Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar

by Richard Ford

  Did I believe what Sylvia had said?

  I believed that it was what he had told her.

  I did see Roxanne again that day. I saw her just as Sylvia was introducing me to this new name. Mrs. Hoy.

  She—Roxanne—was in her car and she had stopped at the first cross street at the bottom of Crozier’s Hill to watch us drive by. I didn’t turn to look at her, because it was all too confusing, with Sylvia talking to me.

  Of course, Sylvia would not have known whose car that was. She wouldn’t have known that Roxanne must have been waiting to see what was going on, driving around the block all the time since she had left the Croziers’ house.

  Roxanne would have recognized Sylvia’s car, though. She would have noticed me. She would have known that things were all right, from the kindly serious faintly smiling way that Sylvia was talking to me.

  She didn’t turn the corner and drive back up the hill to the Croziers’ house. Oh, no. She drove across the street—I watched in the sideview mirror—toward the east part of town, where the wartime houses had been put up. That was where she lived.

  “Feel the breeze,” Sylvia said. “Maybe those clouds are going to bring us rain.”

  The clouds were high and white, glaring. They looked nothing like rain clouds, and there was a breeze only because we were in a moving car with the windows rolled down.

  I understood pretty well the winning and losing that had taken place between Sylvia and Roxanne, but it was strange to think of the almost obliterated prize, Mr. Crozier—and to think that he could have had the will to make a decision, even to deprive himself, so late in his life. The carnality at death’s door—or the true love, for that matter—was something I wanted to shake off back then, just as I would shake caterpillars off my sleeve.

  Sylvia took Mr. Crozier away to a rented cottage on the lake, where he died sometime before the leaves were off.

  The Hoy family moved on, as mechanics’ families often did.

  My mother struggled with a crippling disease, which put an end to all her money-making dreams.

  Dorothy Crozier had a stroke, but recovered, and famously bought Halloween candy for the children whose older brothers and sisters she had ordered from her door.

  I grew up, and old.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  HIGH LONESOME

  The only people I still love are the ones I’ve hurt. I wonder if it’s the same with you?

  Only people I’m lonely for. These nights I can’t sleep.

  See, my heartbeat is fast. It’s the damn medication makes me sweat. Run my fingers over my stub-forefinger—lost most of it in a chain saw accident a long time ago.

  Weird how the finger feels like it’s all there, in my head. Hurts, too.

  Who I think of a lot, we’re the same age now, I mean I’m the age Pop was when he died, is my mother’s step-daddy who wasn’t my actual grandfather. Pop had accidents, too. Farm accidents. Chain saw got away from Pop, too. Would’ve sliced his foot off at the ankle, except Pop was wearing work boots. Bad enough how Pop’s leg was sliced. Dragged himself bleeding like a stuck pig to where somebody could hear him yelling for help.

  I wasn’t there. Not that day. Maybe I was in school. Never heard Pop yelling from out behind the big barn.

  Pop Olafsson was this fattish bald guy with a face like a wrinkled dish rag left in the sun to dry. Palest blue eyes and a kind of slow suspicious snaggletooth smile like he was worried people might be laughing at him. Pulling his leg. He’d say, You kids ain’t pullin’ my leg, are yah? When we were young we’d stare at Pop’s leg, both Pop’s legs, ham-sized in these old overalls he wore.

  Wondering what the hell Pop Olafsson meant. In this weird singsong voice like his nose is stopped up.

  We never called him Grandpa, he wasn’t our Grandpa. Mom called him Pop. He was a Pop kind of guy. Until the thing in the newspaper, I don’t think I knew his first name which was Hendrick. He was a dairy farmer, he smelled of barns. A dairy farm produces milk and manure. What a barn is, is hay, flies, feed, milk (if it’s a dairy barn), and manure. It’s a mix where you don’t get one ingredient without the rest. Hay flies feed manure. You can smell it coming off a farmer at fifty yards. Why I left that place, moved into town and never looked back.

  Except for not sleeping at night, and my stub-finger bothering me. I wouldn’t be looking back now.

  Pop Olafsson spent his days in the dairy barn. He had between fifteen and twenty Guernseys that are the larger ones, their milk is yellowish and rich and the smell of it, the smell of any milk, the smell of any dairy product, doesn’t have to be rancid, turns my stomach. Pop loved the cows, he’d sleep out in the barn when the cows were calving. Sometimes they needed help. Pop would cry when a calf was born dead.

  Weird to see a man cry. You lose your respect.

