Gallowsburg

The big sales conference was a perfect excuse for a road trip.

I could have flown, but the math said it was cheaper to drive. A good salesman always does the math and believe me, I was nothing if not a good salesman!

And besides, I love taking long drives. Or maybe I should say I loved it, back when I was still alive.

Yeah, I'm dead now.

What? You've never heard a dead man's story before?

Well, death happens to the best of us and when it does, it's not always pretty. If only we all got to choose how we went out, right?

My own ending was pretty violent, but to be honest with you? In hindsight I wouldn't have had it any other way.

The way I went wasn't exactly pretty, but the ladies who did me in certainly were. And by the time I was on my way out? Gotta admit, I was definitely enjoying myself.

The name's Andy, by the way. Andy Brown.

Like I said, I was on a road trip. It was to a regional sales conference that was a very long drive away, so I had plenty of time to put on the cruise control, listen to some of my favorite music and take in the sights.

Of course, there's really not many sights to take in on the highways except for billboards, so I opted for the interstate routes up the coast. I was zooming down the road, feeling good, so relaxed that I wasn't even concerned when I was the signs warning me of an upcoming DETOUR.

These things happen, right? Just the price you pay when you take the slower, more scenic interstate roads.

Rolling with the punches, I told myself this slight detour would simply be an opportunity to visit one of these quaint little out-of-the-way rural towns. First rule of sales is, you gotta stay positive!

Yeah, this would be a chance to see the real America; the country that was built before all the strip malls and tract houses and suburban sprawl. Towns with one main street, a church, a town square and public park, and old-fashioned homes built by the great-grandparents of families still living in them today...

I used to daydream all the time about eventually settling down in a place like that. So when I excited the interstate and followed the DETOUR sign arrows onto a local road, I was smiling to myself at the thought that I might be checking out the kind of nice little town where - who knows? - I might end up spending the rest of my days, someday.

Soon, I saw a small town coming up over the horizon as the road I was became its main street. This was a very wide four-lane street, probably converted from the days of horses and buggies. I could see old-fashioned extra-wide sidewalks too, the kind that had also been built before automobiles.

The many wooden storefronts and one-story buildings of brick and mortar all gave the place the flare of the Old West. I figured it must have been one of those gold rush towns put up near the turn of the last century, which just kept puttering on through the decades as a sleepy little one-horse town, far off the beaten path...very charming.

It was early in the afternoon and main street was eerily empty. The kids were probably all in school, while the women stayed at home and the men all went to work. Without any visible signs of life, though, it felt like a bit of a ghost town and I almost expected to see tumbleweeds tumbling by.

My eyes scanned the area, and were drawn to a big, painted sign:

WELCOME TO GALLOWSBURG

est. 1885

pop. 2000"The Home of Justice"

A sickly feeling was creeping up on me.