I shuffled sideways on the Court House chair, the hard wood like a slab of concrete against my bony, seventy-year-old ass.

“Those chairs are stiffer’n a shotgun barrel, aren’t they?” Sheriff Taylor asked rhetorically, with a sly, infectious grin that served the dual purpose of implied apology and attempt to set me more at ease. I returned the smile and rubbed the small of my back, intimating that I had been glued painfully to a bus seat all day, when, of course, I had not.

I’m not sure why, but I sensed that he knew that my gesture of discomfort was a lie. I wondered how many people had underestimated the Good Sheriff and later had regretted it.

“Now then, Mr. Van Brunt,” he continued, the springs in his chair creaking as he tipped back a bit and then swiveled toward me, “what can I do for you?”

“Well, Sheriff,” I responded in as candid a voice as I could muster, “to tell you the honest-to-God truth, I’m looking for a place to retire…a nice, quiet little hamlet… and Mayberry’s reputation for ‘good, clean living’ has brought me here.”

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