by James Sallis
“During your service?”
“Just after.”
The largest raccoon I ever saw walked in the open door.
“Hold on,” Mole said. “Short Girl’s hungry.”
He took a plate from a shelf by the sink, opened a plastic container and scooped out kibble. Put the plate down by the door.
“Used to bring the whole family around, quite a sight, but the little ones are gone now, I guess. She shows up regular, sometimes twice a day.”
Short Girl, it turned out, was a delicate eater. We sat watching her pick a single piece from the plate, chew, go back for another. After a while I said, “Cal called me once when he’d been gone a while—just the one time. Said when he first got back home he’d been messed up. Did things he regretted.”
“Lots of us came back with a load on, you know how that is. We never talked about it.”
Short Girl finished her food and went thumping down the stairs, stopping for water at the galvanized pan outside before going back to her other, her real, life.
15.
Morning mists were still burning away when I found the body.
Cars sat in driveways and at curbside, homemade trailer outside the garage, just as Mrs. Danzig described. Drapes were drawn, mailbox hanging vertical by the single remaining screw and choked with mail. No response to the bell, which I heard ringing inside, or to vigorous knocks.
I went back to the car and got my crowbar out of the trunk. The door gave easily, bolt tearing its way out of soft wood with hardly a sound. Stepping inside, I heard music from deeper within, music that stopped me cold for a minute. It wasn’t baroque, something soft and mildly jazzy instead, but music, the lock tearing out of the frame—everything began to feel like the day I’d walked into Mr. Patch’s house and found him in the bathtub. Dead, like Cindy Brolin.
Mr. Patch had looked at peace. Miss Brolin didn’t.
She had hanged herself in the bathroom, from a ceiling joist, with a length of bright yellow plastic rope. It had done its job, then over time stretched to the point that her feet dragged the floor beneath bent knees. As though she were kneeling. The footstool she had used lay on its side nearby. She’d been up there, I figured, three to four days, maybe more. There was no note I could find. A book of cartoons lay perfectly aligned on the back of the toilet. She had fresh red polish on her toenails.
I called it in to the office, went next door to tell Mrs. Danzig what had happened, then back to the house to wait for the ME and body pickup. There was little of a personal nature on Cindy Brolin’s computer. Emails that looked to be mostly work related; hopscotch visits to commercial websites for women’s clothing and collector’s costume jewelry; legal case files, updates for which petered off and, as of two months ago, all but stopped.
The unreasonable silence of the world, as Dr. Balducci, by way of Camus, once said.
Images like that, Cindy Brolin’s head and face, the bright yellow rope, how it stretched so that she was kneeling, they stay with you. You start to remember all the other deaths. You think of the cat you found in the back yard when you were five or six. Her body and legs were stiff, she was breathing faster than seemed possible, her eyes were oddly white and fixed straight ahead. She knew you were there, you could sense that, but she didn’t respond. Did she understand what was happening? Was she fighting against death? Kneeling beside her and stroking her matted fur, you named her Missy. You told her it was okay, she could just let go, it was okay.
Mayor Baumann had taken a dislike to me for my correcting him on points of law. At some level, I was pretty sure, he was also pissed off that I hadn’t found Cal and brought him back, in order to get rid of me if nothing else. It was Cal, naturally, to whom I owed much of the knowledge allowing me to correct the mayor.
At any rate, lunch with Will Baumann was never a free meal. You could ignore the glad-handing, his sidelong glances to see who might be looking on, interruptions from shoppers satisfied or displeased with furniture purchased at W. Baumann & Son. But a summons is a summons, be it to court or to a session of favor bartering.
Stu Coleman’s development plans, championed by the mayor, had gone south shortly after I stepped in as acting sheriff, nixed by townfolk. Since then he’d given up what I thought to be flirtation but was never sure. Could be it was just another shape for what he was at heart, a salesman, same as his politics. Or simply another verse of the age-old whale song of the white American male.
Today, budget cuts joined our soup ’n’ sandwich specials on the table. Revenues were declining, taxes rising, more than one business was steps away from nailing the doors shut, the school system stayed aloft on blind faith, the hospital was on economic life support.
And the sheriff’s department, of course, had its part to sing in this chorus of belt tightening and dollar pinching. Austerity measures, as Europeans call them. Surely I understood.
I looked at him over my club sandwich and waited.
What it came down to, though it took most of my sandwich and soup to get there, was that I had to let one of my people go.
“Like Moses to the Pharoah.”
“Come on, Sarah, help me out here. It’s for the town.”
“Will, I get paid half what a decent housepainter does. For that I’m called on to ride herd on the town’s kids, settle marital disputes, monitor traffic, track down the occasional thief, plow my way into bar fights, confront all kinds of people hell bent on trouble. Not that I should get paid more—I’m an amateur, no question. And no one else in the department’s adequately trained for what they’re called on to do, either. The town’s consistently refused to pay for that. But my people do it anyway. They pull down just over minimum wage. Their checks pay rent, buy a sack or two of groceries, cover most of the bills unless something happens, the car breaks down, maybe, or someone gets sick.”
