Cripple Creek

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I 'd been up to Marvell to deliver a prisoner, nothing special, just a guy I stopped for reckless driving who, when I ran his license, came back with a stack of outstandings up that way, and what with having both a taste for solitude and a preference for driving at night and nothing much on the cooker back home, I'd delayed my return. Now I was starved. All the way down County Road 51 Id been thinking about the salt pork my mom used to fry up for dinner, squirrel with brown gravy, catfish rolled in cornmeal. As I pulled onto Cherry Street for the drag past Jays Diner, the drugstore and Manny's Dollar $tore, A amp;P, Baptist church and Gulf station, I was remembering an old blues. Guys singing about how hungry he is, how he can't think of anything but food: I heard the voice of a pork chop say, Come unto me and rest.

That pork chop, or its avatar, was whispering in my ear as I nosed into a parking space outside city hall. Don Lee's pickup and the Jeep were there. Our half of the building was lit. Save for forty-watts left on in stores for insurance purposes, these were the only lights on Main Street. I hadn't, in fact, expected to find the office open. Lot of nights, if one of us is gone or we've both worked some event, we leave it unattended. Calls get kicked over to home phones.

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