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Humanity’s one redeeming quality: jazz. If not for the surprisingly tolerable (one might even say competent) sax warbling that filled the Roadhouse, Albert would have packed up and left five minutes into this social torture.
“Truman set us up,” he said.
Turned out he’d misjudged the rustic oaf. Contrary to previous observations, Sheriff Harry S. Truman was in fact capable of humor and even pranks, as there was no other possible explanation for leaving him and the town’s one and only Log Lady sharing a table with no-one else to take them out of their misery.
To take him out of his misery, at least. Margaret here looked placid enough, like most people in town who weren’t too busy running drug rings or otherwise filling up their bingo card of federal crimes. She sipped her beer, looked at her log, and that was that, without even deigning him with an answer.
“My log says the Sheriff got held up,” she said, eventually.
“What, it tells traffic now?”
Her disappointed stare could have frozen a puddle. Albert, who (as her log, at least, should have known) thrived on that sort of reaction, shot back his fakest polite grin.
“It has a fondness for people who appreciate trees. This includes Sheriff Truman. He is watched over.”
Which was a cute thought in its own lopsided way. Miles away from tangible reality, but then, a solid eighty percent of Albert’s job was light years away from tangible reality no matter his constant lamentations to the contrary. Somehow, it had been established, the log was legit. Somehow, it watched over Harry. Somehow it felt nice.
“Gotta be that sawdust he’s got in his head instead of a brain. Like attracts like and all that,” he said instead, because he was Albert Rosenfield and he had a reputation to uphold.
“There is a great wisdom in every branch of a tree, Agent Rosenfield. Wood carries a living memory. A splinter of wood remembers the tree.” She raised an eyebrow past the rim of her glasses. “Does it sound childish to you? It should not. The woods share a conscience. I heard you say to Ben Horne the other day that you could not say the same of him nor any of the thugs he employed in his business. Count your friends. Stick with the sawdust.”
This takedown, Albert reasoned, was more than enough to buy her a beer. The good stuff, not the bland lager they had on tap. She graciously agreed, the way oracles accepted offerings in ancient times.
When Harry eventually made to the Roadhouse, long apology ready on his lips filled with understaffing and rakes and radiators and raccoons, he did not expect to see Margaret Lanterman smiling, no, laughing at Albert’s words, holding up her log so it could hear better. All Harry caught of that portentous conversation was “...no, you can have rugged without the flannel. It’s very in. Out there in faraway civilization, mind you, you wouldn’t know about it. Third guy at the counter from the left, can we agree that’s a sexy beard?”
“Fourth from the left.”
“Lanterman, that’s a goat in a coat.”
But they snapped to attention as soon as they saw Harry join them, and for the love of all he held sacred, he did not investigate further.