Jen

I did not normally trip; I did not normally dodge traffic like Frogger in a traffic jam. I normally did pretty well on my feet. But if I was going to be in the same space as three Dark Saints, I knew I better do something to get one of them to notice me.

A collision seemed the best option. So I played the klutz.

It worked. Sort of.

I felt legitimately dizzy when his hands touched my shoulders. They were strong, steady, and as hot as it was in Port Azrael. I watched gooseflesh raise up on my arms when he made contact.

His patch said Benz but that probably wasn’t his real name.

I wanted to make an impression. And I think I did. But the hell of it was that Benz made one on me as well.

My thoughts kept going back to him throughout the rest of my day. And that had to stop. I wasn’t here to find a boyfriend, for God’s sake.

I was working. I wasn’t supposed to think about sex or anything in the vicinity of attraction, but damn.

That man was bigger, badder, and hotter than anyone I’d ever seen.

I found myself imagining what it would be like if I let his hands roam. I closed my eyes and tried to purge the carnal thoughts he’d inspired.

I did what I could to focus on my job as visiting librarian. I had to have a reason to be there that wouldn’t raise suspicion from The Saints or anyone else in Port Az.

I really didn’t have a clue as to how to take the next step with The Saints. So I did what I was paid to do. I made myself at home in the little area Inez had given me.

I angled myself perfectly to see out the window across to Woody’s. I would be looking to see if Benz or either of his friends showed up again.

Woody’s Lounge wasn’t their club. I had no idea where that was. But now I knew that at least some of The Saints drank across the street. Three to be exact. One of whom I couldn’t quite shake from my mind.

Until I could make inroads on whatever criminal shit they did in this town, I’d make progress on its history instead.

I began to dig into the old records.

I knew Port Az had ties to the Texas Rangers, and to my own history, and so here I was. I’d learn, read, and scan. It was more interesting reading than the filing they had me do in Austin. And it was connected to my Daddy’s past.

I’d get the history of Port Azrael into the permanent records before it disintegrated and I would watch through the window toward Woody’s Lounge. Something had to happen. Something would come to me. I had faith. And maybe Daddy would help things along.

Reading history in a book is a far cry from what it’s really comprised of. History that lasts, records, are things like deeds, old newspaper articles, and other dusty, crumbling papers. Those were the building blocks of any town’s story.

The drama behind the documents was what I was after too. What really happened here was the stuff of legend in my family. My Daddy and my Grandma had told me the stories.

During the Great Depression, when legendary Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer, was going after Bonnie and Clyde, Ranger Randolph Davidson was doing the same in Port Az.

Ranger Davidson was my Great Grandpa and I had heard stories about his heroism since I was born. He was larger than life and loomed large in my dreams: I wanted to become just like him, and just like my Dad.

Back in the day, outlaws and bandits made their way to Texas because it was easy to hide here back then. The vastness of our state is exactly why The Rangers were needed.

The Old West wasn’t so far in the past during The Depression; that’s what Grandma and Daddy reminded me of all the time with their bedtime stories.

They said Great Grandpa Davidson actually rode a horse to the towns he patrolled.

Those stories inspired Daddy to become a Texas Ranger. And me too. It almost seemed like becoming a super hero to me. But now that I was grown, the reality was setting in.

I was going to be standing at copy machines, not spurring a horse from town to town. Unless I took matters into my own hands.

I decided to start with Randolph Davidson. Where was he in all of these old records?

The Town had a newspaper then, so that’s where I looked first for a record of his heroism.

It took a bit of doing, but I found the editions from 1933. The papers were yellow: I was doing this in the nick of time. Port Az Library was not exactly a hermetically-sealed environment. It was hot and dusty.

I started at the beginning of 1933 and slowly thumbed through the front pages.

After two hours, the front page I’d been hoping to find appeared. A headline blared at me, and it was the first name that I’d recognized: Tommy Bass. He was the bad guy in my Daddy’s stories more than once. Bass. A name I’d grown to hate twice over.

TOMMY BASS ESCAPES

Notorious bank robber, Tommy Bass, has escaped the custody of Marshalls in Austin.

Bass, awaiting trial for the robbery of the Bank of the Dakotas, in which a security guard was killed, made his bold break from the law during his transfer to court for a preliminary hearing.

Deputy Charles Folgerty is currently hospitalized with a contusion to the head. He has been unable to provide authorities with details of the escape.

The FBI believes Bass will try to reach the Mexican border.

