“Law and Order”
A short story from the collection, Soldier’s Joy
By Joe Petrulionis
Winter 1985
Talon’s Bar, the kitchen entrance to what we all called “Stencils,” back in the day.
“I believe you got your animals confused.” Larry Nesbit continued to smile while taking another small sip of his almost warm beer.
“Confused my animals?” Jonathan had finished his beer ten minutes ago already, but his southern upbringing would not permit him to order another before his table guest had caught up. He couldn't have known this, but Larry was purposely pacing his own consumption in an effort to slow Jonathan down. This trick could only work because Larry had, himself, been born and raised about a twenty minute drive along a dirt country road from the little Mississippi town where Jonathan also sprouted. Through varied and circuitous routes they had both found their ways to this little table in a bar at a Pennsylvania village nobody’s ever heard of before.
Amazingly, given the village and the bar, there were even two others there that night. One was the bartender. And of course, Mick Berger. Mick sat backwards in his customary spot near, but not at, the end of the horseshoe shaped bar. He had a cigarette in one hand resting from the elbow over an ashtray pressed from a small piece of sheet metal. His other hand held what had been a clear bottle of beer. Now it was just a clear bottle, most of the label now thumbnailed down to small bits of rolled white paper littering the top of the bar. Mick had on a black tee shirt and an orange cap setting forth his professional endorsement of a particular chainsaw brand. His Army utility trousers would have still been tucked into his black boots, back in those days. From where Mick sat, he might be a part of the conversation going on at that table, some five or six steps away, or he might not be. Depends on if someone is buying rounds or not. Tonight the rounds were slow. But Jonathan was telling one of his stories.
Larry objected, “No mule would of gotten spooked and run’d off from three family members like that, even if the bullet had just whizzed by its nose so close that he could smell the trail of smoking blood from the old man’s ear.” Larry was thinking Jonathan had been hitting it pretty hard lately, And Lord knows, he has his good reasons. This year, he’s lost his missus, his little girl, his job. It would be divine mercy if he’d just lose his mind and be thu with it.
“What…” Jonathan was not accustomed to being questioned on the details of his historical studies.
Larry cut him off. “Naw, mules don’t think that way, Jonathan. No mule worries about the future, about what’s going to happen next time that woman squeezes a trigger. That animal must have been a hoss to rear back like that.”
Jonathan made a point of looking directly at Larry’s mostly full beer as he swirled the last gulp in his own glass and said, “I assure you, Hamilton was a mule. Sired by one of those donkeys they raised over in Indian Town and out of a Kentucky Mountain mare ridden into the backcountry by a captain in the Federal Army. The mare escaped one night and she tried to find the way back east, ended up, evidently, meeting up with one of those nearly wild mammoth jackass studs they had roaming over on Canoe Mountain. Being from the city, this mare had a special weakness for that wild jackass type. So no sir. Hamilton was a mule. Larry, will you join Mick and me for another?” Jonathan held up his empty and made an around-the-world finger motion to the proprietor, who nodded then disappeared into the kitchen, mumbling something about getting some doughnuts, some kind of doughnut called See-Veri-Ski-yi or something like that.
Two men walked in. The screen door slammed behind them. The first one, wearing a black leather jacket, a size or two too big, had on a black baseball hat with yellow piping. At ten PM, he was still wearing his mirrored sunglasses and did not smile. The other wore something that looked as if it had once been an expensive sweater, one of those that opened in the front and was held in place with a belt. The belt was missing, tonight. This guy had no sunglasses, but wore a knitted red cap and smiled, much too broadly. His long blond hair stuck out of the skullcap and was gathered by a rubber band just below the collar of his ratty sweater.
“Sunglasses” did not speak. He just looked around the bar as if to map the exits. He walked to the pay phone by the door, picked up the receiver, listened. Then he hung it back up. “Smiley” walked over toward the bar and then looked at Mick, who continued staring toward Jonathan. They were strangers, not from here. This status was lost on no one but the two of them.
“So what do mules worry about, Larry?” Jonathan had his back to the front door and had turned to see the men enter. But now he was back to his story.
Larry reminded him. “You know this. A hoss u’ll worry his self into a fit. But it’s always about things that might be still to come. A donkey will complain about past treatment. He will scream and holler if you done left him in the cold all night or if you fed the hogs better grain that you give the donkey. He’ll let you know about it. But a mule sez to himself, ‘Okay, even this is happening. I even have to survive being shot at by that woman while I stand right next to Pa, my own plow partner. I even have to endure this.’ That’s what a mule would be thinking, not raising no ruckus about having been shot at nor worrying about maybe being shot soon. Naw, Hamilton is thinking, ‘Well, least I ain’t been shot. There’s that.'”
