When I am traveling and cannot get to the wilds and the quiet places, I must remember to cultivate the quiet place within myself. To find the space and center in myself so that I can find peace and clarity, even when surrounded by the din and clamor of the city.
To find grounding in the bustle so that I’m able to think, and write and be.
Here is the first-draft outline of a story I’d like to write about Jack, a young man whose magic ability mostly manifests in his ability to travel long distances.
Jack is a freelance courier and through a case of mistaken identity ends up being chased by two groups who want a magical object a prospective client wanted him to carry. The only problem is that he didn’t take the job. Now, to survive, he’ll have to outrun the bad guys, outwit the good guys and find the object before anyone else can get their hands on it. That’s the easy part. What the hell is he supposed to do if he gets his hands on it?
Working title: The Walker
Genre: Modern Fantasy
Tense/POV: Present Tense, First Person
Setting: Modern world, various settings, mostly urban.
Part One
Inciting Incident: A small man comes to the door asking Jack to courier a package to his brother in Wales. He turns the man down, who offers him money to think about it and then leaves, promising to call back again.
Internal Initial Conflict (call to action): Jack wants to be out of the line of fire and back to a life of being paid little attention. He can’t have this because the small man was seen leaving his apartment and the guys watching assume he’s taken the job.
External Initial Conflict (call to action): Jack wants to survive.
Woven-in Backstory, Vital Information: Jack works as a freelance courier for the supernatural world. Awhile back, he rescued a Kitsune (fox spirit) from a trap, who decided she owed him her loyalty after that and would help him to achieve his potential, whether he likes it or not.
Part Two
Internal Conflict (obstacles): Jack grew up in a rough neighborhood. One where escape and escaping notice from the predators in the waters was the surest means of survival. Escaping the bullies at school was how he discovered his powers in the first place.
External Conflict (obstacles): He can’t give the package to the guys who want it, because he didn’t take it. They won’t accept his assertion that he doesn’t have it.
Internal Higher Conflict (obstacles heighten): Threats go from verbal to property damage with threats of bodily harm if he doesn’t get it for them. He can’t turn back because if he does, they’ve threatened his life and the life of Kitsune.
External Higher Conflict (obstacles heighten): An enemy of the mooks who are after him want him to deliver the package to him instead. Unfortunately, the small man is nowhere to be found.
Internal Highest Conflict (obstacles intensify): The small man is found dead and the object is said to be somewhere only Jack can find it.
External Highest Conflict (obstacles intensify): While backtracking to find the obstacle, Jack is abducted, hooded and tied up by the villains. When the hood is revealed, he sees that Kitsune has followed and is in the shadows. An attempt to free him fails, leading to her capture.
Internal Point of No Return (stakes): He realizes that they will never be safe, so long as the groups think that he is in possession of the MacGuffin and that he’s really the only one who can save her.
External Point of No Return (stakes): The fact that they know where he lives and will come for him if he runs.
Darkest Hour: The idea of being broken, alone and unable to escape. Being trapped in the earth.
Turning Point: Buried alive, he knows that he has to find a way to get out. A way to get Kitsune freed with him, before they run out of air. Picturing the location with no visual or tactile aid. Finding an out. Realizing that the small man was a liar and the answer was right at home.
Part Three
Internal Climax: They can travel by visualizing where they want to go, rather than by seeing it, or having an object linked to the place. How to reach into the inbetween with less energy than before. His fear of confrontation.
∧∨ (preferably simultaneous) ∧∨
External Climax: By pointing the gun at his own head and opening a portal at the last minute so the bullet hits the antagonist instead.
Resolution (external): It shows his willingness to fight back in a corner and leaves the antagonizing group leaderless? They are in disarray and start turning on each other.
Character Growth (internal): Now, no longer afraid of confrontation, he leaves with a new-found sense of purpose and some guilt about ending the confrontation with violence.
Restrained by his guards, I looked upon the man who I’d once counted a friend. He wound toward me like a serpent, or a villain in a pantomime. Jesus, I can’t believe there are people who really do this, I thought. Hasn’t he read the evil overlord list?
