Ted Bell - Spy

“Missed his bus,” Franklin drawled and returned to his soup.

“Prairie ain’t got any buses,” Homer said.

“Well, there’s that.”

The sheriff took a bite of his grilled cheese and smiled. Nobody made better grilled cheese sandwiches than Virgil Buff at the Rexall drugstore. Nobody even came close.

The two lawmen had knocked off around one and left the courthouse. Out of sheer habit, they’d ambled directly across the street to the drugstore luncheonette for a bite. It was a warm December day and the overhead fans inside were spinning lazily. The smell of fried onions in the air made Franklin hungry coming in the door. There was a stack of newspapers set on the table by the screen door and he took one.

From his station behind the long Formica counter, owner Roy Sewell waved them over to the last available booth, halfway down on the right. By the averted looks he and Homer received entering and sitting down, Franklin wasn’t sure he had too many friends left around this town. But, you know, he’d always said, the law wasn’t some kind of popularity contest.

People liked it when the law was on their side and didn’t like it when it wasn’t. No mystery there.

Roy came over and took their order, nodding when both men said, “The usual.” They sat for a few moments in silence and then Homer piped up, “How’s your paper goin’? You only got a few days left before you go to Key West.”

“Almost done.”

“You happy with it?”

“I guess so, Homer. I said my piece anyway.”

“I hear on the news that pretty woman Secretary of State is even going to be there. What’s her name? Consuelo something or other. Cuban, I believe. I’ve seen her on the TV here a lot lately. Say, you nervous about getting up in front of all those fancy Washington folks?”

“I’m nervous about being gone away so long, to tell you the honest truth.”

“We’ll be all right. Don’t worry. We got Wyatt.”

“Yep. We got Wyatt.”

In truth, the town had been pretty quiet since the afternoon about a week ago here that the little Mexican boy, Manuelito, had gone to his reward out at the Brotherwood place. There had been a sizable outpouring of grief in the town’s small but growing Latino community. Even a few demonstrators and more questions raised about the inhumanity of the U.S. immigration laws, and so forth and so on. Some locals, Hispanics and others, blamed the sheriff for the child’s death since the boy had been in Dixon’s care when he passed on. Nothing you could do about that. People think what they’re going to think.

Since the boy apparently had no family left in Mexico, Franklin had arranged for Manuelito to be buried in the small plot behind St. Mary’s. It was the only Catholic church in town, and the priest there was an old friend of Franklin’s. The sheriff had spoken at the graveside and tried to express his true feelings about the loss of a child in these kinds of circumstances. He wasn’t sure he had, but he hoped he’d given some comfort to the folks who mourned. Two families had stepped forward and volunteered to take in Manuelito’s surviving brothers.

“Sit down and eat your lunch, Homer,” Franklin said. His deputy had popped up again, upsetting his water glass and spilling it directly onto Franklin’s plate. Ruined what was left of a perfectly good sandwich.

“Sheriff, something funny’s going on out there. Look at all the people going by. They’re all running. Like they were scared or something.”

Franklin wiped his mouth with the paper napkin and stood up, sliding out of the booth.

“Come on, Homer,” he said as soon as he saw the faces of the townspeople rushing past the drugstore windows. Homer was right. Something about their expressions said they weren’t running to something but rather away from something.

“What’s going on, Sheriff?” Homer said, adjusting his short brim and sliding out of the booth, “A twister or something?”

“That’s what we’re about to go find out. Go ahead. I’ll settle us up with Roy.”

Homer was first out the door and he was almost bowled over by Frank Teague, a big gangly kid who was the all-state center on the high school basketball squad. He had his baby sister in his arms. Right behind Frank were his mother and grandmother. Farther down Main Street was another group of citizens fleeing some unseen danger.

“Miz Teague,” Homer was saying as Dixon stepped out into the street, “where are you running to? What the heck’s going on?”

She paused a second, all out of breath, and said, “It’s some kind of trouble, Sheriff! A whole bunch of outlaw motorcycles. They’ve got guns!”

“How many?”

“Maybe twenty or thirty, far as I could tell. Bad. Looks like the Hell’s Angels or somebody like that. I heard they already shot up some cars. Blew out a store window.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“I don’t know, Sheriff. Everybody kinda panicked.”

“Where are they now?”

“Still down the road a piece, I guess,” the widow Teague said, looking fearfully over her shoulder. “I saw them stopped along the two-lane outside of town. You know, just before you get to Gray’s Mobil station. They’re probably headed into town! Somebody better do something, Sheriff!”

“Yes, ma’am. It’ll be all right. Everybody needs to get off the streets. Right now. You go tell everybody you see. Go on, now.”

“Para Salvados,” Homer whispered to Dixon. “PS 13, right, the same guys we saw down at the bullring?”

“Could be,” the sheriff said. He was already thinking that’s who it was. In the last forty-eight hours, he’d had a few death threats on the phone and one in the mail postmarked Laredo. Daisy’d gotten some very disturbing email. He’d heard rumors from various Latino members of the department that down in Nuevo Laredo, some people were blaming him for the death of the little Mexican boy. Tiger Tejada was no doubt stirring the pot.

The woman set off at a run up Main to catch up with her fleeing family. Franklin stepped aside to let other people go by. You could hear the beginning of a faint and distant thunder to the south. Pretty soon here, they’d be entering town at the bottom of Main Street. That would be about eight blocks to Franklin’s left. A sound like approaching thunder grew perceptibly louder.

“Homer.”

“Yessir.”

“Is Wyatt asleep? Get Wyatt on the radio and tell him to get some officers out here on the street. Anybody he can find in the office and on the radio. OK? Tell him to look out the window. We got a potential panic if he doesn’t already know that by now. I want everybody off the street, now. Tell him I want everybody wearing Kevlar, too.”

“Yessir. How ’bout you?”

“I’m going to try and find out what we’re looking at here.”

“You want this?” Homer asked, pulling out his Smith & Wesson. Franklin looked at it a second. He didn’t carry often, for two reasons. He was trying to set a good community example. And he’d once killed a whole lot of people at close range and was trying to live out the balance of his life without repeating that experience.

Times change.

He took the gun.

“We ain’t got a whole lot of time here, Homer. Now, go on, git over there and help Wyatt.”

FOLKS WERE STREAMING out of Roy’s Rexall now, and Dixon had to squeeze through an onrush of frantic people just to get through the door. He found Virgil, the short-order cook, locking up the cash register and the owner, Roy, breaking the breech of a shotgun he kept behind the counter to make sure it was loaded. Franklin knew he kept it loaded with double-ought buckshot. Wasn’t ideal, but better than nothing.

“Roy, you got a quick way to get up on your roof?” The drugstore was on the ground floor of an old four-story brick building with unobstructed views south down Main Street.