Dog Mayor

“Hey guys, turn that off a second and come over here,” Charley said. “You’re not going to believe what’s in today’s paper.”

Charley was standing out on the sidewalk with his back to the firehouse garage bay. Inside, the guys tried to peel themselves away from the television set, though their efforts were mostly half-assed and incomplete. A few of them shifted themselves from a seated position into a crouch, or twisted their torsos to face in Charley’s general direction while their heads remained fixed on the game. None of them, however, were able to muster the willpower to miss this key third down play.

“Seriously, fellas, you need to come take a look at this,” Charley said.

But Charley hadn’t moved either. The guys suggested that if he wanted them to look at something that bad, he could just as easily come in there where they were, but Charley didn’t hear them. He was still rooted there on the sidewalk, his head and shoulders cocked toward the garage bay while his eyes stayed glued on the newspaper, mirroring the half-in, half-out postures of the guys inside.

A breeze skimmed the pages’ corners. The guys’ voices and the game’s announcers livened the normally quiet street their fire station stood on. During lulls in the action, Charley could hear a lawnmower buzzing somewhere. He scanned over the headline story again, still unsure of how something like this could have happened. Inside, pairs of hands clapped sporadically. To Charley they sounded like popcorn popping. It was halftime now, so the guys could finally get up and see what was holding Charley’s interest so keenly.

“Whatcha got Cap?” Wesley asked as he squeezed Charley’s shoulder.

“Yeah, something in the newspaper?” It was Brent, the new guy. The guys treated him to a round of stares that sarcastically asked: ya think so, genius?

“What could they have written that’s more important than the Broncos pulling off this upset?” asked Winston, the elder of the fire crew. Winston was Charley’s guy, what they called a firefighter’s firefighter. With rolled up sleeves exposing Popeye forearms and an ancient mariner beard like hardened snow, Winston aced the eyeball test. He’d been described on more than one occasion as what little kids would have drawn if asked what a tough old sailor looked like.

Several more reworded the same previous question, but Charley didn’t answer any of them. Instead, as they drew in closer around him, he simply raised the newspaper up over their heads so that all could see. The men craned their necks to get a better look at what he’d been reading, squinting and muttering as they mouthed the words across the page. Some stood on tiptoes so they could follow more of the article. It took them no time to figure out what it was that had caused the Captain to call them away from their game, though many of them refused to believe it. The headline was shocking. A few of the guys actually gripped their faces in disbelief. No one said a word.

The breeze rolled through again. Gentle at first and tinged with the scent of over-ripe apples, it quickly grew forceful and sturdy. The wind demanded their attention when it loudly toppled a folding chair that had been leaning against the garage. With dumbstruck faces and mouths turned slack by disbelief, the firemen all turned to regard the station and its little front stoop where their mascot Roscoe lay dozing in the shade. Behind them, Charlie still held the newspaper aloft, its unbelievable headline reading:

City Goes To The Dogs

Firehouse Mascot Designated New Mayor Via Arcane Succession Plan

With near perfect timing, Roscoe stirred from his nap and directed a thoughtful-looking gaze toward the men, as if acknowledging the elephant who’d suddenly trounced his way into the room. As if the dog could understand why they stared. His ear twitched. Was that supposed to mean something? That he was ok with all of this? The dog tilted his nose skyward in an almost thoughtful pose, like a grayed History professor fumbling through his memories for the perfect quotation. Roscoe then proceeded to lean in and eagerly lick his own groin for the next thirty or so seconds before finally closing his eyes again and resuming his heavy snoring. The firemen, utterly dumbstruck, could only gawk at one another.

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” someone finally said. It could have come from any of them.

