Being the deputy in Lewistown had its perks. Sonny could dress just about any old way he liked. Only on official days and in parades he wore the uniform. Today, he had on his denims with the shirt open at the collar, although it was mid-winter, and his cowboy boots with the fancy curlicue designs etched into the leather. His sheepskin, tan and white fleece jacket hung on the hook on the wall.

Sheriff Jim Evans pushed the door ajar from the outside, sticking his head through the opening. Wiggling his bushy eyebrows, he said, “Hey Sonny, when are you going to take a look at the complaint zone?”

“At night, Sheriff. Like we talked earlier. Night’s when things are supposed to happen, right?”

“Use your phone for backup. If you run into something nasty, don’t act the hero.”

Sonny opened his mouth, then closed it. No use telling the Sheriff what he thought. It would only extend the empty talk. And empty talk it was. What had Sheriff said? The Complaint Zone. Leave it to Jim Evans to turn a fly into a elephant. Nothing ever happened in Lewistown, and the complaint zone was the tiny parking lot—that could barely hold twenty cars--behind the boarding house and Dimitri’s Diner. Actually, only the four front tables were the diner. After ten p.m., the entire store changed into the town-bar.

The complaint had come from the two newcomers, a husband and wife, staying at the boarding house while they took care of some official business. They had called in the morning to report hearing gunshots four nights in a row.

“Gunshots, my foot!” Sonny murmured by himself. Everyone owned rifles in Lewistown. There was deer and geese to hunt, black bears to chase, other varmint to get rid of. Granted this location was the middle of the town, but no matter.

At 9:30 p.m., Sonny unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk and took out the 12-gauge Remington and the Winchester, and after loading and putting extra shells for each, he placed them in his gym bag. He zipped the bag and patted the small pistol on his belt holster. Then he took his jacket off the hook and exited the station.

He drove past the parking lot behind the diner and the boarding house and parked his Jeep a few yards ahead in front of Neil Buchman’s.

He walked up and down the street, waiting. Soon enough, a shot rang in the air, then a few more. Sonny took the Remington out of the bag and cocked it. The one on his belt was for show. It didn’t work right anyway.

At the back door of Dimitri’s, with the light coming from the street lamps, he glimpsed a tall, young man who kept shooting at Dimitri’s metal backdoor.The young man held, with his both hands, a double-barrel, semi-automatic pistol.

Sonny called out. “Hold your horses, Bobby. Why the shootin’?”

Bobby answered, slurring his speech. “I’m vetoing the sign here. I asked nicely but they won’t take it off.”

Sonny had seen the sign before, but he hadn’t made anything of it. The sign said:

No urinating at the door or the wall.
Take your business elsewhere.

Sonny shook his head, grinning. All those guns and nothing. But then it was Lewistown. Anything could happen, though nothing ever happened.