Damage

by Mark Feggeler

  "Done," he said. "I just came from there."

  "How was the food?" Becky asked the way someone who hasn't eaten in three days might ask.

  "Better than usual," he answered. "But not as good as it should have been. Way too many smoked items. Apparently, they're expecting a wave of Scandinavian golfing millionaires to settle the neighborhood. So, what happened to the rest of the gang?"

  Becky shrugged her shoulders and held up her hands, letting them drop noisily back down on the bar. From beneath her stool came the muffled rhythm of a techno-pop tune. She picked up her purse and found the phone in time to answer it. The conversation was brief, and Becky's participation curt. She threw the phone back in the purse and dropped it to the floor.

  "Well?" Ray asked.

  "That was Charlie," she said.

  "The non-boyfriend boyfriend?"

  "Watch it," Becky warned. Clearly, she was in no mood for good-natured ribbing. "Everyone's crapping out. Toni's parents are in town, so she's going out to dinner with them. Walter only shows up if Toni's coming because he's trying to get in her pants, so he won't be here. Anita has play rehearsal tonight, Mac's at his son's hockey game, and no one can get hold of Scott."

  "And Charlie?"

  "He said he doesn't feel like it," she said in a mocking tone.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Becky finished the last drops hiding underneath the ice in her glass while Ray stared at the bottles behind the bar and recalled details from the groundbreaking he could use when writing the article for Monday's edition of the Citizen-Gazette.

  "I think I got some good shots today," he absentmindedly said.

  "Did you use the new camera?" Becky asked.

  "Yes."

  More silence.

  "Can you go for another drink?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said, nodding cartoonishly.

  "Should we just go ahead and get good and drunk?" he asked.

  Becky slapped her hand down hard to signify her approval, startling the young blonde bartender who had been sitting on a stool hunched over a paperback novel at the far end of the bar.

  "Two more of whatever that was," Ray ordered, pointing at Becky's empty glass. He turned back to Becky. "Keys."

  They each took a set of keys from their coat pockets and placed them on the counter. Ray worked his fingernails into the coiled metal to remove the thick car keys from both rings. Once finished, he reached over the bar and dropped them into an oversize martini glass where they joined one other lonely key. Ray glanced around again and saw only the one couple still seated at their table eating nachos.

  "Did somebody forget to come back for their car?" Ray asked the bartender when she presented their drinks.

  "Huh?" she asked, then looked in the glass. She shrugged and leaned back to yell into the kitchen behind the bar. "Marco! Do you know whose key this is?"

  A short man with receding hair pulled back in a long ponytail poked his head through the open doorway. He smiled when he saw Becky and Ray, and stepped out to greet them. His young bartender towered over him.

  "Yeah, yeah," he said. He turned the key over in his wet hands. "This is all I have to show for hiring that alcoholic you recommended to me. That's why I had to bring her in." He twitched his head toward the blond girl standing next to him. He snapped the key down in front of Ray. "Hard to run a bar without a bar manager."

  Back about seven or eight months earlier, Ray talked Marco into interviewing his high school friend. Jake had been clean for almost a year at that point and had committed to cleaning up and living a productive life. Even Ray's cousin Billy, the sheriff's deputy, had reconnected with their old fraternity brother. Through the fall, Jake could often be found at Billy's home on the weekends, helping out with projects, watching football, or playing cards with Billy and his wife, Amy. Jake finally seemed to be taking charge of his life instead of following his addictions.

  Then, five days ago, he vanished. Marco immediately panicked and took inventory of his liquor supply, but Jake hadn't stolen a single bottle. Even his till, up to the last night he worked, balanced out to the penny. There was no sign of theft, or embezzlement. No sign Jake had fallen off the wagon. He simply didn't show up to work. Since then, as far as Ray knew, neither he nor any of their mutual friends had been in contact with Jake.

  "Drunk bastard shows up here yesterday, just like that out of nowhere, and asks me to open a tab for him," Marco said.