“It occurs to me that the reason that you individualists will never win is your inability to organize other people. You assume that people will act in their interest or even know what is in their best interest. In reality, people aren’t that sure. They’re so focused on whatever they’re told to pay attention to that they are thankful to have a strong hand to guide them. They follow their shepherd right into the abattoir.
How else could we get people to give us their time, money, allegiance? How else could we get elected again and again, even admitting our corruption and willingness to exchange “principles” for favors. Long-term good for short-term gain. Because they don’t care and even if they did, the average person is too stupid to do anything about it and too powerless to stop us.
So, what are you going to do, hero? I know your kind. You are opposed to violence and profess the value of reason? Well guess what? I am neither opposed to violence, nor am I amenable to reason. I profit far too much from the current system to wish to return to your fabled more principled time.
And don’t think that this is something that I say because of the party I belong to. The left uses radicalism, the right uses religion. Hell, we even us the same sentences with only the basic terms switched. We have a pope using science to gain followers for his mystical beliefs and scientists watering their discoveries with the language of religion.
You think that just because you follow the law you have nothing to fear? That we will leave you alone? Of course not. Not while the fires of reason burn in your mind. Not while you have a spine to stand erect. Do you know who the last hominid species was who elevated the individual? Homo Neanderthalis. You know what happened to them, I trust?
We killed and fucked them out of existence. Except of course a few throwbacks like yourself every few generations. It’s too bad, if you were just a bit less principled, you could’ve been a shepherd. Instead, we will destroy you, claiming all the while you were a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
And please, for the sake of any past feelings of conviviality we may have shared, please don’t ask me why I sting you. If you can excuse the mixing of imagery. I sting you because, it is in my nature.”
“No.”
The word wasn’t shouted, but that didn’t make it any less of a command. Marcus, lean for his age and wearing the blue and white singlet that had been handed down to him by his father paused in the middle of his wind up. He’d suffered a humiliating and embarrassing defeat at the hands of an Jeffrey Linkletter. Linkletter. The guy’s name could be mistranslated as “Apostrophe” for gosh sakes. But Marcus recognized the tone. He lowered the head gear he’d been about to throw into the bleachers with what he just knew would be a satisfying bang.
“What do you think you’re doing?” His father asked.
“What d-“
“Who do you think you are?” Great, first the tone, now parental clichés.
“I only just…” The frustration was causing pressure to well up behind his eyes with the injustice of the world. He wanted to say that he was only twelve years old, that Jeffrey was a fish and shouldn’t have been able to beat him and that the ref had been unfair. He clenched his fists in frustration.
“Unclench your fists.”
“I can’t even be angry now?” What was Dad’s deal today, God!
“Marcus, you can feel any way you want. That doesn’t matter in the long run. What people will remember. What you will remember about today is how you react. You lost. Guess what? It happens. Should you have lost by getting rolled through from that headlock as you were pinning him in the first eight seconds of the match? No. Of course not. That’s your move. You own it. No one gets out of you. At least they haven’t for a long time, until today. Why’d it happen?”
This was what Marcus had been trying to avoid. Blame. He hated being blamed for things.
“Because I got too high and put weight in my butt instead of keeping it up and using leverage.” The words sounded dejected. Like a kid being forced to recite a bible verse when the minister drops by for a Sunday meal.
“Right.”
“How do you feel?”
“Stupid. Angry. Like a loser.”
“Do you like that feeling?” Marcus pulled a face.
“No. Of course I hate it.”
“Good. What are you going to do about it.”
“Well I was going to throw my head gear and feel better about it.” Marcus said.
“And what would that have helped?”
“Well, I would have felt better.”
“Sure, but what about after the first five seconds.” Marcus thought about it. He tossed his head like he was trying to get a bothersome fly to leave him alone. “I’d have felt stupid.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate when people throw their headgear and stomp and act like little kids about losing, but Dad, I am a little kid.”
