Rough Men

by Aric Davis

  Will found himself sitting on a beach. He had no idea where, and then he saw the bridge, the Mac. He stood, feeling sand between the toes of his bare feet, and began scanning his environment.

  Save for a man a few hundred feet away down the beach, closer to the bridge, he was alone. Will was drawn to the man like a junkie to a bag of white powder and began walking toward him, and at the exact same time, the man began to walk in his direction. As the man got closer, Will came to the realization that he knew him. As they came even closer, he knew that he knew him well, and at less than a hundred feet away, he knew that the man was Alex. Walking faster, then galloping into a run, Will ran to his son.

  Alex had stopped walking when Will finally got to him, had turned to stare at the water. He glanced at Will, then back to the water. If Alex recognized him, he didn’t say.

  “Alex,” said Will, “how are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you waiting for something?”

  Alex pointed at a flag stuck into the sand up the beach. It was a red pennant stuck onto a wooden dowel rod. “Waiting for a ride.”

  “To where?”

  “The other side,” said Alex, smiling. “I’ve got just enough money.” Will’s son held his hand out, palm open, and Will could see three silver dollars, utterly unlike any silver dollars he’d ever seen. Richard Nixon had replaced Kennedy, and the minting of the money had been done poorly. They looked cheaply made. “Where are you headed, mister?” Alex asked him.

  “I don’t know. I just woke up here. Do you recognize me?”

  “No.”

  “We know each other, though. How else would I have known your name?”

  Alex shrugged and put the change back in his pocket. “I don’t know. I just figured you knew mine, but I didn’t know yours. It happens.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you have money for the ferryman?”

  “No,” said Will, checking the pockets on his shorts. “I don’t have anything.”

  “He’s not going to let you on the boat. Look, you can see him coming now.”

  Alex was right. Will could see a boat coming. For some reason, the sight of it made him feel sick. Watching the boat come closer, Will could see that it was all black, a bigger boat, but not a yacht like some folks kept in the lakes. He could see a dog on the prow of the boat, an ugly black thing, and he could hear its barking carried by the wind. Twin smells—sulfur and shit—were coming from the lake, and Will could see steam rising from the water. Looking at the bridge, Will would have sworn that it was broken, shattered into the water. He blinked, and it was normal, yet warped somehow. The Mac, but not.

  Alex peeled off his shirt and said, “Time for me to go, mister.”

  Will watched him walk into the water, never flinching at the heat, just wading into it until it was deep enough for him to swim, and then Alex was slowly swimming to the boat, which was now less than fifty feet from shore.

  The dog was much more clearly visible now. It was barking and roaring aboard the slowly rocking boat, and then Will could see Alex aboard the black vessel. There was a man there, and Will wanted to shout to Alex, to tell him to get back in the water, to swim back, that there would be another boat, a better one. Instead, Will watched Alex fish in his pocket and drop the coins into the man’s gloved hand. The man closed his fist.

  When Will woke, he saw Alison’s face. There was a machine making a screaming, beeping noise, and he felt sure that he was in Lou’s office, the last seconds of his life playing out as he died. It wasn’t quite his life flashing before his eyes, but it could have been a lot worse. He found himself trying to speak, trying to move his arms and legs, but everything was frozen, as though he were glued to the floor with some insanely strong industrial adhesive.

  Suddenly, Alison was gone, her face replaced by the face of someone he didn’t know. The beeping grew louder, and an incredible force smashed into his chest.

  She was there the second time he woke, holding his hand. She was talking to someone, facing away from him. He tried to squeeze back, but he couldn’t, he had no strength. There were still machines beeping, but none of them were shrieking. He smiled, or at least he felt like he did, and gave her hand another squeeze. Her head snapped toward him, her face more beautiful in that moment than it had ever been, her eyes like fireworks. She said something, her voice coming from underwater, and then she was gone, yelling something.

  Alison was back moments later, grabbing his arm, trying to ask him something, a repetitive question, repeated like a cadence, that slowly unearthed itself. When he could finally hear her, he felt like an archaeologist must as he excavates a giant femur from some long-dead lizard.

  “Will? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” said Will, his voice slow and syrupy, foreign to him, as if he’d been drugged. “Yes, I can hear you. Where am I?”

  “At the hospital,” she said, then clarified, “at Spectrum. You were shot twice. You almost died.” Her eyes were welling with tears, and they were sparkling in the hospital light. “You almost died, do you understand?”

  “Yes. But I’m going to be OK?”

  “I don’t know. No one knows. They didn’t expect you to be awake yet. I can’t believe I almost lost you.”

  “Are Isaac and Jason OK?”

  “Yes, they’re fine. Well, better than you, at any rate. I honestly can’t believe you’re OK.”

  Someone that Will couldn’t see was talking to Alison. He could hear little bits of words, but nothing that really came through or made much sense.

  Alison turned back to him again, smiling warmly. “Will, they want you to sleep a little longer, OK?”

  “No,” said Will, “it’s not OK. I’m fine.”

  He would have kept going, but then a numbness, starting in his left hand, was washing over his body, and she was gone, the hospital was gone, and finally, the bed was gone underneath him. He was floating in a white world, and then everything else was gone too, even the white.

