Only by Your Touch

by Catherine Anderson

  Chloe gasped. “Oh, no. It did?”

  He chuckled. “Not a big deal. I’m slick with mud and tape.”

  “I feel terrible.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t. It wasn’t your fault. Methuselah has knocked most of the doorstops off the mopboards. He likes the twanging sound they make when he swats them, and he gets a little carried away.”

  Chloe pictured the half-blind, decrepit cougar swatting the doorstops. “How on earth does he find them?”

  “He seems to know they’re stock equipment for all doors. He’s working on the one in my mom’s room now. When he disappears, I follow the twangs.”

  A cougar, playing like a kitten. Ben Longtree definitely kept eccentric company.

  “What time do you get off work?” he suddenly asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  He gave another rusty laugh. “I have that coming, I guess. I was just thinking I could call with an update on the puppy, is all.”

  Chloe felt silly. “Oh, of course. I get off at eleven.”

  “I’ll give you a ring about thirty past if that’s not too late. Maybe there’ll be a change in his condition by then.”

  Chloe dreaded receiving that phone call. She didn’t expect the news to be good. “I’m always up until about one. Eleven-thirty isn’t too late.”

  “Until then.”

  She let the receiver slip into its cradle. For several seconds, she just sat there, going back over the conversation. Neither of them had said very much, but it felt as if they’d said a great deal. Chloe was relieved. He hadn’t sounded like a killer, and nothing she’d seen so far indicated that he was a raving lunatic, either. So why did so many people seem to distrust him?

  She began putting things on her desk back in order. The task reminded her of the talk she’d had with Bobby Lee.

  “Do you know Ben Longtree very well, Sue?”

  “As well as anyone, I guess. He’s not exactly a social butterfly.”

  “I get the impression that Bobby Lee dislikes him.”

  “They’ve never been what you’d call chummy. Even as far back as grade school, they had it in for each other.” Sue rose from her desk to get a cup of water from the corner dispenser. “I was a year behind them, so I don’t know what happened to cause the rift.”

  “How can two adults still be at odds over a childhood rift?”

  “I hear you.” Sue narrowed an eye, took careful aim, and threw the empty cup into the trash can by her desk. “Testosterone. Who can figure men?”

  “Did you hear Bobby Lee grilling me about Cinnamon Ridge?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. He’s a nice enough guy, and a good deputy. He’s just a little overzealous when it comes to Ben Longtree.”

  “That doesn’t strike me as being very professional. I was under the impression that personal issues were taboo in law enforcement.”

  “Strictly speaking, personal issues shouldn’t interfere with a police officer’s performance, but this is not a perfect world. You should’ve been here right after Deputy Joe Samples caught his wife in bed with the preacher.”

  Chloe gulped back a horrified laugh. “You’re kidding.”

  “That got really ugly. Joe kept his cool when he found them. Didn’t do anything except kick the guy out of his house. It was only the next day, after Joe had packed his bags and left, that he really lost it. For the next six months, his wife couldn’t drive anywhere without Joe pulling her over. I bet she could have wallpapered her living room with traffic citations.”

  “He’s still a deputy. I guess that means he got over it?”

  “With some coercive persuasion from the sheriff, he went to counseling. It helped that his wife and the preacher had a falling out, and she left town.”

  “The moral?”

  Sue’s green eyes danced with laughter. “That Bobby Lee may have a grudge against Longtree, but so far, he hasn’t stepped over the line to get something on him. If Bobby Lee ever does, the sheriff will jerk him up short.”

  “So I wasn’t imagining that Bobby Lee has it in for Ben.”

  “Definitely not.”

  Line one on Chloe’s phone started blinking. The call was from the bar up the road. Two men in the billiard room were cracking each other’s skulls with pool cues. After the call had been dispatched, Chloe filled out the customary report. By the time she had finished, Sue was busy. It was a few minutes later before either of them was free to resume their conversation.

  “There has to be some reason why Bobby Lee and Ben dislike each other,” Chloe mused aloud. “People don’t hold lifelong grudges over nothing.”