“That is the best option for him. All citizens need to be on the lookout and understand that Thomas Bass is a hardened and dangerous criminal. Call your local authorities if you suspect you see him. And do not engage in conversation,” warned Agent Bill Belton, field agent from the Austin office of the FBI.

Tommy Bass was a famous around Texas, like John Dillinger, or Bonnie and Clyde. In an era when criminals were like Kardashians, Tommy Bass had his moment in the spotlight.

And I knew what happened to him. It was the old story they’d told me. I was excited to read about it. It made things real for me. And it brought back my Daddy, in a way.

My Great Grandfather, Ranger Randolph Davidson, killed Tommy Bass. He hunted him down and stopped his violence. Because of that, Ranger Randolph Davidson was in the Ranger Hall of Fame, just like Ranger Frank Hamer.

Most people didn’t know the story like they knew Bonnie and Clyde; there wasn’t a movie or a beautiful girl. Just crime and punishment.

But I knew it and was proud of it. And so was my Dad.

I hunted through a lot of the old records to add details for the Ranger Randolph Davidson section of the history. I felt like I was making sure, in my own small way, that Ranger Randolph Davidson wasn’t forgotten.

Same with Daddy.

It was a lot easier to find things about my more recent history. The story of my Daddy’s death was only a decade old.

He was hailed a hero too.

I had a lot to live up to. But I was going to do it.

I was going to be a Ranger and I was going to bring down The Saints. Or at least I was going to try.

When I asked for this assignment, my boss, Paul Laraby, was relieved. I knew that he would be. He had told me to stop asking for challenging work.

The idea that I wanted to be a Trooper and then a Ranger still didn’t sit well with the men in charge. Paul saw my fresh-out-of-the-academy enthusiasm as a joke.

Texas sexism was alive and well. But I wasn’t going to stop. Daddy wouldn’t, and I am sure Great Grandpa Davidson wouldn’t either.

“You sure as hell don’t look like a Texas Lawman,” Paul had said over and over again.

That was supposed to be a compliment, except coming from my superior, it felt like a sexist remark.

My boss was determined to keep me in a subservient role. I wanted more. And I didn’t want to wait.

The State of Texas was digitizing the history of towns like Port Azrael

Paul may not have thought I looked like lawman material, but he did like me as a secretary or even a librarian. So when I asked for the one-month assignment, he said yes.

I scanned in each item with care. I was saving Texas history, and my own family’s too.

There was nowhere I’d rather be.

I learned how to be careful with the items. And even though I wasn’t, technically, in law enforcement, I did feel like I was contributing more than when I was answering Paul’s phone.

The oldest documents were ones you had to wear gloves to touch. I gently put them on the glass and watched the machine record every detail of the parchment that was the oldest piece of paper in this tiny library.

With each document, I learned more about the connection I had to this town. I learned about my ancestors and what they did here.

I found myself immersed, one document at a time, in the way the town must have looked back then.

I learned about another Ranger, Davis Digby, whose story went back even before my Great Grandpa’s time to when Texas was born. It was fascinating and it was stuff that historians could use.

Davis Digby was one of the first people to provide any type of law enforcement in Port Azrael. He knew President Sam Houston. It was sort of amazing to decipher Digby’s role in helping Port Azrael become a town.

As I converted documents, I became engrossed in the stories of the founders of Port Azrael. It was a mix of Native Americas, Mexican settlers, white settlers, and oddly, Texas Rangers. All of them were here in a strange amalgam. I wondered if that was still true or if their descendants had moved on?

I knew, eventually, that police work was also like this: painstaking attention to details, to papers. And I felt like I was training myself while I worked.

There was so much stuffed into this little library that it was going to be hard to do it all in the four-week assignment. But I’d do my best.

I didn’t have to search hard for the article I needed about my Daddy.

That headline blared at me every day.

TEXAS RANGER KILLED DURING BANK ROBBERY INVESTIGATION.

I knew every line of that story. I’d lived it. My Daddy’s death was covered across the state. He’d stopped the bad guys. Except my Grandmother said some of them were still here. In Port Az, The Saints.

“I don’t care what the news says. The Dark Saints got away with it,” my Grandmother always told me. And I believed her.

The article about my Dad woke me up again to the present. To the other reason that I was happy to take a job in Port Az.

It was time to leave the past for a while and make inroads with The Saints.

I looked down at Woody’s Lounge. Someone from The Dark Saints was back! There was a Harley parked out front. I’d been waiting for that.

I suddenly felt thirsty.