Jonathan just stared at Larry. Then he smiled and said, “Okay so the mule lives and thinks in the present. The Jackass is the historian. What’s the horse, then”
Larry was sometimes a little too smart, a moment too quick. “An entrepreneur. A hoss thinks about the future.”
Jonathan was thinking, Larry smiles as much as Blondie here.
Blond Smiley had meanwhile been standing with his hands on his hips, listening to the discussion at the table and in his own mind waiting politely for a pause into which he might interject something more rational. Smiley looked up toward Mick and flicked his head back to the table as if to ask, what’s with these two?” But Mick did not return his glance. It was about this time that Smiley began to understand that he was not in Kansas anymore. Sunglasses ambled toward the hallway following the Men’s Room sign but did not go in. Oddly, he did open the unmarked door which went upstairs. He saw the steps and then closed the door.
This was all beginning to annoy Mick Berger, who looked directly at Sunglasses and asked, “You looking for something, Buddy?”
Sunglasses ignored him and walked around the backside of the bar, glancing in the kitchen. What he saw and heard in there, he thought, was an old man, wearing one of those tank undershirts, in this weather with the goddamned front door wide open! The old man was mumbling to himself while washing some beer glasses in a metal double sink against the back wall. Mick looked at Jonathan who then looked over toward Larry with raised eyebrows. Larry just kept smiling.
Blond Smiley answered Mick. “He’s looking for a working telephone, aren’t you, ~Buddy?”
Sunglasses ignored the whole topic. Instead he completed his circuit of the small bar by walking along the east wall back to the pay telephone.
“There seems to be a problem with that one.” Blondie explained, one thumb indicating the pay phone.
Mick was halfway into an explanation that these phones are just like the ones up at the penitentiary, they take dimes and quarters. Coins usually solve the problem. But Smiley had reached into the sweater somewhere and pulled out a chrome revolver, pointing it directly at Mick Berger. Who pulled another slow drag off his cigarette, flicked the ash and turned his head a little sideways towards the pistol. Larry kept smiling.
Jonathan, who had missed all of that part with the gun in it since his back was toward both Blondie and Sunglasses, leaned back into the booth back, saying, “You need some change?” One of his hands went into his front pants pocket.
When Blondie saw that he screamed. “Put your god damned hands on top of the table and keep them there, both of you!” Then Sunglasses went to work on the telephone, ripping the receiver out of the armored wound tube and rendering the phone worthless for the need at hand. Larry’s hands were palms down on the table. He was still smiling. Jonathan used his hand to wipe his nose and then turned himself sideways in the booth with one leg up. Easier to see what might be going on at the front door.
Stencil, the bartender, had heard the commotion and was now standing in the doorway of the kitchen. “Som ob bitch, you break a da phone. Gonna pay me you som ob bitch!” The old man walked around the bar, right up to Sunglasses. With one hand, Stencil grabbed the phone receiver, with the other he pushed Sunglasses against the wall.
Then Stencil turned his back on Sunglasses and asked Blondie, “Who’s a pay me twenty five dollars for fix? Som ob bitch!” He was holding the receiver in the air when Sunglasses punched him in the side of the face, a punch which would have flattened anyone else in the room. We could see Stencil’s head turn with the force of the punch. But before Stencil even realized he had been hit, Mick was already standing between Stencil and Sunglasses.
Facing Stencil, but speaking now to Sunglasses, Mick said, “Buddy, you had best get your ass on the other side of this bar. He’ll kill you if you stand around here much longer. You are one dumb ass!”
An old color aerial shot of Irvingsberg, or some of it anyway.
That was when the shot rang out loud. Very loud. Everyone turned toward Smiley who stood with his smoking revolver still pointed at the ceiling.
“Now you shoot ta da hole in my ceiling!” Then there was a whole paragraph of words that never even made it into the published versions of any Dictionaries of any Central European language. Mick moved to stand between Stencil and Blondie.
Jonathan, despite himself, saw for the first time the intricate design which had been sponged, brushed, and putty knifed into the ceiling. Perfect, that is, except for one brownish hole right over the smoking revolver.
Blondie/Smiley’s smile had changed into a forced grin. He was rather confused given what Jonathan might have called the “non-symmetrical power displays” all around him. I have the only gun in the place. But these idiots don’t seem to get it yet. Out loud, though, Smiley said, "everyone put your hands on your heads. We are going to empty the register and then we will be out of here. Nobody will get hurt. Just put your hands on your heads.”
