Autumn and summer always fight as October approaches. Fall brings its own charm and beauty, but I always root for summer until its last moments. The nights get cold first; and then the morning air comes up chilled. It’s a nice reprieve from summer highs, like a very cold beer, but it’s clear at that point that things are about to change.

But then the daytime temperatures hike up. Sometimes it’s even 90 degrees and as sunny as a radiant July day. I expect to see kids tearing about on their bikes and goofing off at the local swimming pool, maybe even exploring the few woodlands we have left around town. But then a school bus barrels past my cruiser.

Temperatures can often stay high even past October 1st, but soon the cold steps into day and the afternoons highs are lower and shorter, just like the days themselves. It’s like an arm-wrestling match where an underdog gets the upper hand only to nonetheless slowly lose position to their thick fore-armed opponent. The summer moments grow fewer and shorter and ultimately lose ground to autumn’s cold, thick grasp.

Quiet moments at night in my cruiser bring this stuff to mind, and while life is certainly worth examination, its good when someone goes speeding by and the present world comes back to focus. The short moments of action and long stretches of quiet make up the life most police officers, though those short moments of action vary depending on where you work.

Big city action is thrilling, but I jangled my nerves enough in just a few years to want out. A smaller, quieter town is more to my liking, but I’ve got buddies who stayed in the city and love the action. I thought I would, too, but I struggled to cool off when it was over. Sleep came, if at all, with much struggle and I hated seeing people at their lowest and very worst.

It’s not as if placement in a smaller town is without danger, stress, or depressing run ins with troubled or unlikable people. But the setting fits me better. My friends back in the city stay close to mind, though, and I try not to measure myself against them. In any case, sleep comes much easier now, which is invaluable. Though it still does require some effort now and then. Melatonin is a joke, by the way, at least from my experience.

But the night is my favorite time of day, nonetheless; I crave the quiet and the peace and envy the lives of nocturnal animals. Nothing good may happen late at night, but sometimes it is the only time to find peace. It’s funny how things like that work. Nights are dangerous or can be dangerous but they’re also peaceful. Hopefully this doesn’t sound too trite, but everything good has a dark side, and things that are beautiful can also be ugly.

The old man walked by my cruiser unawares. Prime position I had that night, stationed next to the big oak tree that stands next to the church parking lot on Cooper Avenue. His gait did not peg him for eighty-one and I paid compliment to his springy step when I pulled out of my spot and alongside for questioning. It wasn’t serious, but it was very late at night and someone was out walking. Good cops get a feel for their beat and know how things usually appear, so they can recognize when something’s out of the ordinary. My watch read 1:30 a.m. and no one had gone by on foot in hours.

“Evening, sir,” I said as my window lowered.

He turned, face unassuming and friendly, especially for late at night. And then we knew each other at once.

“James?” the old man said. “Pardon me, Officer James.”

It was hard not to smile at Old Man Jim, a lifelong friend of my late father. In fact, I was his namesake. Old Man Jim and my father Elmer had been friends since grade school. They went through school, causing trouble together, playing baseball together, and even enlisting together. Though Vietnam itself had split them apart for a few years, they came back to town at roughly the same time and opened a bar together. And while my dad eventually got married and started a family, Old Man Jim never got there himself, which is how my dad came to name me after the old guy. Gave the confirmed bachelor some posterity. I’d love to say I visited him often or at all upon returning home, but I stayed busy with my own life, working on finding a wife and then having a couple of kids. But when he popped up around town here and there, I always made time for a short chat just like tonight. And this particular conversation was such that it didn’t occur right away that an otherwise old man was seemingly wandering around town late at night. He gave no indication of confusion and had a good enough story to tell.

“Couldn’t sleep tonight, James, pardon me, Officer.”

“James is fine,” I said. “It’s nice to run into you, even if at an odd hour.”

“Like I said, couldn’t sleep, so sometimes I walk around the neighborhood, especially now that the air’s cool. It feels good on my old lungs and helps me relax. It’s hard sometimes.”

“Believe me, I get it. Just don’t get sick.”

“No, no. I bundle up real good, as you can see.”

He did have on a nice and thoroughly insulated outfit and quite stylish for an old man. Fitted jeans and a sweatshirt, with a nice down jacket and knitted cap to match. A downright youthful get up, except for the thick heeled sneakers he wore, as sure a sign of old age as a Life Alert bracelet.

“I’m on my way back,” Old Man Jim added. “Been walking for about twenty minutes. Thirty usually does it for me. I get home, climb back into bed, and I’m out for a while.”