  Sue tossed her report into a basket on her desk. “Maybe it’s because Ben’s better looking, and Bobby Lee doesn’t like the competition. Who knows? Ben was a loner and marched to his own drumbeat. There were always stories circulating in school—off-the-wall stuff—that made him a favorite topic of gossip. It was negative attention, but I think Bobby Lee resented him because of it.”

  “What kind of off-the-wall stories?”

  “My favorite was the cat story. It got hit by a car. A tire had supposedly run over its hips, and it was trying to drag itself off the road. Several kids were standing around wondering what to do when Ben showed up. The story went that he laid his hands over the poor thing’s hindquarters, and the cat took off running like it had never been hurt. My friend Sally swore she saw it happen. Ben claimed the cat was just stunned, not hurt, but the more popular version was that he performed Shoshone magic and healed the poor thing.”

  “Which story did you buy?”

  “Which one do you think? Ben was born here. He’s what, a quarter Indian? I think the poor cat was just stunned. Unfortunately, the truth’s never as exciting as fiction. Bobby Lee always craved the limelight. He sweat blood to excel in school, pulling high grades, campaigning for student body president, and becoming a star quarterback. Compared with Ben’s Shoshone magic, all his accomplishments seemed pretty mundane.”

  “So he grew to resent Ben.”

  “That’s just my take.”

  “And your take on Ben? Do you like him?”

  “The truth? I used to have the world’s worst crush on him. I can’t remember what grade it was, but I was a big-time pain in the neck, I’m sure. A lot of boys would’ve told me to get lost, but Ben was kind to me.” A distant expression entered her eyes. “When we were growing up, I felt sad for him.”

  “Why is that?”

  “His father, Hap, was a drunk. A mean drunk, by all accounts—the kind who liked to fight and always picked on smaller men so he’d be sure to kick ass. A guy like that doesn’t turn into a pussycat when he walks in the door at night. Ben’s mother, Nan, rarely came to town, but folks claim she always had bruises when she did. I don’t imagine Ben and his sister escaped the abuse entirely.”

  Chloe thought of Nan, with her sweet smile and gentle manner. “How sad. If things were that bad, I wonder why she didn’t leave him.”

  “Chances are she never went to college or even had a job before she got married.”

  “We’ve come a long way, I guess.”

  “Thank God. Even nowadays, though, it takes a lot of guts to strike out on your own when you’ve got kids to keep in shoes.”

  Chloe could testify to the truth of that.

  “What was Ben like as a boy?”

  “Gentle. Or maybe kindhearted would be a better word. He didn’t have it in him to hurt anyone or anything—unless he got pushed into it.”

  “Pushed?”

  “Yeah. For example, we had a retarded girl at our school named Mandy Jean. Her parents didn’t make her bathe, so she was dirty, and the boys on the bus used to torment her. One day, they knocked her books out of her arms when we got off at the stop, and every time she tried to pick one up, someone would kick it farther up the sidewalk. Ben lived out of town, so he didn’t get off there, but evidently he saw what was happening as the bus pulled away, got off at the next stop, and ran all the way back.”

  C
hloe propped an elbow on her desk and rested her chin on her hand. “What happened?”

  “He squared off and gave the boys a choice. They could push Mandy Jean’s books back to the corner with their noses or have a knuckle sandwich for their after-school snack.”

  “And they did it?”

  “You’ve seen Bobby Lee’s grin. He’s still got his teeth, doesn’t he?”

  “Bobby Lee was one of the boys tormenting her?”

  Sue laughed. “He was a brat. He wasn’t driving yet. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. Boys are ornery at that age.”

  Unless they were gentle souls. “Poor Mandy Jean.”

  “After that, they backed off, afraid Ben would rearrange their faces.”

  “So he is capable of violence.”

  “Aren’t we all? Ben wasn’t a kid to go looking for trouble. He just couldn’t tolerate cruelty of any kind. If he saw someone kick a dog, he went ballistic.”

  “Do you—?” Chloe paused, feeling almost guilty for asking the question. “Do you think he’s dangerous, Sue? Bobby Lee seems to think he might harm me or Jeremy, that he’s genetically predisposed to violence.”

