Visitor from the East

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“Oh, hell,” Bill Williamson said when the alarm clock assassinated a particularly juicy dirty dream. Cussing at it didn’t make it shut up. Resigned that the dream was dead — he’d never be so limber in real life — the governor of the state of Jefferson hit the top of the clock with a massive fist. He got the OFF button and didn’t break the clock, though not from lack of effort.

Yawning, he sat up in bed. “So early?” his wife muttered.

“Sorry, Louise,” Bill said. “But I’ve got to get to the coast to greet the visitor, and Yreka ain’t exactly coastal.”

He lumbered into the bathroom and did what needed doing in there, then pulled a pair of shorts up over the thick, reddish hair on his legs. His wallet sat in one pocket; his keys clinked in the other. Out he went, to grab some breakfast before he hit the road.

Ceilings in the Governor’s Mansion were thirteen feet tall. Doorways were ten feet high. Bill, at nine-two, didn’t need to worry about ducking or bashing his head every time he went through one. Charlie “Bigfoot” Lewis, the second Governor of Jefferson — and the one who built the mansion during Coolidge prosperity — had been a sasquatch himself, and ran it up on a scale that suited his own comfort. Too big for humans, he’d figured, was easier to deal with than too small for his own folk. Bill blessed him for that.

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