“My dad used to sleep in short amounts, too, as he got older.”

“Who are you calling old?” Jim said through a wrinkled smile.

“Right. You look better than I do,” I said. He kind of did. Age had finally put character and distinction on his face. Pictures I’d seen of him and my father from when they were younger put a lot of contrast between them. Old Man Jim stayed baby-faced for years. My father, by contrast, looked like a bearded mountain man when he was just a teenager. He’d snagged more than few under-aged beers for himself and Old Man Jim this way.

His smile continued. “That’s better.”

A chuckle came out of me, a welcome relief. Laughter sometimes came with same amount of effort that sleep did.

“Anyway, just wanted to stop and ask what you were doing,” I said.

“I understand, Officer.”

“James.”

Old Man Jim smiled, warm and wide.

“I miss your old man a lot.”

I blinked and nodded.

“Me too.”

A nice pause between us, a moment between the old and the young, or at least the younger.

“I’ll pay you a visit sometime,” I finally spoke.

His smile stayed, but it grew smaller. “Well, that’d be nice,” he said. “We can have a couple beers on my porch.”

“Yes, I’ll come by soon.”

“Sure, you’re always welcome. Anyway, I’m going to finish my midnight constitutional,” he said, gesturing up the road to Newton Street, where a left turn followed by a right down Prentice Avenue would take him back home.

“More of an early morning constitutional,” I said with a laugh.

“Right you are, a very early morning one,” Old Man Jim said with a sigh. His smile had completely fled.

“Anyway, night,” he said, with a quick wave.

“Night, sir.”

He continued up the road, and I admired his gait once more. He moved with a young, ageless step. How he’d managed that when most older folks walk a hunched over tread, I couldn’t say. But if Old Man Jim had some secret to be learned, it’d be worth knowing. My knees already hurt off and on at forty, and it was hard not to worry how that pain might grow with time.

I took my cruiser up the road, passing Old Man Jim just as he turned down Newton Street. Then I made a loop around town and came back up Cooper, intending to return to the spot in the church parking lot.

But the dental billboard on Cooper, just about half a mile down from the church bore a surprise for me and any other late-night passerby. Cast stark against the night, the ad for Kuhlber Dental Office called attention to itself from miles away. It was the tallest object on that end of town, and no one particularly liked it. And on this night, someone had made their disdain known with a thorough, amusing defacement.

I pulled into the shuttered diner parking lot across the roadway and stood outside my cruiser for a good minute, just staring. Someone had taken the handsome blonde subject of the advert and given him missing teeth. From the spray-painted black marks on his grin, it appeared that the vandal had blacked out several incisors and canines. A laugh escaped from my mouth, and another one followed, finally erupting in a full-on cackle. I had already radioed, so Officer Duane pulled up a minute later, whereupon we crossed the road and pulled our cruisers to the lot below the billboard.

Vandalism wasn’t unheard of in town, but no one had ever done anything to this particular billboard before. Officer Duane had to work through a laughing fit himself before we could attempt any serious sweep of the area. A closer look revealed no particular clues at first, and I might not have noticed the first and only clue had it not been for a fortunate gust of autumn wind. Its chill swept across my cheek, brushing away any suggestion of summer in the night air. The way it ran across my skin reminded me of my wife at home in bed, curling up under the covers with her, forged against the cold nocturne.

The gust fluttered the leaves in the trees all around us, their autumn color visible in the bleary billboard light. And a little piece of paper flapped from the ladder running up to the catwalk where the billboard lights were affixed. The paper shook against the metal rungs and I pulled closer to look. It was a little orange pumpkin with a proper green stem, and a hole punch threading it to the ladder step. It bore a handwritten message across the back.

Happy Halloween! HA-HA-HA

I turned the construction paper pumpkin around and the front had a winking jack-o-lantern face.

“Hey, Duane, get a look at this.”

Officer Duane, who’d still not fully vanquished his giggles, came over.

“Is that from tonight, you think?” he asked, looking at it with puzzled eyes.

I nodded.

“It rained yesterday, so this thing would look like crap otherwise, if it weren’t.”

“Huh.”

Officer Duane did a quick pan of the area and then returned to me.

“Who would’ve done this?”

“Whomever it is, they’ve got a sense of humor.”

We stepped back from the ladder to have another proper look at the billboard, succumbing to more laughter. Our heavy chortle reached across the lot and probably all the way up the road, echoing in the noiseless nightfall. Maybe Old Man Jim heard as he stepped back onto his porch and went inside.

The rest of the story is available at Amazon! More short story excerpts to come!