A little taste of Hard Fall

Woah, I've actually managed to crawl up out of my pit and post something. Much apologies for missing the past couple of times. I thought I might give you a sample from a novel I'm currently working on call Hard Fall.

Enjoy

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Why was I here, sweating through my shorts and staring down that wiry piece of muscle and lean rear end? I don't know, 'cause maybe he's more trouble than he's worth. Pretty boys, city boys, they don't do to well out here. The way he's tossing gear about, well that's long work on a short task. Got more stumble than sense. Sometimes I wonder if he thinks he’s fitting in. Expensive shades, cowboy hat and jeans that had to have cost least a hundred bucks riding low on a set a hips just a hair on the wrong side of thin. His skin holds a warm shade of brown down deep. It ain’t the kind you get from too much sun.

Everything I like all in one spit-start package. Not that I can afford to be all that picky…this is the high country after all.

My beat covers more territory than some states are wide. All we got up here is cowboys and Mormons. If your family ain't been around for at least three generations you're new to the area. Don't even get me started on the tourists.

My family, they walked outa Nauvoo, Illinois just ahead of the lynching parties and fled into Utah pushing handcarts. I'm born and bred local. And since I ain't a cowboy that would mean I'm one of the Latter Day Saints…at least in my heart I am. Some members of the Church, they might not see me so eye to eye on that if they knew.

While I don't drink, don't smoke, and don't cuss, the first guy to mistake me for a pacifist got himself into a world of hurt. My badge, this star…Garfield County Sheriff, one of the “Magnificent Seven,” there’s only seven deputies for this whole county. Been there since I left the corrections department where I worked the state pen in Cedar City. Got my first 22 when I was eight. Shot my first buck when I was twelve. I can handle myself along with the best.
Except, maybe, doing what I was doing here now. Just watching.

Heck, the first time I saw him. It's like right on the top of my mind. I'd stopped by Ruby's Inn to get a pop, standing along the porch, watching who’s coming in and who’s going out. Outa old man Harding’s truck swings this kid. Anybody who’s got to ask how I knew it was old man Harding’s truck…they ain’t never lived a small town. Ruby’s is officially a township, population 182 or there abouts. Panguich, where the station is, hits around 1,600 with Tropic not quite a quarter of that. Both are on my beat. The biggest city round here, two hours and one county away, Cedar City, that’s big enough for two high schools, a college campus and the state prison. Not hardly big enough to get lost in even if, like me, you sometimes wanted to.

Why did he catch my eye? First off, he screamed city, but not in that overfed, treadmill kinda manner. Naw, punk, in a way that sent all my cop senses running for the shotgun. Then one of those weekend biker guys – all play bad ass, with a twenty thousand dollar custom rod, who would dirty his drawers if the wrong guy says boo – drifted by. The punk’s eyes focused in on that leather clad butt, he watched the guy walk by, and then he licked his lips in that slow I wanna be tasting a bit of that way.

Standing there swigging a root beer and I damn near spit it out. Man, oh man, I’ve got my sites on a prime slab of twenty-something pretty-boy in tight jeans. Since it’d been nearly six months since I’d even managed to score a hand job in Vegas, everything went south real fast. I could have passed out from rapid blood loss then and there.

I know. I know. Gay and Mormon don’t cohabit very well. The Church has been wrong on other stuff, seen the light and changed their ways…I’m hoping someday they’ll see the light on this issue. Can’t say I’m holding my breath though.