* * *
Ben recognized the familiar blue and red lights of the police cruiser flashing in his rear view mirror. He looked down at his speedometer and was hardly amazed to discover he was doing about 80 miles per hour. When he would take these long drives to think about things, he would often forget to watch his speed. The trouble was, he had recently taken a few too many drives to think about things. He had tallied up at least ten speeding tickets from Bangor to Buffalo. He did have to say that he had come to enjoy his conversations with the officers that pulled him over for roadside chats. Many times, as a matter of fact, he would leave such encounters without getting a ticket. He believed it was because he was exceedingly honest about his transgressions. For some reason, police felt it was necessary to ask the question:
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
He knew they didn’t teach that in cop school. It must have been from all of the cop movies they watched. They all walked up to his window with the same studied swagger. He loved that swagger almost as much as he hated that question.
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
Yes. He knew how fast he was going. Anybody who said they didn’t know how fast they were going was lying. When he saw the flashing lights, he reflexively looked at his speedometer to see how bad it was. He couldn’t imagine anyone else doing otherwise. The only reason people said that they didn’t know how fast they were going was because they somehow felt that they could get out of the ticket if they played dumb. This was just stupid. The only other person besides these drivers who knew how fast they were going was the cop who pulled them over. Cops really didn’t make too many mistakes about this. The speed guns were fairly reliable but, even more than the gun, the experience of tracking speeders gave police a sixth sense about their rate of travel. But drivers somehow believed that if they either played dumb or denied their crime altogether, that the officer would stop and think:
“Hey, maybe this citizen wasn’t going so fast after all. Maybe I’m wrong. I should apologize for the inconvenience, offer him a home baked cookie and send him on his way with an apology and a repentant smile.”
Not so strangely, no officer had ever said such a thing. He did know of some cops who would give good-looking women - or men - a warning and a phone number. Ben thought that this was an abuse of the badge, but he didn’t think it was a major one. After all, sitting by the side of the road next to a diamond yellow “Moose” sign for hours on end could be a pretty lonely affair. There were the very rare occasions that a moose wandered by to say hello. It was usually around daybreak at the end of a night’s shift when the coffee was too cold and no driver had been by in hours. That was when the moose liked to come by. Ben was fairly certain it was the same moose. It would approach his cruiser and dip its head down for a moment before it would approach the highway. Without fail, it would pause at the side of the road as if it were waiting to see if a car was coming. Then, when all was clear, it would lope slowly to the center of the road and stop at the yellow line. Ben had no idea why, but it made those rare mornings somehow special to see that weirdo moose do his ritual.
So Ben looked down at his dashboard and, past the layer of dust that had begun to cover the protective glass over his instrument panel, he saw that his speed had, without his being aware, crept up to 80. It was always 80. He was fairly certain cars would, if given the opportunity, live at 80. When he was going 80, it never felt like 80. It felt comfortable. It felt safe and right and he never quite understood why it wasn’t a legal speed. He would never pull someone over doing 80. 70? An unsafe speed. There was something somehow wrong with 70. 70 was ridiculous because 65 was legal. Why break the law for five extra miles per hour? 70 was like robbing a bank but only asking for a hundred dollars. 70 made people doing 65 uncomfortable and pissed off people doing 80. It was a no-win speed. And anyone going over 80? Well, they were just asking for trouble. You never knew what was going to be beyond the next blind curve or what might dart out into the road in front of you. Cars started to do strange things over 80. Unless they were high performance sports cars. Those he pulled over on general principal. The problem with high-speed sports cars, especially in Vermont, was that those people who generally tended to own such beasts also tended to feel the need to drive them in such a way as to prove that the cars could do everything they were advertised to do. The fact was, these cars were not made to occupy the highways and byways of the United States. Except, of course, Montana. They could drive as fast as they liked in Big Sky. Buy a Ferrari and keep it in a garage in Montana. Go there a few times a year and red line it. But not in Vermont. Certainly not in Vermont. Ben felt these cars were designed for Europe where they have really nothing better to do than to drive cars really really fast and build roads that are capable of handling cars that are going really really fast. Europeans have all sorts of time on their hands. Almost as much as the Japanese. But at least the Japanese make sensible cars. As a cop on the side of the road waiting for the dawn and the moose and whatever the new day might bring, Ben hardly ever gave the Japanese cars a second thought - unless, of course, they were glowing with some weird neon underlighting and spoilers where there ought not to be spoilers. A four speed Corolla should never suffer the indignity of a high performance spoiler or racing flames. There is no point in it and it just looks silly. He would pull a Lamborghini over just because. As a matter of fact, he did once. It was driven by Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons, as if Ben could give a good goddamn about what family the bored scions of the idiot wealthy came from. Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons seemed unusually irked that he should have to be pulled over by a local policeman like Ben. Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons seemed unusually sure that his prestigious position as the incredibly lucky genetic heir to the incredibly lucky genetic heirs of some long ago successful hard working industrialist guaranteed him some kind of free pass to behave like a monumental fuckwit and simply exert his idiot presence and will of non-personality in the way of a small town sheriff doing his job and that small town sheriff would, like some bygone constabulary dealing with the idiot offspring of a local land baron, simply bow his head in apology and wave the boy on his way. Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons was downright livid when Ben forced him, at gunpoint, to take a field sobriety test and, after being judged under the influence of some narcotic, placed in handcuffs and then not so gently forced into the back of the squad car like, as Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons said over and over again as he was taken to the station for booking, a commoner. Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons certainly didn’t expect Ben to look in his red Lamborghini with spoilers in all of the right places but still, inexplicably, with that stupid pull-me-over neon underlighting, and find his too large stash of cocaine sitting quite out in the open on the passenger seat next to the bottle of Cristal. Ben actually started giggling at that point. As an adult, he never ever giggled except that one time. He just couldn’t quite wrap his head around the idea that there was someone in the world that actually strived to be such a complete and utter stereotype down to the very smallest of details. There were still times - such as now…fortunately, Ben was being pulled over anyway - that Ben would stop and have to suppress a violent laughing spell at the thought of Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons as he sat in the jail cell whining that he would have all of his many teams of lawyers sue Ben and the whole town of Stansbury and maybe the whole State of Vermont for this offense. Oh, yes. Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons brought his lawsuit and it did not make the local district attorney, Daniel Warrington, of the Stansbury Warringtons as he would say every time the rich wretch would open his mouth about his lineage, very happy and when he wasn’t happy, he was less likely to be nice and when he wasn’t nice, he could be downright spiteful. So Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons was prosecuted on numerous felony counts of possession and treated very much like a commoner
and found guilty despite the best efforts of his expensive team of lawyers to prove that somehow a wandering moose had dropped the illegal substances in through the window of the expensive red sports car that was doing 127 miles per hour on a two lane highway and that Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons was the victim of a vindictive small town sheriff who used wildlife to plant evidence on the local elite. They actually used that term quite often, which did not go over well with the jury of people who did not think of themselves as a part of the local elite. Nor Judge Randall Farnsworth, who positively hated those who thought of themselves as any kind of elite. So Paul Sanderson of the Bennington Sandersons ended up in the state penitentiary where, despite many appeals, he stayed for many years and learned that sometimes it is not such a good idea to bring up one’s lineage at every given opportunity and that maybe just maybe it would be safer all around if he drove a nice efficient Japanese car… and laid off the coke.
