“Sheriff, this here’s the investigator.”
“You look pretty young to be looking into other people’s business.”
“I am.”
“Have a seat,” says the sheriff and then pulls out a bottle, mostly full, of Wild Turkey from somewhere under his desk. Two dusty glasses appear between the two, the third man having already made his exit.
On one side of the desk sits a well-built man, Handsome MacDonald, in the prime of his life, experienced but no expert, strong but no bully, certain of many things in life but ready, sometimes even eager, to find out about more.
On the other side sits a slim, sharp-faced fellow in his earliest 20s but sporting a smirk well beyond his years. He’s dressed in an expensive light-gray suit and has his hat pulled down tight to his eyebrows like a tough guy from an earlier age.
A half-hour later, not much has been said but the bottle of Wild Turkey, which had been under that desk for some time, is now almost empty – little more than a copper-colored puddle for MacDonald to swish back and forth across the glass bottom as if he were a chemist weighing up some concoction by eye.
To Step, the young man sitting across from him, it’s an attempt at hypnosis, he’s the one being weighed up, taste-tested, possibly even pigeonholed.
‘I don’t know why I even came here,’ he thinks, keeping his eye on the bottom of the bottle as it swings back and forth from two thick fingers across the desk.
‘I need a job, that’s why,’ comes the reply from him to himself.
In fact, Step, Jack Step, a college dropout with a penchant for adventure and a weakness for drink, is already gainfully employed at a leading national insurance company that his uncle works at. Originally from Joplin, he’d been drifting across the length and breadth of the south since his early teens: first as a stowaway on cargo trains, though he never went too far; then as a hitchhiker to the Florida Keys, where he was arrested after a bar fight with some Cubans. His uncle had to wire the bail and “other financial considerations” to the local police chief, who was a professional acquaintance.
College didn’t go well, either. Jack just couldn’t sit still, his aunt would say. He also just couldn’t stay clear of problematic females. It was one such vixen that had got him in that ruckus with those wetbacks. She wasn’t nothing over 16 herself, a runaway by all accounts. But Jack was determined to remove her from the dangers of her present predicament whatever the personal cost. He wasn’t, however, willing to pay her pimp for the pleasure of living out this romantic fantasy, and in fact couldn’t cover his own bill at the less than reputable establishment.
Then there was the socialite sociology major named Susan. She liked his convertible, his clothes, his utter contempt for academia. What she didn’t like was getting caught doing the deed by her father who paid all the bills. The rape charges, although eventually dropped, were the final straw for Jack’s uncle, who gave the usual ultimatum to his ward.
Surprisingly, the young man showed immediate promise as an insurance investigator, though still remained rough around the edges. But to his uncle’s relief he was given a permanent position and got along well with his coworkers.
“Now, son, I know your history, and expect you know a little of mine. I’ve been handed a cold case, and need a cool head to help me out,” starts the sheriff.
Step now has his eyes off the bottle and on the man.
“Have you ever heard of Old Man Ass – that’s the way he’s known around these parts?”
Step doesn’t answer and doesn’t have to. Every kid worthy of a slingshot had heard the horror stories of the murderous drifter who’d plagued southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and who knows where else throughout the 1950s. Some now considered him a phantom, all the more as the murders suddenly stopped. As a kid, Jack had fantasized about hunting down the son of a bitch and dragging him to justice to a hero’s welcome.
The sheriff sharply returns the bottle to its hiding place and gives Step a hard stare, almost leaning over the desk and into his face.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
No answer.
“Are you really up to the job?”
Doesn’t move.
“I need a man I can count on – not a kid in a pulled-down hat. I’m looking for more than a lunatic and less than a human being. He’s a drifter by profession if any, and I think you know what that means.
The sheriff, who had looked like he was getting tipsy, is now dead serious. His face has turned red from pink, his eyes narrow and hard if still glassy; his mouth, or that slit between his nose and chin, is firm, determined and convinced what it will say is the only truth.
Step’s lips get dry.
Within minutes, the two men are sitting on the office couch going over old files and photographs. Some of the pictures make Step almost vomit. The sheriff doesn’t raise an eyebrow. The written materials are more assorted: newspaper clippings – some with sensational front-page headlines, others little more than an obituary – police reports, including one from a hiker who said he personally witnessed Old Man Ass dragging one of his victims kicking and screaming by the collar into a cave, and the usual statements by psychics and other crackpots claiming that O.M.A. was a troubled spirit returned from the dead, or an alien trying to get back home.
“So where do we go from here?” asks Step.
“There’s the usual paperwork, of course… and, er… Do you have a girlfriend to go back to, Jack? Someone to soothe your fears and insecurities… wipe the sweat off your face when you wake in the middle of the night, screaming…?”