This world

Chapter 1

“Blleeeehhhh!!!! Bleeeeehhhh!!!!! Bleeehhhh!!!!”

“Fuuuuuuuu you stfupid mofffer…. Sonnofffffabishhh” my muffled voice came from beneath the pillow where I had hidden my head the night before. It was a common habit of mine. I like to wake up in the dark because any light just increased the pain from the hangover I always had. My hand flailed out from under the blanket blindly searching for the damnable alarm clock.

“Bllleeeehhhh!!!! Bleeeehhhh!!! Bleeehh….” The last bleehhh was cut short by my fist smashing down on the snooze button on top of the thing. I will never understand why they couldn’t have made alarm clocks with a more pleasing wake up tone. Like, I don’t know, a soft feminine voice whispering “Time to get up Tim, you gorgeous handsome man. You need to get up so that the world may enjoy seeing the epitome of what the world has to offer in the perfect god like man.” Yea, that would be better. Cause then I could persuade myself to get up by arguing “who am I to deprive the world of all of this.”

I rolled out of bed and stumbled to my sink, which was not in my bathroom as I technically didn’t have a bathroom. I lived in the upper floors of a complex in one of those flat type apartments. You know the ones where everything is kind of in one room. No walls really, just like an area where all your living room shit goes, another where all your kitchen mess is at, and then a corner where you put your bed and bathroom. The toilet did at least have a little closet type thing around it. There had been some awkward moments revolving around that toilet, a dinner date, and a bean burrito but we won’t get into that right now.

Wiping the smears off the mirror I realized why they don’t make alarm clocks that say those sweet things to me. Because they would all of be lies. Standing six feet flat I was nothing short of average. My sandy blonde averagely straight hair was in mats and sticking up in all directions, my spotty average beard was just that, shaggy and reddish in color and my five o’clock shadow looked more like a five-day shade. I looked rough to say the least, but this was the best I had to offer most days so I splashed a little water on my face, popped my two tiny little prescribed pills, donned a ball cap, grabbed the keys to my bike and left the flat.

Let me stop you before you let your mind roam to far. You’re thinking “Oh shit! He just left the house with nothing but a ball cap and a smile!” While there are some events well in my past where I was seen in the streets of my junior college town wearing little more than that I have put those days behind me. A fact I am entirely proud of. No. I didn’t leave the house wearing nothing but a ball cap and a smile. I just wore what I had on when I passed out the night before. It was my basic everyday attire. Jeans, Levi 527 because that’s what real men wear, a t-shirt, something with a graphic on it. Today was a Star Wars themed shirt with Han Solo in profile, pistol drawn, and text reading “Damn right I shot first!” And a pair of old busted down cowboy boots. Before you ask, no I was not a cowboy and did not profess to be. I can ride a horse and I did grow up raising cattle on a farm but I didn’t wear a cowboy hat or belt buckles and spurs nor did I carry a colt 45 revolver and to me those are the things that identify you as a cowboy. Real cowboys don’t exist anymore. There are no Doc Holidays or Wyatt Erps. Mostly there are just a bunch of skinny jean flat billed cap wearing individuals who spend daddy’s money driving jacked up dually’s pretending to be or wanting to be called cowboys but not wanting to put in the work it took to earn the right to carry that name. No, I wasn’t a cowboy. I didn’t wear spurs or cowboy hats or carry a revolver. I carried instead a Smith and Wesson M & P 9mm. Thus, completing the fact that I am not a cowboy and the pistol also completing my attire.

My flat was four floors up in the complex, nearly the tallest building in town second only to the courthouse, and we had no elevator so it was the stairs every morning. Just like every morning I passed by the neighbor, Mrs. Macgonahugh, and her stray black cat she called Smokey. She fed that cat religiously every morning just outside her door at 7:48 A.M. She fed him a can of Sunkist Tuna Fish and everyone knew it because the smell of that tuna covered the whole floor she lived on, my floor, and the two below it. I knew she fed the cat at 7:48 each morning because generally this is when I was leaving. I left at 7:48 each morning because I was supposed to be at work by 7:30. So if feeding that cat was Mrs. Macgonahugh’s religion, being late and pissing off my boss was mine. I made it to the stairwell and started down.

