Perfect intro

The angry smell of sex, hairspray, and an acrid shot of perfume swirled about him like a swarm of bees. Even the half eaten bison burger, a test product some food hawker left her, added its voice to the ensemble and they were all saying the same thing. She'll never stay for good. Which wasn't all that bad, was it? Did he want her to stay? If only she weren't such a contemptible pain in the ass. It's like the whole Buster thing.

Why do you call me Buster, he'd say, instead of Coyote like everyone else? She'd answer back with something like, Look Buster, it's not my fault your parents were mental irregular. If you want to be called Coyote, that's your cross to bear. One thing though, i don't lie down with dogs. You got that? Unfortunately, every couple of weeks he didn't mind being Buster for a few hours. It was a wonderfully warm diversion from the everyday loneliness that accompanies a person that doesn't enjoy where they are, but has nowhere else to be. Then again, circumstance was closing in on him. The where he is and the where he should be were nothing more than two trails on the same path headed for an intersection. The problem was further complicated by the intersection being collocated with a cliff and three women, each of whom there to exact their pounds of flesh.

It wasn't good enough that one was a shotgun toting, tequila drinker, with no impulse control or that another was a county judge, with a lifetime of unresolved anger and yelled so much she kept the town virtually bird free. Clearly, that was too easy. So, why not include a nurse, with a predilection for pain, that showed signs of harboring a death wish.

Many times he'd thought, just how the hell did i get here. The short answer would be by bus, but the longer one, the real story of how Perfect became perfect is a much longer tale.

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.

a piece of Perfect...

At the street end of the dirt drive, you could only turn right or left. The funny thing, both directions ended up in the same place; Fox Hollow. Fox Hollow was the only bar in town and doubled as the Post Office. Coincidentally, it was the ice cream parlor in the summer and where you take your kids to get their picture with Santa during the holidays. Oh! Let’s not forget the Rotarians and Tuesday night bingo. The other handy thing about the place, it’s also the bus stop. Naturally, that’s where I met Loyd, nine years ago, when I hit town. You might say it was two steps down from the Army and a stumble back in time.
Back at the house I’d make my left or my right and head for the Fox Hollow. Me, Loyd, and Bit had been meeting up there for coffee at O’dark thirty for a number of years now and it just doesn’t seem right to start the day differently. Sure, I guess we could have met at the diner, but as long as Paula Ann was willing to bring our plates to us, why change?
By the time I get there Loyd will be on his second beer and his third cup of coffee. Bit will ask him why he drinks beer so early in the morning and Loyd will tell him it’s cause he never met a beer he didn’t like. Shortly after that, Bit will ask him why he doesn’t eat something and Loyd will remind him yet again that there is a sandwich in every bottle and a pork chop in every can. Then there will be silence till I get there. God, I love small town life. Nothing ever changes and there’s security in that.