Sheriff Matt Whitlock Confesses to a Lesson in Zen after Hours

I like it quiet like this, Alton. I like to think. I love the way spring light falls easy, soft. This morning I was driving the cruiser, savoring gold pollen everywhere out in the south of the county. Real nice, seeing forsythia and daffodils, ditch irises, and a few Cherokee roses opening white. It was a blue day, and I had a Tampa Jewel, just counting cows, seeing an April breeze in the catkins and new leaves, the radio off. I know that’s hardly right, but curse any citizen who’d grudge me an hour’s peace. Then I started seeing this marksmanship in the caution signs, the yellow diamonds that warn of deer or curves ahead, a steep grade—there’s one of those. Four circles and a jagged hole, likely a thirty-eight slug, smack in the center neater than Willard cleaves meat at the joint. A dozen and more. I got mad because I get paid to protect what the county commission declares holy— the park with its petting zoo, the rebel sentry on the square, and all the highway signs— and here’s all indications that some felon has no respect, some felon who can shoot. I admit my feelings were mixed, that right indignation at the broken law, but envy of his eye for centers. Mind you, I saw nary a rip on the fringes or a near miss. Bull’s-eyes, every sign I saw. A fool is what I feel, you understand, cause I motored over to Pig Burton’s store near The Bottle and asked him—he was stacking feed sacks on Robert Ring’s vehicle— who the hell was the target king of Beat Three. Pig always has his hands in every pie; he’d know if some individual had been hauling off all the turkey shoot prizes. I know I should know, too, but a sheriff’s got beaucoup chores to do, mostly idiot paperwork. I’ve lost touch since the last bond vote hired me four new deputies, all dirt-dumb. Well, old Pig has that laugh he can’t hold back, and he points his finger pistol-like at Robert, who’s got a shamed look on his face. “Pow,” he says at me or Bob, looking back and forth, just “Pow.” Seems Bob’s boy Earl, the one that ain’t got the sense of a chicken under that cowlick red as a rooster comb, is known to have sneaked Bob’s Colt a week before and shot every yellow sign he could till his pa ran him down and whacked him good, then locked him in the fall-down curing shed overnight—he’s a hard man, but he loves that boy. I remember once ... but how the hell can any half-wit you wouldn’t trust to milk hit the bull by the eye first time he ever gets loose with a handgun? “It’s easy,” says Bob, less shamed than afraid now he’ll have to pay for fresh metal—his people have always been tight—but he’s showing a grin I don’t like. “Real easy. He just cuts loose from the hip, five short feet back, sometimes maybe six, and comes back later to paint the target circles wheresomever his bullet hits. He aims that paintbrush right smart.” Blessed if I don’t feel the fool for being full dumbstruck at a trick Earl’s not bright enough to see as a joke. But I didn’t write it up nor charge a soul, just ground my cigar in the dirt and helped myself to a Dr. Pepper, made believe it didn’t mean a thing, but all day I’ve been riding, listening to crime reports on state radio— robbery at the mall, attempted rape maybe, wrecks on the bypass and a set fire in Brill’s deer woods. It gets to be too much. I shouldn’t even take the time to sit here watching this dark space where folks have been dancing all evening, hearing the quiet after all those raucous songs, but Alton, don’t you see, the feeble boy’s right, or half right, at least? It all comes to the same, whether you get what you want in the end or want what you get. The law works that way: each law makes more crime, but it’s not my job to say. Warm up my cup just one last time. I’ve got to circle Ampex once more before I turn it home. God, this dark feels right, no matter what flowers out there shed spring light. The dark is what hits me as holy. I’m calling it a day. Catch you later. Night.