  Pop wore bib-overalls over a sweat-stained undershirt with long grimy sleeves. Summers, he’d leave off the undershirt. He wasn’t a man to spend time washing. He never smelled himself at fifty yards. There was a joke in the family, a cloud of flies followed Pop Olafsson wherever he went. Mom was ashamed of him, when she was in school. Why her mother married the old man, old enough to be her grandfather not her father, nobody knew. Mom said if her mother had waited, hadn’t been desperate after her husband died of lung cancer young at thirty-nine, they’d have done a whole lot better.

  Mom made her own mistakes with men. That’s another story.

  Pop didn’t care for firearms. Pop wasn’t into hunting like his neighbors. He had an old Springfield .22 rifle like everybody had and a double-barrelled Remington 12-gauge shotgun with a cracked wooden stock, heavy and ugly as a shovel. From one year to the next these guns weren’t cleaned. When my cousin Drake came to live with us, Drake cleaned the guns. Drake was five years older than me. He had a natural love for guns. Pop was so clumsy with a gun, he’d be breathing through his mouth hard and jerk the trigger so he’d never hit where the hell he was aiming. Always think the damn thing’s gonna blow up in my hands, Pop said.

  Pop told us he’d seen a gun accident when he was a boy. He’d seen a man blasted in the chest with a 12-gauge. These were duck hunters. This was in Drummond County in the southern edge of the state. It’s a sight you don’t forget, Pop said.

  Still, Pop taught me to shoot the rifle when I was eleven. When I was a little older, how to shoot the shotgun. It’s something that has to be learned, you live on a farm. You need to kill vermin—rats, voles, woodchucks. Pop never actually killed any vermin that I witnessed but we gave them a scare. We never went hunting. Once, I went with Drake and some of his friends deer hunting. Drake was all the time telling me get back! get down!

  Must’ve fucked up. I remember crying. It hurt me, my cousin turning on me in front of his friends. I was thirteen, I looked up to Drake like a big brother.

  On the veranda, summer nights, Pop sat with his banjo. People laughed at him saying Pop thinks he’s Johnny Cash, well Pop wasn’t anywhere near trying to sound like Johnny Cash. I don’t know who in hell Pop sounded like—nobody, maybe. His own weird self. He’s picking at the banjo, he’s making this high old lonesome sound like a ghost tramping the hills. It wasn’t singing, more like talking, the kind of whiney rambling a man does who’s alone a lot, talks to animals in the barn, and to himself. Pop had big-knuckled hands, splayed fingers and cracked dirt-edged nails. Like he said he was accident-prone and his fingers showed it. Pop kept a crock of hard cider at his feet all the hours he’d sit out there on the porch so it didn’t matter how alone he was.

  We never paid much attention to Pop. My grandma who’d been his wife died when I was little. That was Mom’s mother. Mom still missed her. Pop was just Mom’s stepfather she made no secret of the fact. It was just that Pop owned the property, why we moved in there when my dad left us. When Mom was drinking and got unhappy she’d tell Pop that. Pop right away said, Oh I know. I know. I appreciate that, honey.

  The songs Pop sang, I wish I’d listened to. They had women’s name
s in them, sometimes. One of them was about a cuckoo-bird. One was about a train wreck. These were songs Pop picked up from growing up in Drummond County. He’d got the banjo in a pawnshop. He never had any music lessons. Most of the songs, he didn’t know all the words to so he’d hum in his high-pitched way rocking from side to side and a dreamy light coming into his face. A banjo isn’t like a guitar, looks like it’s made of a tin pie plate. A guy from school came by to pick me up one night, there’s the old man out on the veranda with that damn plunky banjo singing some weird whiny song like a sick tomcat so Rory makes some crack about my grandpa and my face goes hot. Fuck you Pop ain’t no grandpa of mine, he’s what you call in-law.

  Didn’t hardly care if Pop heard me, I was feeling so pissed.

  Why’re you so angry, Daryl girls would ask sort of shivery and wide-eyed. Skin’s so hot it’s like fever. Like this is a way to worm into my soul. You ain’t going to hurt me, Daryl, are you? Hell no it ain’t in Daryl McCracken’s nature to hurt any girl.

  No more than I would wish to hurt my mother. Nor anyone in my family that’s my blood kin.

  By age seventeen I’d shot up tall as my cousin Drake who’s six feet three though I would never get so heavy-muscled as Drake you’d turn your head to observe, seeing him pass by. And in his Beechum County sheriff-deputy uniform that’s a kind of gray-olive, and dark glasses, and hair shaved military style, and that way of carrying himself like anybody in his way better get out of his way, Drake looks good.

