Without Mercy Read Free Page B

you and I have dissertated and photocopied and syllabused our way through.”
    â€œGlad to know you hold our work in such high regard,” I grumbled, though without conviction.
    I pulled into the gravel lot behind the stone courthouse and parked in the NO PARKING zone beside the sheriff’s department, rolling down my window to take in the afternoon air. Just as I killed the engine, the sun seemed to disappear behind a cloud. Glancing out my window, I saw that it wasn’t a cloud that had blocked the sun, but a mountain—a mountain of a man, his big belly and barrel chest filling my entire field of view. His shirt could scarcely contain the gargantuan form—I caught glimpses of skin through gaps between the buttons—and when he leaned on the windowsill, the truck canted to the left, causing the apple that had been sitting on the truck’s bench seat to roll against my thigh.
    The big man’s face was out of sight above the truck’s roofline, so I spoke to the immense chest—specifically, to the five-pointed star pinned to the straining shirt. “Waylon, is that you?”
    â€œNah, it’s my baby sister,” rumbled a deep growl of a voice. “How the hell you been, Doc? We ain’t seen you in way too long.”
    A bear-paw hand clapped me on the shoulder, and thetruck rocked from the force of it. “Good,” I managed to grunt. “Busy, but good. Waylon, you remember Miranda?”
    â€œCourse,” he said. He bent down, his bearded, bearish head occupying half the window’s opening, then threaded an arm the size of an oak limb across the cab, offering her the paw, which seemed the size of a boxing glove. Miranda’s hand and wrist disappeared as Waylon closed his fingers. “Mighty nice to see you again, Miss Miranda.”
    â€œNice to see you too, Waylon,” she said. “You keeping ’em honest up here?”
    Her question unleashed a low, thunderous chuckle from deep in Waylon’s chest. “Not so’s you’d notice,” he said. “I’m a deputy, not a miracle worker. Besides, if ever’body up here straightened up and toed the line, I’d be out of work, wouldn’t I? Way I see it, only feller up here with more job security ’n me is the undertaker.”
    WE FOLLOWED WAYLON’S TRUCK OUT OF TOWN ON the Dixie Highway, crossing the Pigeon River and then, in a few miles, paralleling the French Broad, which had somehow, over the eons, managed to carve a channel through the high, rugged mountains between Jonesport and Asheville, North Carolina—barely thirty miles away, as the crow flew, but more than twice that far upriver as the valley twisted and turned.
    We wouldn’t be going all the way to Asheville—only about halfway, to the remnants of a tiny ghost town named Wasp.
    As we followed the river, I didn’t worry about staying particularly close to Waylon, since we could have spotted his truck from a mile away. Despite the sheriff’s emblem painted on the front doors and the tailgate, the truck wasn’t exactlya standard-issue law enforcement vehicle. A far cry from the Jeep Cherokees and Chevy Tahoes favored by rural sheriffs’ departments, this was a hulking Dodge Ram 3500, fire-engine red, sporting a hulking diesel engine, a double cab, dual rear wheels, and twin vertical exhaust pipes, the sort normally found only on tractor-trailer rigs.
    We had barely reached Jonesport’s outskirts—which weren’t too far from Jonesport’s inskirts—when Miranda said, “You know, if anybody else were driving that thing, I’d be tempted to diagnose a case of SPS compensation.”
    â€œOf what compensation?”
    â€œSPS.”
    â€œI heard what you said,” I told her. “I just don’t know what it means.”
    â€œSPS? Small penis syndrome.”
    â€œEww,” I said.
    â€œSPS compensation means driving a huge truck or a