  "You were supposed to call me if you saw him," Ray said, voice heavily laced with annoyance. He held up the key. "How did you get this off him?"

  "That cop friend of yours..."

  "You mean Billy?" Ray asked.

  Marco shrugged. "Whatever his name. He shows up, too, and takes that drunk bastard home. I already took his car keys from him, so he don't kill nobody on the road. I pulled it around back last night so it don't junk up my parking lot."

  Ray stared at the key, lost in thought, while Marco threw out more insults about Jake, the unreliable drunk bastard. The short man eventually returned to the kitchen, and the bartender to her book, leaving Ray and Becky to nurse their gin and tonics. The news about his friend had doused his high spirits, and a melancholy settled over him that matched Becky's already sour mood.

  "I'm sorry about your friend," Becky said, breaking the silence between them.

  "You've met him before, haven't you?" Ray asked.

  "Just a couple times," she said, answering into her glass. "Has he always been an alcoholic?"

  "Ever since college," Ray said. "You should have seen him before that, though. Funny, and smart as a whip. He had such potential."

  "I thought you two met in college," she said.

  Ray shook his head.

  "Jake and I met in first grade, three miles down the road from here in Mrs. Turnwall's class at Glen Meadows Elementary School. Teachers either loved him or hated him, because he was so smart. He never thought twice about showing them up if he felt like they didn't know what they were talking about."

  "So what happened to him?" Becky asked.

  Ray picked up Jake's key and turned it over in his fingers.

  "It's just..."

  He struggled to find the right way to explain his friend. Becky turned to look him in the eyes. Ray took a deep breath.

  "It's tough when you're naturally gifted like Jake was," he said. "When we were kids, everything came easy to him. Math, science, music, sports... But when we got to college, he stumbled. I don't know if he stumbled because he drank, or he drank because he stumbled. All I know is he spiraled fast and all I could do was stand around and watch it happen."

  "You sound like you feel responsible for him," Becky said. Her words struck a nerve.

  "We were all experimenting with alcohol, and pot, and God knows what else," he said. "I'm sure the environment we created around him didn't help."

  "Everybody experiments at that age, Ray," she said. "Most of us figure out the party ends when we enter the real world. It sounds like he's just wired differently. That doesn't make it your fault, or anyone else's."

  Ray put down the gold key and pushed his drink away. He leaned back on his stool, arms crossed, disgusted at the thought of his friend's many wasted opportunities and the number of times he'd tried to help. Jake had entered college with three small scholarships and the prospect of a full scholarship to study business and economics at UNC. He didn't even make it through one semester before his drinking went from weekend experimentation to nightly routine. Thirteen years later, his biggest challenge was holding a menial job at a local dive three miles from his elementary school.

  "Alcohol is just a crutch for him," Ray said. "Some people aren't designed to handle pressure."

  The conversation had taken the appeal out of the idea of hard drinking. After one drink, he said goodnight to Becky and within thirty minutes later, with the sunset painting the bottoms of clouds a wicked orange out his passenger window, Ray found himself driving south along Cotton Street, rolling passed stop signs
in the historic downtown district of Glen Meadows. Three blocks down from the old mansions of the previous century he turned right onto a roughly paved lane lined by trailers and small houses that looked like they had been stitched together with spare parts. Halfway along, he maneuvered the car slowly along Jake's deeply rutted driveway and aimed his headlights at the front porch.

  Ray got out and knocked. He peeked through the windows when no one answered. Light flickered from the television in the living room. Either Jake wasn't home, or he was hiding upstairs, waiting for Ray to go away before coming back down. Ray gave it a few minutes before giving up and returning to his car.

  Monday, Part I

  Unpleasant music surrounded him, just loud enough to draw him out of his deep sleep.

  Most weekdays were the same. Up at six, shower, get dressed, grab a fast food breakfast on the way to the Citizen-Gazette. Seated at his desk by six-forty-five, he could crank out two, maybe three, articles for the day's edition of the newspaper.

