Three a.m. is a very late time of the night to be going to bed or very early time of the morning for that matter, either way Sheriff Bewler was exhausted. Driving up and down Highway 11, stopping drunks, domestic violence calls, none of those things are fun. It’s not covert, gun slinging, door breaking police work like you see in the movies. Starsky and Hutch, fucking fantasy Ford Taurino paradise.
Six a.m. comes fast after you lay your head down and the annoying high pitch digital chime of the alarm clock is not very welcome. A blind hand slithers out from the covers and hits the snooze button, for the additional seven minutes of heaven on earth. Seven minutes later his hand automatically performs the same function. That’s 14 minutes past wake-up time. 14 minutes later than he would get into the shower, 14 minutes later than he would hit the road back into town, 14 minutes later than he would open the sheriff’s office on Main Street. But you know what? It felt good, and the world could fuck off for 14 minutes. Back to Snooze!
Needless to say, he surprised the shit out of himself when he finally woke up and saw Nine a.m. on the clock. He’d snoozed before, but never actually slept. His adrenaline didn’t pump, fight or flight mode didn’t kick-in. He just stared at the clock, as the digits went 9:01 AM. Time: what a wonderful concept he thought and pulled his comforter tighter to his body and thought ‘bacon sounds good for breakfast.’
Usually at 9:15 AM he’d be talking shit with Alice, the secretary girl, over his third cup of shitty coffee. He’d be flirting with her, even though he was graduating high school when she was born. But she liked it all the same and if he hadn’t such a noticeable position in the community, he might have asked her out long ago. Christ he thought, there were some tribes in the world where a nine year old could marry her grandfather – interesting bit of knowledge gleamed from the Discovery Channel.
Sheriff Bewler hauled himself out of bed at the crack of ten a.m. and lumbered all the way to the bathroom: Shit, Shower and Shave? Just the first two today thanks. As the warm water washed down his back he could hear his phone ring several times. Normally he could be in and out of the shower in five minutes or less, but today the water felt good and half an hour must have gone down the drain before he turned the water off and toweled himself off.
He checked his phone, six messages, as he slipped on a comfortable sweatshirt and lazy pants. He’d check those later, right now he had to get the bacon cooking. Bacon makes everything taste better and with two eggs and some thick slices of Texas toast the saying was not wrong at all. But he had to laugh with himself, just a little chuckle, the old bacon, pig, cop Trifecta. Been a while since someone had used that slang with him, last time it was his cousin Francis and he received a serious kick in the head for the affront.
11:15 AM, by now he’d have ticketed five cars along Main Street in the two hour parking zone, before the lunch crowd headed down to Mel’s diner for Pork Tenderloins and Chili Cheese Fries, ooh, that sounds good, a late lunch at Mel’s it would be. He just ticketed five cars a day ‘cause he knew that people had to park somewhere and as long as he made his monthly quota and generated a little revenue for the city then the old checks and balances were up held.
With the bacon and eggs giving him a little burst of energy he picked up his living room that looked like a refugee camp with clothes and shoes and bags and food containers spewed all over the place. He knew there was a couch under there somewhere and a TV. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually sat down to watch TV since he dragged the 32 inch flat screen back from Best Buy on an impulse buy nine months ago.
Oprah sucked, it was Book Club Day. As The World Turns, could keep on turning. The Weather Channel was predicting a cold day with an even colder night, followed by a week or more of cold to not so cold weather with chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain! But the Sci-Fi Channel was showing a re-run of the Original Predator movie with Arnie and Apollo Creed from Rocky running around the jungle and man he loved that scene where Jesse the Body Ventura was killed and Mack picked up his mini-gun and they shot the shit out of the jungle and hit nothing. How many times had he wanted to do that when they were up in the woods on the far side of town freezing their asses off as at a turkey shoot.
1:15 PM? Time for that Pork Tenderloin. He checked his phone again: Fifteen Messages. If he had a deputy, they would have been out checking on him by now, but he was the entire law enforcement team in town besides Alice at the office. Shit, the town would be fine for another few hours without him.
