My father had never been one to brag much on himself, but in his den hung a framed print of that picture.
“I’ve always wanted to ask old Nash,” he said to EJ one time, an impish grin on his face, “if my cleat marks are still on his chest.”
Once my father was gone, Hader’s dislike of him had been passed on to me, and he’d been tough on me in high school, especially one time when some of my teammates and I had gotten into it with Old Mill players after we’d been the ones to whup their asses in a championship game.
Now here he is and here I am, forgetting for the moment that Taylor is in the parking lot, too, having come running from Pine Street to where I’m standing, the front of me covered in dirt.
“Are you all right?” she asks, trying to catch her breath.
“I’m fine,” I say. “And nice to see you, too.”
“What the heck just happened here, Silas?”
I see the three guys from the truck lined up against it. Maybe slumped against it is more like it. Hader is talking to them.
“A lot,” I say to Taylor. “Tell you about it later.”
Then Hader is heading our way, in his uniform, swaggering as ifhe’s the biggest man in town now, like he’s still a jock, except for the extra weight he’s put on since high school. When he takes off his sunglasses, I see a familiar mean squint to his eyes.
But he’s still smiling, as if the best part of his day is just about to start.
“Those boys over there say you just beat the snot out of them for no good reason,” he says, skipping the salutations, not that there have ever been many between Hader and me.
The three guys have come closer to hear our conversation.
“There was a reason I did what I did, Sheriff,” I say. “I saw them dealing drugs.”
“That’s a goddamn lie!” the group leader shouts.
His face is a mess, puffy and discolored, both his eyes nearly closed.
The one whose wrist I’d stomped says, “And after he beat on us, he beat on our truck.”
Hader makes a small turn, looking at the damage to the truck, then turns back to me. “Evidently,” he says.
To me he says, “Sold drugs to who?” He makes a show of looking around the parking lot. “Where’s the buyer?”
“It was a kid in a small car,” I say. “I think it might have been a Saab. He took off when he saw me arrive on the scene.”
“So you’re a cop now that you stopped being a football player?” Hader asks.
“Concerned citizen,” I say.
“Overly concerned,” he says, “from the looks of them and the looks of that truck.”
“How about this?” I say to Nash Hader. “How about you search these punks and see if they’ve got more inventory on their dumb-ass selves?”
“And how about you not think you can tell the top cop in this county how to do his damn job?”
“I’m not the bad guy here,” I say.
He nods at the three guys, all of whom look as if they lost the same fight.
“That look likegood-guy behavior put their tits and asses in a wringer?”
He suddenly seems to notice that Taylor is standing a few feet behind me, leaning against my truck, and tips his sheriff hat.
“Mrs. Webb.”
