Brokeback Springs

Shane Del Mar wakes before five, scratching his spare tire and wiry pubes. He rolls out of bed and stumbles to the kitchen sink, where he urinates. He’s still half asleep, but tries to wake completely by aiming precisely at the drain. He misses and accidentally hits the missus’s coffee cup. Mrs. Del Mar is still sleeping on the couch, if her snoring is any indication.

Shane packed the night before. Probably before his wife even shifts position in her flower patterned housecoat, he’ll have already left for a month long stakeout in a rural part of Broken Springs, known to the locals as Brokeback Springs, where two homosexual men were supposed to be running a meth house. His boss, a giant of a specimen of a man named Paul Bunion, chose Jimmy Twist as Shane’s partner. Jimmy was a lanky character, with a serious demeanor and a mouth like a sailor. He was also going bald. Shane, on the other hand was thirty-something, a bit on the stocky side, with a wide torso and a short gray crew cut. Despite their physiques, their two bodies complimented each other in what they both assumed was a professional way. Both were stronger than they looked, and both had very quick reflexes.

At the station ten minutes later, Paul Bunion, towering over them with hair the color of shoe polish, gave them his point of view. “What I want is for one of you to pitch a tent close to the suspects. The other will man the radio in the squad. No fire. No sirens. Roll up that tent every morn in case the perps come out early to get the paper. You,” he said to Shane, “Fridays twelve noon be down on the bottom of the mountain with your next week list. Somebody with supplies will come in a pickup.” Paul tossed Shane a watch, as if he weren’t worth the reach.

With that, the two men left for the mountain, and for a stakeout they’d never forget.

To be continued...Chapter Two