Mind Tryst

by Robyn Carr

“Sure,” I said, and gave him a quick tour of the kitchen. I showed him where the plates, flatware, glasses, pots, and napkins were stored. I assumed he was laying in his food supply for the week. When he returned the second night with another grocery bag, equally well stocked, I understood. Sweeny required a lot of fuel.

  “Didn’t you have time for dinner?” I asked him.

  He came close to smiling. “I have dinner every night at the steak house, Miss Sheppard. Like a clock.”

  “Oh.” My goodness, I thought. Raising a boy like that would be expensive. In twenty years, he would look like Bodge; a complexion gone to hell and a round, solid gut.

  “What do you make of this, Sweeny? This business about someone coming in my house?”

  “No telling.” He shrugged. “I got a good nose, and if he comes around while I’m here, I’ll smell him.” He whiffed the air. “Sure would like to get someone.”

  “Bodge talks about smelling crime, too,” I said.

  “It’s not the same thing, ma’am. I don’t smell crime, exactly — I just know when someone is where they’re not supposed to be. Bodge, now: He knows when someone is not what they’re supposed to be. With me it’s really ears and eyes. With Bodge it’s like an extra sense.” He punched the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. “Don’t you worry about a thing, ma’am.”

  I felt a shudder. I was certain where Sweeny was coming from. He didn’t seem wily enough to sneak around or dream up psychological games; he seemed like a big bully who might hurt someone while taking them into custody.

  “You watching TV?” he asked.

  “No. Go ahead. I thought maybe I’d take a long hot bath since I have someone guarding the house.”

  “You relax, then. Make yourself a big drink; I won’t be taking anything... not even beer. Believe me, if anyone touches a door or window, I’ll know it.”

  “With the TV on?”

  “I got this knack, Miss Sheppard. From camping. I learned how to hear two places at once.”

  “Oh. Well, don’t hurt anyone, Sweeny.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “Unless it’s necessary.”

  I made myself a big scotch. I momentarily felt more concern for my spook than I did for myself or Sweeny. I let go of that right away and chose to take advantage of having a big lug in my living room. I spent a restful, peaceful night.

  ***

  Monday morning I went downstairs at six a.m. and saw Sweeny lying on the couch with his size twelves hanging over the arm, his mouth open, his head back, and an occasional snore coming out of his cave-like mouth. I quietly opened the front door, went out for the paper, came back in, and saw that he had moved, but not awakened. I showered and dressed, and when I had coffee brewing, he slowly came awake and sat up. He rubbed his eyes and looked around.

  “Morning, Miss Sheppard,” he said, sleepy.

  “Morning, Sweeny.”

  “Quiet night,” he said. Before we could discuss the side of beef and dozen or so eggs he would have for breakfast, he said his farewell and went home to shower, breakfast at the cafe, and report for a day’s work.

  I saw Bodge that morning and he asked me what I thought of Sweeny.

  “He seems like a nice young man. Healthy appetite. Well... I don’t know, Bodge — are you certain he could catch someone tampering around the house?”

  “Yeah, I do believe he could. He’s pretty remarkable in that particular regard.”

  “This morning I went in and out of the house, showered, and made coffee before he closed his mouth and opened his eyes.” Bodge laughed, rocking back on his heels, and made that old tee-hee-hee kind of giggle. “What’s so funny? He was dead to the world.”

  “What time do you usually get up, Jackie?” he asked me.

  “About six. Why? You think he was awake all night?”

  “Oh, hell, no; I suppose he shut his eyes around ten. How’d you like to check Sweeny out? See what he can do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tomorrow, get yourself out of bed around four thirty. Listen toward the downstairs. We’ll see if Sweeny’s still got his stuff.”

  Puzzled, I set my alarm for four fifteen. I heard an engine and looked outside. Bodge’s police car came slowly up the street; the lights were killed and the car doors soundlessly opened. I thought I knew what was going to happen; Bodge and another man got out of the car.

  I sneaked downstairs and leaned around the banister to see that Sweeny was in his usual position: feet over the arm of the couch, head back, and mouth open. I waited a minute; two minutes. And then I saw the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Sweeny suddenly rolled over onto the floor as silent as a cat; he crouched and moved along the floor toward the laundry room. I heard the dead bolt slide, the door open, and a shout almost all simultaneously.

