The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips

by Stephen Baldwin

  All of the rescue workers moved quickly toward the house. Andy dropped his mic and ran over toward the yelling man, along with the sheriff. The boys’ uncle came out from around the corner of the mobile home, a boy in each arm. “They’d climbed into the shed out back of the house and were playing,” he said. “All of these police cars and fire trucks pulling in scared ’em so bad that they hid down under some boxes. That’s why no one seen ’em when we looked in there.”

  The boys’ mother came running out of the mobile home, tears running down her face. “Mommy, Mommy,” the boys said as they reached out for their mother. She pulled them out of her brother’s arms, hugged them so tight Andy thought she might crack their ribs, and started kissing them repeatedly. The joy of finding them alive quickly gave way to her motherly instincts. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” she scolded. “You scared me half to death.” The boys started crying, and the mother cried even more, and even some of the crusty volunteers started tearing up.

  Watching the mother with her sons, a random thought popped into Andy’s head, the kind of thought he hadn’t had for a long time. He thought, I wish I could have given Loraine a reunion with her little boy. Now, he hadn’t thought about Loraine since the day he turned in his resignation at the Trask police force. And he hadn’t really thought about Gabe since the last time he drove past the Adamsburg cemetery, right before he started his state police training. This one random thought, along with the sight of a grateful but frantic mother, opened a door and all of the old thoughts and feelings he’d successfully ignored for over a year came flooding back. He had his fresh start, all right, but deep down Andy Myers was still Andy Myers. And the old demons that haunted him in his former life hunted him down in his new one.

  Just because they’d found him didn’t mean Andy surrendered willingly. He tried to push the feelings and obsession with Gabe’s case back out of his mind. Staying busy had held them at bay before, and that was the tactic he tried this time as well. He threw himself into his work and found extra tasks to keep himself busy. Even during the monotony of sitting alongside the highway pointing a radar gun at cars and trucks zipping down the highway, he created mind games to keep his thoughts busy. He calculated the time it would take a car to reach Indianapolis from his mile marker, dividing the mileage by the car’s speed. When the mind games didn’t work, he lowered his threshold of speed over the limit that would make him pull someone over. That month he wrote more speeding tickets than any trooper in the state of Indiana. On his off days he ran, but these weren’t little jogs in the park. Andy drove over to Brown County State Park and began running the hilly trails that leave ordinary, middle-aged weekend hikers sucking for air. When images of Gabe lying on a bloody floor tried to squeeze past Andy’s defenses, he ran harder and faster until he was too tired to think about anything at all.

  His strategy worked for a while. One day, however, he was done in by the smallest of acts. During breakfast on June 3, he was sitting in his kitchen, eating a bowl of Wheaties, when he looked up and noticed he hadn’t changed his calendar since April. He had this cheap-looking calendar he picked up from the local hardware store hanging right next to the kitchen wall phone. So he slid his bowl of Wheaties aside, went over to the calendar, and pulled it off the nail sticking through the hole that was just above the landscape photo. He flipped from April to May just to look at the picture, which I think was some mountain scene from California. Then he turned the page from May to June and pushed it back on the nail. As he stepped back from the calendar, his eyes glanced down at the grid of days and one number popped out at him. Yeah, you guessed it. It was the second anniversary date of Gabe’s death. He stood staring at the square on the calendar with the number in the middle until he couldn’t see the number any longer because of the tears welling up in his eyes. “Two years. My God, has it really been two years?”

  He sat back down at his table and kept staring up at the calendar, wiping tears away. Memories came flooding back, especially the memory of his last time with Gabe. Andy could see the two of them, sitting up high in the red seats of the upper deck in Cincinnati’s old Riverfront Stadium, munching on hot dogs, while the “Big Red Machine” played far down below. It was the longest continuous time Andy had spent with a child since he was a kid himself. For a guy who didn’t like children, he had the time of his life. Gabe kept peppering Andy with questions, most of them completely unrelated to one another. I like kids, but that kind of conversation gets old fast for me. Somehow, when it came to Gabe, nothing got old for Andy. Even two years later he could hear Gabe asking, “Why did you become a policeman, Andy?” A moment later it was “What do you think they put in hot dogs that make them taste so good?” Then it was “What was your favorite baseball team when you were my age?”

