ONE
NICK
The one setof traffic lights in town turned amber then red. Snow crunched under the tires of my truck as I eased to a stop. To my right was the downtown core, to my left was a gas station and a gazebo with a life-sized nativity scene. It looked like Christmas had vomited up and down the main street, went and got more bad tuna, and came back to chuck up more red and green lights. Decorations. Were. Everywhere.
I’d been in town for less than five minutes and I already hated Chance Rapids.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I whispered under my breath as I followed the instructions from my phone. It was eight o’clock at night, but the glare from the lights made it seem like mid-afternoon. I tried to make out the street signs as I crept along. It was tough because the snowbanks were more like mini mountains, some of which had swallowed up the street signs. Wet snowflakes swirled, landing on my windshield before they were squished by my wipers.
“Oak Street, Oak Street,” I whispered to myself as I squinted to read the signs. It had been a long day and all I wanted to do was get to the hotel, jerk off, and go to sleep.
“Please make a U-turn, if safe to do so.” The GPS lady with the British accent obviously didn’t know that the streets were far too narrow for my vintage Chevy Silverado to make a three-point turn, let alone execute a U. I glanced into the mirror, there were no cars on the road, and I realized that there were no people around either.
God, I hated small towns. “I guess they roll up the main street at sunset here,” I muttered to myself.
Which meant I could do one of my favorite maneuvers—a brake turn that would put a U-turn to shame. After one more glance in the rearview to confirm I wasn’t going to crash into anyone, I stomped my foot on the gas, turned the wheel, and then slammed on the brakes. The truck whipped around like that ride I remembered from the fall fair, the Scrambler, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.
“Turn left onto Oak Street,” the British lady repeated herself.
I hadn’t driven by it; Oak Street didn’t exist. “There’s no Oak Street,” I said.
I usually found my GPS’s voice sexy, but tonight, when she started sounding like a broken record, I inhaled and jabbed at the screen on my phone, trying to get her to stop telling me to turn where there was no goddamn street. When I looked up from my phone, the Christmas lights were flashing.
It took me a minute to realize that the flickering red and blue lights weren’t coming from the ugly garlands over my head—there was a cop car behind me.
“Argh.” I groaned and dropped my forehead to the steering wheel.
The cop car made one of thosewhoop-whoopsounds, but the officer didn’t engage the sirens. The road was so filled with snow, there was nowhere to pull over. “Stupid town.” I stopped right in the middle of the road and put the truck in park. “Fine. I’ll stop. Right here.”
This time the cop’s voice came through the speaker. “You’re blocking the roadway. Pull into the gas station parking lot.”
I cranked down the window and pointed to the stoplights to acknowledge that I’d heard the order. I didn’t trust cops and wasn’t going to get set up for anoutrunning the lawticket. Although I doubted that this backward town even had a jail cell.
There were a couple of cars in the diner parking lot and shadows of people inside. Finally, signs of life. I pulled in next to a Range Rover and turned off the engine. The officer got out of his car and was every bit the stereotype, complete with a pot belly, mustache, and cocky saunter.
Authority and I didn’t do well together. Getting kicked out of the league for arguing with a ref, and maybe giving him the shove he deserved, were evidence of my disdain for any and all people who enforced the rules.
My window was still down. I leaned my elbow on the frame while I waited for the walrus in the uniform to finish his leisurely stroll to my truck.
“Do you mind turning down the radio, son?”
I pointed to the spot on the dashboard where the radio used to live but was now an empty space. “It’s not on.”
The police officer shook his head. “These damn Christmas carols, I hear them in my sleep.”
“Deck the Halls” was playing from a speaker that was hung on the lamppost behind him.
“The only good song is ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.’”
The sides of the cop’s mouth turned up. It looked like I had run into a fellow Christmas hater. “Do you know why I pulled you over, son?”
“I’m not your son.” I crossed my arms, shoving my hands into my armpits. The temperature was at least twenty degrees colder on this side of the mountain pass. When I’dstopped for gas in the neighboring town of Windswan, I hadn’t needed my gloves—now, on the western side of the Sugar Peaks range, it was an entirely different climate.
“Don’t get sassy with me.” The cop rested his notepad on his belly. If he had white hair and a beard, he would’ve been a dead ringer for Santa. “License and registration.”
I got my documents from the glove box and handed them to him.
“City guy,” he said as he read my license.
