17. "A Wolf in Sheriff's Clothing"
And to be fair, their original plan made a lot more sense: lure hooligan-looking teens into buying a fake ID, actually produce one and sell it to them, find out where they're using it, arrest the kids there to prove they were tough on crime, and extort the shit out of the store or bar that was selling to them under the threat of shutting them down for being too stupid to recognize a fabrication, thereby pocketing even more money. And their backup plan also made a lot of sense: find some shady character who actually knew how to make a fake ID, sell it to them for a large one-time profit, then come back the next day in-uniform and demand a bribe immediately as well as regularly-scheduled bribes in the future, ad infinitum, under the threat of arrest with a moderate-to-severe asskicking. But then they got promoted, and now Sheriff Woodland was suddenly worried about how he was going to cover for the fact that he lost his gun several days prior and never told anybody. Therefore, in his infinite wisdom, Ward decided that they weren't going to take the time to learn how to make fake IDs nor seek out someone who'd be willing to buy their goods wholesale; they were going to get creative with the resources they had at their disposal. Then Ward could buy himself a new gun.
"We ain't foolin' nobody, Ward," George said as he stood on the table, leaning on the box of supplies with its edge in his armpit and his right foot crossed over his left.
"What're ya talkin' about?"
"They don't know us and they don't have any reason to trust us. Unless they do know us, in which case, they really have a reason not to trust us."
The two of them were standing about a block away from Gunning Bedford, Sr., High School in the 5500 block of South Houston Street in the Roxana Village neighborhood on the city's extreme southeast side. This location was chosen for a few reasons: it was far away from Sherwood Forest and those pesky outlaws, and the neighborhood was moneyed enough that the kids could probably afford fake IDs but not rich enough to have an ear with Mayor Norman; for example, Roxana Village had the reputation of being the neighborhood of choice for city employees who had to live within the city limits, but not very high-ranking city employees, mid-level police officers and firefighters and the like. And while many would say that they ought to just take their business to the suburbs, they would still have to deal with every town's municipal police asking what the fuck they were doing. So there they stood, in the middle of a residential area, with a folding table and box of laminates and plastic sheets and literally nothing else, hoping a teenager would come by and come buy.
"Nutsy, yer givin' these kids too much credit! Teenagers are stupid! They won't care who they're gettin' these from, they'll just wanna get 'em!"
"Man, you're not giving them enough credit! Teenagers are stupid, but they're not dumber than all fuck. If they wanted an ID, they'd find someone they know to get them a connection. It's like buying drugs; you'd have to be really desperate and stupid to get it from a complete stranger."
Indeed, they'd made their pitch to a few teenage-looking characters in the last hour or so, and they'd all given them odd looks and walked off without a word.
"But we look cool enough, don't we, Georgie?" asked Ward, who gestured to the torn blue jeans and ratty old band t-shirt he was wearing. "Skynyrd's still cool, right?"
"Maybe if you drove an hour outta town," Nutzinger scoffed, "then they'd tell ya that you were only ten years behind the times." He pondered for a moment whether Ward would be less insufferable if the two of them weren't born two decades apart. George himself was just in his street clothes; not too formal, but not trying too hard to look hip either.
"I've heard enough of you city-slickers always joking that us country folk are twenty years out-of-date, and I'll have you know that out in the sticks, we only enjoy things that're still good after twenty years! We're waitin' on ya to weed out the bad shit."
"Hey man, you asked a question and I gave you an answer."
"Well, it was a shitty answer!"
"Jesus, Ward, if you think Redneckistan is such a goddamn cultural mecca, why don'tcha just move back there?"
"Oh, fuck that! Ain't no jobs back home…" Ward muttered as his eyes caught a glimpse of movement in the distance. "Hey, who's this now?"
Turning the corner down the street was a teenage-looking spotted jaguar. He seemed to be shooting dirty looks in every direction; was he up to no good? Or was he simply suspicious of the people who were suspicious of him, a young predator teenager walking through a quiet neighborhood? In any case, Ward's eyes lit up.
"Do you think he'd be interested in what we're selling?" Ward asked as he realized the panther had seen them.
"Well, he's not crossing the street to avoid us like everyone else is."
"Watch and learn, Nutsy!" the sheriff beckoned quietly as the panther grew nearer. "I'm gonna work my charm on him by talking to him in his language."
"Oh, this oughta be good," Nutzinger scoffed. He had no idea.
The two of them turned to the jaguar as he approached. As they were not yet within speaking distance, they exchanged respectful head-nods with pursed lips and disinterested eyes. After a moment, the kid was within speaking distance. He glanced at the table and the box from the sides of his eyes as he seemed to be content to breeze right on past them.
"'Sup," he said without turning his head.
"'Sup," Nutzinger replied.
And that's when Sheriff Woodland said, "Wassup, my tigga?"
The jaguar stopped in his tracks, in sheer disbelief that he had just heard that, and Nutzinger nearly snapped his neck from how quickly he turned to give his superior a look that matched the jaguar's. Ward was about to comment on the sudden awkward silence when George beat him to saying something.
"Jesus Christ, Ward! What the-!?"
"The fuck did you just say to me!?" the jaguar demanded, his look of shock quickly dissolving to one of anger.
"What? I just said 'what's up, my tigga,'" Ward replied, not knowing what was wrong.
"Jesus Christ, Ward!" Nutzinger repeated, any sense of eloquence failing him.
"Where the fuck did you get the idea that you could call me a tigga to my face and expect it to go over well!?"
"Don't you guys always call each other that?"
"We call each other that! We do. You ain't included in that, wolf-boy."
"Whaddaya mean? I was just trying to show ya I was cool! I'm one a' ya's!"
"No the hell we ain't the same! And I expect another predator to understand that a different species means a different experience!"
"But you're not a tigger- tiger either! Are you?"
"Jesus Fucking Christ, Ward!" Nutzinger moaned, getting far past the point of embarrassment by proxy and getting well into frustration from his boss's ineptitude. He was seriously considering shimmying down the table and simply walking away.
"Did you seriously just drop a hard R in there!?" said the jaguar.
"But aren't you a cheetah or something?"
"I'm a jaguar, you fat fucking redneck! And you don't call any jungle cat a tigger!"
"But isn't Tigger the tiger from Winnie the Pooh?"
"Jesus Disco-Dancing Christ, Ward!" Nutzinger shrieked; he wasn't even trying to be comical with his exclamations, he was just running out of ways to convey his ever-elevating shock.
"But isn't he?"
"Why do you think The Sidney Company banned that movie around the world decades ago!?" Nutzinger asked, searching for sanity. "Go into any Blockbuster in America and ask for Winnie the Pooh and they're gonna think you're fucking nuts! G-go to the Hollywood Video down the street, right now, go and ask for Winnie the Pooh and they're gonna think you're fucking nuts!"
"Of course they're gonna think I'm nuts if I walk in by myself and ask for a kids' cartoon movie."
"That isn't what I fucking meant!"
"They really banned it because of Tigger's name?"
"Jesus Fu- Yes! Yes, exactly! And because of the stereotype that bears were gluttons, and because of the stereotype that donkeys were creepy dangerous loners on the outskirts of society, but mostly because of the T-word. There was a lot of antiquated thinking in that movie! But let's stop talking about an old Sidney movie for a second; haven't you lived in the city for long enough to know that you don't just go around tossing that word around wherever?"
"You don't go tossing that word around nowhere ever!" the jaguar amended. "You know what, Squirrelly? Who are you and why are you hanging out with this guy?"
"He's my boss. I'm only here for the money. I wouldn't choose to hang out with this guy."
"Well I suggest you get another line of work, if you know what's good for you! What the hell kind of work are you two even doing?"
"You wanna fake ID?" asked Ward.
The jaguar made a quick series of confused and disoriented faces in quick succession, each more puzzled-looking than the last. "Fake IDs… you're out here standing on the street calling people tiggas to sell fake IDs?" He leaned over to take a glance at whatever was in the box next to Nutsy.
"Yup! Want us to whip you up one?" the sheriff reiterated.
"You really think I'm gonna give you my money, man?"
"What, you won't buy off us just because I called you a tigga?"
"WHAT!?"
"GODDAMMIT, WARD!" Nutzinger hopped onto Ward's arm and started climbing.
"Nutsy… what're you-?"
CHOMP.
"AARGH! NUTSY! LET GO! STOP! STOP BITING ON MY EAR! LET GO A' MY EAR!"
