Today I thought I would share a sample
from my short story titled Burdens.
It was originally conceived for an anthology that Texas author Milton Burton
was a part of several years ago. Ultimately,it didn’t make the cut. Then, all
too soon before I had another opportunity, Milton passed. I still miss him
tremendously and think about him often.
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.
About
five minutes later, Preston turned onto the small visitor parking lot at the
new high school. Old Dooley High, home of the Fighting Bobcats, where he had
toiled for four years in hot classrooms and on hotter athletic fields, was gone
with nothing on the land to mark its passing.
The new high school had the same name but none of the history, having
been built a mile away from the old school on the site where the prison was
supposed to have been built and by the same contractors using pretty much the
same plans. So it wasn’t surprising that the high school had become a three-
storied, hermetically sealed monstrosity that looked more like a prison
building than a school and had none of the charm or history of the old
building.
After
checking in again with dispatch, Preston touched the toe of a dusty brown boot
against the inside of the driver's door and pushed hard. With a squeal, the
recalcitrant door opened and allowed him to get out of the patrol car. Just
like new communications equipment, they needed new patrol cars, since one of
the three was almost always in the shop. That too was going to have to wait
until next year, if not longer. Pushing the door shut and trying to get his
poker face on, he started the long walk under the punishing Texas sun down the
blinding sidewalk to the building.
He
hated these calls that just wasted his time and the department’s meager
resources. The whole point in coming back home was to avoid the big city
nonsense. He wanted the freedom he’d had as a boy to breathe, to help those who
truly needed help, which was why he had become a cop in the first place, and to
get a part of him back that he had so carelessly thrown away years ago when he
left home without telling anyone. His
family was long gone, as was pretty much his town and everything he had grown
up with, and nothing was like he remembered. Even the old Miller General Store
where he used to buy comics and, as he got older, paperbacks with lurid covers
that hinted at forbidden delights within was gone. Times had changed, and certainly
not for the better, he thought as he pressed the door buzzer and waited for
somebody to let him in.
Classes
had ended at four and forty-five minutes later there wasn't a student in sight.
No kids loitered around the building making plans, illicit or otherwise, for
before and after the football game tonight.
Freed from their daily prison, the kids had fled to parts unknown, and
he couldn’t blame them since he would have run away as fast as he could every
day, too.
The
lock finally popped in release and Sheriff Preston walked inside. Just like it had last month during the fake
bomb threat, the place smelled antiseptic and sterile. Back when he was in school, a school smelled like
a school. He wasn’t sure what this place smelled like, but it wasn’t a school.
If
you liked the above sample, there are 15 more short stories in Mind
Slices: A Collection of New and Previously Published Stories. The book
is a mix of fantasy, science fiction, and mystery with many stories containing
elements of more than one genre. $2.99 it is available online at:
If
you have not yet read the book, I hope you take a chance on it.
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