Disturbing the Peace

FICTION Disturbing the Peace Wade Stone Daddy reached for the green knobbed gearshift and yanked it into fourth. "Jacob," he said, "don't forget what I told you. Stay put till I get this mess straightened out, you hear me?" "Yes sir," I answered. "Shouldn't of brought you along no ways," he mumbled, gazing out over the budding pastures. "You tell your momma and that tail's gonna be mine. You got that?" "I wouldn't tell Momma about man stuff, Daddy. Besides, I can handle the wild side." Daddy raised his eyebrows and looked me up and down from across the cab. "Well," he said, reaching up to adjust the mirror, "like I say, just stay in the truck. Liable to be over with by the time we get there anyway." As we turned onto Maple I spit my gum out into the wind and hoped that he was wrong. Daddy was the sheriff of Willard County. That Saturday afternoon Gilmer Lewis, his chief constable, had called out home hollering for him to come into Beckton over to the courthouse lawn. Seems like the town nut had lost his bolt, and old Gilmer aimed for Daddy to head off any trouble. Momma had run over to Mrs. McKinney's to drop off some bread and wouldn't be back for a while, so I pounced on the chance to follow Daddy and watch him lay down the law as he had done so many times in my dreams. The muffler hit bottom as we cleared the dip on Cherry Street. Daddy hung the curve onto Green. The nut was a black man named Oscar Bradshaw, affectionately known as Frosty. Beckton called Frosty a town legend, but Daddy just Wade Stone, a student at the University ofKentucky in Lexington, says, "I consider myselfa student ofAppalachia, andpay close attention to similarities between the region and my hometown, Glasgow, Kentucky, in the central part of Kentucky. " 44 called him the town drunk. The old man, in his ragged clothes and gray knit cap, burned daylight sucking in Lysol from a brown paper bag as he shuffled around the square begging for the quarter that he never got. It was told that one of the farmers on the outsldrts of town let Frosty use an old horse stable as a shelter through the nights. But when winter rolled around and Frosty's feet began to numb, he would march straight to the police station, place himself directly in front of the wide glass window and drop his trousers as he polished off a fifth of whiskey and hummed a few bars of some ancient spiritual in that phlegm-clogged voice of his. Frosty's concert always resulted in the longest local jail sentence—four months or until spring arrived—for public intoxication, indecent exposure, and disturbing the peace not to mention the Reverend's wife who witnessed last November's indecency. Of course, all of this meant peace for Beckton and a warm bed for the notorious repeat offender. My father liked to call the arrangement a symbiotic something. As far as I could tell, the townsfolk called it justice. But then spring would arrive, and the flowers would bloom, and the birds would begin to sing again. And there would be Frosty with a fresh smile and a fresh can in front of the corner drugstore, swaying from side to side. As Daddy pulled into a parking place facing the courthouse, we spotted a small circle of people on the front lawn. Daddy let out a sigh and issued one last warning. "Now stay in the truck, Jacob. Oscar's usually harmless, but a fella can't take any chances. You ought to be able to catch plenty of that wild side by watching from here on the curb." Daddy popped the snap on his holster and headed out the door and onto the sidewalk. As he crossed into the grass, the crowd opened up to let him through. In the center of it all staggered Frosty in what appeared to be a drunken rage, screaming at all the onlookers, spit riding the back of every stressed syllable. Daddy stepped forward...