  I was never jealous of Drake. I was proud of my cousin who’s a McCracken like me. Went away to the police academy at Port Oriskany and graduated near the top of his class. Came back to Beechum County that’s right next to Herkimer so he’d keep his friends and family. A long time Drake would visit us like every week or so, if Mom made supper he’d stay if he hadn’t night shift patrolling the highways. Mom teased Drake saying it’s God’s will Drake turned out a law enforcement officer not one to break the law. Drake would laugh at any remark of Mom’s but he’d be pissed at anybody else hinting his cop integrity isn’t authentic. You wouldn’t want to roil Drake McCracken that way. In school, saluting the American flag felt good to him. Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Wearing the Beechum County Sheriff’s Department uniform. Keeping his weapon clean. It’s a .38-caliber Colt revolver weighing firm and solid in the hand, dismantling the gun and oiling it is some kind of sacred ritual to him Drake says know why? Your gun is your close friend when you are in desperate need of a friend.

  I have held that gun. Drake allowed me to hold that gun. It was the first handgun I had ever seen close up. Rifles and shotguns everybody has, not little guns you can conceal on your person.

  Hey man, I’d like one of these!

  Drake scowls at me like this ain’t a subject to joke about. You’d have to have a permit, Daryl. Any kind of concealed weapon.

  Do you have a permit?

  Drake looks at me like old Pop Olafsson, not catching the joke.

  Ain’t pulling my leg, Daryl, are yah?—I’m a cop.

  Yah yah asshole, I get it: you’re a cop. (For sure, I don’t say this aloud.)

  Drake’s .38-caliber Colt pistol didn’t help him, though. Drake was killed off-duty at age twenty-nine, in September 1972.

  That long ago! Weird to think my big-brother cousin would be young enough to be my son, now.

  Sure I miss him. My wife says I am a hard man but there’s an ache in me, that’s never been eased since Drake passed away.

  We did not part on good terms. Nobody knew this.

  There was always rumors in Beechum County and in Herkimer, who killed Drake McCracken. It was believed he’d been ambushed by someone seeking revenge. Friends or relatives of someone he’d arrested and helped send to prison. There were plenty of these. By age twenty-nine, Drake had been a deputy for four years. He’d accumulated enemies.

  He’d testified as arresting officer in court. Some guys, the sight of a uniform cop makes them sick. Makes them want to inflict injury. Drake was beat to death with a hammer, it was determined. Skull cracked and crushed and his badge and gun taken from him.

  That was the cruel thing. That was hurtful to his survivors. Knowing how Drake wouldn’t have wished that. Even in death, to know his badge he was so proud of, his gun he took such care of, were taken from him.

  They questioned a whole lot of individuals including some at the time incarcerated. No one was ever arrested for my cousin’s murder. No weapon was ever found. Nor Drake’s badge or gun. The Beechum County sheriff took it pretty hard, one of his own deputies killed. You’d think from TV the sheriff had known Drake McCracken personally but that wasn’t really so. It was a hard time then. Drake’s photo in the papers in his dress uniform. Looking good. At the funeral everybody was broke up. Guys he’d gone to school with. Girls he’d gone out with. Relatives who’d known him from when he was born. Mom was the most broke up as anybody, cried and cried so I had to hold her and later we got drunk together, Mom and me.

  Saying, It’s good Pop isn’t here for this. It would kill him.

  Back in July, this happens.

  On Route 33 north of Herkimer, about six miles from Pop Olafsson’s farm, over the county line in Beechum, there’s come to be what locals call the Strip—gas stations and fast-food restaurants and discount stores, adult books & videos, Topless Go-Go and Roscoe’s Happy Hour Lounge, E-Z Inn Motor Court, etcetera. A few years ago this stretch was farmland and open fields all the fifteen miles to Sparta. Weird how the look of the countryside has changed. There’s biker gangs hanging out on the highway, drug dealers, hookers cruising the parking lots, getting cigarettes at the 7-Eleven, using the toilets at McDonald’s, standing out on the highway like they’re hitch-hiking. Just up the road from King Discount Furniture and Rug Remnant City, that acre-size parking lot between the Sunoco station and the old Sears, you see females in like bikini tops, miniskirts to the crotch, “hot pants,” high-heeled boots to the knee. It’s like a freak show, Route 33. High school kids are cruising the scene, racing one another and causing trouble. Mostly this is weekends after dark but sometimes during actual daylight so locals are complaining like hell. Unless a hooker is actually caught soliciting a john, cops can’t arrest them. Cops patrol the Strip and make the hookers move on but next night they’re back. A few hours later they’re back. Got to be junkies, strung out on heroin and what all else. Got to be diseased. Why a man would wish to have sex with a pig! My cousin Drake who’s on night shift highway patrol says it’s like running off any kind of vermin, they come right back. Kill them, next day it’s new vermin taking their place.

