father would have been had he not been saved from scandal, the unclaimed son of the president had still unknowingly continued on in his father’s footsteps by spawning in his own right a number of bastards in the Harding area. The blood of Warren G. Harding flowed strong in the veins of more than a few of the unsuspecting residents of the town that carried his name.
.....The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say, even if there were no apple trees in Harding, Wyoming.
.....Crawford took a bite out of the McIntosh, wiping a trail of juice from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. The anthem faded off to move to the next track. The singer didn’t sound much friendlier on the next song, either.
.....The disc wasn’t something he would have played while driving about the town, but off on the backroads he cruised for the occasional pressure release, the soundtrack to his high school days was a welcome passenger. His fingers rapped out the beat on the steering wheel as the singer growled away.
.....As of late, he had been using any excuse that he could find to drive outside the town limits.
.....The day-to-day grind of being the go-to arbitrator of small town pettiness was beginning to get under his skin. Sometimes it seemed as if his job consisted of nothing more than fielding barking dog complaints and being called in to officiate territorial pissing.
.....He wondered what as up with people anymore, when they didn’t even have the balls to walk on over to their neighbor’s door themselves and tell the assholes to turn the damned music down, already.
.....Two songs later he cut the music off and pulled to a stop by the gate that blocked the access road from continuing.
.....The bullet-pocked sign abreast of the gate cautioned that there was NO TRESPASSING and that VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
.....He shook his head at the foolishness of it all as he clicked the padlock free and unwound the heavy chain that married the two gates.
.....The mine hadn’t produced a decent load of trona in over twenty years, and to have the damned thing listed as a potential terrorist target was the silliest thing he could imagine. It was a hole in the side of a mountain holding nothing but bats and empty beer cans.
.....Hell, even if it was still viable, God forbid if the evildoers blew up our supply of sodium carbonate, forcing us to ration our supplies of... well, baking soda or something.
.....But to meet the demands of Homeland Security allocations, the county had to come up with a potential terrorist target and, miles of scrubland being not that marketable as a landmark tempting enough to squirrel in Al-Qaida troops to blow it up, the Dead Squaw Mine had finally been chosen.
.....Of course, the local teens had to take their beer and find some other secluded spot to party in, but sacrifices needed to be made all around in order to ensure national security.
.....When he had found that the six-figure annual grant for babysitting the mine had remained intact during the latest budget round, he had been nothing short of perplexed.
.....In the same time he had read that the equivalent grants for security precautions maintained for the Statue of Liberty and Washington Memorial had been slashed. The LAX airport in California, also.
.....Real targets he assumed, if targets were still being plotted.
.....Sometimes he wondered...
.....The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
.....An old school Democrat, his old man had been fond of the Franklin Roosevelt quote. Usually dropping it right before doing some damn' fool thing like throwing him or his brother in the pond to teach them how to swim.
.....Growing up in his father's house, the only thing that he had come to fear was that he wouldn't live to see the day that he could escape.
.....Of course it could be argued that these targets were located in the obstructionist Blue States, so it would be their own damned fault if their landmarks went up in a mushroom cloud.
.....His department enjoyed what part of the money they saw, but there were times where he had to wonder if that money could be better used in the War on Terror. But then, he also had to take into account that their local congressman was a friendly hunting buddy of the vice president.
.....By doing well for himself, the congressman was also doing okay by Crawford's department.
... .The sheriff shook his head glumly. Wheels within wheels, he thought.
.....He pulled the gate open and rolled the Humvee through, then locked the gate behind him. He climbed back in and continued up the access road to the mine. Part of that sacrifice involved posting a uniformed officer up at the mine 24/7.
.....Following the previous night’s SNAFU, it was Kyle’s turn in the barrel for the next week.
.....Outside the dusty Airstream trailer parked a-tilt at the mouth of the mineshaft, the deputy tucked a gun magazine beneath the seat of his lawn chair, struggling up as the Humvee rolled in on a cloud of dust.
.....It was a struggle all right, the sheriff noted. The deputy was packing an easy fifty pounds too many, and his neatly trimmed mustache was beaded with sweat by the time he stood.
