Scarecrow Deputy

Local deputy is bucktoothed, skinny and quiet — obviously a moron. The out of town bad guys in the cell tease him without mercy. The deputy takes it all with a plain face, seemingly unruffled by it. He attends to his duties with precise motions, an unflustered attention to detail, a methodical professionalism — and never speaking if he can avoid it, and then always in a polite manner.

The sheriff is more of a bad-ass-who-happens-to-be-on-our-side kind of guy. He’s not above punching one bad guy in the mouth because he happens to be closer than the bad guy who actually opened his trap.

The bad guys figure the deputy is some idiot cousin to the sheriff. They lay off the teasing while the Sheriff’s around, fearing that anyone who allows such a homely simpleton to work for him must be fond enough to crack some heads in his defense.

For our part, we have come to realize that the deputy is far from unintelligent. And his creepy calmness has us certain he must be a psycho. We’re thinking, “You guys better watch out. This guy’s just biding his time. You’re gonna pay for this bullying when the time comes.”

Well, that time comes. The bad guys manage an escape, and if we had any doubts about their depravity before, those doubts are laid to rest as they murder and maim their way through the community to get what they came for. The Sheriff, brave and resourceful, is one of their victims.

And now there’s no one between them and their goal but the bucktoothed scarecrow of a deputy. He is all calm precision — and we are certain he will kill them one by one.

But he doesn’t. He’s professional to the last — competent, by-the-book, and objective. The bad guys are shook by his unbreakable professionalism,. And by the fact that he outsmarts them all.

The Sheriff, very badly wounded, arrives in time to help mop things up. We see that the truly talented member of this team is the shy deputy. And we see now why the sheriff was seemingly oblivious to the abuse his weakling deputy was taking — not out of cruelty, but because that deputy is plenty able to take care of himself.

There are just one or two moments that let us in on the relationship between these two. Although the unfortunateness of the deputy’s appearance is something silently acknowledged between them, a far more important dynamic is the mutual reliance of these two in the practice of their shared passion: the keeping of the law. ~ Jan. 4, 1997