Hard Deadline: Rural Noir Short Fiction By Dustin Walker

These days, Ted never looked great. He’d shuffle into my newsroom with his head down, unkempt beard flowing onto his faded Polo shirt like wire tendrils. Every morning he’d arrive a little later, the reek of whiskey a little stronger.

But when he came to work on that gray autumn Monday, I knew something other than his divorce was weighing on him. It was his eyes that bothered me the most. The way he looked through everything, as if nothing in the here and now mattered anymore.

He fumbled with the coffee pot, spilling more than he got into his cup. Then he ambled over to his desk, right next to mine, and collapsed into his chair. Late again, but only by about 15 minutes this time. And in a town as small as Fort Bend, few things happened that required urgent coverage.

“Mornin’, Teddy.” I called over to him, like I always did.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he slowly turned that unfocused gaze toward me. “Mornin’, Ernie.”

Now, I’ve gone through this routine with Ted for close to 20 years and every time — no matter his mood — he fires back a peppy ‘morning’ without delay.

Once he and Janice split, though, our little morning ritual took on a deeper meaning. It became a check-in to say: “Hey, I’m good boss. I’m ready to work.” But most importantly, it put me at ease every time he said it.

Once he and Janice split, though, our little morning ritual took on a deeper meaning.

Because Ted wasn’t just my reporter, he was — please excuse the cliché — like the son I never had. Guy walked into this place at 19, desperate to make money and get out of town. The kid wasn’t built for logging camps and didn’t quite have the book smarts needed to get a college scholarship, so he managed to talk me into giving him a junior reporter gig. That was back before the internet siphoned off most of our ad revenue.

I figured he’d last a year or two, make a bit of money and flee Fort Bend. But newspapering has a way of getting into your blood. And the more I taught Ted about photography and writing clean copy, the more he fell in love with it all. Still, I never imagined he’d be one of just three of us left two decades later.

I turned to Ted. “What’s wrong? You don’t sound like yourself.”

His eyes stayed on his keyboard. “I got into an accident this morning.”

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“I, uh.” He rubbed his palms on his jeans. “I dropped my smoke and when I looked up…” Ted’s bottom lip quivered before he wept into his hands.

I walked over to him, ignoring the all-familiar burn of my arthritic knees. “Hey, tell me what happened.”

Ted raised his head. “I think I hit someone. Out by the old highway. And then…” The waterworks came roaring back. “Then I just drove away.”

A heaviness pressed against my chest as the magnitude of what I had just heard set in. I looked at the reception desk: Sue, the only other employee at The Chronicle, still hadn’t arrived at her post.

“You think you hit someone? Are you sure? It could’ve been a deer or something.”

“I don’t know. I think it was a cyclist, but I don’t know for sure.” He looked up at me, glassy eyes spidered with red veins. “I stopped for a moment when I heard the bang, then I took off again. I don’t know why I didn’t call the police — I just wanted to get away.”

Maybe I should’ve called the cops on his behalf right then and there, but Ted’s story didn’t hold together all that well. And if it turned out he had just hit an animal, bringing the cops in would just fuel more rumors about him. The poor guy didn’t need that and neither did the paper.

Tales of him slurring at ribbon cuttings or nodding off at council meetings had already riled up some folks in the community. Not exactly the kind of message you want to send when your competitive advantage is nostalgia and small-town values.

Plus, it was quite likely Ted just got worked up over nothing. It’d fit his MO, that’s for sure. So I thought it best to verify his story first before bringing in the authorities. Due diligence and all.

“Let’s go for a drive, pal. Show me where it happened.”

*****

I inspected Ted’s old Buick Century for damage before we took off. The hood had a melon-sized dent in it, which told me he had certainly hit something big. Turn signal was cracked pretty good too, but I convinced myself it was from a deer.

Ted seemed to have sobered up a bit, but I took his keys just in case. He told me to head north on Beatton Road, a quiet stretch of pavement traveled mostly by those who owned farmhouses in the area.

