The gray sky was misting drops and condensing along the tree line. The sheriff pulled out of his driveway in a horse-and-wagon left by his father two Mays before. Looking at the sky he wondererd how Thanksgiving could be so warm, and if there was really anything left to give thanks for. With turned up collar he called to the horses and they trotted off down the road.
For being sheriff they all claimed he was a timid man. He would never raise his voice or command anyone. Even his horses were asked politely to go, to stop, or turn. He grinned to himself. If only they knew.
For twenty years he had been sheriff, and for the past few it had seemed there was no reason for him to continue in the post. There was no crime and everyone died of old age, if they died at all. Few did. The sheriff was old now, the youngsters had moved away, and the town's average age seemed to be somewhere in the late-forties.
"Got so old we scared 'em all away." He grinned again. So what? He was old. Everybody got old. His wife was his comfort and always had been. Even she was old now.
The trees along the road leaned over to drip larger drops on his hat. Without the leaves of spring to cover them, even they looked old. But trees are ageless things and only die when a shortlived old man comes along to cut them down to keep his old bones warm and get through one more winter.
For some reason, however, no one ever cut these trees down. The sheriff liked them so much he had considered making it a law that they be left stand. Not that he had this power but the town council no longer met and no one remembered what the laws were anyway. The Jacksons had been ploughing a field that didn't belong to them for the past decade but no one noticed or cared. The sheriff liked them too much to point out that their cornfield was supposed to be the town park. After the kids had all gone there was no need for a park. Front porches sufficed when there was no work to be done.
That was a rare event.
The sheriff wondered to himself how many years they had left. No, he was thankful when he thought about it. The road was winding. He was thankful for that. It rose and fell, and sometimes even went so far to fall and turn at the same time. For some reason this amused him greatly. Why, he didn't know, but he had decided long ago to stop asking why certain things made him happy.
He had spent many a day in his youth destroying his own happiness by trying to understand it. It didn't make any sense, he would say to himself. "Today I feel like there's heaven around every corner. Yesterday I felt like horse manure. Nothing's changed."
And the minute he let himself ask the question he felt like fertilizer again. So he decided to stop asking.
Not that he didn't believe in asking and scientific progress and the like. Heck, God gave him a brain, didn't He? But the more he read those books about brain processes the more he decided he didn't like it. You come to understand what you like and what you don't like. That's what it means to be old.
So long as you can admit that to yourself, you don't have to feel guilty for ignoring some questions. He smiled to himself again.
The road was just going over one of those small hills. It had been used so many years that the road was a good two feet below the surrounding fields. It was only bad when it rained, and today's misting wasn't enough to cause a problem.
When it rained, though, the entire town could be set ablaze and there would be nothing he could do about it. The mud got so deep that wagons were useless, horses were imobile, and so many shoes would be lost to the muck that there would be no point.
Well, maybe that was taking it too far. Shoes were valuable but... But there would be some houses he wouldn't mind if they suddenly burned down.
What a terrible thought. He slapped his cheek to see if he was awake. Yep, he was. 57 and still thinking that kind of thing. He should be ashamed.
At the bottom of the hill was a tree that was more than usually gnarled. The road had worn it's way down into the roots of the tree and it was always his least favorite part of the drive. If drive was the proper word. There were so many automobiles around anymore his brain was getting poluted by outside jargon. The wagon hit the roots and bounced him around sufficiently. "Hope they're happy," he thought.
The main buildings of the town were just coming into view. The first on the outskirts was the Templeton's (Where they had gotten that name even they didn't know. It didn't make sense to anyone but few things did so it made for pleasant dinner conversation when guests were invited over. You could talk for hours about things you didn't know about, they had found.)
Darlene, the wife of the family, was sweeping leaves from the front walk. The walk curved inexplicably. It had occured to the sheriff that there was no reason for anything to curve. Usually there was a straight line between any two points. The human need to make roads curve and go in 3 directions at once was not only frustrating and time wasting, but fascinating. This was a Why question he could ask himself without ruining the mood.
Mrs. Templeon waved and the sheriff nodded. He would have said something, but the clatter from the wagon wheels and the horse's loud breathing would have made any pleasantness he uttered unintelligible. He turned to look up the road, and Mrs. Templeton went back to her sweeping.
11-12-02
As he entered town he took a right onto Main Street. It was wide and mostly dirt but for some reason wasn't as rutted as the little road leading into town. City projects had kept it in good shape, thought the road sign was missing. Not like anyone cared what the name of the road was. The Post Office employees knew everyone and paid no attention to addresses. Frank should have retired years ago but he claimed he would be bored out of his skull if he had to sit around the house with "The Missus" all day. If that was true, the sheriff wondered, what kept The Missus from going insane with boredom herself? What was it women did all day anyway?
He kicked himself for being sexist (a term he had just learned and was fond of using. Happened that way with every new word he learned and it drove his wife to distraction) and asked the horse to stop. He had never bothered to name the horse, so he just called it Horse. Horse didn't mind, if he had one, and always obeyed when called. He was in front of the Store.
The Store was run by the Greens whom the sheriff had just found out he was supposed to hate. It was another word he had recently learned, and once "anti-Semite" had entered his vocabulary it was hard to get it out of his head. He didn't want to not like them, but he had heard that everybody in this part of the country was one of these anti-Semites and it made him wonder if he was too. He shook his head. Why? They were old friends. He had never minded the fact that they politely declined to talk about Jesus before. Why should he now?
There had been a gentleman traveling through town that had caused some trouble a few weeks before. He had been angrily shouting at Mr. Johns, the local restaurateur in front of the diner. The sheriff thought it was his duty to find out what was going on and as he approached the man turned and stormed away angrily calling everyone in sight an anti-Semite pig and the like.
"What was that?" the sheriff had asked Mr. Johns.
"He's drunk. Ignore him," came the reply.
"You alright?"
"Yeah, now I'm fine. I've never known one of his kind to get like that before." Mr. Johns shook his head and went back inside. The windows of the diner emptied as the other patrons went back to their seats.
The scene had stuck in the sheriff's head and until he could get home that night he had wondered at the meaning of that strange word. His dictionary, which seemed to be the only one in town in that everyone was always stopping by to use it. This had never made sense to the sheriff, but everyone claimed they had "just gotten a letter" from one of their children that had "newfangled" words in it they didn't understand. Evidently the entire town's children had gotten a good education simultaneously.
The sheriff had never even thought about Jews before, but evidently there were people who hated them. At least the dictionary and the drunk man claimed there were. Mr. Johns didn't hate anybody. In the absence of a bar, everyone talked to him over lunch and dinner. He liked everybody. Or at least he pretended to. If Mr. Johns could be, the sheriff wondered if he was one himself. It was an unsettling feeling to wonder whether you dislike someone. There was a Why question he preferred not to think about.
He put on a smile as he entered the store. Mr. Green was sweeping in the back. It must be sweeping time in Clarksville the sheriff thought. The doorbell jangled and Mr. Green looked up.
"Sheriff!" he called pleasantly.
"Hey there, Green, I am out of butter." The sheriff took a deep relieved breath. See, he liked Green afterall.
11-20-02