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Sheriff Thomas Greene put these memories from his mind as he pulled to a skidding stop at the main gate in front of the GM plant. For a few moments, he just sat and stared at the mess on the ramp. Big Bill came limping over as Thomas got out of the cruiser. “Now what?” the sheriff asked.

  “Damndest thing you’d ever see in your life. These assholes stole our turkeys, and then attacked us with them.”

  Thomas looked down the ramp towards the plant—there were turkeys everywhere, some lying in little piles along the edges, others by themselves in the center, and at the bottom, a huge sloppy pile of frozen turkeys. A security guard about a third of the way down, on turkey cleanup detail, angrily kicked a pile of the hard birds and recoiled, swearing, in pain.

  “Getting hard to find good help,” the sheriff chortled as they watched the guard hopping around.

  Big Bill shouted into his megaphone, “Gary! You damn fool! Just pick the bastards up.” And at that, a half dozen of the other guards hooted and hollered at the hapless Gary. The union guys were long gone, back to the safety of the union hall.

  “Anybody get hurt?”

  “We have a couple of guys headed to the hospital for x-rays, and I’ll probably be there later. You know how GM is about documenting everything.” By now several other cruisers had arrived—one from the city, a state patrol car, and another sheriff’s department cruiser, and the other lawmen were listening in. The city cop was actually the Chief of Police himself since dealing with GM was always tough; the company wanted to control the police reports, always trying to make the union look as bad as possible.

  The four cops moved off to the side and huddled together. Thomas and the police chief had sons playing together on the city football team, and they talked about their chances in the district playoffs, the farthest the local team had ever advanced—two more wins and they would be state champs. The state patrolman heard the call on his radio and went over to his cruiser. Ten seconds later he had his lights and siren activated and gave his comrades the thumbs up as he sped off. They had an agreement for calls here at the plant—anything involving confrontation, the company always called it “violence,” belonged to the sheriff’s department. Beer in the parking lot, thefts, chickenshit stuff belonged to the city police, and the state patrol always showed up as a courtesy. There had never yet been any real violence at the plant, but you never knew as a cop when that extra cruiser would make the difference.

  “What’s the boss going to want here, Bill?” the sheriff asked.

  “You never take this shit serious, Tom. Somebody’s going to get killed out here sooner or later.”

  “Well,” Thomas Greene started off, trying to hide his laughter, but couldn’t help himself and waved his arm at the ramp and the frozen turkeys. “What the fuck you want, Bill? Somebody calls in a disturbance and I get out here and find out you just got your asses kicked with frozen turkeys. It’s always some goofy shit like this. You can’t beat these guys.”

  Big Bill spat through his front teeth at a piece of gravel and hit it, then picked out another. “I ain’t in charge here,” he said looking back to Thomas. “It only looks like I am.”

  “Guess I never thought about it that way. You do seem to end up with more than your share of the mess.”

  Big Bill was thinking, as he watched the sheriff drive away, that he always got stuck with the shit. How come he always got the short end of things?

  Chapter 3

  A Bad Thing