LeVon scratched his head and wondered what was the point. "Looks rock-steady to me — what's the problem?"

Barney smiled wistfully and said, "That's my surgery hand — I used to be a surgeon too, you know. Here's my gun hand." He held out his left hand which shook badly.

"Ooooh. What's the matter with that one? Parkinson's?"

"No, no — you shouldn't rush to judgment. Parkinson's patients shake as a side-effect of their medications. No, what happened was there was this goth girl named Magenta, and her brother Riff-Raff caught us having elbow sex, and he wanted to make sure I never did it again."

"Whaaat? Elbow sex? That sounds on the weird side of kinky — I can understand why he was ticked. That was his sister, after all!"

"No, it's not what you think - you see, the two of them had this saying: 'incest is best'!"

LeVon grimaced, "Man, that's nothin' but sick. So you used to be a doctor, huh? I can just see that - 'Doctor Frank-n-furter'! I bet you were something!"

Barney's eye's narrowed. "That's FRAHNK-n-furter!"

LeVon held up his hands palm-forward as he quickly apologized, "Sorry, man - I didn't know that would get you all riled up!"

"S'okay - don't worry, I'm not too offended. I hear that lots of times."

"I bet," replied LeVon as he got up from the leather chair, stretched, and took himself for a short tour of the sheriff's office and adjacent jail. There was dust everywhere, broken whiskey bottles strewn across the floor, and there was no key to the jail cell lock. "Man — I wonder just how long it's been since they had a real sheriff in here?"

"Actually," Barney said as he stretched back and propped his boots up onto the sheriff's desk, "I can answer that. It's been about eight years — some white guy named Bill. He was pretty good, but these Goldwater folks didn't like him since he thought he was gonna be the first black sheriff. Once they ran Bill out of town there hasn't been anything resembling law and order. Now you're here, and they're all going to blame each other for a while for letting you come here."

"This 'Bill' was a white guy who thought he was gonna be the first black sheriff? Hmph. I don't think so." LeVon smiled grimly, remembering how so many whites didn't like him, but so many wanted to be him. "This town's pretty dead. Did this 'Bill' bring a stimulus, too?"

Article Author: Glenn Contrarian

White.
Male.
Retired Navy.
Strong Christian.
Raised in the very deepest of the Deep South.

Proud Liberal.

Thus, 'contrarian'!

Visit Glenn Contrarian's author page — Glenn Contrarian's Blog