At that moment, Jonathan’s disposable lighter went click, and without looking, most of us recognized the smell of burley pipe tobacco, accented with just a hint of burning tennis shoe soles and stink bug carcass. It was his special mixture he could purchase over in Alexandria. Larry was surprised to hear Jonathan speak, around his pipe of course, but you could still understand him. “And if you gentlemen are gonna have to pay for the phone and the hole in the ceiling and then buy us all a round of beer, have a round with us if you like, but if you will do that,” puff, puff, puff, “we’ll just forget the whole thing and let you go on your merry way.”
“No, fair being fair. Before all of that, Stencil gets to sucker punch this stupid dipshit in the mirror glasses!” Mick said as he glowered at Sunglasses. Stencil’s face was beginning to swell into four knuckle bruises. We didn’t know why we all thought so, but we all suspected that if Stencil had been granted his foul shot, this idiot would probably not be able to walk out of here under his own locomotion.
“How ‘bout we do it this way.” Blondie seemed to have forgotten his smile somewhere. “How ‘bout I put a hole in all of you dumb son of a bitches foreheads then pry open that cash register. After that we can all have a round or two, take a few cases along for the ride. Then what time tomorrow or the next day do you think anyone in this shit slick town will happen to come find you all?”
“Haven’t given this a lot of thought have you?” Mick was walking toward the door now, and speaking to Jonathan. “Explain to this dumb son of bitch the flaws in his plans, will you? I’ve had about as much of this fun as I can stand.” Mick stormed out the door, letting the screen door bang back into place.
Blondie pulled back the hammer on his shiny pistol and pointed it toward the slamming door. But Jonathan spoke fast. “Let’s see how this plays out for you, since evidently you have not devoted much time to planning it yourselves. You shoot three people in cold blood during an armed robbery in a small town in the central Pennsylvania mountains. What’s that, life for both of you if you get an expensive attorney and the judge owes him favors. Otherwise it’s an injection for premeditated, murder one. And, depending on your doctrine of choice, you will burn in everlasting Hell, forever. Okay, you probably have enough ammo, you have only fired once. That means you can miss twice, even, unless that’s a five chamber barrell. Then after you get the key off of my dead body, if you can find it, you can quickly unlock the cash register, take the twenty six dollars and twenty five cents that you will find in there. Then you better take some beer to make it worth your while too. Just how much beer do you think you can drink between now and that injection? But all the shooting up here will have caused some of the neighbors to get concerned enough to call the police. If they haven’t called them already. Shooting is a normal thing to hear out here, everyone around here has guns. Lot’s of guns. But not at ten thirty on a school night do people hear four or five shots. So the police will be coming first from Williamsburg. Better take another route. You know the small roads do you? No? Better head back to the highway, then. But the problem is the State College based sheriff patrols will be heading this way from 22. The Swat team from Blair will be heading here from Hollidaysburg. The Huntingdon rapid response team will be on the back way from Williamsburg, just behind those two patrol cars from Williamsburg. You will have to shoot both of them too if you want to have any chance at all. That would be the best case scenario.”
Jonathan took a long drag off his pipe. While he puffed he looked over to Larry, still smiling. Larry said simply, “Yes, best case the cops catch you quickly. You don’t want these civil patrols around here to get here first. Believe me, they are not known for looking too kindly on strangers with handguns. Maybe they will just kill you. Maybe.”
Larry, still beaming that famous winning smile of his, looked back at Jonathan who took back the baton. “Yes, it seems like you only have a small window of opportunity to get out of here and it’s closed as we speak. Don’t you think that young fellow, Mick, you let him walk out of here, just let him walk out. He’s one of the officers in the civil patrol. I doubt if he will even call the police, he will probably rather handle it as a civil emergency. His unit will be outside very soon. You should of bought him a beer and paid your damages.”
For the first time since arriving, maybe for the first time in his life for all we knew, Sunglasses actually spoke. “Let’s just get the hell out of here, Lee. These fuckers are giving me the heebeegeebees.”
But the screen door banged shut again. Blondie, no longer smiling, pointed the pistol in that direction. Unbelievably, Mick Berger strutted back into the bar and took his accustomed place near the end of the crescent of seats. Realizing that the gun was pointed in his direction and all eyes and ears focused his way, Mick took out a red package of cigarettes from the front pocket of his tee shirt, slapped the back of his arm with the pack, popped one out and lit it up. Then he turned on his stool and said, “Illinois PM34-222.”