His feet crunched noisily on the gravel of his driveway. He looked over to his Crown Vic’ Interceptor then looked the other way and got into his VW Golf GTi. He bought the car three years ago after taking it for a test drive at Sam’s Auto Gallery on Mass’. The little red pocket rocket blew him away, but since then he’d barely put 2,000 miles on the clock ‘cause he was always in the Crown Vic’ chasing people in little sports cars and muscle cars that thought the highway was their personal race track. But throwing caution to the wind he snapped on his seat belt, tore down the road to the highway and planted the accelerator through the floor and had the little German hatch back up to 120 MPH in no time. He didn’t have to worry about being pulled over, since he was the only one that did any pulling over within 20 miles.
The Golf was a lot more fun to drive than his patrol car and could see why so many people speed at insane speeds. He promised himself he’d let the next speeder off with just a warning. He felt alive as he wrangled the gear knob through the slick little gear box, feeling the car respond to his every impulse. Past the Myers’ farm at about Ninety and back onto the big straight before hitting the bridge into town and slowing down for the traffic lights just before the railway tracks.
His town is what outsiders refer to as “a sleepy little rural American town. Sheriff Bewler had his own knickname for it “But Wipe MO.” He’d been born and breed in this town and lived there with the quiet resentment that people have for the place they grew up in but could never escape. Some people genuinely didn’t want to escape, but there are always those few who are afraid of the outside world. Afraid that they would never be accepted like they are in their home towns. In the outside world nobody cares if you are the quarter back of the high school football team, nobody cares if you were the home coming queen, in fact they don’t give a damn if your science project won first place at the county fair. But in your home town they do care, and that blanket of comfort is what keeps a small place like this populated, when all common sense says to move the hell away.
Sheriff Bewler could be considered one of these people, in a sense he rule the roost in this town. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone even better. He knew who beat their wife after too many Bud Lights, he knew who slept with an out of town business man for $500, he knew who was on parole for narcotics possession, hell he even knew who had a hit and run last year and continue to be a community leader. Sometimes this knowledge was too much, it ate away at his insides like a cancer. If he lived in a big city, and worked a regular nine to five job, he’d have anonymity and he wouldn’t know shit and people wouldn’t know shit about him either. But not here in Butt Wipe, MO.
Most people didn’t know his red Golf, so thinking about anonymity, he decided to drive around the town and see what people did when they thought he wasn’t looking. He dipped his ball cap and put on his sun glasses, totally undercover.
He drove down Main Street, not much going on there, just a few cars illegally parked here and there. He stopped at the light at the cross section of 2nd and Main. A mid 80s Camero pulled up alongside him revving its engine. The driver looked over at him with that “Wanna Race” face. Sheriff Bewler revved his engine in response and then stared straight ahead at the red light waiting for it to turn green. Wheels screeched and rubber burned as the Camero speed away furiously. Sheriff Bewler didn’t even put the Gti in gear, but made a note to himself to give Al Johnson’s son a talking to next time he was over that way. Punk kid.
He took a left on 2nd and made his way towards Mel’s diner on Mass’. The usual line of illegally parked cars were outside, so he said to hell with it and joined the line. The smell of hot grease wafted through the air as he got out of his car. Something’s cooking.
Soon as he walked in and removed his hat Mel shouted over to him from across the counter “Heard you’ve been playing hookie at work Sheriff!”
“Nah, not playing hookie, just taking it easy, you know, having a day to myself.”
“Do you hear that everyone, Sheriff Bewler is having a day to himself.” Melf and all the other patrons around the counter laughed and one of them chimed in “why don’t you get your legs waxed while your at it!” Jeers of approval came from around the room at this comment “good one Dick, get your legs waxed, well I never.”
Sheriff Bewler took the cheap humor in his stride, thinking to himself, you all better watch out for me next time your parked outside of here, been a while since he’d actually towed a car to the impound, have to correct that soon. “Good one Dick, very funny, is that what you do to your head? Haven’t seen skin that smooth since I changed my nephew’s diaper!” The crowd of funny men didn’t like that retort, a mumor of “oohhs” came from them, ‘cause everyone knew that Dick Brady had been bald since he was 25 and his $20 toupees didn’t do a great job of hiding that truth.
