I. July-September, 2002 – Misty Creek, Colorado

Squeezing the rosewood grips with his right hand, the nickel-plated Smith and Wesson .44 magnum comforted as a toddler’s blanket, a thumb sucked. The heaviness of the pistol, the barrel pointed at nothing in particular, consoled. Understanding the extent of damage to be done—holes as large as garden river rock—he snapped open the cylinder, quickly rubbed the palm of his left hand against it, watched the butt end of the hollow-point dumdum cartridges revolve within. Mesmerized by the silent pirouette of the deadly ordnance, he smiled as the cylinder’s spin slowed, stopped. Palm pushed against the cylinder, a metallic click. Wrapped in a slightly oiled cloth, he returned the huge pistol to the nondescript box, the top lowered as a pall to a chalice.

***

Watching the breeze tickle the leaves delicately held to the limbs of the clutch of three thirty-foot tall Aspens, a huddled cabal cornered in the tiny yard, Merl Purdy slid his gaze from the Aspens, sipped cabernet sauvignon, a blue-red soup against pellucid crystal. He studied the unsightly vegetated plot across the dirt road. Placed the glass upon the small table to his right, raised his legs, one crossed over the other, gently eased the burgundy right heel of the Lucchese boot to the porch rail. He’d be damned if he scratched them up just yet.

Six-three, two-hundred and five pounds, full head of gray and white, lean face, a constant suspicious glare from iced eyes, linebacker shoulders, taut stomach, basso profundo. Merl Purdy loomed.

A Denver cop for thirty-two years, he found himself now ensconced in a pastel blue, two-story Victorian, white picket fence surrounding a small yard. The front porch, the cabernet, the Luccheses, an embroidered shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps, black bolo tie with a silver bear’s head clasp, Wrangler jeans, a brass belt buckle the size of the back of his hand, all of it a singular affectation, the trappings of where he happened to find himself at this time in his life.

The old badge framed useless behind glass, to Misty Creek they’d come.

Endured the cop years, worried the nights, suffered silent the fear of her husband’s passion to right wrongs, the missus wanted mountains. And to the mountains they had come. He had owed her that much.

         
Purdy dangled a hook into the cool, dark, secret holes (to which only he was privy), of Lake Stratter, the deepest natural lake in Colorado, less than a half-mile from the blue Victorian. The lake gave up Rainbows and Browns.

Purdy fished, sat on the porch, glanced at the badge behind glass.

         
Four streets: Main, First, Second and Third, intersected on either end by A Street and B Street. Misty Creek thrived in the summer, dozed in the winter.

Living on Third Street, furthest from Main, Purdy and Misty Creek, the trickle of water not fifteen yards outside his bedroom window, shared the chill of night, he to sleep, it to meandering, conjuring wisps of pre-dawn mist that would, by first light, kiss the willow scrub hunkered along its banks.

Yearrounders bided their days in little houses on First, Second and Third. Seasonals lolled, late spring and summer, in little, big, simple, tawdry cabins two to ten miles into the hills, the forest, the high valleys.

Problem was the missus hiked the hills one day. Home to the pastel Victorian, she reclined upon the overstuffed, flower print couch and never again stood up. Bad heart. Who knew? Helluva thing.

After all, living a little and breathing the mountain air, the mantra the missus unapologetically repeated for years, had placed the badge behind glass, Luccheses on his feet and cabernet sauvignon in his mouth to swirl, for Christ’s sake. He was here for her. Helluva thing. But, there it was.

The watershed of sixty-five years acknowledged, Purdy giving a damn, not really. The old coppers, his only friends, occasionally still caring, Purdy slip-slid into living a little, breathing the mountain air even without the missus. Her humble entreats lingering. Not an easy transition.

Watching Pell Drogan turn the corner onto Third, Purdy shifted one cheek to the other, the Adirondack chair accommodating.

