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When Nicole Haught was five years old, she lost her parents at the county fair.
Or, rather, Nicole’s parents lost her. Nicole was so entranced by the street performer who had set up shop near the House of Mirrors that the Losing, Panicking, and Searching were over and done with by the time she could bring herself to tear her eyes away. Nicole glanced to her left at the sound of her mama’s voice and found herself wrapped in her parents’ arms before she could blink.
“Oh Nicky, Nicky, thank goodness you’ve got your daddy’s hair,” Nicole’s mama crooned softly into her young daughter’s ear as the three of them rocked slowly back and forth.
Nicole, unaware of the reason for the fear and relief in her mother’s voice and therefore determined to ignore them, pointed at the woman who, in the center of a ring of onlookers was in the process of breathing an enormous column of fire. “Can I do that?” she asked eagerly.
Her daddy laughed and ruffled the ginger locks that did indeed match his own receding hair. “Maybe some day, Nicky, but for now I think you’ve already got more fire than you can handle.”
...................
His words turned out to be prophetic when, four years later, Nicole had to be taken to the hospital with second-degree burns on her left hand from trying to snatch a burning stick out of a bonfire.
Nicole sat in the back seat of the car, left wrist grasped gingerly in her right hand, tears leaking from her eyes but stubborn in her conviction not to let a sob escape her lips.
Her mama drove the car, lips pursed, not saying a word while her daddy sat in the passenger seat, shaking his head. “I just don’t get it, Nicky. You’re a smart girl, why would you do something like this?”
“Be cause ,” Nicole snapped from the back seat, frustrated that she couldn’t keep her voice from wavering, “Paul did it. Mason did it. Gio did it. And then Mason said a girl would be too scared to try.” She sniffled, “And then they all laughed!”
“Nic, if Mason jumped off of a bridge, would you jump, too?”
Nicole scoffed. “ Mason was too scared to jump into the gorge off of Highland Bridge last week. But I did it. I think he’s still mad about that, he wouldn’t talk to me until yesterday.”
Nicole’s mama’s lips were still pursed, but a small smile tugged them upwards at the corners as she relaxed her grip on the steering wheel ever so slightly. She caught her husband’s eye as he shook his head again, an amused look on his face. “Nicole, protecting the Haught family pride is an important responsibility, and it’s good to know you take it seriously.” He reached back to gently stroke her cheek. “Just remember to protect your own skin, too.”
...................
Nicole felt fleeting but intense worry about the safety of her own skin when she introduced her parents to her first girlfriend, Jess, at the end of freshman year of high school. It disappeared as soon as she saw the smiles on their faces. Her mama shook the girl’s hand and chuckled, glancing at her husband. “The hair, the pride, an appreciation for beautiful women...is there anything she didn’t get from you, hon?”
“Well she certainly didn’t get her modesty from you, babe,” Nicole’s daddy retorted, winking at his daughter as Nicole giggled.
...................
She ends up inheriting her daddy’s career, too, but it’s the pride and the beautiful women that lands Nicole in hot water her second week on the job as Purgatory’s newest deputy.
“And you’re sure it’s ok that we’re still in uniform?” Nicole asks for the second (or fifth) time, fingers playing nervously with her stetson.
Deputy Micah Wilson smiles patiently, takes a swig of beer, and shrugs. “Sure. Everyone knows we’re off duty, but sometimes just seeing the uniform keeps these cowboys on their best behavior.”
“Don’t give her the wrong idea, Wilson, their best behavior usually ain’t nothing worth talking of,” chortles Wes Hudson, another deputy. “Why don’t you tell her the real reason we keep ‘em on?”
“You got me there,” Wilson concedes. He leans a little closer to Nicole. “The uniform is always a bit of a crowd pleaser on the bull,” he stage-whispers in her ear, loud enough for Hudson and Donald Russell, the final member of their merry band of four, to hear.
Russell groans dramatically, his head in his hands and his third pint of beer empty on the table before him. “Aw come on Wilson, not this again, not in front of the rookie.”
Wilson draws himself up straight on his stool, puffing out his chest, the effect ruined slightly by the beer sloshing over the side of the glass in his hand. “Pull yourself together, Russ! This is about strength! This is about pride! This is about wiping that smug little grin off of this sleazy sonofabitch’s face!” He jerks his head in the direction of Hudson, who Nicole sees is indeed smiling as he quietly sips his beer.