He took another long drag and said, “One a you geniuses decided to park ‘at sedan with Illinois plates and four flat tires right there in the driveway. What were you thinking?” Then he waited a few seconds for emphasis. “I guess you knew there were no other ways in or out of this place. And you can see from the parking lot that none of us drove here, neither. So you parked right in the one place you could be sure to block anyone else from entering. Well, that was clever. But did you ever think about how easy it would be for someone with a big red pickup to park sideways behind you there and keep you from getting back out tonight? No, I didn’t bring the key up here. What, do I look like some kind of idiot?” The chainsaw cap was cocked almost straight up now, a small gathering of hair now hung down to his fu manchu and he hadn’t shaved the rest of his face recently. His smoking cigarette dangled from one side of his mouth and with one eye closed to the smoke, he spoke out the other side. “And I’ve got the steering wheel lock on it. You aren’t going anywhere tonight. So best go ahead and shoot me and have your very last beer while you wait.”
Sunglasses stepped over to the screen door and started to peer out. Mick said, “Stencil, don’t stand behind him if he goes near that door. Come over here and wait with me.”
Sunglasses stepped quickly out of the doorway, looked over toward Blondie, and shook his head. They were both on the verge of flight but they had no place to run.
Jonathan said, “Mick, what if these young men could just pay their damages and be on their way? Wouldn’t be any snooping into the activities of the civil patrol that way. Just saying…”
Blondie’s voice indicated his desperation. “We got no money. Just the car. What if we was to give you the car and disappear?”
“I don’t know,” Mick said flicking the ash into the little ashtray with a practiced aim that was quite impressive to anyone who would notice such accomplishments. “This is a title state. We would need you to go with us to a registration office at ten am, and sign over the title. You have a title and ID don’t you?”
Blondie looked at Sunglasses. His eyes widened as both shoulders moved upwards and forward, as if to say, “Well, now what?”
Jonathan helped out, “You’ve got no money. Your car is either stolen or not titled. Do you have anything of enough value to get yourselves out of this mess?” Then Jonathan looked at the pistol and asked Blondie, “What’s that worth, hundred and fifty? Hundred and seventy?”
At eleven thirty, as Jonathan walked out of Stencil’s Bar with Larry Nesbit, they were in high spirits, the first high spirits Jonathan had been in for six months or more. They walked down the road, around the traffic jam of a car with Illinois plates pinned in by Jonathan’s own old pickup truck, these days on loan to Mick Berger. They walked across the highway to the diner, in front of which Larry had parked one of his own dump trucks, and in the cab of which Larry would spend the rest of tonight asleep so he could pick up a load of crushed two downs and be on his way at first light.
“I really wanted to hear the whole story of Matilda Braun in Port Matilda. You still owe me that story, Jonathan. You goin’ t’ call the sheriff or am I?”
“Oh, I am five minutes from the cabin, Larry. I’ve got the gun,” he pat his own coat pocket. “Mick has their car pinned in and Stencil may or may not decide to return the sucker punch favor. But right now, they both have a beer to drink and it may be a long, long time before those two ever see another beer. Besides, I’d bet Mick’s drinking beer on the house tonight. Wouldn’t want to interrupt that too early. I’ll call directly.”
They both laughed and walked off in the darkness of a quiet night in Lorraine Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. Of the two of them, only Larry would sleep well that night, bundled up in the seat of an old but well maintained dump truck.
After his ten minute walk back through the woods in front of Simon’s Blue Hole, Jonathan would reach the cabin, turn on some lights, and smoke a pipe. Then he’d make the phone call to the Huntingdon County Sheriff’s Department. Call came in just after midnight.
“Your name, please,” the tired sounding man at the other end of the line asked.
“Yes, good evening. My name is Jonathan Fost, spelled, F-O-S-T. I need to report an attempted armed robbery in Irvingsberg.”
“Irvingsberg? Is that in Huntingdon County?”
“Yes, we are just northeast of Williamsburg, just inside the county line.”
“What is the current situation? Anyone hurt?”
“I don’t believe anyone is hurt. We took away the gun. Two men came into Stencil's Bar and tried to empty the register. One shot was fired into the ceiling, but we got the gun away from them and now they are in the bar drinking.”
“You said Stencil’s Bar? Where is this place?”
“Yea, its official name is Talon’s, but if you are heading to 22 from Williamsburg on Canal Street you turn left right there at Gannister Brothers, the old diner and the gravel operation, right after the bridge. Soon as you cross the bridge look up to the left and you’ll see the green light in the front window. You can’t miss it.”
