Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang (3 page)

Tommy puts up a hand in a peaceful gesture,
palm out.

“I’m not suggesting anything,” he says. “I’m
just thinking aloud, is all. You can’t tell me it’s never crossed
your mind.”

Mason and I have talked about this before and
I tell him the same thing I tell her when she suggests that maybe
the sheriff should hole up somewhere in the Hierro Maderas.

“I’ll stand by his side for a long as I’m
alive.”

“And I appreciate it,” the sheriff says.

“Listen,” Mason says.

We all turn to her.

“What is it?” I ask her.

She touches her ear. “Listen.”

“I don’t hear anything,” I say.

But then I get it. The desert night’s always
full of sounds. Rustles and stirrings in the dry brush. An owl
hooting from the top of some distant cactus. Javalinas rooting
around down by the dry wash, looking for prickly pear.

Right now there’s dead silence except for the
wind banging a shutter up in the barn.

“Look sharp,” the sheriff says.

We scan the skies on all sides. I can’t see
anything.

“Over there,” Tommy says, pointing above the
house.

I start to tell him there’s nothing there,
except then I realize it’s like the absence of sound in the desert
around us. The sky is always thick with stars—this far away from
pretty much anybody, there’s no light pollution and you can see the
galaxies in all their glories. Except above the house there’s an
empty spot. No stars. Nothing.

Because the last of the enemy ships is there
and it’s using something new: some kind of stealth tech. Instead of
a glowing oval that’s a little like a dirigible, there’s just the
shape of it blocking out the stars.

“Sheriff!” I call over.

The sheriff brings the stock of the buffalo
rifle up to his shoulder. It’s an easy shot, but he doesn’t take
it. He just stands there, staring up at that absence of stars.

I lift my rifle. The range is iffy but I
think I can make the shot. But before I can squeeze the trigger a
laser flashes out of the enemy ship. It burns the dirt at the
sheriff’s feet then rises up to cut him in two. He falls to the
ground in a jumble of metal and little clockwork bits that spill
across the yard. His head bounces once, then rolls up against the
wheel of the wagon holding the Linden Kid.

I start firing at the ship, but it’s already
in retreat.

And then it’s gone.

For a long time I stare at the mess of
scorched parts that used to be the sheriff. Buddy approaches it and
sniffs at the metal, whining. Mason touches my arm in sympathy but
I shake her hand off and turn to Tommy.

“Goddamn,” I say. “Why’d you have to fill his
head with all that crap you were spouting?”

“It was his choice,” Tommy says.

“Is that right? And what are we going to do
the next time those bastards show up? Nobody could shoot like
him.”

“Maybe they won’t come anymore since they got
what they were looking for.”

I’ve got nothing left to say. I start to take
a swing at him but Mason grabs my arm and hangs on.

“You better make dust,” she tells Tommy.

A year later I’m steering down a dusty side
road in my old pickup. Mason’s got the shotgun seat, Buddy’s riding
in between us. We’re towing a new-to-us old Airstream trailer as I
follow the directions Mason reads from the GPS app on her
phone.

“That’s it,” she says, pointing ahead to
where a dirt lane leaves the side road and heads out to some
buildings we can see out in the brush.

It’s a crappy track, full of potholes, and I
take my time pulling the trailer along its half-mile length. By the
time we reach the ranch house a woman is standing on the porch,
shading her eyes. She’s got a couple of lean, reddish-brown dogs
beside her on the porch. The dogs are obviously interested in
us—gazes steady, ears twitching—but trained enough to stay with her
and not bark.

I pull in under the shade of a tall mesquite,
roll down the window, and get out of the cab. Mason follows suit,
but we leave Buddy inside.

“Ma’am,” I say and touch the brim of my
baseball cap with a finger. “Is Tommy around?”

“He’s out by the barn,” she says, “but I
wouldn’t get your hopes up. He’s pretty particular about what he
buys.”

I guess she thinks we’re here to try to make
a deal on the Airstream.

“We’re not selling,” I tell her.

She smiles. “Well, then you’re most welcome.
The last thing we need around here is more junk—no offense. That
trailer actually looks to be in pretty good shape.”

“It better be. We paid enough for it. Is it
okay if I go talk to Tommy?”

“Sure. If he’s not in the barn then he’s in
the workshop behind it.”

I touch the brim of my cap again.
“Thanks.”

“You go on ahead,” Mason says when I turn to
her.

I nod. She knows this is something I have to
do on my own.

“I’ve got iced tea,” I hear Tommy’s wife say
as I’m leaving. “If you’d care for a glass.”

“That would be lovely,” Mason tells her.

Then I’m out of earshot.

I follow the sound of a hammer on metal
around back of the barn. When I turn the corner I see Tommy banging
out the dents on the side panel of what looks to be an old bumper
car.

“Hey,” I say.

He lifts his head. It takes him a moment to
recognize me and then a wary look comes into his eyes.

“Should I be wishing I had my shotgun in my
hand,” he says, “instead of this mallet?”

I shake my head. “I’m not here to make
trouble. I came by to apologize.”

He sets the mallet down on the hood of the
car.

“There’s no need for that,” he tells me.
“Things were pretty messed up that night and I should have kept my
mouth shut. You were doing just fine before I came along.”

“There hasn’t been an attack since then,” I
tell him. “Not one. We’ve never had so long a stretch.”

He waves me over to where a couple of plastic
lawn chairs are set in the shade.