“Uh, fellas,” says Nicole, doing her best to read the room but apparently missing some crucial information, “I hate to break up this testosterone-fest, but anyone wanna explain to me exactly what’s going on?”
“Haught’s gonna take my side, Wilson, just watch,” says Russell, before turning to Nicole. “You see, Hudson happens to hold the bar record for level 8 on this here mechanical bull.” He points at a plaque on the far wall, too small to read from their table. “What’s it say on that plaque, Hudson?”
“20 seconds. Ridin’ around for hours on 7 was getting mighty boring, thought I’d give it a shot,” says Hudson, with a big show of looking down at his beer in false modesty.
Nicole smiles and takes a drink. She likes her fellow deputies. She had been a bit nervous when Wilson invited her out for drinks after their last shift before the weekend (the last thing she needed was to have to turn down a flirtatious coworker in her first month), but Wilson had quickly added that Russell and Hudson would be coming along as well, and a glance at Nedley showed he approved. “You’re new in town, deputy. You need friends, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the good seeds from the bad in this place,” he muttered to her on her way out. “These boys are some of the good ones.”
“20 seconds,” repeats Russell. “Don’t sound like much, but none of these rodeo clowns can seem to beat it.” He jerks his thumb in his friend’s direction. “Much less Wilson, and he’s tried more times than any of ‘em.”
“ Yet ,” insists Wilson, more beer spilling out of his glass as he pounds the table with his palm, “Can’t seem to beat it yet. ”
“And let me guess,” says Nicole, laughing, “you just know tonight’s the night.”
Russell chuckles. “I like this girl,” he says, throwing an arm around Nicole’s shoulder. “Took her less than two weeks to figure out Wilson’s an idiot.”
“Please, that took less than a minute. The same amount of time it took to figure out you’re gonna be tumbling off that bull about seven seconds after Wilson’s had his turn, Russ.”
This time it’s Hudson’s turn to chuckle. “You’d better watch out Russell, this rookie means business. The sheriff’s hat is gonna look a hell of a lot better on that pretty red hair of hers than it does covering up Nedley’s bald spot.”
Nicole blushes in spite of herself. Compliments on her appearance from well-meaning friends she can take in stride, but she really wouldn’t mind wearing that black sheriff’s hat one day.
“We can worry about sabotaging the promising rookie’s career later,” says Russell, grabbing Wilson by the arm and pulling him in the direction of the gate into the bull ring. “ After I hand you your ass on this damn contraption.”
...................
Nicole’s prediction is off by about two seconds, and not in Russell’s favor. Wilson barely picks himself up off the mat after his six-second ride before Russell crashes down next to him, a full five seconds short of an even ten. Wilson had been right, the crowd around the ring doubles in size as soon as bar-goers see the blue and khaki of a Purgatory policeman. A couple of them pound Wilson and Russell on the back, massaging their shoulders and offering consoling words through amused grins as they make their way back to the table where Hudson and Nicole are waiting.
“Crown’s still yours, your Majesty,” says Wilson, pressing his Stetson against his chest and bowing dramatically. “Still the only deputy in Purgatory who can come close to taming that damn thing.”
“Well hey now,” says Nicole, “maybe that’s just ‘cause one deputy’s never been tested.”
Russell and Wilson look at each and laugh. Even Hudson smiles into his glass, not meeting Nicole’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, did I say something funny?” asks Nicole, some of the lightheartedness gone from her voice. She hadn’t intended on taking a turn on the bull that night, but she feels a small twinge of annoyance in her chest as her new friends struggle to respond.
“I--We--It’s just, we didn’t think you’d want to bother trying,” stutters Wilson. Hudson isn’t smiling anymore, and he still refuses to meet Nicole’s eyes.
“ Bother trying?” parrots Nicole, standing up and brushing off her pants. Wilson has about an inch on her, but he cowers slightly under her glare. “You were off that bull faster than I could name all of the female officers in Purgatory, and you know as well as I do that there aren’t exactly a lot of us. Maybe you shouldn’t have bothered .”
“Look, Haught,” says Wilson, regaining some of his poise, “I like you. You’re smart. You’re easy on the eyes. More importantly,” he continues, speaking over the beginnings of her frustrated protest, “if I came across you in the boxing ring I ain’t so sure I would leave with all of my teeth. But we’ve been riding this piece of shit for years, you’ve been here less than a month, and I’m pretty sure you’ve had more beer tonight than Russ and Hudson combined. You go ahead and try, but you ain’t gonna win.”
