Five Miles to Paradise

17

Police work was anything but easy. Heck would have gladly told anyone this who chanced to ask him. 

In Out-in-the-Middle-of-Nowhereville, USA, or more precisely, the small community where he lived, it was a plodding process of one step forward, and maybe ten or fifteen backwards, stagger a few off to the left or the right, run in place for awhile, stumble over something in your path, and sometimes fall flat on your face.

The trail from point 'X' to point 'Y' never seemed to be a straight linear path. 

More times than not, it proved to be a convoluted, sometimes circular, often coiled, way that could lead the good guys to double back on themselves or to run into nothing but dead ends. 

Sometimes, it seemed to Heck like he spent an enormous amount of time just chasing his tail.

Heck felt with T-Bone's disappearance, he'd crashed into a brick wall. Many times over.

There seemed to be nothing to go on. Even though it had only been a short time since Bone's abandoned vehicle was reported, if he didn't get a break soon, he knew the case would go cold. 

He wondered secretly if he'd ever solve this case. He already speculated he would not, but he kept such thoughts to himself.

"Think Bone's just taken off with one of his buddies?" Mervyn asked.

"Remember last time," one of the men threw in.

Heck didn't need reminding about the last time someone had said T-Bone was missing. They searched for two days. Turned out he was lying up drunk with an old prostitute who worked the northern end of the county.

Was T-Bone pulling a drunk, laying a prostitute, just wandering about bird watching? Or was he really hurt, lying in a ditch somewhere, waiting for Heck to find him, rescue him? Was he dead?

A crystal ball would come in handy right about now, Heck thought.

"What do you wanna do, Heck?" Mervyn asked.

Let somebody else handle this problem, Heck thought. 

But that was out of the question.

"Let's go back to the truck. Maybe the wrecker is there by now, and we can haul 'er back to the station, and give her the once over. That old jalopy might have something to tell us, though I doubt it. 

Them farm boys hopped into the cab pretty fast. Before I had time to ask them to step back and let us do our jobs. I can't believe the stupidity of some folks.

Not to mention the utter lack of raising. And I ain't too sure Togo Batson didn't pinch some of ole T-Bone's tobacco, if he had any in his truck cab."

"Probably don't matter none. Storm gave that old truck the first good scrubbin' it's seen in decades," Palmer added.

"Yeah," Heck said. "We just can't seem to catch a break, can we?"

"You wanna call it a day?"

"Yeah. Ya'll go on home. I'll wait for the wrecker," Heck told his deputies.

He stopped to light a cigarette.

"With the rain, dogs won't tell us nothin' no more. Scent's deader than roadkill. No use wasting more time here. Palmer, tell Nuel we 'preciate all he's done, but he can pack his dog up and go home, too."

"Yes, suh."

"If we're lucky, T-Bone will be on us tomorrow for towing his vehicle off without his permission," Mervyn said.

"Yeah," Palmer muttered. "If we're lucky that might just happen."

"We'll have to be mighty lucky, indeed," said Heck.

* * *

Heck couldn't help but think of T-Bone and the uproar his flags had caused as he drove slowly behind Merle's 1930 tow truck. That old truck was T-Bone's rolling flagship with the pair of blazing beauties unfurling on the bed of his truck. 

'All dressed up,' as the old colored man would say.

Most of the community liked it better when Bone's chariot was naked. It seemed as if their ire dampened during these times of empty broomsticks and trailing rope. 

For life to be so complicated and filled with so much that really mattered, Heck was often confounded by how much effort was wasted as folks fumed and fussed about T-Bone and his flags. 

Not to mention the rise in the number of complaints citizens voiced.

But more stomach ulcers bloomed during the old man's flag days than perhaps ever developed over broken marriages, ruined financial endeavors, or real calamities and true misfortunes. Unimaginable shifts in luck, precipitous world disasters, murder, rape and ruin. Nothing seemed to stir up more stink than T-Bone's old pickup and his twin fluttering flags. Not really, but it sure seemed like it to Heck.

Folks sure did like to fuss and fume about those flags.

How could anything of so little consequence tie people's bonnets into such knots? How could one old man's simple declaration of patriotism ignite so much displeasure? Would T-Bone's flying his flags really matter if the community was suddenly destroyed by some malignant force like a tornado or earthquake?

Heck knew it wouldn't.

Yet, week after week, as sheriff, Heck dodged the complaints of irritated adults who came to him with the conviction of an anointed saint clearing the Church of What Is All Holy And Devout of something obscene.

Some said T-Bone and his flag-festooned rattletrap was akin to sticking this great country in the middle of the county dump.

Numbers of stellar citizens were quick to remark that they thought that Mr. Bone's display was the height of tackiness.

How could the sheriff let such nonsense go on year after year without making T-Bone remove his ridiculous display?

Making the town safe and taking care of unsightly nuisances -- wasn't that what Heck got paid for?

Many would curl their upper lip as they snidely suggested that democracy was being trampled under by such a dishonorable display.

What were their tax dollars working for if it wasn't to have a sheriff who kept the area looking smart and homey for the one or two lost tourists who happened to blunder into town?

Heck was the elected official who represented them, they would quickly say, with an undertone of venom that Heck found so unpleasant.

It was Heck's job to uphold the law. 

They forgot to mention the fact that no one would run for the sheriff's job, and hadn't in over twenty-five years. They also forgot to mention the fact that Heck continued to carry out his duties while driving his own personal car because they, the tax payers, could not afford to furnish him with a vehicle.

No matter.

Heck would just as quickly remind them that T-Bone was breaking no laws. He was a taxpayer just like they were. But the upstanding citizens did not what to hear this. 

 They were like prairie dogs chattering to the wind, and nothing could stop the old biddies and their hen-pecked mates from pestering the daylights out of their kindly, old sheriff.

"Why not just go up to T-Bone and tell him how you feel," Heck suggested once.

That burnt their butts like a lit match stick near a farting butthole.

They looked shocked.

Heck knew then that they didn't have the guts to confront T-Bone, but they had no qualms about wanting to turn him into the bad guy that rained down on one old man's parade.