It Needs to Look Like We Tried

by Todd Robert Petersen

  I fell asleep in the van and woke up to the sound of crunching gravel. Spit was running out of one corner of my mouth, and I rolled over on my book, crushing about a hundred pages. I came around the van looking for June’s car and instead saw a police cruiser, the same one from before. The chubby cop was letting June out of the back. June shook her head and protested. Chubby said something to her and handed her some Kleenex the skinny cop had passed along.

  She’s back, I texted. I wasn’t sure how to say the next part so it would signal the right amount of alarm, so I went plain: In a cop car. She was back, in a cop car.

  Margot burst out of the door first, followed by the daughters. When she saw them, June tried to shut the cruiser’s door, but Chubby stood in the way. Skinny pulled the older daughter aside and said, “She was shoplifting again, Jaymee. Manager said they’ve had enough, and they’re through with her.”

  The girl stared at the driveway and ground her teeth. “You know she can’t help it,” she said.

  “Walmart doesn’t care,” Skinny said. “She’s banned. And they’re going to prosecute.”

  “Where’s the car?” Jaymee asked.

  “You’ll have to get it from impound.”

  The next one out of the house was Bill, with a camera on his shoulder. Vogel came next, talking on his phone and at the same time pointing and telling Bill if he stopped taping he’d have his head. Margot told Bill to cut. The two of them went back and forth. Bill kept shooting because even though he was a putz, he had the instincts to get it down. He’d reflect on the ethics once he shot the tape. Gavin, Farm, and Karin came out last.

  The girls swarmed their mother. Margot pushed in as close as she could, but it was clear this discussion was for the family.

  Skinny gathered all of us together. “Y’all probably feel like you have a right to be here on the property. But given the situation, I think the respectful thing to do here is clear out for a while.”

  “What happened?” Margot asked.

  The cop pointed at Bill. “He needs to turn that off.”

  “I have the right to film this, officer,” Bill said.

  “I’m not talking about your rights, mister. I’m talking about you being a decent human being.”

  “Bill?” Margot said.

  “You’re calling cut?” Bill asked.

  “I’m calling cut.”

  Bill unshouldered the camera, but he didn’t turn it off. By the angle of it in his hand, I could tell that he was still trying to frame a shot. Neither of the cops seemed to notice. Skinny told us June was in some trouble. “She’s embarrassed and tired and doesn’t want to go back in the house with y’all still being here.”

  Margo asked what she’d done and Skinny said, “Well, that’s none of your business, lady.”

  In the window upstairs, where I’d first seen the two daughters a couple of days before, I spotted Hoot again, staring down on us as the girls got their mother out of the police car. I followed the invisible lines of his gaze and found they led to June, who stood there in the middle of everything, looking back at Hoot. A message moved across the distance. It was impossibly sad to watch them this way. June shook her head. Hoot put his hands on the window, which pulled the shadows away from his face. And June shook her head again. The police said something nobody heard, then got in their car and drove off.

  Hoot disappeared from the window and a minute or so later burst out of the front door with his shotgun. Vogel and Bill were away from the house getting video of the police car. Hoot was breathing like he’d been sprinting. His face was twisted and crazed. “Where is that shrimp?” Hoot howled.

  The daughters ran up to him, screaming, but he ignored them. He pointed the shotgun skyward and fired. Everyone crouched.

  Margot screamed, “Not again!”

  Vogel ran to his car and popped the trunk.

  His two daughters were smart enough about guns to stay back, but screamed, “Daddy, don’t!”

  Hoot came through us fast, pumping the shotgun and fanning out to the side to get a clear shot, then he fired once above Vogel’s head, making him duck.