The sheriff flailed and twisted, trying to shake the squirrel off, but Nutzinger stuck on Woodland like an infected earring. The jaguar kept glaring at the two of them as they went at it, not wanting either one of them to get out of this situation feeling good about themselves.
Eventually, Ward snagged a hold of George and yanked him off his ear with a pained "Gah!" He clutched the squirrel in his paw and confronted him. "What the hell was that for, Nutsy!?"
"Why did you refuse to stop saying the goddamn word!? Do you want to get us killed!?"
That's when the jaguar stepped in, grabbing the back of Ward's hand and turning Nutzinger toward himself. "Oh, what's that? You think I'm gonna kill you because I'm some big scary tigger!?"
"No, it's because you're a big angry tigger!"
"The fuck!?"
"Nutsy, now you said it!"
"Whaddaya mean- oh, goddammit!"
"You fucked up, Squirrelly!"
"Hey, man, between the two of you, you both put the word in my head!"
"Well it wouldn't have come out so easily if you didn't use it that often, now would it?"
"...What? No! I'm always hearing this fat asshole saying it! That's why it came out so easily!"
"What? No I don't! I don't even think about jungle cats that often!"
"Oh, nice. Nice to know my people are that easy for you to ignore!"
"Besides, he's always saying it, too!"
"Oh, is that so?"
"Ward, what the fuck are you saying!?"
"You got a problem with jungle cats, too, Squirrelly?"
"You realize he's lying to cover his own ass, right? Why are you believing him two minutes after he dropped a T-bomb?"
"Because I don't think he's smart enough to come up with a lie like that!"
"Yeah, I'm a dumbass! Really it's him lying to cover his own ass!"
"At least I would be smart enough to do it!"
"So you were lying, Squirrelly."
"What? No!"
"You were lying about him lying. So you do love using that word when there ain't any tiggas around!"
"I refuse to believe this is actually happening right now."
"So did you want a fake ID to buy booze and cigarettes with, or no?"
The jaguar shot back up and looked like he was about to have a brain hemorrhage from the sheer stupidity he was witnessing. Then he went back to being pissed. "What the fuck is preventing me from kicking both y'all's asses right here, right now?"
And for a moment, Ward and George didn't know what to say to that. Then they saw a familiar type of vehicle approaching behind the jaguar.
WeeeeeOOOOOOoooooo…
"Uh… that," said Nutzinger meekly.
The squad car pulled up in front of them, and as luck would have it, a black panther stepped out. She immediately recognized two of them and looked tremendously bored.
"I got a call about two sketchy characters trying to sell stuff on public property without a permit," she said, looking Ward specifically in the eye. "What the hell are you two doing?"
"You know these two racists?" asked the jaguars.
"Racists?" the officer asked with a wince.
"Yeah, these two both called me a tigger to my face!"
She turned back at her superiors with a look that was equally repulsed and confused. "Is this true?"
The looks on their faces answered that question well enough, but they knew that they were still expected to verbalize it.
"Uh…" Woodland began, "y-ya see-"
"Yes," said Nutzinger flatly, believing that owning his actions would be less-bad than dancing around them. "First Ward used it to try to be cool, then they started arguing about it, then Ward wouldn't stop saying it, and then everyone was saying it so much that I didn't realize I said it once, too. By accident. Heat of the moment. That's what happened."
The officer looked further unamused. She then turned to the jaguar to see what he had to say.
The jaguar looked like he was slowly starting to simmer down. "I don't believe that squirrel didn't realize he was saying it, but everything else he said was right."
She turned back to the undercover cops: "What are you dumbasses doing here?"
"Uh…
"Well…"
"So you know these guys?" asked the jaguar. "They been doing this before? You gonna do something about it?"
She thought carefully about how to handle this. "What's your name, son?"
"Francisco," he answered with an augmented Spanish pronunciation.
"Francisco?" asked Ward without even thinking. "You from South America? My bad, I thought you were from Africa- GAH! Nutsy!"
As Ward tried to unclamp George's mouth from the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, the officer stepped over to the teenager. "Officer Viviana del Bosque, Nottingham Police Depar- excuse me, Nottingham County Police Department." She gestured toward her badge, which bore the now-defunct municipal department logo; the new badges were to be ordered and distributed soon, with the costs of hiring a graphic designer, having the badges manufactured, having the badges shipped to Delaware from China, and paying extra cops to be on duty for a few hours while the county's officers were temporarily badgeless during the transition period all to be paid for by a generous donation from the taxpayers of Nottingham County.
"Oh, really? 'Del Bosque'? ¿Es usted también de Sudamérica, señora?"
"I dunno, kid, ask my parents. But hey, be straight with me: did they do anything in the way of physically assaulting you?"
"What? ...N-no, not physically, but they called me a tigga to my face. The fatass wolf said it like half a dozen times!"
"And I believe that. Especially from the dumbass who thinks jaguars are from the savannah. But I gotta ask, did they- WARD! Will you stop fucking screaming!? I'm trying to have a conversation!"
"But he won't let go!"
"George, let go!"
"Hrmhrmhmrmhrrhmhr!"
"I don't care, George!"
"You know them by name?" asked Francisco.
She knew she couldn't just out them as the two highest law-enforcement officers in the county, lest she immediately compromise any remaining trust this kid had in the police, so she had to be vague about it. "Two guys I keep running into who keep doing stupid stuff but nothing I can arrest them for. Stuff that's not technically illegal, even if a lot of people think it should be. And speaking of - this is gonna sound like a stupid question, but I have to ask - do you think they meant to hurt you or do you think they were just being stupid?"
"I think they were so busy being stupid they didn't stop to think whether it might hurt me!"
"And I get that. But jaguar to jaguar, be real with me: do you think they were consciously trying to verbally assault you?"
"I don't think it should matter."
"And I get that, Francisco, but-"
"Are you going to arrest them or not!?"
"...Arrest them for what?"
"Sister, whose side are you on!?"
"Listen, Frank, I can arrest them, they can go to court, the court can find out that there's no evidence of an actual crime, the case gets thrown out, everyone's time and money is wasted, I look stupid, and nobody learns anything. You tell me, Frankie, do you want to spend hours and days of your life in a courtroom testifying against them when there's a very, very small chance they'd be convicted of anything?"
"So you're just gonna let 'em get away with it!?"
"No, I'm gonna try to talk some sense into them. As much as I'd like to kick their asses too, they're not gonna learn anything that way."
Francisco winced and twisted his head in a way that made his disapproval clear.
"Look, kid," continued the officer, "I had a call like this just a month or so ago. Some buffalo called a rabbit 'cute', rabbit flipped his shit, sunk his choppers into the buffalo's leg. Had to arrest the bunny. Even though I totally got why he did it, you can't just-"
"Man, what the fuck is wrong with the cops in this town!?"
"Hey, you just swore at a police officer! That's verbal assault, too! If I really wanted to be egalitarian, I'd either have to arrest none of you or all three of you."
"Man, even the jungle cats on the police force don't care about their own kind!"
"Kid, I'm gonna recommend you move past this, not because they deserve your forgiveness, but because you're gonna lose your fucking mind if you don't."
Francisco looked like he was going to burst with profanity again, but he realized Officer del Bosque wasn't budging.
"This isn't easy for me, Frank," said the officer.
"...They're trying to sell fake IDs."
Viviana found that curious. "Are they now?"
"Yeah."
She puzzled again about what to do now. "...Get out of here, Frankie."
"You're not gonna do anything about them?"
"I'll do all I can do. I can't do anything more than that. Imagine how this makes me feel, Frank."
"...It's Francisco, lady."
"And it's Officer Fucking del Bosque to you, kid, not 'lady'! Now get out of here so I can handle these idiots."
Francisco turned back toward where he came from and stormed off grumbling loud enough for del Bosque to hear him loud and clear: "Man, cops in this town don't care about their species, don't care about their culture… 'see a tigger, pull the trigger,' we all know that's how y'all think!"
Viviana watched him walk off and turned back to the Sheriff and the Deputy, who apparently somewhere along the line stopped fighting, got bored, and started playing rock-paper-scissors while waiting for del Bosque to wrap it up.
"So," she began, "you two seem pretty relaxed after causing a racial incident."
"Hey, Ward kept shooting rock-paper-scissors at me by himself like, twelve times before I gave in," said Nutzinger; Woodland did not protest this claim.
"Well the fact of the matter is I just made at least one more kid think the police're full of racists and race-traitors, just so I could cover y'all's asses."
"And we appreciate you sticking up for us, Viv," said Woodland.