  I couldn’t resist; I ran into the living room and through it toward the laundry room, and found Sweeny with his big grip around a young man’s wrist.

  “What the hell are you doin’, Raymond?” Sweeny asked.

  “Seein’ if you’re awake,” Raymond replied, very good-naturedly.

  “Boss? Why you keep doin’ stuff like that? Huh?” Sweeny called that out into the dark predawn backyard.

  “Can’t help myself, Sweeny,” I heard Bodge say. “It’s the damnedest thing.”

  “Well, stop doin’ that! Now let’s get back to sleep. I got another hour at least!”

  “Sure thing, Sweeny,” the invisible sheriff called.

  “ ‘Night, Sweeny,” Raymond said, skipping down off the back step.

  Sweeny closed and locked the door and turned around. It was as if he knew I was there; it didn’t startle him at all to see me standing there open- mouthed, amazed. “You got another hour, hour and a half at least, Miss Sheppard.”

  “I’ve... I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” I stammered.

  “I got a good nose,” he said, looking at me.

  “God, Sweeny...”

  “Ma’am?”

  I was going to be a long time in believing this had happened. I shook my head. “Will you marry me?”

  “Aw, Miss Sheppard, don’t be ridiculous.”

  Later I learned more about Sweeny from Bodge. It seemed that Sweeny didn’t like to use his gun, so there had been no danger that he would start shooting and kill Raymond. It seemed he liked his fists, and one of the things he was still “working on” was his ability to make an arrest without causing a bloody nose. Sweeny, in fact, still had some fights, though he had made tremendous progress in his control since high school. And finally, Sweeny was not good at cognition and deduction; he would not have passed a large city’s police-force detective exam. However, he had an uncanny intuitive sense for danger, threat, or wrongdoing. He would not glance at me going out the door for my paper, but a hand on the back door to my house — which he had sworn to protect — would pull him from a deep sleep with the instincts of a panther.

  He wouldn’t have made it on any other police force. One fight or proven instance of police brutality in L.A., for example, would get him tossed out. Bodge believed he had himself a good man with a few edges to be filed down.

  This is the atmosphere, the intimacy, which I grew to both love and suspect. That people could know each other in this way, that their assumptions could be correct. That Bodge could get Raymond, who he said was at that jackass age, to get up at four a.m. to do the Sweeny test. And they could trust Sweeny’s behavior, what he’d do; that Sweeny wouldn’t suddenly change and shoot Raymond’s head off. And Sweeny would not be angry or resentful. He’d respond in his predictable way and be only mildly annoyed by their prank.

  This was Coleman, where I was almost one of them. People knew each other in a complete sense, a family sense, in which assets were never overglorified, but taken in stride. And in which faults or flaws were understood and accepted. Not tolerated — accepted. “Sweeny? Oh, Sweeny’s not punching people as much anymore.” “Don’t be getting Nicole on that murde
r or I’ll never get any work done.”

  To have become one of them would have been good. That small-town trust and intimacy were never wholly mine. If you don’t have the stamina to endure the years it takes to become one with the town, it helps to have been born there.

  The next morning Roberta, again, did not come to work. By this time I had to call her; she said she wasn’t feeling well. She sounded fine. The men had not been in the cafe in the morning and I realized it had been days since I’d seen them. At lunchtime I drove to Roberta’s house for a showdown.

  ***

  Tuesday, noon, I arrived at the Musetta home. Harry and Roberta had a large ranch-style place on the eastern edge of the valley. Harry did farming that he called gardening; he specialized in herbs, summer plants, and strawberries, and had a modest orchard and a small flock of sheep from which he did a salable lambing each year.

  Harry also had a few horses, a few cows, a few goats, some chickens. He wasn’t an ambitious farmer; like many residents of Coleman, he was willing to live a less wealthy life in order to live this kind of life. This was why Coleman was blessed with good professionals like Roberta, Dr. Haynes, the dentists, other lawyers. The populace was small, the cost of living reasonable, and the town was postcard beautiful. In the beauty shop, I heard a part-time resident say that it was like living in Switzerland. Having never been there, I couldn’t agree, but I could believe it. Coleman is healthy, natural, clean.

