Lester
Lester thought he heard the phone ring. It brought him out of a deep, solid sleep. Went to bed early these days. Lucky if he made it past nine P.M.
The phone kept ringing. God, how he hated that thing.
The wife nudged him with a solid elbow to his back and pulled a pillow over her head. “Phone,” her muffled voice said from under the pillow.
“They can call back in the morning,” Lester said as he glanced at the clock. It was a few minutes after midnight.
The phone didn’t stop its awful clanging. Whoever it was, they weren’t giving up, and since Lester didn’t have one of those new answering machines, the phone would just keep on ringing.
Lester’s wife gave him another shove. She wasn’t going to let him sleep through this. She never let him sleep through phone calls in the middle of the night. She said that he signed up for the job and by God he had to hold up his end of the bargain.
“Might be important,” she mumbled through half sleep.
“Hell.” Lester sat up and rubbed at tired eyes that had heavy bags under them, bags the size of mandarin-orange slices. He had short-cropped hair. Simple and neat. Gray had replaced the black, and his bald spot kept expanding. The unfortunate by-product of his thinning hair was to make his already big ears look even bigger. He’d heard it all: Dumbo, Alfalfa, Howdy Doody, and Gomer Pyle. Gomer Pyle was the worst. He really hated that one.
The phone kept clanging. An old-fashioned phone he got back before his hair turned gray, the ringer nothing more than a brass bell with a small brass hammer that kept tapping as fast as a hummingbird’s wings, annoying as hell.
Lester grumbled to himself and swung his arthritic legs out of the warm security of the blankets. His knees were a mess, all the cartilage nearly gone. Bone rubbing on bone in the joints. Winter was the worst on his old body. The cold made his legs so stiff that it took over an hour every morning to get him walking without looking like Frankenstein lurching about.
Eyes half closed, he stumbled out into the hallway and jammed his toe on one of the damned porcelain cats that Bonnie had placed all over the house. Her obsession with all things cat drove him nearly out of his mind. Cat calendars, cat figurines, cat bookends, cat-embroidered sweaters. She even wore cat pajamas to bed every night. Lester hated goddamn cats.
They had two slinking around here somewhere. Sneaky little critters. Probably clawing at his favorite reading chair or taking a crap in the litter box that stank up the whole damn house. Early on, after years of trying to start a family, Lester and Bonnie had to accept that kids weren’t in the cards. Bonnie’s body just wasn’t built for it. Heck of a thing for a woman to endure. To make matters worse, Bonnie came from a big family. Six brothers and sisters. All of them had kids. Lots of them. Bonnie was the only one who couldn’t produce. And now all of Bonnie’s nieces and nephews had kids. Going to a family reunion was like attending a preschool with all the young’uns running around. So in came the cats. Thirty years of goddamned cats and Lester was ready to take a gun to either them or himself.
He fumbled for the phone that hung on the wall and answered it more to shut the damn thing up than to find out who might be calling. “Sheriff.”
Lester listened for a second, and then his eyes opened a little wider. It was his deputy. Sokowski was usually such a hard-ass, but his voice sounded a little shaky. Unchecked.
“Danny Bedford? You sure?”
Lester kept listening. His hand went automatically for his shirt breast pocket—searching for his pack of smokes—then realized that he was wearing a pajama shirt.
“Slow down and back up a little bit, son. How long ago did Mindy call you?” Lester rubbed the gray stubble on his head as was his habit when he was taking in troublesome information. “I’ll be damned. It’s after midnight. What the hell is that boy doing out there so late?”
Lester walked into the kitchen. The telephone cord uncoiled and stretched to its limit as he kept listening to the deputy. Sokowski might be a little hotheaded, and a bit hair-triggered at times, but the man took his job seriously enough to keep folks in line. He usually played the bad cop to Lester’s good cop. Sokowski tended to be rough around the edges and rubbed some people wrong, but he was still young enough and would hopefully mellow over time. The fact was, Lester knew he’d been growing soft over the years—hell, he’d always been pretty soft—and sometimes folks in town needed someone to keep them in line, or otherwise those same folks would just walk all over you. If you gave them an inch, they’d take a damn mile. Walk quietly and carry a big stick, that’s what Lester always thought made for a good law-enforcement officer. Between himself and Sokowski, Lester walked quietly and his deputy carried the big stick. Besides, it wasn’t like folks were exactly lining up to get the job of sheriff or deputy.
He grabbed his smokes from the kitchen counter and lit up a Camel and sucked in deep—he kept promising the missus that he would quit the habit, but it sure wasn’t going to be tonight. Bonnie would throw out his packs of cigarettes when she didn’t think he was looking, but he always kept a carton hidden around somewhere. Bad habits proved hard to break, especially when you’d been doing them for nearly fifty years. He would try to cut back a little. More for Bonnie than anything else. Maybe to half a pack a day. If he couldn’t do that, maybe he’d try some Camel Lights. Baby steps, he told himself. Baby steps.
Lester nodded as Sokowski finished up what he was saying. “All right, then. Let me throw on some clothes. Meet you out there in ten minutes or so.”
He put the phone back on its cradle and looked over to Bonnie, who was standing there now, wrapping herself up in a big, thick terry-cloth robe.
“Everything okay?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing.”
Lester moved past her and turned on the hallway light. He kept working the cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he grabbed his uniform pants off the hook and hiked them up and over his pajama bottoms.
“The Knolls girl called Mike. Got herself all worked up because Danny Bedford showed up at her doorstep tonight.”
“At this hour? What in the world for?”
He threw on his heavy sheriff’s jacket and zipped it up to the neck. Didn’t want to be catching a cold. That’s all he needed right now. His immune system wasn’t worth a damn these days. “Don’t know. But according to Mike, Mindy was scared. Living alone and all, and Danny’s a big drink of water.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. That boy wouldn’t harm a hair on her head.”
Lester nodded. Stabbed his cigarette out in an ashtray. “Maybe so. But she’s got it in her mind that she needs us to get Danny out of there.”
Bonnie nodded. “Well, be careful. The roads are likely to be pretty slick.”
Lester plopped on his sheriff’s hat, which had seen better days and could use a good washing. “You know me. Always careful.” He grabbed an old leather gun holster worn smooth from years of riding on his right hip, strapped it around his waist, and cinched it up tight.
“You really think you need your gun belt?”
“Nope.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “And don’t let them goddamned cats into bed.”
She smiled at him. “You know me.”
“Yeah. I do.” He grinned right back at her.
“Want me to make you a cup of coffee?”
“Would love one, but I better get. Should be home in an hour or so.” He headed for the door when he heard a jingling sound behind him.
“You might be needing these.” Bonnie held out a set of truck keys between her fingers.
He smiled, took the keys from her, gave her another peck, and shuffled out the door.
