Sheriff

His name was Sheriff Rudolph Borgen, and he was a very busy man. He could tell this from the way he twitched as he spoke, his shoulders shifting as though he had a million burdens he desperately needed to shake off. The wide brim of his hat hung low over his eyes, which darted over every detail of the Chevrolet, inside and out. He chewed on a piece of black tobacco and spit it out at the rear of the vehicle, hands on hips, his shifty shoulders working out the kinks in his thick bulldog neck. "You folks from the city? Up north, I figure."

"Chicago," Clara cheerfully said. She batted her eyes and gave him her sweetest smile, all teeth and pink, innocent lips. "We got folks in Texas we're set to visit." Her innocence faltered slightly as she watched him inspecting her switchblade, an inner darkness welling within her at this mishandling of her most sacred object. "You gonna need that much longer? It's my good luck charm, like I said. My brother, Frankie, he gave it to me when I was just little. He said it would help me cut through the bad times, that's what you said, wasn't it Frankie?"

He sat up blearily in his seat, his eyes heavy, his body sleepy. The tiredness was unexpected, and he had to wonder if this new body he'd acquired had some illness he wasn't aware of. "Sure."

"My, my, falling asleep that easy, you can see now why I don't let him at the wheel. Got a real case of the dropsy, my brother does. Don't mind him, he's just a lunkhead. " She turned her head and glared out the windshield, hiding her brewing inner darkness from both of them. "That switchblade was real special when he gave it to me, at least to a little girl looking up to her big brother. I guess everyone seems real wise when you're only five."

Sheriff Borden smiled back, and tipped his hat to her. "Seems we got things in common, Ma'am. Lunkhead brothers have been my speciality." He leaned his elbow on the roof of the Chevrolet, his lips upturned as though he were a dog scouting out a scent. He tapped the edge of the switchblade in a gentle rhythm on the roof. "Not much family resemblance, though. Not one hair of symmetry, no sir."

She continued on with her sweet smiling, though to the trained eye the strain of it was cracking her. "That happens sometimes."

Sheriff Borden scratched his arm, lips still upturned in that sniffing pose. "Guess you might be right. I don't have much to compare to, myself, seeing as how my brother is a twin and all. Must be a bit of prejudiced thinking on my part, believing family is all offshoots of the same person. Least that's how I figure it. When you look in a mirror all your life, you keep expecting to find similarities where there ain't supposed to be none." He frowned as he glanced into the backseat. "I got to say, though, you do look might familiar. You must come through these parts often."

"Not really," he began, and Clara shot him a silencing glare. He shrank back beneath it, and did his best to give the Sheriff as warm a smile back as he could muster. "Not this time of year."

"I see." Sheriff Borden turned his attention back on Clara, who was smouldering in the driver's seat. He twirled the switchblade in his grip, bits of red grit flaking off of it and onto his palm. "Now myself, I like to travel in the spring, when it's not too hot. Summer heat beating down like this, especially in Texas, it's enough to fry a person's soul to a crisp."

Clara batted her eyelashes and demurely unbuttoned and re-buttoned the top of her sweater. "Yes, well, it is difficult at times, but the car gives us a good breeze when we're on the open road. Frankie and I take turns driving, because it is ever such a long way from Chicago, but our Gran, she don't wait on no one." She bit her bottom lip, her eyes flickering to her companion in the back seat. "I am a bit curious, though. Just why are you stopping motor cars like this? You worried someone's going to have engine trouble?"

Sheriff Borden chuckled at this. He straightened up, the switchblade still in his grip as he adjusted the waistband of his beige uniform trousers. "Well, Ma'am, it's like this… There was a terrible fire happened a ways back, and we're checking on folks, seeing if they witnessed anything out of the ordinary on their travels. Was a real blazer, that one, took out a farmhouse and a motor car, too."

"That's terrible!" Clara gasped. She held her hand at her open, shocked mouth. "Don't tell me someone was hurt…."

"None got out alive, which is a shame," Borden said, sadly. "Three people, all told. A real tragedy."

"Gosh," Clara breathed. She kept her hand at her mouth, as though holding her horror at the very notion in. "Did you hear that, Frankie? Three people. What a terrible, terrible shame."

"'Course, it weren't the fire that did them in," Sheriff Borden added, stopping Clara's heart cold. He leaned his hip against the side of the Chevrolet, the switchblade swung between his fingers in an endless, circular loop. "There's been this problem that's been happening on that farm as of late. We been suspecting the old folks were in with some of the gangs in Chicago, and we'd been keeping an eye on them now and then, just to check out the rumour mill. Trouble was, couldn't get a proper warrant, not with the judge in this town being so keen on his off license wine and all." He hid his eyes beneath the brim of his hat. "Now, you didn't hear that tidbit from me."

