Category: Excerpts

While I was home for Christmas, I drove around the old home town to see who I could run into.
Unlike all my previous visits, most everyone was there, either down at Turtle Creek Saloon or the Hi-Lite. I wasn’t sure what my reception was going to be like, but it turned out well: a lot of people had been reading my website and were really in to what I was doing. South Dakota doesn’t have much, really, in the way of celebrity — after Tom Dascle and Mt. Rushmore, they’re pretty much out of ammunition, so that night, among my old High School buddies, I basked in a rockstar-like glory. People drove me around town, and told me about parties that were going on in the next few days and that I should definately come.
When I got back to my folk’s house, I confided to my mom that it was already the best visit home that I’d ever had, and I hadn’t even gone hunting yet.
Of course, I’d forgotten to get a license, so I had to take care of that the next day.
I drove back into town in my pickup to buy a pheasant license and backed into a space in front of the pizzeria/movie rental shop/Sears outlet that also sold the permits I needed. (Yeah, in South Dakota, you can’t really specialize.)
When I came back outside, my pickup was partially blocked in by this other car. I tried pulling out but I kept tapping bumpers, no matter how much I hauled the wheel over to the left, so finally I just put it back in park and waited.
That was when I noticed the cops on the other side of the street. There were at least five, all out in front of the Clothes Garden (retail chains don’t really like South Dakota, btw). They were all heavily armed and peering in the windows of the store. I couldn’t really see what was going on, so I pulled my gun out of it’s case in the passenger seat and used the scope like a telescope to watch the action. It probably wasn’t a good idea to point a gun at a cluster of cops this way, but no one was looking my way.
All but two of the cops crept inside and started weaving through the circular racks of clothes, pistols out and crouched. I watched, and realized that I could see where the guy they were after was hiding. The problem was, I didn’t have any way of warning them, so I kept watching.
The cops in the store were clueless. They walked right by the guy about 5 times, until he finally got cocky and made his move, slipping past the deputies in the store and out a side entrance that led back to the front sidewalk.
He came out right behind the sheriff, who was a nice guy I’d known a long time. I only had one choice, so I squeezed the trigger and dropped the guy. The cops didn’t know what was going on, and by the time they’d gotten a clue, I’d pulled out of my space across the street and was driving calmly in the opposite direction. The only thought I had about the whole thing was that I’d have a really good story to tell at the party I’d been invited to that night, and that my sights were adjusted a little high and to the left.
~
It was a pretty wild dream.