  Will woke again. This time he was sitting up in a raised bed. He was still in the hospital, still hooked to beeping machines, though he was quite sure now that there were fewer of them, or at least these were quieter.

  Alison wasn’t in the room, but there was a young black woman sitting across the room at a table next to an older white man. The two, noticing him stir, stood and crossed the room to him.

  “Mr. Daniels, I’m Dr. Monroe,” said the black woman, then gestured to the older man, “and this is Dr. Halleck. We have both been involved in your care up to this point, Mr. Daniels, along with a great many other people.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it very much.”

  The two doctors smiled, and the older one spoke.

  “You are out of the woods, Mr. Daniels, though not by much. You were shot twice, once through your right hip and then again through your collarbone. You are very, very lucky to be alive. The bullet in your hip really should have severed your femoral artery, and if that had happened, you would be dead. You are going to be in a wheelchair for a little while, and walking is going to be rough, possibly for the rest of your life. Take that as a good thing. You are likely to walk again, assuming you do your part in physical therapy, but it is possible that you will have mobility issues. I’m sure that’s hard to hear, but you’ll adjust. Just remember that you ought to be dead, and uncomfortable days will still seem bearable.”

  “As happy as we are to see you, and to give you some news on your current condition,” said Dr. Monroe, “we are also here to make sure that you’re physically and mentally ready to talk to the police. There is a detective here that has been very eager to speak with you.”

  “Van Endel?”

  “Yes,” both doctors said, answering at the same time, but with only Dr. Monroe continuing to speak. “Detective Van Endel has been waiting for a little more than a week. If you’re not ready yet, I can tell him to bug off, but you’re going to need to talk to him eventually. He has the look of a man very use
d to getting what he wants.”

  “If I talk to him, can I see my wife afterwards?”

  “You can see her either way, Mr. Daniels,” said Dr. Halleck, frowning. “Neither Dr. Monroe or myself are offering you a carrot on a stick, nor do we even feel pressed to do so at this point. If you want to talk to the detective and then your wife, that’s fine. If you prefer your wife first, or even just her, that’s fine as well.”

  “I can talk to Van Endel. Will you send him in with some water? I’m really thirsty.”

  “Of course,” said Dr. Monroe, but the look on her face had changed. “Mr. Daniels, as far as we know, you have not been charged with a crime. If you want the detective to leave, press the call button by your right hand, and one of us will be in shortly.”

  Will watched them leave, and a few minutes later, Van Endel entered the room. The detective was carrying a Styrofoam cup with a bendy straw sticking out of the top of it, along with another cup that Will guessed to be coffee. Van Endel set the water down on a table next to Will’s hospital bed, then picked up one of the chairs the doctors had been using and moved it closer to the bed.

  “How are you, Will?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “I bet.”

  “What happened? The last thing I remember was Lou pointing a gun in my face.”

  “Well, Mr. Schultz was in the act of executing you when three of our SWAT officers breached the room. They used flashbangs, a type of grenade that makes a white flash instead of an explosion. It can be very debilitating, at least temporarily. The first of those exploded at almost the exact moment that you were shot, causing Mr. Schultz to move the barrel and shoot you in the chest, instead of the head. The first member of the team saw Mr. Schultz trying to aim at you again, and killed him. You were very lucky.”

  “So Lou’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be asking me the questions? I sort of feel like we’re going in reverse.”

  “I’m making an appearance, Mr. Daniels, nothing more. Officially, the matter is settled. You were visiting your attorney when he turned on you. He was later found to have high levels of painkillers, cocaine, and alcohol in his system.”

  “Was the other guy dead?”

  “Yes, Carlos Santiago is dead. He was a very, very dangerous man, Will. You’re lucky to have spent any time near him and survived at all. He liked machetes a great deal when he was just a young man. The DEA has been trying to get a handle on Carlos for a long time; he was one of the biggest stateside names in MS-Thirteen.”

  “What about the pictures?”

  “What pictures?”

  “You know what pictures. The ones of the mayor.” Will could hear the frustration coming out in his voice, and he took a drink of water. “The pictures on Lou’s desk, of Mayor Huntington and a young girl, they were awful.”

  “Will, I’m going to say this exactly one time, all right? If there were some pictures of the mayor doing something so utterly awful that it pains me to even think about it, they were gone by the time my men got there. If such pictures had existed, or if someone were to have made copies or otherwise attempt to prove their existence, I am quite sure they could be easily proven to be manipulated photography. However, if such pictures existed and they were given to someone like me, I would use them to force the mayor’s hand in a few issues you’re unaware of and, once those matters are dealt with, see that he retires. These are things I can barely do, Will. You would be killed if you tried.

  “On a side note, there were DNA samples found for the three of you—Jason, Isaac, and you, I mean—at the house of one Christopher ‘Mumbo’ Jefferson. Mumbo was found strangled to death; it looked like he was tortured as well.”

  “He was at the bank with Alex.”

  “Will, I know why you did exactly what you did. There’s a part of me, a non-cop part, that even sort of admires it. The rest of me, though...well, the rest thinks you’re a fucking idiot who was cheating death left and right.