__________________________

Two days ago, the town of Blanton, Missouri kicked off their 150th annual Founder’s Day celebration, an event commemorating town patriarch Jeremiah Blanton’s arduous journey through the uncharted wilderness and his ill-fated decision to establish a trading post in the very spot where Blanton’s city courthouse now stands today. Blanton’s expedition had been inspired by the notion of buying and selling pelts of the wooly mammoth, a beast the illiterate Blanton had once seen pictured in a children’s book he’d been told was an Encyclopaedia Britannica. Years later, Jeremiah Blanton fell from the roof of his barn, landed on his head, and hallucinated the image of Jesus Christ himself riding on the back of a wooly mammoth, just like the one in the book. The hallucinated Christ, speaking in rhymes, described to Jeremiah Blanton a promised land of unbelievable splendor and strongly insisted that Jeremiah lead his people there. Like now, like right now, as in you’ve got until Friday to get your stuff together and head on out. And so they did, they left Pennsylvania behind in search of a North American Canaan. The journey was arduous, and many of their number perished along the way, but through it all, Jeremiah never lost his faith. And because of that faith, he eventually made it to the promised land. Unfortunately for Blanton and his fellow homesteaders, the region they decided to settle was completely devoid of wooly mammoths (and probably had been for the past 10,000 or so years). To make matters worse, the area they carved out for themselves had long ago been claimed by an infamous tribe of frontier natives. Angry, warlike, paranoid natives who often indulged in psychotropic substances before setting out in their war parties. Believing that the white settlers had desecrated their ancestors’ spiritual dwelling place, the Osage warriors fell upon the unsuspecting Blanton party in the middle of the night and proceeded to more or less turn the entire group of settlers into silly string. It was a pretty dark tale, actually.

But as only can happen via the passage of time, the story eventually softened over the years and became less of a historical event and more of an excuse for the whole town to throw a party. And what a party it was. The city would all but shut down for the week, as most of Blanton usually came out to help with the Founder’s Day celebration in some form or fashion. The day itself was a full one, to say the least, kicking off in the morning with a festive parade through the town square, followed by Blanton’s famous “world-wide” chili cook-off and a full-on carnival with rides and games, before culminating in a fireworks show and the Founder’s Day Dance back in the town square. Given Blanton’s rather modest population, the celebration might have easily been viewed by outsiders as a bit excessive, but like most matters of small town civic pride, you really had to live there to understand.

Blanton was what you might call a big little town. It was quintessentially midwestern, a place harkening back to the American ideal so perfectly captured by Norman Rockwell, the only kind of community in the world capable of producing a Harry S Truman or an Ernest Hemingway. Blanton was pure; it was like an antique, preserved and unblemished. And like most small towns, its heart was, and always would be, the main square, an area which had more or less remained unchanged since the turn of the twentieth century. Sure, there were signs of modernity scattered about: national chain stores, gyms, and restaurants – but it was the old courthouse and the shops and offices standing guard around it, that inevitably received Blanton’s true love and adoration.

According to the most recent census, there were a little over twenty-five thousand people living in Blanton, though it always felt like the number, whatever it was, should have been smaller. Most people knew or at least recognized one other, and even if they didn’t, that still wouldn’t make them strangers. In Blanton, people gave each other the benefit of the doubt; they assumed the best in each other and took pride in the fact that this was where they lived, that this was the place they called home. The folks there took pride in who they were and what their town stood for. Perhaps that’s why they tended to go overboard, why they would put so much into their Founder’s Day celebrations; because it reminded them all of who they really were and just how lucky that one simple fact made them.

Founder’s Day this year got off to a bit of a rocky start, though, with the morning parade through town. The theme they’d picked was “The Pioneer Spirit” and it featured city judge Gerald Morrison as the honorary grand marshal, a recognition of the highest order that saw its annual designee assume the role of Jeremiah Blanton and climb atop the float of honor (a giant wooly mammoth) where he would greet the adoring crowd while dressed in animal pelts and other adornments from that bygone era. It was generally seen as a lifetime achievement award in Blanton, and the judge was as deserving a recipient as there ever had been. Born and raised right there in Blanton, the judge was a classic case of native son made good. Despite coming from a lineage of poor and ignorant sharecroppers, the judge nonetheless graduated at the top of his class at Blanton High and became the first ever member of his family to attend college, doing so at the University of Missouri, and graduating with degrees in both History and Law. Morrison returned home to start a legal practice up from scratch, quickly growing it into the largest one in town. Having affected the lives of nearly everyone in town at some point or another, the judge was viewed by all as an indispensable pillar of the community. The people first elevated him to the role of city judge over twenty years ago, and there he’s remained ever since, not once paying any mind to what others deemed upward career progress, a concept he viewed as an abandonment of his responsibility to the people of his hometown.

At the age of sixty seven, the judge now found himself in this position of the highest regard. There he was, honorary grand marshal atop a giant wooly mammoth, dressed from head to toe in Davy Crockett’s hand-me-downs and waving to the cheering crowds who lined the streets of the town. The “animal” on which the judge was standing had been adorned with thousands of decorative flowers, its fur made real with black and brown orchids and accented by wild daisies of innumerable color. Tragically, the volunteers who constructed the float had failed to anticipate the effects of an early morning dew on the decorative flowers beneath the judge’s feet, and so it came as a shock to all when the parade entered the town square and its honorary grand marshal lost his footing and tumbled head first onto the sidewalk below.