“Nothing?” he says as we settle into our
seats.

“Nothing. So you were right. It was him they
were after all along. Once they took him out…well, we haven’t seen
hide or hair of them since.”

“I’ve thought a lot about that night,” Tommy
says but he doesn’t go on.

“And?”

He shrugs. “And nothing. It all seems like a
bad dream. Like I ate a lot of pizza and ice cream while watching
one of those big blockbuster movies where things blow up every
couple of minutes or so. Then I fell asleep and found myself in the
middle of that alien shootout.”

“Except it wasn’t a dream.”

“I know that.” He leans back in his chair.
“Do you ever wonder where he came from—the sheriff, I mean—and
where he’s gone now?”

“All the time.”

And I do think about where he is but it’s
nothing I feel like talking about. I feel guilty enough for keeping
the sheriff around as long as I did. Mason’s even starting to sleep
through the night now.

“I’ve got something for you,” I say as I get
to my feet. “It’s back in the truck.”

He stands up and we head back to the
house.

“Nice Airstream,” he says.

“Yeah, it’s a ’66, but it’s in crazy-good
shape. Mason and I are going to do a little travelling. Visit her
sister in New Mexico first, then see where we feel like going after
that. We’ve never been able to travel before.”

We’ve reached the truck. I lean into the bed
and pull off the tarp that’s covering Johnny Scales, the leader of
the Mech Gang.

“You’re giving me
him
?”

I nod. “I thought maybe you could talk to
that friend of yours—see if he can get him walking again.”

“I could do that. What about the rest of
them?”

“I’ve got them in storage. If your friend
figures something out, maybe you could email me and let me
know?”

“So you can try to fix the others?”

I nod.

“What about the sheriff?” he asks. “What’d
you do with what was left of him?”

“We buried the parts up in the Hierro Maderas
where no one’s going to find them.”

Tommy turns to look at where the mountains
rear up in the distance. They’re not as close from this vantage
point as they are to the ranch, but they still seem to go up into
the sky forever.

“God rest his soul,” Tommy says. “If he has
one.”

I nod.

Tommy returns his attention to the still form
of the clockwork outlaw weighing down the bed of my truck.

“I’ve got a little front loader back in the
barn,” he tells me. “We should be able to lift him out with its
bucket.”

“Did you tell him?” Mason asks as we’re
driving away from the house.

I shake my head. “Why give him something to
worry about?”

“Maybe because there is something to worry
about?”

“The enemy’s not coming back. They cut the
sheriff in two—that’s all they were after.”

“We don’t know that for a fact.”

“It’s been a year,” I say.

A year since we buried the body—like I told
Tommy we did. But we kept the head. It’s in the Airstream now in a
padded box to keep it from getting banged around. Evenings we take
it out and set it on a cushion. I don’t know how or why, but the
sheriff’s still in there. Some nights he just tells us stories
about what it was like back when the state was a territory. Some
nights we try to figure how to get him another body because I’ve
got to tell you, it’s damn weird talking to just a head.

The sheriff thinks he can move into another
body if we can get something in working order.

This friend of Tommy’s getting Scales fixed
up is a long shot. We’ve considered lots of other options.

Like sneaking into the tunnels under
Disneyland and stealing one of their old animatronic figures. Grab
one of those Yetis and let the sheriff go wandering deep in the
mountains. That’d give the area a for-real Mogollon Monster. I’d
love to see the face of the hiker who runs into him wearing that
body.

Or breaking into a morgue to get someone
newly dead, but the sheriff doesn’t think he can exist in flesh and
it doesn’t seem right, him walking around in a corpse. Damn thing’d
probably rot out on him.

No, he needs clockwork, or some kind of
machinery. Something that’ll last.

So far it seems pretty hopeless. But I’m not
giving up.

I’m a Cutler and it seems we’ve always got to
have ourselves a folly.

###

About the Author

Charles de Lint is a full-time writer and
musician who makes his home in Ottawa, Canada. His many awards
include the
World Fantasy Award
, the Canadian SF/Fantasy
Aurora Award
, and the
White Pine Award
, among others.
Modern Library's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century poll (voted on
by readers) put eight of de Lint's books among the top 100. With 37
novels and 18 collections of short fiction published to date, de
Lint writes for adults, teens and children. His new middle grade
book is
The Cats of Tanglewood Forest
, illustrated by
CHarles Vess (Little Brown, 2013). His most recent adult novel,
The Mystery of Grace
(Tor, 2009), is a fantastical ghost
story and a heart-wrenching tale of love, passion and faith. His
newest young adult novel is
Over My Head
(Triskell Press,
2013). His latest collection of short fiction is
The Very Best
of Charles de Lint
(Tachyon Publications, 2010). For more
information, visit his web site at
http://
www.charlesdelint.com
.

You can also connect with him at:

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Charles-de-Lint/218001537221

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/#!/cdelint

Tumblr:
http://cdelint.tumblr.com/

Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang

Is an original Triskell Press publication and
appears here for the first time.

Cover design by MaryAnn Harris.

Cover art by Ben Garrison.

http://bengarrison.com/fine_art.html

eISBN 978-0-920623-13-8

For information:

Triskell Press

P.O. Box 9480

Ottawa ON K1G 3V2

Canada

http://
www.triskellpress.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion
thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
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except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or
reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places,
businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or
locales is purely coincidental.