"I wasn't sticking up for you, I was trying to make it extremely clear that you two were being stupid assholes in a way that wasn't technically illegal. Don't ever put me in this position again or I'll beat your asses myself."
They didn't have anything to say to that, so del Bosque continued.
"So, this is how you're spending your first full day as the new Sheriff and Deputy? Selling fake IDs and calling random teenagers racial slurs?"
"Oh!" said the spooked wolf. "Uh, it's a, it's a whatchamacallit…"
"A sting operation," said the squirrel flatly.
"...Really?" said del Bosque.
"Yeah, I don't know why he sounded so nervous, because that's actually what this is."
"Hey, I forgot the word!" the wolf barked at the squirrel, then turned to the jaguar. "Yeah, so, we get kids to try to buy fake IDs, we make them pay up front, and then we arrest them! Pretty clever, huh?"
Viviana wanted to say that such a plan sounded ridiculous, but the more she thought about it, she thought that it sounded exactly like a plan that Ward Woodland would come up with: not inherently illogical, but highly unlikely to work. She was tempted to look inside the box on the table next to Nutzinger, but she didn't care that much; she thought it must have just been the box they kept their money in - if they had made any, which they probably didn't. "Don't you guys have bigger fish to fry?"
"Hey, we're psyching ourselves up!" Ward protested. "We're practicing our strategery for smaller criminals to help us brainstorm how to take on the big dogs!"
"Aaand all your years working as the Chief of Police for the city didn't already prepare you for this?"
"I know! Isn't it ridiculous? I'm just as disappointed as you are that we were never given formal training for dealing with dangerous bandits!"
Absolutely none of this was worth her time. "I'd mention how embarrassing it is that this city - wait, fuck, no, this county now - has a police department run by complete idiots, but I expect you to say something back about how I'm the idiot for not knowing how to finagle my way into outranking you."
"I can tell you that for Ward, it was a whole lotta ass-kissing," said George. "And I was a diversity hire who kept getting lucky with promotions because everyone hated everyone else in the city department more than they hated me. I have no qualms about this."
"Viv, if you're so well-put-together, why don't you go out to Sherwood and find them?" asked Ward.
"Because I need to keep this neighborhood safe from lowlives whose get-rich-quick scheme is based on screwing over random teenagers and calling jungle cats tiggers," she retorted as she walked back around to the driver's door of her squad car.
"Hey, will you stop lumping me in with his stupidity?" Nutzinger protested. "You can say it's guilt by association all you want, but that's not how adults see the world!"
"Well, I'm an adult, and that's how I see the world, so that's that," she said as she stepped into her car, started the engine, and rolled the passenger's window down. "Newsflash, George: nobody broke your arm to be a cop. And if you really don't care for the accepted definition of adult behavior and values, then you can go work at McDonald's." And as she rolled her window back up and put the car in drive, they heard her add, "Or maybe I'm the one who needs a new job." And she drove off; they watched in silence as she turned the corner and was gone.
"So… can we go now?" asked George, but Ward had a question to settle.
"Nutsy, why did you keep biting me?"
"I don't know, motherfucker, why did you keep saying the word!?"
"Nutsy, when your boss is talkin' to ya, ya don't answer a question with a question."
"Hey man, telling you to stop wasn't working, so I tried something else, but apparently that didn't work either. So here's a question for you: what did I have to do to get you to stop using that word?"
"Oh, Nutsy, Nutsy, Nutsy…" Ward cooed as he shook his head at the little squirrel. "When are you going to realize that I'm above you and I ain't never gonna do what you tell me to do?"
"Well you'd better start, because I'm right!"
"Georgie, if you were really right, then I'da already agreed with ya."
And Nutzinger just turned his head and glared into empty space for a second, thinking about how if he did quit the force and apply at a fast-food joint, they'd likely tell him he was overqualified.
-IllI-
After getting changed back into their uniforms, their next destination was even farther in the wrong direction from Sherwood Forest. Bayard was a small suburb bordering the extreme eastern edge of Nottingham's Roxana Village neighborhood. The sleepy burgh was further bounded by a swampy inlet of the sea that buffered them from the excitement of Bethany Beach and Fenwick Island, and its suburban neighbors of Bunting to the south and Clarksville, Millsville, and Ocean View to the north provided enough hustle and bustle to suit their needs. Some joked that Roxana Village was just West Bayard, seeing as most people who lived in Roxana Village would have much preferred to live in the suburbs if given the option, but at least Roxana was on the terminus of the Transit Authority of Nottingham Green Line subway. Bayard just looked like a small town that incidentally bumped up against the biggest city on the Delmarva peninsula. Bayard was fundamentally a small town which got encroached by suburban sprawl, and it showed to everyone who passed through it.
When Ward Woodland was himself a young officer living in a shoddy row house in Roxana Village, his favorite place to get blitzed was a place called Lucky's on Janus Street in Bayard. When he got promoted and was rewarded with nicer digs closer to the mayor's coop, he didn't find himself back in that part of town anymore, so he hadn't been back to Lucky's in years.
"Did you want to set up the sting in Roxana so badly just so you could go to this place afterwards?" Nutzinger asked as he pulled the squad car into the parking lot, having just heard the Sheriff's recollection of why he was fond of this place.
"Ya see, Nutsy? I'm not as dumb as you think I am!"
"Yeah, well a broken clock is wise twice a day," the squirrel muttered as he reluctantly clambered onto the wolf's shoulder as they stepped out of the car.
Ward swung open the door and made a sweeping duck as he passed through the doorway - he was a tall son of a gun, but he still would have cleared the door frame easily, maybe his ears would have brushed the top, but he wasn't wearing his hat or anything, so he was very much doing it so he could make a production out of standing upright as he entered, rising like a phoenix, drawing attention not only to his size but to the fact that he was back to his favorite haunt.
"It's just like I remember it."
"Oh, just give me a copy of your fucking memoir, will you?" said George.
The place was fairly busy for a Monday afternoon. It wasn't packed by any stretch, but it was still populated enough for someone with selective hearing to have trouble participating in a conversation. There were some retirees, some unemployed locals, some employed locals who just didn't feel like going to work that day, some tourists from the beaches who had been recommended this place by the hospitality workers at their hotels for its homier feel (and its cheaper alcohol), and even a smattering of schoolteachers who were starting to enjoy their own summer break.
One such schoolteacher actually wasn't a patron. A high school physics teacher by trade, Dick Leland was one of those older guys who got bored easily and needed to keep busy for the sake of his own sanity. Therefore when Gumboro High School let out for two months, he took a gig tending the bar during day shifts at Lucky's in Bayard just to get himself out of the house (not to mention, his paltry teacher's salary could use the boost, too). He considered himself pretty good at building rapport with the patrons - cynically telling himself that he had plenty of practice since most of his colleagues at Gumboro High were also alcoholics - and had been doing it for well over a dozen summers by this point, although there were some regulars he would rather never see again. And since the antelope hadn't seen the wolf in almost a decade by this point, he was starting to feel comfortable thinking he'd never see him again. Imagine his shock when, on his first day back at Lucky's that summer, he glanced toward the entrance to see the big fat hick stretching toward the ceiling, wearing the county sheriff's regalia.
"W-Ward? Is that you?" asked Dick.
"Hey, there, Big Dick!" Ward answered as he waltzed over to the bar. "How's it crackin'?"
That nickname was one of the reasons why Dick didn't care for Ward Woodland - okay, granted, 'Big Dick' was a better nickname than 'Little Dick', but Ward should have had the social wherewithal to know that he wasn't welcome to slap risqué nicknames on people he barely knew (and for Dick's part, he was too far into life to rebrand himself as Rick, Rich, Ritchie, or Richard). Dick also didn't like how he would always choose him to complain to when he had a rough day on the force, blubbering like a baby, all the while talking loudly and profanely and not caring who heard. Dick was also personally disgusted by the vast quantities of bar food he consumed, his food bill easily rivalling his drink expenses, leading Dick to wonder if the wolf's massive gut contained a gigantic mass of sodium from all the peanuts and pretzels and mini microwave pizzas he ate. Dick also wondered how often the guy bathed and would have bet his bottom dollar that Ward didn't wash his paws after taking a leak. But Ward was not only a paying customer, he was a punctually paying customer. He never kept a running tab; he always paid the day of, and he actually tipped fairly decently. Dick and his fellow bartenders had actually brought Ward up to the boss, Lucky himself, and while they all said they didn't care for the guy, the head horse in charge reminded them that the wolf had done nothing worthy of being banned, and in some ways he was actually better-behaved than many other regulars. The staff all privately theorized that Ward was just a courteous patron because he didn't want to jeopardize his rapport with his favorite bar, but regardless of his motivations, he was good to them nonetheless. Within the context of Lucky's bar, Ward Woodland had never been a particularly offensive personality, he was just someone whose presence made everybody vaguely uncomfortable.