“135 lbs isn’t that little Marcus. And it’s not like there’s a day when you will suddenly feel like you’re old enough to be mature.”
“Yeah, but”
“The only way. The only way to be more mature- or improve yourself in any way- is to act as if you already have the good quality you want.”
“You mean like, if I want to be honest I have to tell the truth as if I’m already an honest person even if I’m used to ‘stretching’ the truth?”
“For example, yeah.” Marcus looked a bit sheepish. When he was younger, he’d been prone to tall tales and prevarication like most kids, but his ability to be funny enough to avoid trouble didn’t develop until much later. His dad smiled kindly at him.
“Huh.” Marcus thought for a moment, “So basically, you’re saying that if I want to have good sportsmanship I have to start doing it now.”
“Sportsmanship matters a little when you win, but it matters a whole lot more when you lose. That’s one of the reasons we do sports Mark. We’re all gonna lose in life at some point or other- maybe a lot. But it’s how we act when we lose that determines whether we get back up for another try and how much people want to help us when we go for another try.”
“Right, cause anyone can be tough when they win.”
“Right.”
“But only someone really tough can be tough when they lose.”
“Exactly. You got it. Now, what are you gonna do now?”
“I’m gonna focus and get ready for my next match so I can pin this guy and come back in the round robin.”
“Right. You mad?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Use it. Let it build slowly into focus so you can win. I want you to visualize how the match will go, what you’re gonna do and what he’s gonna do and I want you to get psyched up starting about 15 minutes before you get called. Start warming up when they call the 112’s okay?”
“Okay dad.”
Marcus couldn’t remember whether he’d won the next match or been out of the tournament. I was fairly certain that they’d gone out for ice cream after the match, just as he would do with his son Jack 20 years later. He thought about that lesson once in awhile and was glad he’d learned how to get up gracefully when he got knocked down.
There had been knocks much more difficult than losing to Linkletter and it was good he’d inoculated himself against them early in life. All in all he was glad he didn’t grow up to be the kind of guy who would throw his headgear.
“Look Marcus, you’re a decent writer and you’ve got some interesting ideas for characters,” said the man in the suit, “We can’t sell this wilderness adventurer stuff these days. People don’t get it.”
“What do you mean? Every few years hollywood comes out with a Western or an adaptation of a Jack London novel and they do fine. Hell it wasn’t long ago they made a good profit on Huckleberry Finn.”
“You don’t get it man, we can sell stories of triumph over nature. Surivors of a plane crash eating each other to survive. Young kid dying from eating the wrong plants after having a hissy-fit that his dad was cheating on his mom. Those will sell, but this? Who do you think you are, Edgar Rice Burroughs?”
“Of course not. Burroughs created some of the most memorable characters of his day.”
“Yeah, and they reflected people’s aspirations back then. The west was still pretty wild before it was tamed by Hollywood, Barbed Wired and Mob-run casinos. People moved out west to live off the land. Now they build cabins in Aspen and visit during ski season. Hell, more of the population has lived in cities than the rural areas since 1920 and there’s no sign of it ending. You know what that means? Two generations of people who’ve never lived outside the city unless it was to visit summer camp or to visit Grandma and Grandpa. People don’t understand it and hell, I don’t understand it.”
“What’s not to understand?”
“Okay, you’ve got this character, Joshua right?”
“Yeah.”
“So he lives off the land and helps people out.”
“Yeah. If they need it.”
“Well, that’s noble and everything, but why does he do it?”
“What do you mean why does he do it? He does it because they need help.”
“Doesn’t ask for money? Just leaves after helping them?”
“sometimes, yeah.”
“You know what I call that?” Asked the man in the suit.
“What?”
“Suspicious. No political agenda, no witnesses? I mean, he’s not an alcoholic, trying to atone for a past wrong, avenge some injustice?”
“No. Just sees work that needs doing and helps them as needs it.”
“Yeah, there’s already a character who does that.”
“Who?”
“Superman. And people hate Superman. They don’t feel he’s realistic.”