  Time slowed. That’s the one thing movies get right. Karin and I grabbed people and got them down, covered their bodies with our own. Vogel dodged behind the Maserati. Hoot bellowed, broke open the shotgun, and reloaded. Vogel reappeared with a pistol he must have kept in his bag. Without a second of hesitation he fired two shots into Hoot. The first made him drop his shotgun. The second turned him sideways before he crumpled to the ground. Bill had the camera back on his shoulder. When Vogel saw that Hoot was down, he advanced and continued shooting into Hoot’s fallen body until his weapon was empty.

  Even when you’ve been under fire before, it’s easy to lose clarity, but with training you can overcome it. In the silence that followed Vogel’s last shot, Karin ran straight at him. In two blindingly quick moves, she first disarmed him then incapacitated him with a hand thrust to the throat. Suddenly he was upside down on the ground with his gun hand pointing straight in the air and Karin standing over him. Vogel was coughing and cursing at her, his hand and wrist cranked almost backward. Karin threw the pistol behind her. Vogel kicked, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

  I ran over to Hoot, rolled him over, and tried to find a pulse. Blood surged once or twice out of his mouth. His eyes were open, but it was over. I’d seen this plenty of times. There was no life in him. Sounds came back one by one. The girls were crying. June was on the other side of me, kneeling, with her head all the way down on her husband’s chest.

  Next thing I knew those cops were back. Skinny was questioning Vogel. Chubby got down on his knees and looked like he was about to start CPR. I put my hand out to stop him. “I was a special ops combat medic in Afghanistan, brother. He’s done.”

  Chubby didn’t respond, he just ducked his head toward the mic of his radio and called it in. “I need an ambulance here, stat.”

  Everyone was sitting around with bottles of water, giving statements. At first it didn’t look like they were going to arrest Vogel. I mean, they didn’t treat him any different than the rest of us. They took his driver’s license and concealed carry permit and checked him out. After a few minutes, once they had sized things up, they came back with handcuffs, and their attitudes had changed 180 degrees. They pushed him around, and their voices were louder, more clipped.

  Vogel protested. “Hey, I’m the good guy here. We’re all lucky I came prepared. That idiot came out shooting at us. I just returned fire.”

  Skinny said, “Shut up, Han Solo, it doesn’t matter who shot first. You’re named in a federal indictment for some kind of Wall Street fraud. There’s a warrant out for you and Barbara Stein. Then there’s everything you did here. Charles Simone Vogel, you are about as under arrest as a person can get.”

  “Simone?” Chubby asked.

  “Shut up,” Vogel snapped.

  They read Vogel his rights and took him to the car.

  DURING THE REST OF THE day there were more sirens. The ambulance came and went. Then there were more cars, neighbors, social workers, and reporters. It was a very long day. Everybody was still taking care of business in front of the house because nobody could get inside. June and the girls sat in some ratty old lawn chairs, and a social worker with a clipboard was telling them somebody would come in the next day or so to walk them through funeral arrangements. She asked June if Hoot was a veteran, and she nodded her head.

  While this was happening, I noticed the police assembling around the door end of the storage unit. One of them had a bin of hair ties and clips. They were all shaking their heads and a couple were laughing. I went over to them quick and said, “Hey, look. Don’t let her see you went in there.”

  One of the cops said, “The jerk with the camera told us to have a look.”

  The short cop from before resumed their conversation and said, “It’s just like the stuff we picked her up for. There’s tons of it inside, just like this. What do we do?”

  “What
about a search warrant?” another cop asked.

  “Not necesary when it’s an active crime scene,” Chubby countered.

  At this point, June noticed people were gathering. “You don’t have permission,” she said. When they didn’t hear her, she shouted it again. “You don’t have permission!” When she saw that they had already been inside, she closed her eyes and trembled until she got it together enough to turn and run inside, slamming the door behind her.

  The daughters slumped forward in their chairs. The older girl cradled her head in both hands, and the younger one pulled her legs up and curled into a ball behind them.

  There was a flash of light from one of the windows on the ground floor where we’d been shooting the interviews. The nature of that flash didn’t process for any of us while we tried to figure out what we’d done. A few minutes later we all saw June move frenetically from window to window across the upstairs.

