by Chris Capps
She had also gained an appreciation for the various smells involved. But where her husband had been a superior butcher, Andrea had a knack for cooking that he had always lacked. The increased supply would ordinarily mean an unfortunate dip in prices, but she had been able to supplement this by offering a wider selection of prepared meals, including shredded pork in her now famous barbecue sauce. She glanced over at the pressure cooker where the next batch was being prepared. The front door to the shop rang, summoning her from the back room. With a difficult smile, she greeted what she promised herself would be the final customer of the day. Dr. Samuel Rosario was already looking through round spectacles at the pulled pork sitting in a bowl behind the refrigerated glass. It had a small cardboard sign placed behind it declaring it was Andrea's special blend.
The elderly man looked up at her and smiled boyishly,
"Guess what I'm here for, young lady."
"Six pounds of pulled pork wrapped in twelve small parcels for the next four days," she smiled, quickly soaping her hands and washing the blood from them in the old utility sink, "I'm no doctor, but shouldn't you diversify your diet if you're going to stay in practice for the next few years?"
"Bah," he said chuckling, "I'll tell you the same thing good doctors have been telling their patients for centuries. Do as I say, not as I do."
She chuckled to herself, dried her hands, and picked up the serving ladle,
"Six pounds, six dollars," she said as she began ladling and wrapping up the parcels
"I'm telling you, Andrea, this is the only thing I can eat anymore," Rosario said pulling out his coin purse and counting six silver dollars onto the counter, "I think you've found the perfect mixture. What's the secret? Honey? Beet sugar?"
"I've already told you, it's a family secret," she said picking up the coins, and ringing the register open, "The secret is the proportions, but I'll tell you the ingredient."
"I promise I won't stop buying it even if you tell me," he said, leaning forward. There was an innocent intensity to him, "Dr. Rosario has kept many secrets in his day."
"It's bacon fat," she said. She wasn't nearly as happy as she was pretending to be, but she was enjoying role-playing as someone with no cares. And around the doctor, someone who had seen her on the verge of collapse for so many months, it was comfortable to talk about something simple.
"Good lord," the doctor said letting out a chuckle, "Don't tell me the proportions. It sounds scandalous."
"It is," she said with a grin, closing the display case, "Was that all?"
"Just news. I'm an old gossip, but you know I never gossip about my patients. Unfortunate, as that disqualifies almost half of the town's residents. Except, as far back as last year, you. Why don't you come into the office next Thursday? I don't have too much going on, and believe it or not, stress does take its toll on your health."
"I've seen enough of the hospital for a while," Andrea said, the strength of her smile weakening. It was still too soon. It may always be too soon. The doctor started stacking the packets of meat in his other hand,
"How's the pastor?"
"Good," she said, "Yesterday I stopped by. I told him we'd see him tonight. Mark said he'll go too. He'll be here after I close up."
The doctor nodded, though the stack of packets was nearly reaching up to his chin now,
"You know I have nothing but nice things to say to you both, Mark included. You both did everything you could to keep Delia happy up until the end. Two people with as much love in their hearts as you will be able to recover from this, of that I have no doubt."
"Doctor Rosario," she said, calling after him as he jingled the door open.
"Sam," he said looking back.
"Do you really like the pulled pork, or is this just your way of checking in on us?"
He smiled, the stacked packages nestling under his chin as he turned,
"See you in four days." The door gently coasted shut.
***
Mayor Clayton Sugarhill buttoned his suit jacket against the foul smelling wind wafting from the helicopter pad, wishing he had worn better shoes. He pushed his way through the crowd until he met eye to eye with one of the police deputies. Without a word he picked up one of the blockades and walked past them, daring them with a look to stop him. Sugarhill had been scheduled for dinner and a light wine tasting at the elder McCarthy estate when news broke over the CB about a major accident in the general area of the airfield. From there it was a simple matter of telling his driver to move toward the noise and within minutes he was on the scene. Sugarhill was not a small man, having served in the military for eight years before settling in Cairo and running for four consecutive terms as mayor. He was also not a man people tended to say no to.