With the Buick’s janky muffler rattling like gunfire in the background, I managed to pull a few more details out of him on the drive. It turned out that his loneliness got the better of Ted. So rather than sleep off the remains of last night’s bender, he went to pay his ex an early-morning visit at her ranch. The accident happened on the way.

I never figured out why they got divorced. Janice seemed good for Ted, an anchor for a guy who needed structure and routine to thrive. Maybe they split because he worked too much. Maybe it was something else entirely. All I know is that he never got over it.

Anyway, Ted wasn’t up for much conversation. He slumped against the window and watched groves of bright-yellow poplar blur by. A bit of overcast dulled what would have otherwise been a postcard autumn scene.

The silence gave me time to think — to dwell, really — on what would happen if he really had hit someone. What it might mean for Ted and for The Chronicle.

Some people may wonder why I’d be worrying about a newspaper during a time like that. A person’s life could be hanging in the balance — pardon the cliché again — and there I was stressing about how it might hurt The Chronicle’s image. Well, that little rag was more than just a newspaper to me.

I think referring to your job as a ‘calling’ is about as BS as labeling someone your soulmate, but reporting on Fort Bend gave me a reason to exist. I never got married or had kids or embraced religion like so many others in this town. Instead, I found meaning in paper and ink.  When I’m grinding away in the newsroom, it feels like I’m serving the universe in some oddball way. As if documenting the events of this ramshackle town were playing into some greater purpose.  Or perhaps I just liked the idea that a historian might be reading my words 500 years from now.

Either way, life takes on a beautiful simplicity when you know exactly why you were put on this earth. And you understand what you need to do each and every day. No matter what.

But as The Chronicle edged deeper into the red, it looked more and more like Fort Bend might lose its one and only newspaper. Even though I hated to admit it, I woke up some mornings wondering if I’m fighting a lost battle.

“Slow down, we’re coming up to it,” Ted said. “Just past the culvert.”

The Buick’s shot rotors rattled my foot as I pressed the brake and pulled onto the slight shoulder. Thin trees and thick brush squeezed the road on both sides.

“I don’t want to see,” said Ted.

“That’s fine, pal. I’ll be quick.” I got out and walked a few dozen feet from the car, scanning the bushes for evidence of Ted’s accident.

Without that busted muffler banging in my ears, everything seemed too quiet. No chirping birds or rustling breeze; just dried leaves crackling beneath my shoes.

The red bicycle stood out like an open wound against the brush. Next to it, a man in a tracksuit lay on the ground faceup. My insides recoiled and everything but that body distorted, like the background in a portrait photo.

I waded into the grass, thinking the guy might just be knocked out. But the unnatural angle of his neck told me otherwise. I leaned in closer to get a better look at his face. It was Murray Sheffield, a retired teacher and superfan of the Junior B hockey team.

Murray was one of those rare guys who seemed to actually get healthier in old age. He’d always be out jogging or riding his bike when not heckling the away team’s goalie. Murray and I were far from friends, but we knew each other in the same way that everyone knows each other in Fort Bend. A quick hello on the street or idle small talk at the barber. Yet I couldn’t help thinking about how empty our little arena would sound without his booming voice filling the bleachers. Or how devastated his wife would be when she got the news.

I walked back to the car and went up to Ted’s window. He sat exactly how I had left him, eyes still on the floor mat.

“Who was it?”

I sucked in a deep breath. “Murray Sheffield. Didn’t look like he suffered.”

Tears rolled down Ted’s cheeks. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and then looked at me. “Aren’t you gonna call the police?”

That was my plan, initially. But then I got thinking: every journalist needs to make decisions with the greater good in mind, no matter how difficult they might be. And no damn good could ever come from Ted rotting in a jail cell. The poor guy wouldn’t survive behind bars and The Chronicle wouldn’t survive the PR hit once the news got out.

A wind kicked up, sending yellowed leaves scratching across the fractured pavement. The air seemed colder. And I became all too aware that our next move would dictate how the rest of both our lives turned out.