“I’ll have the truck stop Mel, over easy on the eggs and give me a side of those chili cheese fries and a coffee.” Everyone seemed to shut the hell up now and get back to their lunch, so fearing no more remarks, Sheriff Bewler grabbed the paper and spread it out in front of him. There was a local paper that floated about once a week, but for the daily news they had to accept the Star from up there in the big city. Nobody like the Star, but everyone read it, so they could heckle the folks up there “driving their Volvos and drinking lattes! City folk don’t know a hard days work, why I’d like to see one of them on my farm for a half a day, I’d have em broke in two by lunch.” But Sheriff Bewler knew that life in the city wasn’t all easy. A few months ago he’d been up there and was stuck in traffic on I-35 just before the Broadway Bridge and looking under the over pass he saw a whole community of homeless people just squatting under there, keeping close together for warmth. Steam was rising out of a vent as one passed a brown paper bag to the other. That wasn’t easy city living. When it’s tough in the country, it’s never as tough as it is in the city. He’d like to see one of these red necks make it through a half day in the city they’d be broke by two!
He laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, said thanks for the lunch and walked out the door leaving the “witty men with their jokes” he mumbled, thinking “I’ve heard that somewhere before?” What he didn’t remember was that that was a line from a W. B. Yeats’ Poem he read in his high school English class: “The witty man and his joke, aimed at the commonest ear” went the poem.
When he’d been reading the paper he say an add for Flight to Europe – Paris and London from $189 each way from Chicago. He’d never been over there, he’ll he’d never been out of the country except to go to Canada for the day once when he was fifteen with his family on vacation in Buffalo New York. Terrible vacation he remembered, his parents shouted at each other the whole time, the air conditioning broke in the car on the way back and his sister got sick allover the back seat. Yeah, he hadn’t been out of the country since. But just heading off to London or Paris or somewhere just like that, now that sounded good. He’d always wanted to go to Ireland, that’s where his great grandfather came from, Cork County or somewhere like that. Fuck it, that what he’d do.
He’d go to the bank, take out his savings, stick half of it into his credit card, rent out his house, take a leave of absence from work, get some replacement in for a few months and piss off to Europe.
Suddenly he felt like a huge weight was lifted of his soul, his head became light and all he could think was “why the hell hadn’t I thought of this before.” He could imagine it already, walking around London lost but not caring, sitting back in a pub in Ireland having a pint, taking a walk along a beach in France, maybe even go to Germany and have some sauerkraut. He drove in a daze as he made his way to the Farmer’s State Bank.
“Hey Sheriff Bewler” said Old Sam the security guard at the bank, “taking a day off I hear?” “Yes, I am Sam, thanks for asking.” “Well, you enjoy it, ‘cause we don’t get many of those these days.” “Don’t you worry Sam, I am.” He laughed at the little rhyme he just made. Today was a good day.
There was only one person in front of him at the bank line and he waved to all the folks in the back as they stuck their heads up in the air to see him. Then as he got to the front and Dorris had started to say “Hello Sheriff Bewler…” He cut her off, “Yes Dorris I am taking a day off. “
“Well, there is no need to be like that about it, I was just going to ask what I can do for you today?”
“Sorry, just a reaction and what you can do for me is deposit five thousand dollars from my savings account in this credit card account and just cash out the rest for me.”
“That’s a lot of money Sheriff, can I ask…”
“No Dorris, you can’t ask what it’s for, it’s for me, it’s my money, thank you Dorris.”
Dorris pottered off to get the Manager to make such a large withdrawal and he watched her as she explained waving her hands and flapping all over the place, her head going up and down like a chicken. The manager went into the big vault with Dorris and dissapered from his vision. He went to turn around to Old Sam and make a joke to him about having his side arm ready for the all the money he was going to be leaving with, but when he turned around he saw Old Sam lying on the floor dead or unconscious, and standing beside him was a youth of about 19 or 20 with his eyes popping out like he had spent one night too many taking Meth in some shack. The youth was holding a gun and was bending down to pick up Sam’s gun.
“Wait there now one minute young fella” Sheriff Bewler said as calmly as he could “we don’t need any trouble here.”
“Shut the fuck up pig, get your fucking ass on the floor and shut the fuck up.”
He didn’t recogonize the youth, but the scrawny fella sure knew who he was, “coulda sworn I knew everyone around these parts,” he thought to himself.
“If I have to ask you again, I’m going to cap your ass pig.” The kid was obviously out of control and he didn’t want him to start shooting in here with all the bank staff around.
He started to get down on the floor when the small rug under his feet slid one way and he went crashing to one side.
The nervous cracked-out youth’s gun went off only once, that’s all it needed to do. That was the last day Sheriff Bewler ever took off again. His ashes were scatted by his sister down by the river where he used to fish when he was a boy, a place he liked to go alone and think. Now he’d have eternity to think and muse on all the things he never did do.
