Nowhere Fast

By Jack Seville

Nowhere Fast
by Jack Seville


In South Dakota, Sherriff Dale Walthroup is only three months from retiring when he and his friend, Sonny Firecloud of the Pine Ridge Reservation Tribal Police, stumble into one of their biggest and most challenging cases. For over three years, young women have been disappearing from South Dakota cities and towns after boarding the Jackrabbit Lines bus service bound for Rapid City. With the intuitive skills of Sherriff Walthroup, the creative police work employed by Sonny Firecloud, the tenacious work of the FBI, and the assistance of a mysterious young woman, the sex ring operating in South Dakota is broken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543428407

Jack Seville

JACK SEVILLE hails originally from the Western Maryland city of Hagerstown, MD. He is a graduate of Hagerstown Junior College, an honor graduate of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA and an honor graduate of the Lancaster Theological Seminary in the same city. He is now a retired ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, having served during his career as a local pastor, a seminary professor, a national staff leader, and a denominational area minister. He presently lives in Oshkosh, WI with Fanny Lee, his spouse of 59 years. The Seville’s have three adult children and three high school aged grandsons. Seville’s avocations over the years have been in the fields of writing, acting and singing. He has published three previous novels: Through His Eyes Only, Something Due, and Settling Accounts. He has published many professional articles, photographs, ands poetry. He has been seen in theatrical performances in Hershey, PA, Aberdeen, SD, Bismarck, ND, and Oshkosh, WI. From 2012-2014 he was seen on stage at the Cumberland County Playhouse in Crossville, TN where he appeared in the role of Jacob in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” as the Conductor and a townsperson in “The Music Man,” as Grandfather in “Ragtime,” as the wine seller in “Scrooge, the Musical,” as the TV reporter in “Inherit the Wind,” and as George Rapelyeah in “Front Page News,” a musical about the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in early Twentieth century Tennessee. As a singer Seville has sung opera and Broadway in Pennsylvania and North Dakota, and he has sung with the following choruses of symphony orchestras: the Lancaster Symphony, the Aberdeen Symphony, the Bismarck, Symphony and the Saint Louis Symphony, plus the Oshkosh Chamber Singers. Seville’s fictional writing could best be termed “historical fiction” where he takes actual historical crises and cultural issues and places ordinary people into the stories. This style gives much realism and intensity to the novels he has written over the years and leads some readers to think that what he writes about must be from first-hand experience or knowledge rather than a fairly fertile and creative imagination. NOWHERE FAST actually picks up the later life of an imaginary Sherriff from Kadoka, SD who first appeared in Seville’s second novel Something Due. Some readers were so taken with the character Dale Walthroup that they suggested Seville try his hand at writing a sequel in which the Sherriff would be the lead character. Others have read Seville’s novels and suggested that they might be easily converted to stage plays, musicals, or movie scripts dues to the heavy emphasis in his writing upon dialogue. Presently, he is working at converting his third novel Settling Accounts to a musical in which the primary music will be contemporary Rap and Country! You can now read his novella NOWHERE FAST and decide for yourself whether you have discovered a new writer whose style and content matches that evaluation of one critic of Jack Seville’s work who wrote “this man is a gentle genius,” “whose work stands among some of the most creative of persons among us.”

Book preview

Prologue

The man I met in the Dakota Nursing Home in Chamberlain was nothing close to what I pictured in my mind as I drove across the prairie from Sioux Falls that day. I had studied old photographs from newspaper stories going back to as early as 1970 in preparation for our interview. He was a big man then. Six feet, three inches tall, he looked more like a professional athlete than a recently elected sheriff of Shannon County. A special Sunday edition of the Argus Leader in 1976 revealed a native person who loved fishing in South Dakota, who had served his country honorably in Korea, and who had returned home to Kadoka to marry his high school sweetheart, only to lose her tragically. The article went on to speak of Dale Walthroup somehow solving the mob’s intrusion into Kadoka when the spectacular café murder case involving a person living there under witness protection took place in the sleepy little town alongside Interstate 90 near Rapid City in the mid-sixties.

Twenty-five years later, being a senior, I was assigned this interview by my journalism professor at Sioux Falls College. He said, Go meet this man about whom so much has been written for he most likely was the most controversial law officer in South Dakota’s history in the Twentieth century. My assignment was to learn as much from him as I could regarding his final case, the disappearance of young women in the late eighties, for not much ink had been given to his final sixty days in office.

The nurse who walked with me down the wide hallway was, I guessed, in her late fifties. She informed me, Mr. Walthroup has good days and bad days. He doesn’t always know where he is and his memory now is very sporadic. That’s typical of dementia, she confided as she tapped lightly against the door numbered twenty-three. As I walked into the darkened room with her I was immediately taken with the stark furniture: a single bed with a rickety nightstand next to it, a short dresser that had to have been at least fifty years old on which a small flat screened RCA television sat atop, and one old chair beside it that appeared to have served at one time as somebody’s kitchen chair.

In a wheel chair facing the only window in the room, and the only source of light, sat a small man who was slumped toward the plate glass as though he were trying to see his way to escape the confines of his aged predicament. He did not move as we entered the room. The nurse went to his side, leaned down so as to face him, and gently said, Dale, there is a student from Sioux Falls College here to speak with you. If he answered, I failed to hear.

She turned to me and said, I believe I have to wake him up. He sleeps a lot these days. Then, as she spoke, a figure moved from a corner behind me and walked slowly to his side. She reached forward with both hands and gently massaged his temples, speaking in what must have been Lakota for I had studied the ancient language two years earlier and recognized its melodious sound.