  None of the sheriff deputies care for this assignment. The Strip is the pus wound of Beechum County. Sparta’s the only city, population 15,000. Herkimer ain’t hardly any city but it’s got more people. Rookies are sent out on the Strip. Older cops, still assigned to highway patrol, you know they fucked up somewhere. There’s this undercover team, Drake gets assigned to. He’s just backup, in an unmarked van. Five male cops, three females. Sometimes the male cops pretend to be johns, picking up hookers and busting them. Sometimes it’s the females are hooker decoys. The female deputies are close in age, looks, behavior to the actual hookers. Sometimes a hooker has darkish skin like she’s mixed race but usually they’re white females like anybody else. Slutty girls you went to school with, dropped out pregnant and got married and divorced and turned up in Sparta, Chautauqua Falls, Port Oriskany living with some guy or guys, and have another kid maybe mixed-race this time, and turn up back home, and get kicked out from home, and move in somewhere else, and pick up a drug habit, hang out at the E-Z Inn or the Go-Go, Roscoe’s, hang out on the Strip, get busted, serve thirty days in Beechum Women’s Detention, get out and get back on the Strip, got to be pathetic but you can’t feel sorry for them, pigs as they are. The female deputies hate undercover. No dignity in undercover. You wear slut clothes, not your uniform. You wear a wire, not your badge. No weapon, if a john is some sicko wants to hurt you, you got to rel
y on backup.

  Or maybe, undercover is kind of fun. Like Halloween.

  Sable Drago, a Beechum County second-year deputy (turns out she is an older cousin of Bobbie Lee Drago, the girl I will marry in 1975) is one of the undercover team who defends the operation. Sable was a high school athlete, belonged to the Young Christian League. Sable believes this is work that has to be done, enforcing the prostitution, loitering, public drunkenness and “public nuisance” statutes. The Beechum County sheriff got elected on a clean-up platform. Sable has a missionary fever about undercover also it can be scary, it’s a challenge you’re not in your uniform almost you are naked, like any civilian. But when things go right it can feel damn good.

  On the Strip Sable is a look-alike hooker. One of those fleshy girls looking like grown women when they’re fifteen, now at thirty-one Sable is busty and wide-hipped with beet-colored hair frizzed and sprayed to three times its normal size. Her hard-muscled legs thick as a man’s she hides in tight black toreador pants. Hot-pink satin froufrou top tied below her breasts to display her fleshy midriff. Peach-colored makeup thick on her face to hide her freckles. Eye makeup to hide the steely cop-look in Sable’s eyes and crimson lipstick shiny as grease. Hey mister wanna party?—wanna date? Hey mistah? Sable’s cruising the parking lot by the old Sears, calling to guys in slow-moving cars, pickups, vans passing through like they are intending to turn into the Sunoco station to just get gas, or drive on. Sable can’t wear high heels, has to wear flip-flops on her size-ten feet but she has polished her toenails, her kid sister gave her some dime store sexy tattoos to press on exposed parts of her body. Sable can’t drift too near the other hookers, they’d make her as a cop. Sable’s mumbling and laughing into the wire she’s wearing down between her sweaty breasts, the guys in the van are her best buddies, hiding around the corner of the empty Sears. It’s a hot-humid day. It’s dusk. It’s a time of quickening pulses, anticipation. If you’re a hunter, you know the feeling. Our country cops are into the kind of arrests where a suspect (drunk, stoned, plain stupid) has put up some resistance so you rush to knock them on their ass, flop them over so their face hits the ground, if they don’t turn their face fast enough their nose is broke. You are required to place your knee in the small of their back. You push, to restrain. All this while you are yelling, Hands behind your back! Hands behind your back! Required to bring the suspect under immediate control. If you lose control, you may be blown away. First thing you learn at the academy, Drake says, a police officer never loses control of the situation. An officer can lose his gun, he’s killed by his own gun, it happens and it’s a shameful thing nobody wishes even to speak of, and disgraceful to the family. Better blow away the suspect than get your own brains blown out, Drake says. For sure.