"Oh, uh… nothing much, Ward. Still teaching high school. What've you been up to?"
"Oh, well, my little buddy here and I just got promoted to the sheriff and deputy of the county!" Ward answered with a self-aggrandizing gesture.
"Hi," Nutzinger murmured as he waved meekly, hoping to convey to the antelope that he wasn't trying to be rude and sarcastic to someone he just met, but he also really didn't want to be there right then.
"Y- you!?" said Dick. "I-I-I heard that they merged the departments, but… I didn't hear it was you!"
"Yep!" said the sheriff as he slid onto a barstool that creaked under his weight. "And to celebrate, let me get an MGD!"
"Celebrate?" asked Dick. "Just the two of you?"
Ward gave him a sideways look, one that said you're my friend and I really don't want to be angry with you, but I really don't know why you thought it was a good idea to say that out loud.
"Uh-um… sure, draft or bottle?"
"The D in MGD stands for 'Draft,' don'it?."
"Can I just get a Coke or something?" asked George. "I gotta drive."
"S-sure, coming right up," the antelope said as he slinked away to the spigot.
"So let me get this straight, ol' Wardy ol' pal," Nutzinger mused as he hopped off Woodland's shoulder and onto the counter. "You're going around bragging to people you haven't seen in years that you got a promotion instead of going and doing the thing you were promoted to do?"
"Nutsy, don't act like you're not afraid to go into those woods."
"I'm not. The fuck they gonna do? Kill me? These guys fuck shit up, but they don't kill anybody. And even if they did, it'd be better than being stuck with you."
"You're just acting brave because you know you're too small of a target for them to hit! Ain't that right, little guy?"
"Keep calling me 'little guy,' Ward, it's not gonna make me curl up and start crying. My people are used to being small and we're not as retardedly size-obsessed as you big motherfuckers." George snuck a glance down the bar at the antelope, who clearly was trying to pretend he wasn't hearing their conversation. "You know, Ward, I used to think you were just stupid, but now I'm starting to think you're a coward. Which is worse than being stupid in many world cultures."
The sheriff crossed his arms on the counter and leaned in toward his deputy like he was about to bestow upon him some invaluable wisdom. "You know what, Nutsy? You're right, and you ain't wrong. I am a coward. And I'm here to get some liquid courage to work up my nerve to go and take on those outlaws! And I will freely admit this to you, Georgie-Porgie, because I'm not ashamed to say that I'm trying to make myself better." Then he leaned back out of his wisdom-bestowing position and said something in a much deeper and projecting voice than his usual shrill timbre: "I, the Sheriff of Nottingham, am not so much of a coward to be afraid to admit that I'm a coward, and that I'm doing what I can to be less of a coward, because I'm not ashamed to say that I'm getting better, which a coward would be too afraid to do!"
Everybody in the bar heard that. Some whispered among themselves, wondering if they had just heard that correctly. Others had other plans.
Ward leaned back into his paternal chit-chat position and reverted to his regular voice. "Therefore, Nutsy, I ain't a coward because I can admit when I'm being a coward, and a coward couldn't do that. Whaddaya think a' that, Georgie?"
The deputy glanced back over at the bartender who was bringing their drinks over. He couldn't wait for that soda, because he needed the caffeine to assuage his budding headache.
"Uh… here you go, boys," Dick said as he delivered the drinks, still flabbergasted by this blast from the past. "You need anything to eat, Ward?"
"Get me some pretzels, Dick."
"Need cheese or mustard?"
"C'mon, Big Dick, is this even a question?"
"Both. Right. Got it." He glanced down at the squirrel standing on the table, who was already taking a long swig of an appropriately-sized glass of cola. "What about you, man? Actually, do you need a chair or something? I can probably get you one."
"Naw, they won't be staying long."
George spit out his soda on Dick's shirt when he heard that voice. He and Ward turned to see two figures standing behind them. One was a slight, svelte bobcat who was known to make up in sheer nerve what he lacked in muscle. Looking further up, one could see the face of an elk who was the source of the voice that lead to the antelope's shirt being soiled.
"Oh, uh- T-Tommy, Matty, h-hey, how's it going, guys?" Nutzinger stammered.
"H-hey, there, Elky, Goldy, um… funny seeing you here!" Woodland similarly stammered.
"Ain't very funny to us," said Goldthwaite.
"We're unemployed and unemployable, jackass," growled Elkins. "What do you think we're doing with our time, knitting sweaters?"
"Uh… maybe?" was all Ward could come up with.
"Wait. Matt, Tom. There some issue between you guys?" the bartender cut in.
"Don't worry, Dick, they're not sticking around much longer," said Tom.
"But we just got here," said Ward. "We ain't leavin' yet just 'cause you're here!"
"Well it would be awful fuckin' rude of you to force us to make an even bigger scene when Dick and Lucky and all the people who work hard to maintain this nice business," Tom said, realizing as he said it that in his flustered state he had completely botched that sentence, but maintained his poker face all the same, certain that he had gotten his point across anyway.
"When they do what?" asked Ward, not getting Elkins's point.
"Goddammit, Ward, we're gonna fuck you up if you don't get the hell out of here!" Matt snapped.
"Gentlemen!" said Dick sternly. "I don't know what the hell these guys did to you, but you can't threaten them inside my bar and expect me to just roll with it!"
"You really don't know what they did?" asked Elkins.
"We're the old sheriff and deputy, they're the new sheriff and deputy," said Goldthwaite. "They screwed us over, you dumb motherfucker, use context clues!"
"Hey! Don't you fuckin' speak to me that way!" shot the antelope.
"The fuck are you gonna do, spit in our drinks!?"
"You want us to be nice?" said Tom. "Then get these assholes out of here-!"
"Hey! Matty! Tommy! Tommy Tommy Tommy! Chill!" said George as the deposed sheriff and deputy spoke, finally getting his voice heard after a moment. "Aggression isn't gonna solve anything! You can kick Ward's ass but-"
"We're gonna kick your ass, too, you fucking midget!"
"Goddammit, Tommy, will you stop lumping me in with his dipshittery!?"
"Then stop following his fuckin' lead, dipshit!" said Matt.
"If you kick our asses, you'll just be proving them right for firing you! Good sheriffs don't go starting bar fights!"
"Well, your sheriff instigated this the second he walked in here, knowing goddamn well that this was our spot!"
"Actually," Ward squeaked, "I completely forgot that-"
"Because you're a fucking dumbass!" hollered the elk.
"Tommy, if you assault us unprovoked, we're gonna arrest ya, and then your lives'll really be over," said George. "It's that simple."
"GOOD!" Elkins growled; it sounded like he did permanent damage to his vocal cords when he did, and at this point, everybody in the bar had their eyes on the unfolding altercation. "Matt and I aren't ever gonna be able to get a job ever again anyway! Go and lock us up! Three squares and free rent sounds hunky fuckin' dory to us!"
"Gentlemen!" Dick repeated. "I will repudiate your bar tab if you guys just get the heck out of here and don't come back until I don't work here anymore."
"We're pretty comfy here, thank you," sneered the bobcat. "We'd be more comfortable if these two guys left and quit bothering us, though."
"Or if they want us to leave so bad, they can just arrest us for threatening a police officer," the elk mocked. He leaned in toward the wolf's face. "But they're not gonna do that, are they? Because they're cowards. And they know they are. They even said so, and they think they're brave because they say so, but deep down they know they're not. Isn't that right, you fatass fucking hick?"
"Get out of my face, Elky!"
"I'm not IN YOUR FACE, RETARD!" Elkins reared back his head and looked like he was about to headbutt Ward square in the snout, but just as Ward flinched and yelped, Elkins stopped in the air. "Pfft. Pussy." He shoved Ward hard by the shoulders into the counter of the bar, then did it a few more times as he said. "Go on. Fight me. Do it. Shit, you really are a coward, aren't you?"
"Boys!" Dick barked. "You have one more chance to get out of here before I-"
Thwack.
"Gwahhh!"
Thump.
"Aaarrrgh!"
Goldthwaite used the same arm he used to smack Nutzinger off the counter to make a half-shrugging gesture. "Before you what?"