Appearing not old or young, Pell Drogan’s fifty-four year old Schwinn Black Phantom, chrome fenders, black and red frame, white sidewalls, wire basket attached to the front, three-foot spade tied across the handlebars, the brown fedora on his head, penny loafers (a cent in each slot), white socks, all shared, give or take, Drogan’s own nativity. Short and thick-bodied, an oversized white cotton dress shirt, freed from the waistband of his gray wool and polyester pants, flapped behind him. The missing three bottom buttons of the shirt allowed for the disportment of hairy girth at his middle. He coasted through a tight arc, leaned into the turn from A Street onto Third.

Squinting through black plastic frames, Drogan braked the Phantom in front of his unkempt 1890 gingerbread Victorian bungalow, barely visible behind the overgrowth of feral bushes and weeds that had overtaken the tiny front yard. Drogan unsaddled himself and pulled/pushed the Phantom up into the dense thicket of yard. He and the Phantom disappeared into the foliage.

Pell Drogan collected things.

Before the missus had hiked her last, Drogan and Purdy lost an hour to Drogan’s telling of collecting things, now covering most of the square footage of his little house. “I’m to the point,” Drogan explained, incongruous siren voice, coquettish, darkly round orbs behind black frames, “where I have to place things upon things. My things,” added he, the gloomy eyes rolling, a hand upon a saucily upturned hip, “are now almost above my head.”

“What kind of things do you collect?” Purdy asked.

Smiling, jutting his chin, fluttering his eyelids, “Things. Just things.”

         
Now, seeing only snippets of Drogan’s movement through the entanglement of green, Purdy squinted, saw the Phantom propped against the house, a brown paper bag lifted from the Phantom’s wire basket, the fedora vanishing behind the house. Deducing, inured in the ways of the cop, Purdy saw Drogan open his back door, take off his hat, quickly inventory his eight-by-eight living space. Purdy envisioned a small cot, a miniature refrigerator, a propane hotplate, a wooden bar from wall to wall with clothes on hangers, cans of soup, corned beef hash, Spam stacked three high on the floor, a door leading to a toilet, a sink, a tub.

Closing his eyes, the cabernet warming his belly, Purdy envisioned Drogan toss his fedora (Who the fuck wore those things anymore, anyway?), onto the cot, turn sideways, cross the threshold from his living space to his things. Sucking in his belly, turning sideways, Purdy imagined Drogan sidestepping down the aisle with paper sack in hand.

Drogan then, Purdy surmised, returned to his living space, licked the end of a Number 2 Ticonderoga, grabbed a thick ledger from the TV tray next to his cot, noted the date, time, location of the find and its new resting place.

Purdy didn’t know if Drogan kept a ledger. But, comfortable in the Adirondack, sipping the cabernet, catching a whiff of the new Luccheses, certain of his conclusions, he abandoned the image of Pell Drogan.

***

The mother, Magdalena Manea-Drogan-Mayfair, delayed the revelation of Drogan’s lineage until he became fifteen. Drogan’s hormones fabulously churning, his nipples strangely hard, new growths of hair where hair had not been, Magdalena considered not the consequences of truths conveyed to her son enmeshed in the springtide of pubescence. But there it was.

“We, the Maneas that is, were … are gypsies with a little Colorado Mountain Ute thrown in for good measure,” said Magdalena, her unusually small adolescent son’s eyes acorns blackly framed by plastic. “We first came to Misty Creek some time before 1850. Misty Creek was then little more than a shamble of drooping log huts; a place where furs were skinned, traded; a place where Indians and gypsies were enchanted by one another—the spiritualism, the mysticism, you know. Our Romanian clan was probably the first of any gypsies to cross the Continental Divide.”

May sun, the pink Victorian on Third (Drogan’s inheritance), the porch swing singing from rusted eyehooks, all of it framing a telling of history from a mother to her child.

Rouged and powdered, black and gray hairs untidily bunned, lips deeply red, Passion in Paradise, gold, silver chains of doodads and pretties lumbered from her neck, her ears, her wrists. A white blouse, shoulders hugely pleated and puffed, her skirt a rainbow. “When I was growing up, the clan—having long since left Misty Creek—traveled around the west and southwest in house trailers and station wagons. We stayed, you see,” paused for a moment, sucked on a purple cigarette, exhaled, reached for sangria. “We stayed,” beginning again, “in that part of the country that didn’t have much, oh, history, I guess is the right word, with gypsies. It was a good idea, too,” her lips barely touching glass. She sipped, swallowed, held the purple cigarette at cheek level.