As she did this, I noted several things at once about her. She was dressed very simply in native garments. Her hair was braided beautifully and formed a long ponytail down her back. She was a wiry five feet ten inches tall even in her moccasins. And, she seemed to be about the same age as the nurse. Her strong fingers kneaded his brow and nape until he stirred slightly.

When she turned to face me, she impressed me with her beauty, even at her advanced age. High cheekbones, straight nose and lip line, brown skin, she was a picture of mature Lakota womanhood. And, her penetrating eyes cut right through me as she stood between me, and the old man. Then, soundlessly she stepped aside and moved back to the corner darkness from which she had emerged.

The nurse said, I believe he is awake enough to speak with you now. She walked past me as she left the room. I pulled up the old kitchen chair on his left and sat down. At first, neither of us spoke. I knew enough about native ways to be patient and to disregard time constraints at such times. I waited. I could hear the whirring of the air conditioner outside his room. I even thought I could hear him breathe from time to time. But, I waited for him to speak first for such is the custom.

He turned a bit in his chair and glanced at me. A slight smile crossed his deeply lined face. He inhaled deeply. Age had taken its toll on this man and at that moment I really was uncertain that this assignment had been a very good idea. But, I waited.

Finally, the former sheriff of Shannon County spoke to me.

How old are you? He asked quietly.

I am twenty-one years old, I said almost apologetically. I am a senior journalism student at Sioux Falls College. I hope to be hired by the Argus Leader when I graduate.

I was a college senior once, he said wistfully. But then, you haven’t come to speak with me about that subject have you?

No, grandfather, I replied. I have come to hear your story of your last investigation as sheriff in Shannon County.

Oh, he said as he slowly turned away from me. Let me think. That was a long time ago, he said sincerely as he seemed to be glancing again out the window.

I began to be excited for I was attempting something that had not, up to then, been accomplished successfully by even the best of reporters. I was on the threshold of hearing, first-hand, from the person at the center of the case, how this man, with his friend Sonny Firecloud of Pine Ridge, got to the bottom of one of South Dakota’s most baffling and notorious mysteries. My race was of advantage I presumed. And, I knew that if I were successful I would not only obtain a good grade in the class but I would be laying the foundation for the resume that would lead to my first full-time newspaper reporting job. I knew I would need to be very patient and that I would have to sift through what I was about to hear in order to understand how this man functioned as sheriff. But, I was prepared to spend two days a week for the next two months in order get my story.

Finally he asked, Are you prepared?

Yes, I said confidently.

I wasn’t, he said nearly inaudibly.

Chapter One

Only three months to go. Only ninety-one days. Twenty-one hundred eighty-four hours. One hundred thirty-one thousand forty-one minutes give or take. The more he broke it down, the longer it seemed. Retirement? Whatever it is, the nearer it seemed the more elusive it became. Waneyayduchokayahwe!, he muttered aloud as he sat idly in his car. Like the corn of the harvest, well past its prime, the moon of the mid-winter couldn’t come fast enough for him.

He’d take a trip, he thought. Just take off down the highway for no other purpose but to get the hell out of western South Dakota. Except for two years in Korea following basic training, his entire life had been consumed by the challenges of this land. This part of Dakotah so comprehensively defined him he had difficulty imagining where he would go. This was home but would it remain so were he not set to it like a horse to a plow? Unchained to this place where would he be and whom would he become? How long could he be absent without losing his identity? Who would he visit? What would he like to see? Who would miss him? Payahzon!

As he sat quietly on the service road overlooking Interstate 90, there was little else to do but ruminate. The quarter moon neared its apex. Traffic heading in either direction was basically limited to semis at this hour. All of the businesses of Kadoka had been closed for eight hours or more. People who lived in this little town were well through another quiet night’s sleep. He wondered if he were the only man awake at this time save those few, troubled by faulty prostate glands, who had just risen to relieve themselves, stumbling quietly through their homes in the dark so as to not disturb anyone.

The old Studebaker Lark rested in the relative darkness of this ideal spot from which the sheriff everyone knew and with whom few conversed could scan the area in every direction at once. Its Chevy engine silent, waiting to be aroused when needed, the old car sat idle like him. Its second paint job dully reflecting the fact that more than a little primer now had protruded to the surface of the sheet metal, the trusty Lark’s body had seen better days. This vehicle, nearly twenty years old, had become the most talked about automobile in this haven for vintage cars to which fewer tourists came to see with each passing year.

He had spent many a weekend night here. After but a few years service to the county he had learned that most problems occurred on Fridays and Saturdays. No sense spending Sunday nights here. Even less logic to whiling away time Monday through Thursday nights. Truth be known, only a handful of Fridays and Saturdays netted much more than the dozen or so drunks whose cars wove nearly out of control coming from Rapid City. That was it. Most of the time his role was that of rescuer of drunks before their broken cars and bodies were carried off to appropriate morgues and junkyards for processing.

He watched a semi heading east toward Chamberlain or Mitchell or Sioux Falls and beyond. He imagined the driver listening to some late night talk show person or the latest country and western songs on Rapid City’s all night country station. He could tell the load was heavy as he listened to the engine pull the slight rise going east. He wondered how they did it? These drivers who crisscross America week after week, kidneys bruised and spines calcifying in pursuit of enough money to support the families for whom they strove. In his mind he compared the men and women who steered these massive rigs through all kinds of weather to the short-lived Pony Express riders of the nineteenth century. Yet, this phenomenon had lasted nearly fifty times as long as the Pony Express. No end in sight. Night after night, even in this remote area of the nation, the trucks rolled on. Wakonshechate, he thought as he watched a big rig pull the rise. It was a hell of a life in which drivers sacrificed constantly on behalf