by Newman,James
Loath as I am to admit it, being black in a small Southern town circa 1977 was only one of several unfair strikes against someone like Calvin Mooney. I had seen the way Midnight’s upper-middle-class white folks—ladies and gentlemen who would otherwise argue that such prejudiced behavior was far beneath them—looked down their noses at Rooster, the way they watched him with expressions of self-righteous distaste as he shambled about town. I had heard carloads of teenagers yell cruel epithets his way as they raced down Whitman Boulevard in their parents’ shiny sports cars, had seen beer bottles hurled from such vehicles nearly hit Calvin when he bent to replace an errant can that had clattered from the glittery aluminum mountain atop his wagon.
I cursed Sheriff Burt Baker when I heard the news of Calvin Mooney’s arrest. I wished I could get my hands around his fat fucking neck.
Despite that nagging, instinctual sense of self-preservation which had thus far kept me doing the right thing, there was no way I could allow an innocent man to take the blame for what Baker had done.
It was too late for Cassie Belle Rourke. But not for Calvin Mooney.
I knew what I had to do.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There was just one thing I had to do before I paid my long-overdue visit to Deputy Mike Linder.
I had to be sure…
As soon as Mom left for work, I went to the phone in the kitchen. I stood before it, swallowed. Cleared my throat. Wiped my clammy palms on my shirt.
I stared at the phone for several long minutes as if it might bite me should I step too near.
For as far back as I could remember a list of emergency numbers had been taped on the wall above the telephone, to the right of our refrigerator. That bright white piece of notebook paper always stood out in stark contrast to the ugly melon color of our kitchen wallpaper even after the paper started to turn a dusty-yellow, but I can’t recall ever needing to use the list before the day I visited Deputy Linder. Just a few of the numbers there, all of them written in Mom’s barely legible scrawl, were contact info for the Midnight Fire Department, our family doctor, and the Polk County Sheriff’s Department.
I sighed and picked up the phone. Squinted to read Mom’s hastily scribbled number for the Sheriff’s Department. Dialed it.
It rang. And rang. And rang again. My heart slammed in my chest while I waited for someone to pick up.
“Polk County Sheriff’s Department,” said a deep male voice, halfway through the fourth ring. “May I help you?”
“I—” My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t speak.
“Hello?”
“I…h-hello?”
“Hello. Polk County Sheriff’s Department. How can I be of service?”
“Could you, um…”
“Yes?”
“C-could you p-please t-tell me if Sheriff B-Baker is available, please?” I whispered into the phone. I cringed. My voice sounded so high-pitched and squeaky.
“No, I’m sorry, he’s not,” came the reply. “May I take a message, or perhaps if this is an emergency I could be of—”
That was all I needed to know.
No Sheriff Baker.
I hung up.
I threw on my jacket and hurried out of the house, not even bothering to lock the front door behind me.
It was now or never, I knew.
I was ready as I’d ever be…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It seemed as if years had passed since the last time I’d seen the sun. Ever since the night of the Apple Gala I had become increasingly convinced that the pall of gloomy weather hanging over Midnight might never go away. The storm faded to a faint drizzle as I made my way through town, down New Fort Road toward Main Street, but it did not dissipate entirely. A thick blue-black promise of more hard rain loomed upon the horizon like an ugly bruise on the sky, and thunder rumbled beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains like a dirty secret. The streets and sidewalks were littered with soggy leaves and dead pine needles stuck to the ground like rust-colored insects flattened by the storm. Occasionally I would spot a fat brown earthworm in my path, trying to find its way home, and with a boy’s unending infatuation for all things slimy and oozing I would cup my wriggling discovery in one palm, moving him off of the cement where he might burrow down into the earth to venture homeward instead of awaiting squishy death beneath the feet of passers-by. Perhaps I merely delayed the inevitable, walking slower and slower the closer I came to the Sheriff’s Department, though I tried to tell myself I was brave, that nothing could stop me from doing what was right. I missed Burner more than ever as I dodged dozens of mud puddles or accidentally stepped through them when I failed to pay attention to where I was going, splashing muddy water over the legs of my jeans in the process. Normally I would have ridden right through those miniature ponds without a second thought—Burner and I would have intentionally hit every one, in fact, as if it were some sort of messy game. But times, they were a-changin’. And they had been ever since the night of August 5.