"I'm deaf in this ear," Clara assured him.

"Word on the Chicago streets has it that the farmlands were used as a bit of a cemetery for a goodfella or two. Got some suspicions myself that there's some truth to that."

She giggled at this. "Oh, you're a kidder!" she tittered. "Chicago mob men working out of this little hole in the world, I mean, truly you can see how ridiculous that is…."

"Them corpses, and we will find them, make no mistake, they got something special about them that's been bugging a few of my pals up north for a while now." He traced the outline of her car window with the edge of the rusted, stained switchblade. "Seems every victim's got a strange calling card carved into their face. Mostly on the eyes. One 'x' and one 'o'. When I see that scraped into the bones, I know it's got Chicago written all over it." His bulldog pout twisted into a wide, sharklike smile. "But now, what am I doing, worrying a pretty little thing like you?" He handed her the switchblade, which she took with a slightly trembling hand. "You would have told me by now if you'd seen anything. Guess you must have just missed the show, and a good thing, too." He tipped his wide brimmed hat at her, and gave her a toothy grin. He had a gold incisor that glinted in the morning sun. "Have a good trip. You watch yourselves, now."

"I always do," she said as she turned on the ignition, the motor clattering into life.

Sheriff Borden stepped aside as the Chevrolet found the road again, its wheels kicking up dust and debris, the ensuing cloud a thick, opaque shield against further scrutiny. The Sheriff was a thin, willowy line within the cloud of dirt, long arms extended, his hands on hips, the profile of his hat facing them. Even his formless shadow studied them in question.

"We almost didn't make it," he observed.

"You shut your mouth." Clara gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white, her teeth gnashing in a silent scream. "You shut it good and tight."

* * * * *

The silence in the motor car was vicious, tainted as it was with Clara's ever brooding anxiety over the police barricade. He couldn't understand why she would feel this way when it was clear that they weren't suspects, for Sheriff Borden never would have given her back her switchblade, nor would he have wished them well on their continued journey. It wasn't as if he could traverse state lines and follow them, and thus, Clara's fear was unreasonable. Besides, she was grossly exaggerating the crime's importance, for hadn't she made it clear, time and again, that human life was worthless, outright expendable? Sure, she may get caught and the state would murder her in turn. Fearing what was expected seemed a foolish waste of energy. He sighed and rested his head on the knit pillow, its musty contents made all the more pungent by the acrid summer afternoon heat.

"We'll be arriving in Foss soon," Clara said. Her head was rigid as she drove, her hands cemented to the steering wheel in the manner of a department store mannequin. "I need to blow off some steam. There had better be somewhere for a girl to water her whistle."

Blowing off steam. He knew well this coded language that hid its acts of violence beneath harmless words. Never did a night end with only her drunken steps to lead him off of his prescribed path, if she got her way they would be harbouring yet another corpse passenger before the night was through. Another stinking, human mess he would be forced to deal with. He thought on the liquified remains of the man she had falsely named Frankie and a thick well of oil slid upwards in his host's throat. He gagged, and swallowed the slimy lump back with effort, its slick bitterness burning the oesophagus. "We should wait," he said, choosing his words especially carefully. "That discussion you had with that law officer, it's clearly upset you. If you're worried your acts have been detected, there's no point in going into another situation where you can ensure they make the proper connections."

A farmhouse windmill creaked in the distance, its gothic, circular reach looming ever closer as they trundled down the long stretch of road, not another motor car in sight. The heat was baking him from the inside out, and he fanned himself with the map she'd purchased back in Chicago, its paper accordion folds doing nothing more than slightly dissipating the humid air around him.

"You shouldn't have killed that man." He folded up the map and tucked it into the side pocket of his jacket. The knitted pillow lay discarded on the floor of the motor car, its pungent aroma wafting up in miserable drafts. This evil old Gran had thought of a stranger's comfort, once, he thought. She'd knitted this ugly pillow will care and had the foresight to know that eventually a tired soul would be riding in the back of that Chevrolet, and it would be her creation that would provide them with comfort. Not so, now, with the leftover stale scent of decay lingering over it, the very same rot that had captured Gran's body and made it one with the mouldy knitted remnant of her life.

Clara had said they were bad people. But her Gran had thought of someone else when she made that ugly green and brown knit pillow, a balm to some unknown soul she had yet to meet. Perhaps that was why the hobo had found their farmhouse, that pillow had been meant for him, to rest his tired head on instead of the filth of the earth. Bad people, from what he understood, didn't care about the comfort of others. They were headstrong and careless, too full of themselves to think of any person existing beyond their fiercely narrow scope.

By this definition, Clara herself was a bad person.

