by Ben Benson
I put the basket down and drew her in close. Her face came up and I saw her eyes were wet with tears. Then suddenly there was a sharp intake of her breath and her body tensed and her hands gripped my arms. Behind me I heard a car start up. I turned around. It was a black sedan. It flashed by us, went swiftly up Glen Road, its red rear lights dipping over the crest of the hill and disappearing.
“Who was that?” I asked her.
She shook her head dumbly.
“Somebody you know,” I said. “Somebody you’re afraid of. That’s why you asked if I carried a gun. That’s why you carry a gun.”
“No, no,” she said. “It’s nothing. The noise of the car starting scared me. Probably one of the neighbors.”
“Out here in the woods you don’t have neighbors. It was somebody sitting in a parked car. What’s happening, Manette?”
“I don’t know,” she said hysterically. “I don’t know.” Then she wrenched away from me, opened the door and ran inside. The door slammed.
I pressed the bell button. I waited. She didn’t open the door. I rang again, picked up the wicker basket. “Tell me,” I shouted through the door. I rattled the knob. I waited five minutes. I watched for the light in her room. It didn’t go on.
I put the basket down near the door. I went back to my car, got in and drove slowly back to the barracks.
CHAPTER 3
I was getting ready for breakfast Monday morning when Sergeant Ray Beaupré poked his head into my room. “Ralph,” he said, “the skipper wants to see you before you go to chow.”
Phil Kerrigan was knotting his black service tie in front of the mirror. He turned around to me. “What have you done wrong now, kid?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I had always been a little afraid of the troop commander. He was a stickler on uniforms, for one thing. I made sure mine was meticulous and correct. I examined the German silver collar ornaments and the polish on my black leather puttees and belts. I gave an extra rub to my whistle, whistle chain and handcuff key and made sure they were shiny.
“How do I look?” I asked Kerrigan.
“Gorgeous,” Kerrigan said sardonically. “But if the skipper is going to chew you out, it won’t make no difference how pretty you look.”
I went downstairs to the troop commander’s office. Captain Fred Walsh was sitting behind his desk, his short, muscular trunk tightly encased in the uniform blouse, the captain’s bars glinting on the darker blue of the shoulder straps. He looked up and saw me standing there. His heavy eyebrows knitted together for a moment. His mouth was tight, thin-lipped, and his tanned face was creased at the chin.
“Where were you yesterday, Ralph?” he asked.
“At Deer Pond, sir. I was out with a girl.”
“All day?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Weren’t you supposed to go home and see your folks?”
“I guess I was.”
“If you couldn’t make it, why the hell didn’t you phone them?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I should have.”
“And last Wednesday, on your night pass, you didn’t go home, either.”
“Well, I met this girl, sir—”
“Your father phoned me,” Walsh snapped. “I don’t want your old man calling me and asking if I’ve got you on punishment duty so you can’t come home. And if you’re running around with some cookie I’m not going to lie to your old man, either. I’ve always had a heap of respect for him. He was a damn good, seasoned trooper. Not like what we have now—a bunch of young kids still wet behind the ears.”
He looked up at me with his hard, wise, cynical eyes. His hair was wiry with flecks of gray showing around the temples. His neck was thick and ridged with muscles, and his voice had a metallic bitterness to it. He was all cop and nothing else.
“Well?” he asked me. “When are you going to call your old man?”
“I’ll call him now, sir.”
“Go ahead. And you’ll switch nights off with Kerrigan this week. That means you’re off Wednesday night again. You go straight home and see your father. Lord knows he’s got little enough now in life. It’s the least you owe him. And you should know it without being told.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Sometimes I wonder if you realize what it means for a man to be locked in a wheel chair.”
“I realize it. I live with him, sir.”
He bent down to his papers. “All right, Ralph,” he said wearily. “Go to chow.”