Three a.m. is a very late time of the night to be going to bed, or very early time of the morning for that matter, either way Sheriff Bewler was exhausted. Driving up and down Highway 11, stopping drunks, domestic violence calls, none of those things are fun. It’s not covert, gun slinging, door breaking police work like you see in the movies. Starsky and Hutch, fucking fantasy Ford Taurino paradise.
Six a.m. comes fast after you lay your head down and the annoying high pitch digital chime of the alarm clock is not very welcome. A blind hand slithers out from the covers and hits the snooze button, for the additional seven minutes of heaven on earth. Seven minutes later his hand automatically performs the same function. That’s 14 minutes past wake-up time. 14 minutes later than he would get into the shower, 14 minutes later than he would hit the road back into town, 14 minutes later than he would open the sheriff’s office on Main Street. But you know what? It felt good, and the world could fuck off for 14 minutes. Back to Snooze!
Needless to say, he surprised the shit out of himself when he finally woke up and saw Nine a.m. on the clock. He’d snoozed before, but never actually slept. His adrenaline didn’t pump, fight or flight mode didn’t kick-in. He just stared at the clock, as the digits went 9:01 AM. Time what a wonderful concept he thought and pulled his comforter tighter to his body and thought ‘bacon sounds good for breakfast.’
Usually at 9:15 AM he’d be talking shit with Alice, the secretary girl, over his third cup of shitty coffee. He’d be flirting with her, even though he was graduating high school when she was born. But she liked it all the same and if he hadn’t such a noticeable position in the community, he might have asked her out long ago. Christ he thought, there were some tribes in the world where a nine year old could marry her grandfather – interesting bit of knowledge gleamed from the Discovery Channel.
Sheriff Bewler hauled himself out of bed at the crack of ten a.m. and lumbered all the way to the bathroom: Shit, Shower and Shave? Just the first two today thanks. As the warm water washed down his back he could hear his phone ring several times. Normally he could be in and out of the shower in five minutes or less, but today the water felt good and half an hour must have gone down the drain before he turned the water off and toweled himself off.
He checked his phone, six messages, as he slipped on a comfortable sweatshirt and lazy pants. He’d check those later, right now he had to get the bacon cooking. Bacon makes everything taste better and with two eggs and some thick slices of Texas toast the saying was not wrong at all. But he had to laugh with himself, just a little chuckle, the old bacon, pig, cop Trifecta. Been a while since someone had used that slang with him, last time it was his cousin Francis and he received a serious kick in the head for the affront.
11:15 AM, by now he’d have ticketed five cars along Main Street in the two hour parking zone, before the lunch crowd headed down to Mel’s diner for Pork Tenderloins and Chili Cheese Fries, ooh, that sounds good, a late lunch at Mel’s it would be. He just ticketed five cars a day ‘cause he knew that people had to park somewhere and as long as he made his monthly quota and generated a little revenue for the city then the old checks and balances were up held.
With the bacon and eggs giving him a little burst of energy he picked up his living room that looked like a refugee camp with clothes and shoes and bags and food containers spewed all over the place. He knew there was a couch under there somewhere and a TV. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually sat down to watch TV since he dragged the 32 inch flat screen back from Best Buy on an impulse buy nine months ago.
Oprah sucked, it was Book Club Day. As The World Turns, could keep on turning. The Weather Channel was predicting a cold day with an even colder night, followed by a week or more of cold to not so cold weather with chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain! But the Sci-Fi Channel was showing a re-run of the Original Predator movie with Arnie and Apollo Creed from Rocky running around the jungle and man he loved that scene where Jesse the Body Ventura was killed and Mack picked up his mini-gun and they shot the shit out of the jungle and hit nothing. How many times had he wanted to do that when they were up in the woods on the far side of town freezing their asses off as at a turkey shoot.
1:15 PM? Time for that Pork Tenderloin. He checked his phone again: Fifteen Messages. If he had a deputy, they would have been out checking on him by now, but he was the entire law enforcement team in town besides Alice at the office. Shit, the town would be fine for another few hours without him.
