Christmas in the Shack
Chapter 10: More Frustrating than Unicorns
Sheriff Manley Glodson was very nearly a globe. He must have weighed 350 pounds, fifty of it chins—a collection of them dangled and wobbled there beneath his prissy, smirking mouth. Ford was fleetingly glad that he'd made this trip alone. Had Stanley come along, he thought, Glodson's jail would have already gained two more inmates.
"But surely if the fine is paid—"
"Still have that ol' wreck of a truck messin' up my parking lot," the sheriff said. "Figure I have to charge a hundred a day for space rental. That adds another nine hundred to the fine. There's the fee for havin' that old truck hauled into here in the first place, another hundred. Plus, I have to do paperwork, so that's another hundred. We're talking about two thousand one hundred now. Be two thousand two hundred tomorrow."
"All right," Ford said, fighting down an urge to whip out his magnet gun and pull the banks of file cabinets behind the sheriff's desk down on the man. "Fine. I have a thousand dollars in cash for the fine and I can write—"
"Don't take checks or credit cards," Glodson said with his annoying smile. "You just can't trust people, you know."
Ford looked at his watch. "It's not quite noon. Where's the nearest bank?"
"About three blocks away. It's closed, though."
"Where's the next nearest?"
"One mile. It's closed, too. All the banks in the county are closed for this whole week. Too bad. There's always after New Year's, though. You can come back then."
"No, I'll find an open bank somewhere," Ford said. "What's the deadline?"
Glodson jerked a thumb up over his shoulder. Above the file cabinets a round electric clock showed the time as 11:53. "Five o'clock, by the office clock. Good luck finding a bank."
"May I at least speak to Mr. Sawyer?"
"He's in isolation. He's an insolent sort of man. Teach him a lesson, you know. No visitors."
Ford walked out of the sheriff's office and used his cell phone—he still marveled at it—to call Stanley. "Listen," he said, "there's a complication."
"Who do I need to kill?" Stan asked.
"No, no, it's just that the sheriff, a man named Glodson, is using this case to scam us out of as much money as possible. I need you to wire me fifteen hundred more. That should cover the bases."
"Fifteen hundred, got it. Where do I send it?"
"I'll call you back."
Sitting in the claustrophobic parking lot—except for the entrance, it was surrounded by a high brick fence—Ford looked at what must be Sawyer's pickup, a ten-year old wreck. Literally. Someone had broken out headlights and taillights, and the windshield was a network of shattered safety glass, sagging inward and about to collapse under its own weight. Deep dents in the body showed that someone had been exercising, maybe with a baseball bat.
Ford used his phone to find the nearest wire-transfer office. It was about a fifteen-mile drive. He called Stanley back and told him the number for the transfer. "What are you doing?" Ford asked. "Sounds like you're driving."
"Yeah, runnin' an errand. But I'll take care of this within the half hour. It'll probably be waitin' for you by the time you get to the office."
"I may also have to hire a wrecker," Ford said. "The sheriff is charging rent for the impounded truck, and he—or one of his staff, maybe—has made it undriveable."
"Oy," Stanley groaned. "Just out of curiosity, where is the sheriff's office?"
"Corner of Main and Stanton, in Klamatch," Ford said. "But don't drive up here! The last thing we need is you and your hot head."
"Would I do something like that?" Stan asked. "Let me go send you that money."
"Ford?" Wendy asked from behind the wheel of the rental car.
"Yeah. It's worse'n I figured after his first phone call. Ya sure you wanna go through with this, Wendy?"
"Absolutely."
"We might get caught."
"That's what makes it fun," Wendy returned with a grin.
Stan chuckled. "Ya know, if I was twenty again—skip it. I don't wanna get creepy."
Wendy laughed. "Stan, you missed that bus a long time ago!"
Stan had been surfing the web on his phone. "OK, next town there's a department store that has a Western Union kiosk. Should be two-three miles. I gotta send Poindexter some money."
"Got it. Just tell me where to turn."
Ford was back at the sheriff's department by two-thirty. As he walked to the front door, through the big front window he caught a glimpse of Glodson's retreating bulk. The hulking sheriff went into his office—he was working alone because, he said, the rest of the staff had the day off as part of the holiday week—and reached up to move the hands of the clock.
That was the last straw. Ford drew.