“This ain’t about winning , deputy,” says Nicole, shoving her beer into Wilson’s hands as Russell and Hudson roll their eyes, smiles returning at her use of the title. She pushes her way past rowdy bar-goers and hops the gate, Stetson grasped firmly in her left hand, right hand curled into a fist.
This is about pride .
...................
Nicole isn’t an idiot. She knows she doesn’t have a single chance in Hell or Purgatory of actually beating Hudson’s record of 20 seconds on level 8. This isn’t her first rodeo, so to speak, but she hasn’t been on a mechanical bull in months and she would have preferred to start off easy before going for gold.
Still, Russell’s ride had only been five seconds long, Wilson’s six. If she can match either of their times, maybe even pull off an extra second or two, she can leave the bar with her ego intact.
Mercifully, it’s a woman working the machine, a name tag with Nancy written on it in loopy font pinned to her shirt. “Lemme get a feel for the thing and then krank ‘er all the way up, if you don’t mind,” Nicole tells her. Even though she knows she was about to make a fool of herself, Nicole can’t resist sending a wink Nancy’s way. “I need to teach these losers a lesson.”
Nancy glances back in the direction Nicole had come from and grins, nodding. “Sure thing, sweetheart.”
Nicole turns and sees that Hudson and Russell have followed her, Wilson trailing behind with her beer still in his hand. “You boys gonna count it out or what?” Nicole asks as she puts a foot in the stirrup and settles into the saddle.
“Hell yeah, Haught, all two seconds of it,” calls Russell, softening the joke with an encouraging smile. Nicole places her Stetson on her head just long enough to tip it at Wilson, who nods good-naturedly and raises the glass of beer in her direction. Nicole knows they’re good, no matter what happened, knows none of them had meant to insult her. But she’s still gonna ride the damn bull.
...................
“...FOUR!” shout all three deputies, Wilson having joined in after Russell’s initial prediction of two seconds proved false. Four seconds. In another three seconds, Nicole will be on the floor, but what happens in the intervening time feels like it takes hours.
The first thing that happens is Nicole decides to glance up, away from the bull. Had she continued to focus her gaze downward, the following events would have been completely irrelevant. But she does look up and because she looks up she happens to catch the movement of the bar door opening out of the corner of her eye.
That’s the second thing that happens. The bar door opens. The third thing: someone walks through it.
“...FIVE!”
Actually, two someones. The first is a man: tall, tattooed, and muscular, clad in boots and denim and virtually indistinguishable from half of the patrons already enjoying their drinks. He has his arm wrapped so tightly around the second figure, a woman, that she is almost invisible from Nicole’s vantage point atop the bull.
But spot her Nicole does, and that is the fourth thing that happens, the one that seals her fate, in more ways than she could possibly imagine. For a fraction of a second, the rest of the room disappears along with the bucking machine beneath her as Nicole loses herself in the long brown hair, the smile that reaches up into the girl’s eyes and deep into Nicole’s heart, warming her to the core even from across the room.
“...SIX!”
Unfortunately, a fraction of a second is all it takes for Nicole to lose her concentration, as well as her firm grip on the mechanical bull. Forgetting for a moment that she is still holding her Stetson in her left hand, she reaches behind her to steady herself (the fifth thing that happens) but it’s too late. The bull gives a particularly hard buck (the sixth thing that happens), sending the Stetson flying from Nicole’s hand and Nicole tumbling out of the saddle and…
“...SEVEN!”
Nicole picks herself up off of the mat, blinking rapidly as the room seemed to spin before her vision slowly clears. She rubs her temples and takes a deep breath before turning towards her new friends, whose cheers and applause she can now hear over the fading ringing in her ears.
“Hell yeah, Haught stuff!” shouts Russell, looking extremely pleased with himself for coming up with the pun on her name.
“Not bad for a rookie,” says Hudson, smiling and pounding her on the back after she has climbed out of the ring. Wilson seems to have disappeared, but Nicole hears a loud shout behind her a spins around to see him walking towards them, fresh pint of beer in hand.