Acorns to profuse pools, Drogan’s eyes gulped truths. Gypsies! Indians!

“We told fortunes, read the cards, sometimes worked the orchards and crops. We had music and monkeys and dancing bears.” Stopping her narrative, she looked at her son, she, enjoying the moment, he, enraptured. She again sipped sangria. “Sometimes,” she continued, “we conducted ourselves somewhat outside the, ah, legal structure.”

“You stole babies and sold them into slavery,” Drogan said, having somewhere heard or read it.

Laughing, “Of course not,” said Magdalena. “We simply took, collected, um, things that we’d sell in the next town we’d happen to land in.”

“What things?”

“Valuables.”

Both reckoned images of valuables, hers of pick-pocketed watches and rings, shoplifted trinkets, perfumes, scarves, and whiskey and rum; his of diamonds, rubies, gold nuggets, Spanish doubloons.

“Why am I a Drogan?” he asked.

Magdalena paused, perplexed by this diminutive creature, she sucked on the purple cigarette. Exhaling, “I met your father in Topeka, the most God-awful flatland hellhole on the face of the earth,” she said. “But, your father, John Drogan, an Irishman, by the way, was as handsome as Clark Gable and as charming as Cary Grant and perpetually as drunk as a sailor on shore leave.”

“My father was a sailor?”

“Oh, no, no, honey.” Giggled. “No sailors in Topeka.” Hand floating to her lips, sipped the sangria. “He was a charmer though. He loved things, too. He was a little dense, though. He smoked Pall Malls, wonderful, unfiltered cigarettes in a red and white package. Ah, ‘Pall Malls are made longer, to travel the smoke further, to make it cooler and sweeter for you,’” said she, dreamily, remembering the marketing puffery of twenty years before. “But, he called them Pell Mells. I corrected him, of course, but it didn’t work. To him, they were always Pell Mells. I married him in June of ’50. Sadly, he passed not long after. In a drunken stupor, he fell down upon the tracks of the California Zephyr—a passenger train that raced like a bat outa’ hell from New York to San Francisco. Train sliced him in half. Anyway, you came along about six months later. In honor of your father, I named you Pell. Pell Drogan.” Magdalena smiled toward the pleasant day unfolding beyond the porch of the tiny bungalow. “Married Morlon Mayfair not long after your father’s, um, accident. He, Morlon, was the funeral director who took care of your father’s remains. Well,” pausing, sipping sangria, puffing the cigarette, “at least he took care of your father’s top half. Did a good job, too. Open caskets can be so revealing. But, you couldn’t even tell that the lower half of your father just wasn’t there.” Silence. Then, “Morlon bought this house for me, ah, us, the three of us. I wanted to live here and Misty Creek needed an undertaker. It was ordained. Back to my roots, you see.” Pausing, studying her purple cigarette for a moment, “Anyway,” she continued, “it was the three of us for only about a year. Poor thing, Mister Morlon, drove his ’51 Buick off the side of a nasty cliff on the way to his attorney’s summer cabin. Your adoption papers were in his hand when they pulled him out of that big ol’ Buick. Having a heart in the right place was Morlon Mayfair’s middle name. But, well ... You’re still a Drogan.” Jangling of doodads, hand rummaging through Drogan’s fulgent black hair, “And, of course,” she added, “you’re a Manea. Indian, too.” Reaching into the crevice of her victory-necked blouse, Magdalena pulled out a small folded square of yellowed paper. “And this,” extending the paper to Drogan, the heavy metal on her wrist clicking, “is, now that you are about to become a man, your heritage—your inheritance from your forebears. I’ve never looked at it. But it’s been passed down through the family, the Maneas, for generations.”

Abed, hard nipples throbbing, a feverish stroking of himself, Drogan’s night was gypsies and Indians, a phantasm revealed by his mother. From the gypsies, a promise of things hidden, marked by Xs on an aged map of Misty Creek.