Once in the field with the rabble of the crowd behind him, Sugarhill saw the arc of water from a newly filled fire truck still dousing the smoldering wreckage. The heap of slag was still hot, though the fire had been controlled to a small flicker localized behind the glass and filling the cockpits with smoke. It couldn't have been burning for more than an hour. He spotted the Sherriff leaning into the window of a pickup truck with his finger pointing at its occupants, the McCarthy brothers.
"Sherriff Rind," the mayor called out, not needing to feign concern upon seeing the grown children of his good friends and political benefactors being scolded by that ape of a sheriff, "Sherriff Paul Rind, hello!"
The Sherriff sighed and turned slowly, his expression unchanged as he glowered at the quickly approaching mayor. He turned back quickly to the McCarthy brothers and the mayor could have sworn he heard the tail end of an imperative. Something. Something. Mouths. Shut. The mayor nearly stumbled over a twisted piece of rotor as he neared them, "Well, it looks like you've secured the area. Are these boys here helping you?"
"Yes," the Sherriff said, "They've been deputized. They're helping me with an unrelated investigation and they need to leave now."
"Sherriff," a troubled Mike said, then he stopped. The Sherriff and the mayor were both looking at him. From the passenger seat he felt a prod in his ribs from Felix. He didn't see his brother, but he did hear a very faint 'shut up' from between clenched teeth.
"Well, we'd better get going," Mike said, "Talk to you again soon, Sherriff. Mayor, say hi to Mom and Dad for me. Are you going over there?"
"Not tonight, boy," the mayor said with a gentle smile, "It looks like my hands will be full this afternoon. You should go see them. Send them my regards."
The truck pulled away, paralleling the ambulance tracks that had been left earlier and disappeared into the fog. The mayor and the Sherriff then stood face to face, as was often their custom, sizing one another up like two boxers. The Sherriff began by calling out to a passing deputy, the nearest person to them,
"I don't know your name. Tell that crowd to disperse. It's going to be dark soon."
"Deputy Frankie, sir," the short deputy said dropping a piece of cooled slag and jogging over to the crowd at the perimeter, "Alright let's move it, folks!"
"Alright, we're alone now," Mayor Sugarhill said, "You can quit acting like a big pushover."
"Mayor, I think we have a problem," The Sherriff said lowering his voice to a barely audible growl.
"Really!?" the mayor shouted holding his hand out to the smoldering wreckage, "I'd say you've got a pretty big damn problem right there! What happened?"
"Two helicopters collided. We think one may have landed on top of the other."
"Does that sound as impossible to you as it does to me?" the Mayor asked.
"The helicopter that landed had two occupants, a Chance Cooper who apparently got out and was standing on the landing platform when the second one landed on top of them. We're guessing the other one was Rob Howell. The two vehicles became entangled, and as the top one veered to its right it pulled the one beneath it over. The crash caused damage to rotors and landing gear of both craft. Aside from that the fuselages were both bent and we aren't sure which fuel system ruptured first. Th
e fire then began to spread and we think it may have been ignited by arcing from one of the spotlights - also damaged from the crash. Of course we're left with one obvious question."
"What the hell?"
"Yes," Sherriff Rind said, "What the hell exactly. It just appeared like magic."
"The witch, then," Sugarhill said with a sigh, "Let's go see the witch. Your people have the scene under control."
"Officer Jessica Myers to me, please!" Sheriff Paul Rind yelled out into the field in his booming voice. Jessica rounded the wreckage and jogged to the two of them. Rind continued, "You're in charge here. All evidence is to be carefully contained. No fewer than three officers here until morning. Don't let anyone from the Daily Sentinel or even worse The Daily Finger get close. If you have to, threaten arrest. Make sure Tanhauser cleans this up as soon as it's deemed safe. Also, Jessica, we're going for a walk so make sure we aren't followed."