Glodson was just about to spin the hands forward to past 5:00 when—to his amazement—the clock jumped off the wall and sped out of his office through the open door, trailing electric wires. At the same moment, the front door opened and Ford walked in. "Hey!" he said, ducking. "You don't have to throw the clock at me!" He picked it up. "Two thirty-one. I'm back with the money, and the clock's not showing past five, anyway."
"What happened?" Glodson asked, sounding dazed.
"I haven't the faintest idea," Ford said. "It's your clock." He counted out the cash, in hundred and fifty-dollar bills. "That should release Mr. Sawyer. I'll want a signed release form and a receipt."
"What?"
"You ought to do something to earn the hundred-dollar paperwork fee," Ford said, smiling.
Glodson sat down and irritably filled in and signed and stamped two forms. Then he passed a third to Ford. "You sign this," he said.
"What is it?"
"Standard letter. You won't bring any charges or make any complaints. You agree to get that wreck out of my lot by five p.m."
"I've already called a wrecking service," Ford said. He read through the document, and with a face as grim as an approaching tornado, he signed it. "Now, Mr. Sawyer, please."
"Come on."
It was a wonder that Glodson could fit through the door that led back to the cells. None of them were occupied, but then they went through a second door into a chilly room that held only one cell. An emaciated man sat on a bunk—just wooden boards, no mattress—with his head in his hands.
"It's your lucky day, dog ass," Glodson said. "You got a lawyer here to spring you." He unlocked the cell, and uncertainly, the man stood up, his eyes huge and haunted.
"Your kids are OK," Ford told him, and the man began to sob. "Thank you," he said, his words hardly understandable.
"Let's go."
"I'd run him through the car wash," Glodson said. "He's gonna stink up your vehicle."
"I'll take my chances. Steady."
Ford had to half-support Sawyer. The man had almost no muscle tone. And he did smell—a smell not like sweat, but oddly yeasty. It was the scent of starvation. "Didn't they feed you?" Ford asked him.
"Once a day. Cup of water and one slice of bread."
In the parking lot, Ford had to catch Sawyer to keep him from falling. "My truck," the man said. "What did they do to my truck?"
"It'll be OK," Ford said. "Come on. I'm going to drive you down to Gravity Falls and your kids."
"They'll take them away from me," Sawyer said, his voice brimming with despair.
"You have friends," Ford said. "Here." He opened the passenger door of his Lincoln.
Sawyer, who had no coat—only a chambray work shirt, holes in the elbows, jeans, and tattered sneakers, no socks—hung back. "I'll dirty up your car."
"It can be cleaned. The first thing we're going to do is get you a little food. There's a burger place not far from here. Is that OK?"
Sawyer began to drool and wiped his mouth with the back of a dirty hand. "I'm sorry. I thought I was going to die back there."
"You're not. Are burgers OK?"
"Heaven," the man said, shaking all over.
Half a mile down the road, Stan and Wendy sat in their car, parked in the lot of a closed and boarded-up gas station. "There he comes," Stan said. "Look, he's got the guy with him. Wait until they're outa sight. Now. Let's go."
They cruised past the sheriff's station, Stan glanced through the open gate into the parking lot, and said, "Got it. Just one truck in there, easy to see."
Wendy found another inconspicuous place to park, they casually walked into the sheriff's department lot, did a little tinkering, and then were ready. "I'll drive it," Stan said.
"No way, man," Wendy told him. "I'm the one can jump-start it."
"Wendy, I swear if you don't marry Dipper an' get to be my niece-in-law, I'll call down the curse of the Pines on you."
"Wouldn't want that!" Wendy said with a grin. "But give Dip some time to get legal. You go pull the car so's I can see it and give me the high sign when it's time."
"Tuck all that hair beneath your coat."
Wendy did so. Stan still shook his head. "Wish we could disguise you somehow."
"One sec." She pulled a long strand of her hair out, draped it across her upper lip, and then tucked the other side beneath her hat. "Now I'm a dude," she said, and she did look like she had a mutton-chop mustache.
"Get 'er started, an' look for me."
When Stan drove to within sight again, Wendy revved the truck engine. She'd punched a hole through the fractured windshield—she did need to see—and when he stopped, she leaned forward, her hand on the gearshift.