“You going to jail won’t bring Murray back.” I hardly believed the words as I said them. “I don’t think we should call anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

I knew what he was thinking just by the way his eyes widened: Ernie’s got a plan. And usually, I did have one. I built plans to cover the big Empire Days festival, plans to improve our weekly circulation, and plans to keep the newspaper alive.

But here’s the thing: my plans require time. I need to weigh all the options and think about contingencies and do what some people might call ‘over analyzing.’ That’s simply the way I operate and I’m comfortable in that mode. Not everyone gets it though.

Ted once asked me why I decided to stay in Fort Bend instead of going to a bigger daily down south. I fed him some lines about loving the community and wanting to keep The Chronicle’s 80-year legacy alive, which were both true. But the real reason is that I’d never be happy at a big paper, where deadlines hit you like buckshot and scrums demanded rapid-fire questions. Working at a little weekly gave me time to think and plan. No quick turnarounds on stories, no pressure-cooker decisions.

But I always wondered if that mindset weakened me. Life doesn’t always provide you with time to stop and think: sometimes you have to trust your instincts, as rusty as they might be, and do what’s best for everyone. And my instincts were screaming at me not to call the cops.

But we couldn’t just leave the body here and hope for the best. Murray would be found eventually and there are only a dozen or so ranches out this way. It wouldn’t take much for the cops to put together a shortlist of folks who drive — or had any reason to drive — this lonely stretch of road. Ex-husbands included.

“What I mean is that we need to handle this situation ourselves. No police.” I leaned in close.  “Help me get Murray into the trunk.”

*****

Ted went along with my plan without much convincing. I suspected that the lingering effects of shock and alcohol played a factor.

He grabbed Murray by the ankles and dragged him out of the bushes, keeping his eyes on the sky the entire time so he didn’t have to look at the man’s face. Couldn’t say I wanted to look at him either.

I did my best to help lift Murray into the trunk. Thankfully, there wasn’t much blood — his neck must have snapped on impact — but you still feel a special kind of horror when handling a body like that. Ted’s constant shaking told me he felt it, too.

We shoved the bike into the back seat and were all set to go in under 10 minutes, with no sign of a passing vehicle.

That bit of labor seemed to sober Ted up even more. The guy still had a glassiness to his eyes, but he had arrived at work in worse shape. I figured he’d be able to drive.

The plan was that he’d drop me back at The Chronicle and then head out to the old Jacobsen Quarry, about 40 miles east of town. I’d hop in my Corolla and follow him out there and then we’d dump Ted’s car in the lake and report it stolen later. That way, if the cops dredged the quarry, they’d hopefully pin the accident on some yet-to-be-found car thief.

The dropping-off part went fine — Ted seemed pretty steady behind the wheel — but as soon as I got out and Ted took off, my ever-committed receptionist spotted me in the parking lot. Sue was a kind old woman with the heart of a pitbull. There was no chance she’d let me leave without dealing with Mrs. Scriber’s latest round of complaints about the paper’s small font size and lack of photos of her grandkids. I figured it would look suspicious for me not to take the call, so I got Mrs. Scriber settled down before heading out.

My stomach did backflips on the drive to the quarry. I tried not to think about things too much, but the prospect of losing The Chronicle weighed on me like a lead blanket. If I couldn’t walk into that newsroom every morning, where would I go? Who would I even be?

My phone buzzed inside my pocket, reminding me that we couldn’t take our sweet time out here. Sue and I normally worked together to manage all the emails and calls from readers and advertisers. The paper may be struggling, but we still had enough subscribers to generate plenty of work for just the two of us. And as the day dragged on, Sue would become even more suspicious about Ted and I disappearing.

Smooth pavement turned to washboard dirt as I turned onto Quarry Road. The rough conditions sent violent tremors through my car and up into my sore knees, but I couldn’t slow down. Instead, I cranked the radio — an old Steve Miller Band song — and stole glances at the eerily still quarry lake peeking out from behind the birch trees that lined the road. Whatever it took to distract my nattering brain.