Spent, exhausted, wondering why a mother would name a child after a drunk’s ignorance, Drogan considered the names of saints and presidents, of Jake Stratter, the founder of Misty Creek. Named after a mispronunciation, Drogan’s thought traveled to a conclusion. He drifted with melancholy, finally to sleep.

***

Years, decades of politely suffering Pell Drogan’s eccentricities, not working, riding his Schwinn up the trails, digging holes here and there, yearrounders suffered less well the ungodly jungle that nearly consumed the pink Victorian. At the edge of Drogan’s property, standing a hundred years, dangerously infested from the scourge of beetles, a lodgepole pine turned brown, then gray, teetered. Came warning after warning from yearrounders. Drogan shrugged, turned from each. The doomed pine remained. Then, one fine day turned peculiarly gray, a ferocious tempest raced through the whole of Misty Creek, gave up a final puff upon Drogan’s miserable tree. Long dead, infested, snapping, teetering, falling, falling down, destroying the roof and trunk of Purdy’s new midnight blue Lincoln Continental. The car slumped, then raised, the air cushion shocks adjusting.

Purdy, upon seeing the hindquarters of his Lincoln mutilated by the neglected, dead, toppled pine from Drogan’s yard, responded predictably.

Appearing from behind and through the wildly profuse vegetation in his front yard, Drogan studied, hand on hip, the damage the pine had inflicted upon Purdy’s new car.

They, Drogan and Purdy, stood in the middle of Third Street, silently staring at the wreckage.

“You fucking nutcase son-of-a-bitch,” Purdy menaced, lapsing comfortably into copspeak. “Your fucking, sick, diseased, dead tree destroyed my new car. You fucking weird son-of-a-bitch.” (The resurrection of the fading lexicon felt good on his tongue. Purdy was doing the old coppers proud.) “You’ve neglected your fucking property and look at the fucking result!”  

Purdy stepped toward Drogan.

Drogan stepped back, quickly blinked behind black frames, once, twice, three times. Never having faced rage or even real anger from anyone, he tensed, the spasm of a tic flickered his right eye. Interactions with yearrounders had always reeked of gentility, laidback. Had he not, his lifetime, enjoyed a special place in the hearts of yearrounders—of all one-hundred and six, give or take? He bolted.

***

A chilled silence to the earliest hours of the morning, no moon, a breeze slipped atop the inveterate flow of Misty Creek, Purdy rolled from one side of the bed to the other, his eyes open, barely able to discern the dim splotches of mountain flowers imprinted on the bedroom curtains. The missus loved flowers.

Expected was the necessity to tow the Lincoln into Denver. Unexpected was the seven-thousand dollar restoration estimate. Purdy remained peeved. Living a little had become sleepless nights, angry days. Bourbon replaced cabernet.

Forsaking sleep now lost to temper, Purdy rolled once again, sat up, and slipped his bare feet into leather slippers. Naked, taking three steps, he pulled his robe from the back of the room’s single chair. Tying the terrycloth belt, he walked through the dark hall to the front of the old Victorian. He missed the missus, gone now six months. He missed his Lincoln, gone now two months. Waiting for parts, my hairy ass! Purdy ground his teeth, clenched his jaw. Sat in the flower printed chair facing the window that framed Drogan’s mire; poured two fingers of bourbon, the bottle, the glass handy on the table next to the chair, glared at the clump of shadows that fronted Drogan’s yard. He sipped. He drummed his fingers. Considered options.

***

Sidestepping through the aisle to the front of the house, red long johns from neck to ankle, his insomnia the child of newly felt sensations of doom, Drogan rubbed his forearm against the filth of the window. Through the smeared grime, only the barest view of his front yard seen, the earliest hours of the morning exposed only the indistinct black jumble of thicket. Drogan searched for the source of his trepidation. He must be prepared. For what, he didn’t know. But he must be prepared.

