Life With A Werewolf

Getting Sarah Part 1 - Lost In Arkansas

This blog is now located at: https://lifewithawerewolf.blogspot.com/ and in a few weeks will only update there. Please save that location, and check often. All of the back posts from here is now located there. Thank you.

-------------------------------------------------------

          It took us several hours to get back through Kentucky. We were halfway through Missouri when we finally decided to call it a day and rest for a few hours. Crash found a small parking spot on the far end of a rest stop and parked his old Caddy, allowing us to sleep a while. It was cold, hadn’t started snowing yet, and getting colder. I would have loved to have a hotel room, even if I had to share the bed. But none of the locations either of us called would have a room for another three hours or more.
          So, we slept, bundled in our coats with the top up. Thankfully the seats in these older vehicles tend to lay almost completely flat. These came from an earlier time when prospective motorists didn’t have access to Airbnb or luxury accommodations and many times had nothing more than roadside motels. Those could be iffy at best. They could either be new construction, with the fancy “massage beds” (which was nothing more really than a small Earthquake simulator that would shake you into oblivion) or they could be roach-infested run-down shacks, complete with moldy carpeting, leaky roofs, and bed bugs large enough to ask if you have change for the snack machine.
          Since both of these for some people, especially those who spent a good part of their day on the road, didn’t seem all that appealing, a large portion of Americans then would just sleep in their cars at various rest stops. Vehicles were designed for this, with fold-down seats which allowed one to do so in comfort. And despite the arctic winds getting colder and colder, Crash and I were able to do the same, and doze for a good two or three hours with nothing more bothersome than a little cold wind leaking through the rough patched top of the Caddy.
          It was a few hours later that we veered, and instead of ending up somewhere in Texas, as I had expected, we found ourselves in Northern Arkansas, in a community with a population small enough to make our tiny hometown feel like a metropolis in comparison. Typical American small towns are based around two separate highways. One allows you to pass through the town with relative ease. You may have to take things down to a pace that a slug would consider slow, but you need not even stop. Mainstreet will ride alongside or intersect with the highway, and that is where the vast majority of the community does their living, bill paying, and dying in.
          The small town that we stopped in was no different. Small “historical” style buildings resided around a courthouse that looked as if it was built out of a catalog that advertised buildings that looked historic. Each small business in the area resided in such styles of buildings. Only the gas stations and a Dollar General was different: they were newer pre-fab metal-style buildings with strange exteriors that always reminded me of the interior of corrugated cardboard. We stopped at a local truck stop diner that sold grease with a side of warm smiles and a friendly “Hey y’all”.
          Sitting in an ancient booth surrounded by wood paneling, feeling as though Aunt B was about to show up any minute with Andy Griffith and Opie, we ordered food and coffee, then sat and waited. Crash and I were talked out, exhausted by the road, and enjoying the peace only a quiet meal with a good friend could provide. As the caffeine began to work its magic a sheriff’s car arrived in front and out stepped a man that I thought for a moment might even dwarf Crash’s stature.
          They seemed to be the same build and height, with the sheriff being several shades older than Crash in appearance. His face held the ancient shape of worn leather, beaten and creased by years of rough weather. White hair sprouted out from around his cowboy hat. He had the dark skin of an unknown ancestry and wild blue eyes that pierced into me. I could tell right away, that the sheriff was also a werewolf.
          He sat down at our table and held his hand out to me first with as warm of a grin as he could muster. “I’m Nathaniel Collier. Just call me Sheriff Nate.”
          I shook his hand and gave him my name, not even attempting to give him the same warm smile he gave me. “I apologize for my sour demeanor,” I said.
          “It’s alright. I’d be a little sour myself if I was told I had to come get my ex-wife for she killed herself,” he said with a grin.
          I yawned. “I thought it was vampires that were trying to kill her. Or did I have it wrong?”
          Sheriff Nate’s jaw dropped open. For a moment I was tempted to tell him he could catch flies that way but wisely kept my mouth shut and instead looked down into my coffee.
He turned to Crash and asked, “How much does he know?”