“What? You’re not supposed to thing he’s realistic. The man is bulletproof and flies.”
“You’re missing the point Marcus. That’s not what’s unrealistic about Superman. What’s unrealistic about superman is that he’s all-powerful and benevolent.”
“Well that’s what Christians say about God.”
“Yeah, and how many of them have read the bible and really believe that crap? Basic rule of PR. Tell people something often enough and they’ll believe it. How many times does the bible say god is good?”
“Probably a few?”
“At least 61 times. Though I might have lost count in the Gospels somewhere.”
“You counted that?”
“It was to win a bet.”
“Huh, I never figured you for an atheist.”
“I’m not Marcus, but how many times before the new testament does he kill people, order people to kill people or enact ecological genocide because he’s unhappy with the state of affairs of the world?”
“Probably a few.”
“To say the least.”
“Wait, so you’re telling me people will believe in a character who does terrible evil things, but says he’s good, OR they’ll believe in someone who is good, but with some fatal flaw, but they won’t read about a guy who just wants to get the work done that’s in front of him because he wants to live a decent live and doesn’t want to get a bunch of attention as a result? That’s insane.”
“Of course it’s not insane Marcus. People hate aspirational figures. People want models to be fat, we cheer when someone formerly beautiful gains a bunch of weight and loses it; when someone beautiful gets an addiction and recovers. Hell, we celebrate them more than people who never get the addiction in the first place. You know why? Because people without flaws grate on the nerves. They’re a constant reminder that we’re not good just the way we are. They’re a reminder that we need to do good things to be good people. As a species, we won’t stand for it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You know who the three most famous people to stick to their principles in the face of social pressure in western history are?”
“Who?”
“Socrates, Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King, Jr. You know what people did to them?”
“Hemlock, Crucifixion and A Gun.”
“Right. People won’t buy it in fiction and they won’t stand for it in real life. Go write him as an alcoholic and we might be able to sell it. Make him guilty over having killed a man and we might be able to. Make him a racist and have to learn a lesson about the humanity of black people or some shit and we can sell a million copies in the first month. No one would believe this guy could exist otherwise.”
“No thanks. I’ll try elsewhere.”
“Your loss Marcus. Let me know if you change your mind.”
“Thanks,”
“Out of curiosity, where’d you get the idea for the book?”
“I just wrote what my dad did. Didn’t polish it much either.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been tough with a guy like him around?”
“Nah, he showed me what’s possible and how much easier his way was.”
The man just shook his head.
It didn’t really matter which publisher it had been or what the guy’s name had been in the suits. They’d all said pretty much the same thing. No one is buying stories about good people doing the right thing. Good people gone wrong, or bad people being redeemed was where it’s at.
Oh, Marcus had tried before to write people like this, but there were so many people like that in real life that what was the point in imagining a world that was the same as the one you lived in.
Sometime after the twentieth publisher he got the idea. Rather than write a world like that into existence, why not just live it. He’d been doing so for some time, but that was where he got the idea. Screw them for saying people wouldn’t want to live near someone who lived their convictions. What kind of cynical foolishness was that?
Upon reflection, it wasn’t foolishness at all. If that was how the world worked then fine. Didn’t mean it had to be how he worked.
“There’s nothing someone can do to make me act against my convictions,” he thought. “I don’t have time for people who are so small.”
One of the things Marcus learned over the next few years was that there were few people who would in fact, stand up when the situation demanded something of them and do the right thing. Too many people who would instead, wait for someone else to solve their situation for them.
Why shouldn’t they, after all… Lawyers solve your legal problems when you run afoul of the law, Accountants solve your financial problems when you miscarry the ‘1’, restaurants and fast food solve your culinary problems, which lead to health problems, which pills and pharmacists solve for you. That’s ignoring the whole technological industry of gadgets whose sole purpose seems to be creating problems that they can then solve (for a year or two) with their new widgets.-most of which, weren’t problems if you didn’t buy the previous widget anyway.