The consensus among those who’d been there to witness the event was that the judge had landed on his head and snapped his neck in two. In reality, the fall looked far worse than it had actually been, though his tumble had been severe enough to put the judge in an intensive care unit all the way over in Columbia. Initial word from the doctor was that the judge was stable and responsive but the blow to his head had given him a serious case of something called transient global amnesia. Which more or less meant that his memory would reset itself every ninety seconds or so, leaving the judge trapped in a repeating time loop where he would ask the same sequence of questions, time after time after time.

“Hey, what happened?”

“It’s Tuesday, right?”

“Well that does sound like something I’d do!”

“But was the costume a hit?”

And so on. Always the same series of questions, regardless of what was said to him. The judge’s condition was a rare one and thus baffled the doctors who attended to him, as they found themselves unable to provide the family with even the tiniest hope as to when the judge’s mind might return to him. All in all, a terrible way to get the day started in Blanton.

Unfortunately, things would only get worse.

Back in town, the chili cook-off was primed to get underway in the parking lot behind the courthouse. Most of the contestants had been up well since before dawn, preparing their booths while putting the finishing touches on their entries. Over a hundred teams had signed up for the competition this year, an unofficial participation record that the organizers hoped would translate into an even more exciting contest. A contest whose results would be decided by a blue ribbon panel of judges, each one hand picked from a cohort of Blanton’s finest citizens. To be selected as a chili cook-off judge was to have one’s character validated, as it implied an easy comfort in entrusting one of Blanton’s most vital traditions with. This year’s three-person panel consisted of: Blanton’s Chief of Police, Richard Sherman; Macy Harmon, the owner of long-time Blanton landmark, Macy’s Diner; and the utterly forgettable Henry Whittington, Blanton’s City Clerk and a last-minute replacement for the time looping Judge Morrison.

Over the course of the competition, the judges were instructed to sample and score each of the various teams’ entries. The judges wore official sashes of red white and blue that marked them from great distances away to the harried contestants. Police Chief Sherman, in addition to his sash and matching skimmer hat, wore a dark gray suit with a plain navy blue tie tucked behind the bulging top button of his coat. The Chief of Police was in his late fifties, carried an extra thirty pounds around his waist, and still wore his hair in a well-disciplined crew-cut. He looked every bit the part of a middle aged, small town cop.

Lester Whittington, on the other hand, was a small and mousy man, dwarfed behind a pair of oversized, thick-lensed glasses. His slight and forgettable appearance contrasted starkly with the oafish and ape-like figure of the police chief. Lester was prone to mumbling, and his clothes smelled like mothballs and steamed vegetables. As city clerk, Lester was responsible for keeping records, administering contracts, and running the city elections in Blanton, the types of dry and forgettable, though absolutely necessary, activities that no city could function without.

Macy Harmon, the third and final judge, was a bouncy woman in her early sixties who still preferred spending her days behind the counter at the diner that bore her first name. Known for her spectacular bouffant hairstyle and fire alarm laugh, Macy was the kind of local celebrity that you’d often hear described as a real character. For the chili cook-off, she’d decided to liven things up a bit by dressing herself from head to toe in the American flag; her blazer was stitched together from strips of Old Glory, as were her slacks and comfortable walking shoes. Even the rings on her fingers and the charms on her bracelets proudly displayed the nation’s colors.

It is worth noting that Founder’s Day did not fall on the fourth of July, or any national holiday for that matter.

