James Sallis - Cripple Creek

Copyright 2006 by James Sallis

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THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Sallis, James, 1944
Cripple Creek : a novel / by James Sallis.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-80271-845-7
1. Ex-police officersFiction. 2. TennesseeFiction. I. Title.
PS3569.A462C75 2006
813'.54dc22
2005028095

First published in the United States by Walker & Company in 2006
This paperback edition published in 2007

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Printed in the United States of America by Quebecor World Fairfield

Tomy brother John

and beloved sister Jerry

in memory of our search for food

somewhere near where Turner lives

The blood was a-running
And I was running too....

Charlie Poole
and the North Carolina Ramblers

I 'D BEEN UP TO MARVELL to deliver a prisoner, nothing special, just a guy I stopped for reckless driving who, when I ran his license, came back with a stack of outstandings up that way, and what with having both a taste for solitude and a preference for driving at night and nothing much on the cooker back home, I'd delayed my return. Now I was starved. All the way down County Road 51 Id been thinking about the salt pork my mom used to fry up for dinner, squirrel with brown gravy, catfish rolled in cornmeal. As I pulled onto Cherry Street for the drag past Jays Diner, the drugstore and Manny's Dollar $tore, A&P, Baptist church and Gulf station, I was remembering an old blues. Guys singing about how hungry he is, how he can't think of anything but food: I heard the voice of a pork chop say, Comeunto me and rest.

That pork chop, or its avatar, was whispering in my ear as I nosed into a parking space outside city hall. Don Lee's pickup and the Jeep were there. Our half of the building was lit. Save for forty-watts left on in stores for insurance purposes, these were the only lights on Main Street. I hadn't, in fact, expected to find the office open. Lot of nights, if one of us is gone or we've both worked some event, we leave it unattended. Calls get kicked over to home phones.

Inside, Don Lee sat at the desk in his usual pool of light.

"Anything going on?" I asked.

"Been quiet. Had to break up a beer party with some of the high school kids around eleven."

"Where'd they get the beerJimmy Ray?"

"Where else?"

Jimmy Ray was a retarded man who lived in a garage out back of old Miss Shaugnessy's. Kids knew he'd buy beer for them if they gave him a dollar or two. We'd asked local stores not to sell to him. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't.

"You got my message?"

"Yeah, June passed it on. Good trip?"

"Not bad. Didn't expect to find you here."

"Wouldn't be, but we have a guest." Meaning one of our two holding cells was occupied. This happened seldom enough to merit surprise.

"It's nothing, really. Around midnight, after I broke up the kids' party, I did a quick swing through town and was heading for home when this red Mustang came barreling past me. Eightyplus, I figure. So I pull a U. He's got the dome light on and he's in there driving with one hand, holding a map in the other, eyes going back and forth from road to map.

"I pull in close and hit the cherry, but it's like he doesn't even see it. By this time he's halfway through town. So I sound the sirenyou have any idea when I last used the siren? Surprised I could even find it. Clear its throat more than once but it's just like with the cherry, he's not even taking notice. That's when I go full tilt: cherry, siren, the whole nine yards.

"There a problem, Officer?' he says. I'm probably imagining this, but his growl sounds a lot like the idling Mustang. I ask him to shut his engine off and he does. Hands over license and registration when I ask. 'Yeah, guess I did blow the limit. Somewhere I have to beyou know?'

"I call it in and State doesn't have anything on him. I figure I'll just write a ticket, why take it any further, I mean it's going to be chump change for someone in his collector's Mustang, dressed the way he isright? But when I pass the ticket to him he starts to open the door. 'Please get back in your car, sir,' I tell him. But he doesn't. And now a stream of invective starts up.

" There's no reason for this to go south, sir,' I tell him. 'Just get back in your car, please. It's only a traffic ticket.'