Broken Field

by Jeff Hull

  “Is Mikie okay?” she asked.

  “We need to know where he is,” Sheriff Rue said. She saw the way his uniform shirt stretched at the buttons, noticed a dark blotch the shape of Australia just above his belly, saw the tarnish on his badge.

  Maybe if she was nice enough to him, he would tell her where Mikie was, if he was all right. “Do you want some coffee?” she asked. “Some muffins?”

  He looked at her strangely. “Where’s your son, Mrs. Jensen?”

  “I thought he was home. I heard him come home last night.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know. Late. I was sleeping. But I woke up. I always wake up to hear him come in.”

  “Did you see him? Did you talk to him?”

  “No, I just went back to sleep. Once I know he’s here, I go right back to sleep.”

  “We need you to go into his room and tell us if anything is missing. You have to tell us everything.”

  Well, sure, she thought. Why wouldn’t I? At least they had stopped with the he-killed-somebody business. “Okay,” she said, “I will. But can you please tell me what’s happening?”

  The men looked around inside the trailer and all around it, which seemed pointless to Caroline because Mikie’s car was gone. He was gone. They asked her again what was missing. His coat, his boots, nothing much. Some books, she noticed, and told them that. The books that he always had by his bed, three or four of them. She was going to bet that his little ceramic one-hit pot pipe was gone, and whichever bag of weed he happened to be working through, but she didn’t think she needed to tell them that. They asked her where he might go.

  The reservoir, she told him. Other than that, she couldn’t imagine. Where did he go? Why didn’t she know this? When the deputies were all back in their cars, Sheriff Rue stood in her kitchen talking down to her while she sat at the table and held her robe tightly around herself. “If your son comes home, we need you to call us immediately,” he told her.

  “What is happening? Can’t you please tell me what is happening?”

  “Mrs. Jensen, your son was involved in an altercation at a party. We believe he stabbed another boy. The other boy is dead.”

  “No,” she said. A long, dubious nooooo. “Mikie didn’t kill anybody. Who did Mikie kill?”

  “Ma’am, this is an active investigation. We’ll be able to tell you everything eventually. Right now, it’s imperative that we find your boy. I think he’s a danger to himself and to others.”

  “Mike? Mike LaValle? Do you know my son?”

  “Ma’am, Caroline. I just left a crime scene where a boy I’ve known for a long time, a boy I watched grow up, has bled to death in the snow after about twelve different kids say your son stabbed him with a knife. Okay? That’s what I know. Nobody told the story a different way. And I also know you had better contact us the minute you hear anything about where he is. Anything at all. If he calls, if he texts, if he shows up.”

  She said she would, though she wasn’t sure that was true. Suddenly there was so much to think about. Mikie had stabbed somebody.

  “I know it’s hard to hear,” Rue said. “I’m sorry. But what’s best for your boy is that we find him and get him under control, because he’s not under control right now.”

  “Tell me what they say happened,” she said.

  “We have to go look for your son,” Rue said.

  “Who was it?” Caroline asked, though she knew already.

  “A classmate,” the sheriff said.

  “They bully him so hard,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?” Caroline knew she was saying things to try to make him stay, because if he left her alone here without telling her something different than what he’d already told her, then that would be what had happened. She needed to find a way to make him tell her something else had happened, that it wasn’t the way everybody thought, that maybe there had been a mistake. But he was leaving.

  His hand twisted the doorknob. She found herself telling stories about things that she had witnessed in the lunchroom, acts of aggression. “They’re awful to him. They say hateful, racist things because he’s mixed. They say hateful things about me and about him and they push him around. They throw trays of food on him.”

  The sheriff said nothing to that, just paused in the open doorway, letting the cold bright air pour inside, and looked at her. It was strange, the power of her longing for him to stay—this terrible man who had told her such terrible things. Not because she believed for a moment that Mikie had killed somebody and wanted to help them, but because she did not want to be alone in the trailer on this morning. What if Mikie came home?