Everything looked so gray, so dreary, in my town. As if the whole place were drowning beneath a thick, watery fog of wrongness.
The offices of the Polk County Sheriff’s Department were located at 327 North Main Street, in a nondescript brick building sandwiched between the offices of the Midnight Sun and a vacant establishment that had once been a pool hall called Happy Jack’s. Out front of the Sheriff’s Department was a tall silver flagpole. A U.S. flag clinked and clanked upon it in the day’s cool breeze, and I noticed the flag flew at half-mast, presumably in memory of Cassandra Belle Rourke. The giant gold badge painted on the office’s plate-glass window was the only hint as to what went on inside there; otherwise the Sheriff’s Department might have been just another Mom & Pop’s diner or arts-and-crafts store at first glance.
My heart started thudding in my chest like a jackhammer when I saw it looming so close before me…
I didn’t want to go in there. Never in my life had I not wanted to do something so badly.
But I knew I had no choice.
I shrugged off my windbreaker when I came within a hundred feet or so of the building, took a deep breath as I tied it around my waist.
For a five full minutes I must have stood there. Not moving. Just staring at the offices of the Sheriff’s Department.
Somewhere in my peripheral vision an old blue-haired lady pulled her Cadillac alongside the curb, got out, and waited while her poodle left a tiny pile of turds at the base of the flagpole. She might have said something to me, but I wasn’t sure. On the other side of the street, four burly rednecks conversed loudly as they entered Annie’s Country Diner (FREE O.J. WITH LARGE BISCUITS-N-GRAVY PLATTER, read the sign in the window, above a smaller pink banner: WE MISS YOU, CASSIE). One of them said something about a “crazy sonuvabitch,” and “huntin’ season,” but that was all I could make out.
The blood rushing through my head as well as my own nervous respiration had grown nearly deafening during those last few seconds.
I blocked everything else out then. I stared at the offices of the Polk County Sheriff’s Department up ahead. Swallowed nervously. Took a few steps forward. The only thing upon which I could focus, during those last few seconds before I entered the building, were the bold white letters painted beneath that badge on the window:
POLK COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT
BURT L. BAKER, SHERIFF
I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to trade places with that old lady’s poodle on its too-tight leash.
I wanted to be anywhere but here.
But I knew I had to do this. Before it was too late.
So I opened the door and went inside.
The interior of the Sheriff’s Department was nothing like what I expected. Thanks to TV shows like Columbo and Dragnet, movies like Serpico and (Dan’s favorite) Dirty Harry, my twelve-year-old brain had envisioned a room bustling with mad activity. Chaos. Stern-faced boys in blue escorting tattooed scumbags and scantily clad hookers to the dingy jailhouse at the
back of the building. Baggy-eyed detectives with five o’ clock shadows sipping from cups of hot black coffee. The smell of blotter ink, cheap cigars, and gun oil. Not to mention phones—a shrill chorus of telephones constantly ringing ringing ringing.
On the contrary, when I entered that one-room building and the little bell over the door announced my arrival (far louder than I would have preferred), the first thing I noticed was the almost haunting quiet of the place. It didn’t seem right.
Outside, I heard the swoosh of a car driving through a puddle. The loud fart of a diesel engine passing then fading in the distance. Through the building’s thin walls I could faintly hear Stevie Wonder singing “Sir Duke” on a radio, sounded like it was coming from the newspaper place next door.
My guts roiled as I looked around the place. I wondered if I really could go through with this.
