by J. M. Hayes
“Now wait a minute. I wasn’t speeding.”
“Course you were. That’s why I run out in the street here and tried to wave you down. I sure hope you’re insured,” the deputy continued. “I hate to think of the damages you might be responsible for if our truck can’t deliver that heart in time for the transplant.”
“Heart transplant?”
“And look here,” Wynn said, showing them the battered sack containing Mad Dog’s dough. “You made them drop the liver. I’d ask to see your license and registration only I got to arrange fresh transport for this right now.”
“Uhh, sure,” the man agreed. “Don’t let us keep you. We’re feeling a lot better. We’ll be on our way.” He wasn’t limping as he hurried around his Nissan and got behind the wheel. His wife was already belting herself in.
“You guys keep a close eye on your speed now, you hear?”
“Sure thing, deputy,” the man called. The Altima was already rolling. “Thanks for the warning.”
Wynn watched as the man headed out of town as fast as five miles below the posted limit could take him. The deputy was feeling mighty proud of himself until he heard the squeal of another set of tires. He jumped onto the curb and whirled to see who had nearly run him down. It was a car with out-of-state plates, a rental, from which an attractive middle-aged woman emerged.
He was on a roll. He was still planning how he would put the fear of small town cops into her and send her on her way when she marched up and yanked the sack from his hands.
“What are you doing with that?” she demanded.
“Well I…” Wynn took a step back and wondered if he ought to draw his gun and show her who was in charge. It obviously wasn’t him. She tore into the bag and he was surprised to see a small timer attached to one end of Mad Dog’s dough. He’d heard you had to let dough rise before you baked it. Maybe that was why it tasted so bad. It wasn’t ready yet, though the numbers on the timer indicated it was mighty close.
“Hey, that’s Mad Dog’s dough. And not very good from the taste of it, but I was gonna give it back to him.”
She paused and gave him a peculiar look.
“You ate some of this?” She seemed incredulous. “This isn’t dough. It’s C4 plastic explosive. Maybe you should see a doctor.” She shook her head as she jumped back in the car, popped it into gear, and headed east on Main as fast as the driver of the Nissan had wanted to go. Almost as fast as the Heathers.
“No,” Wynn said to her rear bumper. “She was kidding,” he muttered. But he had the sinking feeling she wasn’t. His stomach rumbled. He felt a burp coming on. It made him very afraid.
***
Mrs. Kraus thought it was like when the second Heather appeared on the scene. The girl’s crazy father had come looking for her, not because he wanted to take care of her himself, but to use her as a weapon against her mother. He was fresh out of prison. Hadn’t seen his daughter in years. So he kidnapped the wrong Heather and threatened her life as a way to get at Two’s equally loony mom.
Since he first got elected, Englishman had always tried to be a good lawman, even if he’d never had any formal training for the job other than a brief hitch in the army that sent him home with a Purple Heart and a cynical view of the world outside Benteen County. But when his own daughter’s life had been on the line, he’d stopped being Sheriff and started being Dad.
This time it was Judy, and though the sheriff’s bride might not be in quite such immediate danger, she was apparently running away—headed for Wichita and a flight to France. Mrs. Kraus could see Englishman wrestling with his duty—the threat to his community—and weighing it against his responsibility to Judy. She felt pretty sure the community was about to lose out.
“What’s this lawyer crap?” Englishman was in the chairman’s face and Mrs. Kraus wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t be grabbing the man by his throat if he didn’t start answering questions right now. Time for a little meddling, she thought.
“How you gonna feel, waiting on a lawyer if another bomb’s out there and somebody gets killed?” she asked Chairman Wynn. “You ain’t been Mirandaed. What you say can’t be used against you. Strikes me, it’d be in your best interest to explain right quick.”
“We haven’t done anything that bad,” Supervisor Finfrock said. “We maybe bent a few rules and regulations, violated the open meeting law, but it was a genuine emergency and for the good of the county. We don’t need a lawyer unless Jud Haines isn’t on his way to close that Windreapers deal.”