While serving as a judge in the contest was generally viewed as an enviable position of great status, nothing compared to the prestige that came from winning Blanton’s (allegedly) world famous chili cook-off. Past winners had almost all seemingly gone on to bigger and better things in the wake of their victories, like Patsy and Randy Clark, the 2007 winners who sold their secret recipe to a division of Kraft foods for a hundred thousand dollars, which they used to start a live monkey rental business out on highway 50. And there was Pete Darden, an erstwhile farmer and the only back-to-back winner in chili cook-off history. After his second win in 1999, Pete sold his farm, packed up his things, and departed for Birmingham, Alabama where, with the backing of several high profile investors, he was to open a chain of cowboy-themed chili restaurants. Tragically though, Pete never made it to Birmingham, as he was murdered in his sleep on the first night of his travels by a prostitute he’d picked up in Memphis, Tennessee. Suffering from severe methamphetamine withdrawals, the hooker stabbed him while he slept and made off with a substantial amount of the cash Pete had been carrying. To preserve the chili cook-off’s good name, Pete’s demise was kept under wraps, and so most of Blanton was still operating under the assumption that Pete’s Chili House was a thriving restaurant chain that had taken the southeast by storm. As a postscript, the prostitute who’d murdered Pete was tracked down a few days later and shot to death by police officers after she’d tried to stab one of them with a syringe she claimed was “full of fuckin’ AIDS blood”. But perhaps the most widely-known success story of all was the one belonging to Martha Whittier, the 2001 chili cook-off winner. A part-time hairdresser and single mother of three, Martha’s inspirational victory speech had so dazzled Blanton that, within weeks of her chili cook-off victory, a groundswell of grass roots support had thrust her into entering that summer’s Democratic congressional primary, a contest that Martha improbably emerged from as the victor. Her momentum carried her swiftly through that Fall’s general election and on to Washington D.C. and a seat in the US Congress. She would then go on to parlay her three successful terms in the House into a bid for one of Missouri’s seats in the United States Senate. And it was all because of her spectacular vegetarian chili and a made-up story about rescuing handicapped children from certain death inside of a burning church.

Such was the legacy of the Blanton chili cook-off. It was with that legacy in mind, and the fame and money and power that came along with it, that most of the teams entered and began preparing for the contest. Most, but not all. There was one team in particular that was driven by something much, much different.

Mark and Patty Stevens unloaded their minivan in the early morning light and quietly began to ready their booth for the chili cook-off. Working with a practiced efficiency, they ticked line-by-line down the checklist they’d prepared months ago in advance. While their outward appearances projected a measure of serenity, it was the eyes that betrayed their shared inner mania. The husband and wife team had been consumed by an obsession with winning this year’s contest. It both drove them on and tortured them incessantly, as if the competition were a demon who’d taken possession of their souls. For the last twelve months, Patty and Mark Stevens could focus on nothing else but how close they’d come to winning last year and the injustice they’d suffered at the hands of a corrupt judge. For the last twelve months, Patty and Mark Stevens had been plotting their revenge.

Leading up to the previous year’s contest, The Even Stevens, as they called themselves, had been the overwhelming favorites to win first prize. Mark and Patty had taken a vacation to Mexico that February, and when they returned to Blanton with an array of exotic peppers and spices, everyone had taken notice. Especially Doug Braden, Blanton’s esteemed City Prosecutor and a member of that year’s blue ribbon panel of judges. He also just happened to be Patty’s former high school sweetheart and, despite the fifteen or so years that had passed since then, still remained unable to get over the break-up and just move on with his life. Hardly shocking behavior, though, when considering just what kind of a person Doug Braden actually was. Blanton’s City Prosecutor had so been stung by Patty’s decision to marry Mark Stevens, a former member of the marching band who now sold building supplies for a living and clearly wasn’t half the man that he was (in Doug’s opinion), that he vowed to go out of his way to make sure that Mark and Patty’s life together was as miserable as possible. Up until the point of the chili cook-off, this hadn’t amounted to very much: an “errant” subpoena here, a non-random jury selection notice there – nothing big. But that would all change now that he was a judge in a contest that they were favored to win. Finally, Doug Braden had been put into a position where he could do some real damage. As he fantasized about his impending triumph, Doug found it impossible to keep from laughing out loud.

And so in last year’s contest, Doug Braden shamelessly left The Even Stevens completely off his anonymous ballot, which, despite the first place votes they’d received from the other two judges, was enough to knock Mark and Patty out of first and into a close second place. The outcome was devastating to the young couple. Later that day, after most of the contestants had cleared out, Doug, thirsting for satisfaction and unable to just leave well enough alone, approached the shell-shocked couple and gloatingly revealed to them his treachery. This ended up being a real mistake on his part. In misreading their mild-mannered exteriors as an indication of inner weakness, Doug had unnecessarily invited upon himself a savage and sadistic retribution. For in reality, the meekness that Mark and Patty projected was nothing but a mask, an overcompensation to hide the devils that lurked deep within their blackened hearts. And so, as they watched Doug Braden walk away in triumph, a decision was reached between them: Mark and Patty were going to poison Doug Braden at the next chili cook-off.

