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In the Dead Center

Without lying any more than necessary, deputy sheriff Earnest C. Loll had been a good man, and he came to the typical end in an atypical way. Late in the afternoon of September 28th 1935 the Sheriff of Multnomah County found Loll prone behind the remains of a fallen Douglas fir in the woods around Mount Sylvania. The back of his head, crowned with an explosion of sword fern and blood...

Seventy-two hours before he would be murdered, Loll raised himself to a sitting position. The sky was a murky gray-blue, and he could feel the air biting his bare skin through the heavy woolen blanket.

He shook off the night with a powerful shutter. Around him shinny ice-covered fir trees came into focus.
She was gone.

And with her, his steel-toed boots. He touched the frozen sole imprint in the mud where he had taken them off the night before. A pair of boots like those, were a hard loss. But she had been almost worth it. And if she crossed his path at another time, he would take the boots and her again.

The coals were dead in their fire pit. He was not surprised she had left him. A woman like her is uncommon, and exceptional things never stick to ordinary men.

Loll pulled up his long underwear, and then his trousers, buckled his gun belt tightly around his hips, and began the long walk back to town.

"Five dollars and fifty cents down payment. We'll hold them for you until Tuesday," Mr. Brandenburg said with a plosion of breath on each stop consonant.

Loll couldn't imagine Brandenburg spending the night naked in the deep woods with a strange woman and yet he was the one with all the money and all the control.

"Hold them until Tuesday and I'll pay you in full when I pick them up."

"Why don't you just buy them now? You could take them now."

"You can't hold them for me?"

"Put the twenty percent down now, and we'll hold them. Or you could just come in Tuesday and buy them then. But we can't hold them without twenty percent down."

"I can pay in full Tuesday if you'll hold them until then, because I need them for work."

"Deputy Loll, you'll just have to take the chance they'll still be here on Tuesday. Twenty percent down, that's our policy. I can't guarantee anything unless you make the down payment."

With the cracking of wood and the shattering of glass, the front of the store exploded inward as two armed men tumbled through, rolling in a bedlam of curses, handguns and heavy woolen clothing. Splintered planks from the door frame clobbered Deputy Loll, knocking him to the ground.

Mr.

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