  What if he didn’t? When the squad cars pulled away, she noted how ordinary their tires sounded on the old, dried snow. How the trailer had filled with morning light and looked nothing anymore like the garish scene in the murky dawn when the blue and red lights had washed over the ceiling. You spend your whole life raising a boy—never an easy boy, never a dull moment, but always the great love of your life. You pour all of yourself into that child and the way you live with him and you spend countless hours thinking about what is best for him, whether living here is better than living there and what your TV-watching policy should be and whether you should make him eat things he doesn’t like because they’re good for him.

  Even if he’s awkward, you want good things to happen for him and even when he’s pursuing things you think might end in heartache, you cheer for his gumption in recognizing what he wants and going after it. None of it is easy, but the loopy grins, the occasional wholehearted hugs, the objective view of him interacting with his peers, finding acceptance in a friend group—they make it all worthwhile. And then one day the sheriff comes and tells you your boy has stabbed somebody to death.

  How do you start a morning with that and move through a day? Outside, the sky was huge and pale blue and everything under it looked so ordinary. The leafless cottonwoods stood still, though she didn’t have the sense they were waiting for anything. Under them, tall spears of dry, yellow prairie grass poked through the snow. The huge fields of yellow wheat stubble stretched empty and motionless, unchanging. A hundred yards away in the creek bottom three mule deer does switched their tails and gnawed at the frozen ground.

  Nothing about the way they acted indicated a change in the world. Could Mikie really have killed Matt Brunner? If she was honest there were plenty of days she felt mad enough to kill Matt Brunner. But not really. Swat him. She’d wished she could clout him across the mouth on a few days.

  How badly had he pushed Mikie this time? Mikie would have had to be pushed. It would have to be extreme circumstances. Something extreme. And then an accident. Defending himself and … what? Trying too hard. That was what she would be able to hold onto, how she would find a way forward into the day. But then she thought of how scared Mikie must have been to do something like this. How scared he must be now, going who knew where.

  * * *

  Tom woke with the light and knew nothing more than he had known when he went to bed the night before. Winter. Cold. Except he was in Jenny’s bed. He turned his head and looked out the window—second story, a new vantage point at this time of day. But even from here, the land tilted toward an unbelievable horizon, beautiful and immense, the distance even in early hours so very far away. It was Thanksgiving. He turned back to Jenny, could feel the warmth of her legs tangled with his, felt her hair cool on his cheek. He kissed her forehead and started to gently slide his arm out from under her body. She woke.

  She pulled him to her. “Shhhhh,” he said. “The dog. I have to let her out. I’ll come back.” They had until afternoon together and alone—she had, the night before, delivered her kids to their father for his family’s Thanksgiving gathering near Chinook. Jenny made a not-really-awake sound of acceptance, and he slid from the bed. He drove through the silent streets of town and then to his farmhouse. Scout was scratching at the door when he stepped up to it. He let her out and started walking across the f
ields, his legs light, the crunch of frozen snow under each step. Scout was such a busy little girl, so different when he didn’t bring his shotgun.

  She made up her own mind. Far to the south, somewhere down south of the Missouri probably, somewhere a hundred miles away, Tom saw a line of clouds sketched along the horizon, purpled along the bottom, definitive and solid enough to be a front. Maybe it would affect them. But the west looked clear, a curve of bending light, hundreds of miles of land between him and the edge of the earth. He had read that, at sea, you can see seven miles to the horizon, and on land, without elevation, it was much, much closer. But he didn’t believe that. Some days he saw the faded blue serrations of mountains he knew were a hundred miles away.

  Some days he saw the weather in Canada. He walked a half mile along the top of the coulee, seeing bird tracks but no birds. A group of pronghorns seemed to float across the wheat fields several hundred yards away, their tight, fast footwork not evident from this distance. A rough-legged hawk wheeled overhead. When it was time to turn around, Tom felt himself walking a little faster.

  He was looking forward to crawling back into Jenny’s bed, to her warmth. He was excited about her waking to him. Back at the house, his cell phone on the kitchen counter had a notification on the screen. One missed call. Jenny. Why Jenny? She should be sleeping still. He called her right back.

  “Hey,” she said. That’s what she said to him now when he called. “Hey.” A warm invite into whatever conversation might follow. A rest before beginning. A moment of connection. But this one was quicker. “Hey.”

  “Did you hear what happened?” she said then.

