more Perfect Texas,

(Please comment good or bad, i won't take it personally. well unless you don't comment)

Free Parking

“Okay Coyote jump out and grab it.”
“Jump out and grab what, Loyd?”
“That damn parking ticket.”
“Whose car is that?”
“How the hell should I know? Grab that damn ticket.”
“Grab that damn ticket?”
“Yeah, and hurry up about it we’re blocking the street.”
“Look Loyd, I’m not getting into one of your little games. If you want it, you get it.”
And with that, Loyd flew out of the truck, grabbed the ticket, and was driving back down the street. The moment had all the urgency of a fire and none of the bells. Loyd threw the parking ticket in the glove box with what had to be a hundred others and raced down the street at a mind numbing speed of about ten miles an hour. “Look”, Loyd said. “There are two more. You get the one on that side and I’ll get the one on this side.” In this Coyote flatly refused. He once again insisted that he was not going to engage in whatever silly little game Loyd was playing this week.
Over the next thirty or forty minutes, Loyd and Coyote drove the Perfect loop and collected parking tickets. The glove box had become over run and the tickets were now being stuffed under or behind the seat. In the middle of all of this Coyote sat back, drew on his beer and giggled at what could be nothing more than a Tuesday night special. Usually Loyd stuck to littering, but the judge had grown weary and changed the Sheriff’s departmental policy. Littering was no longer a crime unless it was committed by someone other than Loyd. This all came to pass because Loyd would, on any particular Tuesday after payday, find a Deputy and litter right in front of him while acting the ass. There were times when Loyd would end up in his underwear on a public street tearing little bits of paper from a notebook and throwing them to the ground for the sole purpose of being arrested. After all, you don’t get to see the judge, if you don’t get arrested.
Our Judge was one of a kind. D.A. Hallowell. Her given name of Dale Anne was both a mirror of her twin sister Anne Dale and the first names of their parents, Dale and Anne. With both of her parents now gone and a vicious rivalry with her sister, her name was Judge Hallowell or D.A. for short. The other sister was just as furious as the Judge.
Anne Dale Hallowell went by Dale. The funny thing is, she looks like a dale too, whatever that is. The name just suits her. I remember one day when Loyd was screwing around with a lingerie catalog on the bar at the Fox Hollow. He was erasing the bras off of the models on the pages when Dale came out of her office to see if we needed fresh beers. Immediately Loyd shut the catalog and started reading over the back cover. His transparent feigning of interest spawned the comment from Dale that he was going to go blind if he didn’t quit shopping. Somewhere in that Loyd read the address box; A. Dale Hallowell, Hallowell Mercantile… “Hey, I know A. Dale Hallowell”, he said. “Do you know A. Dale Hallowell?” Well the next thing you know everyone at the bar was talking about knowing A. Dale Hallowell. There weren’t but five or six of us, but that was enough to raise the ire of the A. Dale Hallowell and she threw us all out until we could grow up. We spent the afternoon out back on the patio drinking beer from the grocery store, pitching washers, and discussing our familiarities with A. Dale Hallowell. I still don’t believe she was out to hurt anyone, we all know that shotgun isn’t loaded, but we got the message.
Klaus Van Horowitz was a Sergeant on the Perfect police force and the assistant chief. A poor hapless bastard born of a mouthy German woman and a Jewish father who was never healthy and never let you forget it. For one reason or another Klaus was born with a chip on his shoulder and a world to take it out on. Klaus, like most people in Perfect was a native. What set him apart was that when he went away for college, he didn’t stay gone. He moved back, went to work for the police department, and never looked back. Most people will tell you that he came back because he would have had to work in some other town, but what would he do in Perfect? Get even with anyone he wanted. Take Loyd Cantrell for instance. Just once he’d like to bust his ass. To bust Loyd for something that would make him feel good for doing it. Something that would make up for all of the jokes that were played on him as a kid and it would happen. Nobody is so good they never get caught. However, right now Loyd would have to take a back seat; he had bigger fish to fry. Somewhere out there right now was a true vandal that he had been investigating for months. Some kid was out there lifting parking tickets off of cars causing a severe administrative headache for him and maybe if he caught the little booger soon enough he could turn him away from crime. The chance to save a boy from going bad would go a long way toward becoming lieutenant.