Widow Town

by Joe Hart

  “We could dig until Judgment Trump, Joseph, and not find a thing out there, and that’s because of one reason and one reason only, the man didn’t do it. He might’ve had more Red Rock in his brainpan than anything else, but he didn’t kill anyone. At least no one we know of.”

  “But if we’re right, then he or they are still out there. They could do it again anytime they want.”

  “Yes they could, but you have to pick and choose your battles. If we made a ruckus now we’d look like fools. And if we pushed hard enough we’d be unemployed fools. I like the DA a bit less than I do our friend Mitchel, but they’re right as far as how the community would react to us shouting about serial killers running amok.”

  Gray turned and stared down the street to the vacant lot. The pond would be drying up now without the constant water flow hydrating it.

  “We’ve done all we can right now. Until they surface again, and they may not, we have to wait. If they do, they’ll make a mistake and we’ll be ready.”

  “That’s infuriating.”

  “That’s police work.” Gray faced the deputy again. “Did you know the first Sonic-Rail they built, crashed on its initial run?”

  “No sir.”

  “It did. Killed a hundred thirteen people when its magnets went out. Careened right off the track and hit a bus that was traveling on the highway below it.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  Gray nodded. “The real tragedy was it could’ve been prevented. The story came out later that one of the designers wanted to hold up on the commercial run because he was worried about the exact problem that occurred. But he was overridden and as a result those people lost their lives.”

  Ruthers nodded slowly, looking across the street.

  “Here, I wanted you to have this.” Gray stepped forward and pulled his old knife from his pocket.

  “Sheriff, I can’t take this, it’s your knife.”

  “I got a new one given to me and I don’t need two of the damn things.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Joseph, if you don’t take it I’m going to throw it at you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome. My father gave me a knife when I was ten. I still have it. It’s not an auto or anything like the one you’ve got there, just a folder, probably seventy years old or more. Its blade is worn down almost to nothing from how many times it was sharpened, but it’ll still cut as well as the day it was made.”

  “I’ll keep it on me at all times.”

  “Good. Now, Mary Jo mentioned that a dog got hit over on third. You mind going over and getting it off the road?”

  “Will do.”

  Gray started moving toward the building, the file and the coffee cups in his hand.

  “Sheriff, which are we? The ones that pushed the Sonic-Rail ahead or the man who tried to postpone it?”

  Gray paused but didn’t look back over his shoulder.

  “Neither. We’re the people on the bus.”

  ~

  Rachel rose up through a jellied sleep. The vividness of the dream she’d been having dissolved into a blur of Picasso images, the clarity of the words and sounds slurring into babble. She opened her eyes to the featureless ceiling above the cot.

  The memories returned on their own. Her escape. The taste of blood in her mouth. Running. The lit porthole. Ken.

  She turned her head to the side and tried to sit up. Her hands and feet moved only inches then stopped. Blinking through the fog that plagued the boundaries of her vision, she saw that her wrists were locked in wide manacles attached to the bedframe. Her feet felt as if they were in the same position though she couldn’t gather the strength to raise her head far enough to see for certain. The cot swayed beneath her as if she were on a ship.

  “Rachel, are you awake?”

  The man stood on the other side of the glass within Ken’s cell. Her eyes found his somber face and she yanked on the shackles hard enough to draw blood from both wrists.

  Ken sat in a highchair facing the glass.

  He was buckled in tight across the chest and legs though his arms were free to swing, which he did, looking around the room with cautious eyes.

  “Don hurt ’im,” Rachel said, her tongue swollen three sizes.

  “I’m disappointed, Rachel. I thought we had an agreement?” The man began to pace behind Ken’s chair. “I told you not to try to escape, and what do you do?”

  Rachel tried swallowing but her mouth was a desert, gritted with sand. She pulled again at the bindings and her wrists began to ache.

  “I wouldn’t struggle, those manacles are iron plated and lined with ratcheting mechanisms that tighten whenever you move too much. It’ll eventually cut the circulation off to your wrists and ankles, and the tissue in your hands and feet will die over time.”

  “P-please.”

  “Oh the time for begging is long past I’m afraid, Rachel. You knew the consequences before you injured Adam and tried to run away. What did I tell you would happen if you did that?”

  “I’m s-sorry, please, don’t hurt him.”

  The man stopped pacing and looked at the back of Ken’s head. He drew out a pistol.

  “No! Anything! I’ll do anything you want! I won’t try to get out again, I promise!”

  “But Rachel, how can I trust you?”

  “I won’t, I won’t, I promise, don’t hurt my baby. Please, please, please.” Her voice gave way to sobbing. The man sighed and tapped the pistol against his thigh. Slowly he brought the barrel up and aimed it at Ken’s back.

  “No!”

  The gun clicked once as he pulled the trigger.

  Empty.

  Ken laughed and banged his hands against the tray before him.

  Rachel dissolved into soft weeping, her body going slack.

  “This is your last chance, Rachel. The next time there will be rounds in the gun. I’ll execute him in front of you after gluing your eyes open. Do you understand?”

  She could only nod. Her tears trailed in hot streaks across her face. The man holstered the weapon and knelt next to Ken’s chair.

