Author: Charles Wells
Category: Nonfiction
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Deputy Sheriff, Bill Jacobs, on his way to a late breakfast after working the night shift, was tired and short tempered. He had answered two major emergency calls during the night. One was to a pair of fighting drunks at the juke joint near the river. The other was to a husband and wife who were enjoying their own drunken weekend binge. He separated them and stopped the fight and as usual with those two, neither would press charges against the other. “I can’t have him arrested for hitting me, officer. He’s gotta’ go to work Monday morning to feed the youngins.”
There was little he could do except warn them and leave. Two hours later, they were at it again so he locked them up and called a relative to come care for the small children, one still in diapers, for God’s sake.
“That was one crazy night,” he thought.
The Police radio in Jacob's car crackled. It was the dispatcher, Brain, calling for a unit to respond to the Pary estate. Miss Abatha Pary was reporting a trespasser in her south field, driving a strange car with an out of state tag.
Jacobs lifted the mike and said, “Brian? I’m only a couple of miles from there. I’ll take that call.”
“Roger, Jacobs.” The dispatcher chimed.
“I wish that kid would stop. That joke is older than I am.”
He steered the heavy patrol car off the graveled pavement and into the mouth of a narrow dirt road. The tires belched twin clouds of thick red dust into the dry air behind. Jacobs’s thought, “Probably some out of state visitor who stopped to take a leak in the bushes.”
Such things happened a lot in West Creek County because the Interstate passing through had no public rest rooms for 40 miles east or west. Many travelers, caught between the rest stops, would pull off the highway, find a nice, deserted looking dirt road, and head for the bushes.
As Bill’s patrol car rounded a sharp curve, he saw a red Jeep Cherokee parked close to the ditch. He pulled up behind, noting the car’s body and tires showed little signs of heavy traveling on dirt roads. The car carried a North Carolina tag. Across the bottom it read, “First in Flight.” First in the bushes after forty miles of empty Interstate and floating bladder.
Picking up the radio mike, he called the tag information into Brian and sat back waiting. It took a long, anxious two minutes before the response came. “No wants and no warrants. Vehicle registered to Charles E. Veal. Gastonia, North Carolina.”
Jacobs took a deep breath, acknowledged the report, and got out of the car. He glanced across the field toward the clump of trees and underbrush where he knew the cemetery would be. “I hope this is going to be a nice, peaceful, visit, Chuck.”