Read Online Mangrove Bayou by Stephen Morrill - Free Book Online Page B

June says about you.” Everyone chuckled.
    Milo Binder showed up last and his shoes still squeaked. They borrowed a few extra chairs from the lobby and Troy’s office and then squeezed in a bit around the long table. Troy sat at one end, June at the other.
    “Got a lot to go over,” Troy started. “Everybody got coffee? Doughnuts? Ready to sit a while and listen?” He looked around the table. A few of them nodded. Nobody seemed to need more coffee. Bubba slid a Krispy Kreme box down to Angel Watson, the petite blonde officer who doubled as the department computer guru. She looked at the doughnuts as if they would bite her and she pushed the box away.
    “I’ve been working my way in slowly,” Troy said. “I know I’m an outsider. Pretty soon I’ll be an insider. And now it’s time for a few new rules and practices.”
    He looked down at a legal pad in front of him. “Let’s talk discipline. I don’t see much evidence of any around here. In fact, when I call a meeting for eight a.m., I expect to start talking at eight a.m., not at eight-ten. So here are some new rules. “First-name basis is fine. Insubordination is not fine. Giving sass back to the citizens is not fine. We’re in the serving and protecting business and they’re the paying customers. They’re not always right, we know that, but politeness goes a long way.”
    “Some of those people will walk all over you if you let ’em,” Calvin Smith said. “Got to let ’em know who’s boss right off when you snag ’em.”
    Troy looked at Calvin. “Snag ’em?”
    “You know, stop ’em for something.”
    “Aha. Keep in mind that they are not ‘those people,’ but rather ‘our people.’ And Contempt of Cop is not an actual law on the books. One thing we’re paid to do is to swallow a few insults if necessary.”
    “Shit. I let ’em know who’s boss, what I do.”
    Troy stared at Calvin a moment. He looked around the table and then down at his legal pad. “Don’t just go out there and drive around. Get out of the air conditioning and talk to people. Park and walk around a bit. Look behind things, go where you can’t see from the truck windows. Break up the patrol routines. Appearance is important and I’m changing the uniforms. No more black long trousers and black long-sleeve shirts with sweat salt stains on the backs. Maybe that’s good up north. Not here.”
    “That’s what they wear in Tampa, where you come from, Miami, most other places,” Jeremiah Brown rumbled. He was a black man and very dark, the oldest among them, with gray showing in his short hair. He was two inches taller than Troy and much wider, about the size of a Mack truck diesel engine and, Troy suspected, about as powerful. He weighed close to three hundred pounds and not much was fat. Even the Suburbans leaned a bit when he climbed into one. Whenever Jeremiah Brown spoke he rumbled like distant thunder. He sang the bass parts in his church choir.
    “I don’t care about most other places,” Troy said. “They wear that because black uniforms are intimidating and don’t show vomit and bloodstains so much.”
    “I could have lived without that knowledge,” Angel Watson said.
    Troy smiled. “We’re switching off to khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirts. Come winter we’ll also have long pants and long-sleeved shirts and you get to choose which to wear on any given day. Down here, even in winter, we’d only need those a day or two now and then. Wear your black shoes from your old unis. We have some calf-high brown socks to match the shorts and shirts. Walk around in shorts with black socks and people think you’re some tourist from Chicago.”
    “We gotta buy these new uniforms?” Milo Binder asked.
    “Not at first. I got some cash out of the town council.” In fact, Troy had only gotten the money for two outfits per person. He’d kicked in the majority himself. “June already had all your sizes, so we bought each of you a half-dozen of the summer