  “Genetically?” Sue rolled her eyes. “If our genes control our behavior, God help us all.”

  “That’s my feeling, too.”

  “That isn’t to say you shouldn’t be careful,” Sue hastened to add. “He did kill a guy. I just don’t think his genes had anything to do with it.”

  Chapter Six

  The pup was losing ground fast. Ben sat at the table, listening to the rattle of the dog’s breathing. It wouldn’t be long, a few minutes, maybe an hour. He’d turned off the lights. It was more peaceful in the shadows. Having failed to save the little guy, Ben at least wanted to make him as comfortable as possible at the end.

  It was always difficult when he lost a patient. Life was sacred, and every creature, large or small, mattered to him. But it was doubly hard to fail when he knew a child would grieve as a result.

  “He’s dying, isn’t he?”

  Lost in his thoughts, Ben hadn’t heard his mother enter the kitchen. “Yeah, I’m afraid so. I’ve done all I can, and he just isn’t responding.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. That little boy loves him so.”

  His neck ached with tension. Even in the dimness, he could see the lucidity in her expression. It was strange, how she drifted in and out. The doctor said it was common with milder forms of Alzheimer’s, especially at first, but Nan had had the disease for five years. On the one hand, Ben was glad her condition hadn’t deteriorated, but it hurt when she came back to him this way, only to leave again.

  “I remember another boy who loved his dog.”

  Ben nodded. “Yeah, me, too.”

  “For months afterwards, you’d go missing, and when I went searching, I’d find you outside, sitting under that old tree beside his grave. All that winter and the following summer, you kept vigil. At times I wondered if you’d ever get over it.”

  “In ways, I never have.”

  “I hope little Jeremy doesn’t take it that hard. His heart was in his eyes today while he was petting that puppy.”

  “It’s out of our hands now, Mom.”

  “No, never that. As long as there’s life, there’s hope.”

  Ben stared into the darkness.

  “There’s nothing quite so beautiful as a child and dog, running and playing together on a sunny day. Just imagine, being able to make that happen.”

  His throat felt so thick, he could barely reply. “You’re tired, Mama. Why don’t you go along to bed?”

  “Yes, very, very tired.” She moved closer to rest a hand on his shoulder. “I love you, Ben. Do you know how much?”

  He stroked her frail wrist with his thumb. “I love you, too. Never doubt it.”

  “I don’t. What breaks my heart is that you no longer love yourself.” Ben could almost feel the sadness emanating from her. “As a mother, I’ve countless regrets, but the one that haunts me most is that I let him do this to you.”

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself. You did all you could.”

  “Did I?” She let the question hang there a moment. “It’s always easier to say we’ve done all we can, isn’t it? But it’s seldom true. We can always do more—if only we find the courage.” She tightened her grip on his shoulder. “Seeing you like this would break your grandfather’s heart. He was always so proud of you, and he tried so hard to teach you to be proud of yourself. Where has your pride gone, Ben? Why do you deny what you are?”

  “I’m not denying anything. Look at me.”

  “You wear the trappings.” She fingered the beaded thong around his neck. “I know you’re trying. I see you touch the medallion sometimes—to remind yourself, I think. ‘I am Shoshone.’ But those are only words, Ben, and the medallion is only a stone passed down to you by your grandfather. ‘Wear it with pride,’ he said. You were only seven years old the night he died, but he saw in you the man you’d one day become.”

  “And I’ve failed him. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, Ben. You’re failing yourself. And that’s the heartbreak of it, don’t you see? You’ve closed the door to your soul.”

  She drew away from him then, becoming part of the shadows again. He could hear her slippers shuffling over the tile as she left the kitchen. Long after the sound of her footsteps faded away, he sat there with his head bent, listening to Rowdy’s laborious breathing. He’d heard the death rattle too many times not to recognize it now.

  With a trembling hand, Ben reached out to stroke the puppy’s fur, thinking of Jeremy. In ten or twenty years, would the child look back and remember this time in his life with an ache in his heart? Even worse, would he eventually become like Ben, afraid to let himself love again?