He remembered his Grandpa Jack (whom he’d named his son after), welding a splitting wedge to a tube and running it on a pole so that his wife and grandkids could safely split wood with a light hammer when he was in town on business in the winter. It hadn’t been hard, it had needed doing. So he’d done it.
It had taken a few years, but that was the start of it. No need to raise Jack in the mire of this business. Initially skeptical, Rosemary eventually agreed and they decided to build a cabin in Ely, Minnesota. She’d been no stranger to hard work, having grown up on a 30,000-hen chicken farm, but she’d also liked living in the city because it was so much more exciting and there were so many people around. Now that she was raising Jack, she didn’t like the focus the boy had on TV and comic books. And some of his friends were worrying to her. Not because she thought he’d be lead astray. (Actually, Jack was well-liked and charismatic), but because she was worried he’d lead them astray. Jack was a good boy of course, but his ability to find trouble and be in the middle of it with none of it landing on him seemed a bit unnatural to her.
But then, that could just be a mother’s natural inclination to worry about he kids.
Janet picked up the phone and dialed. After a few rings, a voiced picked up the phone.
“Yes, hello?”
“Hello Marcus, this is Janet from the Echo, we spoke earlier.”
“Ahh, yes. The fluff piece on me. Wanting to know about why I’m out in the woods and all that.”
“Yes, well.” he needn’t have put it like that she thought (not realizing Marcus was feeling the same way). “Anyway, I’m writing the piece and I had some questions about some of the newspapers written about you in the past. Jessica, the girl you saved from the cold and Sheriff Bleeker and a few others. Except that it seems like in nearly every case you keep your name out of the papers and disappear before anyone can take a statement.”
“I don’t really care to have a fuss made about me. Anything I may or may not have done is no more heroic than chopping firewood or doing the work in front of me that anyone with half an ounce of sense would do if they were in my position.”
“All the same, I’d like a chance to talk with you and to find out more about what makes a man like you.”
“I’m not sure I know what makes someone like me, or if there should be more like me in the world, but I suppose I was unnecessarily brusque last time you were over. Do you want to come out to my place?”
“That would be fine. When should I come out?”
“Any time before Sunday would be fine. I’ll be home.”
“Thank you. I’ll come out Wednesday afternoon.”
“See you then.”
She hung up the phone. Alright then. Wednesday.
“Alright Jack, you’re old enough now, you get to learn how to build a fire.” Said Marcus.
“really?” Asked Jack. Jack was 10 years old, and had not been allowed to be nearer than a marshmallow stick to the fire up until this point.
“Yep. With supervision.” Marcus wanted him to learn a skill, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Okay! What do I do first?”
“Well, what do we need before we can have a fire?” Asked Marcus.
“Marshmallows!” Said Jack.
“Close. What else?”
“Matches?”
“Sure, for now.”
Jack looked at his father, puzzled. “What do you mean ‘for now’?”
“I mean, matches are a good start, but they’re not the only way.”
“well yeah, lighters” said Jack.
“Lighters too, but there are other ways. Flint and steel, a magnifying glass, a 9-volt battery.”
“What?” Jack was suddenly skeptical, “a 9-volt battery?”
“Trust me,” said Marcus, “It works.”
“Huh.”
“Okay, so the answer we’re looking for is Tinder, Kindling, and bigger wood that will burn for longer. Your job right now is to gather things you think might make good tinder and put them in little piles so we can see them. I’ll get the kindling and larger firewood.”
From there, Jack and Marcus spent the next half hour looking for Birch Bark, Pine Needles, Jack Pine, and all manner or small flammable things. Marcus showed him how the exposed grain of the wood burnt much better than the bark and how to split wood safely with the hatchet and a broad stick.
Then they built a fire, and had their s’mores. Even today, the swell of pride at the memory of their first fire burned within him when he remembered that day. The way that Jack had been so careful of the fire, without being timid; how he’d built up the size slowly, heeding Marcus’s warning that fire was easier to grow than to shrink; and how at the beginning, the fire had almost gone out, but jack had quickly grabbed some tinder and gently breathed life back into the fire.