Two identical desks sat side by side in the center of the room, neither covered with more than a modicum of paperwork. A bank of puke-green file cabinets lined the wall beyond the desks. At the rear of the room another door led to an area designated AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. To the right of that door a microwave and a coffee machine sat atop two more battered file cabinets. The microwave hummed softly.
The smell of beef stew filled the room.
I stood there for several long minutes, wondering what I should do. Wondering what came next.
A toilet flushed. The door at the back of the room squeaked open.
A man in a khaki uniform came through, wiping his hands on his pants.
My breath caught in my throat. My heart skipped a beat.
The microwave dinged.
The man in the sheriff’s uniform glanced first toward the microwave, then at me. Our eyes met.
A phone on one of the desks rang.
MIKE W. LINDER, DEPUTY SHERIFF, read the nameplate atop that desk.
I began to breathe again. My heartbeat slowly returned to normal.
Deputy Mike Linder threw up his big right hand. “Well, look what the cat dragged in! Mr. Kyle Mackey!”
The phone rang again.
I returned the man’s smile, but shyly stared at my shoes. Wondered what to do next.
“Be with ya in a second, ’kay?” Mike said.
I nodded.
Mike Linder and my father had been old high-school buddies. He and his wife, Terri, used to bring my family warm meals after Dad’s funeral, but they stopped coming around following a nasty scene Mom made one evening when I was eight or nine years old. Deputy Mike had dropped by to check on us, and once again my mother had been drunk out of her gourd. She answered the door in only her bra and a denim skirt, a bottle of Jim Beam gripped tight in her hand like some copper-bodied parasite affixed to her palm. As soon as she opened the door, she asked Mike what the fuck he wanted. He barely had time to say anything before she accused him of looking down on our family. She informed him that we did not want his “charity.” Then she threw herself upon him, started smothering him with vulgar wet kisses.
Mike apologized that day after shoving Mom off of him, and when he saw me peeking around the corner, he waved at me. The smile on his face, however, was very sad. He sniffled once, softly, before stepping off our doorstep for the last time.
Linder was a big man, but he possessed one of the kindest, gentlest faces I ever saw. His brown hair was peppered with early streaks of gray. He volunteered a lot as a Salvation Army Santa Claus around the Christmas season, and he was perfect for it. His bright blue eyes seemed to sparkle with kindness. A number of faintly visible freckles dotted his fat cheeks, a trait that made him appear ten years younger than his thirty-some-odd years.
“Okay,” Mike said, into the phone. “Love you too. No, I won’t forget. Bye.”
I cleared my throat, shifted my weight from one foot to the other as I waited.
“Sorry about that,” Mike said, hanging up the phone at last. His voice was deep, but not intimidating. “Wife checking in. Both the girls have been sick. Doc Laymon’s gonna write ’em a prescription for me to pick up on the way home. How are things with you, buddy?”
That was the thing I liked most about Mike Linder. He always spoke to me as if I were his equal, not just another dumb kid. He made me feel like a real person, in spite of my family’s predicament.
Still, I popped my knuckles nervously, fidgeted beneath Mike’s gaze. For some reason I could not make eye contact with the deputy, as if I had come here to confess my own crimes.
“Earth to Kyle,” Deputy Linder said with a chuckle, startling me from my inner torment. “Hello, hello?”
I laughed uneasily. “Um, s-sorry. H-how are you, Mike?”
He gestured toward the microwave at the back of the room. “Do you mind? I was about to grab some lunch.”
“Um, yeah,” I said. “Of course. G-go ahead.”
“Been one of those days, lemme tell ya. I don’t gobble it down now, I’ll never get the chance.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do…um…I hear things have been really, um, busy around here.”
“You can say that again. Been nonstop all morning after…well, you know.” He glanced toward the jailhouse at the back of the building, beyond that AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY door. Shook his head.