I was immediately reminded for the need of pain killers in my life. Every step down the stairs was like someone driving nails into my head. Alcohol with a side of alcohol was the cause of the hangover and the reason for my pounding head. I guess you could add drinking a fifth every night to my religion. So, it’s drinking a fifth, being late and pissing off my boss. I don’t have a name for it yet but I feel like there’s a strong cult following out there already. The only draw backs I can see from my religion are these:

1. I’m constantly being screamed at by my boss that I need to grow the hell up and take some responsibility for my life.

2. I’m reminded constantly that alcohol will kill me one day and that I should dry up.

3. And last these neverending cases of the head bangers I get every morning.

Yea I call em’ head bangers. Picked the term up from likely my one and only friend growing up, Russell. Russell and I had met not long after my walking on air incident when he moved over from an elementary school that had closed down. So, he wound up at mine. We were friends then but we never really hit it off until ju.co. You should have seen his face when I told him about the walking on air fiassco. He grinned like a jack ass eating briars and said with a smile “Man I thought I was screwed in the head.” I promptly attempted to throat punch him for that. In truth he was actually one of the only people outside of doctors and shrinks I had ever told that to and after I tried to throat punch him and failed he laughed a little and said, “Shit man who knows. Maybe you did. Stranger shit has happened. Like, for example, the platypus.” We both had a good laugh and never spoke about walking on air again. We did have a lot of drunk discussions about the platypus. But anyways, nails in my head, stairs.

Gingerly, I made my way down the stairs and out the door where the immediate onslaught of sun light into my eyes made my head ache even worse and forced me to squint my eyes. I reached my bike and into the bag there and grabbed my cool as hell aviators. I don’t know if I pulled off the look but I liked to pretend I did. Don’t misunderstand all the self confidence and machoism. It is all a front, I’m real big on self-deprecating humor and making sure no one gets set up for disappointment. I figure if I play myself down for an idiot and general screw up when I do something right people will be extra impressed and when I do screw up everyone will just be expecting it. So, I pulled on my extra cool aviators that sat crookedly on my face and were likely way to large and I took the key from my pocket.

The cold steel of the chain that held my bike to the bike rack was kind of nice in the hot humid day. Yea, see you thought when I said bike I meant motor cycle. Nope. I am not nearly that cool, nor do I make enough money to afford a motorcycle. I’ve never actually even drove one. There was an accident that occurred in my past that left my mother hating them and she never wanted me to look at one let alone touch one.

Once I had the chain safely stowed away in the fanny pack of my bicycle, that’s what I called it because what the hell else do you call it, I pulled it from the rack and started towards work. My flat was only two blocks from the station located on town square and if I pedaled hard it took about five minutes for me to get there. The station was located just down the hill and around the corner from my flat. I rarely pedaled hard. Thirteen minutes later I snapped the chain back around the tire of the bike and started through the doors of the Pine County Sheriff’s Department. After graduating ju.co. I returned home with no other prospects and my dad called in a few favors with the Sheriff of Pine County who was a high school buddy of his and got me on the force. I started out as a guard at the jail which was a pretty easy job as we didn’t see to many crimes and the ones we did see were common place like Jimmy down the road being drunk in public. Jimmy would stay locked up on the weekends for various drunk in public acts of mischief. One of my favorites had been the time he had run through the town naked eventually taking a mock ride on the fiberglass statue of a bull outside of our towns only steak house. Yea good times.

Eventually I made it into a squad car which was my least favorite part of the job and I was in a hurry to put it behind me. There was absolutely nothing worse than dealing with little shit asses at a high school every day. One of the jobs of the deputy’s in my town was to assist in the security of the local high schools. It was rarely a fun time dealing with that. If the children didn’t point and snicker or shoot spit balls at you or your car you might manage to have a good day. Unlikely however as you still had to get passed the point that you were still dealing with the stupid little shit asses and their attempts to be cool while leaving school by burning up tires on asphalt as they left school and basically daring you to say something or write them a ticket. I rarely wasted my time doing this because all it would result in was the child’s dad calling my boss and complaining and cashing in a favor to get the little pimple faced smug kid out of trouble. So, I just let them be the little pains in the asses they were bred to be and went about my merry little way. Lucky for me I only had to spend about two years in that miserable god forsaken position.