  I had allowed myself to become agitated by Roberta’s unexplained absences by the time I got to their place. I realized I wasn’t Roberta’s partner, but I couldn’t function in an office in which there wasn’t trust — and I couldn’t imagine what reason Roberta could have for not going to the office and not making an attempt to contact me personally.

  There were three trucks in addition to Roberta’s Suburban in front of the house. I parked, went to the door, and heard the sound of men’s voices inside. It took Roberta a long time to answer. She held a magazine and was wearing her glasses, which she immediately removed. “Jackie!” she said, taken aback.

  “I’m sure I’m intruding,” I said. “I felt I should come out here and find out what’s going on.”

  Roberta sighed and looked exasperated, and I nearly fled. “Of course,” she said. “Come in; you’re entitled to some explanation, I suppose.”

  “I wanted to assure myself you’re all right,” I said.

  “Don’t bullshit me, dear. You’re probably put out that I’ve been absent without cause. I can imagine.”

  “Well... I would have liked a phone call from you. When you just leave word with Peggy —”

  “It’s my office; it didn’t occur to me to clear it with you that I was taking time off.”

  “Well,” I said, moving inside the door to her house, “then let’s talk about that. If we’re going to work together and rely on each other —” I stopped when I heard a surge of laughter come from inside the house. It sounded as though Roberta and Harry were having a party.

  “Oh, come in, Jackie. Let’s not bicker. This won’t take long to explain.” She walked off ahead of me, her wide hips swinging under her double-knit trousers. I had never seen Roberta in stay-at-home dress. She usually wore a suit to work, and her sensible lace-up shoes.

  I followed her into the kitchen, where I found a lunchtime poker game. A cloud of stale smoke and laughter greeted me. Harry and Wharton, Lip and George Stiller were seated around the kitchen table, sharing a full ashtray, coffee mugs, Coke cans, and a plate of hastily thrown together bologna sandwiches, half gone.

  “Hey, there’s our girl,” Harry said, half rising. “I guess you couldn’t stand it without us, hey, girl?”

  “Looks like you moved the party out here,” I said.

  “Yeah, for the time being. Just having us a little game; want to sit in?”

  “No, I came to see how Roberta is doing.”

  “Berta? She’s mean as a snake today, tell the truth.”

  Roberta was busying herself making a new pot of coffee. “I don’t think I’m any meaner than usual, frankly. Harry, tell Jackie what’s going on. That’s why she’s here. Tell her.”

  I looked at Harry; the three other men watched me. Harry was a man who I supposed had been handsome in his youth. Of the couple, Harry was the more physically attractive. He still had a solid physique, a good set of teeth, twinkling blue eyes, a full head of graying hair. He had a crepe-like set of wrinkles around his eyes, on his forehead, and down his neck from exposure to the elements.

  “Well, Jackie, it happens I had a visit to the doctor and I have a cancer. It’s taken me and Berta a few days to decide just how we feel about that. Berta isn’t sick; she’s sick of me, I guess. Sorry if we worried you.”

  “Worried me?” I gasped. I moved closer, dropped my purse on the counter. “Harry! What kind of a cancer?”

  “Well, guess,” he said, grinning. “Aw, I’m sorry, honey. I don’t mean to be such a bad tease. It’s lung cancer.” He patted his chest. “Right here. Figures, don’t it?”

  “Why aren’t you in the hospital?” I asked.

  “Because I don’t aim to be.”

  I was speechless. I stared at him; he sucked on a cigarette. “Harry! Put that out!” I shouted this as though he had lifted hemlock to his lips.

  He didn’t react. He blew out the smoke. “It’s too late for that, now. I’d only die crabby.”

  I turned toward Roberta, a pleading look on my face. She held up her hands as if to ward me off. “I quit,” she said. “I don’t much like it, but I had a clean X ray and put ‘em down. What Harry does is up to him.”

  “Jeez,” I sighed. “What are you going to do? Have surgery? Chemotherapy? What?”