  But the one question that Andy could now hear above all the others was Gabe asking, “Do you believe in God?”

  “I guess so,” Andy said.

  “I believe in God,” Gabe said, “but I don’t think my mom does.”

  “Really? Why do you think that?”

  “She won’t go to church anymore. She used to go all the time, when my mom and dad still lived together. Now she drops me off at the door, but she won’t go inside.”

  “Just because she doesn’t go to church doesn’t mean she doesn’t believe in God,” Andy said.

  “Yeah, I know. But she doesn’t just not go. She gets kind of mad when I bring church up. And she doesn’t pray before we eat. And one day I went outside to empty the trash, and when I pulled the lid off the trash can, I saw my mom’s Bible in there. My dad gave it to her one year for Christmas. I think if someone throws their Bible away, they don’t believe in God,” Gabe said. Then he added, “I worry about my mom. I pray for her every day. She always seems sad.”

  Andy sat in his kitchen, staring at the calendar, replaying Gabe’s words over and over in his head. Memories of Gabe and all the feelings they stirred up about Loraine and John had invaded this place, and they would not leave. Andy’s reprieve was now officially over.

  Chapter 18

  ALTHOUGH THE OLD MEMORIES had found him, Andy did his best to keep from obsessing over Gabe’s death. The change of scenery helped, as did his job. Back when he lived in Trask, he did basically the same things in the same places and saw the same people every day. Once that place became infected by the Phillips case, he had to get away from it. His new surroundings did not have that smell of death. He didn’t have to answer calls at the Madison Park Apartments two or three days a week or drive past the Adamsburg cemetery every time he went to the Harris County Courthouse. With enough effort, he could push Gabe and John and Loraine completely out of his mind for weeks at a time. I’m not so sure that was any better. The questions that haunted him never really went away. I think he just got used to their voices.

  Sometime I think it was August because it was still hot. Andy was out on patrol on Interstate 65. He was cruising south, to be exact. The grass on the sides of the highway had turned brown and dry (it was a pretty dry summer that year) but another colorful sight had sprung up in its place. All along the highway, very large, very bright billboards had popped out like dandelions in May. You couldn’t get away from them. Up on the billboard was the smiling face of one Mr. Reginald Chambliss, Esquire, the infamous Harris County prosecutor turned Republican nominee for governor. Good ole Reginald Chambliss was leaning against a broom, and underneath the billboard read: sweep out crime and corruption. vote reggie chambliss, governor. His high-profile murder case had proved to be the real broom, sweeping him right past Harris County and into statewide politics. Reginald Chambliss couldn’t have plotted it out any better if he’d written the story of his life himself. Andy laughed when he saw one of the billboards for the first time. After a while he got where he hardly noticed them.

  But on this particular hot August day, Andy pulled his police cruiser off the interstate and parked underneath a Chambliss billboard. He kept the engine running, and the AC cranked up on hig
h. Pulling out his radar gun, he started clocking southbound motorists. Traffic was light, and he’d parked in a rather conspicuous place, which meant most people slowed down before they ever got to him. The red digital numbers that flashed on the gun dropped as the cars came closer to his location. He didn’t really feel like getting out in the heat anyway, which meant he let anything under sixty-four miles per hour slide. The gun registered a couple of sixty-fives and one 66, but those numbers dropped so fast that by the time the cars reached him, they were down to fifty-three or fifty-four. He figured they got the point without having to be pulled over, so Andy left them alone.

  All of a sudden, a green Ford Maverick went flying by. A large 8-3 flashed on his radar gun. “Holy crap, I didn’t think those cars could go that fast,” Andy said. He dropped the radar gun onto the passenger seat and reached down to turn on his lights and sirens. Suddenly a black blur flew past that had to be going at least ninety. He yanked the shifter down to drive and pulled out after them. In a matter of moments Andy had his cruiser up to nearly one hundred and was closing in fast on the black blur, which he could now see was some kind of Plymouth. While Andy closed in on the Plymouth, the Plymouth closed in on the Maverick. It pulled up to the side of the green car and started trying to force it off the road. Andy couldn’t see anyone but the driver in the Maverick, and from the way his hands were flying around, he looked to be scared out of his mind. Suddenly the Maverick slowed down and pulled over onto the shoulder, which Andy assumed was because the driver had spotted him in his mirror. The Plymouth stomped on the gas and took off. Andy stayed on its tail.