          “Jason knows a lot,” Crash replied. “Not everything yet, but he knows a lot. Much of it he learned on his own.”
          “Well, I’ll let you boys grab a bite real quick,” Nate said, with a serious look, then turned towards me. “After dinner, Crash can drop you off at the motel and get y’all a couple of rooms while me and him go poke around a bit. Won’t take us too long.”
          “Sheriff,” I said, “You’re not putting me in a cage like some damsel in distress while you go off and play the hero. I’m in this.”
          “You have no idea what you’re dealing with here,” Nate growled. “Me and Crash have got this. It would be better for all involved if you stayed out of it until you’re called.”
          “Nate,” Crash said. “He’s alright. He can handle himself.”
          He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Alright. He can come.
But if he pukes or freaks out, I’m leaving y’all there at the crime scene.”
          Our food arrived a couple of minutes after that. We ate about as quickly as we could and in less than five minutes me and crash both had empty plates and coffee mugs in front of us. Standing up almost as one, we both said, “alright, let’s go.” I’m not sure Sheriff Nate was prepared for that. He blinked a couple of times, then shrugged. “Well, I guess that proves it.” He said to himself, as we paid our bill and left.
          As we were about to get into our cars, I grabbed the sheriff’s shoulder and asked. “Proves what?”
          “Huh?”
He looked at me as if I caught him off guard.
          “You said ‘I guess that proves it.’”
          “Oh,” he replied then pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“Heard you were military. Combat vet or something. Didn’t believe it until I saw you eat in there. Only two types eat like you just did. Werewolves and veterans. Makes sense why Crash has so much faith in you. Though, if you screw up, you die.”
          I shrugged. “Well, we’re all gonna die anyway.” Then walked over to the passenger side of Crash’s Caddy. Sheriff Nate was glaring at me. “What? I never said it was gonna be today.”
          I climbed into the car, then looked at Crash.
“Your werewolf friend has no sense of humor.”
          He shrugged. “He says life is precious. It’s why he became a cop, after all.”
          Life is precious. As if I didn’t already know that. A lot of people whose risked life or limb for their occupation can get jaded. It can seem like a giant game of Whack-o-mole. The moment you press down a problem in one area, three more in three different places seem to pop up. It can feel like an accident. Lightning struck a puddle somewhere and then before you know it the algae was learning how to walk.
          I’ve never subscribed to that theory. Yes, life can be insane at times. A near trainwreck of cosmic insanity, a joke played out by God, the stars, the universe, or whatever other entity you can think of, playing out pranks on us actors born onto a stage whose only job is to die in some spectacularly entertaining fashion. But if life can be as dark and psychotic as some people claim, then the inverse, the light has to be just as bright, if not brighter. The prevailing theory in entertainment about such things right now is that you can’t have good without Evil. That you need the negative to know what the positive is like. I’ve never personally subscribed to that. My theory is a bit different.
          You can’t have evil without good. For things to be dark, bitterly dark, you have to have a light source. That brightness out there in the ether that illuminates everything. For something to exist in the shadow, to pull life down into it for the sole sake of devaluing it and destroying it then the light must exist somewhere. The light has to be there, otherwise, we don’t have life.
          I know it’s crazy. However, if you think about it, it just may not be as crazy as you first thought. Cause after all, for there to be rebellion against good (which, let’s be honest, is all that evil really is) there has to be good first. Good has to exist. Without it, you don’t have evil. And with that empty vacuum of good and evil, you get nothing. Which is a far scarier thing to have than good or evil.
          True evil does exist. I know it, I’ve seen it. Raised my right hand and have made my oath to give to my best ability to fight it.
Was injured, and taken out of that fight, true. But I did fight it. Me and anyone who has served in a capacity, whether it's military, police, firefighter, what have you, have seen it. And for there to be evil, for it to exist and give those individuals a job in fighting against it, there must be a good out there for that evil to rebel against.
          All of this was on my mind on the short trek out to the crime scene. We drove through wooded hills and houses out onto a gravel road that lead into a valley in the literal middle of nowhere. A trailer home draped in blood. It was in this trailer home that my brief story took a bit of a darker turn.