His feet crunched noisily on the gravel of his driveway. He looked over to his Crown Vic’ Interceptor then looked the other way and got into his VW Golf GTi. He bought the car three years ago after taking it for a test drive at Sam’s Auto Gallery on Mass’. The little red pocket rocket blew him away, but since then he’d barely put 2,000 miles on the clock ‘cause he was always in the Crown Vic’ chasing people in little sports cars and muscle cars that thought the highway was their personal race track. But throwing caution to the wind he snapped on his seat belt, tore down the road to the highway and planted the accelerator through the floor and had the little German hatch back up to 120 MPH in no time. He didn’t have to worry about being pulled over, since he was the only one that did any pulling over within 20 miles.
The Golf was a lot more fun to drive than his patrol car and could see why so many people speed at insane speeds. He promised himself he’d let the next speeder off with just a warning. He felt alive as he wrangled the gear knob through the slick little gear box, feeling the car respond to his every impulse. Past the Myers’ farm at about Ninety and back onto the big straight before hitting the bridge into town and slowing down for the traffic lights just before the railway tracks.
His town is what outsiders refer to as “a sleepy little rural American town. Sheriff Bewler had his own knickname for it “But Wipe MO.” He’d been born and breed in this town and lived there with the quiet resentment that people have for the place they grew up in but could never escape. Some people genuinely didn’t want to escape, but there are always those few who are afraid of the outside world. Afraid that they would never be accepted like they are in their home towns. In the outside world nobody cares if you are the quarter back of the high school football team, nobody cares if you were the home coming queen, in fact they don’t give a damn if your science project won first place at the county fair. But in your home town they do care, and that blanket of comfort is what keeps a small place like this populated, when all common sense says to move the hell away.
Sheriff Bewler could be considered one of these people, in a sense he rule the roost in this town. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone even better. He knew who beat their wife after too many Bud Lights, he knew who slept with an out of town business man for $500, he knew who was on parole for narcotics possession, hell he even knew who had a hit and run last year and continue to be a community leader. Sometimes this knowledge was too much, it ate away at his insides like a cancer. If he lived in a big city, and worked a regular nine to five job, he’d have anonymity and he wouldn’t know shit and people wouldn’t know shit about him either. But not here in Butt Wipe, MO.
Most people didn’t know his red Golf, so thinking about anonymity, he decided to drive around the town and see what people did when they thought he wasn’t looking. He dipped his ball cap and put on his sun glasses, totally undercover.
He drove down Main Street, not much going on there, just a few cars illegally parked here and there. He stopped at the light at the cross section of 2nd and Main. A mid 80s Camero pulled up alongside him revving its engine. The driver looked over at him with that “Wanna Race” face. Sheriff Bewler revved his engine in response and then stared straight ahead at the red light waiting for it to turn green. Wheels screeched and rubber burned as the Camero speed away furiously. Sheriff Bewler didn’t even put the Gti in gear, but made a note to himself to give Al Johnson’s son a talking to next time he was over that way. Punk kid.
He took a left on 2nd and made his way towards Mel’s diner on Mass’. The usual line of illegally parked cars were outside, so he said to hell with it and joined the line. The smell of hot grease wafted through the air as he got out of his car. Something’s cooking.
Soon as he walked in and removed his hat Mel shouted over to him from across the counter “Heard you’ve been playing hookie at work Sheriff!”
“Nah, not playing hookie, just taking it easy, you know, having a day to myself.”
“Do you hear that everyone, Sheriff Bewler is having a day to himself.” Melf and all the other patrons around the counter laughed and one of them chimed in “why don’t you get your legs waxed while your at it!” Jeers of approval came from around the room at this comment “good one Dick, get your legs waxed, well I never.”
Sheriff Bewler took the cheap humor in his stride, thinking to himself, you all better watch out for me next time your parked outside of here, been a while since he’d actually towed a car to the impound, have to correct that soon. “Good one Dick, very funny, is that what you do to your head? Haven’t seen skin that smooth since I changed my nephew’s diaper!” The crowd of funny men didn’t like that retort, a mumor of “oohhs” came from them, ‘cause everyone knew that Dick Brady had been bald since he was 25 and his $20 toupees didn’t do a great job of hiding that truth.
