Chapter 4 - The Midnight Police Call
The voicemail was from Officer Higgins, a local cop I’d worked several vehicle-accident scenes with over the years. His voice on the recording sounded deeply tired, the kind of exhaustion only seasoned law enforcement officers achieve around the holidays.
"Oscar, give me a call when you get this. Your dad and brother are down at the municipal animal shelter, and they've barricaded themselves inside the goat pen because the county impounded the alpacas. Your dad keeps yelling that he's a taxpayer and demanding my badge number. Call me before I arrest a senior citizen for trespassing in a petting zoo."
I stared at my phone for ten seconds.
Then I rubbed my temples, grabbed my car keys again, and drove down to the county animal shelter.
When I pulled up, the parking lot looked like a crime scene: two police cruisers with their blue and red lights flashing against the chain-link fence, casting strobing shadows over an enclosure filled with forty-two very confused miniature alpacas and one newborn baby.
Officer Higgins was leaning against his cruiser, arms crossed, watching the spectacle with a cup of lukewarm coffee.
As I walked across the gravel lot, Higgins saw me and sighed with immense relief. "Thank God. Bennett. Control your family before I have to explain to a judge why I put a retired warehouse manager in handcuffs next to a llama."
"They're alpacas," I corrected automatically.
"Whatever-the-hell-cas they are, they're currently occupying three municipal animal control stalls, and your brother tried to bribe me with a share in something called 'FleeceCoin'."
I winced. "FleeceCoin?"
"It's a digital token backed by alpaca wool. I told him I'd rather invest in swamp land."
We walked over to the main paddock. Inside the wooden fence, sitting defiantly on a bale of hay next to a bewildered-looking alpaca, sat my father, arms crossed, wearing a winter coat over his pajamas. Trevor was standing beside him, holding a makeshift sign made of a cardboard box that read: FREE THE ALPACAS – DOWN WITH MUNICIPAL TYRANNY.
When Dad saw me approaching, his face hardened into granite.
"Oscar!" he bellowed, standing up. "Tell these thugs to let us go!"
"Dad, you're trespassing in an animal shelter at midnight," I said reasonably.
"They towed our trailer! They impounded our livestock! They're violating our constitutional rights!"
"Dad, it's a municipal impound lot. You can't just break the padlock with a bolt cutter because your trailer got left on the highway."
"We had to secure our assets!" Trevor shouted from behind him. "Snowflake needs temperature-controlled security!"
Officer Higgins rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Bennett, you want to sign for them, or do we book them for criminal mischief and property damage?"
I looked at the two of them. Dad, gray-haired and stubborn, trembling slightly from the cold because he hadn't worn proper boots. Trevor, looking like a manic cartoon character in his stuffing-stained Christmas sweater.
For eleven years, I would have paid the impound fee, settled the towing charges, bailed them out of whatever bureaucratic nightmare they'd engineered, and driven them home while apologizing for not being supportive enough.
I looked at Higgins. "What's the impound fee?"
"Tow truck fee plus storage and veterinary care for forty-three animals overnight? Right around two thousand eight hundred dollars."
Dad glared at me, expecting the ritual to begin. Oscar pays, Oscar fixes it, family helps family.
I looked Dad in the eye.
"Book them," I said.
Dad staggered back a step as if I'd slapped him. "What did you say?"
"Book them, Officer. They're adults. Let them explain FleeceCoin to a magistrate in the morning."
Trevor shrieked. "You can't do that! We're your flesh and blood!"
"Flesh and blood doesn't break into a county pound with bolt cutters," I said calmly. "Goodnight, Dad. Hope the hay is comfortable."
I turned around and walked back to my truck.
Behind me, Dad's voice cracked with genuine, unscripted terror for the first time in my life.
"Oscar... wait! We don't have our wallets! The house is locked and the power is off! We have nowhere to sleep!"
I stopped at the driver's side door, looked back over my roof at the flashing blue lights, and said the only thing left to say:
"Welcome to entrepreneurship."
I climbed into the F-250 and drove home.
When I woke up the next morning—Christmas Day—the sun was shining brightly over a frozen, silent world. No frantic phone calls. No demands for money. No flying turkey.
Just absolute, uninterrupted peace.
Until my doorbell rang at 9:00 AM.
I opened the door, expecting the police or a process server. Instead, standing on my welcome mat was Mom, wearing a heavy winter coat, holding a single cardboard box containing a coffee maker, a toaster, and a stack of unpaid bills.
Her eyes were red, her hair unbrushed, and for the first time since I was a teenager, she looked entirely defeated.
"They let your father and Trevor out on bail," she whispered. "Using my wedding ring as collateral at a pawn shop."
I leaned against the doorframe, folding my arms. "Merry Christmas, Mom."
She looked up at me, tears spilling over her eyelids. "Your father's sitting in the car. He wants to talk to you. Not to yell. Just... to talk."
May you like
I looked past her down at the curb, where Dad's dented sedan sat idling in the cold, exhaust billowing into the frosty air.
"Tell him to come inside," I said. "I'll make coffee. But the checkbook stays closed."