Their booth was situated under a bright blue canopy with a long rectangular table arranged across the front of the tent on which they could display their work and distribute sample bowls to the folks stopping by. Perpendicular to that table, on the left side of their booth, was another table where Mark would stage the samples for Patty to hand out. Hidden from sight on a warming plate in the back was a special serving of chili, indistinguishable from the others save for a tiny red dot Patty had marked along the edge of its bowl. Inside bubbled an insidious concoction of ingredients specially reserved for Doug Braden.

Everything sped up to a blur once Patty spotted Doug making his way to them through the dense and bustling crowd. We’re really going through with this. Mark’s trembling hands reached for the bowl they’d set aside for Doug. Their already elevated sense of alarm only soared higher when Patty caught sight of the judge’s contingent approaching their booth from the opposite direction. For Mark and Patty, it was as if everything moved in slow motion and yet sped past them at the exact same time. Doug wound up arriving just as the judges did. Macy Harmon wisecracked about something Patty couldn’t quite make sense of and the Chief of Police pressed his bulk against the table and anxiously grabbed for the closest bowl. Doug eyed the chili with what seemed like suspicion. A sudden surge in the crowd seemed to suck the air out around them and ratchet up the already intolerable level of tension. The beads of sweat along her hairline finally broke free of their moorings and were now hard charging down her forehead and into her eyes, making it impossible for Patty to see, which caused her to lose track of which bowl was which. Her hands started to shake, and in a whirlwind of panic, Patty mistakenly handed the sample marked with a red dot to Police Chief Sherman and could then only watch in horror after realizing what she’d done as he hungrily gorged himself, swallowing the entire thing down in a matter of mere seconds.

Luckily for Mark and Patty, the toxins inside the chili they’d mistakenly given to the Blanton Chief of Police needed a few minutes to take effect, and so by the time Richard Sherman began having hallucinations of his dead mother’s corpse, the judges had visited at least six other tables after theirs. Of course, that didn’t make it any less terrifying to watch, as the normally reserved police chief became red-faced and started to scream and flail his arms about wildly. When Mark and Patty heard the commotion from several booths down, they knew it was because of what they’d done. Standing along the edge of the crowd, they watched with the others as Richard tore off his clothes and began savagely beating his fellow honorary judge, Lester Whittington, the whole time accusing him of being the demon who was raping Richard’s mother in purgatory. Before anyone was able to realize what was going on, the chief of police had beaten the city clerk into an unrecognizable pulp, fracturing his skull and putting him into a coma before he himself suffered a swift and powerful brain aneurysm that dropped him like a sack of potatoes. Doug Braden stood opposite Mark and Patty and eyed them from across the crowd. The husband and wife were unable to return his accusing stare.

Mayor Grover Phillips, upon hearing of the tragedy at the chili cook-off, faced a real dilemma. First the Municipal Judge’s tragic injury, and now the unfortunate incident with the Chief of Police and Blanton’s City Clerk – perhaps it would just be better, he thought, if they just cancelled the rest of Founder’s Day. Continuing on with the festivities could be viewed a very cold and unsympathetic thing to do and would only provide his detractors with even more ammunition to use against him. And there was already enough of that as it was. In the end, though, the mayor decided to keep the carnival open and allow Founder’s Day to continue on. He felt that to do so was the best possible way of exhibiting the true spirit of Jeremiah Blanton. Plus, the city had already paid in advance for the rides and musical performers at tonight’s Town Dance. In cash. Things would have to stabilize.

Of course, no sooner had the mayor commented on the smoothly running operations of the carnival, than a wild commotion exploded over by the dunking tank. By the time the mayor was able to pick his way through the crowd, a group of men had hauled Carl Thompson, Blanton’s City Council President, out of the massive vessel of water. Less than ten feet away, Tina Butler was holding her nine year old son Paul in her arms and trying her absolute best to comfort the distraught child. The mayor sought out a familiar face in the crowd and raced over to question her.

“What’s going on here?” Mayor Phillips asked.

“Paul Butler over there hit a bullseye on the dunk tank and Carl fell in but he didn’t come up,” Vice-Mayor Wanda Pepper explained. “Must have hit his head on the way down or something.”

The mayor squinted at Carl Thompson’s bloated face. It was an awful shade of bluish-gray, like the color of a dirty storm cloud. He knew right away that this was bad.

“How long was he under the water?” Mayor Phillips asked.

“About five minutes,” Wanda said.

“Five minutes?” he shouted. “Why the hell didn’t anyone go in after him?”

