The Locke Paradox - 03 - Commandment Seven

Keep it fun. Because boredom leads to blindness.

Episode Three: Commandment Seven

The ride home was quiet. Didn’t even turn on the radio. Just forty-five minutes wondering where he went wrong.

Boredom. You don’t retire a stallion in their prime.

Yeah. A stallion. And a stallion’s gotta run.

Back home, he packed an Army green duffel. On his way out the door, he grabbed a scoop of chicken feed and headed to the coop.

Julian’s well-fed Rottweiler sauntered from the coop. Their eyes met as Julian tuned in to the quiet of the coop.

“All of ‘em?”

A feigned whimper.

He dumped the feed with a sigh. “Well, at least you’re fed ‘cause we gotta go.”

He tossed his bag in the bed of the truck. Meatball jumped in the driver door.

They were headed south toward I-40. Hadn’t decided on east or west. He hoped Steve’s camera would help him decide.

All those headlines connected with string. Mass graves in Bosnia and Chechnya? Chinese spy satellites and nuclear espionage in California? Could be fun.

Calm down, Jules.

He fished a pen out of the glovey and scribbled in commandment seven.

#7. Keep it fun. Because boredom leads to blindness.

Connected or not, one thing was certain. There were better places for Julian to be Julian.

---

Julian’s Dodge idled in the Eckerd parking lot. The promise of one-hour photos had turned into two. He tossed a third empty can of Yoo-hoo on the passenger floor. Meatball licked the Cheetos dust from his fingers.

He rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. An Asheville cruiser eased next to the entrance and parked. A patrolman went inside and chatted with the clerk, who clutched a thick envelope, the clerk pointing at Julian’s truck.

The fuck did I do?

The two chatted between glances out the window and the envelope on the counter. The cop barked into his radio.

Meatball growled as Julian glared at the exchange.

A few minutes later white Chevys boxed in his Dodge. Boots, badges and guns filed out, stacking behind their cars.

“Driver in the Dodge, put your hands where we can see them!”

Julian rested both hands on the wheel, moving them slow.

“Turn the engine off! Now!”

He killed the engine, leaving the keys in the ignition. “Relax, boy,” he told Meatball.

“Open the door and step out! Hands!”

“I’m going to roll up the window!” Julian’s voice was steady.

“You’ll do exactly as I say!”

“If I don’t, my dog will get out.”

“Get the fuck out of the truck! Now!”

Julian shut his eyes. God help you if you shoot my fucking dog.

“Meatball. Stay.”

Both hands out the window, he opened the door with his left and stepped out. He closed it with his hip.

“Hands up! Walk backwards toward my voice.”

Julian scanned their faces as he turned. Shaking. Sweaty. Pale.

Meatball’s hips twitched. The low growl rose in his chest.

“Stay, Meatball! Stay!” His voice broke like a glass rod.

The dog launched through the window like a 120-pound hate-seeking missile aimed at the megaphone.

His pulse slowed to a metronome’s click as he burned the actions into thought.

Time bent.

The sound of shots never reached him. In the skip of a record, their guns were in the Dodge, Delores was in his hand, the envelope of photos was in his pocket, and a cop’s throat was in Meatball’s jaws.

A few watched in catatonic shock as Meatball chewed through their lieutenant’s neck. A few watched Julian. One pulled a hidden .38 from his boot.

Delores put him down with a bark.

The rest ran.

He jumped back in the truck, grasping for keys that weren’t there.

“Shit!”

He grabbed the keys from the floorboard.

“Fucking asshole.”

With a whistle, Meatball was back in the truck. The Dodge roared to life and barreled through the hills, leaving the Blue Ridge and his retirement in a bloody heap.

“What the fuck was that?”

Meatball panted proudly, gore matted in his coat.

He opened a bag of Cheetos with his teeth and gave it to Meatball. “I told you to stay in the truck!”

He didn’t stop checking his mirrors until the blue peaks had faded away.

He waited until dark before pulling into a dead rest stop. He cleaned the dried blood off of the dog, polished off the last of his road snacks and racked out for the night.

He pulled out the envelope of pictures from Steve’s disposable camera.

The first two in the stack were his—the photos Julian had taken of Steve’s wall of conspiracies. He kept flipping.

“oh.”

Then another.

“Oh.”

One after the other he flipped through the pictures. Print after print of 4x6 glossy probable cause.

He flipped one to Meatball, “Why? Why would you take a picture?”

He tucked them all back into his jacket. Julian and Meatball lay down in the covered bed and shut their eyes.

A slow chuckle split into two. Meatball watched as Julian’s laughter shook the truck.

“Touché, Steve. Touché.”