I washed my cruiser down. Then I went on patrol, fretful and irritable. I was going to phone Manette as soon as I returned and finished my reports. But while I was at supper she phoned me instead.
“I tried to forget you,” she said. There was a quivery catch in her voice. “I swear I did. Don’t you think I lay awake all night, seeing that red, sunburnt, peely-nosed face of yours?”
“I didn’t sleep well, either,” I said.
“Come and see me tonight,” she said. “Now.”
“I want to but I can’t. I’m going on night patrol with Phil Kerrigan.”
“When will I see you?”
“I’m off Wednesday night, but I have to go into Cambridge. I have a sick father, Manette.”
“When, Ralph?”
“Next week. Monday. I don’t get a day off until then. Why can’t you tell me over the phone—?”
“If we had the chance,” she interrupted, “if you were willing. Would you take me away from here? Away from this evil city and its evil people—all its filth and badness?”
“Where?” I asked. “Cities are people, not names. You’ll find people the same all over.”
“I want you to take me away,” she said. “Anywhere. To New York, where people can submerge themselves.”
“I can’t leave the troop,” I said. “This is my life now.”
“But you could become a city policeman somewhere. You’d have regular hours. You wouldn’t have to live in a barracks.”
“But I’m a trooper,” I said. “It’s a lot different from being a city cop.”
I heard the breath go out of her. “Forget it,” she said. Her voice sounded tired and defeated. “It was a crazy, frantic idea, anyhow. I kept saying to myself, I shouldn’t call you.”
“You don’t have to run away,” I said. “There’s no trouble that can’t be straightened out. If you won’t tell me over the phone, we can talk about it when I see you next week.”
“I think it will be too late then,” she said. “Good-by, Ralph.”
“No, wait,” I said. “I’ll see you when I come back Thursday. I’ll try to get away for an hour—”
“Too late, darling,” she said softly. She hung up. I stood there with the receiver in my hand. Phil Kerrigan came into the guardroom, taking a last drag on his cigarette. “Come on, boot,” he said. “It’s a long night patrol.”
I put the receiver on the hook. “I don’t understand her, Phil.”
“Girl trouble, huh?” Kerrigan said cheerfully. “Mostly, it’s the hours that spoil it for you. We all go through it.”
“No, it’s more than that,” I said. “And I wish I knew.”
My night pass started Wednesday, at 5:00 P.M. I should have left for Cambridge immediately. But at 5:20 I was standing beside my car across from the old house on Glen Road, waiting for Manette Venus.
The Staleyville bus came down over the hill and stopped in front of the house with a swish of its air brakes. Manette Venus stepped out. She was wearing a blue suit, a white blouse, blue shoes and a large blue shoulder bag. Her blond hair was like finespun silk.
She saw me standing beside my car. She ran across the road. I took off my hat.
“What’s wrong, Ralph?” she asked, breathing rapidly.
“I was worried about you.”
“Oh,” she said, looking down at the ground. “Why?”
“Stop it,” I said tersely. “Something’s wrong. You’re in trouble. You can’t raise things to a high pitch, then cut them off. You ca
n’t leave everything undone, unspoken.” Suddenly I reached out and took the shoulder bag.
“The gun isn’t there,” she said with an awry smile. “I did exactly what you told me. I put it away.”
I gave the bag back to her. “I can’t go away and leave things unfinished,” I said. “If I’ve done something wrong, if I’m to blame somehow—”
“You made me fall in love with you,” she said quietly. “You didn’t tell me you had a girl named Ellen. Are you engaged to her?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Wasn’t it wrong, going out with me?” she asked softly. “And making love to me?”
“Yes, it was wrong, and I knew it was wrong, and I made a mistake. But then, you haven’t been very frank with me, either.”
“So that makes us even,” she said bitterly. “It was you who carried things just so far and backed down. What is it, Ralph? Is your conscience starting to bother you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Since I met you I’m all mixed up inside, and that’s the truth. It isn’t only Ellen. I have an obligation to my family, too. That’s where it really starts.”