“We don’t have the money, Sarah. It’s that simple.”
“Only if you’re looking at it simply.”
“Why does every conversation with you have to turn into an argument?”
“The town’s not a furniture business, Will. Not just what comes in, what goes out. But look, I have a solution for you.”
Mattie had brought us both coffee by this time. The mayor lined up three packets of sweetener, tore them open all at once, and dumped them in.
“Instead of a civics lesson?” he said.
“You need to trim one person from the department, right?”
“As I said.”
“Then I’m gone, everyone else stays. Problem solved.”
“What, take one for the team? You’re some kind of half-baked hero now?” He looked up to wave off an elderly man (furniture patron? political petitioner?) approaching the table. “Jesus. Even for you, this is out there.”
Mattie had brought the check with our coffee. The mayor picked it up, a bit more dramatically than warranted, and stood.
“Truth is, you’re seriously off, Sarah. Always have been.”
He was right, of course.
Even to the moment I said I had a solution, I had no idea I was going to say that about quitting. And when I did say it, immediately I felt sadness, a sense of loss, settle upon me. But I also felt relief.
Cal’s poster was still up, and I sat swiveled around in his chair looking at it.
in the time you’ve been discussing
the latest celebrity’s tummy tuck
44 veterans have committed suicide
Cal’s poster, Cal’s chair, Cal’s people, Cal’s job. Mine now. We’d see.
Sometimes it’s like you go on practicing for the performance day after day without ever getting to read a script or know what your part is. Or you’re standing in the park with a map that says, in this big box with bold letters, you are here, and you know damn well you’re not.
Cal’s job. People’s pain.
Wh
at you see and feel in others, ultimately, is what you’re able to reach down and find in yourself.
The mayor had repeated his sentiments during a visit to the office later that afternoon (“I meant what I said about your being off, Sarah. You are. People sense it”) while at the same time pledging no interference, personnel cuts or otherwise, with the department. Not long after he left, KC reminded me it was six years this month that Will’s wife died in the traffic accident out on the loop, and that the store’s W. Baumann & Son was pure wishfulness. Donnie had decamped for the charms, anonymity and distance of the city late that same year.
I sat thinking of the mayor’s fixed smile and one-of-a-kind comb-over, how perfectly suited they would be to a ventriloquist’s dummy.
So much for deep thoughts and empathy.
So much, too, for our efforts to curtail drag races out by the old Pentecostal Church, news of which—one vehicle totaled, another in a ditch, serious injuries—reached us by phone as KC and I were talking. That kept us busy through the rest of the afternoon, past evening cicada calls, to dark. Interviews, photos, sketches, measurements. Danny Bevilacque, who’d been driving the crash, had at least a broken shoulder and leg; the ambulance guys took spinal precautions. Bo Dooley’d been in the ditch but seemed okay aside from bruises on his chest and arms and a goose egg over his right eye.
Both boys insisted they weren’t racing. Something went wrong with the accelerator, Danny said, it jammed, the cable broke, something. He’d finished a rebuild of the carburetor on his street car the day before and was out here trying it out when, coming into that long curve, he started picking up speed. Shifted down much as he could but—next thing he knew, he was halfway up a tree. Bo told us he’d driven his car into the ditch to get out of the way of Danny’s. From the look of the scene, weird as the stories were, they were telling the truth.
I got home well after dark and was standing in the kitchen eating an apple gone soft with time and a slice of cheese that I remembered looking quite different upon purchase, when the refrigerator door, shingled as it was with restaurant menus, special-offer coupons, photos, an anonymous picture postcard from Minnesota, a letter or two I’d meant to answer, to-do lists long forgotten, and images torn from magazine pages, caught my eye.
Patterns. The whole of it, taken in all at a glance, looked the same as before. But as my eye passed over the door and its layers, my subconscious snagged on it, and upon inspection subtle misplacements seemed evident: an edge out of kilter, altered spacings, curled edges that hadn’t been. A rate-increase note from the power company that I barely remembered had migrated to the top. Someone had been in here. Someone had gone through this, then put everything back just as it was. Almost as it was.
Who? And why almost?
16.
“What happens is, you get down toward the end and you hope your life, though you can’t see this however hard a look you take, you hope your life had some shape to it. Not meaning or a purpose, that brand of bullcrap. Just that it had a shape, wasn’t some glob of stuff slapped on a plate.”
Abel Holland was eighty-two years old. Claiming “cognitive problems,” multiple incidents of inappropriate behavior or speech, and general unfitness to care for himself, two of his children were trying to have him declared incompetent. The third disagreed and, as the disagreement escalated, I got called in.
Hard to say what was behind this. Usually it’s money or possessions, sometimes no more than a power play. None seemed to apply in this case. Abel had few possessions and lived off Social Security. There was nothing to exercise power over—except, of course, one another. Nor did the two petitioners manifest much by way of emotional concern for their father. There’s little that’s uglier than such intra-family disputes.