The road ended at an empty gravel lot that stood about 100 feet above the water. Ted’s Buick was parked there already, exactly where I hoped it would be. I got out of my car and stumbled — my legs burned after being jostled on that washboard road — then walked over to the Buick.

Ted sat holding a half-empty bottle of whiskey against his lap. Did he already have that in the car when we left? Or was he foolish enough to make a stop along the way?

“C’mon buddy, put that down.” I opened his door. He screwed the cap onto the bottle and tossed it on the passenger floor. Then he pulled himself out of the car.

“Why put up with me this whole time?” His voice slow and heavy. “Why put up with my drinking and coming in late and all of that?”

I didn’t have a good answer for him. Looking back, I should’ve fired Ted and forced him into rehab. Should’ve made that tough decision immediately, the moment his drinking got bad, rather than let things drag on like this. Somehow, I convinced myself that pushing ahead with the status quo would be better for everyone.

“Hey, we have a job to do,” I said.  “After this, let’s get you clean, okay? Get you into a treatment center down south. Then things will be back just the way they were.”

I really wanted to believe that. But looking at Ted in the gray morning light, seeing those sunken eyes and the way that every muscle in his body seemed to droop like a dying flower, it was clear I had lied.

Ted had rebuffed my attempts to get him to see an addiction counselor in the past. And even if I did convince him to go to rehab, I couldn’t imagine the guy ever covering council or photographing high school basketball again. He looked like a man who had finally gone over the edge. Even in his drunken state, Ted must have known it, too.

“Really?” he asked. “You think things could go back to how they were?”

“Look, we need to get this done. Let’s not get distracted.”

I half-limped to the brink of the drop to get an idea of what we were working with. The quarry lake stuck out like a scab against the bright landscape of poplar-clad mountains. Swaths of compact dirt and crushed rock framed the shoreline, including a twenty-foot strip that ran between the water and the cliff we were on. No way we could clear that by pushing the car off the edge by hand. I had an idea, though.

Back at the Corolla, I popped the trunk and fished out an extra-long zip tie leftover from tying back small trees in my yard last weekend. Then I wandered around the lot, kicking at fist-sized stones, hoping to find something heavy I could strap to the gas pedal to hold it down. Nothing fit the bill.

My phone went off again. I thought about muting it, but didn’t. I liked how it motivated me to work quickly; reminded me of what was at stake.

When I got back to the vehicles, Ted sat on the ground next to the Buick with his knees pulled tight against his chest. He stared into the surrounding forest.

“You gotta get up,” I said. “We need to find something heavy enough to hold the gas pedal down. Only way we can launch your car into the lake.”

Ted stood up and leaned against the passenger door. “I appreciate what you’re doing, I really do. But I think we need to call them. Call the cops.”

“We sure as hell don’t!” I shouldn’t have yelled, but we had come too far to go back now. “Hey, we’re almost done. Stay with me, pal.”

Ted kept talking, as if he hadn’t heard me. “If we hide his body, his family would always wonder what happened to him. There’d be searches and we’d have to do stories. I couldn’t live with that.”

“Okay, listen  —”. My phone rang, ruining my train of thought. If that was Sue calling, then things really were getting crazy at the office.

“I can’t just pretend this didn’t happen, Ernie. Just forget about it like that.”

I had to turn things around. “This isn’t just about you, Ted. What do you think will happen to The Chronicle, huh? After all the gossip you drummed up this year, you think a single advertiser would stand by us if you go to jail for manslaughter?”

Ted looked at his feet.

“The Chronicle will be finished,” I continued. “Over thirty years of my life — twenty years of yours — washed away. And for what? So that you could feel less guilty about your drinking?”

His eyes welled up again. He pressed his hands against the car and sobbed.

Now, I never wanted to play the bad guy in this situation. Guilting him was never part of the plan, but we had to keep moving forward.