  Margot gathered us up and said we should pack our gear and get back to LA. She said she’d briefed the studio, and they seemed relieved to hear Vogel was in jail. I got the sense that Chuck Vogel was the loosest of loose cannons, and despite the trouble of having to clean up this mess and despite how much PR work for this would be, the studio was thinking of this as a simple way out of a contract.

  Gavin and Farm asked if I would help them load out, and as we went back into the house, we could smell smoke.

  “It’s the lights,” Farm said, once at a whisper, then again, screaming. We ran out of the house to get the fire trucks, which were gone now. It was just the police and the social worker.

  Gavin ran to tell the cops, but by then, flames were licking their way across three of the ground-floor windows.

  Skinny was on his radio. “Negative,” he said. “Send everything you got. There’s a woman trapped on the second floor.” He looked up at the top story and you could see his shoulders sag. “Affirmative. There’s no way to go through the house.”

  There was nothing any of us could do. The Jessup girls were screaming at the police to do something. June came to the open window and placed her hands on the screen. Black smoke boiled out of the soffits and you could already hear the roar of the flames. Everyone was encouraging June to climb out the window and jump. Smoke filled the upstairs windows, and as we heard the approaching sirens, June closed the window and fell away from our sight. We didn’t see her again. We were watching for something: a hand or maybe for the window to open.

  The fire was so intense it pretty much had to burn itself out. Bill shot all kinds of video, and everybody was too tired to tell him to leave it alone. Eventually somebody came for the girls so they could be taken to stay with relatives. By the time we left, it was dark, and the orange flames shot sparks a hundred feet into the air.

  When I came back in the morning, the whole place was as flat and black as a skillet. I don’t know why I came back, but I felt like I needed to see it. Nobody else wanted to come, so I was out by myself. On the way back to the motel, I stopped for something to eat, but I didn’t have the appetite.

  Instead, I called my sister to tell her what happened, and all she could say was “Darryl, that’s horrible” and “What will those poor girls do?” The conversation didn’t go the way I’d hoped, so eventually I told her I was sorry but I had to hang up.

  When people ask about that day, I tell them yes, Chuck Vogel shot that man, and yes, it was on purpose. I tell them yes, he thought he was defending himself, and no, he was not actually in danger. I tell them that it doesn’t matter if there was rock salt in the shotgun. I tell them about trying to drive in Iraq, where everything—baby carriages, backpacks, a crate of cantaloupes, a lady in an abaya, any of it could be a bomb. It stops mattering what it is, and it only matters what it looks like it is. That is the legacy of this world. Appearance trumps reality. I tell them that the real tragedy had nothing to do with Vogel. It was the rest of us who killed June Jessup.

  The police kept us there a couple more days, lawyers deposed us, said that since there were plenty of local witnesses, they would let us know what they needed from us. They wanted Bill’s tape. He protested, and Margot said they could have it. We could go home, but they’d probably want us back for the trial.

  It was obvious, though, that Vogel was also going to stand trial back in New York on the federal charges. With a manslaughter charge on top of it all. Vogel’s life was done, really. He’ll get some of what’s coming to him. Some of it. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Folks in the middle, like us, we neither suffer nor prosper. Those Jessup kids are orphans now, and homeless. They aren’t babies, and they have their wits, so they’ve probably got a chance if they don’t end up in the system.

  Once the police and the lawyers released us, the crew came to me and asked if it would be cool if they just flew home. None of them felt like driving for two or three more days. Truth be told I wanted to be alone for a while, too, maybe take a detour and see the Grand Canyon. No amount of talking was going to make any of this feel better, and it had every chance of making me feel worse. I told them I’d deliver them to the airport and take the van and gear back to LA.

  I thought about trying to find those Jessup girls so I could offer my condolences, but I didn’t believe it would change anything. Sometimes you have to walk away from trouble or you make it worse.