Ben was certainly not of a mind to bring up his standing as Benjamin Hamilton of the Stansbury Hamiltons to the young trooper who was swaggering her way toward his window. She would probably just laugh. Probably.
“Do you know how fast you were going, sir?” she said before she even look at him. He liked her technique in this. He had told her so many times before.
“You know I do, Jenny. At least 80, but most likely no more than 80. It’s usually 80, isn’t it?” Ben thought he detected a slight grin at his response. But Jennifer had obviously been practicing stone faces in the mirror for some time, so she would give him no hint of familiarity.
“It’s Officer Kennisaw, sir.” He was amazed her face could move enough to speak. “You are aware that the speed limit on this road is 65 miles per hour, sir.”
“You know I am, Officer Kennisaw.”
“And you know your status as the former sheriff of Stansbury does not give you the right to break the law, do you not?”
“I would hope so. You’ve informed me of that every time you’ve pulled me over.”
“Then why do you persist in breaking the law, Ben?”
She had a point. Ever since Ben had stopped being sheriff of Stansbury, he had taken up the strange habit of breaking the law. While he was sheriff and for many years before, he always toed the line. He never thought to do otherwise. He enjoyed being sheriff and deeply respected the rule of law if not all the rules that were codified. Sometimes he would bend in his interpretation of the laws as they pertained to those who he sometimes let off with a stern warning or not even that. But when it came to his own activity, he never drove over the speed limit or even crossed the street unless it was at a legal point of crossing. It just wasn’t a part of who he was as a person. His father always told him, from the time he was five, that he would be a cop. Ben didn’t know if it was because his father just really wanted him to be a cop or if it was something that was evident in a five year old boy who never played the robber. When his friends played Robin Hood out in the forest, Ben was always elected to be the Sheriff of Nottingham. He didn’t mind it, either. He had always wondered why Robin of Locksley couldn’t go about his helping of the poor without resorting to banditry. It just didn’t seem right to constantly victimize government servants and upset the status quo just out of some sense that there was an injustice being done. Robin was a nobleman. He could have used his lands as a place of refuge for the peons and, perhaps, sought to change the system from within. But Robin resorted to criminal behavior and for that he needed to be punished. If it had been some poor peasant robbing and stealing for some righteous cause, he would have been shunned. But not the noble Robin. No. He was special because he was royalty. Ben never liked the idea of royalty so when he got to play the Sheriff of Nottingham Forest, he did so with relish. More often than not, his friends would complain because Ben and his group of deputies would usually succeed in bringing the so-called merry men to justice. They couldn’t argue with him, though. He always played fair. He thought that if the historical Sheriff of Nottingham could have just played fair, he would not have been vilified and, perhaps, he and Robin could have worked things out. Ben understood that some lawmen were not entirely lawful, but he couldn’t rightly disrespect the badge even by playing a cop as a bad guy.
Ben looked at Jennifer. She reminded him so much of himself when he was in her position. He knew that she would make a fine Sheriff of Nottingham.
He didn’t really have a good answer for her question. “I don’t know what it is. Lately, I’ve just been…distracted.”
“If you’re so distracted, Ben, then perhaps you should do your thinking at home. Maybe take a walk and think rather than get in the car. I’d hate to have to clean your remains from the side of some poor moose.”
“I appreciate the sentiment. But I have a lot on my mind and a lot of time now to think about it.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Some people were unhappy he had lost the last election. Jennifer was one of those people.
“My fault to be sure. There were more important things than being sheriff.”
“Such as?”
He really didn’t have a good answer for this because in his mind he had never really stopped being sheriff. What he was doing now that he was not sheriff was, in fact, an extension of being sheriff. He simply knew that he could no longer be sheriff and do the thing that he was doing now.
“Such as taking long drives and occasionally being saved from running into a moose by a concerned friend.”
He wasn’t ready to tell just yet. Soon. But not just yet.
“I know I should have it all committed to memory by now, but I need your license and registration.”
Ben flipped down the visor and gave Jennifer the documents. He stopped keeping them in his wallet some time ago. It just seemed a waste of time.