  The notion formed in his slowly waking brain that it might be Monday. Mondays meant only one article, a holdover from the previous week. What did he have? The groundbreaking photos from Sunday. Photos were great eye candy. They took up lots of space when you had nothing else to offer, and they required only three or four sentences each. He also could tap out a sloppy ten inches about Lonesome Pines, sprinkling in quotes from Wallace and Upton to stretch it out. Nothing to win a hard-working reporter a Nobel Prize, or even honorable mention from the North Carolina Press Association, but a decent showing for a Monday.

  So, why did the clock tell him it was five in the morning instead of his usual six? Ray sat up and turned off the clock radio. He could see only a moonless black sky through gaps in the blinds covering the bedroom window.

  Then he remembered his scheduled ride along with his cousin, Billy, the sheriff's deputy. He had just enough time to get dressed and swing through for a chicken biscuit before making the eleven mile drive to the Sheriff's Department in Whitlock. He knew from experience Billy arrived punctually at five-thirty. He couldn't be late, or Billy might leave without him in order to stay on schedule for his morning rounds.

  Too many cars choked the drive-thru at the restaurant for Ray to get breakfast, so he sifted through the ashtray under his car stereo for change to buy something from the vending machines at the Sheriff's Department. He needn't have bothered. He arrived and was escorted to the break room where he normally met up with Billy, and there found a tray of fresh pastries and containers of juice on the round table in the corner of the room. He wasn't entirely certain it was acceptable for him to help himself. There were no witnesses in the room to see him if he grabbed a muffin, but too many people were roaming the hallways of the building for him to feel entirely comfortable with the idea.

  A wiry deputy with a neck too slender for his narrow collar entered the room. He had a pinched face and a small head covered in short-cropped black hair. When he spoke, Ray wondered if someone nearby was throwing his voice. The sound that came out of his mouth was far too deep for the man.

  "You looking for someone?" the thin man asked.

  Ray shook his head. "No. I'm just waiting on Deputy Merrill."

  "He ain't here yet," the deputy said, eying Ray suspiciously until, for no apparent reason, a broad grin stretched across his simple face. "You going with him today?"

  "Yes," Ray said. "I'm his cousin, Ray Waugh. I work for the Citizen-Gazette. I'm doing another article on a day in the life of a sheriff's deputy. You and I met the last time I was here, sometime last year."

  He held up the camera hanging around his neck as if it helped illustrate who he was and why he was there. The deputy gave the camera a quick glance before returning to grinning stupidly at Ray. After an uncomfortable pause, Ray held out his hand and approached the other man, asking his name. Before the deputy could answer, a new person popped through the break room doorway and stopped abruptly to avoid a collision.

  "For God's sake, Dean, stand clear of the door," the short man said in a slightly effeminate voice.

  Ray knew him. He had interviewed the year before when he ran against the incumbent Edgar Redmond for county sheriff. Richie? Mitchell? The name momentarily escaped him. At least he remembered the man was a detective. Deputy Dean turned to look down at the stocky detective in the snugly fitted gray suit, but he didn't immediately move out of the way. He eventually took a step to one side to let the him enter the room. The detective ignored the disrespectful behavior. Still smirking, Deputy Dean nodded a farewell to Ray and left the room.

  "How are you, Raymond?" the suited man asked as he poured coffee into a mug he had taken from the cabinet above the sink. His hair was shaved close to the scalp in the few places along the back of his head where it still grew. He stood only an inch or two shorter than Ray but was broader from his shoulders to his waist. In some ways he resembled a bald pit bull. He turned, reaching out to shake Ray's hand. The skin of his hands was soft. "Is the newspaper business treating you well?"

  "It is," Ray answered, withdrawing his hand. "And how are things for you, detective? I imagine things must have been an awkward period of adjustment between you and the sheriff after the election."

  The little man grinned and took a seat at the table. He assessed the selection of pastries before choosing a cherry tart from the top of the pile.

  "Would you care for one, Raymond?"

  "Yes, actually, I would," Ray said, taking a seat across from the detective. "I missed breakfast this morning. I don't expect Billy will be too keen to stop anywhere for me since he seems to be running late."