“My God, man,” the chairman said. “Haven’t you been paying attention? Jud Haines is our bomber. Jud Haines pulled the pin on a grenade right here in this office so he could make a clean getaway. That money’s in electronic limbo right now, and we let him code in the password that will transfer it wherever he wants, including countries that don’t share information about banking transactions.”
The sheriff turned to Finfrock. “Right now, I don’t care if you robbed the county blind to come up with that money. All I care is where it’s supposed to go. Where Jud Haines has gone.”
“We needed three million to guarantee the construction of the transmission lines and the infrastructure for the county’s wind farm,” Finfrock explained. Mrs. Kraus could tell he didn’t think he’d done anything seriously wrong. Of course, he didn’t seem to think collecting weapons of mass destruction was a problem either. “After the bombings this morning, we knew the deal was dead if word got out. Jud contacted Windreapers and told them we got a counter offer. That, if they wanted to build their farm here, they had to close the deal today.”
“That don’t make no sense,” Mrs. Kraus said. “You don’t even have all the land lined up. You’re lacking three sections in the middle, last I heard, including Mad Dog’s.”
“I really don’t think you should say any more,” Chairman Wynn suggested. It earned him a glare from Englishman hot enough to raise blisters. The chairman wilted under it.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s like Finfrock told you. We’re facing an economic crisis in this county. If we don’t close the deal on that wind farm, we’re likely to be closing up government here in the next few years. May have to merge with another county or two, just to supply basic services.”
“Who cares how you rationalized this,” Englishman said.
“Well,” the chairman continued, “we acted to seize those properties this afternoon. Eminent domain. We’ll pay the owners a fair price but, to have that wind farm, we had to have that land.”
Mrs. Kraus was shocked when Englishman responded with a laugh instead of rage. “You seized Mad Dog’s section?”
“It’s legal. We got the power to do that,” the chairman replied.
“I suppose you do,” Englishman said. “Only Mad Dog thought you might be getting a little desperate to get hold of his property. So he deeded it to the state of Kansas a couple of months ago. Gave it to them, free and clear, contingent on that land being put back into native grass and grazed by nothing but buffalo and other indigenous fauna.”
“That can’t be,” the chairman protested.
“Oh, you better believe it can. Mad Dog gets to live there for up to forty years at an annual rent of one dollar. He figures he’ll be dead before his lease is up. You might be able to make your eminent domain stick on the other two sections, but you can’t seize land from the state.”
“But then we don’t have ten contiguous sections,” Finfrock wailed.
“And, three million dollars or not, you don’t have a wind farm,” Englishman said.
“Wichita,” Chairman Wynn said. “Jud Haines, if he was telling the truth, is catching a jet there this afternoon.”
“So, all I’m missing is a connection between our archer and our supervisor, who’s become a part-time terrorist and maybe a full-time thief. And he’s on his way to Wichita, where I need to go anyway, and our archer is already dead, so there’s nothing to keep me here. Well then, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I’m going after my wife n
ow. And maybe your crook.”
“Englishman,” the chairman said. “You got to catch him. Get our money back. Otherwise it won’t matter what you decide to do about the rest of us. He gets away with that money, this county’s bankrupt right now.”
The sheriff took his tape recorder off the desk and tossed it to Mrs. Kraus as he headed for the door.
“Hey,” Finfrock complained. “Aren’t you going to unfasten my handcuffs?”
“You want I should take care of that?” Mrs. Kraus asked.
Englishman turned at the door. “Let him go or lock him up. Put the chairman in a cell with him or let them walk out the door together. Do what suits you. I’ll decide whether to level charges when I get back. Just don’t let Finfrock near his bar. That way, this community might go bust, but it won’t go boom.”
***
Jesus, Wynn Some wondered. What happened if you ate plastic explosives? Was it poison? The stuff couldn’t be good for you. His stomach felt like pressure was building up inside and he realized he was sweating a lot more than the balmy afternoon warranted. Was that just nerves, or was something else happening to him? He’d felt a little like this that time he ate all the dried fruit and then got so thirsty. What he drank, of course, caused the mulched fruit in his stomach to re-hydrate and swell. For a while there, he’d looked like he was pregnant and felt like he was dying.
