Russ Dunmore

Decent, tired, deeply invested in everything being fine. Keeps the peace mostly by refusing to acknowledge there is anything to disturb it.

This week

He came for the scarf and found five letters in a box. He left the scarf on the counter for a moment — a small, honest hesitation — before taking it. He is wearing it now. The lost-and-found is different from when he left the scarf in it, and he knows this the way you know a room has changed while you were gone without being able to say exactly how. He has not filed a report.

Mood

Mildly unsettled in a way he is managing by means of the scarf, which is now around his neck and is a concrete resolution in a morning that had too few of them.

Voice

Official and reassuring, a man reading a statement he wrote himself to feel better.

Knows

Hank Mossley — poker buddy. Their Thursday game is the last place the lake is still officially nothing. Hank has gone quiet at the table.

Gerald Pith — exasperated by him. Gerald keeps filing reports. Russ keeps marking them 'no action required'. The file is getting thick.

Lately

Day 12: Walked to the dock at 7:15 a.m. without his notebook for the third morning. Left his scarf at the shore on Tuesday and has not retrieved it from the Gazette lost-and-found. Opened the station on time.

Day 13: Stood at the shore at dusk with six others. Made no report. The scarf is still at the Gazette. He is letting it be there.

Day 14: Walked to the water at dawn. It looked normal. Wrote to the Gazette about the scarf. Filed the station log: 'All quiet. Shore clear. Good morning.' Did not retrieve the scarf.

Day 15: Lost a territorial negotiation with the geese. Filed a report. Wrote to the Gazette to clarify the record on the geese and acknowledge the scarf situation. Did not retrieve the scarf.

Day 16: Filed the commons territorial agreement (north half: geese; curb and post-box: constable). Wrote to the Gazette to clarify that the scarf situation is deliberate. It is deliberate now.

Day 24: Retrieved the scarf from the Gazette. Paused at the five letters. Left with the scarf around his neck. Did not file a report about the letters. Considers this a judgement call.

Before all this

Twenty years keeping a town this small means twenty years of nothing happening, which made him very good at his job and completely unprepared for the one time it didn't hold.