CHAPTER 5: WELCOME TO STOCKARD CREEK

A drunk man in his underpants, waving a pool cue in the middle of the street and threatening to attack people, was never a positive thing for a police officer.

In fact, it is quite the opposite.

When Stockard Creek, Montana Police Chief Keith Taylor – already cursing himself for choosing to work late tonight – arrived on-scene, the situation had already been handled, but it was quite a sight in the main downtown section. Close to midnight, most of the stores and the restaurants were closed, but the taverns remained open – along with Stick’s Diner, which was owned and operated by a three-hundred-plus pound Samoan man with the nickname ‘Stick.’ A few guests at the town’s primary hotel – the renovated five-story classic structure ‘Hotel Hayes’ – had spilled out onto the sidewalk to check out the action.

And there were the usual suspects on-scene, like a fire truck – which had no reason at all to be there – the fire department’s rescue unit and an ambulance. Everyone had their emergency flashers on – of course they did as this was a show, was it not? Two of his night shift officers were there – including the supervising sergeant – and a third officer who was the first to respond to the underpants wearing, pool cue toting, drunken man.

The drunken man – a tall, thin landscaping worker named Darwin Jenks – was now strapped down to a gurney in the back of the open ambulance and he had apparently calmed down enough to let the paramedics have a look at him. Keith went first to his officer, who was seated on the front bumper of one of the fire rigs, mostly being made fun of by her co-workers.

Officer Lizzy Chatham had been on the force for just under three years and – although one of his most impressive, dedicated and efficient officers – she was also physically small, which could put her at odds when someone as physically imposing as Darwin Jenks went off. When Keith walked up to her, she was having one of the rescue workers put a couple of band aids on a pretty nasty clobber mark on her left temple.

When he walked up, she was already waving him off.

“I know, I know, Chief – don’t even say it,” she said. “The jerk whopped me in the head with that pool cue so quickly, I didn’t even see it coming.”

“Seriously Liz?” Keith asked. ‘Mano-y-mano with Jenks? He’s a walking tarantula, you know that.”

But she frowned and made a little ‘pfft’ sound.

“Come on, Chief, when I’m first on-scene, my backup is a few minutes out, and that walking tarantula is in the middle of the road hitting vehicles with a pool cue, it sort of makes my decision easier,” she said. “Plus, he IS in custody, right? How do you think he got there?’

To this, she had a point, and he had to acknowledge that, which he did without saying anything else.

“Why didn’t you use your Taser on him?” He asked.

“I tried,” she said. “It was…. Ineffective,” she said.

“Was it ineffective or did you miss him with it?”

“I’d rather not say,” was her answer.

One of her fellow officers came up quickly, said ‘hey Liz, close your eyes for a second, you’ve got something…’ And when she closed her eyes, he smudged some blue cue chalk on the tip of her nose.

She quickly batted him away and wiped her nose, but she was smiling: “You all suck!’

As the sergeant on-scene made sure things were organized and being handled correctly, Keith walked to the back of the open ambulance and climbed inside. How many ambulances had he crawled inside over the years? A hundred…? Maybe more…? He side-stepped closer to Darwin Jenks and sat down on a bench next to him but made sure to stay out of the way of the techs who were prepping the man for transport.

“Looks like you had a tough night, Darwin,” he said.

The walking tarantula grinned at him and flexed his fingers, with both wrists strapped tightly to the secured gurney. His eyes were bloodshot – from alcohol or narcotics or, most likely, a combination of both. He had blood in his mouth, which had turned his front teeth a pinkish color, and his pupils were dancing rapidly. Still, he just kept smiling that creepy smile.

“She’s a tough little shit,” Jenks said about Officer Chatham. “I struck the first blow, though. Got her good…”

This hung in the air for a minute, but Darwin Jenks’ eyes sparkled with malice, a toxic mix of chemicals and something even darker.

“You know I like ‘em when they fight, Chief…”

Keith moved his right hand so quickly, and with such force, that the tarantula man didn’t have time to even comprehend what was happening. Keith’s hand shot between the man’s legs and clamped onto his testicles with such vice-like strength, that any smile, laughter or smirk died instantly. He gulped in a final breath of air and winced; the wind sucked right out of him. The EMT’s kept readying the ambulance for transport to the hospital and went about their business without so much as a second glance. Keith’s grip tightened to the point that, if he increased the pressure much more, he would pop the man’s testicles like a pair of grapes.