Now, it felt like something was building up in his stomach again, and it seemed to want out in the worst way. If he released it, would it just be a massive burp, or might he erupt like a volcano? Would he belch, or would he explode like that bomb Jud Haines threw into the ditch across from the Texaco?
Deputy Wynn stood perfectly still. If he moved, he reasoned, he might jar the stuff in his gut and set it off. They could be finding bits of him all over Buffalo Springs for years. He fought against the pressure inside, but willpower wasn’t enough. The force in his belly was building. He put a hand over his mouth and tried to hold it in. Not possible. He felt it come rolling up his esophagus. His mouth flew open in a rictus of terror. If he could have screamed and burped at the same time, he would have. He squeezed his eyes down tight and waited to die.
The belch rolled out of him. It was the kind of eruption a man who had just polished off four beers might be proud of. It rolled down Main Street.
Wynn opened his eyes. He was alive. He shook his head in amazement and was still shaking it when the earth joined in and shook as well. The echo of his burp came roaring back far louder than when it left him.
The east, where the sides of Main Street merged on their way to an infinite horizon, turned bright as dawn. Then that new sunrise was eclipsed by a cloud of smoke and dust that mushroomed into an otherwise perfect sky.
Did I do that, Wynn wondered. He hoped not, because his gut was rumbling again. Another burp was on the way.
***
They don’t build windows like the ones in the Benteen County Sheriff’s Office anymore. As the sheriff watched, he saw the reason for that. The windows that looked out across Veterans Memorial Park toward the east—and the column of smoke and fire that rose from somewhere in the direction of Buffalo Springs’ elementary, middle and high schools—were tall and narrow, each half containing a single sheet of glass. On a beautiful day such as this, the lower half could be raised clear up to match the top one and allow languid breezes or escaping supervisors to pass without obstruction.
It wasn’t the force of the blast that did it. It was the sound wave that followed and shook the entire town. It also shook a pane free from ancient putty and dry-rotted moldings. The sheet cracked, shattered, and collapsed onto the worn linoleum. Shards flew, glistening daggers to pierce any remaining fantasies regarding the tranquil nature of the day.
“Was that the school?” Chairman Wynn asked.
The sheriff noted Wynn Senior’s use of the past tense. He could still see the flag on the pole in front of the school. “Just beyond, I think,” the sheriff said, but he didn’t pause to speculate about it. He sprinted for the door, motioning Parker to follow. “The girls have my truck. Where’s the black and white?”
“Parking lot out back.” She dug in a pocket and produced the keys and he took them from her.
The black and white was a twenty-something Chevy with the big-block engine that, despite having traveled three hundred thousand miles, still had enough power to raise a dust cloud to compete with the one on the east side of town as it stormed from the courthouse lot and turned south.
The streets of Buffalo Springs were empty. Just as well, since the sheriff flogged the black and white for all it had. Parker had reached down and started the lights and siren the instant she was belted in. That should have cleared traffic, if there’d been any. They only had to swerve once—to avoid Deputy Wynn, standing in the eastbound lane in front of the Bisonte. He had one hand on his stomach and one over his mouth, his full attention on the towering cloud just east of the city limits.
“Wynn,” Parker said, in case he hadn’t realized who the fool in the road was. The sheriff switched lanes and never considered stopping.
The cloud had the ominous mushroom shape associated with a nuclear blast, though it was far smaller.
“It is past the school,” the sheriff said, relief tinting his voice. Buffalo Springs Day was to be capped off with a dance and banquet in the gymnasium tonight. People were already there. Some huddled around cars in the parking lot while others peered from broken windows in the school buildings or clustered in doorways. He couldn’t see anyone who appeared to be hurt, and no one tried to flag them down.