"Understood," Jessica said dutifully, turning to begin the laborious process of peacefully dispersing the crowd.
The two of them walked toward the '71 Crown Victoria that served as the Sherriff's personal squad car. In the dispersed mist, he knew it would be possible for people in the crowd to see what he was doing, but he also knew they would be too distracted to notice him or care. Popping the trunk open with his key, the Sherriff rifled through a small arsenal and produced a perfect working replica of a World War II M1 Garand. The weapon was detailed right down to the 30-06 rounds that had been stressed to shatter upon entering a human body. He loaded the clip beneath the rifle and handed it over to the mayor.
"It was shortly before I ran for mayor that my first fiancée left me. That was about ten years ago, I guess."
"I know," Rind said picking up his favorite 12-gauge shotgun from the floor of the trunk, "I remember you were pretty bent out of shape about the whole thing."
"Back then I wasn't into politics. That would have been '71 I think. Same year as your Crown Vic. The tunnel was still open and I was planning on leaving when the summer rolled around." Priming the first cartridge to enter the weapon's chamber, Mayor Sugarhill shouldered the faded rifle and continued, "I seem to remember seeing a flyer up announcing that the town would be holding its first election. At the time I remember thinking to myself, 'Who would be stupid enough to run for mayor in a know-nothing little podunk world like this?"
"You stupid S.O.B," Rind said chuckling and shouldering his shotgun. He picked up the old metal gardening shovel from the trunk and weighed it in his hand. It was heavy. Heavy enough to smash a skull. It would prove sufficient.
"I found myself in a peculiar mood that day, though," Mayor Sugarhill continued, "I found it was one of those strange days, those days where you could technically do anything your heart desired. That sometimes happens, in my experience. Every now and again - say every decade or so - you come across a day where everything just happens for you. It's the easiest thing in the world to do." Together they slammed the trunk shut and started walking away from the airfield into the woods and mist beyond. Sugarhill continued, "I found that day intersected perfectly with another rare event a man finds in his life. In my experience, sometimes it happens shortly after losing the touch of an important woman. It was that day that I, for no particular reason, decided that I would take up an incredibly difficult challenge for absolutely no reason. You know what I mean. It's those sorts of days that men look at a photo of Everest and call their travel agent."
The sun was quickly setting, somewhere in the distance to the west. Nights in Cairo were measured to be 32 minutes longer than they were during Earth's summers, uniformed throughout the whole year regardless of season. With the fog quickly turning a hellish red all around them, the duo began descending a steep embankment weighted down by their cargo and an unspoken grim memory.
"I think I know what you're talking about with the second one," Rind said pausing for a moment to brace himself against a gnarling and twisted root, "Sometimes a man makes a decision for no reason, and then builds upon it until it becomes the only thing that matters. Yes, I've had that."
"It's getting colder already," the Mayor said using the Garand to help him vault over a small ravine at the hill's base. It was wildly dangerous to use your weapon as a walking stick, something he would have scolded others for doing back in his military years, "I should have brought my coat. So - where is she?"
"Six hills voidward from the airfield," the Sherriff said reaching his hand out to help Sugarhill over a small bubbling creek, "You were talking about when you decided to conquer the world."
The mayor laughed, taking Rind's hand and hopping over the stream, only to feel his heels slip and dump into the muddy waters behind him. And he was wearing his dinner shoes. Still, the comment from Rind did make a certain sort of sense. Though it was a small and little populated world, there were few that could challenge his authority over it. Ignoring the sediment and frigid water streaming into the front of his shoe, he beamed,
"You know it's strange I've never heard anyone else say it that way. I suppose it's true, though. Master of a world of nothing."
"I didn't vote for you," the Sherriff said, partially to himself.
