James Sallis: Cripple Creek

I 'd been up to Marvell to deliver a prisoner, nothing special, just a guy I stopped for reckless driving who, when I ran his license, came back with a stack of outstandings up that way, and what with having both a taste for solitude and a preference for driving at night and nothing much on the cooker back home, I'd delayed my return. Now I was starved. All the way down County Road 51 Id been thinking about the salt pork my mom used to fry up for dinner, squirrel with brown gravy, catfish rolled in cornmeal. As I pulled onto Cherry Street for the drag past Jays Diner, the drugstore and Manny's Dollar $tore, A amp;P, Baptist church and Gulf station, I was remembering an old blues. Guys singing about how hungry he is, how he can't think of anything but food: I heard the voice of a pork chop say, Come unto me and rest.

That pork chop, or its avatar, was whispering in my ear as I nosed into a parking space outside city hall. Don Lee's pickup and the Jeep were there. Our half of the building was lit. Save for forty-watts left on in stores for insurance purposes, these were the only lights on Main Street. I hadn't, in fact, expected to find the office open. Lot of nights, if one of us is gone or we've both worked some event, we leave it unattended. Calls get kicked over to home phones.

Inside, Don Lee sat at the desk in his usual pool of light.

"Anything going on?" I asked.

"Been quiet. Had to break up a beer party with some of the high school kids around eleven."

"Where'd they get the beer-Jimmy Ray?"

"Where else?"

Jimmy Ray was a retarded man who lived in a garage out back of old Miss Shaugnessy's. Kids knew he'd buy beer for them if they gave him a dollar or two. We'd asked local stores not to sell to him. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't.

"You got my message?"

"Yeah, June passed it on. Good trip?"

"Not bad. Didn't expect to find you here."

"Wouldn't be, but we have a guest." Meaning one of our two holding cells was occupied. This happened seldom enough to merit surprise.

"It's nothing, really. Around midnight, after I broke up the kids' party, I did a quick swing through town and was heading for home when this red Mustang came barreling past me. Eightyplus, I figure. So I pull a U. He's got the dome light on and he's in there driving with one hand, holding a map in the other, eyes going back and forth from road to map.

"I pull in close and hit the cherry, but it's like he doesn't even see it. By this time he's halfway through town. So I sound the siren-you have any idea when I last used the siren? Surprised I could even find it. Clear its throat more than once but it's just like with the cherry, he's not even taking notice. That's when I go full tilt: cherry, siren, the whole nine yards.

"There a problem, Officer?' he says. I'm probably imagining this, but his growl sounds a lot like the idling Mustang. I ask him to shut his engine off and he does. Hands over license and registration when I ask. 'Yeah, guess I did blow the limit. Somewhere I have to be-you know?'

"I call it in and State doesn't have anything on him. I figure I'll just write a ticket, why take it any further, I mean it's going to be chump change for someone in his collector's Mustang, dressed the way he is-right? But when I pass the ticket to him he starts to open the door. 'Please get back in your car, sir,' I tell him. But he doesn't. And now a stream of invective starts up.

" There's no reason for this to go south, sir,' I tell him. 'Just get back in your car, please. It's only a traffic ticket.'

"He takes a step or two towards me. His eyes have the look of someone who's been awake far longer than nature ever intended. Drugs? I don't know. Alcohol, definitely-I can smell that. There's a friendly bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor.

"He takes another step towards me, all the time telling me I don't know who I'm messing with, and his hands are balled into fists. I tap him behind the knee with my baton. When he goes down, I cuff him."

"And you tell me it's been quiet."

"Nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before."

"True enough… He get fed?"

Don Lee nodded. "Diner was closed, of course, the grill shut down. Gillie was still there cleaning up. He made some sandwiches, brought them over."

"And your guy got his phone call?"

"He did."

"Don't guess you'd have anything to eat, would you?"

"Matter of fact, I do. A sandwich Patty Ann packed up for me, what? ten, twelve hours ago? Yours if you want it. Patty Ann does the best meatloaf ever." Patty Ann being the new wife. Lisa, whom he'd married months before I came on the scene, was long gone. Lonnie always said Don Lee at a glance could pick out the one kid in a hundred that threw the cherry bomb in the toilet out at Hudson Field but he couldn't pick a good woman to save his life. Looked like maybe now he had, though.

Don Lee pulled the sandwich out of our half-size refrigerator and handed it to me, then put on fresh coffee. The sandwich was wrapped in wax paper, slice of sweet pickle nestled between the halves.

"How's work going on Val's house?" he asked.

"She's got three rooms done now. Give that woman a plane, a chisel and a hammer, she can restore anything. Yesterday we started sanding down the floor in one of the back rooms. Got through four or five coats of paint only to find linoleum under that. There's a floor here somewhere!' Val shouts, and starts peeling it away. Sometimes it's like we're on an archaeological dig, you know? Great sandwich."

"Always."

"Eldon Brown's come by some days to pitch in, says it relaxes him. Always brings his old Gibson. Thing's beat to hell. He and Val'll take breaks, sit on the porch playing fiddle tunes and oldtime mountain songs."

Don Lee poured coffee for us both.

"Speaking of which," I said, "I was sitting out front noticing how this place could use a new coat of paint."

Don Lee shook his head in mock pity. "Late-night wisdom."

Early-morning, actually, but he had a point. Beat listening to what the pork chop had to tell me, anyway.

"We're way past due on servicing the Chariot, too."

The Chariot was the Jeep, which we both used but still thought of as belonging to Lonnie Bates. Lonnie'd been shot a while back, went on medical leave. When the city council came to ask me to take his place I told them they had the wrong man.

You fools have the wrong man, was what I said. Graciously enough, they chose to overlook my ready wit and went ahead and appointed Don Lee as acting sheriff. He was a natural-just as I said. I'd never seen a man more cut out for law enforcement. I would agree to serve temporarily, I told city council members, as his deputy. Snag came when Lonnie found he liked his freedom, liked being home with his family, going fishing in the middle of the day if he had a mind to, taking hour-long naps, watching court shows and reruns of Andy Griffith or Bonanza on TV. Now we were a year into the arrangement and temporarily had taken on new meaning.

Headlights lashed the front windows.

"That'll be Sonny. He was at his mom's for her birthday earlier. Couldn't break loose to tow in the Mustang till now."

We went out to thank Sonny and sign the invoice. Probably he was going to wait a couple or three months for payment. We knew that. He did too. The city council and Mayor Sims forever dragged feet when it came to cutting checks. Just so she'd be able to meet whatever bills had to be paid to keep the city viable, payroll, electric and so on, the city clerk squirreled away money in secret accounts. No one talked about that either, though it was common knowledge.

"Could be a while before you get your fee," I told him as I passed the clipboard back.