“We have a cruiser on the way. No need for an ambulance?”
“I don’t think so. Just a cruiser. Oh, the driveway to the bar is blocked. The perpetrators’ car is blocking the way in. And my pickup truck is blocking that car. They won’t be driving away until we move the truck.”
“Okay, anything else we need to know?”
“Yes, maybe. The guy that owns the bar is a little difficult to understand. He speaks a language he calls “Little Russian,” but it’s really a mix of Polish and Ukrainian.”
“Oh God. We have like zero chance of finding a translator for him. Does this guy speak any English at all?”
“Well, yes and no.”
As Jonathan Fost hung up the phone and climbed the stairs into his bedroom, he congratulated himself on the phone conversation. He thought it went much easier than he expected, slid into bed and was well into his first deep sleep in months before the phone rang again at four am.
Meanwhile, though, as the Huntingdon County Sheriff's Department dispatcher hung up the phone with Jonathan he keyed the radio mic and said, “Ahhh, well now. Any units south or west of Huntingdon Township, ten forty, over.”
A tone of reply followed by a quick, “Cruiser 3, ten twenty Waterstreet, over.”
“Cruiser 3, we have reports of a ten thirty one robbery in progress one shot has been fired, no injuries reported. Your ten twenty is Talon’s Bar in Irvingsberg, are you in route?”
Tone: “Hotel Charlie One, Cruiser 3 is ten seventeen Irvingsberg, but you gotta ten nine that ten twenty for me. Over.”
“Affimative, Cruiser 3. Your ten twenty is Talons Bar on 866 right across from the old diner there on Canal Street. Up the hill from Gannister Brother’s Aggregates. Perp vehicle is blocking the driveway to the bar and a pickup truck is blocking the suspects’ automobile.”
Tone:”Hotel Charlie One, I think you must mean Stencil's. ETA five minutes. Better get me some back up on this one. You said there were shots fired? Any descriptions?”
“Affirmative on shots. I’m calling the Captain’s house now, and then Blair County. Outside of Williamsburg’s jurisdiction, but will alert them to monitor any traffic across the bridge. Will update. By the way, the owner of the bar does not speak much English, Toby. Be advised. All Huntingdon Units, 10-32 backup for Cruiser 3 in Irvingsberg, that’s on Canal Street between Williamsburg and 22. Please ten forty, over.”
This is what the police band radio traffic sounded like that night. It only became more cluttered as several police cars from far reaches of Huntingdon County, Blair County, and Centre County were called in to back-up the closest Sheriff’s Deputy. The little white roulette ball had just settled into the black slot of one Officer Toby Kletch, a young man fresh from service in the United States Army who had finished in the top ten percent of the Commonwealth’s Patrol Academy and who struggled to afford the rent on a small house there in Alexandria, where his wife and two small children, a four year old daughter and a two year old baby boy, were now sleeping. Officer Kletch sped to the crime scene in record time, running without siren or flashing lights or even headlights during the last two hundred meters of his race. Leaving his patrol car in the old diner parking lot, not thirty feet from where one of the least inebriated witnesses to the events of the evening slept soundly in the cab of his dump truck, Officer Kletch performed the kind of courageous act that is expected of any peace officer. He removed his weapon from its holster, chambered a round, turned down his clip on radio, turned off his flashlight, and approached an unknown situation involving armed criminals with no one else on the side of law and order anywhere within sight.
Keeping himself to the edge of the green light emanating from the painted plate glass window of the bar, Officer Kletch bounded up to the back corner of the building, ignoring the ringing sound of adrenaline in his ears and reminding himself to breathe. A screen door into what looked like the kitchen stood at the top of a small ramp, the back door. That kitchen exit being unlocked, Officer Kletch quietly entered. Through another short hallway, he could see the front door and a part of the bar. The television on the wall was on, but it sounded mostly like static. There was no speaking, no sounds at all coming from the people in the bar either. He could see the back of a small and elderly man wearing khaki pants and a tank undershirt, standing on this side of the bar. One arm and part of the face of a man wearing a black leather jacket sitting at the bar was also visible, as was the blood. The man’s face looked like it had been smashed with a baseball bat. The nose looked to be broken and one eye sagged under what was sure to be a long term shiner. Mounds of blood stained napkins were building up on the bar in front of the poor guy. With one hand he gingerly applied new napkins to his own nose. With the other hand, this fellow was drinking a beer. A mangled pair of sunglasses, missing one lens, sat on the bar between the guy with the nose and the bartender.
