Keeping the Peace

by Linda Cunningham

  “Mom. Listen to me. Emmie keeps texting me. What am I going to tell her? How would you like to be locked up in a house all day with Debbie?”

  Melanie laughed. “Debbie is an adoring mother. Emmie is spoiled. You’re all spoiled. Tell her you can’t pick her up.”

  “Can you drive us? Can you go pick her up? Please? Please, Mom?”

  Melanie slammed the dishwasher closed. “Okay. Okay. You broke me. You really did. Tell Emmie I’ll come to pick her up when I can.”

  Mia jumped off the couch. “Oh, thank you, Mom! Thank you! I’ll go with you.” She ran out of the room. Melanie heard her running up the stairs to her room to get dressed.

  Sighing, she stared out the window, feeling the sting of defeat. She had never been a very good disciplinarian, but maybe this was a good way to compromise. After all, she’d driven in worse.

  Twenty minutes later, Melanie was peering through the blowing snow at the base of the dirt road. “Can you see anything your way?” she asked Mia. Mia’s face was pressed to the window.

  “I think you’re clear, Mom,” she said.

  Melanie pulled out onto the main road into town, hoping that if anybody was coming, they would see the lights of her car. She felt the car’s jolt as the tires first slid and then caught some traction in the sand that had been spread. Warily, she proceeded into the village.

  When John finally arrived at the big brick building in the middle of town that housed the police station and the town offices, the weather had not abated in the least. He was grateful to see Becky’s small four-wheel drive vehicle in the parking lot. At least he had a dispatcher. Now he would see how many of his officers showed. His footsteps echoed through the high-ceilinged old building as he opened the main door, stomping the snow off his boots as he went. He headed to the police station, which was actually a block of small rooms cramped together at the back of the building.

  Becky sat at her desk in the reception area. She was a large, pleasant-looking woman with wide eyes in a flat face. She wore her shoulder-length light brown hair pulled back from her face with two barrettes. She was dressed in jeans, a turtleneck, and sweatshirt, and in the same way her gruffness belied a soft heart, her slightly sloppy appearance did not translate to her job. She was deadly efficient. John didn’t know what the police department would do without her. He had known her since their teenage years when they had attended the same high school. They had something else in common, too. Becky’s husband was Melanie’s cousin Jim Dearborne, who worked for Melanie’s father, managing the Dearborne dairy. The familial connection had created a bond between them that served as a comfort to whichever of them was in need at the time. It was their own two-person support group.

  “What’s happening?” asked John, walking past her. His office was a small room off the reception area.

  “It’s snowing,” she answered over her shoulder.

  “That’s a lovely shade of sarcasm you’re wearing today. I see you got down off the hill.” John punched a key on the computer on his desk and waited. The tinkle of chimes announced that he had mail, and he brought up the page. Every morning, he checked the log, the roster of incidents that had taken place the night before. The overnight dispatcher at the state police barracks kept it updated and sent it, at six every morning, to all the surrounding local police departments. All the on-duty police officers had to file immediate reports with the state dispatcher. If something had occurred in his town during the night, John would likely always know about it even before his officer could fill him in.

  “I like my little car. It goes,” Becky said. “Have you heard from Cully or Jason or Steve?”

  “I have not,” answered John.

  Steve Bruno had been on duty overnight, but the log reflected no activity in Clark’s Corner. Giamo wondered where Bruno was now. Probably feeding his face at the diner. Steve was the best of his three regulars, but it was still dismal to think that the ages of his three officers only added up to eighty-five years. He and Becky often felt like mother and father to the Clark’s Corner PD.

  “Well”—and this time, Becky sounded exasperated—“I just got here. I know I’m early, but you’d think they’d get their asses in gear and get here on time, especially on a day like today.”

  As if in answer to her crabbing, the door swung open and a young man in uniform stamped into the room, all the while whacking at himself with his hat and sending snow flying in all directions.

  Becky set up a howl. “Cully! Stop that! You’re making a mess! It’s all over my desk!”