  “Columbus dispatch, this is Indiana 2-3. I am in pursuit of a black Plymouth Fury, Indiana license three-three-C-one-eight-zero-three. We’re southbound on I-65, mile marker five-two. I need another unit to check on a green Ford Maverick on the shoulder approximately one half mile north of this location.”

  “10-4, Indiana 2-3.”

  The Fury yanked from the passing lane to the right-hand lane to avoid hitting a VW Bug in the left lane, then swerved back left. Andy had to slow down due to the Bug’s interference. Andy passed it on the left-hand side, his tires throwing up gravel from the edge of the median. He closed in on the Fury’s bumper again, his siren blaring. Up ahead, Andy could see traffic starting to build just past a road construction sign. The Fury’s brake lights lit up, and the right-hand blinker came on. It slowed and pulled over onto the right-hand shoulder, then stopped.

  Andy pulled his cruiser behind the stopped car, and turned off his siren. Over his PA mic he called out to the driver of the Plymouth, “Get out of the vehicle and lie down on the ground behind your car.” Slowly the driver’s-side door opened, and a heavyset man, who looked to be in his forties, climbed out, his hands shaking as he held them up in the air over his head. “Facedown on the ground, sir,” Andy called out again over the PA mic.

  “Yes, sir. I will, sir,” the man said as he lowered himself to his knees and lay down on the hot asphalt highway shoulder.

  Andy stepped out of his cruiser, his hand on the .38 pistol, waiting in its holster. “Place your hands behind your back, please, sir.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, his voice cracking.

  Pulling his handcuffs out of a compartment on his belt, Andy secured the man’s hands, then helped him to his feet. Bits of gravel stuck to the man’s cheeks and tears ran down his face. “Would you like to tell me what was going on back there?” Andy asked.

  “I caught them together,” the man said. “I walked into my house after work and I found them in bed together, right there in my own bed.”

  Andy already had a pretty good idea of the answer, but he asked anyway. “Who are ‘they,’ sir?”

  “My wife. We’ve been married seven-and-a-half years, and I walk in and find her doing our next-door neighbor. If I could have caught up to him, I would have killed the son of a bitch.” Then he looked up at Andy, his shoulders slumped forward, his voice breaking. “I’m really sorry, Officer, running from you like that. I can’t believe this is happening. I thought the guy was my friend. I loaned him my Weedeater last week. If I’d known he was screwing my wife, I would have used it on him. Can you blame me?”

  Andy patted the man on the shoulder as he led him to the back of his police cruiser. “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Ken. Ken Chamberlain. I’m in a lot of trouble, aren’t I, Officer?”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so, Ken. Do you have your driver’s license on you?” Andy asked.

  “In my back pocket,” the man replied.

  When Andy ran Chamberlain’s license, he found the man hadn’t had as much as a speeding ticket since he was sixteen. He was from Henry County, over sixty miles away. He’d been after the man in the Maverick for nearly an hour by the time they sped past Andy. As much as he hated to do it, Andy had to take the guy in. Later he learned the unit that responded to his call for help couldn’t find the green Maverick. Apparently, the driver headed toward home as soon as the black Fury left him alone. That’s a hell of a way for your marriage to end, Andy thought as he finished his reports and went back out on patrol.

  Long after his shift ended, Andy walked out on his back deck, a Pepsi in his hand, and stared out, the daylight fading away from the trees. Believe me, there wasn’t much else for him to do. Cable television hadn’t arrived in Brown County, and the rabbit ears on his old black-and-white set could only pick up one channel. As he stood on his deck, watching the trees sway in the wind and listening to the tree frogs, he started thinking about Ken Chamberlain sitting in the Bartholomew County Jail. The poor dumb bastard, Andy thought. But he couldn’t leave it at that. He started pondering Ken’s question: can you blame me? It made Andy ask himself what he would have done in the guy’s place. And he had to admit he would have probably done the same thing. He still couldn’t stand the idea of my mom dating again, even though he’d dumped her years earlier, and he’d been with many women since then. I guess technically he didn’t dump her. He dumped me. The two of us just happened to be a package deal at the time.

