Free The Winter People by Bret Tallent Page A

lazy
slob with a rude mouth.  Fortunately, with their rotation schedule, he didn't
have to deal with him all that much.  Johnny thought that of all the people he
had known, Clayton was pretty close to the bottom of his list.  He'd disliked
other people before, but still respected them.  Not so with Clayton.  Johnny
could not find one redeeming feature in the man.
    Both men looked up
questioningly at Johnny as he entered.  Johnny saw that someone had removed
Nick and Mike's cups from the table.  Probably Ted, he thought.  Ted's glass
was still in front of him, empty.  Clayton's was in his right hand, stopped
half way to his mouth.  The half empty bottle of Jack Daniels was sitting
uncapped in front of Clayton.  Johnny had no glass as he didn't drink.  Behind
them he could hear the statical whine of the radio.
    "What'd the
Sheriff say?" Ted asked as he leaned back in his chair, causing it to
creak under his weight.  His southern drawl making it sound more like, whaad
the sherrf saay?
    "Nothing, too
cold to sit out there and gab with him," Johnny replied flatly.
    Clayton piped in,
"Yeah, it's colder 'n tits on a witch out there!"  Then he washed
down his words with a shot of whiskey.  Johnny looked at him disgusted.  Clayton
ignored him and slammed the empty glass down on the table and leaned back in
his chair, balancing it on two legs.  The chair moaned in protest to no avail. 
Then Clayton put his feet up on the table and his hands across his big belly
that stretched at a couple of buttons on his uniform.  "Did he believe
them little fuckers?" he snorted.
    Clayton was a
portly man that stood about five foot seven.  His face was a round pale blob
with two tiny raisins for eyes.  His pencil thin eyebrows were so light that
they could easily have been missed at first glance.  His hair was a light
blonde and usually looked to be in need of a good shampooing.  It was greasy
and unkempt.  And most of the time he suffered from body odor.
    Johnny didn't know
much more about Clayton than he did about Ted, he didn't care either.  Although
he had worked with Clayton for close to ten years now, neither of them
considered the other a friend.  Johnny had heard rumors about Clayton, and
although he didn't take much stock in rumors, somehow he wasn't so quick to
dismiss these.
    Everybody knew
that Clayton repeatedly beat his wife.  She'd been seen at the emergency room
over in Steamboat too many times with a bruise from a falling can, or a broken
arm from a trip down the stairs.  Clayton's wife was another story that made
Johnny's skin crawl.  Clayton was forty three and his wife was only twenty one,
and apparently he'd raped her when she was seventeen.
    It seems that
Heather Mead (then Heather Jenkins) met Clayton at a town social.  Flirting
with an older man excited her a little….even one as disgusting as Clayton.  As
the story went, the flirting got a little out of hand and Clayton followed Heather
home afterwards.  Somewhere in the woods between the Skyview Motel and the
Jenkins place, he beat and raped her.  Nothing was ever reported and one year
later, for reasons unknown, she married him.
    And that was the
part about rumors that drove Johnny crazy.  If no one ever said anything, then
how do we know what happened?  It was always, "I heard it from this friend
of the sister to her best friend who saw someone do something to somebody
else."  Crazy!  But somehow, it didn't seem so crazy when it was about Clayton. 
Johnny could really see him doing it.  And now, any time he had to deal with Clayton,
he felt dirty.
    "I told you,
we didn't talk.  I don't know what he thinks," there was noticeable
contempt in Johnny's voice.
    "Well I don't
believe 'em!  Little city pricks are probably yankin' our dongs!  Wake us up in
the middle of the goddamned night with some bullshit that nobody's heard
about!  Their friends are probably laughin' their asses off right now, laughin'
at us hicks!"  Clayton reached