As it turned out I had a good eye at crime scenes picking up the stuff others missed and putting it together to find the who done it’s of the crimes. That particular skill landed me the gig I have now, detective for the Pine County Sheriff’s Department. Since we are such a small town and we also have a city police force there isn’t a lot of call for our services but we handle those things outside of the city limits and those within that the city deems below their lofty sense of self. Just your basic stuff. Being that there isn’t much demand for our services there are only two of us on the force with the title detective. And speak of the devil.

“Hey! Wouldn’t go in there if I was you.” A small yet strong voice came from just behind me. I turned to see Cami coming up the steps. Cami was, as you have probably guessed, the other half of our force. She was shorter than me by about three or four inches, so she said, in truth she was more like a foot shorter at about 5’ 1” or maybe 5’2” if I had to guess, but full figured. I don’t mean to say she was over weight or fat or out of shape or anything of that sort. In fact, quite the opposite. She had curves I guess would be the best way to put it. Medium length brown hair was braided into a pony tail that landed in the middle of her back, her brown eyes were dark pools that invited you to stare, a smirk of a smile was perpetuate on her lips, and her toned mid-section flowed into a set of hips and a posterior that was simply awe inspiring. It was the kind of butt that was reserved for the women in movies, just curved in the right way. Perfectly shaped so that when you ran your hands down her back and over the top of it you would find them naturally cupping just beneath to pull her up and towards you. Umm… not that I’d know or anything. Cami had never shown much interest in me beyond just a co-worker. So, well, anyways.

“Why not?” was all I said after I had collected and controlled my thoughts hoping like hell she couldn’t read any of those thoughts on my face. God knows she’d have beat my head in for them. I turned to face her and saw as I suspected the smirk on her face

“Boss is in the mood to chew this morning and it’s your ass he has a taste for.” She spoke with laughter in her voice.

“When’s he not in a mood for my ass in his mouth?” I asked with my clever quick wittedness that was really just me being a smart ass.

“You know Tim that is not something to be proud of. If it was my ass he was chewing I’d be beggin’ him for forgiveness.” She said disapprovingly,

He would only be so lucky to have your ass in his mouth I thought. Or at least I thought I had thought because as soon as I was done thinking I heard her ask “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” I asked dumb founded.

“You said something about someone being lucky.” She stated with a blank look on her face.

“Naw, not me. You must be hearing things.” I fought to keep the nervousness out of my voice because I knew if she actually knew that I said that I would be rewarded with much the same treatment as if she had heard my thoughts. That is to say with a nice solid smack upside the head. She stared at me for a second deciding whether to believe me or not.

Finally, she gave a slow nod. “Uh-huh. Ok. Well anyways I don’t feel like listening to him lecturing you again about being late because we both know that is never gonna change. And I don’t want to hear him say how you never follow protocol and how you tend to screw every bit of ethics out of our investigations because even though you do those things and he hates you for it he won’t ever fire you.”

“Right he won’t” I smirked. “Because I am to damn good at what I do. Tim D. Calhoun always gets his man.” I pointed my finger at her like a gun and after fake firing it at her I blew the smoke from the barrel.

She smacked my hand aside. “No because he was good friends with your dad and knows you haven’t had your head on straight since everything happened and he doesn’t want to be the one to push you over the edge.”

I dropped my hand down to my side and just kind of stared at her.

“Anyways,” she continued “since I don’t feel like hearing it I am going in here to check our assignments and I will tell him you are out in the car getting things cleaned and ready.”

I just stood there still kind of dazed at her what happened statements until she pushed me lightly in the chest. “Also, do you think that shirt is appropriate for a cop to be wearing around with everything going on these days?”

I came to and glanced down to my shirt the “Damn right I shot first.” In bold letters across the front did seem a bit inappropriate. I promptly reached down took it off, turned it inside out, and put it back on. When my head popped out Cami was staring at me like something was wrong with me.

“Is my hair messed up? Do I have eye boogers or something? What is it?” I muttered as I ran my hands through my hair, plopped my hat back down on my head, and tried to wipe at my eyes.

She simply shook her head. “So much potential. So much waste.” She said. “Go wait in the car.”