  So, as the sun died and the sky started turning dark, he stood there, sipping a Pepsi, thinking about what he would have done if he’d caught his wife with another man while they were married. He thought about it a little too long, which is one of the dangers of living by yourself in a remote area with poor television reception. He thought about Ken Chamberlain’s wife having sex with the next-door neighbor and about unfaithful wives in general, which naturally turned his thoughts to the unfaithful wife with whom he was most familiar, Loraine Phillips. And the more he thought about Loraine Phillips, the more he wondered why a man with a history of violence, like John Phillips, hadn’t come after him. Sure, Andy was quite a bit bigger than he was, but that hadn’t stopped John years earlier when he beat up a guy bad enough to earn himself three years in the state pen.

  Andy took a long, last drink of the Pepsi in his hand and turned to his standard answer. John took out his anger on his son, he mused. That was the best way he had to get back at Loraine for what she’d done to him. Besides, Gabe wasn’t even his son. He paused as the last thought ran through his head. Or was he? Loraine had told him he wasn’t, but something didn’t seem quite right about that. Gabe sure looked a lot like John. Same eyes. Same smile. Same build. John had to be his father. But if Loraine lied to me about that . . .? A chorus of tree frogs serenaded him as he stood, lost in thought, on his deck. Why, then, would he hurt his own son rather than coming after me? He turned the Pepsi can up for another drink, but nothing came out. Shaking the can, he walked into his kitchen and grabbed another out of the refrigerator. Popping the top, he turned his thoughts back to Ken Chamberlain sitting in a jail cell. Chamberlain’s actions made a lot more sense. You wouldn’t kill your kid to get back at your wife for screwing around on you. You’d go after her or the bastard who was nailing her.

  He walked back out onto his deck, with its chorus of tree frogs, and thought about jealous husbands and revenge. Why the hell
didn’t he come after me? Andy asked himself. That’s what I would have done. He’s kind of a strange man, my biological father. Once his mind locks onto something, he can’t let it go, sort of like a mental snapping turtle. He might have asked the guy directly, but you can’t just pick up a phone and call someone on death row, and driving five hours for a question this small didn’t make a lot of sense. So Andy walked back into his cabin, fished out a piece of paper and a pen from a drawer in the kitchen, and sat down at his table and began writing. His letter was short and to the point. “Dear John,” he wrote, “If you knew your wife was sleeping around, why didn’t you do anything about it? Most men would have gone after whoever was having sex with their wife. Why didn’t you? Why did you take your anger out on your son instead?” He signed his name to the bottom, shoved it in an envelope, addressed it, stuck a stamp on it, and put it in the mail the next day on his way to work.

  Andy had pretty much forgotten about writing John, when, a few weeks later, he pulled up to the mailbox next to his driveway. A padded manila envelope with a lump in the middle was mixed in with the usual assortment of bills and circulars. Up at the top of the envelope was John’s name, his inmate number, and a return address that ended with Michigan City, IN. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Andy said. “He wrote back. I wonder what else he crammed in there.” He tossed the envelope, along with the rest of the mail, onto the car seat and drove on up to his cabin. When he got out of his car, he purposefully left the mail where he’d laid it. It was still there the next morning when he went to work and the next evening when he returned home. He piled on a few more days’ worth of mail before finally carrying it into his house. Inside, he let it collect dust on his kitchen table for nearly a week before he finally pulled John’s letter out of the stack to open it. He shoved a pocketknife blade into the space at the top of the envelope, and started to rip it open, when he stopped himself. For some reason he couldn’t do it. He sat there like that for at least two or three minutes before pulling the knife away from the letter, closing the blade, and dropping the letter back onto his kitchen table. A week later he moved the envelope from his table to his mantel, where it remained, unopened, for at least a year, maybe more.