“So, fellas,” Swarthbeck said to the group at large, “what did we learn tonight?”
With no answer forthcoming, he cupped a hand to his ear and leaned in. “Anybody?” He straightened up and got serious. “OK, I’ll tell you what you learned. You learned not to come to my party and mess it up by being drunk and stupid. Tonight, that lesson is going to cost you the privilege of being here for the rest of the weekend. I catch any of you even sniffing around downtown tomorrow and the toll will be considerably higher. Understand?”
He got nods all around.
“Uncuff them and let them go,” the mayor told Officer Sakota.
“But Adair—”
“Phil. Let them go.”
Sakota produced wire snips from his pants pocket and set about freeing the men, one by one.
“Anybody in there with her?” the mayor asked, pointing to Adair’s closed office door.
“Carl Pollard and some roughneck,” Sakota said.
Swarthbeck opened the door, and Chief Underwood stood up behind her desk.
“Hi, Adair,” he said. “How you doing tonight?”
“Fine. Busy. I was just—”
“Good. Listen, do you mind if I say something to these guys?”
“I—”
“Good.” He pivoted toward Pollard. “Carl, you’re a dumb motherfucker. Agreed?”
Pollard tried to scoot around in his chair. “Uh, what are you driving at, Mayor?”
“I’m driving at your dumbness, Carl. It’s breathtaking in its scope. Why, I’d go so far as to say that being dumb is your masterwork, that you have no peers in the realm of being dumb. Do you follow me?”
“Not really, no.”
“Mayor,” Adair said. “What’s going on?”
Swarthbeck ignored her, turning now to Pollard’s sparring partner. “And you, whoever you are, are not much brighter, are you?”
The young guy started to speak, and Swarthbeck cut him off. “My question does not require an answer, son. Both of you guys are going to leave right now, and I better not see your faces again this weekend.”
“Mayor—” Adair said.
“Phil,” the mayor said.
Sakota came in and snipped the zip-cuffs from the men’s wrists. The mayor saw him give Adair a pained look, and that was OK by him. He valued loyalty in other people. Made him think better of them.
When Pollard and the other man cleared out, Swarthbeck took the temperature of his police chief. He figured he’d have to do some damage control, but he’d suspected that before he walked over. She’d have disappointed him otherwise.
“You’ve got concerns, Adair,” he said, taking the seat he’d occupied almost twenty-four hours earlier. “Let’s talk.”
While Adair Underwood paced through her office and went through her litany of gripes, Swarthbeck tried to keep his smile on the side of bemused rather than an outright smirk. Adair was a big, strong, young woman, and the ferocity of her complaints left the mayor at least as blown back as he was impressed. Simultaneously, he dealt with the notions that he’d hired exactly the right person for the job and someone who would be more trouble than she was worth. A little hard to reconcile that dichotomy.
He’d overstepped? He couldn’t disagree with her there.
He’d undermined her authority? Again, probably so. But there was some upside in that, he thought.
He was acting imperial? Whatever. Maybe Adair was reading too many books of high intrigue.
“Adair, sit down,” he said.
“No.”
“OK, stand up. But I’m getting a knot in my neck following you around the room. Can you just pick a spot?”
She stood at the corner of her desk, a few feet from him. Her mouth was cinched up tight, and her arms crossed.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’m waiting,” she said.
“OK, Adair, just let me talk here.” He’d reached the end of his patience with the insolence. It was just like a woman to press things when she was pissed off. “I know I said you could run this operation the way you wanted—”
“You said it’s my department. That’s what you said when you hired me.”
“Goddamnit, Adair, just shut up and let me finish, OK?” It was more roar than he’d intended, and Adair lowered herself into her chair. “Ten years ago, Jamboree was almost dead. Nobody really came anymore, and we damn near closed her up. But then Sam took it over, and we got some good ideas flowing, and now you can go to any of these towns around here, and people will say, ‘Man, I love that Jamboree.’ We’re the damn gold standard.”
“I still don’t see—”
“Adair, please.” He slapped her desk, and she clammed up. “Part of the reason we’re the gold standard is we don’t hassle people. I know we need a certain amount of security. I didn’t flinch when you asked for eight men, did I?”
“No.”
“But what we don’t need is to develop a reputation that we’re putting the pinch on people who come here. Mark my words, when those guys sober up, they’ll appreciate that we didn’t bring the justice system down on them, that they’re not facing a couple hundred in fines for drinking too much and being idiots. And they’ll also stay away, like I told them to. Which solves our problem going forward, does it not?”
“Yes.” She was tight-lipped.
“What I’m saying is, there are 362 other days a year where I won’t say boo if you want to run Carl Pollard in for fighting or cite somebody for public drunkenness, OK? It is your department, Adair. I’m just asking you to get with the spirit of this thing for one weekend.”
“You still didn’t have to undermine me like that. You made me look bad in front of those men and my officer.”
The mayor leaned forward, voice a notch lower in conciliation. “Yeah, I suppose I did. I’m a decisive guy. I move fast when I think something needs to be done. I’m sorry, Adair.”
She stood again. A dominion move, Swarthbeck thought. I like it.
