Paul Sweeten Fiction Short Story

100 Miles to Miles City

By Paul Sweeten

That afternoon I had reached no particular place – a road sign that said MILES CITY IN 100 MILES. Usual practice was that I would drive up to the nearest police station, tell them I’m on the road without money or a place to stay, and would it be okay if I slept in my car in the parking lot? I’d slept in the car before, out on the road, but if police catch you sleeping on the road they’ll take your name and remember your car. They’ll give you a sermon about pretty girls and men you can’t trust. If the cops get you again it’s more than a sermon. It’s a fine I can’t pay. Too dangerous, they’ll say, for a woman to be out here with nothing but herself. That’s one sermon I had from a young officer. I showed him the gun I kept in the glovebox and showed him the licence for it. Be careful, he said. And that’s what most said, for me to be careful.

By the time I reached the station that evening, the sky was colouring up like a red desert. The clouds in Montana carry over in wakes and fade away to something resembling smoke. It wasn’t that dark yet, but lit-up road signs showed the way to the wood cabin: signs that said TEN MILES, FIVE MILES, ONE MILE. The parking lot was small and only one police Jeep was parked outside.

The Deputy looked over me. I told him the gist of things. He looked at some papers on his desk and looked at me again, then he sighed, and he looked around as if we were in the middle of some dirty deal. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Is it okay I stay?’

‘Number two is free,’ he said. ‘So unless you want to do something wrong I can put you in there for nothing. Otherwise it usually comes with lawyer’s fees.’

‘I aint got a lawyer,’ I told him.

‘You don’t need one,’ he said. ‘What I’m saying is I’m allowing you the use of the cell if you got no other place to go. Better you in here than out there.’

‘I thought it would be safe in the parking lot. It looks pretty quiet around the back.’

‘Yeah, it’s safe,’ he said, ‘but it’s safer in here.’

He took me around the office and showed me the Sheriff’s room and the water cooler, the little kitchen and the bathroom. It was just one bathroom, for girls and boys together. Then he showed me the cell while asking me what my name was and what it was I was doing on the road at night. I told him the truth: that I was making my way to Seattle from New Jersey. I told him about my aunt in New Jersey and the boy I was seeing in Seattle. ‘Dangerous,’ he said, ‘to be driving out at this time.’

‘I’ve got curtains for the car windows,’ I told him. ‘Plus a gun in the glovebox.’

‘You got a licence for the gun?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Perhaps you better bring that through to here. With the gun, too. Better to just give me any valuables you’ve got in the car for safekeeping.’

‘I’ve got peanut butter sandwiches and bottled water if you wany any.’

‘No thanks,’ he said.

I’d say this Deputy was in his late twenties. He had grown a moustache on his lip that looked more like a stain of dirt or the overspill of some brown food he’d been eating. It didn’t look like any other moustache I’d ever seen. It put his age up a few years anyway, and perhaps he was in his early thirties after all. He was tall and broad and clearly he took care of himself. Apart from that moustache. He had on a tucked-in shirt and when I came back with the gun and the licence, he had untucked the shirt and was running his thumbs around the rim of his khakis. Then he tucked the shirt back in and looked at me. ‘Just leave those things here,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you the cell.’

He took me down a corridor and swung open a metal door. ‘So it’s a real cell for prisoners?’ I said.

‘One of them.’

‘And you’re not expecting anybody in here tonight?’

‘I’m not hoping for anybody in here tonight. Can always use number one if needs arise.’

‘Number one?’

‘Across the way.’

‘You wouldn’t happen to have any food,’ I said. ‘Real food, I mean. All I’ve had for days is spread and bread.’

‘Three meals come as part of your stay,’ he said. ‘It’s our policy to give you breakfast, lunch and dinner.’

‘Is that the law?’

‘It is.’

‘But only if I’m a lawbreaker, right?’

‘Right. The law only applies to lawbreakers in here, but I think we can pretend for tonight. We’ll call it dinner about now, if that’s okay with you. I’m sure I can find something in the kitchen.’

The Deputy left me in the cell with the door open while he went back towards the office. The cell was a small space with a bed and a table. There was a pen on the table, chained to the drawer handle, and one piece of paper for writing. There was one pillow on the bed and a sign on the wall that said HOLLER FOR HELP.

The Deputy came back holding a tray. ‘It isn’t much,’ he said. ‘Some fruit though. Some cereal, too. It’s more of a breakfast but to be straight with you, it’s better than the dinners we give out. That’s good cow’s milk there, anyways.’

I told him ‘Thank you’, then the Deputy said he had to see about the office and that he’d leave me to it. ‘Does the door stay open?’ I asked. ‘I mean when it’s closed. It’s not an automatic lock or anything?’

‘Not automatic,’ he said. ‘But I’d better lock you in. If it’s open and someone comes through here with a felon, they’re going to give you a fright. When it’s locked everyone can see the cell’s occupied, so no one will bother. Is that okay with you?’