In the rental car, Stan, speaking into his phone, disguised his voice and said, "Hey, Sher'f, I think somebody's a-stealin' a ol' truck in yore lot." When he heard Glodson's squawk, he waved at Wendy and sped down the street.
Wendy peeled out—it was amazing that the old truck had that much pick-up, but a blessing—as a screaming globe of a man in uniform came running out with all the speed and grace of an angry hippo. She burned rubber as she made the right turn into the street. Glodson inserted himself into his police cruiser, started it, and jammed his foot on the accelerator. The car leaped forward about five feet and stopped.
The chain tethering its rear axle to a light pole was the reason. Glodson boiled out of the driver's seat, maybe just in time, because the engine, still running, dropped completely out of the frame. A second later, all four doors fell off. His face the red of an impending coronary incident, Glodson grabbed the microphone. "APB!" he screamed. "I've got a redheaded mustached SOB of a perp in a pickup truck on the run! I need eyes on the road! Anyone copy?"
He released the TALK key, the radio crackled, and a strangely familiar voice said, "Is this here Sheriff Glodson?"
"Yeah! Yeah, it is!"
"Oh. Then bite me!"
In the end, Glodson had to call for an ambulance. Sadly, his health caused him to have to resign from office not more than a week later. It is said that the people of the county quietly celebrated his retirement by invading his office, burning his arrest records, and stealing all of the computers, but that may be just a rumor.
"How does this cockamamie thing work?" Stan asked a couple of miles away. He and Wendy had both pulled off the road and behind some trees.
"Let me see it, dude." Wendy took the flashlight and cautiously pointed it at an acorn on the ground as she turned it on. "Whoops." She turned it off and kicked an acorn the size of a beachball. "Wrong setting." She twisted the crystal and tried again. The acorn shrank. Then she aimed it at the truck, and kept the beam on it until it was the size of a toy.
"That's the ticket!" Stan picked the shrunken truck up and dropped it in his pocket. "We'll give it to his kids as a souvenir. Want me to drive back?"
"I'm good. I get tired, I'll tell you." Wendy pulled and shook her hair loose. "Now, that was fun. You gonna ditch the cop-band radio?"
"Nah, they got no reason to stop us. I've used it before, and it comes in handy. We see flashin' blue lights in the rear-view, I might shrink it, though." He pulled out his phone. "But I do need to make a call." He punched in a number and after a moment said, "Hiya, Soos! Do me a solid, bro?"
As Soos responded, Stan put his hand over the phone's mouthpiece and asked Wendy, "Did I say that right?"
She popped a bubble. "Close enough, dude."
"OK, OK, I don't need your undyin' pledge of loyalty," he said to Soos. "Listen up: Me an' Wendy been in and outa the Shack all day, right? Think, Soos! You know we have, get me? You've seen us, like, three-four times? Most recently, uh, say a few minutes ago? Yeah, it is kinda like a spy movie. Great! You're a good man, Soos! Huh? OK, OK." Clenching his teeth, Stan added in a deadpan voice, "You're like a son to me. Great, great. See you in a few!"
Because they didn't stop to feed a nearly-starved man, and because Wendy was at the wheel, they arrived in a town a few miles north of Gravity Falls, returned the rental, packed all their stuff out of it and into the Stanleymobile, and still made it to the Shack half an hour before Ford and David Sawyer walked in.
When his kids saw him and ran to his arms—Stanley walked out of the room. Standing on the front porch, he felt a hand rubbing his back. "Hey, hey," Wendy said. "'S OK, man. You an' Ford did great." She had followed him out.
He honked his big orange nose into a handkerchief. "Got somethin' in my stupid eye," Stan complained.
"Me, too," Wendy said. "Well, the easy part is over. Now we gotta figure out how to keep that little family goin'."
"Yeah," Stan said gloomily. "That man's got some pride left, you can tell by lookin' at him. He ain't the type to take charity."
"Not a problem!"
They looked around. Mabel had just ridden Dipper's bike up to the Shack. "'Sup, Mabes?" Wendy asked suspiciously.
"You'll have to wait and see at the party!" Mabel announced, hopping off the bike. She pumped her fist in the air. "Par-ty! Par-ty! Par-ty! C'mon, join in!"
When they didn't, she shrugged and laughed. "I can do this all day!"
And she pretty nearly did.