“That explain what happened this morning?” she asked. “Decisiveness? Something needing to be done?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you know.”
“Oh, the office?”
“See, I knew you did.”
The mayor shrugged. “No need to get all conspiratorial. I just didn’t want a big mess down here on the first day of Jamboree.”
“You sure that’s all it was?” she asked.
“Yeah. Don’t you trust me?”
“No.”
The mayor stood up and pushed his chair closer to her desk. “And that’s what makes you a good cop. Good night, Adair.”
SAM
From the trash-riddled center of Main Street, Sam watched the sun peek above the badlands east of town. He looked at his watch: 5:20 a.m. Every year during Jamboree, he went to bed early on Friday night, his ears plugged against the sonic assault, and every year he wondered if he shouldn’t be downtown having fun with everybody else. And then, come Saturday morning, every year, he was here at sunrise and thankful for his good sense in bagging some sleep.
His companions on cleanup duty—Eldrick Sloane, Ren Brian, and Chet Mayberry—didn’t seem to have quite as much starch in them, having been downtown for the duration the previous night. The owners of the Sloane Hotel, the Double Musky, and the Oasis had promised months earlier to kick in some cleanup help. That was part of Sam’s job, getting commitments on jobs like cleaning up and setting up the parade markers. At the time, the business owners no doubt expected that they could saddle an underling with the duty, but in a place where high school dropouts were pulling in thirty dollars an hour for using a scrub brush on oil rigs, the labor pool of peons was turning out to be damn shallow.
“Fellas, if we just divvy the street into quarters, we can get everything swept up pretty quick,�
� Sam said. “I’ll run everything out to the dump. We’re not aiming for pristine here. Just presentable.”
He handed out push brooms to each man. “Smile, Ren,” he said. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“What are you so damn cheerful about?” Brian said.
“It’s my favorite day of the year.”
“Yeah? Mine is Sunday, when I can count the money and be done with this for another year.”
Sam gave him a chuck on the shoulder and sent him off to meet his duty.
The other guys dispatched to their positions, Sam started his sweep at the south end of the stretch, and as he built piles of detritus, he tried to make sense of the conversation he’d had with Patricia an hour earlier. She woke up while he showered, and she’d made him a cup of coffee, a gesture he appreciated.
“What time did you get home?” he’d asked her.
“Ten thirty or so.”
“That late?”
“I had a drink with Raleigh.”
“Oh.”
“Coffee, Sam.”
He’d winced at having let it get to him. He wasn’t stupid. He knew about her little crush on Raleigh Ridgeley. The way she kept those books close when they came out, like a starving child protecting her food, made it obvious, but Sam had always ascribed that to an innocent fascination with what Raleigh had been able to make of himself beyond the town limits of Grandview. To anyone who stayed, like Sam and Patricia had, Raleigh’s life would naturally seem exotic and alluring. But hey, Raleigh came back year after year—by Sam’s reckoning, that made Grandview pretty special, too.
He might’ve cogitated more in that direction if not for what Patricia had said next.
“Henrik was at your mother’s again. Samuel saw him.”
“Damnit.”
“And listen: Samuel, I hope, is going to tell you about this, but in case he doesn’t, I want you to know.”
“OK.”
“Henrik called him a fag.”
“He did?” Sam folded his hands into fists.
“Yes. Do you know anything about this?”
That had stung him a bit. He’d snapped the buttons on his shirt to buy time to moderate his reply. “You think I told Henrik about Samuel? Really?”
“Samuel asked if you did.”
“Well, that’s just great.”
His voice must have risen, because she held her hands out, palms down, urging quiet. “You don’t get to be hurt by this. Samuel’s the aggrieved party. I’m just asking a question.”
“No,” he’d said. “I did not tell Henrik anything. And I’m getting a little tired of being the bad guy here. Why do you get all the firsthand information and I get all the secondhand questions? Why won’t he talk to me about it?”
“Because you were asleep and I wasn’t.” Here, her voice had gone to a whisper. “And if you’ll stop blustering and listen to me, I’m telling you that he wants to talk to you and I told him he should. So if he makes like he wants to, let him. OK?”
“OK.”
She’d stood and fixed his collar.
“He wants to go by Norby, you know,” Sam had said.
“I know.” She’d sighed. “I don’t have the energy for any more names. Your son Norby is asleep next door. Your daughter Denise and her husband Randy and their children Chase and Randall Junior are in the basement. They would all like to see you, Sam Kelvig, for breakfast, so hurry home, OK?”
“OK, wife Patricia.” She’d smiled at that, and he’d thought that maybe it was a way forward after these weeks of clinging to their own sides of everything—the house, the bed, their interests. He’d puckered up for a kiss, and she’d instead patted him on the chest.
“I’m going back to bed,” she said.
Twelve bags full of trash rode in the back of Sam’s pickup as he drove home. Breakfast first, dump afterward. He’d see if Samuel wanted to go with him. That would offer an opening for more to say, if his son wanted to say it.