With that grip still firmly in place, Keith lowered his face closer.

“This is your one and only warning, Jenks,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Look at me…’ And when Darwin Jenks tried NOT to, the grip on his tortured testicles tightened, causing him to moan and cry out, though he fought hard not to. “… you put your hands on one of my officers, one of my people, and you did it with malice. The people in this town, the citizens here – it is my job to look out for them, to protect them, as much as I can. And I take it very, very seriously…” His face was so close to Darwin Jenks’ now that he could smell the man’s breath and hear the wheezing coming from deep within his throat. “If you hit one of my officers again – or if you abuse anyone in this town, especially a woman – I will tear your heart out and dump your lifeless corpse in one of the old mine shafts. Do you understand me?” When Darwin Jenks just moaned and gritted his teeth and seemed on the verge of passing out, Keith squeezed harder. “Do. You. Understand. Me?”

And finally, when he was physically unable to go much further, the walking tarantula managed to nod and repeat, ‘yes yes yes… I got it!’

When Keith hopped back out of the ambulance, everyone in the immediate vicinity could hear Darwin Jenks’ shout – incredibly loudly – ‘I’m SORRY, Officer Lizzy! I’m SORRY!’ And then the ambulance bay doors were pulled shut.

With a pair of fresh band aids pressed over the cut on her head, Officer Lizzy Chatham merely shook her head when Keith walked back up to her.

“You know, Chief – I sure do hope to meet her one day,” she said.

“Meet who…?” He asked.

“The woman in your past who broke your heart so badly that you seem to take great pleasure in crushing the balls of your fellow man,” she said. “I’d consider some hardcore counseling, if I were you.”

He frowned: “Just go finish your damn report.”

And the scene, for whatever excitement it had produced, was mostly fading away. The small crowds had begun to drift back to wherever they had come from, the cell phones had been put away and the broken pool cue tossed into a garbage can. The action was over and the situation handled, meaning Keith’s presence there wasn’t necessary, so he headed back to his patrol vehicle.

The Stockard Creek Police Department was located in an old credit union on the northside of downtown, on the main strip, near the courthouse. It was a short drive from where the confrontation with Darwin Jenks had taken place and, had he not been coming in from the opposite side of town when the call came in, he would have just walked down to it.

But as he pulled in front of the building, relatively lit up with the night’s activity, he saw the solitary figure seated on a bench in front of the main front door. The figure didn’t move, hands clasped together passively in the shadowy lap and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to anything at all.

Instead of pulling around back, Keith swung around in the street and pulled up to the curb.

When he got out, he sauntered over to the bench, and the person seated upon it, and plopped down next to her.

“I had to do a double take to make sure you weren’t dead,” he said.

The person he’d sat down next to was an old woman – loose fitting jeans, a knitted sweater of a thousand different color schemes, homemade bracelets around each wrist and a dream catcher necklace. Her hair, which was probably blonde a hundred years ago, had gone entirely to gray, but she still carried herself with an almost regal grace and no one – other than Keith himself – would talk to her so flippantly.

She waved him off.

“I’ll outlive you most likely, Chief,” Sarah Sessom told him. ‘I have made it this far, right? What’s stopping me from keepin’ on keepin’ on? My health isn’t that bad – other than the usual aches and pains. I am built like my grandfather clock.”

“Sarah, you have like six grandfather clocks.”

“The one in my living room, by the fireplace.”

“You have three in your living room by the fireplace,” he said.

“You know, Keith Taylor, you are becoming a real pain in my old butt,” she said, but she was trying not to smile. “I may put a little hex on you yet.”

He stretched his legs out and crossed them at his ankles.

“And pausing for a moment’s rest in the middle of the night in front of the police station is usually NOT something you tend to do,” he said. “Which leads me to conclude that something is up. So, joking aside…? What have you seen?”