"I was stupid back then, though. Stupid now too, I suppose. Somewhere I read that the Chinese have the same word for problem and opportunity," the mayor said as they mounted the hill leading to the chain linked perimeter fence surrounding Cairo, "I don't know what that word is. I came up with my own, though. Propertunity."
Rind, removing the wire cutters from his belt turned back to the mayor,
"No you don't. Tell me you don't call them that."
"I do," Sugarhill said, "And don't cut up the fence. Let's climb over it."
Rind had started chuckling into his wrist, what was slowly becoming a much louder guffaw. His face, ordinarily the stern robotic facade everyone in town knew, was giving way to the mirthful college base stealer and ego drinker. There was evidence in the moment of a humanity that most people in town would have never believed after watching the stoic scarred Sherriff enforce law from behind tinted windows and mirrored sunglasses. Clayton Sugarhill realized that much of the Sherriff he had grown to hate was still comfortably a facade. And yet the laughter, he realized, was still at his expense.
"First of all, you're too fat to climb over the fence. It's going to break either way. You're not fooling me with the girdle. Second, never tell anyone else about your propertunity word or you'll never be elected again."
"You could really stand to laugh more often," Mayor Sugarhill said forcibly gripping the fence and starting his ascent, "It makes you look almost like a person."
"Remind me how stupid you are more often and I'll do just that," Rind said scaling the fence quickly and rolling over to descend on the other side. Sugarhill, while by no means fat, lacked the deftness and dexterity that his companion showed. He wobbled slightly as he crossed the threshold into the collection of trees and mist known to those on the inside as The Void.
"You know I was talking to the McCarthy boys about what they found," Rind said helping the mayor down, "And they mentioned the shoeprints. Very familiar to my memory."
"Sherriff," Sugarhill said pulling a small silver pill box from his jacket and swallowing it down with a swig from his whiskey flask, "I've already ruined a pair of fine shoes and a perfectly good spinal readjustment coming out here with you. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't interrupt me when I'm in nearing the end of a story. We'll have plenty of time to discuss Molly Nayfack when we reach her grave."
"Have it your way," Rind said, "I was interrupting you for your own sake."
"I stayed, not realizing my place in the vast and incalculable equation of the two universes. It turns out, I may have been the only person who made the right choice. Back there, on Earth, I had no chance. I would have washed up and never realized my full potential. And knowing myself, I would have regretted leaving after the tunnel closed."
"But here you're king of the anthill," the Sherriff chuckled, "And soon yo
u'll be digging like an ant."
"You'll be digging," Sugarhill said, "You have the shovel and I have the back pain."
They crested the last few hills in silence as the brilliant red mist all around them finally turned blue and went dark. With the light of the Sherriff's flashlight they finally crossed over the threshold of the last few steps before the wooden headstone became visible. A mound of earth in the clearing poked up beyond the cage of roots surrounding the grave. The headstone bore no words, but they both knew who was, or rather who was supposed to be buried here.
"Molly," the Sherriff said, "Are you still there?"
"Don't say it," Mayor Sugarhill hissed through clenched teeth, "We're both thinking it, but don't you dare say it."
Chapter 3
In the still air of the reddened evening mist, Pastor Steven Ritzer killed the engine to his lawnmower and rubbed a small bandana across his forehead. The elder McCarthy estate, which required trimming once every two weeks, was large enough to eat up nearly a full day's worth of work, but the modest brewery and distillery the duo had set up allowed them to have cultivated for themselves a comfortable life. Far more comfortable than their hoodlum children, Mike and Felix. Not that Ritzer could really judge them.
A substantial portion of the money that ended up in the church collection plate started at one point or another as tips from the McCarthy's and, after briefly passing through the pastor's pocket, ended up going into the church's modest needs. It helped that most maintenance the church required could be performed by Steven personally. It didn't help that the commissary no longer considered candles a necessity for a church that rarely held services. These days he had to either make purchases directly from the general store or go about the task of mixing lye with fat bartered from the butcher's shop to keep up the candles burning.