I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about and I pondered it only a moment as she turned and walked through the door. Before the door shut I did get to stare just a moment longer. Did I mention she had some killer assets? Anyways, I turned and walked down the side walk to the lot where our standard issue Crown vic was parked. As I stepped off the side walk I noticed a couple of ju.co. girls running down the sidewalk having their morning jog, dressed in the basic sorority girl jogging kit that must come standard with every first year’s sorority dues, a sports bra and yoga pants and shoe’s. I think shoes. Hell, I never really made it past yoga pants to be honest. I’m sure they wore shoes though. I mean if they didn’t they would wind up with like super rough feet and what man wants to lay in bed with a beautiful woman only to find when she rubs her feet against your legs you have to check to make sure she’s not a man. So, yea shoes. They had to wear shoes. Lost in my musings about shoes I lost track of where I was headed stepped off the sidewalk and rolled my ankle which caused me to fall and shift into an epically awkward move. The girls laughed and pointed and then Cami appeared out of nowhere standing just above me filling my vision.

“Hey dummy, you really impressed them.” She said teasingly as she offered me her hand. I took it and groaned as she pulled me up. She was strong for her size and seemed to lift me with ease.

“Yea girls love that clumsy affable dork thing. They’ll be knocking each other over trying to get back to me.” I said glancing at the joggers as they bounced away. “So… boss still pissed?”

“Oh yea. Time to go. Get in.” she shoved the key in the door of the old crown vic to unlock it then leaned over to the other side giving the door handle a jerk to unlock the passenger side. We weren’t high enough up on the food chain to merit one of the new Dodge Chargers for a squad car. What we had was an old black worn out rust bucket of a crown vic. Never let Cami hear me or you or anyone else describe it that way. She treats that thing like it’s her child. She even named the damn thing. Inigo. I don’t know where the hell she got the name. The only time I ever asked about the name she replied in an accented voice while stroking the dash, “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.” I remember just staring at her as if she had become possessed and then the look of utter disbelief on her face. After that she just mumbled something under her breath about my lack of culture and spun the tires madly and drove like a bat out of hell for the next fifteen minutes. Vows were made shortly there after to never ask again.

Ten or twelve minutes went by before either of us spoke. Nothing abnormal there. This was our routine. We bantered before entering the car then spent the next few minutes getting comfortable and then she told me the duties for the day. It was kind of nice that it went that way. Gave me a little time to get my thoughts in order and see if I could recall anything from the black out drunk the night before. I never could but hey there’s no harm in trying right?

Cami spoke first as expected. “Hey what’s the deal with the call last night?”

The shock on my face must have been evident because she looked at me and laughed. “Don’t remember calling me last night huh?”

“No. Not really.” I replied a bit sheepishly. She just grinned and laughed a little.

“You were talking out of your ass. Must’ve been at least four or five sheets to the wind.” She laughed as she spoke. She had one of those laughs that was kind of staccato. Short chopped little bursts. Cute. Her statement though kind of struck me as odd. Not the fact that I was talking out of my ass because that was par for the course. It was more the fact that I was talking to her, over the phone more than anything. See, ever since this one horrific night with a cell phone and a now ex-girlfriend I have had a strict policy of cutting my phone off, removing the battery, and placing one part in my pocket and the other in my bike fanny before I begin my binge. Safer for all parties if my communications are limited to bar tenders and strangers.

“I called you?” my voice betrayed my surprise.

“Yea” she laughed a little and rolled her eyes. “Yea you did and boy howdy the line of shit you were feedin.”

“Well hell. I apologize. I thought I turned my phone off. I know how I can get when I’m fit shaced.” I said a little embarrassed.

“Yea you told me that last night to. Then you went on to explain how this was so important you had to disable all of your fail safes. Had to go out to your bike and get the battery from your bag, put it back in your phone just to call me because” and at this point she really laughed and a small snort escaped her nose or mouth or where ever the hell snorts escape from. A combination of both I think. “you were in mortal danger.” She broke down into more laughs at this point. I thought she was going to have to pull over she was laughing so hard.

“I used those words?” I asked feeling more like a jack ass every second. “I actually said “I am in mortal danger?” I used my best over dramatic super hero voice.