The position of the bench allowed them to look down the hillside through the town itself, with the streetlights illuminated and vehicles – dark but shiny – lining the streets. The skeletal bridge at the far end of town was light with light green and blue lights where it spanned over the creek. Beyond that main street, the residential neighborhoods that leaked and spread back into the mountains that formed the walls of the canyon the town was built in.

Sarah Sessom was Stockard Creek’s oldest resident – and its’ wisest.

When she traveled the town, she did so on foot in old, leather sandals and, a visit from Miss Sarah was considered an unspoken moment of profound positivity. Some people awakened in the middle of the night to find her on their back decks or in their yards, seated and feeding night critters with whatever combination of nuts or treats she’d brought along with her. If someone saw her out there, they might call out ‘good evening, Miss Sarah’ and she would wave back or return the greeting by using their first names and asking about the family.

More than a few times someone would ask if she wanted company, but she would merely smile and respond with some personal tidbit about the family that no one should know. ‘You should get your rest Thomas, that work presentation in the morning isn’t going to conduct itself’ or ‘next time, Beverly – when that baby’s feeling a little better.’

When Keith had taken the chief’s job, he’d been told that Miss Sarah was a human owl, and that explanation was really all he’d ever needed. She was a sort of all-knowing, all-seeing, tough-as-nails but sweet old lady the town would be lost without. He loved her visits and he loved teasing her, mostly because her left eyebrow would arch and she’d study him like he was – at times – the strangest creature in the universe.

As they sat there for a moment, the door to the police station opened and one of his night officers brought a hot cup of tea down, which he handed to her.

“Here you go, Miss Sarah…”

She accepted it and politely smiled: “Oh Ronald, your momma would be so proud of you! Such a sweet man.’

Keith frowned: ‘Are you serious right now?’ But the officer merely went back inside. “You’re having my police officers make you tea when you stop by?”

“I don’t make them do anything, Chief – they simply offer,” she leaned closer to him and spoke in a whisper: “They seem to think of me as a bit of a good luck charm.”

“You’re not an omen, Sarah,” Keith said. “You’re just… you.”

“So you say…” She sipped her tea. “I just happen to have some notions, dreams or premonitions over the years and, let’s just say, some of them proved fruitful.”

“And what percentage of times have they proved fruitful?” He asked. “Ballpark it for me…”

She shrugged: “Oh, I don’t know – ninety-five or ninety six percent of the time? Maybe a tick higher?”

“I’m not calling you a wise old owl, no matter how high that number goes,” he told her.

She worked on her tea for a moment, and he knew the time for pleasantries was nearing an end. There were two ways that Sarah Sessom lapsed into silence. The first was when she sort of smiled to herself and anyone with her could feel the calm around them. The second was different somehow, like a soft tension emanated from her that rippled through the air.

“Okay, so let’s hear it,” Keith said. ‘The air changed.”

She smiled: “You and your ‘the air changed’ nonsense.’ But, when he remained silent, she nodded. “There’s… something is coming our way, Chief. Something big. It is not a singular person, it is not… it’s an event, a seismic change, or the potential for one. I can’t grab hold of anything more, but it’s mobile, it’s heading this way.” She looked over at him, but he stared straight ahead. “It’s light being chased by darkness – an awful, awful darkness.”

“That’s life in general, right?” He said, trying to downplay it a bit. When she didn’t smile, he sighed. “What are you thinking? You’re saying it’s not a singular event – like a weather issue. Is someone going to get sick? Is the mill closing?”

When she turned to look at him, there was something in her eyes that he didn’t quite recognize. It was so foreign to him that he had to look away from her. If he had to guess what it was, he would be tempted to call it admiration, but he brushed that aside.

“You’re our Alpha, Keith Taylor,” she said. “In so many ways and beyond being our Chief of Police. You are the best of us – and this town relies on you. But this – what is coming – it is… we are all going to be tested.” She gestured to the silent town around them – the buildings and the homes hidden within the tall trees. “… this is going to be a doozy.”

To this, he smiled: “That is it…? That’s what my wise old owl has to call it? A doozy? Who wrote ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes?”

“That was Ray Bradbury,” she said.

“So, something doozy comes this way, maybe.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly: “Or draw on the lyrics of Led Zeppelin: ‘For now I smell the rain, and with it, pain – and it’s headed my way.’

“I think I prefer the doozy term instead.”