“They all thought he was just horsing around, like he was trying to pull little Paul’s leg or something,” she said. The mayor stared at her with bulging eyes, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“They said he’d been doing it all day,” she added.

“Jesus Christ!” the Mayor exclaimed, before quickly gathering himself. “Okay, look. Here’s what I need: I need you to head over to City Hall and see if you can’t get in touch with the promoters for tonight’s musical act,” he said. “We’ve got to cancel this thing. We’ll give refunds to all the people who’ve already bought their tickets, I don’t give a damn what it costs us.” The vice mayor understood and quietly nodded her head. As she turned to leave, the mayor grabbed her by the arm and apologized for having yelled at her.

“I really do appreciate everything you do, Wanda,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

It would turn out to be the last thing the mayor would ever get the chance to tell her. In her rush to make it back to City Hall, the vice mayor failed to notice the psychopath dressed as a circus clown who was crouching in the back seat of her SUV. Before she could even put the truck into drive, the clown seized her from behind and pressed the blade of his knife tightly against her throat. He’d done this many times before and in places just like Blanton, similarly forgettable towns with names like Smyrna and Lake Jackson. The rules dictated he keep a low profile in order to blend in with his surroundings. He’d been eaten alive by Wanda’s blazing red hair the instant he first saw her, when he’d caught her directing the set up at the fairgrounds earlier that week. That was when he started watching her. The clown found himself licking his dry lips and gritting his yellowed teeth every time Wanda had shown up. By the time the Ache returned, he was prepared to welcome it with open arms. He knew what would happen next. He always knew. The rules were very clear with regards to that sort of thing. And so now that he’d gotten her, the clown calmly whispered instructions into Wanda’s ear, forcing her to acknowledge each one with a nod of her head. He assured the whimpering woman that everything would be ok and that there was no need for her to cry. All she had to do was just follow his simple rules. The clown then ordered her to put the car in gear and drive them to a secluded spot in the woods, far from where anyone could help her.

Hours passed and the sun was now setting in a purple sky. Back at the carnival, the mayor had grown impatient from all the waiting. What the hell’s taking her so long? He finally broke down and made a few calls of his own: city hall, the police station, even the emergency room. Nobody had seen Wanda Pepper. This in turn raised even more questions, which the mayor viewed as the exact opposite of what should have been happening. All he’d wanted to know was how much money they had left, and yet it seemed like the more questions he asked, the further down some other rabbit hole he was taken. It had started with Wanda, but now the mayor found himself unraveling yet another bizarre thread as he listened in disbelief to the anguished sobs of the city’s treasurer. The mayor had called him up with the intent of finding out exactly how much money the city stood to lose when, out of nowhere, Bido Bergman (that was the treasurer’s name) suddenly exploded into tears. With a finger in one ear and his phone pressed to the other, the mayor swam against the current of stragglers who headed for the carnival’s exit. Despite the noise around him and the sobbing on the other line, Mayor Phillips was almost positive he’d heard Bido confess to a long-running scheme in which he’d embezzled nearly a quarter of the city’s money.

“Wait a second, Bido, you did what?” the mayor asked again.

“I stole it, Grover, oh God, I stole it,” he wailed.

“Where the hell are you? We need to talk,” the mayor shouted. Silence on the other end.

“Answer me dammit, where the hell are you?”

“Mexico,” Bido whispered.

The mayor hung up his phone and looked for something nearby that he could kick the shit out of, settling for a small trash can on which he nearly wound up shattering his big toe. Doug Braden, catching the tail end of the mayor’s outburst, rushed over to see if everything was all right. Right away he could tell that, in fact, everything was not all right, solely from the mayor’s reddening face and the barrage of unintelligible profanities that spewed forth from his volcanic lips. Doug helped him down onto the ground and, while easing the mayor’s suit coat off and loosening his tie for him, urged the mayor to take deep breaths. The once crowded thoroughfare was now completely empty.

“Grover, you gotta calm down buddy,” Doug said. “Whatever it is that’s got you so fired up, I know for a fact that it’s not worth losing your cool over.”

“The city’s fucked,” the mayor said. “So fucking fucked. One disaster right after the other, we just can’t take any more of this.” Doug noticed that the mayor had started clutching his left arm.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” he asked. “You’re not having a heart attack, are you?”