  From the airport, I found my way onto the interstate heading west. It was a very long, straight, and uneventful road, but the skies over the panhandle had gone weird, full of heavy-bellied, green clouds, and way off in the distance thin, blue-white bolts of lightning lit up the horizon.

  I turned on the satellite radio and drove. Normally I am an audiobook man, but there was no story I could imagine that would take my mind off the last week. Silence seemed like an even worse threat. I picked the 80s on 8 station because it seemed like the best way to shut off my brain, but I should have known, from repeated experience, that the radio or shuffle mode has a way of dropping a song in my lap that makes me seriously doubt that anything in the world is actually random.

  After Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” ended, the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” came on. I knew the song by the simple guitar intro. I also knew that I’d done more than my part keeping it together while everything was falling apart. As the drums came in, I moved lane by lane to the right and crossed the rumble strip. As the opening lines hit—“Watch out. You might get what you’re after”—I clicked on the hazard lights and let the song do its thing.

  Everything at that point was more than I could handle.

  5

  Providence

  FRANCIS BUGG EMERGED FROM HIS trailer into the shellac of morning light, stretched his arms and lower back, then descended the plank steps. Bugg was a tall, thin man with a compact white mustache, crew cut, massive hands. He carefully unlooped the garden hose and watered the two half barrels of flowers that hid the wheels of his trailer.

  Despite the general ramshackle condition of the trailer park, Bugg’s place was modest, tidy, and organized. A white Ford F-250 with new tires was parked in front, but off to one side, leaving room for a bright orange Honda Civic with a massive chrome spoiler mounted on back.

  Bugg dragged the hose deliberately along a gray gravel path so he could water a few shrubs that accented each end of the trailer. This ritual took a few minutes, and Bugg seemed to delight in completing this one simple task with focus and precision. When he was done, Bugg coiled the hose and took note of the sky, which was darkening. The clouds were faintly drooping underneath, which Bugg knew meant trouble. He made a mental note to check the Weather Channel when he went inside.

  As he continued to scan the sky, his ear caught the bickering of three tiny finches quarreling with each other around the bird feeder. One finch, with a seed in its beak, was twisting its head wildly, eyeing the others, who lunged in fearlessly. Bugg watched for a moment longer, then went over to the bird feeder and shook a little seed into the palm of his hand, which sent the bird
s in all directions. He took a couple of steps to neutral ground and made a bubbling call through his teeth that sounded exactly like the finches. The birds flew past him and watched him extend his hand and repeat the call.

  Gingerly, one bird swooped in and landed on Bugg’s hand, where he began picking at the seed. Neither of the other two would venture in, so Bugg gently tipped some seed into his other hand and made the call again. A second finch came forth and began to peck.

  The third finch, seeing the others being fed, dropped the sunflower seed in its mouth and tried to push in, first on the bird in Bugg’s left hand, then on the bird in his right. Bugg turned his head to avoid the flutter of flapping wings and tiny claws. After a few seconds of pandemonium, Bugg clapped his hands together, scattering the seed and sending each bird in a different direction.

  Bugg shook his head and turned to find his son staring down at him with a smile on his face.

  “Didn’t think that one through,” Bugg said, almost shouting. The boy shook his head and pointed to his ears. Bugg nodded and then signed, Good idea. Bad ending.

  His son, Eric, signed back, Birds. I thought you would smash them. He spoke the sentence, too, but it was difficult to make sense of it. Eric stood above Francis on the porch laughing, wearing nothing but a pair of orange Oklahoma State basketball shorts. He was an Adonis, always able to make Francis stop in his tracks. He was naturally strong and thin. His hair swept effortlessly back and his jaw was angled heroically away from his chin.

  Lately, the boy had been in trouble at school and with the police, couldn’t keep a job. Each one a small thing on its own, but all of them led in a direction Francis could line up with a ruler, pointing to the kind of trouble Francis had seen waxing strong in the world for the last forty years.