***

Yearrounders watched, smelled, tasted the change of season. The shadows at noon, the morning chill, a tincture of freeze, the critters not only in the hills, but in the outskirts of town as well, hoarding sustenance, moving down to the valleys, growing their coats. Yearrounders inhaled the Misty Creek dawn, stirring their tongues, a flavor of change.

Gus Gummer, mayor of Misty Creek and proprietor of Gummer’s Emporium of Hard and Soft Goods, Est. 1884, hummed Sweet Betsy from Pike (a generational curse of the male Gummers, not able to say esses without stuttering—Oh, have you heard tell of ssssssssSweet Betsy from Pike). A preclusion to the singing of the ditty while shoppers shopped, Gummer studied his end-of-season inventory. Scratching the light stubble on his chin, he wheezed a sigh and grabbed his red, white and blue suspenders, snapped them against his chest. The end of season slowdown had come. It was time to cut back on the perishables, time to bring out the winter, sensible hards and softs: boots, hats, mittens, long johns, electric and propane heaters, wool blankets.

Adrianna Calabrese—Adrianna’s Potpourri and Curios, Est. 1983—four-foot six (four-foot eight, counting hair, coifed blond, Revere Beach, Mass., the land of the tall-haired girls, still calling after all these years!), just this side of seventy, stood atop her three-step stepladder. Dusted clay likenesses of Jake Stratter, founder of Misty Creek; of the leader of the Utes—Chief Two Looks who befriended Stratter; of wolves and bears; of horses and ashtrays; of feathered, leathered dream catchers and squaws with papoose, all expertly handcrafted in Bangladesh. Singing, her voice as strident as a teenager’s glee, “You better watch out, you better not cry...” Christmas was, after all, little more than one-hundred days away.

Fred Meyer, sucking on a Swisher Sweet cigar, fuming smoke in quick breaths that competed with the lazy swirls of mist atop Lake Stratter, walked his dock, FM Canoes – For Rent, and checked chains and padlocks, seventeen each. Back in ’83, some son-of-a-bitch cut his securing ropes and the lake took every goddamned one of ‘em to the eastern shore! Meyer looked up. Gonna rain, he concluded. Laughing, the effort erupting in a radio static crackle from his chest, “Rains every goddamned day. Hah!” Sucking hard on his cigar, he stepped into the wooden rental shed, rubbed his hands together before the orange glow of an electric fire.

Sheriff John Grout was vaguely related by marriage, third or fourth cousin to the Stratter line, a genetic string that ended with the sole remaining heir to the founder of the town, a great-great-grandson, passing on almost twenty years before.

The revered last-of-the-line Stratter was unmarried, childless. Stratter’s death, the predictable result of a self-inflicted load of buckshot into his mouth after having had his cards read by some lowdown gypsy slut continued to be mulled over draughts and shots in the dim light of the Misty Inn.

Sheriff Grout stepped from the Town Hall, paused, studied the gray day and fingered the comfort of the holstered Glock 9mm on his right hip. He climbed into his black and white, ‘98 Ford Crown Victoria—Serving and Protecting—blue, red and yellow light barred, sirened cruiser. Pulling away from the curb, he drove up Main, down First, up Second, down Third, then back to Town Hall. He’d made his rounds. Back in his office, tipped his swivel chair, rested his feet on his desk, a conclusion: Law enforcement was a tough row to hoe, a fucking bitch.

Gus Gummer, Adrianna Calabrese, Fred Meyer, John Grout: all leaders of the yearrounder community; all members of the Town Council.

***

No missus, no car, hadn’t dropped a line in those secret holes in months, Purdy finished off his second round of two fingers of Wild Turkey 101. Still in his robe, still staring across Third, watching the dawn reveal the detail of the Drogan disgrace, he stood and turned toward the hallway back to his bedroom. Ignored the muck and odor of dirty dishes piled on every surface of the tiny kitchen. Gave a smile to the flowered curtains the missus had hung in the bedroom, pulled on his Wranglers, his Luccheses, belt buckle secured, pressed the mother-of-pearl snaps, pulled the bear’s head bolo over his head, walked back to the living room. A reverent lifting of the frame from the wall, the back removed. The gold shield pinned to his chest.