Doug felt absurd, like a complete asshole as a matter of fact, for having asked a question with such an obvious answer. The mayor was pouring sweat and panting like a sick dog. Doug stood up to look around, to call someone for help. Mayor Phillips slumped over onto his side in a heap. The city prosecutor searched for his phone, patting himself all over – his pants pockets, the breast pockets of his jacket, nothing. What happened to my phone? The mayor weakly offered his own. There was no one else in sight, no one who could help them. He looked down at the mayor, down into his glassy, distressed eyes. Doug started to dial 911 but stopped just short of pressing that final digit. An idea had materialized, one he knew right away was dangerous and immoral, the kind of thought Doug should have known better than to entertain, the kind that, if he were to ever have a chance at finally being a good person, would have to be chased away immediately. And yet he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t let it go. The idea was too big now, too startlingly true. Once a notion like that finds comfort in someone’s mind, it quickly settles in and grows roots; deep, strong, powerful roots. By that time it’s already too late, as the idea has now become impossible to ignore.

Doug went down the list: the Vice Mayor’s missing, the City Council President just drowned to death, the Municipal Judge is a prisoner in his own mind, the City Clerk had been punched into a coma, and the Chief of Police is nearly brain dead. That meant that he, the City Prosecutor, was next in line. Doug looked back down at the bloated face of the mayor and compared it with his own. He could tell that something inside him was changed, like a switch that he’d never known about had been flipped.

“I gotta find you some help buddy,” he said, crouching down and squeezing the mayor’s hand. He couldn’t look him in the eye, though. “Just hang in there, ok? Everything’s going to be all right.”

Doug dashed off in the direction of the parking lot, leaving the panicked and confused mayor behind to fend for himself. Knowing that Grover was watching him, Doug ran purposefully, hoping to project an assurance that help would be there in no time. As soon as he turned a corner and was out of the dying man’s sight, though, he slowed all the way down to a walk. Had there been any onlookers, they might have reasonably thought Doug to be on nothing more than a casual stroll though the parking lot. He took a last look back in the direction of where he’d left the mayor and gave a solemn nod of the head, as if in honor of the man and the sacrifice he was being forced to make. A quiet, peaceful moment passed. Then Doug began to laugh, like he always did whenever he was bad. Quiet at first, he soon felt unable to control the laughter. Before he knew it, Doug was laughing hysterically, like a madman, falling over himself across the hood of his car. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the laughing stopped and the parking lot was silent again. Without a word, he stood up, straightened his jacket, and got into his car. Humming to himself with the air of a man who knew he would soon be mayor, Doug started the engine and set out for the town square. Along the way he casually tossed the mayors phone through the sunroof, watching in his rear view mirror as it exploded into a million pieces.

The closest parking spot he could find was still several blocks from the square, but even from that distance Doug heard the band playing and could tell there was quite a crowd gathered. He gave his watch a confused glance. Apparently the Founder’s Day Dance was well underway. He began jogging toward the noise, wondering how he’d lost track of the time. Another worry: with such a large gathering of people, how was he going to track down his assistant? Luckily that worry was quickly proven to be unfounded, as it took him virtually no time at all to find her in the crowd along the edge of the massive outdoor dance floor. Fanny was over six feet tall and always wearing those cat’s eye glasses of hers, Doug reminded himself. What kind of crowd would someone like her be able to blend in to?

“Fanny!” he shouted.

“Doug!” she answered. “Oh my God, where have you been? We’ve been trying to get in touch with you!”

Between the crowd noise and the band’s louder-than-necessary rendition of Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up”, it was nearly impossible for them to hear each other. Doug led his assistant far enough away from the outdoor dance floor that they weren’t having to shout at one another.

“Doug, the mayor had a heart attack, a massive one” she said. “They found him all alone at the fairgrounds. Everyone’s been trying to get in touch with you, where have you been?” He forgot that he’d lost his phone. Hoping to offer a vague, yet sufficient explanation, Doug began hemming and hawing about where he’d just come from and what he’d been doing. Fanny cut him short.

“The mayor’s dead, Doug,” she said, as straightforwardly as she could. They looked at each other. After a silent count of three, she connected the dots for him. His guilty silence was easily misinterpreted as innocent ignorance or just plain old shock. “The Vice Mayor’s gone missing and you saw what happened to Carl,” she said. “The Police Chief’s going to be prosecuted if his brain function ever returns, and so that means,” she said before pausing briefly, either for emphasis or effect. “That means you’re next in line to fill the mayor’s role.” She said this last part and then looked down at him intently, trying to gauge his reaction. Doug nodded his head as if it were all news to him.