What Abel was saying made perfect, plain sense to me. But it didn’t to the two pressing hard for a judgment against their father. They never so much as stopped to think about what he was saying, simply took it as further evidence of Abel’s instability. About all we could do (as Judge Islip and I discussed afterward) was counsel them on probable outcomes should their behavior continue. Once you’ve shut down communication and blocked out logic and common sense, there’s nothing left to you but digging in harder.
At one point as Abel and I spoke, I called him sir and he started up laughing. Spent eighty-two years getting called by names, he said, boy, nigra, colored, ever kind of name, but sir, that’s a first. Just you look round us. Here in this courthouse where people of every stamp get brought together. And here we sit, a woman lawman and an old black man, together. Now that’s a shape, Miss Sheriff. That, I swear by everything I’ve seen in my life, that surely is a shape, yes it is.
Hours later I reiterated my conversation with Abel Holland as Sid and I sat outside at a pie-slice divot of town sidewalk a new coffee bar had appropriated. “It’s not unusual,” he said, “for cultures to believe that to name something is to call it into being, even to have power over it.” Earlier, in a light-footed remark carrying hidden weight, he’d expressed wonder and joy at my being free for the evening. We’d both feigned not to notice.
“But right now,” he said, draining his cup, “what I’m looking to name is some food.”
“Definitely could do with power over that.”
“Chinese sound good?”
“Whoa. Big spender.”
“Your turn to pay.”
“Then strike that last remark.”
Jenni was at the table almost before we sat, carrying tea and a tray of tiny egg rolls, making her usual fuss over us. Hadn’t seen us in so long, how goes keeping the streets safe and people honest, had we had a chance to get away for a spell, decompress, take some deep breaths? She’d recently returned from a trip to China with her grandfather, to the village he was born in, her first visit ever. She was still trying to decide what she thought and felt about all she’d seen.
The bowling alley back home had mirrors mounted to either side. You’d lift your ball, glance at the mirror on the right, and there you were. The one on the left would have the same image mixed with a reflection of what came from the right mirror, and the right in turn (at least in imagination) would reflect both, arm after arm lifting bowling ball after bowling ball.
That’s what Thursday felt like.
A state-wide bulletin waited when I got in that morning. There’d been a string of robberies at convenience stores in the north part of the state. Two males, one white, one possibly Hispanic, both late twenties to early thirties. The darker-skinned man carried a gun, what sounded from descriptions to be a .22. Small sums gained each time, as one would expect, most of these stores, chain and mom-and-pop alike, having gone to dropboxes. No pattern to time of day the stores were hit. And no real violence, yet.
I pulled up a state map on the computer and located the sites. They formed a series of lazy z’s trending southward, always off the highways, swinging between state roads and side roads. Not much more to be gleaned from this, but the course the two were on, such as it was, conceivably could bring them close to Farr. I made a note to alert everyone to add multiple drive-bys for Joe’s QuikE, Grab-Go and others to their routine patrols.
Much of the rest of the morning was given over to quarrel, gritch, grieve and their many kin. Smashed shelves during a confrontation over price at Meyers Clothing, kids who should have been in school brought in for tagging, a storeowner demanding we arrest a homeless man hanging around downtown, a young woman with no identification who’d been going from car to car trying doors in the mall parking lot.
Then, late afternoon, it started raining and looked as though it would go on forever. Our windows became rivers. Outside, cars ploughed at 15 mph through water halfway up their tires. The roof leak we’d had outside the supply room ever since I’d been here turned from drips and plops to a steady thin stream. We began to field calls for impassable roads, abandoned vehicles, parents frantically seeking children
, wellness checks on aged relatives. At three-thirty the back door swung open to the downpour and Brag, who’d gone home after his night shift, splashed in. We could have wrung enough water out of his clothes to fill a truck bed.
“Figured you could do with some extra help.”
“All we can get,” KC said.
Phones rang, one after another and at the same time, out in the front offices as well. City clerk, traffic division, records.
“Always be waiting for rainbows, don’t we?” KC said between calls.
“For all we know, there’s one out there now.” Brag had changed to spare clothes he kept in his locker. The clothes looked drier. He still looked soaked through. “No way we’d see it.”
Already on the phone again, KC nodded.
Convenience-store robberies, break-ins, tagging kids, homeless men and foraging women had lost whatever urgency they had.
The rain slacked off toward seven. Thanks in large part to the wrecker and driver from Bing’s Garage and to Brag, who left phones behind to brave again the swamp outside, the streets were mostly clear by nine-thirty. We decided that, further emergencies excepted, we’d all done enough for the day, closed down the office, and redirected calls to myself and KC. Stars began to show one by one, surfacing through the cloud cover. A light wind followed. It smelled of decay and new growth.
Sid and I had planned to have dinner together that night. Finally home, I found his note.
Called the department and couldn’t get through. Don’t know when or if you’ll make it out of there. If you do, there are curried vegetables and rice in the oven, just need a warmup. Call tomorrow?
Given the circumstance, I wasn’t sure if the last sentence was meant as an entreaty to me or was asking permission. That’s the wobbly, knock-kneed state of mind I was in. I ate the rice and vegetables cold as I stood listening to bugs fly against screens and skitter down them, sent Sid an email of apology and thanks, and fell into bed still dressed.