“Deputy,” he says, standing straight in a mock salute before handing her the beer. “I may have accidentally finished your beer while you were on that dumb-ass quest to prove yourself, so I figured the next round should be on me. Besides,” he continues, holding out his hand, “I think you earned it.”
“You bet your ass I did,” replies Nicole, grasping his hand and shaking it firmly. “Now if y’all would just help me find my hat, I think I’m ready to call it a night.”
Wilson frowns. “What do you mean, find your hat? Thought you had it with you in the ring.”
“I did, but it fell out of my hand when I--”
The memory of her last few seconds on the bull comes flooding back and Nicole scans the room, as much for the girl as for the Stetson, but spots neither, the middle of the room having filled up quickly as someone name ‘Champ’ hops the gate. “--when I fell off the bull.”
“How’s about we split up and look, and meet back here in ten minutes?” suggests Hudson, already moving in the direction of the ring.
“Good plan,” says Nicole, heading in the other direction, turning her back on the other two deputies before she can see Wilson pull Russell towards him and whisper something in his ear.
...................
Ten minutes later none of them seem to have had any luck. Wilson looks worried. “Russ, what are we gonna do if she can’t find the thing?”
“How bad would it be if I lost it for good?” interjects Nicole before Russell can answer.
“I ain’t gonna lie, Haught, it wouldn’t be good,” says Russell shaking his head. “For one thing, any one of these clowns would love to get his hands on a gen-u-ine PSD Stetson and Nedley would love it if they never did. For another…”
“...Department’s gotta pay for a new hat,” finishes Wilson, “and they ain’t cheap.”
“Wes?” says Nicole, looking at Hudson and trying to keep her voice even. She likes Wilson and Russell, but she trusts Hudson. “What should I do?”
Hudson looks at her helplessly. “I wish I could tell ya, rookie. I’ll stick around, help you do another once-over of the bar, but I’d say you’d best be prepared to grovel a bit, come Monday.”
“Don’t worry, Haught, we’ll back you up,” Russell chimes in, “Tell ol’ Nedley we goaded you into it.”
“As mistakes go, you could have done something a helluva lot worse,” adds Wilson.
“Even if you and Hudson don’t find it, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Nedley only fired Packard because he lost his twi --”
Wilson elbows Russell, hard, before he can finish, but it’s too late. Nicole’s eyes go wide. “Nedley fired someone over a lost hat?” she asks in disbelief.
“Like I said, he lost his twice, and he was a shitty cop besides. I swear, Haught, you make your case well on Monday and you’ve got nothing to worry about,” insists Russell, but the damage has already been done.
Nicole is going to walk into the precinct on Monday with a Stetson on her head if it’s the last thing she ever does.
...................
Nicole rubs her eyes wearily and glances at the clock. 3am. Technically already Saturday, but if she pays the extra thirty bucks to rush the order there’s a chance it will arrive on Monday before her shift.
Finding her department-issue Stetson proved to be a lost cause, so upon returning home after her night-out gone sour, Nicole set herself up with her computer and two fingers of whiskey to cosplay as if her career depended on it because, well, it did.
The hat itself hadn’t been too much of a problem. A quick search on Etsy turned up a cream-colored Stetson with a brown leather band similar to the hat she had brushed so carefully on the morning of her first day two weeks prior.
The badge, however, proved to be a bit more difficult.
After an hour and a half of searching and two more fingers of cheap whiskey, Nicole found a startup company that boasted the ability to do metal etchings up to 10x10 centimeters in 48 hours on commission. Thirty minutes later Nicole is staring at a sketch of the PSD badge drawn partially from memory, partially from a photo of herself in uniform that she had sent to her father when she had first gotten the job.
It isn’t a perfect recreation. Nedley would probably notice if he inspects it too closely. But Nicole is drunk, worried, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t sort of like the challenge and the risk. Besides, Nedley is at least three inches shorter than her, the odds of him getting close enough to see the imperfections on the badge are slim.
Nicole uploads the image to her computer and hits “Complete Order”, pointedly ignoring the price in the corner of the screen. Leaning back in her chair, she lets her eyelids droop and is surprised to find her drunk and exhausted thoughts return to the girl from the bar. She had almost forgotten about her in the frantic rush to get in the hat orders before sunrise, but there’s something about her eyes, something about her smile that...sticks.
She nearly forgives the girl for possibly getting her fired. Indirectly, at least.