"Alright!" the antelope said as he reached under the counter, not breaking eye contact with the disgraced lawmen, and produced an aluminum baseball bat from under the counter. "No more Mister Nice Dick! You've been war-"
And in perfect synchronicity, Tom and Matt both produced handguns from the backs of their pants and pointed them at Dick's face.
"GAH!" Dick yelped as he threw his hands up, dropping the bat in the process.
"For the record, Dick, we didn't plan to do this, but the opportunity presented itself," said Elkins. "Jail is the only thing we've got to look forward to!"
"LUCKY, GET OUT HERE!" Dick screamed at the air in front of his face.
"W-wait," said Goldthwaite as he and Elkins looked toward the door to the back area. "Lucky's here-?"
"AAARGH!" Ward howled as he leaped out of his seat with his arms spread and clotheslined the elk and the bobcat, tackling them both to the ground. The sound of metal clanging made it clear to everybody that at least one of them dropped their gun.
Elsewhere, a door burst open. "What the fuck is going on here, Richard?"
"LUCKY, GET YOUR SHOTGUN!"
Ward propped himself up to see that Elkins still had a grasp of his gun. He went in to wrestle it away from him, but had to relinquish control of Goldthwaite to do so.
Seeing his opportunity, Matt scrambled, half-crawling half-running toward where his pistol lay, but right before he could grab it, he was immobilized. "GheeAAARRRGH! He bit me! The little shit bit me!" He writhed in pain on the floor, just inches from his weapon, trying desperately to shake the squirrel off his ankle, fearing how numb his foot suddenly felt.
The struggle for Elkins's gun continued, the two wrestling on the ground, neither keeping their arms in the same spot for more than a fraction of a second.
"Get off me, Fatass!"
"I'm not ON you, Skinnyass!"
Elkins moved the gun down by his stomach in an air pocket between his body and Ward's gut. In a moment of clarity, Ward realized what Tom was trying to do, and he rolled off of the elk's body as quickly as he could.
PPPPPbbbbb!
"AAAAAAAHHH!" the patrons screamed at the sound of the gunshot. The bullet lodged itself into the backboard seat cushion of a booth.
"Everyone hit the dirt!" Dick pleaded, having picked up the baseball bat but not knowing what to do with it.
Ward tried a new strategy for incapacitating Elkins. He leaped back on top of him, sideways this time, smothering the elk's face with his stomach. He tried to also crush Tom's arm under his weight, but Tom held it out too far, and Ward found the gun sticking straight up from Elkins's hand in the space between Ward's own head and his left arm. Panicked and suffocating, Tom let off three shots at whatever they would hit.
PPPPPbbbbb! A pitcher exploded.
PPPPPbbbbb! A window shattered.
PPPPPbbbbb! A ceiling fan's mechanism jammed before the whole thing shook loose and fell from the ceiling, landing right on Ward's head.
Sensing a sudden lack of resistance, Elkins had a brief moment of composure to gather his strength and toss the obese wolf off of himself. He hurried to try to get back on his feet before someone tried to take him down again.
Thwack!
"GAH-!"
Thump!
BrrrrINGGG! the aluminum bat rang as it landed on the ground right next to the elk who had just been speared in the head by it.
"Somebody call the police!" begged a patron.
"Those guys are the police!" another answered.
"Then call the other police!"
Matt squirmed enough to shimmy back toward his gun, and he raised his foot to the sky to get a better look at the squirrel hanging onto him by his teeth. George saw the bobcat point the gun at him and dropped immediately before Matt let off a shot.
PPPPPbbbbb!
"Gwah!" Dick hollered as he dropped himself to the floor to avoid the bullet. He got out of its way in time, but the inanimate objects on the shelf behind him weren't so swift. A glass bottle of Jack Daniels exploded with enough force to take out the neighboring bottles of rum with it, and the shower of glass rained down upon the antelope. "GUHuhUHuhWAAAHHH!" screamed the bartender as the shards pierced his layer of fur and embedded themselves into his flesh, the insidious force of broken glass finally finding a victim who wasn't a vulpine Englishman.
Lucky returned from the door to the office with his trusty shotgun. "Who's got the gun!?" he demanded.
Despite having lost all sensation in his right leg and feeling troublingly lightheaded, the bobcat managed to stand up shakily and aim his gun in the horse's direction. "SEND ME TO HELL!"
Lucky was in no mood for theatrics, so he wasted no time shooting at the space above Matt's head, with no intention of actually hitting him. But as luck would have it, he didn't even need to.
Squeak.
Snap!
"Aaaaaaaahhhhh!" Matt screamed as he collapsed in the pool of blood that caused him to slip and bend his leg in the worst possible way. "My ankle!"
"Oh, my aching head…" Ward muttered as he slowly got to his feet.
"Guys, I think Matt needs an ambulance, he's bleeding from his ankle really bad," said George.
"Yeah, because you bit him there!" hollered a muskrat hiding under a table.
"Man, he was gonna kill us if he didn't!" argued an ox hiding under a larger table.
"Oh, like these two are so much better!? Do you even know anything about Woodland and Nutzinger? Do you even read the newspaper!?"
"Are you calling me stupid, stupid!?"
And as the argument began among the customers, Matt was writhing in tearful pain and Tom was out like a light, and Ward saw his opportunity to get the hell out of there.
"Do we have any medics around- HEY!" Nutzinger protested as Woodland grabbed him and carried him off out of the bar.
"Hey, wait!" Lucky, still holding his shotgun, ran after them, jumping around the pool of Goldthwaite's blood and Elkins's unconscious mass. He ran out the door just as he saw Ward and George get back into their squad car. "Where you going? We need you to sort this all out!"
"We ain't cleaning up this mess!" said Ward. "Call the police!"
"Wha-? You are the police!"
"Then call the other police!" Ward screamed as he slammed his door shut. George threw it in reverse and backed out of the parking spot, and as he switched it into drive, Ward rolled down the window to say one last thing as they took off back downtown: "And I didn't get to drink my beer, so I'm not paying for it!"
-IllI-
"Yes, yes… the house will be on the street that straddles the state line, that should greatly narrow it down. And if his mother answers the door, apprehend her, too! She spoke curtly to me!"
The mayor was working from home today, bedridden with the ankle he sprained the day prior when he slipped in Charles' vomit. As for Charles, he had already received his admonishment for dialing the wrong number, which he did because his mind had been elsewhere. Since he couldn't perform his regular clerical duties outside of the office, and was instead tasked this day with waiting on Prince John hand and foot, the mayor gave him an opportunity to make a quick run to the library so he had something to occupy himself with during his downtime. When Hess misdialed the number, he had just gotten back and was itching to crack open the book to start learning about the peer-reviewed psychological facts about experiments with hypnosis. He was also a tad bit frustrated when he made the call, thinking of an unfriendly interaction he had had at the library: he had gone up to the help desk and asked the shrew at the counter whether there were any staff that could help him collect the book he needed, to which the shrew looked up from whatever she was reading, stared him right in the eye, and asked if he'd even attempted to try to collect the book himself. After a five-second glaring contest between the two of them, her brain registered that there was an incongruity with this weasel visible in her periphery, at which point she glanced down and only then recognized his handicap. To this, she apologized profusely and bashfully summoned a buffalo security guard to grab the book for him and put it in his over-the-shoulder backpack. Yet a little bit of him was glad that incident had happened; it had been the first time in years when his disability wasn't the very first thing someone noticed about him. At present, Hess was sitting on the ground, engrossed in his book, turning the pages with his feet, trying not to get distracted by the mayor's phone call.
"Again, I believe he's an arctic fox… His name? Now, I'm not too certain, but I believe his name may be- Oh, please do excuse me, I'm getting another call." John reached over the edge of the bed to the phone's console on the ground (for Hess's ease of access) and fiddled with the buttons to get the other caller on the line. "Mayor Norman speaking… What!? No, I don't know where they are! I am their superior, not their zookeeper! Whatever business they needed to which they needed to attend, I trust it was of the utmost-!"
DING-dong!
"Charles, please get the door."
"Yes, sssire!"
"Do pardon me, but it seems as though I have some houseguests… Yes, houseguests, I'm injured, remember!?... So what if I haven't told you, you should have found out anyway! You should always be seeking to know the current health and welfare of your mayor!... Why, I ought to-!"
The door opened and Hess led the sheriff and deputy into the mayor's bedroom.
"Hiya, mayor!" said Sheriff Woodland. Nutzinger just waved disinterestedly.