.....The sheriff cut the engine and stepped out, handing Kyle the boxed lunch.
.....He didn’t figure that Kyle would notice the missing apple.
.....“Spot any Iraqis scurrying about?” asked Crawford as the deputy cracked the cardboard box and hauled out a wedge of ham-and-cheese sandwich, peeling the butcher paper back.
.....Kyle didn’t notice the lunch was short one apple.
.....The deputy glanced around seriously. “Nothing yet,” he responded, biting into the sandwich. Breadcrumbs hung to the man’s mustache, and Crawford figured that the deputy would be saving them for a snack later.
.....He nodded and stretched as he scanned the empty horizon.
.....Crawford's back popped satisfactorily. He lit a cigarette and waited until the deputy had finished his meal before tearing him a new asshole over the previous night’s misuse of department equipment and abuse of personal property.
.....He’d already blown off most of his steam earlier on Kehoe, and so while the ass chewing that Kyle received was short and sweet... it’d still be a while before the deputy would be sitting back down with his damned magazine.
..... Crawford felt much better. The sheriff had to justify the trip out of town to personally deliver the box lunch somehow. He figured that return trip would be equally relaxing.
.....On the other hand, that part involved going back to town.
.....Damn.
.....The volume of the Blaupunkt was only at the halfway mark, but the drumbeat of Faith No More’s “We Care A Lot” felt as if it were about to shake the vehicle into a ruin of nuts and bolts. Windows vibrated in their frames like they were about to explode like the wineglass in a Memorex commercial.
.....Crawford smiled and goosed the volume up a notch more.
.....Up ahead lie the Dead Squaw Mine, an abandoned deathtrap burrowed in the side of a hardscrabble hill. Depleted and closed nigh on twenty years before, currently the mine served only as an annoyance to the more liberal-minded residents of Harding. Even though the mine was nothing more than a hole in the ground and no longer cited on any maps, they still felt that the dubious name was culturally insensitive.
.....Liberal-minded folks being a distinct minority in Harding, there wasn’t much they could do about fighting history...
.....Up until the early twenties the town had no problem being known as as Dead Squaw, Wyoming. But with the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923, the town had taken on his surname as a tribute.
.....No one on the local committee who had voted for the name change knew that it was widely suspected in the Beltway that the President had been poisoned by his own First Lady and White House doctor in a plot to avert the taint of rising scandal.
.....Nor did any of them realize that the man had fathered the illegitimate son of a local girl when he had spent the night in Dead Squaw, during a leg of his first and only campaign as the Republican candidate for president. They only knew that the future President of the United States had spent a day and night in their fair village, and right there that was reason enough to offer up the name change as tribute to the fallen leader.
.....Forty-some years later, the bastard of the local girl and the president would make his way on up the social ladder to become mayor of Harding, and then go on to represent the area in the state legislature. It was short-lived tenure, marked by overt graft and a sexual scandal involving an aging flapper and the girls that resided in her boarding house.
.....Although disgraced from politics at an earlier age than his father would have been had he not been saved from scandal, the unclaimed son of the president had still unknowingly continued on in his father’s footsteps by spawning in his own right a number of bastards in the Harding area. The blood of Warren G. Harding flowed strong in the veins of more than a few of the unsuspecting residents of the town that carried his name.
.....The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say, even if there were no apple trees in Harding, Wyoming.
.....Crawford took a bite out of the McIntosh, wiping a trail of juice from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. The anthem faded off to move to the next track. The singer didn’t sound much friendlier on the next song, either.
.....The disc wasn’t something he would have played while driving about the town, but off on the backroads he cruised for the occasional pressure release, the soundtrack to his high school days was a welcome passenger. His fingers rapped out the beat on the steering wheel as the singer growled away.
.....As of late, he had been using any excuse that he could find to drive outside the town limits.
.....The day-to-day grind of being the go-to arbitrator of small town pettiness was beginning to get under his skin. Sometimes it seemed as if his job consisted of nothing more than fielding barking dog complaints and being called in to officiate territorial pissing.
.....He wondered what as up with people anymore, when they didn’t even have the balls to walk on over to their neighbor’s door themselves and tell the assholes to turn the damned music down, already.