Jack took to it and was even excited to split the wood. They had laughed so hard the first time jack had come up with the “death chant technique” of getting more power from his 10 year-old body with each strike. He’d hit it shouting “Die! Die! Die!” and would manage to get a surprising amount of power out of his strokes.
They stayed up late into the night and were treated to clear skies under a multitude of glittering, glimmering stars. At least, that’s how Marcus remembered it.
Who knows what the weather had been. It didn’t matter. Sometimes details are shaped and perfected in our memory allowing the spirit and meaning we attach to them to shine through, more than if they were unrefined.
“But why do you assume the killer and victim knew each other?” He asked.
“Most people feel it’s rude to murder someone they haven’t been introduced to. That’s generally reserved to governments and serial killers.” was my reply.
There are always subtle clues, as anyone familiar with police procedurals on television would recognize. Lack of a forced entry, two glasses on the coffee table, both with coasters, and the man’s coat hung in the entry closet, when there are no other signs of a male inhabitant at this apartment.
Marcus walked over to the cabinet where he kept the whiskey (or Whisky- a point of contention at the local watering hole with any Canadians who came over.) It was a Laphroaig quarter cask. Not easy to come by in Northern Minnesota. It had been a gift years ago from that guy, Nick was it? The guy who held up the convenience store. That’s funny, the clerk up and moved back to Minneapolis, thinking it was a lot safer there for some reason. People are really funny, always closing the barn doors after the cows escape. Probably in the hopes that it would look like a divine miracle to anyone who might own the cows and barn; and who might be in the mood to ask questions vis a vis the state of the doors before they had been closed.
People always looked for an answer they could rely on as ultimate without having to ask too many questions. Probably why religions, political parties, astrology and the NFL are so successful, he thought. Wave a flag *BAM* instant identity. Crisis over.
Never mind the fact that it was the only holdup they’d ever had at that time in Ely. Never mind that he was a LOT more likely to get held up in any part of Minneapolis than he was up here. He was filled with religious fervor after that too. It would have depressed Marcus to think of it when he was a young man, now it just made him somber.
Ironic too, that the guy who he knocked out and got sent to prison saved his earnings and had his mother deliver the bottle to him. Sealed and unopened, Marcus wasn’t a fool. He knew some people harbored grudges. The letter that accompanied it thanked him for busting him and getting him sent away. It explained that he’d been desperate to get a score or fix or whatever, and that being in treatment in prison was working for him. Kept him away from most of the people and that he was hanging with the crowd of “Jesus-freaks” who spent their time in the gym.
Another irony, Marcus had mused. Here he was an Atheist, doing God’s work. He opened the bottle and shared a shot with the kid’s mother, who’d had an uncomfortably hopeful look in her eye. Afterward, he penned a letter thanking the young man and telling him he’d had a nice conversation and raised a glass with his mother and should he get out on time or early to look him up if he needed some work.
Marcus didn’t really need the work of course, but the kid would have a hard enough time when he got out. Maybe if he really had changed, he could vouch for the kid and get him work at one of the local bars or something.
It was odd though, that of the three, the guy who got sent to prison would be the most grateful. Marcus supposed it had something to do with human nature. Or maybe because he realized that prison was a lot better than where he might have gone if Bleeker hadn’t been taking a piss at the time.
Marcus looked at the bottle and the hash marks he’d drawn to make sure that when the kid got out they’d be able to share a last glass. Just a few months.
He hadn’t heard from Nick in several years, but people had a way of popping back into your life when you didn’t expect it.
Janet made her way up the driveway to the rambler on the edge of town. A wooden sign had been cut with a jigsaw to form the name “The Bleekers” at an upward angle, and featured a wood-burned Loon on a lake edged with pine trees. The left side of the walk was considerably cleaner than the right, meaning either someone who was in a hurry to shovel and didn’t do the edging, or possibly someone who favored one side over the other, when it came to physical activity.
