Mangrove Bayou by Stephen Morrill Page A

to the locker room and wrinkled his nose. “Somebody going to have to clean that up,” he said, pointing to the bloodstains on the cell floor.
    “You just coming on?” Troy said.
    “Yep. Got to put in my hour working out in the back room. I see Calvin got himself his very own punching bag.” Bubba turned to walk down the corridor.
    Troy stared after Bubba a moment. “Calvin, when you’re done here, step into my office,” he said.
    Troy sat behind his desk, pulled out a lower drawer, and turned to face the back window with one foot up, resting on the drawer. Out on the boat ramp a man and woman were launching a daysailor, sails still down. Early birds, Troy thought. At this hour there wasn’t much wind, but what there was would be offshore and take them out the channel to the Gulf. In the afternoon the sea breeze would help bring them back to town. Powerboaters didn’t usually pay attention to wind or current or even much to tides. Sailors had to. The woman held the dock lines while the man drove a car and trailer up and out of the ramp and over to the parking area.
    Calvin came in and sat in a chair in front of Troy’s desk. He looked out the window too. “That some kind of sailboat?” he asked. “Never saw the point of something so slow it takes forever to get anywhere.”
    “It’s a Com Pac,” Troy said. “Probably a sixteen. And a sailor has arrived at his destination the moment he leaves the dock.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Troy was looking out the window. “Motor boats are usually used for some purpose. Fishing, diving, getting to someplace. Nobody just fires up a gas-guzzling motorboat and runs it around in circles for fun. Not unless you’re rich. But sailors just want to sail. And they’re sailing the moment they leave the dock.”
    “Seems an awfully slow way to get around,” Calvin said.
    “Well, I guess you need to be a sailor to get it. Never mind.” Troy was watching the boat and the woman. “I understand the other officers call you ‘Ticket Master’ because you write so many traffic and parking tickets.”
    “So? I’m good at my job.”
    “Protecting and serving is not very much about tickets,” Troy said. “I checked. You, in fact, write as many as the rest of the department combined.”
    “So? I’m making a lot of money for the town council. Give me a raise then.”
    “Yesterday you gave a parking ticket to a man who had parked his car and boat trailer slightly over the lines in the parking lot out there.” Troy pointed out the window to the boat ramp.
    Calvin nodded. “We only got so many spaces for those trailers. Man uses two of them, takes one away from someone else who needs it.”
    “I know all about boat trailer parking at boat ramps, believe me,” Troy said. “And in the winter when the ramp is busy, I’d say you had a point. But it’s July and we both know there won’t be six trailers out there today and we have thirty spaces for them. Man could park crossways and not bother anyone else.”
    “So, what would you have done?”
    “I’d have written a stern note,” Troy said. “And put that on his windshield. Sometimes a little social pressure gets the job done better than a fine.”
    Out on the ramp, the man had returned and he and the woman raised the mainsail on the sailboat. There seemed to be enough wind to gently push it off the dock and the man deftly flipped it end-for-end, letting the boom far out as they drifted downwind and toward the channel out to the islands. The woman went to the mast and hoisted the jib, then scampered back to trim the jib sheet. Hank-on jib , Troy thought, approvingly. None of this modern roller-reefing for those two .
    “A week ago you ticketed a tourist for going thirty-two down Barron Road here in town,” he said to the window.
    “Speed limit’s thirty,” Calvin said. “Everywhere in town.”
    “I know that.”
    “Damn Canadian needed to be taught that we’re serious about traffic laws here.”
    “We are.