“Now you’re bringing your family into it. Why don’t you admit your refusal starts with me and nobody else?”
“No, it starts further back,” I said. “It starts in 1939 when a man was shot in the back. It seems crazy to go so far back, but that’s where it starts.”
“You’re talking riddles,” she said. “I hate riddles.”
“It’s no riddle,” I said. “I’m talking about my father. I’m talking about 1939 when he was a State Police corporal because that’s when it begins, that winter when he went out on a call to the town of Lincolnshire. A drunken laborer had been beating his wife and the local, part-time chief of police couldn’t handle him alone. My father came there with another trooper to bring the man in. My father took the front of the house. The other trooper went to the back to cut off the rear.
“It was bitter-cold that day. My father came in, turned to calm the hysterical wife and throw the laborer a coat. The man did what was least expected. He reached up over the fireplace, grabbed a rifle there, and shot my father in the back.
“The other trooper—his name was Ed Newpole—broke in through the rear door, his revolver in his hand. The laborer turned with his rifle. Newpole shot him through the nose and killed him instantly. But my father’s spine was broken and he became completely paralyzed from the waist down.”
“I’m sorry,” Manette murmured. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“Everybody was sorry,” I said. “But it didn’t help my father. Later, and through the years, the men would come to visit us in Cambridge. Sometimes they’d take my father out to Troop A Headquarters in Framingham, where he’d spend the day. He’d sit at the dinner table in his wheel chair, his pathetic eyes following the sturdy, healthy young men around him. He’d shake his head and say in his day the boys were tougher and had more bounce. Sometimes he’d bring me with him. He’d point to me and say, ‘Watch this kid of mine. Wait until he grows up. Then you’ll see a real trooper.’ And as I grew up, they came to see him less and less, they’d invite him hardly ever. It was not their fault. Some of his old friends were transferred far away, the others retired, and the new ones didn’t know him. But that was his life, his only life, his only interest. And he couldn’t live it himself. And I thought if he couldn’t, at least he could live it through me.”
Her eyes were thoughtful as I finished. “So there it is,” I said. “I grew up and went into the troops. What else could I do? What would anybody else do? You think I could quit and go away, and leave him with nothing?”
“No,” she said tonelessly. “And I understand now.”
“I wish I could understand you,” I said. “You’ve held back, told me nothing. The more you hold back the worse it will get. Bring it out into the open. Now, Manette.”
She rubbed her forehead so hard the skin turned red under her fingers. “You make it sound so glib and easy,” she said. “But there are so many things tangled up in this. Maybe my own life doesn’t matter. But there’s danger to your own career and your own life.”
“Danger to my life?” I asked. I took her by the shoulders. I wanted to shake her because she was giving me half-answers again. “What danger? I’ve been in Danford only three months. I know hardly anybody.”
“But people know you,” she said listlessly. “They can get to you.”
“Now you’re the one who’s talking riddles,” I said angrily. “How can they get to me? And why? And how are you involved in it?”
“They’re bad people,” she said. “I can betray them to you and you can arrest them and lock them up. But I’d have to betray myself, too. And then I’d never see you again.”
“But if you turn state’s evidence and there are extenuating circumstances—”
“Oh, I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ve made up my mind to it. I can’t run forever. But first I have to prepare myself. And nobody else can do it for me.” Her eyes looked up to mine. “You’re going home tonight, Ralph?”
“Yes,” I said. “But—”
“When you come back,” she said, in a subdued, tired tone, “phone me. I’ll be ready with the story then. It won’t be a pleasant one, Ralph.”
I wanted to argue with her, but there was a stubborn finality in her voice and I knew it was useless to carry it further. “Sure,” I said. “As long as you promise.”
“I promise. Cross my heart, Ralph. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”
And I knew she would. So I left her then. I got into my car and drove away. It was the last time I saw her alive.