Poured another two fingers, stood at the front window, gritted his teeth and raised the shot glass to his lips. An epiphany: Pell Drogran had pretty much ruined his living a little life in Misty Creek.

***

As a mother lifts her first newborn, both hands cradling the beloved, raising it to shoulder height, a meager shaft of sunlight bouncing off the brightly polished nickel, right hand squeezed the rosewood grips. The .44 magnum heavy in his hand; the stuff of justice embodied in metal and wood, a tool of balance, making all things equal.

***

Rising with the sun, sweeping from the high ridge to the north, a breeze’s waltz whirled an intimation of the coming freeze. Purdy, having stepped out upon his porch, felt only the skirt of the larger swirls goading the tops of the tall pines, his jaw set, his intent clear, stepped off his porch, walked to the little white gate fronting his tiny yard. Hands placed atop a white picket, he stared across Third.

***

Taking a moment to light the butane stove and place a metal teapot upon the yellow-blue flame, Drogan, his right eye in spasm, rushed back to the front window of the Victorian. Glaring through a rounded gap in the familiar muck of his front yard, saw Purdy cross the street. Drogan held his breath. Purdy parted the scrub, became a blur as he crossed Drogan’s line of sight. Drogan turned.

***

Arms at his side, staring at the decrepit back door of the pink Victorian, Purdy studied the greened-brass doorknob, the three deadbolt locks. Beaming, ear to ear, as they say, it felt good to smile again, it felt good to live a little again. Purdy stepped closer to the door, raised his right leg, slammed the Lucchese soul against the hinged side. Rotten wood splintered, hinges popped, the door hung cockeyed from the deadbolts. Purdy stepped into Drogan’s burrow.

Flame hissed from a butane stove. A teapot disported a reedy cloud. Unmade cot. A thick ledger atop a TV tray. He knew it. He just fucking knew it! Bathroom door open. The hallway to the living room dark, Purdy stepped further into Drogan’s den. Approaching the hallway to Drogan’s things, Purdy paused for a moment, remembered his training, old coppers shouting: Wait a minute, dipshit. Your silhouette in the doorway ain’t a fucking good idea right now! Purdy smiled, stood in the doorway, waited for his eyes to adjust to the

Seeing the yellow flash, not hearing the monstrous resonance of the big bore weapon, reacting involuntarily to the immense punch of the dum-dum piece of lead tearing through his brain, Purdy wobbled back, sidestepped to his left, fell squarely upon the butane stove and, hitting the floor, was dead.

***

Feeling the painful throb in his right arm—he had never fired the .44 magnum before and consequently fired high—Drogan saw the dancing coruscation of fire before he smelled it. Smoke lazily meandered through the hallway to the living room where he stood, the .44 magnum still pointed at the doorframe within which Purdy had threatened.

Not immediately understanding the presence of fire, of smoke, Drogan crept toward his cozy living space. Reached the doorframe, lowered the magnum to his side, and peeked around the corner. Bed aflame, the ledger burning hot with blue-white sparks popping like the firecrackers of imps. The old walls embraced the flame, happily attending to the fury of the conflagration.

Drogan dropped the .44, rushed to the teapot that, somehow, had managed to land upright on the floor next to Purdy’s ruined head. Water, thought Drogan. Grabbed the teapot, removed the lid, threw what little water was in the tin utility upon the angry inferno that, sadly, now ate Drogan’s red underwear, a mere appetizer to the entrée.

Outside, decades, generations of detritus, the aged, gray leavings of once green, grand pine and spruce, willow and scrub, all became fodder for the voraciousness of flame that leapt from Drogan’s Victorian.

***

Adrianna Calabrese smelled smoke as she turned the key to open her store. Standing on her tiptoes, her palm above her eyebrows, surveying the horizon, saw not only smoke but flames as well, yes, there on Third. Tiny steps toward Town Hall on two-inch spiked heels, her tall hair flopped, unraveled. She pulled the cotton cord and sounded the alarm.