Parker clicked on the radio and told Mrs. Kraus to send someone to check for injuries at the school. It needed to be done, though the sheriff wasn’t sure who Mrs. Kraus would find to do it. Wynn Some had looked to be in too much of a state of shock to be of use to anyone. He was the only deputy available. The sheriff needed to be elsewhere. Anything that didn’t desperately require his attention would have to get by without him for now.
He was on the brakes before they entered the dust cloud. There was garbage all over the highway—broken branches, clumps of dirt and asphalt, burning weeds. No pieces of shredded metal from a car, thank goodness, nor any human remains that he could make out. He got busy navigating the debris field as the cloud closed in around them, thick and dark as the dregs at the bottom of a cup of Bertha’s coffee.
A shape materialized in the middle of the road just ahead. The black and white was pre anti-lock brakes. To maintain any ability to steer, the sheriff had to feather the brake pedal. Some of the debris on the highway was mud and mulched green vegetation. He hit a patch and realized he could aim for the ditch or the car in the middle of the road. He chose ditch, but the black and white had a will of its own. They clipped the rear of the ghostly sedan and spun. The Chevy’s rear axle dropped into the culvert and they came to a halt facing back toward town. And just short, it turned out, of a crater that had once been the north side of the blacktop and part of the ditch that bordered it.
“You all right,” the sheriff asked, but he was climbing out of the vehicle as he got Parker’s affirmative reply.
The sedan had rolled forward several feet and dropped its front wheels into the crater. He couldn’t see anyone inside so he scrambled to the door and yanked it open. The car was empty.
“We surrender. We’ll come peaceable.” The sheriff turned and found a middle-aged couple facing him. They must have gotten out of the Nissan in order to examine the effects of the blast.
“Either of you hurt?” the sheriff asked.
“Oh no. Not hurt. And it wasn’t us who blew up that liver, officer. Honest.”
The sheriff had no idea what they were talking about. But then, he had no idea why this was happening, or how he was going to get to Wichita in time to stop Judy since it would take a tractor or a tow truck to get the black and white, or this couple’s Altima, back onto the highway.
“We just want to go home,” the woman said.
The
sheriff sympathized. He wanted to go home too. Only his home was a quiet little town in the middle of the continent where nothing ever happened and he lived in peace and quiet with his wife and daughters. Home seemed to be a place that was ceasing to exist even as he watched.
***
“My husband isn’t with me,” Judy told the man at the airline check-in counter. She wondered if he ever would be again.
The man looked over the reservation information on her computer printout. “You realize these are non-refundable tickets?”
“That’s why I’m here. He’s going to try to join me, though. I left a copy of this printout for him and I faxed one to his office, but, just in case, can I leave my copy with you so he can pick up a boarding pass if he arrives without it?”
“There won’t be a problem, ma’am,” the man said, “as long as he brings a photo ID.”
Judy felt herself go cold inside. He was going to ask her for a photo ID as well. She had several, including her passport. She had Englishman’s passport as well. She had left his luggage at the house, but she’d left a note telling him she was bringing his passport. He could get by without a change of clothes. They could buy everything he needed there. But he couldn’t get into France without a passport. And suddenly, she wasn’t sure she could get in with hers, or even get on a plane. She cursed the urge that had sent her to Millie’s this morning.
“And I’ll need an ID for you, Mrs. English.”
Damn, damn, triple damn. She dug into her purse and fumbled between her passport and her billfold for a moment. Neither portrait, with its full head of dark hair, resembled her now. What the hell. She went with the passport.
He did the double take she’d expected. “It’s an old picture,” she said.
“Uhh,” was all he managed by way of reply.
“It’s from before I started chemotherapy,” she improvised. That might soon turn out to be true, and it was part of the reason she’d decided to see what she would look like without any hair. If she went through with what Doc seemed to think she needed, she might have no choice but to look like this, or worse. So why not make it part of her new, adventurous, Parisian look instead? Besides, she had promised herself she wouldn’t think about that. Not until after Paris, if Englishman came. Or when she had to decide if she would come back if he didn’t.