  The young man stopped shedding snow. John came back through his office door carrying two cups of coffee. The coffee machine was in his office because it housed the only free outlet in the suite of old rooms. The younger man reached out his hand, but John scowled and set the cup down in front of Becky. Nonplussed, the chastised officer took off his jacket and hat and hung them on the pegs behind the door.

  “They say we’re going to get twenty-four inches,” he exclaimed. Tim Cully was twenty-one years old, with curly dark hair and equally dark brows over snapping eyes. He was of average height, but powerfully built and particularly handsome. What he lacked in experience, he made up for in enthusiasm, honesty, and energy, although this was sometimes to his own detriment.

  “What’s that to you?” huffed Becky. “You’re on duty, snow or no snow.”

  John interrupted her grousing. “Are the plows out anywhere?”

  Cully nodded vigorously. “Yeah. The main road through town is plowed, and they’re getting to the side streets. Patterson called my brother out at four this morning. He’s plowing up your way.”

  “I didn’t see him,” Giamo said into his coffee cup. He could picture Woody Patterson, head of Town Maintenance, running around, self-important. Woody went crazy in weather like this, calling in independent plow trucks, zipping around in his town pickup with the yellow flashers piercing the snowfall, “checking on” his drivers, measuring the salt and sand piles. In the end, he mostly succeeded in irritating everyone, with the police department absorbing the majority of the complaint calls.

  Steve’s voice crackled over the dispatch mike.

  John leaned over Becky’s shoulder and pushed the button. “Yeah, Steve, what’s up?”

  “Hey, I’m on the south side of River Street Bridge. There’s a rig jackknifed across the whole bridge. The tractor’s hanging over the side.”

  “Son of a bitch. Driver?”

  “He’s okay. Crawled out the window. We gotta move this thing. The side of the bridge is punched out. What’re we going to do about that?”

  “Reroute the traffic around River Street.”

  “I’m trying to do that now.”

  John could hear an angry voice in the background and said, “I’ll get Woody down there with some flashers. We’ll call Larry and get the wrecker down there. I’m on my way.”

  He stabbed at the button again and turned to Becky, but she was already on the phone to Larry Sample. It was so early, John reflected, and she would know that the garage wouldn’t be open. But only she would actually track him down at the diner and order him and his wrecker to the accident on the bridge.

  John opened his mouth to say something, but Becky waved him impatiently toward the door. “Go, go,” she urged, covering the phone with her hand. “I’ve got things here. I’ll call Woody as soon as I’m sure Larry’s on his way.”

  He thanked her silently with a smile, shut the door behind him, and hurried down the hall. John was a little surprised when he pulled out of his parking place at the town hall and fishtailed into the road. What traffic there was had turned the slush made by passing plows into a shining coat of slick icing, like the glaze on a doughnut. The SUV responded sluggishly to his skillful twist of the steering wheel, and he proceeded up and over the hill.

  The scene of the accident was chaotic. John parked in the driveway of one of the River Street homes and left his lights flashing. He could see Steve Bruno in the midst of it as he approached
. Thank the Lord it was Steve, thought John. If it had been Cully at the scene, fistfights would have broken out. Steve was trying to talk to Larry, who, contrary to usual behavior, had already arrived. He was shouting over the dieseling of the wrecker engine and waving his arms towards the bridge. A small man with a cigarette hanging from his lips, obviously the irritated driver of the rig, hopped up and down at Steve’s elbow, also shouting. John could hear broken English mixed with angry French. At the same time, Steve was frantically motioning the creeping line of morning traffic to detour through River Street, trying to keep it moving.

  “Got your hands full, Steve?” asked John.

  “I’m glad to see you,” his young officer responded candidly. He gestured toward the skinny little man who stood at his side. “This is Joe Boulanger, the driver.”

  John reached out to shake the man’s hand. The exasperated driver politely took the cigarette out of his mouth and dashed it to the ground before he shook the chief’s hand. “You sure you’re all right, sir?”

  “Fine, fine.” The driver nodded vigorously. “Not my rig, though. Damn bridge! Damn bridge. I been coming this way for years. Every time, I say, one day somebody’s gonna fall off this bridge. Then, it gotta be me. When somebody gonna do something about that bridge?”

