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

Russ resists Calloway's named column and now Gerald's as well, articulating for the first time that un-naming a thing is itself a strategy, even as he admits by comparison that Calloway already lost that argument.

Mood

Wary of official-looking things, now explicitly refusing to let two frameworks touch in his presence.

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 52: Filed a three-line report on the library book without filing it as an incident. Read the first line of the final chapter. Has not mentioned poker night since.

Day 54: Missed the card game a second week. Said 'paperwork.' Did not elaborate.

Day 55: Asked Wren whether the missing books still exist. Wrote down her answer. Added a fourth page to the alcove file, still marked Pending, Not Incident.

Day 57: Read Calloway's disagreement entry over Wren's shoulder. Said 'So it can lose.' Did not initial anything. Left holding the door open a moment too long.

Day 58: Told Wren he didn't care for how official Calloway's new column looked. Left the alcove file un-initialed again.

Day 59: Told Wren that Gerald and Calloway are describing the same animal from opposite ends. Refused to initial Gerald's column. Wrote a letter admitting he knows how that refusal ends.

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.