I wondered if Calvin Mooney was back there behind bars even now, wrongly imprisoned at the hands of a murderer with a badge while I delayed justice because of my own paranoid sense of self-preservation. Perhaps he heard every word we said. I wondered if Burner was back there as well. Waiting for his best friend to come bail him out.
Mike opened the microwave, pulled out his bowl of beef stew. “So I understand Dan left for Florida a few days ago.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, not wanting to talk about that at all.
“Good for him. He’s gonna go far, that kid. Won’t be long till he’s fielding offers from the N.B.A., you wait and see.”
“Probably.”
“Guess you’re the man of the house now, huh?”
“I guess.”
“Gonna miss him?”
My reply was barely a whisper: “If you only knew…”
“I was always crazy about my big brother when I was your age. Worshipped the guy. He works in the White House now, writing speeches for President Carter. Can you believe that?”
Then Mike forgot all about Dan in Florida and coveted government jobs and how much we both missed our brothers as he turned back toward me and carried his dinner to his desk. He sat, pulled from his desk drawer a small baggie containing a fork, a napkin, and several salt and pepper packets, and began to eat.
He spoke to me between loud, smacking bites: “So what’s up, Kyle? What brings you to the offices of Midnight’s finest?”
I pointed to a metal chair in front of his desk. “May I?”
“Mmm.” He swallowed, took another big bite of beef stew. “Please. Sit.”
I sat.
“Not hungry, are you?”
“No,” I replied, though the way he chowed down so voraciously I wouldn’t have expected him to offer me any of his lunch even if I had accepted his offer. “Thanks.”
“So what’s up, little buddy?” Deputy Linder asked me, his mouth full. “Somethin’ wrong, or did you just drop by to say ‘hi?’”
For the next minute or so I stared at a picture on Mike’s desk, unable to find my voice. It was a framed photograph of Mike’s twin daughters, Staci and Traci, a snapshot the family had taken during a trip to Disney World, judging from the majestic castle in the sunny background and the beaming, tuxedoed rodent who stood between the Linder twins.
Perhaps it was everything on my mind of late…but those girls looked so much like Cassandra Belle Rourke at that moment, with their long blonde hair and innocent teenage smiles, I wanted to run screaming from the room. Mickey Mouse resembled something sinister embracing the girls, a malevolent creature with obscene intentions despite the very friendly expression upon his mammoth black and white head.
“Kyle? You okay?”
&nb
sp; I looked up, and Deputy Linder’s face seemed to glow with compassion. His fork was still in his hand, but he had stopped eating.
“What’s the matter? Has something happened?”
“I…I…”
“What is it, Kyle?”
“I…I n-need to tell you, Mike—”
I heard the front door of the building open behind me then, but I didn’t turn around. The words I had prepared to say to Deputy Linder caught in my throat. Shit. After all this, someone had interrupted us? How long would it take for me to build up the nerve again to tell Mike what I knew? Could I do it? Or would this be Calvin Mooney’s only chance at freedom?
Mike looked past me, over my shoulder, and greeted the person who had entered with an upward jerk of his head. “You get that taken care of, boss?”
“Eh. For now. Goddamn fool’s never gonna learn, though.”
It was a voice I knew instantly. A voice that had haunted my dreams for days. The voice of the Devil himself.
“Same old shit, at least once a week. I’m starting to think the son-of-a-bitch likes it, Mike.”
His walkie-talkie squawked loudly upon his belt as if to emphasize his point.
I couldn’t turn around even if I tried. My feet seemed cemented to the floor, my ass Krazy-Glued to my seat. My every muscle tensed up. My cheeks, ears, and neck burned with terror. I felt naked, so vulnerable sitting there as he walked up behind me. I could hear the blood rushing through my head, felt my bowels lurch. I wondered if he heard them too.
“You decided not to haul him in this time?” Deputy Linder asked his superior.
“What good’s it gonna do? Guy’s gonna learn his lesson faster if I take him home and let Bella knock him over the head with her rolling pin a few times than if he’s sleepin’ it off in the tank.”