“I’ll have the truck stop Mel, over easy on the eggs and give me a side of those chili cheese fries and a coffee.” Everyone seemed to shut the hell up now and get back to their lunch, so fearing no more remarks, Sheriff Bewler grabbed the paper and spread it out in front of him. There was a local paper that floated about once a week, but for the daily news they had to accept the Star from up there in the big city. Nobody like the Star, but everyone read it, so they could heckle the folks up there “driving their Volvos and drinking lattes! City folk don’t know a hard days work, why I’d like to see one of them on my farm for a half a day, I’d have em broke in two by lunch.” But Sheriff Bewler knew that life in the city wasn’t all easy. A few months ago he’d been up there and was stuck in traffic on I-35 just before the Broadway Bridge and looking under the over pass he saw a whole community of homeless people just squatting under there, keeping close together for warmth. Steam was rising out of a vent as one passed a brown paper bag to the other. That wasn’t easy city living. When it’s tough in the country, it’s never as tough as it is in the city. He’d like to see one of these red necks make it through a half day in the city they’d be broke by two!
He laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, said thanks for the lunch and walked out the door leaving the “witty men with their jokes” he mumbled, thinking “I’ve heard that somewhere before?” What he didn’t remember was that that was a line from a W. B. Yeats’ Poem he read in his high school English class: “The witty man and his joke, aimed at the commonest ear” went the poem.
When he’d been reading the paper he say an add for Flight to Europe – Paris and London from $189 each way from Chicago. He’d never been over there, he’ll he’d never been out of the country except to go to Canada for the day once when he was fifteen with his family on vacation in Buffalo New York. Terrible vacation he remembered, his parents shouted at each other the whole time, the air conditioning broke in the car on the way back and his sister got sick allover the back seat. Yeah, he hadn’t been out of the country since. But just heading off to London or Paris or somewhere just like that, now that sounded good. He’d always wanted to go to Ireland, that’s where his great grandfather came from, Cork County or somewhere like that. Fuck it, that what he’d do.
He’d go to the bank, take out his savings, stick half of it into his credit card, rent out his house, take a leave of absence from work, get some replacement in for a few months and piss off to Europe.
Suddenly he felt like a huge weight was lifted of his soul, his head became light and all he could think was “why the hell hadn’t I thought of this before.” He could imagine it already, walking around London lost but not caring, sitting back in a pub in Ireland having a pint, taking a walk along a beach in France, maybe even go to Germany and have some sauerkraut. He drove in a daze as he made his way to the Farmer’s State Bank.
“Hey Sheriff Bewler” said Old Sam the security guard at the bank, “taking a day off I hear?” “Yes, I am Sam, thanks for asking.” “Well, you enjoy it, ‘cause we don’t get many of those these days.” “Don’t you worry Sam, I am.” He laughed at the little rhyme he just made. Today was a good day.
There was only one person in front of him at the bank line and he waved to all the folks in the back as they stuck their heads up in the air to see him. Then as he got to the front and Dorris had started to say “Hello Sheriff Bewler…” He cut her off, “Yes Dorris I am taking a day off. “
“Well, there is no need to be like that about it, I was just going to ask what I can do for you today?”
“Sorry, just a reaction and what you can do for me is deposit five thousand dollars from my savings account in this credit card account and just cash out the rest for me.”
“That’s a lot of money Sheriff, can I ask…”
“No Dorris, you can’t ask what it’s for, it’s for me, it’s my money, thank you Dorris.”
Dorris pottered off to get the Manager to make such a large withdrawal and he watched her as she explained waving her hands and flapping all over the place, her head going up and down like a chicken. The manager went into the big vault with Dorris and dissapered from his vision. He went to turn around to Old Sam and make a joke to him about having his side arm ready for the all the money he was going to be leaving with, but when he turned around he saw Old Sam lying on the floor dead or unconscious, and standing beside him was a youth of about 19 or 20 with his eyes popping out like he had spent one night too many taking Meth in some shack. The youth was holding a gun and was bending down to pick up Sam’s gun.
“Wait there now one minute young fella” Sheriff Bewler said as calmly as he could “we don’t need any trouble here.”
“Shut the fuck up pig, get your fucking ass on the floor and shut the fuck up.”
He didn’t recogonize the youth, but the scrawny fella sure knew who he was, “coulda sworn I knew everyone around these parts,” he thought to himself.
“If I have to ask you again, I’m going to cap your ass pig.” The kid was obviously out of control and he didn’t want him to start shooting in here with all the bank staff around.
He started to get down on the floor when the small rug under his feet slid one way and he went crashing to one side.
The nervous cracked-out youth’s gun went off only once, that’s all it needed to do. That was the last day Sheriff Bewler ever took off again. His ashes were scatted by his sister down by the river where he used to fish when he was a boy, a place he liked to go alone and think. Now he’d have eternity to think and muse on all the things he never did do.
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