The Pendleton Omens - 1. Chapter 1

“How many times do I have to go through this?”

“I got it the first time, Donny.”

“And don’t call me Donny. I’m sick of it.”

“I’ve called you Donny since the first grade.”

“Well, don’t.” I was as close to slamming out of Owen’s office as I ever came. Which wasn’t very close at all.

“Bit tense this afternoon,” he said.

“You made me do that report three times.”

“You got it wrong twice.”

“I doubt it. I’ve been doing these reports for twenty years. And I do ‘em better than anyone else in the station.”

“Then you’re messing up.”

“Or you’re being a jerk.”

He grinned. “Well, there is that.”

“Why?”

“Give me a break. Before I make you do that paperwork again.”

“No way.” I gave Owen the finger then headed into the main room. “Owen has his head up his butt,” was all I told Rob Perez as I slumped into my chair. Our worn desks faced each other. The town keeps promising a renovation.

“What else is new?” Rob asked.

“I mean it.”

“Something’s always up,” he said. “He takes all the crap to let us do our work.”

“This is different.”

Rob laughed, and I stared at him for a couple seconds. He was working on his computer, doing his usual three fingers and a thumb typing. He had another bad haircut. Too short, with the sideburns too high. What is it about some good-looking guys that sometimes makes them so blind?

The phones rang. The phones were always ringing. For a small station in a smaller town, we get a lot of calls.

“Car wreck on one forty one,” Elena reported.

“Where?” Rob asked.

“Where do you think?” she asked back.

“On it,” he said, grabbing his coat and heading out.

“Wreck or fender denter?” I asked Elena.

“I don’t know. The guy on the phone just sounded irritated.” She smiled, then turned back to the front desk.

I looked at the report I’d filed three times in the last two days then dropped it in my drawer. I wished I could tell Rob what was up with Owen.

Instead, I speed-dialed Noah. “How you doing?” I asked Lleeya when she picked up. “How’s he doing?”

“Busy,” she said. “I don’t think he can talk.”

“Well, tell him I called. That’ll hold him for a couple of hours.”

She laughed. Then I laughed. Then I hung up. I could picture Noah working over some guy. I never thought of him working on women. Then I could picture myself lying on his table.

I stood. I stretched. My neck still hurt, no matter what he adjusted. I looked at Elena, stared at the coffee maker, glanced at the clock, and decided I couldn’t drink half-day-old crap again.

“Going down to Theo’s,” I told her. “Want something?”

She seemed to consider, playing with her tongue between her teeth. “Nah,” she said.

“I’ll be right back. And you know how to find me.”

I pulled on my coat, checked for my gloves, stuck my baseball cap on my head, and forced my way out the stubborn front doors. They were always worse when they’re wet. Then I had to make sure I didn’t slip on the wide front steps, on what was left of the morning’s snow. At the intersection, two inches of new white stuff didn’t make the tiny town square look any cleaner. Two feet of gray stuff was already plowed against the curbs. And the gazebo needed painting.

I crossed Main then headed down it after it turned, still pulling on my gloves. I couldn’t believe I’d lost another pair. Lost one of them, anyway, my usual stunt. Even when I bought cheap multiples, I always lost the wrong glove.

It was probably in the low teens. It would go lower tonight, and normally, I’d have to load on the blankets. But Noah had a heated water bed. I’d never liked them before. They seemed something left over from the sixties. But Noah didn’t care.

“They’re good for your back,” he said. “And if you’d been sleeping on something better than that piece of Salvation Army piece of crap, you wouldn’t be having problems.”

“It came with the apartment.”

“You couldn’t buy another one.”

I’d been meaning to. But the move into the apartment had been rushed, and there were other things I needed to do first.

“Like move out,” Noah mentioned, the first time I let him see the place.

“It’s not that bad.”

“It’s close to work. I’ll give you that.”

My apartment was next door to the police station. That was on the ground floor of the town hall. Upstairs was a meeting room, but the windows had been boarded over for years, and they’re mainly what I could see out my windows.

The apartment was three rooms in a row. The building had once been a hotel. You came into the living room. To the right was the kitchen. To the left, the bedroom. A bathroom, off the living room, had a window that opened into the hall.

“Out of here,” Noah said. “Now.”

“It’s not that bad,” I’d repeated.

Which was pretty much the story of the town. Waldron was an old mill town, almost abandoned when the mill shut down. Over the next hundred years, the area slowly became suburbs. I’d once crawled into the attic of the old mill. There was a narrow ladder leading from one of the janitor’s closets. Hanging in the rafters were old gas fixtures and globes from early electric lights.

“They ought to restore this place,” I’d told the guy giving me the tour.

“Who’d care?” he’d asked. He was dead now, too.

Waldron wasn’t any better looking than the old snow, but it was improving. People who couldn’t afford to live in Northampton or Amherst were buying the small old houses.

Two blocks down, I went into Theo’s. I didn’t even have to order. He just brought me a mug.

“Cold out,” he said.

“No joke.”

“Worse coming.”

“So I heard.”

“I gotta sell this place.”

We laughed. Theo was always talking about selling his place. Then spring came, and he decided Waldron was the best place on earth.

And that was pretty much our conversation. Theo didn’t like owning a coffee shop but didn’t know what else to do. At least, I liked my work. In fact, I liked it almost better than anything in my life.

I liked Waldron, too, though there were now city problems that hadn’t been there when Theo, Owen, and I were growing up. And I liked western Massachusetts. It was where I intended to die, though not any time soon.

“There’s a wreck out towards Mount Tom,” I told Theo.

“Usual place?” he asked.

“That’s what Elena said.”

“She still married?”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

“That’s just too bad.”

We laughed. Theo had the perfect wife. Elena had a great husband. And she was almost half Theo’s and my age.

I sipped my coffee. It was always too hot at first, but I tried to drink it anyway. “You make things too hard for yourself,” my ex-wife Sharon told me. And I wondered if I should have put off finally telling Owen about Noah.