‘I suppose it’s okay,’ I said. ‘What do I do if I want it open?’

‘Just holler for help.’

‘Right. And you’re going to be here?’

‘All night,’ he said.

‘Would it be okay for me to smoke in here?’

‘No smoking,’ he said. ‘But you can go outside whenever you want. I mean, of course you can. Do you want to smoke now?’

‘I think I’ll just eat this.’

‘Right,’ he said.

I said ‘Right’ back to him, and he left and locked the door.

In the drawer of the table was a copy of the Bible. Someone had torn out the chapter between Exodus and Numbers and left a spine of page stubs in its place. Whoever it was must have torn out every page one by one. Each tear was different.

I laid back on the bed and felt an instant discomfort with the place. The walls had been scratched and the bed was hard and noisy. I mean that it would creek something terrible whenever you moved. All considered it was the worse bed I’d ever lain on – worse than the car’s backseat and worse than any couch. All I could keep looking at was the grate in the door – one of those you could put on the latch or swing open like a mailbox. When I called for the Deputy to come open the door and give me some air, his approaching footsteps gave me a little comfort. Strange, the way that was.

The Deputy swung open the latch instead of opening the door. ‘Can you open the door?’ I said.

‘Sure,’ he said, and he unlocked the door without opening it. ‘You’ve not touched your food.’

‘I’m not so hungry now.’

‘A minute ago you were.’

‘I’m okay. Actually I think I’d be more comfortable in my own car. I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, really I don’t. It’s just I’m not used to these surroundings and sitting here with the door closed – I don’t know – I feel like I should be feeling sorry for myself or guilty or something else I don’t want to feel. You understand.’

The Deputy opened the door and stepped into the room and placed his left hand on my shoulder, pushing me back a little to see the table and the Bible. ‘You been reading?’ he said.

‘No. Someone’s torn out some pages of that book.’

‘I know,’ he said, and his voice was quiet and impassive, as if he only meant himself to hear.

‘Must get you frustrated that someone would do that. I mean, you’re giving them something to do while they’re in here, yet they’re tearing it out like that. Must get you frustrated sometimes.’

‘No one’s ever stayed in this room,’ he said. ‘We don’t tend to use it. There’s another cell across the way.’

‘Number one.’

‘That’s right. Did you want to see it? Perhaps you’ll like it better than this one.’

‘It’s okay. I think I better go outside. I could use a smoke.’

The Deputy watched my chest as he moved a little to let me by. I walked out of the cell, down the hallway and into the reception of the office. From the back window I saw my car, and I saw the headlamps were still on, glaring through the window. ‘Damn,’ I said, and I said it so the Deputy could hear me. ‘Look at that.’

There was no answer coming from the corridor and no footsteps either. Then the phone of the office began to ring, a shrill bleating from a red receiver flushed into the wall above the desk. Under the receiver was a light that flashed in time with the ringing, and this was lighting up the reception all in red. It occurred to me to call out ‘Shall I get that?’, or something alike, as there was still no sign of the Deputy in the corridor, and no one else coming from down the stairs or from the Sheriff’s room. The phone just kept ringing without him coming to answer it. After a while the ringing stopped, and it didn’t start up again. Emergencies don’t go away, I thought. It must have been just nothing. Just something that could wait.

I walked back along the corridor and there was nobody around. No sign of the Deputy. The door to the cell was still open and when I looked in, the guy was standing there holding the Bible in his hands. He had the book open where the pages were ripped out, and he looked up with an offbeat stare in his eyes. He had untucked his shirt. Then he closed the book slowly and set it down on the bed. Something discomforted me. Without thinking it over, I slammed shut the door of the cell and pushed the bolt across. I heard the Deputy from the inside take a step towards the door and try to push it. Then he started hammering on the steel, not saying anything. I wasn’t saying anything either, but he was hammering on the door like he meant to break it down. The whole place shuddered. I stepped back and looked at the grate, closed, and I thought for a long time about swinging it open, getting another look at the guy’s face. I thought maybe if I saw him again I’d make up a better mind about him. But I left the grate. I walked back through the corridor and into the office where the phone was ringing again. I left it that way, grabbed my gun and the licence and ran to my car as fast as I could.

I drove the 100 miles to Miles City and didn’t slow up for anything. Wind hollered outside the windows. I rested the gun on the seat beside me, lit up a cigarette and let the smoke blow back in my face. I was going flat out. A hurricane warning came over the radio but I changed the station. At first it sounded like a dead frequency, but there was the faint sound of a piano starting up a piece of classical music. I’ve never liked classical music myself, but I left it on. I pushed the engine so hard that I couldn’t hear it anyway. Passing signs that said TEN MILES, FIVE MILES, ONE MILE, I turned off the headlamps and the road disappeared.

Author’s Bio: Paul Sweeten is 24 years old and lives, works and studies in Oxford, England.