  The thought made Ben ache with regret and myriad other emotions he couldn’t sort out or analyze. He allowed the weight of his hand to rest on the puppy’s heaving rib cage. Images of Jeremy and the dog running and playing together drifted slowly through his mind, like the turning pages of a picture book. His mother was right; there was nothing more beautiful than a child and dog romping together in the sunlight. And what a joy it should be to have the power to make that happen.

  Just once, Ben thought. How could it hurt if he did it only once? He closed his eyes, let the tension drain from his body, and curled his fingers over the puppy’s wasted body.

  When Chloe’s shift was over, she decided to drive home with her window down. Whispering Pines, the subdivision where she lived, lay ten miles west of town, a pocket of private land surrounded by national forest and countless small lakes that attracted fishermen. At this late hour there was never much traffic out that way. Normally, Chloe enjoyed driving the curvy, two-lane highway. But tonight, fearing she might fall asleep, she needed the wind in her face.

  As she nosed the Honda through town at a sluggish twenty-five, she loosened her hair and sighed with delight at the breeze moving over her. The scent of pine and manzanita from the woods made the air smell fresh and clean.

  As she turned left onto Shoshone Road, she accelerated and set her speed at fifty, slowing only when she passed one of the residential or business districts en route to the subdivision. The little store where she sometimes stopped to get Jeremy a treat was dimming its lights. The owner, a grossly overweight man, stood out by the gas island, balancing a clipboard on one hand. Just as Chloe passed, he bent over to read a pump meter. The waistband of his baggy jeans dipped low in back, flashing a broad expanse of bare rump that gleamed in the moonlight like the underbelly of a dead fish.

  She gulped back a startled laugh. Country living. Just last week, her brother Rob had asked if she missed the cultural diversity of Seattle. Heck, no. She had all the cultural diversity she could handle right here.

  She sighed as she reached her favorite stretch of the road, bordered on both sides by trees. Some five miles long, it was intensely dark, with a windy ribbon of moon-silvered asphalt stretching ahead of her a
nd a midnight-blue sky overhead, studded with thousands of stars. This was the Oregon she’d come to love as a girl when she’d vacationed here with her family, and it had been memories of this place that had drawn her back as an adult.

  As she turned off onto Whispering Pines Lane, a two-mile stretch that led to the housing district, Chloe slowed her speed, ever watchful for deer. No deer leaped out in front of her, but she did come upon a porcupine waddling up the center of the road. Jack Pine’s version of a traffic jam.

  Ringed by towering pines that blocked the moonlight, her front yard was cloaked in darkness when she pulled into the driveway. Tracy hadn’t turned on the porch light. The illumination inside the house, diffused by curtains at the windows, cast only a dim glow over the shrubs bordering the foundation. In the breeze, shadows shifted, creating sinister shapes.

  Chloe hesitated before exiting the car. Then, scoffing at herself for being a goose, she wrenched open the door, got out, and forced herself to walk, not run, to the steps. This was a sleepy town, the crime running to domestic disturbances, traffic infractions, and poaching, with an occasional fight at the bar to keep things interesting. She had no reason to feel uneasy.

  Foiled by darkness, she fished for her keys, which, like an idiot, she had dropped in her purse. Oh, duh. Sleep deprivation. Her brain was on autopilot. She fumbled to insert the key in the lock. When she pushed into the living room, Tracy, engaged in conversation on the kitchen phone, waved hello.

  “Gotta go. Chloe just came home. Yeah. Me, too.” She made kiss noises. “Bye.” After hanging up, she said, “Ooh, bummer. You look totally wiped. Was it a busy night?”

  “Not too.” Chloe limply patted the girl’s shoulder. “I’m just tired.”

  The supper dishes had been washed and stacked in the blue drainer. “You’re an angel, Tracy. Thanks for cleaning up.”

  “No problem.” Tracy’s brown hair was secured in a twist with a big purple clip. Glitter gel made her sweet face sparkle like a showgirl’s, and she’d slashed her skintight jeans in strategic places. “I put some clothes in the washer for you and ran the vac. Jer spilled his popcorn.”