.....Two songs later he cut the music off and pulled to a stop by the gate that blocked the access road from continuing.
.....The bullet-pocked sign abreast of the gate cautioned that there was NO TRESPASSING and that VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
.....He shook his head at the foolishness of it all as he clicked the padlock free and unwound the heavy chain that married the two gates.
.....The mine hadn’t produced a decent load of trona in over twenty years, and to have the damned thing listed as a potential terrorist target was the silliest thing he could imagine. It was a hole in the side of a mountain holding nothing but bats and empty beer cans.
.....Hell, even if it was still viable, God forbid if the evildoers blew up our supply of sodium carbonate, forcing us to ration our supplies of... well, baking soda or something.
.....But to meet the demands of Homeland Security allocations, the county had to come up with a potential terrorist target and, miles of scrubland being not that marketable as a landmark tempting enough to squirrel in Al-Qaida troops to blow it up, the Dead Squaw Mine had finally been chosen.
.....Of course, the local teens had to take their beer and find some other secluded spot to party in, but sacrifices needed to be made all around in order to ensure national security.
.....When he had found that the six-figure annual grant for babysitting the mine had remained intact during the latest budget round, he had been nothing short of perplexed.
.....In the same time he had read that the equivalent grants for security precautions maintained for the Statue of Liberty and Washington Memorial had been slashed. The LAX airport in California, also.
.....Real targets he assumed, if targets were still being plotted.
.....Sometimes he wondered...
.....The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
.....An old school Democrat, his old man had been fond of the Franklin Roosevelt quote. Usually dropping it right before doing some damn' fool thing like throwing him or his brother in the pond to teach them how to swim.
.....Growing up in his father's house, the only thing that he had come to fear was that he wouldn't live to see the day that he could escape.
.....Of course it could be argued that these targets were located in the obstructionist Blue States, so it would be their own damned fault if their landmarks went up in a mushroom cloud.
.....His department enjoyed what part of the money they saw, but there were times where he had to wonder if that money could be better used in the War on Terror. But then, he also had to take into account that their local congressman was a friendly hunting buddy of the vice president.
.....By doing well for himself, the congressman was also doing okay by Crawford's department.
... .The sheriff shook his head glumly. Wheels within wheels, he thought.
.....He pulled the gate open and rolled the Humvee through, then locked the gate behind him. He climbed back in and continued up the access road to the mine. Part of that sacrifice involved posting a uniformed officer up at the mine 24/7.
.....Following the previous night’s SNAFU, it was Kyle’s turn in the barrel for the next week.
.....Outside the dusty Airstream trailer parked a-tilt at the mouth of the mineshaft, the deputy tucked a gun magazine beneath the seat of his lawn chair, struggling up as the Humvee rolled in on a cloud of dust.
.....It was a struggle all right, the sheriff noted. The deputy was packing an easy fifty pounds too many, and his neatly trimmed mustache was beaded with sweat by the time he stood.
.....The sheriff cut the engine and stepped out, handing Kyle the boxed lunch.
.....He didn’t figure that Kyle would notice the missing apple.
.....“Spot any Iraqis scurrying about?” asked Crawford as the deputy cracked the cardboard box and hauled out a wedge of ham-and-cheese sandwich, peeling the butcher paper back.
.....Kyle didn’t notice the lunch was short one apple.
.....The deputy glanced around seriously. “Nothing yet,” he responded, biting into the sandwich. Breadcrumbs hung to the man’s mustache, and Crawford figured that the deputy would be saving them for a snack later.
.....He nodded and stretched as he scanned the empty horizon.
.....Crawford's back popped satisfactorily. He lit a cigarette and waited until the deputy had finished his meal before tearing him a new asshole over the previous night’s misuse of department equipment and abuse of personal property.
.....He’d already blown off most of his steam earlier on Kehoe, and so while the ass chewing that Kyle received was short and sweet... it’d still be a while before the deputy would be sitting back down with his damned magazine.
..... Crawford felt much better. The sheriff had to justify the trip out of town to personally deliver the box lunch somehow. He figured that return trip would be equally relaxing.
.....On the other hand, that part involved going back to town.
.....Damn.
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