  “Well, honey, I decided that I’m going to get all my wood chopped and sell off the lambs. Other than that, nothing.”

  “Harry, what does the doctor say?”

  “The doctor says it ain’t good, that’s what he says. Now, the choices he gave me don’t seem like good ones at all. Seems I have it spread already. I don’t feel half bad, that’s the thing. And we could try all these fancy drugs and X rays,” which he pronounced “ex-a-rays.” He tapped out his cigarette. “I got a cough, which I think I’ve had now forty years; I got a sore throat, which I think I’ve had twenty years. My legs aren’t as strong, but I get around as good as ever. Thing is, I could try to beat it, except the odds are bad and the cure is worse than the disease.”

  “Maybe not, Harry. There’s all kinds of wonderful stuff now; there’s new drugs, special clinics, and psychotherapy, and positive thinking, and —”

  He stared at me, unblinking, smiling indulgently. I gave up and looked back at him.

  “Pull up a chair, gal,” he said to me. I absently dragged a chair from the big bleached-pine table and took a seat. “You want a little nip? You can have a sandwich and coffee to sober you up before you go back to lawyering.” I nodded. Harry dragged himself to his feet and got a glass, put in some ice, poured a little whiskey in it, and handed it to me. It didn’t taste one bit good. I made a face.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  The men all laughed. “He ought to buy at least one bottle of decent whiskey before he goes,” Lip said.

  “Doesn’t hardly matter now,” Wharton said. “He’s come to like the taste of that rotgut and would probably get sick on good whiskey now.”

  “You want to try something else, honey?” Harry asked. “I got some rum from a Christmas party we had one year.”

  “No. I’m sure this will work. Now, tell me this again.”

  “There ain’t nothing to tell. There’d be even less to tell if I hadn’t’ve got stepped on by that old mare; I should a put that mare down last spring anyhow. I meant to. She doesn’t get by too good. Anyhow, she crushed two toes and they swelled all up and I went to see Doc Haynes. Once those doctors get their hands on you, you’re done in. He takes a little blood, gives a little ex-a-ray, and next thing you know you’re driving to Denver for more
blood and more ex-a-rays, none of which I would’ve done except that Berta hounded me till I couldn’t stand having her come home to supper.” He chuckled a little. “You never trust those doctors. Doc Haynes is a sneaky son of a bitch. Called Berta at work and told on me.”

  “You didn’t want to know?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “But, Harry, if you’d found it sooner —”

  “I didn’t, see. Wasn’t anything wrong that I could tell, and it still doesn’t seem like anything much is wrong. To hear these fancy doctors talk, I might not get to deal the next hand.”

  “I’m ahead,” Wharton said, grinning.

  Now, Wharton is an unhandsome man. He’s stoop-shouldered, with a long skinny face, nearly bald, has deep-set and weathered eyes, a stubbled chin, a mole on his nose, and slippery false teeth. He’s ugly. He’s an old man who has lived a hard life on a ranch. Wharton, about seventy, would work till he died. When he grinned he looked downright friendly. He turned and looked at the coffee pot, pushed back his chair, and got up to refill his mug. He returned to his seat.

  “So you’ve refused treatment?” I asked, sipping my drink.

  “In a way. I got me some pain pills. They’re doozies, too. I took one the other night. Shew.”

  “Are you in much pain?”

  “Naw. I just wanted to try one out. I don’t reckon I’m going to have a lot of pain.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised. I knew cancer, especially lung cancer that had spread, to be horrendously painful. The men at the table chuckled. Roberta left the room with a coffee cup in hand. “I’ll be in the living room, Jackie,” she said while leaving.

  “How’s Roberta holding up?” I asked.

  “Oh, hell, Berta’s doing good. That’s one good old girl. We’ve had some good years. Probably a good thing we never had children — we were old and set in our ways even when we were young.”

  “Isn’t there any compromise, Harry? Won’t you even go back and hear what the doctors have to say about this... condition?”

  “It’s like this, Jackie. I had me a lot of tests, even stayed overnight in a hospital a coupla times. I got a second opinion and a third one. They all say the same thing: It’s bad and the treatment is bad, too. And the odds are bad. And it’s damn near the first bad thing’s ever happened to me.