"Woodland! Nutzinger!" the lion growled as he hung up the phone. "Why am I getting a phone call that you two were consuming alcohol while on duty, were involved in a bar fight, and then proceeded to abandon the area?"
"Because you called us over here!" the wolf said confidently.
"I… I did?" He did not.
"You sure did!" Surely he didn't.
"...Did I?" He hadn't.
"Yes, you did, Mr. Mayor!" He had done nothing of the sort.
"I… I don't recall summoning you to my quarters…" He didn't remember doing it because he didn't do it.
"Whaddaya mean? You wanted to call us over to give us an update on how you're feeling about catching the bandits!" Ward smiled brightly, pleased with the brilliance of his fib. "Why, Mayor, you call us to meet with you so often - most every day - you must be startin' to forget when you do it! It's like tyin' yer shoes: you don't remember doin' it, but you musta done it!"
Nutzinger was absolutely dumbfounded by how that plan of Ward's was succeeding.
"Hm…" the mayor thought to himself for a second. "I do suppose that makes sense. I do indeed have something I would have liked to have bounced off of you, as it were, though I was under the impression you were currently preoccupied with plotting against the bandits at this very moment. That's why I called for other, lower officers to handle a menace I just had to deal with instead of consulting you about it."
"What menace?" asked Nutzinger.
"Oh, disregard, the other officers are already taking care of it. No menace who is attached to these outlaws, at least I don't think, suffice it to say."
Yeah, suffice it to say you don't think, alright, George thought to himself, suppressing a self-amused laugh.
"But more to the point, gentlemen," said the mayor, "I have a question that I feel I should present to you. Now, I ask of you, don't read too deeply into this. This is merely a thought exercise. A hypothetical. Feeling out our options before we-"
"Yo, Mayor?" said Nutzinger. "Ward's too afraid to admit it, but the suspense is killing him. Can we just get to the point? For his sake?"
"Nutsy," said Ward, "do you want me to smack you off my shoulder harder than that bitch bobcat smacked you off the bar counter-?"
"Would it do you any help to know the suspect's names?"
George and Ward turned away from the other and glanced at the mayor. Charles also looked up from his book, unaware that the mayor was already trying to commit to this strategy.
"Uh… what was that?" asked Nutzinger.
"Their names. Would it help you if you had names to attach to the mysterious entities living in the woods?"
"Well… yeah, sure!" said the sheriff. "Then we could find their criminal records, where they live, who they're-"
"They live in Sherwood Forest, Eddward," John stated sternly. "I remind you they're off the grid. They have no home address we can simply go to and apprehend them at… well, they do, but it's a dark and mysterious forest that they know every square meter of, a place we cannot just go crashing into with the expectation of victory."
"...Oh. Yeah, I-I guess that's right."
"Which is what makes this such a tough, almost philosophical question: would it help you to know their names? If they've no home addresses, no criminal records, no stable lives we can intercept… would it simply be frivolous information that would clutter your head? Or! Yet! Would it actually detract from the goal? Would it mortalize our enemies, make us start to ponder that they are after all real people, creatures with names and stories which we're trying to destroy? And what of all those peasants who support their illicit deeds? Would it have the same effect on them? Would their love of their antiheroes deepen if they had names to attach to them, if they could know that these were real people and not just legendary beings?"
"Well, uh, for that last part, Mayor," Nutzinger squeaked, "I'm preeetty sure most of the people they give money and shit to already know them on a first-name basis."
Prince John cocked his head at that; it wasn't completely surprising, but he didn't know that they knew. "Is that so?"
"I mean, I'd imagine. I mean, there's some names that I've heard floated around by other cops and civilians alike, but I can't, like, prove them or anything."
And Prince John was afraid to ask, but he was even more afraid of not knowing. "And, er… what names have you heard?"
"Robinhood'n'littlejohn," Nutzinger said without even thinking about it.
"...A-a-a-and where, pray tell, have you heard these names being said?"
"Man, I dunno, around? Like I said, sometimes I overhear it from civilians, sometimes I overhear it from other cops talking about why they stay the hell away from Sherwood."
"Wait, why haven't I ever heard those names?" Ward mused aloud.
Because you're a fucking asshole, Ward, and nobody wants to talk to you. "Because you're the boss, so nobody's gonna spit out a bunch of conjecture when you're trying to tell people what's what."
"Hm. Makes sense. So yer tellin' me that the names of these assholes are Robin Hood and Little John? So which one's the Little one, the fox?"
"I actually think Little John's supposed to be the bear because, you know, everybody loves irony."
"And the fox's name is literally Robin? As in robbin'? Ain't Robin a girls' name?"
"That's why I'm kinda thinking it's just a joke name like 'Little John' - Robin Hood, robbin' the neighborhood-"
"STOP!" Mayor Norman cried. "Stop saying those names!"
Ward and George glanced at him like they had just witnessed him have a premonition of his own death.
"...I-I-I-I mean… don't, er… don't get too attached to those names, boys. Er, erm, not, not attached, that's not the right word, erm… but we have no proof that these are the correct names, ergo, we mustn't get it in our heads that they are! Erm… though I must ask, George, how long ago did you hear those names?"
"Oh, I've been hearing those names on and off since basically Day One. But those are just the most common ones I hear; I've heard a few of them. I've heard that one's called Will or Willie or Billy Scarlett - maybe that one's the fox, 'cause y'know, scarlet, red, maybe there's a second fox, I don't know, maybe there was a second fox but he drowned in the creek or something, I don't know, and Billy's a pretty generic name, just like John, so again, this could just be a nickname… and apparently one of them goes by 'the Rooster,' but God knows which the fuck one of them that belongs to. Uh, there's also-"
"Th-that-that's quite enough, George, thank you, thank you for elucidating me. But, er, I-I must ask, though… why haven't you told me or the department these names if you knew them this whole time?"
"Because like you said, Princey, these nicknames are all hearsay. You don't want to muddy the waters with information that might not even be accurate."
The mayor breathed some breaths to come back down to Earth. "Hm. You're right. Quite right."
Just as all of this was happening, Hiss was starting to get a wee bit bored of watching his boss have a panic attack as people regurgitated information that he already knew. Unable to look at the awkward sight, he turned to look out the window instead, and who should he see across the street but a tall, slender fox dressed up as a blind pauper and a plump, towering bear dressed like he had just gotten home from 'Nam?
I mean, it had to be them, right? For one thing, the fox's abundant tail was sticking out from under the shawl, and just as always described, it was even bushier than most foxes' and brilliantly vermillion without a trace of black or white highlights. So that already raised a red flag (quite literally a red one). But to seal the deal, Hess assessed the creatures' sizes relative to one another and their surroundings. The fox and bear seemed to be the correct proportions to match the descriptions - the fox was more than half the bear's height, so either this was an extremely tall fox or an extremely short grizzly. Then there was the matter of the youths who just happened to be walking down the sidewalk about twenty-or-so feet behind them. Judging by their dress, they were very suburban-looking adolescents who likely didn't even know the legends of the evil whose footsteps they were treading in. Hess could see that among them was another red fox - definitely a red one, not one of the smaller species - who nevertheless looked extremely stunted. If the fox dressed as a blind man was even close to normal-sized, it would mean that the younger fox would have been even tinier, bordering on medically-unable-to-live short. Furthermore, if the adult fox was normal-sized, that would mean that the wolf in the stupid beanie was also undersized, and possibly even the young bear (who Hess noticed looked more like the adult bear than the young orange fox looked like the adult red fox, but Hess knew that all brown bears basically looked the same to him, so he dismissed the fleeting notion that the two parties on the sidewalk were in any way connected), and it would mean that the street lights were oddly low, and it would mean that that fire hydrant was miniscule… sod it, it was the outlaws. Out in the open, brazen as ever, walking right past the mayor's place of residence in paper-thin disguises in broad daylight. It had to be them.
But it was the strangest feeling. Charles wasn't alarmed to see them because he was afraid they were coming to break into the house - nonono, they were clearly in disguise to go collect some loot and their eyes were focused on the path ahead, not the mansion, they clearly weren't coming to pay a visit right now; Charles was alarmed because he was overcome with a deep and unshakable sense of shame.