  The detective wiped neon-red cherry filling off his fingers with a napkin. He finished chewing and swallowed before asking "Who is Billy?"

  "I guess you all know him around here as William," Ray said, thinking back to the previous day's conversation with the sheriff and how Redmond didn't know who he was talking about. "I'm doing a ride along today with Deputy Merrill for the paper."

  The queer little man did a quick, but noticeable, double take at Ray before proceeding with a second bite of his pastry. Ray picked out a bear claw and wrapped it in a paper towel. The other man swallowed and wiped his fingers again before speaking. "I'll be very interested to read about your adventures today with William," the detective said.

  At that moment, the sound of scuffling feet and labored breathing drew their attention. A hulking man in a brown deputy's uniform barreled into the break room and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Ray and the detective seated together at the table. He looked at them both, his mouth hanging open for a moment.

  "You ready?" he said to Ray. "We're late."

  "I was born ready," Ray said, grabbing his camera and the bear claw. "Pleasure seeing you again, detective."

  Monday, Part II

  They traveled well over speed limit along a winding country road that ran parallel to the main highway connecting Whitlock, the county seat, to the commercially developed towns of Glen Meadows and Watsons Glen. The highway was a more direct route, but the lack of lights and traffic made the back roads seem like a quicker trip.

  Billy was squeezed as tightly into the driver's seat of the sleek brown cruiser as he was into his uniform. He drove with a heavy foot. Several miles north of Glen Meadows, the vehicle rounded a sharp curve that fell away to the right. The half of the bear claw in Ray's stomach floated and dropped as Billy maintained speed through the turn. Ray firmly gripped the arm rest.

  "Slow down, man," he said.

  Although the sun was up, a dense fog blanketed much of the countryside. Headlights offered little help. Every now and then the gray curtain dissipated enough for Ray to get his bearings from the trees and clearings he could spot. He traveled this road frequently, mostly when heading up to the old courthouse in Whitlock to cover the county commissioner meetings for the Citizen-Gazette. Ray had taken over the beat from Walter two years ago when Becky promoted Walter to Business Editor. Ray thoroughly appreciated being able to hand of
f some of his own lesser responsibilities to Toni, the newest member of the reporting team, especially the Glen Meadows Planning and Zoning Board. The meetings were dreadfully boring sessions during which board members debated such exciting topics as fence heights and impermeable surface restrictions on new residential construction sites.

  Billy hadn't said much since finding Ray in the break room. A handful of two syllable responses was all Ray could get out of him whenever he tried to initiate a conversation. He tried again after another mile or two of awkward silence.

  "How's Amy doing these days?" Ray asked.

  "She's fine," Billy mumbled. His full attention was on the road ahead, or at least the twenty feet of it that was visible.

  "Pregnancy going all right this time?"

  "Uh huh."

  Ray let it drop. He'd be seeing Amy, Billy's wife, later that day and could find out directly from her all the details of her third pregnancy.

  "So," Ray said. "Are we going any place interesting, or is your plan simply to drive like a bat out of hell through the fog until we hit a tree?"

  "We have to follow up on a noise complaint at 317 Wilkston Creek before I can start my usual rounds," Billy said, then fell silent again, focusing on the rare stretch of straight road before him.

  "How was Jake when you saw him this weekend?" Ray asked.

  At least this got a reaction. Billy glanced quizzically at him.

  "Marco told me you drove him home from the pub the other night," Ray explained. "What were you doing playing nursemaid to him? Last time I saw the two of you in the same place you were chasing him with a rake, threatening to kill him."

  "That's ancient history."

  "It was less than a year ago," Ray said. "How bad is he?"

  "I've never seen him worse."

  The words had barely left Billy's mouth when he hit the breaks hard enough to thrust both men forward in their seats. Ray slammed his hand on the dashboard to brace himself and cursed loudly after the cruiser had stopped. He quickly checked out the back window to see if another car was behind them as Billy shifted into reverse and started backing up.