  “Okay little man. Now you have to watch mommy, okay?” He held Ken’s small hand in his own and tapped against the glass three times. Ken giggled and reached for the partition.

  The door to her cell opened and Adam walked in. His face was bandaged on the left side, hiding his damaged eye. The other one stared at her, muted rage burning in its center. His mouth was a straight slash at the bottom of his face.

  “You watch mommy, watch close now.”

  Adam sneered and unbuckled his belt.

  “No, please,” Rachel said, staring down her own length at the approaching man. Only then did she realize that she wore a loose nightgown that trailed to her knees. Adam’s smile widened.

  “I’m gonna make you sorry,” Adam said, dropping his pants to his ankles. He wore stained underwear that once might’ve been white. “So sorry.”

  “Please, don’t make him watch.” Rachel turned her eyes to the man kneeling by Ken. “Please don’t.”

  Adam stripped away his underwear and climbed onto the cot, pushing up her gown as he did. His face was huge like the moon, pitted with acne scars that could have been lunar craters. His remaining eye was a cavern of darkness.

  Rachel tried to hold back the scream but it slipped out as she turned her face away from her son.

  “So sorry,” Adam grunted. “So sorry.”

  Chapter 32

  Gray drove for hours.

  No calls came through on the radio. It sat as quiet as a stone in the dash. He watched it and when it didn’t speak he gazed out at the rolling fields of too-green corn. He drove to the Olson farm, stopping in the empty yard. All that was left of the house was blackened rubble caved into the hollow basement. Boards singed and ash covered floor. The ground crackled beneath his boots as he walked the old home’s border, kicking a rock into the hole now and then. The birds lamented unseen in the trees. The corn spo
ke.

  He left the Olson’s and wandered the back roads until the Jacobses’ driveway came into view. A fox, its white and orange tail twitching, slipped from the edge of the field and disappeared into the drying forest. Gray pulled even with its trail but it was already gone.

  The scorched farmhouse stood silent and still. An old homemade swing swayed from the strong arm of an oak. The garden, untended, withered beneath the sun. Gray walked across the lawn to the doghouse and looked at its empty hole for a long time.

  Inside he sat down at the kitchen table, turning one of the placemats beneath his hand. Turning, turning, turning. A fly buzzed and knocked against a window somewhere. He flung the placemat across the room in a violent motion. It banged into a cabinet and fell to the floor, settling like a tiny rug.

  “Come on,” he said. “Come on.”

  He locked the door on his way out and went back to the cruiser, climbing inside. Checked the radio. Nothing. He drove into town, ten miles under the speed limit, his eyes blank on the road, the cracks clicking beneath the wheels.

  When he pulled down Main Street he kept rolling past the station, past Lynn’s store, past the vacant lot, and turned, coasting toward the pond’s depression.

  It was a muddied hole now. The water was gone, leaving a brownish muck that was cracking at its edges, drying inward toward a puddle no wider that a man’s reach at its middle. Deep footprints marked the places where the underwater lights had been retrieved.

  Gray parked the cruiser and got out, walking down the path to stand at the same spot as Lynn had the night before. A candy wrapper fluttered toward him and skidded away, scratching at the ground. To the right, the path followed the pond’s edge into a small park dotted with hearty bushes and evergreens that had yet to lose their color to the leeching sun. Next to the path was a steel bench, ornately carved wood on its seat and backrest. Ryan Barder sat upon it.

  Gray walked down the trail, losing sight of the boy as it first wound away and then came back toward the parched dip. As Gray neared the bench, he saw Ryan held a small chain in his fingers and a bag of groceries sat near his feet.

  “Afternoon,” Gray said.

  Ryan jerked a little and his eyes widened. “Afternoon, Sheriff.”

  “Sorry I keep startling you.”

  “It’s okay, I was just thinking.”

  “Looked like it. Mind if I sit?”

  Ryan gazed at the spot beside him for a moment and then scooted down, pulling his grocery bag with him. Gray sat, stretching his legs out. A massive pine shaded the bench, its shadow stretching much past its true length.

  “You working anywhere this summer, Ryan?”

  “No sir.”

  “Just on your farm there?”

  “Yeah, but we don’t do a whole lot. Dad has a crew come in every fall and harvest for us.”

  “You have your own equipment?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How many acres?”

  “Around five hundred.”

  Gray whistled low. “That’s a lot of crops.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How old are you, Ryan?”

  “Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in a few months.”

  “Gotcha, fall boy. Not too far from mine. I just turned forty this week. You wouldn’t have known Devi Jacobs, would you?”

  “No sir.”

  “You’re about her age, would’ve been in the same grade at least, right?”

  Ryan nodded. “She was in my class, but I didn’t know her.”

  Gray looked out over the vanished pond. “Such a shame. Pretty girl, so much life ahead of her. Was she popular at school?”

  “I don’t know, maybe.” Ryan grasped the grocery bag handles and began to stand. “I really should be getting home, Sheriff.”

  “Sure, sure. I just saw you sitting here and thought I’d say hello. Not too often you see a young man like yourself alone looking so thoughtful.”