Shutting the laptop, Nicole stands up and stretches. The sky outside her kitchen window is a deep indigo, speckled with stars, and she’s sure the smudge of orange on the eastern horizon is her eyes playing tricks on her--sunrise is still hours away. But her career is in the hands of the Fates now--the Fates and a couple of strangers online claiming expertise in metal etching.
It almost makes her regret the bull ride.
Almost.
...................
At nearly five-foot-nine with bright, auburn hair, Nicole is used to heads turning when she enters a room. Hell, once she had grown out of the awkwardness of adolescence and into a sense of confidence in her appearance and sexuality, she had even welcomed the stares, on occasion.
This is not one of those occasions.
Nicole feels stares boring into her hat like bullets. She pulls the rim down over her eyes self-consciously, then curses herself silently for drawing more attention to the facsimile sitting on her brow.
Wilson and Russell are sitting at their adjoined desks; Russell has his back to her but Wilson’s eyes are glued to the badge on Nicole’s hat, his lips pressed tightly together. Nicole catches his eye and he nods, flashing her a quick thumbs up.
Nicole hears Russell whisper something to Wilson as she passes, but her desk is in her sights; so intent is she on reaching her chair without incident that she doesn’t see Hudson’s barely contained surprised as he comes in from the break room, holding a cup of coffee.
Striding quickly past the sheriff’s office, Nicole nearly makes it to her desk before she hears Nedley’s voice behind her.
“Officer Haught? A word?”
Nicole takes a deep breath, bracing herself for the reprimanding, the stern order to clean out her desk.
“Sheriff? What can I do for you?”
“Well, Nicole, I’ve been waiting for you to get here so I could return this but now I, ah…” He sets down a very familiar looking Stetson on his desk and steeples his fingers, frowning slightly. “Now I have some questions for you pertaining to...whatever it is you’ve got on your head there.”
Nicole stares at the hat on the desk in shock, so surprised that she forgets her chagrin. “Is that...mine, sir?”
“Well I certainly thought so,” Nedley replies, turning the hat over in his hands, “Wilson and the other boys dropped it off earlier this morning, said you’d be looking for it when you came in for your shift. Said they told you I had it, that you left it in the cab on Friday evenin’.” He gives her a searching look. “So you can imagine my surprise when you showed up not five minutes ago, looking very much in uniform and very intent on not comin’ into my office to ask about a hat.”
The wheels in Nicole’s brain have already begun to turn. “Sir,” she says, “do you mind if I...just…” She gestures towards the door. “I’ll explain everything, I promise. But there’s something I need to do first.”
“Haught? Haught!”
She’s already out the door.
“Well aren’t you three just a regular bunch of assholes !” Nicole glares at Wilson, keeping her voice down so Nedley won’t hear, but speaking loud enough for her anger to seep into her words.
Wilson is giggling uncontrollably, so Russell speaks up instead. “We didn’t know it would come to this, Haught, honest!” He shrugs. “We thought you’d just come in this mornin’ with some grand old speech prepared, begging not to be fired. We didn’t know you’d spend a fortune to impersonate a police officer .”
“Hey now, it ain’t like we took the whole damn uniform,” says Hudson leaning against Russell’s desk only to shrink under the look levelled at him by Nicole. “Don’t look at me Haught, they didn’t even tell me they’d done it until after you left!”
“Yeah but you had the entire weekend to tell me about it, didn’t you?”
“I--Yeah. Yeah, you ain’t wrong about that.”
Nicole glances back at Nedley, who is watching the confrontation with a mildly amused expression, as if he too has put together the pieces of the puzzle. “Ok,” she says, turning back to the men in front of her, “here’s what’s going to happen. You three are going to go in there and explain to Nedley what happened. You’re going retrieve my real hat from him. And then you’re going to put your little heads together and come up with some monetary price for the trouble I went through this weekend, which I will then deem either satisfactory or unsatisfactory. We will keep at this game until I am satisfied. Understand?”
The three policemen nod wordlessly. As they file past her and into Nedley’s office, Nicole puts a hand on Hudson’s arm.
“Wes, wait a sec.”
“What’s up, Haught Stuff?”
“What can you tell me about that rodeo jockey from the other night? Champ?”
“Can I ask why you want to know?”
Nicole shakes her head, smiling slightly. “It’s nothin’. It’s just, I think the girl that was with him owes me a drink.”