Perfect Little Town

“Ya’ll need to take a walk,” the sheriff says, motioning toward the front doors.  “Right over that way.”

Ron holds up his hands in deference, and he and Jessica backpedal toward the entrance.

The desk clerk points at Ron.  “And that gentleman went up to the second floor and started banging on the guests’ rooms, screaming so loud I could hear him from down here.  I’ve had numerous complaints.”

“And then his wife started swearing at you?”

“Him, too.”

“What’d he say?”

“I don’t remember exactly but he used the F-word a lot.  They both did.”

Ron sees the sheriff reach across the desk and squeeze Carol’s hand.  “I’m sorry, Carol.  I’ll handle this.”

“Thank you, Arthur.”

The sheriff puts on his Stetson, turns, and advances toward the Stahls, a hybrid of a sneer and a scowl overspreading his face.

He stops, the steel tips of his boots two feet from the tips of Ron’s sodden sneakers.

“Sir, did you go upstairs and disturb the guests?  Swear at—”

“I can explain—”

“No, don’t explain.  Just answer the question I asked you.  You and your wife do these things?”

“There isn’t a soul in this hotel but the four of us in the lobby, and that woman won’t sell us a room.  Please.  Just go up and look.”

Sheriff Hanson tilts his neck, vertebrae cracking, says, “Sir, you’re beginning to make me angry.”

“I’m not trying to make you angry, officer, I just—”

“Sheriff.”

“What?”

“Sheriff, not officer.”

“Look, we’ve had a terrible few hours here, Sheriff, and we’re just—”

The sheriff moves forward, a good four inches on Ron, backing him up against the wall, his breath spiced with cinnamon Altoids.

“You will answer my question.  Did you do the things Carol said you did?”

“You don’t understand, she’s—”

The sheriff pinches Ron’s nose between the nostrils, fingernails digging into the cartilage, tugging him along toward the doors, kicking them open with his right boot, Ron losing his footing, the sheriff shoving him completely across the sidewalk into the foot of snow that has piled up in the empty parking space.

He hears Jessica say, “Don’t you fucking touch me.”

“Then walk.”

She runs over and helps Ron sit up in the snow, his nose burning, both of them glaring at the sheriff who stands under the canopy of the Lone Cone Inn, smoothing the wrinkles out of his parka.

“Take a guess what’ll happen if I see either of you again tonight?”

“You’ll throw us in jail?” Jessica mocks.

“No, I’ll beat the shit out of you.  Both of you.”

Jessica scrambles to her feet and marches over to the sheriff.

“You see this?” she screams, pointing at her bottom lip.

“Yeah, you got a fishhook in your lip.”

“Your little restaurant over there—”

“I don’t give a shit.  You’ve blown through all my good will.  Now I own a blazing hot temper, and you’d do well to get out of my face right now.”

“Please, we just—”

“Right.  Now.”

Ron has rarely seen Jessica ever back down, but something in the sheriff’s tone convinces her to retreat from the sidewalk—maybe the possibility that she might get slapped or worse.

“Let’s go, Ron.”  She bends down, gives him a hand up, and he slides his arm around her waist as they start into the street.

Jessica glances back over her shoulder, yells out, “This isn’t over!  You know that, right?”

“Best keep walking!”

-15-

“How’s the pain, Jess?”

“Bad.”

They trek down the middle of Main in the single set of tire tracks.  Jessica walks ahead of Ron, crying, but he doesn’t dare attempt the distribution of comfort.  He made that mistake the last time she was passed over for partner, and like an injured animal, the fear and sadness instantly metastasized into rage.

“I’m freezing, Ron.”

“I’m thinking.”

“You’re thinking?”

“I’ve been trying, but there’s no cell service in this valley.”

“Right.”

“No place to stay for the—”

“Quit telling me shit I already know.”

“Let’s just get back to the Benz.  I have Lortab in my bag.  We’ll tilt the seats—”

“We’re sleeping in our car now?”

“Baby, when the Lortab hits, you won’t know the difference from that seat and a bed at the Waldorf-Astoria.  We’ll crank the heat, get it warm and toasty inside.”

“Jesus, Ron.”

“It’s the best I can do, Jess.  They’ll probably have the roads plowed when we wake up, and then we’ll get the fuck out of this town.”

They near the end of Main, every building dark, no light but the muted glow of the streetlamps.  A quarter mile ahead, Ron sees the gate lowered across the highway that climbs north out of town toward the pass.

Jessica says, “See that?”

On past the buildings of Main, near the city park, a bonfire shoots ribbons of flame into the sky.

They improve their pace, Ron noting a jolt of hope, thinking this could be a party of some sort, attended by people who might help them, but as he opens his mouth to suggest this to Jessica, she shrieks and starts running toward the flames.

-16-

Speechless, they stand thirty feet back, the Italian leather seats charred beyond any hope of salvation, the glass blown out, flames licking through the windows, the dashboard boiling, the scorching tires pouring black smoke up into the falling snow.  Ron’s face tingles in the warmth, and it occurs to him that frostbite might be an appropriate concern.

“Why are they doing this to us?” Jessica asks.

“I don’t know.”

And he realizes that his wife doesn’t sound angry anymore, just confused and scared, and for the first time he feels it, too—not annoyance or frustration, but real tangible fear.

He puts his hands on her shoulders, and she lets them stay for a moment, then turns and faces him, the firelight refracting off the tears in her eyes.

“Hold me.”

As he embraces her, the lamps up and down Main wink out, and the drink machines at the visitors’ center across the street go dark and quit humming, and an oppressive silence blankets the town, nothing beyond the whisper of snow collecting on their jackets and the quiet hisses and exhalations from the burning Benz.

“Something’s happening,” she says.  “Isn’t it?”

“It’s probably from the storm.”