  “Forget about the pictures. They’re long gone, and you’re still here. You want to take some time, recover. Get back to work. There’s nothing you can do about the rest, and if you try, your luck is going to run out fast.”

  “What was Lou doing?”

  “He was doing the only thing that men like him know how to do—he was trying to make a deal while he was treading water. A blackmail plan seems the most likely, so let that be what helps you sleep at night. Even if Mr. Schultz had used the pictures or sold them like he wanted to the highest bidder, they were never going to get released. They were taken to try and destroy a man, and there was never going to be any courtroom justice for the victim, no matter what you did, or do in the future. I, on the other hand, can see them brought to some use, albeit still under the radar of an ordinary citizen. Is that clear enough?”

  “I’m just wondering what pictures you were talking about.”

  Van Endel smiled thinly, finished his coffee or whatever it was in the cup, and threw it in the garbage.

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Writing came back. It was hard at times, but Will fought the headaches that would come raging out of nowhere with time away from the keyboard. Time with Alison. Writing before had been an escape, a rope thrown to a drowning man; now it was just something that he did, something he was. Alison gave him the space that he needed but somehow was always there when that same space was unnecessary. It was as though she had a window into his mind.

  The first book after everything was over, and two weeks after physical therapy had begun, was about recovery. It didn’t start that way, and it didn’t end that way, but that’s what it was all the same. Will took the sweat of the therapy sessions and used that as a catalyst to give his character legs, and then in a cruel moment of keyboard indulgence, Will took the legs away, and his character came to life.

  Equally important to the development of his character was heart. That critical organ started beating the day Will saw on the news that Mayor Huntington was stepping down. Whatever Van Endel had needed to do, he’d gotten done. Will went back to his writing after watching the report and could feel the blood surging through his fingertips into his protagonist.

  He talked to Jack often as he wrote, giving his friend, so many miles away, short updates on his writing, his beaten body, and his mental state. All were getting better. When the manuscript, with the working title of Broken Bastard, was finished, Will sent it off to Terri, not with the fear of rejection that had always plagued him, but with a bizarre confidence. His publisher loved it, and the game of updates, contracts, and conference calls began again.

  Life was as normal as it was going to get, and that was just fine with Will and Alison.

  They stood as a group of five. Will, Alison, Isaac and his wife, Daisy, and Jason. In Will’s hands was a container holding Alex’s ashes, and he could see the Mackinac Bridge if he looked to his right.

  Will walked alone into the water and began to sprinkle the ashes into the lake, watching as the waves slowly took his son into the water. Down the beach, Will could see a man staring at them—staring, it seemed, at him. When Will had emptied the container of his son’s ashes, he ignored the stranger, dressed so much like Alex had been in the dream, and walked to Alison. He took his wife in his arms and embraced her, but when he looked back, the man was gone, and the ashes were lost to the waves.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  On October 13th, 2011, Walker Police Officer Trevor Slot received a phone call from his wife, Kim. The cancer was back, and it was in her spine. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll be OK.” She could hear the stress in his voice; something else was wrong. “Hon, I’ve got to go.” Those were the last words they spoke, as Officer Slot was killed just moments later by two fleeing bank robbers as he attempted to lay down spike sticks in an effort to disable their car. The robbers, armed and shooting at police, were killed minutes later.

  I never met Trevor Slot, though he live
d just a couple of streets from me, and our daughters attend the same elementary school. We were close enough that I heard the cancer story before the media did, hushed whispers between mothers of other small children, talking about how sad it all was, how tragic. Yet, as sad as it all was, it was something else too. It was heroic.

  Officer Slot gave his life to maintain public order. Not as a sacrificial lamb, but as a genuine badass, likely in the sort of way that the people who knew him outside of work, friends from church perhaps, never would have seen. Weeks later, I saw his wife and kids as my friend Scott and I took our daughters trick-or-treating along the usual route. Officer Slot’s family had nothing but smiles and hellos for everyone. It would have been easy to shut off the lights and not participate. Apparently, that wouldn’t have been good enough.

  Officer Slot was the purest definition of a rough man. He knew every day when he put on his uniform what the risks were, and that for him, they were worth bearing. He is, quite literally, the kind of man that allowed us on that fateful day to live our lives safely, without even being aware that violence was afoot. Much thanks to all of you in law enforcement and the armed services who do the same.

  At the time of this writing, it is my understanding that Mrs. Slot’s cancer is inactive. I wish her all the best in her battle with this terrible illness and look forward to seeing her for many Halloweens to come.

  Endless thanks to my endlessly supportive family, who have helped this writer endure stress beyond measure. The most-affected victims being, of course, my wife and daughter, who are far more wonderful and loving than anyone I deserve to have in my life, but yet continue to stick around and support me, even through the frustrations of writing. A simple thanks would never be enough, but it’s all I’ve got. I love you both so much.

  My parents, equally as supportive, are also deserving of a round of applause and perhaps a few high fives. Through their tireless efforts to help, listen to, and bolster this writer’s confidence, I manage to maintain the ability to sit alone before a keyboard and make imaginary friends absolutely miserable. Again, a simple thank-you would never be enough.