He could have been ready by now. He should have been ready by now. There they were, waltzing right on by, probably unaware that Mayor Norman wasn't at City Hall today, seemingly not even armed, and Charles could pipe up and alert the sheriff and deputy and have them arrested faster than it would take to microwave a frozen dinner; his seeing to their demise was part of his endgame, but these daft bastards wanted to put him in the catbird seat now? Did they know his plan? If he didn't know better, he'd think that they were doing this to mess with him specifically. And it would have worked: if Hess had just gotten his arse in gear instead of kissing his boss's one too many times, he could have been ready for this moment. But he didn't, so he wasn't.
As the idiots argued behind him, not noticing him stare out the window, certainly not seeing the figures walking on the other side of the street, Charles took deep breaths and tried to reassure himself that this would not be his only opportunity. There would be more, surely there would be, and one day he would be ready. He glanced down at the book he had picked up from the library today. He was taking steps forward. He was getting better. He was doing what he needed to do to set himself up for success. He couldn't ask any more of himself. Slow progress was still progress, and spending his energy lamenting his lack of preparedness wouldn't accomplish anything now.
And the thought did cross his mind that Prince John and/or the Department might have a moment of genius and do something to capture the criminals before he was ready for it, or that the criminals may make a rare mistake that leads to their own destruction before he was ready for it, ergo, his slow progress might not be fast enough. But Hess had faith in the incompetence of the powers-that-be, the competence of the Sherwood Forest bandits, and the everlasting power of the status quo. If the tide seemed to be turning against the Merry Men, well, he could probably do something to right the ship; if anything, that might give him the practice he needed to exert the power he strove to have. Charles lamented the weird reliance he had upon these outlaws, but the more he thought about it, this moment proved it was actually a sort of interdependence; they needed him just as much as he needed them. Though Charles Hess was not a particularly pious man, he had been raised in a church back home in England, and this moment made him remember a time as a child when he asked his religious parents why God allowed Satan to exist if God was all-powerful and could destroy Satan if he so desired; his parents were at first flustered by this troublingly philosophical question, but they eventually came up with an answer that, after all these decades, finally made sense to him: the presence of an enemy serves to better prove one's own glory.
Charles would one day soon get that infernal pocket watch. Or perhaps in his readings, he may discover that he didn't even need a pocket watch. Maybe he could continue using a glass of wine, or perhaps even just his toe, swung back and forth. For all he knew, maybe there was something in that book about how to compel someone just by looking them in the eyes.
He watched as the fox and the bear walked further down the street, eventually completely invisible from the angle at which he stood. Hess had overheard every word of the debate occurring behind him over name-dropping Robin Hood and Little John. Charles knew that the Merry Men knew that Prince John and those in whom he confided already knew their names but dared not speak them for a plethora of reasons, ranging from fears of legitimizing them to fears of appearing to their peers as knowing too much; Charles also knew that the poor of the city largely knew their names, as they well should, as back in their heyday they would address themselves by name and the commoners would cheer their names right back to them, which many of the laymen police officers surely heard but pretended not to, lest they be saddled with the task of going to find them. Simply put, Charles knew that publicizing the names of the Merry Men would change fuck-all, and if anything it might embolden them by feeding their egos, cementing their status as local legends; but he also knew Prince John didn't know that.
"Mayor?" said Hess as he turned from the window. "Perhaps it would be bessst- er, best, pardon my lisp -" (he was still embarrassed from letting his seductive for-Prince-John's-ears-only hiss out in front of the sheriff and deputy yesterday, though to be fair, having that hat over his head had understandably blurred his judgment) "- it may be best to begin publicizing the names of the bandits! Think of it this way, Mayor: surely they think we're incompetent after all these years. Discovering that we have a new lead on them may indeed jar them, frighten them even, and may indeed start to wear on their seemingly-impenetrable self-esteem!"
The other three all forgot what they were talking about; Hess had made his point quite well.
"I… I beg your pardon, Charles?" asked the mayor.
"Not to overstep my boundaries, Mayor, but I truly believe that if we were to put up wanted posters bearing their names, it may start to sew the seeds of doubt in their heads, letting them know that they are not beyond our reach!"
The lion stared pensively into his lap for a moment, not saying a word. The other three simply looked at him, waiting for an answer; the sheriff and deputy didn't have a horse in this race, and Hess was itching with anticipation to see whether he had just had his way with the mayor's mind without the help of psychological sleight-of-hand.
After about ten seconds of silence, the mayor finally spoke: "...it's just like chess."
"Uh… what was that?" asked Woodland.
"It's just like chess!" the mayor beamed. "We may not be capturing their king, but we're moving our pieces in place to do so! We're setting a chain of favorable events in motion! They see us move a pawn one spot forward - not even two spots, just one! What could it mean? They don't know! Are we up to something, or are we simply playing it by ear, running blindly into the battle without a plan? They don't know! They may see us make such a small step forward, and they may start to question what plans we have in place that would lead us to make such a bizarre move! It may indeed drive them crazy as they try to figure it out! And if instead they think so lowly of us that they decide we must surely be throwing ideas at the proverbial wall to see what sticks, I say let them! Let them underestimate us! It will make it all the more satisfying when we have the last laugh! I see no way that telling all the world what their real names are will benefit them! Either our minor little move will send them into a panic attack, or it will set them up for an unpleasant surprise. So therefore I do decree, let us move this pawn one step forward! For you see, gentlemen, it's just like chess!"
"Uh… sure! Yeah! Right!" said Ward, who barely understood the rules of checkers.
"Cool. Got it," said George, who was thinking about one time his eleventh-grade English teacher made him rewrite a persuasive paper just because he took way too long to argue his point.
"I'm glad you like the idea, Mayor!" said Charles, knowing exactly how John would reply.
"Glad I thought of it!" replied John. "Gentlemen, I thank you for your time. Of course, we cannot start printing the wanted posters yet. We must first prove their identities beyond the shadow of a doubt, and I am working with our forensics team right now to see to it that the names we have attached to these characters in our heads are either proven or refuted to be accurate."
"Cool. So can we go now?" asked Nutzinger.
"Yes, officers, I don't wish to further distract you from your task of seeking to capture the outlaws. Of course, we may soon have some help in our endeavor, but in the meantime, please take what steps you can to make progress each and every day until then. We'll rendezvous each day to discuss what you will have done the previous day toward this end. So I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Uh, sure. Let's dip, Wolfie."
Ward didn't answer, just rolling his eyes at the thought that he now had to present his homework every day. He began to turn toward the door.
"Wait!"
Ward stopped in his tracks, and the sudden change in inertia nearly threw George of his shoulder.
"Uh… yeah, Mayor?" asked the sheriff.
The mayor looked nervous and a tad constipated as he worked up the courage to ask what he was sure would be an embarrassing question. "Er, gentlemen, a question that just crossed my mind, a question I would ask anybody but myself, quite literally the first person I saw I would ask this, so please don't be offended by it if it seems odd, and also please don't inquire about what inspired this question, for it is rather, er, a tad, erm, out there, as it were. Furthermore-"
"Mayor, you're making the poor old boy nervous again," said the deputy. "Please just spit it out."
"...Do you boys keep up with the, er… popular culture?"
Woodland and Nutzinger glanced at one another from the sides of their eyes, not really knowing what to make of that.
"I-I mean…" George stumbled, "I mean, not particularly, but, you know, we are citizens of the world, so we get exposed to stuff. Why?"
"Er… to your knowledge… is Justin Timberlake an arctic fox?"
"..."
"..."
"...why on God's green earth do you ask?"
"Please just answer the question."
"Well, shit, I don't know what the guy looks like," said Ward.
"Uh, no, uh… I'm pretty sure he's one of his people," George said, pointing at Ward.
"Heh! Looks like li'l Nutsy knows his boy bands pretty well!" Woodland teased, poking Nutzinger in the stomach with his fat finger.
"Oh, shut the fuck up, Ward! You could probably stand to know more about pop culture, Mister "Oh-Lynyrd-Skynyrd-Are-Still-Cool-Right?" Like you still think the entire world is bumblefuck Virginia in the fucking seventies. Shut the fuck up, you stupid hick."
"...You mean they're not still cool?"
"Gentlemen?" the mayor interjected.
"Actually? Wait. Fuck it. Ward, where were you when the wardrobe malfunction happened during the Super Bowl last year? Even if you didn't see the halftime show, did you not see his face in the news for months afterwards?"
"Excuse me?"
"Wait, it was him who got his shirt ripped off?"
"Boys-"
"NO!"
"GENTLEMEN!"
That shut them up.
"Er- gentlemen, you misunderstand my question! My apologies, I phrased it poorly. What I meant to ask is, er… would 'Justin Timberlake' be a name that would plausibly belong to an arctic fox? Not the Justin Timberlake, of course, but, er… there exist both timber and lakes in the arctic, no?"
