After Hours

I worked crisis in Sagebrush City, a desert city in the Southwest. After five, the county stopped calling, and the office belonged to the six of us who never went home.

The names have been changed, and so have a lot of the details, to protect everyone, including me.

Food showed up without anybody planning it. Somebody brought tacos. A grocery-store chicken appeared, and nobody knew who'd bought the chicken. Cajun Jerry told stories with one shoe off. Six adults who'd spent the day on psychosis, eviction, jail, and missing children argued for forty minutes about mayonnaise.

We could handle suicides. Psychosis. Violence. Death. Children in danger. Government agencies.

We could not handle the phone ringing at 8:47 when the coats were already involved.

Somebody answered every time. Even Jerry put his shoe back on.

A client named Darryl wanted a second bus pass. He was entitled to one. Six of us each told Darryl one small lie, separately, so nobody had to spend five minutes explaining why he couldn't have two. By the end of the day, the lies added up to a county anti-fraud program with serial-number tracking, audits, and a twenty-four-hour clearance period. None of the programs existed.

Darryl never got the second pass. He did get six of us to invent a government.

The county would pay to cremate a poor person who died. The county would not pay for a funeral, an urn, or a plot. If nobody picked up the ashes within thirty days, the free cremation started piling up fees.

So we picked up the ashes. Sometimes the ashes came in cardboard. Once they came in a tub like the ones powdered lemonade comes in, and Frank stopped drinking powdered lemonade for nearly a week.

The county knew legal names. We knew Fatback Ferguson. Little Mike. Church Lady.

After Hours is one of ten Sagebrush City books. Read them in any order.

Ebook (epub), delivered right after purchase.

Included free: Jukebox, a short bonus Sagebrush City book.