Three yearrounder’s pretty Victorians consumed immediately, digested by the hot tongue of what some called nature’s way. Nature’s way leapt across Third and devoured Purdy’s house, Mister and Missus Skulley’s house next door and meandered on down both sides of the block, unabated, pushed by the morning breeze. Third Street was pretty near leveled by the time the fire wagon arrived. Saving First and Second was the volunteer fire crew’s objective, which they achieved as the breeze shifted and sent the conflagration toward Misty Creek, behind what was once the desperate entreat, a house in the mountains, the living a little mantra of Purdy’s missus.

Mayor Gus Gummer, Sheriff John Grout, Adrianna Calabrese, Fred Meyer, the totality of the Town Council, stood at the edge of the blackened Drogan estate, stared at the charred remains of two skeletons, one clearly missing the back half of its skull. All agreed with Mayor Gummer’s assessment, “Sssssssweet Betsy!” Still staring at the fascinatingly gruesome scene, a rubbernecking of sorts, Sheriff Grout opined, “There’s foul play at work here.” All present nodded an assent. Sheriff Grout had, after all, cordoned off the area with yellow plastic POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS tape that had been stored, unrolled, unused for ten years now.

Catching his eye through the lazy cloud of his Swisher Sweet,Fred Meyer took two steps closer to the leavings of the inferno, knelt down slowly, gently reached his thumb and forefinger into the ash and tweezered a tiny incongruity of brilliance amongst the scorched mess. Stood up, spat on his find, rubbed it against his shirt, raised it to his eyes, said, “Goddamn, would you look at that.” They looked. A prism blazed—a diamond the size of his thumbnail.

The Town Council, to a man, a woman, as urchins to a garbage pile, on their knees, on their haunches, sifted and picked, picked and sifted ... findings of astounding magnitude.

Town Council, executive session, agreed no forensics were necessary. The gold badge, the distinctive buckle, the diminutive remains of Purdy required no further investigation.

Two headstones bought with town funds, side by side: Pell Drogan, Prodigous Collector, 1950-2002; Merl Edward Purdy, A Good Cop, 1937-2002.

***

Confused, What the fuck! Third Street ain’t no more!, the vehicle rollback operator left the midnight blue Lincoln Continental where he’d originally picked it up. Fuck if he’d haul that thing back to Denver.

II. Late May, 2006 – Misty Creek, Colorado

Misty Creek erupted. Effusion of green, lake blue, flora fantasy, critters awakening, gelid wisps of the leaving season, Yearrounders and seasonals awoke.

Yearrounders and Seasonals marveled alike at what the town had become in the four short years since the Great Fire of ’02. Third Street was entirely rebuilt; a new two-story pine log Town Hall; a new Town Square, plastic outhouses replaced by brick restrooms, Kohler fixtures, hot water. Splendorous remodel of Gummer’s Emporium of Hard and Soft Goods Est,. 1884, now became Gummer’s Emporium of Hard and Soft Goods, Delicatessen and Fine Wines. Adrianna’s Potpourri and Curios, Est. 1983; now became Adrianna’s Potpourri and Curios, Day Spa and Vintage Clothing. FM Canoes – For Rent, became FM Marina - Canoes, Rowboats, Motorboats, Jet Skis, Bar & Grill. Two gleaming red, white and blue, four-wheel-drive, 2006 Chevrolet Suburbans fitted out with light bars, sirens, gun racks, computers, riot gear, shotguns, fire extinguishers, silver/gold badges on both front doors, Serving and Protecting blackly stenciled, sat strong and stoic, silently awaiting any hint of a breach of law and order.

Within the new Town Hall’s subterranean garage, a gray steel door marked NO ADMITTANCE – ALARM WILL SOUND, allowed entrance by only four keys. Twenty feet of stairs past the gray door, down to a concrete and steel reinforced room, four additional doors, deadlocked, padlocked, the initials GG on one, JG on another, FM on the next, and AC on the last; doors behind which reposed ... things. Just things.

Mayor Gus Gummer waved at tourists. Driving his midnight blue, 2002 Lincoln Continental slowly up Main, said he to no one in particular, “Ssssssweet Betsy!”

Life was good in Misty Creek.

END