The problem, as Sam had come to view it, was one of perspective. He just didn’t see how this was who Samuel claimed to be. When had that happened? In Missoula? God knows, Sam had chafed often during his own time out there, at how little dignity and self-control some of his classmates had shown. California, maybe? Sam couldn’t make sense of that place. Norby said he was gay and that was that. “I was born gay,” he’d said to his parents, on that excruciating phone call after he and Derek didn’t even make it to their flight in Minneapolis. Sam had felt kicked in the teeth on that one, because there he was, trying to understand something that was beyond comprehension, and his own son wouldn’t even come look him in the eye.
Sam had his doubts about this “born this way” stuff. The Reverend Franklin had backed him up on that one, talking about the people he personally knew who had been able to conquer their “SSDs.” “What’s that?” Sam had asked, and the pastor had said, “Same-sex desires.” The Reverend Franklin said there was help, that people could beat back the impulses with intensive therapy. “He’ll need you to stand by him as he fights this,” the pastor had said.
On the ride home, Patricia had told Sam, “That was a mistake. I’m not talking to him anymore.” No discussion, no mediation, no attempt to come to a unified idea of what they should do about their son. She’d been unfair, Sam thought. She’d left him out here alone to wrestle with this.
If Samuel was born that way, Sam wondered, how come he had girlfriends all through high school? Lidia Faulkner, Janine Cisco, Megan Riley. Those were just the three he remembered. There were more. Sam and Patricia had particularly encouraged him where Megan was concerned. They liked her, liked her family, liked the stock she came from. “The cut of her jib,” as Big Herschel was wont to say. It had looked so promising, and then, just like everything else, it fell away and this new person—this Norby person—showed up.
Sam idled in the turn lane off Main Street, waiting for three trucks carrying scoria to pass so he could make the turn for home. He punched the steering wheel. Then he punched it again and again and again.
NORBY
His father’s truck rattled up Telegraph Hill, weighted down by the cargo and by the burden of all that had gone unsaid. Every now and again, one of them would look at the other and smile, but nobody dared pop open the conversational seal.
That’s OK, Norby thought. For the first time here, I’m feeling all right.
The scene at breakfast had been familiar, familial, a grab-it-if-you-want-it free-for-all of pancakes and waffles and fresh fruit his mother had been cutting when he slipped up behind her and kissed her cheek. Randall Junior had sat on Norby’s lap, happily popping grapes in his mouth while Denise snapped pictures of them on her phone, and Randy talked of the impending night’s adventures, now that Denise was granting him dispensation for one night of fun. Norby had watched his parents—mostly his father, who seemed delighted to have everybody under the roof again. That’s when Norby realized he was glad he’d come, and more than that, he was glad to be glad.
The talk with his mom the previous night had gone a long way, he thought, as had what he’d overheard earlier this morning, while still in bed. He’d been relieved that his dad hadn’t used the auspices of a private conversation to run him down. He’d been thankful, too, that Sam forswore any knowledge of what Henrik had said. And he smiled now to think that his parents assumed he couldn’t hear them. He’d spent his growing-up years in that room adjacent to theirs, the ductwork like an amplifier. They had no idea the things he knew.
The truck had climbed atop Telegraph Hill now, and the turn-in for the dump lay just a few hundred feet ahead.
“You remember the last time I was up here with you?” Norby asked.
“Can’t say as I do.”
“It’s been a long time.”
Sam snapped his fingers. “The bike!”
“Yep,” Norby
said. He laughed. “Never did find it. We tried, though, didn’t we?”
“We had to.”
God, how Norby had loved that bicycle, a present from his mom and dad for his thirteenth birthday. Chrome plated, with mag wheels. He’d been the instant envy of every other kid in Grandview. For three days, that status lingered, until the bike was stolen from the Kelvigs’ garage during the night.
“I’ve never seen you so mad,” Norby said. “I thought you were going to interrogate every kid in town.”
“I would’ve, if I’d had the chance.” Sam grinned.
The Kelvigs had gone house to house, asking questions, meeting insolence with guilt-inducing invective. (“See this boy?” his dad had said to one neighbor who’d suggested that all boys’ bicycles should be confiscated for the peace of the neighborhood. “His favorite thing in the world was stolen, you moron.”) They put up flyers on creosote-soaked telephone poles. They filled out a police report that they knew would do no good, until Sam said, “Maybe somebody dumped it.”
That, too, had been a futile effort, unless you counted the three milk pails and the Red Wing crock they found and dragged home to Patricia, who rehabilitated them and turned them into planters that still graced the house.
“That was a good time,” Norby said. “Didn’t seem like it then, but it was.”
They made the turn, and Sam reached over and tousled Norby’s hair, just like he would have done in a time when he didn’t have to engineer tenderness.
Activity had picked up in town. Folks jammed into Pete’s for breakfast, Sam had volunteers marking off the parade route, and Norby was helping his dad put together the viewing stand where Mayor Swarthbeck, Sam, and a few other dignitaries would sit.
“So you saw Henrik again?” Sam said.
Norby grunted as he ratcheted a line of bolts. “Yeah, at Grandma’s.”
“What’d he say?”
There goes Dad, fishing. Norby smiled. His father knew damn well what his uncle had said.
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