"Uh… I-I mean, I guess," said Nutzinger, "but, you know, if I think timber, I think-" (and he pointed to Woodland again) "-or some other people who aren't from… that far north. Plus, you know, adoption… exists."
"Oh. Excellent point, George. I must say I had completely forgotten that was a possibility."
"Why do ya need to know this, Mayor?" asked Ward.
"I've already asked you kindly once not to ask."
"We're asking anyway," said George.
"Perhaps it is best if you two leave so the mayor may rest his leg," Charles threw in.
"He ain't hurtin' his ankle by talkin' to us, is he?" asked the sheriff.
"But you are hurting my sense of leadership and authority by not doing as I say!" growled the mayor.
Nutzinger and Woodland just stared at him for a second, wondering if he understood the subtext of what he just said. After a moment, the look on the lion's face changed from one of anger to one of uncertainty, and the sheriff and deputy did him a favor by walking out of his room and leaving his house without saying another word.
-IllI-
After leaving the mayoral mansion, Woodland told Nutzinger to head to a different bar along the shore in Long Neck. Then he fell asleep in the passenger seat.
"Ward, wake up."
"Hrmmrnhrmmh… five more minutes, Momma…"
"Ward, you pissed your pants."
The sheriff shot up in his seat and went to inspect his crotch, looking for discoloration and feeling for moisture, but he couldn't find any.
"Nutsy, what the hell was that about? I didn't- Nutsy, where are we?"
"Well, that woke you up."
"Nutsy, where the hell are we?"
"Where we need to be to prove we're doing our jobs."
"I thought you didn't care about this job?"
"No, but after running into Tommy and Matty at the bar today, it really reinforced my fear that if I ever lose this job, I'm S. O. L. for getting a job for the rest of my life. I don't give a shit about being rich, but I need some source of income."
"Nutsy, you realize we can just lie and say we were here, right?"
"We're already hoping nobody realizes we were asleep during the press conference yesterday, bucko. If we keep lying for absolutely no constructive reason, we're gonna get busted eventually and then we're gonna be deadbeats like Tommy and Matt. Laws of probabilities and stuff like that."
"Oh, so you're afraid of getting busted? You pussy."
"You're calling me a pussy when you don't want to do your job and go into those woods."
"Like I said earlier, Georgie, I acknowledge I'm a coward, so now I need some beer to help me get over it!"
"Jesus, did you just use the word acknowledge?"
"What, did I surprise you with my smarts?"
"And how."
"Let's get outta here, Nutsy."
"And also I just don't want to go to a bar with you ever again after that place in Bayard."
"What, you have more fun going home and reading a book like a little girl?"
"..."
"..."
"...Fine, motherfucker, you drive."
"What?"
"Here's the keys." Click. "Go for it."
"Nutsy, I can't drive with that little steering wheel and gas pedal!"
"Well this car was specially modified with taxpayer money you helped collect, so unless you want to admit that that was a total waste of time, get out of this car and stop wasting mine."
"...Your what?"
"My time."
"Oh."
"And my breath. C'mon! Let's go!" Click.
"Do you have a death wish, you dumb son of a bitch?"
"Ward! Use your fucking head! If that camp was theirs, then they probably knew we were there since you fucked everything up around there, and they're probably not dumb enough to stick around that place when they know we could just come there with a fucking army? And if it's just a place where a bunch of homeless crackheads and smackheads live, then what the fuck are you afraid of? Besides, it's broad daylight on a beautiful day, they're probably out around town right now! ...Th-the outlaws, I mean. Not the junkies. The heroin addicts are probably asleep right now and the crackheads are probably, like, slamming their heads into brick walls or whatever the hell they do all day."
"So what you're saying is that we should patrol the city and try to find them! Uh, the outlaws, I mean, not the, uh, junkies and crackheads."
"Jesus! Just c'mon and go check out the camp with me so we can say we were there! For Christ's sakes, Ward, your brain is probably as big as my entire body, and you still don't seem to have an intelligent thought in there anywhere!"
"...Nutsy, I still don't have a gun."
"Well I have mine."
"You really think you can deal damage with that little pea-shooter?"
"That won't be an issue. And ya know what else I got? I got the fuckin' car keys! Now let's go!" Slam.
-IllI-
Between Nutzinger's tiny legs and Woodland's hesitant pace, it took them nearly forty-five minutes to get from the Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve parking lot to the site where they had discovered signs of life. Nutzinger made a point not to stand on the sheriff's shoulder for this, partially because in the unlikely event of an ambush he would be a smaller target to hit, but mostly because it was hard to stand on Ward's shoulder when the wolf was shaking like a leaf.
"Jesus, Ward, get yourself together," Nutzinger said around the time when he started to get the inkling that they were getting close. "You've been in here hundreds of times, haven't you? You weren't this nervous when we went in here after the call with the bobcat kid in the SUV, you weren't this nervous when we went to ambush them with Matt and Tommy in the dead of the frickin'-ass night-"
"We had safety in numbers then, Nutsy… and I had a gun."
"Holy hell, if I heard someone say that in a book or a movie or something scripted like that, I'd think it was some heavy-handed political commentary."
"What was that?"
"Nothin', man… Okay, screw it, I'm actually kinda worried about you now. Are you gonna be alright?"
"I've been in these woods alone before, George. That's a mistake I'll never make again."
"You're not alone now."
"You're a squirrel."
"Well, hey, man, make another comment like that and you'll wish you were alone."
"Nutsy, I think deep down you that I'm really your best friend. You might bite me like a tick, but you would never really hurt me."
"Whoa. Ward. Whoa. I'm the one who has a gun, remember? Say something like that again and I'll blow my own brains out. And then you'll really be alone. And you wouldn't want that, now would you?"
"No…"
"Didn't think so."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Wait… did you… did you run into the outlaws when you were here alone before, or-?"
"There!" Ward exclaimed as he pointed through the trees toward the clearing littered with clothes and housewares.
"Finally!" said George, who couldn't actually see it from his angle but trusted that Ward wasn't completely useless.
"Wait!" warned the sheriff. "Tread slow! There might be booby traps in these parts… heh, 'booby,' that's funny…"
They tiptoed into the clearing, which they could see was not visibly occupied, but they wanted to get the closest look they could. Soon, they found themselves right in the center of the clearing at the base of the tree. They looked around and assessed the sight, and…
"It looks exactly the same," remarked the deputy.
But the sheriff, who looked five minutes ago like he was about to start crying, now looked furious.
"They think they're so smart."
"Wh-what are you talking about, man?"
"They think they're two steps ahead of us, don't they?" He turned his head violently left and right to see if there was any obvious detail he was missing. "They knew that if they did leave a booby trap, it would prove that someone who's got sumpthin' to hide lives here! So they didn't set a trap so we can't prove that! They're just waiting for us to think this is some abandoned meth camp and give up on it! They're just waiting for the trail to run cold!"
"Hey, Ward, Ward, chill out," Nutsy pleaded. "Maybe there's more evidence here than we think. Like… the scene investigator took photos, right? Let's check how the debris looks in the photos to see if it's really been untouched. If something's missing or something's been moved, then maybe we can prove signs of life!"
"That would actually be a pretty good idea, Nutsy!"
"Cool! So- wait, would be? You… you left the photos in the car, didn't you?"
"Uh, no, uh… I… I never picked them up from the lab."
"Goddammit, Ward, this is why the bandits think they're smarter than us! Uh… you wanna go digging in that hole in the tree some more to see if there's any evidence of a crime you missed last time? Like something stolen?"
"Nutsy, look around you. I already cleared that hole out."
"...Well, Jesus, man, don't say I didn't try to give you ideas."
"I won't, I won't…" the sheriff mumbled. He looked around one last time, almost disappointed that the outlaws weren't jumping out of the woodwork with bows and arrows and big fucking sticks, because at least then he would get some feeling of vindication, some feeling that this journey was worth the time spent. "We'll be back here soon, Nutsy… either I'll have my gun with me or I'll have backup with me, but we'll be back here, and we're gonna put the fear of God in those goddamn commies!" He then looked straight at the Major Oak and kicked it as hard as he could. "GAH! My toes!" he cried as he held his foot and jumped in pain, while Nutzinger laughed loudly, knowing the only person around to hear him was presently incapacitated.
But in that moment of rash frustration, the seed of an idea was planted, though it would take a bit for the sheriff to put the pieces together in his head.