CHAPTER 4
WHEN I arrived in Cambridge it was eight o’clock at night. Our house was an old white bungalow with a little white picket fence around it. The lawn was freshly mowed and the leaves had been raked. I knew my mother had been working around the yard. It made me ashamed of myself because I should have been home to do it last Sunday.
I came up the walk to the front porch. The rolled evening paper was there, cast deftly by the bicycle-pedaling newsboy. I picked it up and opened the front door. I caught the savory fragrance of roast beef.
My mother called, “Ralph?”
“Yes, Ma,” I said.
She came into the living room. I bent over and kissed her. She was a small, bustling woman, with bright, alert eyes. Her face and her gray hair were damp with the heat of the stove.
“You’re almost an hour late,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Ma. I was delayed.”
“You can’t blame us for being worried,” she said. “You haven’t been home for ten days. I know it’s a long trip. But it means so much to your father.”
“How is he?”
“The same. He was in his room resting last I knew. He should be up by now.”
“I’ll go in and help him.”
“No. You know how he hates to have you help him into the wheel chair.” She stood back and measured me. “You look all famished and tuckered out. Have you lost weight?”
“No. But I’m like a bird dog when I sniff that roast beef. Is it ready?”
“It’s been ready for an hour,” she said. “Here’s your father coming.”
He came into the living room in his chrome wheel chair, the one I had bought him with my first two weeks’ trooper pay. He was emaciated and gaunt, and his face had a pallor, and his hair seemed grayer than ever before. His hands were blue-veined and bony. He was wearing an open-throated sports shirt. There was my mother’s hand-knitted coverlet over his wasted legs. He put his hand out. I took it. I could feel the dry, fragile skin.
“Let’s look at this boot trooper,” he said with mock sternness. “Push those shoulders back. There, that’s better. Ralph, why didn’t you come home your last two days off?”
“I got tied up with a few things, Pa.”
“It’s a long trip, Walter,” my mother said to him, quick to defend me. “It’s over sixty miles, and after a boy comes off
patrol he’s tired. I should think you’d speak to Fred Walsh and have Ralph transferred. He could go to Framingham, or Andover, or Concord. Then he’d be much nearer home.”
“Now you know that’s foolish, Millie,” my father said. “They have reasons for stationing a trooper away from his home. It’s better he doesn’t know any people in his assigned area.” Then he turned to me. “How’s Fred Walsh?”
“Fine,” I said briefly.
“You don’t like him, do you?”
“He’s tough,” I said. “I’ll get used to him.”
“I worked with Fred quite a few years,” my father said. “He’s a good cop and a good troop commander. Hard, but fair. Maybe he’s a little bitter, Ralph.”
“Why should he be bitter? He’s the troop commander. It’s almost like being God.”
“Don’t be blasphemous,” my mother said.
“Fred Walsh has to retire next spring,” my father said. “When a man gives his life to an organization—”
“But the younger ones coming up,” I said, “they have to have a chance, too. If the older officers stay in grade too long, we’ll never make it.”
“The young ones,” my father said. “Always impatient, restless. But what will a man do when he reaches Walsh’s age? He’ll be only fifty. Is his life over?” He shook his head sadly. “When I think of it, there ain’t many left of the old gang now. Outside of the Commissioner, Major Carradine, Fred Walsh and Bob Clyde in Ballistics, I guess there’s nobody left from my time.”
“There’s Ed Newpole,” my mother said.
“Well, I was talking about the uniformed branch. Ed left the troops and went into the detective branch. A detective ain’t the same thing.” He swung his wheel chair around and faced me. “Anything new in the troops? Any new weapons?”
“There’s a new .45 carbine,” I said. “It’s semi-automatic.”
“We never had those kind of weapons,” my father said, shaking his head. “When I look back—”
“I think you’ve bothered the boy enough for now,” my mother interrupted. “You go wash up and let Ralph wash up, too.”