Officer Kletch stepped into the room with his police pistol pointing to the other two men, also seated at the bar. One of these two faced the front window. “Police! Do not move. I need everyone to put your empty hands in the air.”
The character at the end of the bar, the one sitting backwards facing the front window, slowly took one last drag off his cigarette. Finally all six hands were in the air. The old man in the tank top undershirt just stood there with both hands still on the bar. To him, Officer Kletch asked, “Hablar English?”
The old man looked at the guy with the cigarette on the other end of the bar. That one answered. “He understands English pretty well, that’s the owner of the place.”
“Everybody move back from the bar. Slow now. Keep your hands up where I can see them.” To Mick, he asked, ”Okay, sir, anyone else in here? In the back? Upstairs? Anyone?”
Stencil answered, “Nobody there back. Nobody nowhere.” Mick just shook his head.
The deputy sheriff said, “Okay good. Now is anyone armed? Let me know now if you're armed. I won’t take it so well if I find out later that you are armed in any way. Guns, knives, anything?”
Mick said, “I have a pocket knife.”
“And you two?” The police officer directed his question at the two others, the blond one and the one with the bloody face. Neither answered.
“Okay, you two get down on the floor, face down with your arms spread eagle. Move slowly and move now.” The blond one and the one with the broken face slowly started kneeling, keeping their hands up and out.
Once the other two were spread eagle on the floor, Deputy Kletch walked over toward Mick Berger, his weapon not exactly pointed at him but near enough that Mick would not try anything. “Okay, I appreciate your cooperation. Now listen carefully. Drop that cigarette on the floor and slowly take out that pocket knife with two fingers. Show it to me.”
Mick took one last drag on his cigarette and then let it drop to the floor. He moved one hand toward his pocket and slowly produced a folded pocket knife which he held between two fingers. Officer Kletch reached over and took the knife and then said, to the old man behind the bar, “there were reports of an attempted armed robbery in here tonight. Did someone shoot a gun?”
Stencil’s eyes went to the ceiling. Officer Kletch quickly looked up and back at Stencil, who looked down toward the men on the floor and back to the police officer. The deputy reiterated, If we find a gun on one of you tonight, it’s not going to go so well. I ask again, are any of you armed? Now I want to hear an answer from all of you.”
Stencil and Mick both said their versions of no. The blond one yelled, “ I am not armed!”
That left only one, the one with the bloody face. The deputy pointed his pistol into the bloody face and said, “Don’t play with me, mister. I am a nervous man. I’m going to ask you one more time. Are you armed.
The perpetrator previously known as Sunglasses splattered blood from his mouth and nose as he yelled back something that sounded like, “I told you. I aint armed!”
Just then two more police officers from Huntingdon County entered with their weapons drawn. One spoke into a microphone clipped to his collar. Everyone frisked, no weapons were found.
Mick Berger, now seated again at the bar while Stencil made coffee, was being asked to explain what had happened in there this evening. His reply, “Don’t get me wrong, Officers. But the deal was, we were s’pozed to forget the whole thing. They lived up to their side, so I guess the only way I can answer your question is to say I don’t really remember.” It was not a surprise to Mick that telling the truth and living up to your agreements were probably the only two sins in the world that could get a guy into real trouble.
At three thirty in the morning the phone downstairs at the cabin started ringing. But that phone was downstairs and Jonathan had been asleep, dreaming pleasant dreams about his wife swimming in a small lake in the middle of the summer. She had just started to arise from the water and slowly, ever so slowly had begun toweling her hair, her naked body would drip dry on the rocks while he watched. As the phone rang downstairs, Jonathan realized he had been dreaming and was now crying, his pillow a little wet. He was no longer sure if it was a good dream or a bad dream so he put his head back down and tried to pick up the strings of his subconscious memory’s narration.
But at four ten am, there came an awfully insistent knocking at the door. He tried to imagine he was dreaming that too. After all the chain in the drive was up and who would have walked all the way down here at this time of the night. The knocking continued, even more loudly, if possible.
Still wearing his boxer shorts and a hastily thrown flannel shirt, Jonathan stepped down the stairs and could see two uniformed police officers there on his porch. He went back upstairs to get some pants and slippers. Then while the two police officers continued to bang away at his door, Jonathan Fost went to the toilet to pee, brushed his teeth, and climbed back downstairs to greet the Huntingdon County Sheriff's Department. They had a few questions for him.
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