Hashtag by Eryk Pruitt

Author:Eryk Pruitt [Steps, 280]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polis Books

7

Deputy Harmless Harris perched at the edge of the cornfield and watched the road leading up to the house. He was at full alert. He kept his sidearm holstered, but the safety switched off. Instead, he carried his scattergun. He loved the feel of the artillery in his hands and relished any opportunity to bring it out.

“Where is that son of a bitch?” he growled.

A few corn rows over, Roy and Able bent just below the tops of the stalks. Their crouching days were well in the rearview. Able didn’t have the knees anymore and Roy’d just flat-out gotten too fat. They kept an eye on both the road and the house. A good fifty yards separated the cornfield from the home, a fallow field splitting the two.

“He’d have just got off work at the plant a half-hour ago, Harmless,” Roy called back, just above a whisper. “He’ll be here. Hold your horses.”

Harmless spat at the ground. “I don’t see why we’re sitting out here waiting. We should just charge in and see if the Shanks boy really is kept in there. When he comes home, we pop him then.”

“I thought you liked to take them by surprise,” Roy said.

“We’ll surprise him sure enough when he opens the door and sees us sitting there with the Shanks boy, don’t you think?”

“We don’t technically have cause to be in that house,” Roy reasoned. “Remember, it was an anonymous tip that got us here. We go in there without a warrant and we won’t be able to hold nothing up in court. And if he sees us before he gets in the house and rabbits, he’ll be in the wind and we’ll never catch him.”

Harmless hated it, but he knew Roy had a point. Yet Harmless really hoped for a reason to use his precious shotgun and that Joseph Two Trees would never see the inside of a courtroom. He prayed the oily old Injun would be armed and, when he saw the law move in on him, he’d realize the jig was up and come out shooting. Harmless was ready. He wanted a piece of him.

When Roy approached him earlier that evening, Harmless’ sights were set on the old 809, the converted doublewide trailer turned nightclub that got its name from its location out Highway 809. He’d had run-ins with the notorious watering hole and had been jettisoned several times as a customer, sometimes so abruptly that he felt need to express his frustrations in the parking lot and on as many people as possible. But Roy’s news derailed his plans and he figured he could take on the crew at the 809 another night.

“I got us a lead,” Roy had told him. Harmless could only wonder what kind of rocks Roy would have turned to get anything resembling what could be called a lead. “You ever heard tell of an Injun in town by name of Joseph Two Trees?”

Indeed, Harmless had. Joseph Two Trees was a Catawba fella, a loner who worked out at the dog food plant on the edge of town.

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