“Oh hell yes you did and it gets better. You remember what you were in danger from?” she almost couldn’t stand holding it in. When I shook my head side to side to indicate I had no freaking clue what she was talking about she almost vomited the words out. “Your imagination!!!!” and then she did have to pull the car over. The tears streaming down her face had impaired her ability to drive. “You actually said “I am in danger from my god forsaken imagination Cami…I can’t control it. It…It…it’s coming after me…” she said in a mocking voice with a slurred and delirious edge to it that I could only assume was her best impersonation of drunk me.

My head shook side to side slowly as I stared forward, in disbelief of what she was saying. While drunk me has done some crazy things in his life I can’t ever recall becoming a complete loon from a few drinks. “You sure it was me?” I asked unwilling to believe I had really been that far gone.

“Shit yea it was you. Who else do you know that calls me Cami?” Cami wasn’t her real name. Jackie Camille Ambles was her whole name. At work everyone called her Detective Ambles and at home everyone called her Jackie. Can’t really be certain why I started calling her Cami, I just did and she love hates it in that way that if anyone else does it she stares daggers into their soul and they never make the mistake again.

“I must have really been sloshed huh?” I asked with a little laugh.

“No more than usual I don’t think.” She shrugged.

“Well I can tell you this. That will be the last time I have sushi with bourbon.” She laughed at this and pulled back onto the road finally having gotten her laughter under control. I’m certain that it had to be the sushi. I loved the stuff but if it made me into a crazy person I’d steer clear of it for a while.

“Where we headed?” I asked in an attempt to steer away from any further telling of my drunken shenanigans from the night before.

“You’ll feel right at home. A bar in town called Stevie D’s.”

I chuckled. “Yea I know the hole.”

The tall green pines that were a major source of income for people in this area, as they sold them for clearcutting and processing at the various papermills around, rolled by for a few miles until we came to a red clay dirt road about ten miles outside of town. Red clay dirt roads were pretty common place around here. There was one red clay dirt road for every three or four paved ones. Some of them went on for miles and miles. My buddy Russell and I had taken to a few for his bachelor’s party years ago. I was his best man and as tradition dictates the best man does the bachelor party. My suggestions of strippers and cocaine had been shrugged off. Instead it was dirt roads and bud lights that he wanted. So that’s what we did and I tell you this a few more beers and we might have gotten lost. We managed to travel almost a hundred miles without seeing the first paved road. It was a good time.

The lack of rain over the past few weeks had left the road dusty and as we turned and started down it a thick cloud of red dust trailed behind us. Thick enough it blocked out a lot of the rising sun and gave the interior of the old crown vic a rusty hue. A few more miles down the dusty lane and across a rickety old wooden bridge that spanned a small creek you could jump with little effort so it kind of made the bridge seem a bit over kill, stood a weather aged wooden barn that had been transformed into a small bar. The kind you only see in movies, with a dirt floor and light that could pass through the cracks of the wood paneling along the side. On the top front part of the barn, the gable I think it’s called, the name of the bar, “Stevie D’s”, was painted in a true blue and lined in a bright orange. The familiarity of the place washed over me in a wave. Right by the front door just inside, I knew without entering the place, was a picture of the namesake of the bar. He stood about six one, red beard, red hair, and wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled and even when he didn’t. Crows feet mom had always called them. She always said it was a good thing, meant you had lived a life full of joy and laughter and that was a good life to have lived. Unconsciously I raised my fingertips to touch my own crow’s feet. My thoughts wondered a little.

Mom had always loved that about my dad. Those crow’s feet had marked him. He was a good man, kind and gentle but strong and stubborn when it came to standing his ground. He never met a stranger and people around town loved him. Baseball and football coach to the youth of the town and those that surrounded it. Countless lives he had touched through so many different ways and many of them he hadn’t even realized. A hell of a guy by all counts. I guess that’s why one of his former players named the bar after him. Cris Cody had turned one of his family’s barns into a bar several years ago right around the time my dad had passed. He asked me if it would be alright with me if he named the place after my Pop and I answered with a big “Why hell yea!” because in my head what could be better than always having a beer with the old man. Thus, he named it Stevie D’s. A nick name for the man he had lovingly called coach. Sitting out in front of it right now I got a bad feeling down in the pit of my stomach. Why was it I thought that dad and I might be doing something different together today.