The Last Annual Slugfest Read Free Page B

M-Five.”
    His pale eyes narrowed further. I was amazed he could still see. “Bad road?” he demanded. “Tell me about it.”
    He meant “justify it.” “There was a mud slide across Kiev Road.”
    “Your truck has four-wheel drive.”
    “A tank couldn’t get through that.”
    “Did you try?”
    “If I had tried, the truck would still be there.”
    He eyed my boots for evidence of mud. With a quick shake of the head, he said, “Clean. Didn’t you attempt to circumvent the obstacle on foot?”
    “Mr. Bobbs, Kiev Road is on the hillside. If I’d tried to walk around that mud, I’d have slid all the way down into the river. And,” I added, knowing his weak spot, “I would have lost my route book.”
    He winced. I had lost a route book to an angry German shepherd three months ago. He’d been going for my leg when I proffered the book. Snapping his jaws around the tasty leather cover, he shook it till every page sailed out, half onto the muddy rain-covered hillside and the rest into the river. I’d spent days on the phone to the main office in San Francisco copying over all five hundred names, addresses, meter numbers, and reads. And while I had done that, my routes had gone unread. Late routes go on the office report—Mr. Bobb’s report—as do unjustified Missed Meters. If I failed to read a meter because of a locked gate, or something blocking it, or because it was so obscurely placed that I just couldn’t find it, then the miss went on my Missed Meter Count. It was my responsibility to contact the customer and deal with the problem. I was allowed only four and a half misses per thousand. But if I failed to record a meter because of an acceptable reason, like a bad road, then I was in the clear; it was the office’s count it was noted on. And since the little offices in the rugged areas always had more Missed Meters than the city offices, where there were no felled redwoods blocking the roads or bulls huffing at outlying gates, Mr. Bobbs was always in the position of justifying his count. He fought us on every M-5. Presenting him with a Missed Meter was like telling Edwina Henderson to put up No Smoking signs.
    He glared down at the offending route book. “We’ll hold that read out.” He looked back at his watch. “Too late to contact Public Works today. First thing Monday. And you can drive by to see if that slide has shifted.”
    I was tempted to argue that my route for Monday was nowhere near Kiev Road, that I didn’t have time to hassle Public Works about a slide I knew they wouldn’t clear for months, and that Mr. Bobbs didn’t need to hold this read out to badger me with next week (other offices didn’t do that). But it was nearly six o’clock, and on Friday night, the night of the Slugfest, I had other things to do. “Perhaps,” I said, “your sacrifice tonight will make up for this month’s Misses.”
    Mr. Bobbs stared. One of the attributes he shared with Edwina Henderson was the absence of humor. To him, the idea that anything even this loosely connected with our utility company could be laughable was close to heresy.
    Silently, I extricated the offending page and handed it to him. Route book in hand, I turned toward the storeroom, where I would drop it in the tan, dufflelike San Francisco bag that would carry it to the computer in the city.
    “Miss Haskell!”
    “Yes?”
    “Your Missed Meter Count is already at four.”
    I nodded. As I put my truck key on the hook and signed out, I thought that no one but Mr. Bobbs would know by heart each reader’s Missed Meter Count. I hoped that when he got his first bite of slug tonight, it would be raw.
    It was eight-thirty when I pulled up outside Steelhead Lodge. The Slugfest was scheduled to start at eight, but the first event was the award for the biggest slug. Then there were the races, which went, as the master of ceremonies said each year, “at a snail’s pace.” Coming half an hour late, I expected to arrive just in time for