  Ryan stared down at his hands that worried at the chain.

  “Was that your mother’s?”

  Ryan glanced at him and frowned before looking back at the ground.

  “How’d you know that?”

  “I surmised. The chain’s delicate, too small for a man’s taste, and your father mentioned that you lost your mom on your birthday.”

  “Yeah, it was hers.”

  “Your birthday must be kind of tough each year.”

  Ryan shrugged. “I never knew her. It’s worse for my dad.”

  “I suppose it is.” Gray stared at the boy for a long time until he met his gaze. “Are you all right, Ryan?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “It seems there’s something bothering you.”

  “No, I’m tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Your face is healing up nicely. How’d you get that again?”

  “I fell, in the kitchen.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I really have to go, sir.”

  “I do too,” Gray said, rising from the seat. “Hotter than hell in July around here. A man can’t sit still too long, he’ll turn to ash. I’ll walk with you if you don’t mind.”

  They moved down the path together. Ryan kept his focus on the ground and Gray looked ahead.

  “I like history, Ryan, didn’t know if I mentioned that.”

  “No sir.”

  “I do, always have. My father enjoyed it and passed it down to me. I even like natural history, scientific history, things like that. Do you know how long our sun has been around?” Gray said, motioning to the blinding sky.

  “A couple billion years?”

  “Four point six billion, approximately. That time itself is something to ponder, isn’t it? The amount of life and events that have occurred in that span, it boggles the mind. The only problem with the sun is it’s like everything else, it’s finite. Someday it will end, in fact I read recently that it’s nearing its halfway point of life. Middle aged, like me.” Gray chuckled. “But we’ll never see it burn out, humankind I mean. You see, the sun’s getting brighter, and personally I think it’s already getting hotter. In another billion years or so it will be too hot to keep the water from evaporating into space. It’ll all just dry up and blow away into the dark.”

  They reached Gray’s cruiser and he paused, watching Ryan who stopped several feet away.

  “I don’t understand,” Ryan finally said.

  Gray laughed again. “I’m glad in some ways you don’t, it’s a harrowing thought to say the least. What I mean by it is this: there are things to worry about and things that can be let go. In the end everything you see around you will be gone. Everything anyone’s ever worked for, the steps we or any other life has taken will be erased like they never were. Now, I don’t tell you these things to depress you, I’m trying to give you the one thing that I got from thinking on all this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Perspective.”

  Gray watched Ryan for a beat from beneath the bill of his hat, then nodded and climbed into the car. Ryan looked after the receding cruiser and tried not to let his legs tremble until the sheriff was out of sight. When he knew he could walk without stumbling, he set off for his own car parked on the baking street.

  ~

  Gray stopped the cruiser before the farmhouse and studied the young man seated on its front porch. His red hair was in disarray and his forehead was propped in one palm. Gray let out a long breath and opened the door. Davey didn’t look up as he approached and placed one foot on the lowermost stair.

  “Afternoon Davey.”

  “Hello.”

  “May I have a seat in the shade?”

  “Sure.”

  Gray climbed the steps and sat in an open chair beside the boy. Everything was still, not a breeze moved the drooping leaves. The house popped with the heat.

  “I didn’t get to say how sorry I am,” Gray said. “Your father was a good man. Good friend.”

  Davey nodded into his hand and finally sat up. His f
ace was as red as his hair, but dry.

  “He was strong and he passed that on to you, I can see it. There’s nothing I can say to comfort you, son. No words ease suffering like this, only time does. The memories that are painful now will become different as the days pass. They’ll change from bitter and hurtful to something else, something mellow and good. The memories will be a comfort, you’ll see.”

  Davey stared at him, through him, his eyes lifeless. After a time, he blinked and licked his lips.

  “I wanted to thank you, Sheriff.”

  “For what?”

  “For killing that man who hurt him. He deserved worse than he got but I appreciate you ending him.”

  “You know it was self-defense, right, Davey? I had no choice. If it had been any other way, I would’ve brought that man in alive.”

  “I know, but I’m glad you didn’t, especially now.” Davey turned and looked out across the field that spanned in a rolling green sea beyond the yard. “It’s a joke isn’t it?”

  “What’s that, son?”

  “Life. It has to be. It couldn’t be anything else after he went missing and then we got him back only to lose him for good.”

  “Sometimes it seems that way.”

  “Like how you lost your daughter.”

  Gray’s jaw clenched. “Yes, that’s right.”

  Davey studied Gray’s face for a while before looking at his hands. “Are the memories better about her now?”

  He opened his mouth to reply and closed it again before rubbing the heel of his boot across the parched decking.

  “Not yet.”

  “But you think they will.”

  “I have to believe so.”

  “Otherwise life’s not worth living, right?”

  Gray dipped his chin once.

  “Everyone tells me there’s a heaven and a God that’s watching out for us, and that Dad’s with him now, but I want to ask, why wasn’t he with him when he was taken from us? Where was he then? The only comfort I get from that is if there is a heaven, there must be a hell, and that’s where Hudson is now.”

  A cicada began its slow, buzzing drone and the sun beat down. They sat without speaking for a long time.