She also told lies.

"I'm not sure why it was so necessary to kill him," he reiterated. "He was just a drifter. He probably never even saw us."

"He saw us, I'm sure of it, and what's done is done. It's not like I can raise the dead, I can't slip into their skin and remold them into whatever shape I want them to be." She bit her bottom lip, her eyes narrowed in furious tension. "It don't matter, anyhow. The coppers figure it's just another mob hit, and you heard him back there, it wasn't like they were anyone's favourite neighbours. I told you, they got money for turning their farm into a rum-runner's graveyard."

"They were dead for two years." He kept his voice even, his eyes following the perfectly even stitching of the knitted pillow at his feet. "You forget that I've seen your work. You're rather prolific."

"Think what nonsense you like," she curtly replied. "It's not me that copper was looking at."

He was confused by this, and he sat up in the back seat, his posture stiffened, shoulders rigid and back awkwardly straight. The strong muscles in this host sometimes went against him, squeezing him to the left of a healthy pink lung. "He never spoke more than two words to me."

"Fat chance them thinking I'm some killer," she giggled. "They aren't looking for some innocent little thing like me, not this sweater wearing, no lipstick, buttoned up like Victoria spinster sweetheart like me. I can hear what's going on in their minds, as clear as a radio broadcast. 'This one couldn't hurt a fly. My, but she's so sweet, so innocent. Kind of vulnerable, too. Poor girl, she needs protecting from brutes like him'. " She glanced back at him, narrowed eyes brimming with black and green malice. "That's what they think you are. The brute. Come to corrupt sweet innocent little me. They'll be looking for you, all right, this man who wasn't a priest, even though he was, who has no history of speak of, who doesn't even have a real name."

"You're wrong." He rolled down his window, the acrid summer air sucking all oxygen out of his host's healthy, pink lungs. "They are your relatives. You are the strongest connection."

"You're just a nasty man who led me astray," she snapped back. "Don't question my intelligence. Why do you think I even brought you along on this ride? Because when something bad happens around me, it bounces off and right away it sticks to you. You make a good cover, friend."

The windmill creaked beneath the scant breeze that captured it, rocking it back and forth on its circumference, never quite making a full rotation. The massive gears groaned beneath the lumbering greeting the structure gave them, its stretched shadow long and cloying as it travelled along the length of the car, obscuring them in its shadow.

"You are reckless and unfocused, Clara." The detail nagged the back of his mind, that she was using him a tool of deflection. Then where was her promise of his target, his own work that needed to find completion? "You've lied to me too many times. There is no trust between us." He kicked the knitted pillow under her seat. "When the police come for you, I won't stop them."

He felt no regrets. It was what had to be done. She was a serious liability, regardless of her self assured confidence. She had already admitted how easy it would be for her to pin all the blame onto him, to make him suffer for her own horrible crimes. Death and murder were common for her, and she would never understand that these things were so alien to his understanding that he had to twist his mind into odd, uncomfortable angles in order to comprehend them. "I'm here for one specific reason," he reminded her yet again. "I can't journey with you if you're going to keep on killing random strangers. There is no purpose to this, no reason. You claim to be the same as me, but it's all lies. Clara, if the police hang me or you, it doesn't matter. I will survive that end. I don't believe it will be the same for you."

She turned her head away from the road, her dark eyes flashing at him as they pierced into him. The motor car swerved back and forth on the road, her hands carelessly holding onto the steering wheel. "So what are you saying?"

He cleared his throat. Motor oil bubbled up and then settled. "I'm saying our relationship is not a good one."

"This has to be the stupidest break-up I've ever had to endure." She continued glaring at him, the motor car swerving at dangerous angles all over the road, its back wheels tempting the ditch to claim them. "Look, friend, what happens in this world happens and there's no going back and rewriting what parts you didn't like." She picked up speed. A pebble broke free from beneath a back wheel and made a crack in the back windshield. "No matter what crap you think, you're stuck on this road with me. I'll get you where you need to be, because I'm that kind of person. Then I'm dumping you, and you're on your own. I'm that kind of person, too."

She slowly turned back to the steering wheel, her hands getting a steadier grip, the motor car brought back out of its frenzied zig-zag scampering. It was tamed now, the wheels in alignment, the road straight ahead of them, her attention riveted to the long, long road that would take them to where they both needed to be.

"It's not so bad," she said, softly. "We'll have some good times along the way and how can anything go wrong when we have California to look forward to. You ought to get your job done, which will make you happy, and I'll get my spot in moving pictures. We all get something in the end, that's how it's supposed to be. Just stick with me. You'll be fine. I promise."

He wasn't so sure.

"You can't see the future," he reminded her.

"You can't neither," she said. "Not anymore."