  “We’ll get your truck out, sir. Just be patient,” said John, but he had to agree that the man had a point.

  The bridge had been built in 1941. It was narrow, made of reinforced concrete. It wasn’t high above the water, just fifteen feet, but the road curved coming off it at each end, and the bridge itself was improperly banked. Apparently, the driver had skidded just as he came onto the bridge. He’d fought to regain his control as, in maddeningly slow motion, the rig continued to slide forward, twisting until the rear wheels of the tractor smashed into the far abutment. The ancient, cracked cement, already swollen with ice, crumbled under the blow. The driver found himself at a standstill, jackknifed on the narrow bridge, with the rear wheels of the tractor and the front wheels of the box perched precariously over the river. Now, as John could see, the little man was literally hopping mad.

  “John,” called Larry from the wrecker.

  John raised his head in acknowledgment.

  “Where the hell is Woody? It’s gonna take me some time here. We need them flashers.”

  “Becky has him on the way,” the chief shouted back.

  Larry Sample spat tobacco juice out the open window of the wrecker. Untrimmed gray hair frizzled out from under his frayed and greasy Red Sox ball cap. He wore a full beard, and there were icicles hanging from under his nose. The icicles were slightly brown, tinged by perpetual flying tobacco juice. He was not a pretty sight, but every man there was glad to see him.

  “Hey, you, Bub,” called Larry again, pointing at the little driver.

  “You mean me?” the driver shouted, puffing out his chest. “My name ain’t Bub. It’s Boulanger.”

  “Whatever,” said Larry good-naturedly. “Climb up here with me. We gotta go round, and you gotta help me hook on.”

  The driver nodded and leaped nimbly into Larry’s battered wrecker. Steve was scrambling to clear the traffic. Larry was especially famous for going where he wanted to go when he wanted to go there without looking in his rearview mirror first. John helped Bruno hold the traffic at bay until the wrecker had made its way via River Street to the other side of the bridge. He heard the gears crunch as Larry backed up to the crippled tractor.

  John could now see flashing yellow lights coming through the snow. “Looks like Woody made it,” he said. “Steve, you’ve been on all night. You better get home and catch some sleep. The power might go, and then we’ll need everybody on.”

  John could see the young man’s eyes were heavy with fatigue. He clapped Bruno’s shoulder with his right hand and physically propelled him toward the cruiser. Bruno stumbled off, climbed into the car, and drove away. John gave a short, sharp sigh and trudged back to talk to the maintenance chief, Woody Patterson, who was placing detour signs with flashing yellow lights in front of the bridge abutments.

  “We didn’t need this, John,” the man shouted to John. “We didn’t need this now. This thing won’t get fixed before spring now. No way. No way we can do it. I hope you soaked him good with a ticket. Was he legal on that bridge? What’d ya wanna bet he wasn’t legal.”

  John sighed. “The bridge wasn’t plowed or sanded, Woody. It wasn’t the driver’s fault. Better make sure those flashers are good. This snow is blinding. I haven’t seen it like this in years, even when we were in Maine.”

  “It’s heavy, too, John. I’m saying we’ll lose power.”

  “I wish people would just stay off the roads,” muttered John, more to himself than anyone. “Keep in touch with me today, Woody. I’m going to make a pass through town. If there’s nothing going on, I’ll be back at my office.”

  Both men looked up as an earsplitting, metal on metal screeching sound filled the air. Through the snow, they could see the tractor slowly being winched back up onto solid ground. There was a huge pop, and what was left of the bridge abutment shattered, as though it had been dynamited. The truck cab bounced on its own tires and settled back on the roadway.

  “Ah, Larry!” Woody said, agonized and stamping his foot in the snow.

  “I think he did you a favor,” John remarked, heading back toward his vehicle. “Now you can start from scratch. A good project for next summer. You better start hammering the finance committee now.”

  Woody shook his head, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket, and turned away.

  The beleaguered police chief climbed into the Suburban and backed out onto the street. He was glad to note that most of the traffic had cleared. It looked as though those who were going to work had finally arrived there and everyone else had thankfully elected to stay home. He decided to swing over Poplar Road, which looped halfway around the western border of the town. He would make a quick check at that end for any trouble and then return to the station over the back road.