She knew which it was. Sheriff Bleeker retired some fifteen years prior after getting shot by some meth head who had held up a convenience store the Sheriff happened to be at. He’d been a popular figure in town, generous and more Andy Griffith than Wyatt Earp.
Getting shot had come as a surprise to the law man, who’d come out of the bathroom at just the wrong moment completely unaware. The papers didn’t report what happened next, but there were rumors of a black truck and a man in a Fur-Lined coat leaving the scene of the crime after the paramedics arrived. The paramedics found the assailant cuffed in the back seat of the car, asking to please be taken to jail now.
Janet had been surprised reading the story. It was obvious that Marcus had been there, but why had he been able to leave the scene without making a report. That just didn’t add up.
She knocked on the door.
“Sheriff Bleeker?” The sounds of an uneven gait assisted by a cane on a wood floor were audible as Janet waited outside. The door opened to reveal a bearded man of about 50 who was still well-built, despite his infirmity.
“Come in Ms. Rogers. I haven’t been a Sheriff in awhile now, so Frank will do me just fine.” He lead her into a house whose walls were covered in pictures of kids of various ages, mostly fishing or doing other cabin-related activities. A picture of a pyramid of water skiers from the 1970s caught her attention as she followed him through the living room to the kitchen. They sat at a table by a window.
“Alright Frank. In that case, please call me Janet.” He nodded in reply.
“What can I do for you Janet?”
“I’m looking for information about Marcus.”
“Now why would I give you information about Marcus Ms. Rogers?” She noted the change in demeanor.
“Look, he’s not in trouble or anything. I just want to find out more about him for an article I’m writing for the Echo.” The retired lawman’s shoulders relaxed fractionally, “There have been rumors and stories floating around The Range for years and I’d like to find out which of them are true and which are not. I’d also like to get people together for a dinner to thank him for the effect he’s had on the community.”
“Marcus knows about this does he?”
“I’ve spoken to him,” she said stating an unrelated truth, hoping it would work.
“Well, in that case, what would you like to know? Though I must say, the man is frosty. I have a hard time believing he’d take part in any sort of honors or awards or anything. Doesn’t seem the type.”
“Well, you know what they say about appearances.” She said, hastily. “I’d like to know what happened at the Voyageur 66.”
The Sheriff grunted and shifted uncomfortably. She continued. “It’s just that I’ve read the story in the Echo about the incident and there are some things that don’t add up. I was just hoping I could hear the story from you and see if there’s something interesting to follow up on.”
“Well you’ll have to understand, I’m not the best witness” he said with a rueful chuckle. “On account of I didn’t see anything after having been shot in the hip by some hop-head.”
“Hop-head? The papers said he was a meth user.”
“Hop-head, crackhead, glue sniffer. Whatever. The man was high as a kite apparently and decided to hold up the station. I came out of the bathroom after he made everyone get on the floor, he turned and shot me. I think I heard someone say “Excuse me” then, heard a few thumps. The rest I’m telling you I found out afterward in the official reports. Apparently Marcus came over with the first aid kit from behind the counter, staunched the bleeding and made the clerk hold pressure on the wound while he called paramedics.” He paused and shook his head. “He must’ve grabbed my cuffs off me or something because when the paramedics got there, they said that the criminal was in the back seat wrapped up like a christmas present, polite as you please.”
“Sorry, that’s all I know.”
“Did they ever release the name of the criminal, or is the clerk around?”
“Nah, the clerk was just some kid who moved to the cities shortly afterward. The criminal is probably still serving time at Arrowhead, drugs plus assault with a deadly weapon on a cop isn’t likely to get him a light sentence.”
“I see. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“No. I’d just recommend you make sure this is alright with Marcus before you go making a fuss. He generally doesn’t like that.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Frank.” She stood up and extended a hand. “Thank you for your help.”
“No problem.” He smiled and shook her hand. “Marcus is a good man. I’d like people to know about that too.”
“I’ll see my self out. Bye now.”
“Good bye ma’am.”