“Murray is gone, but he was what? Seventy? Seventy-five? Not exactly cut down in the prime of his life. The Chronicle, though, that’s timeless. That’s your legacy. You want to throw all that away?”

Ted stared at the trunk of his Buick as if he could see through the metal and right into Murray’s lifeless eyes. He didn’t say anything for a bit. And every second of silence weighed on me, forcing me to think about how we might have already been out here too long. About how Sue must be wondering why we both disappeared so suddenly.

“So how do we get out of this?” The words tumbled out of him like loose stones. “What do we do now?”

I considered asking him to trudge through the woods with me to hunt for the right-sized log or rock. But with my aching legs and Ted’s pickled mind, it could take us hours to find anything that might hold down the pedal. And if we couldn’t rig the car to launch itself into the water, that left only one other option.

“You’ll have to drive.” I kept my voice firm and steady. A boss’s voice. “Floor it toward the cliff and then hop out at the last minute. It’s the only way to build up enough speed.”

“What?” Ted’s face bunched up. “You’re kidding right?”

Under different circumstances, such an idea would have been funny. Like we were staging a scene for a low-budget action flick. I might have come up with a better solution if given more time to think and plan; something that didn’t involve Ted taking such a big risk. No time for that, though. So I went with my instincts instead.

“There’s no other way. I’d do it if I could,” I nodded toward my knees. “Jump out as the car nears the edge, about twenty feet or so away. Tuck and roll and you’ll be fine.”

Ted chewed at his bottom lip. Then he went into the Buick and grabbed the whiskey. I didn’t stop him. Maybe that was a mistake, but I couldn’t risk getting into a lengthy argument. Whatever it took for him to get the job done.

After a few long gulps, he handed me the near-empty bottle. For afterwards, I assumed. Then he sat in the driver’s seat and gripped the wheel.

I put the whiskey in my car and then made sure all four windows of the Buick were down, so the thing would sink faster. Afterwards, I positioned myself behind his open window, just out of sight so he’d focus on the cliff instead of me.

“You can do this. Just remember: twenty feet and then tuck and roll.”

He nodded slowly, bloodshot eyes fixed straight ahead. I took another good look at him: he’d never come back from this. His drinking would only get worse after adding one more tragedy to his life. And no matter what happened, whether he got caught or remained a free man, he’d keep on suffering.

“OK, buddy, on three. Ready?”

He nodded.

“One.”

The Buick’s motor roared to life, muffler banging away. Ted’s fingers curled around the steering wheel.

I didn’t like what my instincts were telling me to do at that moment, but I couldn’t deny it’d be for the greater good. Better for Ted. Better for everyone.

“Two.”

I looped the zip tie through his window and out the backseat window behind him, cinching his door shut.

“Three!”

Ted gunned the motor. The Buick charged toward the cliff, kicking up a wave of dust and gravel.

As he neared the edge, his shouts carried over the engine.

The brake lights flashed just before the Buick launched over the cliff.

I don’t remember hearing a splash, but I do recall watching the Buick sink into the water. A small crown of bubbles circled as the rear end slipped beneath the surface. Then I went back to my car, feeling like my entire body had been shot up with novocaine.

I opened the door to my Corolla and dropped myself onto the driver’s seat. That numbness spread deeper inside me. I didn’t notice my tears until they made tiny splashes on my pants. Just five minutes, I told myself. Five minutes to grieve for my friend before heading back into town.

Then I started the car and turned the radio up twice as loud. To near static.

I drove fast down those washboard roads, the hot-pebble feeling in my knees distant and faded. And I forced myself to think only of all the work I’d need to catch up on at The Chronicle.

*****

If you’ve enjoyed “Hard Deadline”, you can visit our free digital archive of flash fiction here. Additionally, premium short fiction published by Mystery Tribune on a quarterly basis is available digitally here.

For online archive of short fiction (longer pieces) on Mystery Tribune website, you can visit here.