  Chapter Four

  POPLAR ROAD WAS LIKE SO MANY ROADS that traverse small Vermont towns. It was a dirt road, wider than most, and due to municipal growth that had taken place over the last ten years, it had become one of the major roads in town, even though it hadn’t been originally designed for the traffic it now handled. Poplar Road extended from the state highway, back into the hills where new houses were being built or old houses, like John’s, were being reclaimed. It continued up one side of the ridge of the small mountain that made the western border of Clark’s Corner and down the other. John had just reached the top when his cell phone went off. He grabbed it out of the console where he had thrown it that morning and spoke into it.

  “Hello? Hello?” There was nothing. Melanie’s number was showing on the screen, but the storm must have knocked out reception. He put the phone back in the console, opting to call her when he got back to the station. He continued to crawl along through the storm. On top of the hill, the wind was whipping the snow into a white-out, and he had to be careful. Suddenly, the radio called out to him. He picked it up.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “John, there’s an accident,” Becky’s voice crackled over the radio.

  “Look, get Cully on it. He’s a first responder. I’m way the hell up Poplar Road.”

  “The ambulance is deployed. Cully’s already there.”

  “Well, I’ll be—”

  “John! John, listen to me. It’s Melanie and Mia.”

  Her comment didn’t register at first. He thought she was saying it was Melanie and Mia on the radio. “What? What did you say?”

  “Melanie and Mia got hit, John. They got broadsided.”

  “Becky?”

  “I don’t know anything except Cully got called out. Melanie called in on nine-one-one. It’s right down in the middle of town. Please drive carefully.”

  Now he understood. His mouth went dry, and he could barely see where he was going, but it had no
thing to do with the driving snow.

  “They hurt? Are they hurt, Becky?” He was having difficulty controlling the encroaching panic.

  “Well, Melanie called in, so…oh, John, I don’t know. It happened right down in the middle of town, at the intersection. Cully just left. Please be careful. I’ll take care of things here.”

  He clipped the radio back in its holder and shook his head, confused. Melanie and Mia were home. They had to be. But apparently, they weren’t. What were they doing out? He tried to push the Suburban faster, but he dared not slip off the road. Wild thoughts raced through his head. To calm himself, he concentrated on the facts: Melanie had called in, so she had at least been able to use her cell. Mia. Mia would have been riding in the passenger seat. They couldn’t have been going very fast, but they had been hit on the side, Becky said. Fighting his way down the mountain road, John felt weak with fear. He found himself thinking of his daughter, thinking back to when she was born. She had been born fast. They almost hadn’t made it to the hospital before the eight-pound baby girl burst into the world, wailing for her first meal. They’d named her Mia after John’s grandmother.

  Melanie’s mother had been nasty about the name. She’d laughed when she heard it and said sarcastically, “So Mia, is it? Mama Mia. Did you name her after the song or the spaghetti sauce?”

  Melanie had been furious, but John had only laughed back, saying, “No, we named her in honor of my grandmother.” He’d said “in honor of” on purpose.

  He thought of his pet name for her. Mouse. He had called her that since her mother had dressed her as a tiny mouse, complete with a pink-eared headband and a long tail, for her first Halloween. Born in August, Mia was too tiny to walk across the stage at the town hall for the annual Halloween pageant, but Melanie had dressed her up anyway, and John carried her across the stage, holding her high for all to see. Mia had continued to live in the same manner as she had been born. She was fast and fearless, dashing ahead, sometimes rashly. John couldn’t count the times he had plucked her out of one danger or another. Still, she continued to thrive in spite of herself, growing tall and lean, with long, dark blond hair and light brown, almost green, eyes. Naturally athletic, she rode the endurance trail riding circuit in the summer and led the school ski team in the winter. To John, his wife’s rosy skin, blond hair, and blue eyes were beautiful enough, but their daughter was possessed of a more arresting, mercurial beauty, as though the exotic, mysterious magnetism of the first Mia shone through, softening and illuminating the icy, northern Yankee beauty with an inner fire.