Sample Sunday

Judging by what I see on the social networks I am part of, a lot of authors these days reserve Sundays for samples of their works. While the title is not locked in my mind just yet, this story is going to be part of the new book featuring new and previously published stories. Hopefully this small sample will pique your interest.

Burdens

“Sheriff?”

The radio constantly crackled with annoying background static but the voice of the day dispatcher, Sue Ellen, broke through. Her being the sister of the mayor should have meant a quick approval of my budgetary request for new radios, but it hadn’t.

“Go ahead, Sue Ellen.”

“Miss Graves down at the High School just called in and told me to tell you it has been exactly thirty-three minutes since she called the first time and she wants to know when, exactly, you will be there .”

Sheriff Max Preston suppressed a curse and shook his head. Graves was a human abomination, plain and simple, and would do the world a favor if she could find an open pit to Hell and fall in. Every week she came up with another hoop for him to jump through and there was nothing he could do to avoid the damn things. Not that he could say any of that on the radio for everyone in the county to hear on their scanners.  Sue Ellen, having all the brains and the only working moral compass in her family, waited for him to respond.

“I am headed there now, Dispatch.”

Sue Ellen acknowledged and the radio went back to its usual static- filled self. Preston drove down Main Street, passing through the stoplight at each end and then headed out on the narrow two-lane road that went by the old Thompson place south of town and the nearby church Thompson had built in an effort to save his immortal soul. If half the legendary exploits were true, no church on God’s green earth could have saved him.....

Kevin R. Tipple ©2012