They were interrupted by one of the mayor’s former aides, who’d sprinted over to them from the other side of the stage. “Doug, thank God you’re here,” he said, out of breath and pale as plain yogurt. “Things are close to spiraling out of control, and we need you to talk to the crowd, to, you know, calm everyone’s fears and let them know that things are still running smoothly.”

Before Doug knew it, the mayor’s handlers were huddled around him at the side of the stage, bombarding him with information. Fanny thrust a handful of index cards at him, cards that contained an outline of what he would say during the bands impending intermission. Doug was running on autopilot now. This was his element, this was where he felt most at ease, where he felt most in control. He reviewed the talking points, silently mouthing the words he would say while periodically raising his head to nod in the direction of whoever was talking at the time. Another note card was handed to him. He read it and looked up at the person who’d given it to him as if to ask is this some kind of a joke? 

The music came to an end and the crowd responded with an appreciative round of applause. Doug took a deep breath and reassured himself. He could hear the mayor’s chief of staff through the loudspeakers, but it sounded as if he were far away, as if he were talking from the bottom of an ocean. The words sounded like puffs of smoke that floated upward and out of Doug’s reach. Something about a tragedy and Blanton pulling together. Something about control and trust and the way he would have wanted it to be. The way who would have wanted it to be? From his vantage point offstage Doug was able to take in most of the enormous crowd, which he estimated numbering in the thousands. Of all the gathered faces, though, two he recognized immediately: the two that were now able to return his gaze with accusing and hateful eyes. More words from the chief of staff. And then, before he knew it, Doug was walking across the stage to the microphone. There was no applause, no cheering, no nothing, just the echo of his steps and the disquieting stares from Mark and Patty Stevens.

Doug found it within himself to summon the proper words. The people of Blanton had a right to know what was going on, they had a right to be informed, he told them. He didn’t sugar coat things, but he didn’t frighten them either. He just spoke plainly and put his faith in them to trust that everything would be all right with him as their mayor. And they did, resoundingly.

“Blanton’s never been about any single individual, no matter how great that person may have been,” he said. “And it never will be. That’s not where we draw our strength from, that’s not what gives us hope. No, what makes our little city the best one on earth is you, my friends, it’s each and every one of you and the way you always come together in times like these to lift each other up, to overcome anything that gets in your way. It’s because of you that Blanton is strong, and it’s because of you that it will only get stronger.”

They loved it, ate up every word. Civic pride had never been stronger than it was on the night when the City Prosecutor-turned-mayor told the people everything they’d ever wanted to hear. On a day when tragedy struck at Blanton with an unimaginable fury, it had only taken five minutes for Doug to convince them it was nothing, that it was no big deal. And so the night continued on as planned, with Doug, as acting mayor, presiding over a public ceremony to swear in the city’s interim fire chief. The previous head of the fire department having retired to Boca Raton a few months ago, the city council felt their best move would be to conduct a wide-ranging search for his replacement. This led to offering the job to the current fire chief in Springfield, a move that immediately kicked off an intense bidding war which had thus far resulted in a bitter stalemate to the negotiations. In the meantime, in an attempt to liven the mood around the whole situation, someone down at city hall had gotten the idea to name the firehouse mascot, Roscoe, as interim fire chief. And though it had likely been intended as a joke, the concept gained momentum for its symbolism and downright perfect embodiment of Blanton’s small-town values. One thing led to another, and before anyone could realize what was happening, Doug Braden, as acting mayor, stood on stage at the Founder’s Day dance and swore the dog in as the new fire chief, tongue firmly planted in cheek as he played to the crowd’s enthusiastic support.

Little would he know that in just a matter of minutes, a miscalculation by the unlicensed company hired to put on the fireworks display would send one of their biggest rockets shooting straight toward Doug’s chest, drastically cutting short his time as mayor in a massive explosion of red, white, and blue. The ensuing chaos would leave the town in an uproar over the next twenty-four hours before the dust would finally settle and the people left in charge would realize in horror that the city charter’s rules for mayoral succession dictated that, given the vacancies in every other office before it, the head of the fire department was next in line for the office. Compounding matters was the fact that the covenants in the city’s municipal bond contracts stipulated that any break with the mandates laid out in the city charter would immediately constitute a default by the city of Blanton and trigger bankruptcy proceedings.

Which more or less meant that they had no choice in the matter. Blanton, Missouri would simply have to live with the fact that a dog would be their acting mayor.