  “About what?”

  “You didn’t,” she said. “Sit down, Tom. It’s bad.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “It’s not about me. It’s about Matt Brunner. He was stabbed to death last night.”

  “Are you … ” and he stopped because he was going to say “fucking shitting me.”

  “It was Mikie LaValle. There was a party or something and a fight and Matt got stabbed, and he died before the ambulance could get there.”

  “Holy …”

  “I was thinking,” she said, “maybe I could come over there.” But it wasn’t really a question.

  Tom couldn’t imagine how that might help anything. What he needed to do was get into town and start talking to people. He needed to see David Cates. He needed to see the Brunners. He needed to talk to Caroline Jensen. He wanted to hear what Krock O’ knew. But then he listened to that inner scrambling and compared it to the voice on the other end of the phone and what she was really saying. I can be with you. I want to be with you. He said, “I wish you would.”

  Tom would never understand how they wound up in bed so quickly after she arrived. She had come through the door, thrown her arms around him, hugged him so close.

  “This is Dumont,” she had said. “This doesn’t happen here.”

  He had held onto her and felt her diminishment. He had long before grown tired of comforting people when the world did not meet their petty expectations—of big screen TVs and late model pickups and not enough playing time—but the story Jenny’s body told him was about bewilderment.

  The only thing he could reciprocate with was physical surety. I’m here, was all he could say that made sense. In that way they wound up in his bed at 10:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, Tom elevated by her need for reassurance—and by this sudden release for his own tricky thinking. Jenny was new to him this way. Her body felt long and lean and useful, more responsive in the uneven sighs and peaked cries than even the night before.

  When they were done, he wanted to say something about the way he felt. But she seemed past that. She seemed to accept already everything he would struggle to say. Which left him dwelling on Matt Brunner.

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve never known anybody who was killed. And by somebody we know.”

  But that wasn’t it. Tom was focused on where he’d gone wrong with Matt—and with Mikie. If he had not fallen asleep on that team bus, if he had not been distracted by Sophie—I feel bad about so many things—if he had been able to build a better team, better young men. If he had engaged with Matt Brunner and directed his development—instead of just using him to run an offense. Shit, if he had liked him more. And Mikie LaValle. Why hadn’t he followed through more? The workouts, the books he borrowed, the lessons. There was so much to feel bad about he didn’t know where to get started.

  “I know you want to blame yourself …” Jenny started. “But Matt wasn’t just a quarterback. I had him in classes—he was a lot of things and there were dozens of places where someone could have tried to help him see things.”

  “Who was closer to him than me? Who spent more time with that kid than I did? And in all those teachable moments? What did I teach him, how to get yourself killed in high school?”

  “He seemed in control. Who seemed more in control of his life than Matt Brunner?”

  “LaValle came to me, more than once. He wanted to learn more about his heritage. Metis, mixed blood. I think he’s Blackfeet, not Metis, but he was interested in the history. I gave him books, we talked after class sometimes. I gave him a workout to do. Tried to get him to quit smoking and start running. He wanted more. I blew it. I had a huge chance and I didn’t follow through.”

  “A kid who’s troubled enough to stab another kid to death, there’s maybe not much people like you and me can do to save that kid.”

  “But it’s all the steps along the way. It’s all the touchpoints where people can make a little difference here and a little difference here and change the way a kid turns out. You have to believe that or you wouldn’t be the teacher you are.”

  “It’s hard to know when you can make a difference or not.”

  “In this case it seems so easy.”

  “It’s hard to know how much time you have. You thought you were connecting with Mike. You thought you had time to let that develop. He’s a junior. You thought you had all that time. You didn’t know he was going to stab someone the night before Thanksgiving.”

  They got out of bed around noon, Jenny starting to be concerned about being home when her kids came back, her own Thanksgiving treats ready for them. Tom had some places he needed to go. He drove first to the Brunner farm. He’d hunted there for years, felt familiar with every dip and roll in the land. All of it lay there, where it always was, when he pulled into the drive. Gary Brunner came out of the house to meet him before he could even get out of his pickup.

  “I know you mean good,” Gary said, “But it’s not a good time. There’s nothing good to talk about here.”

  “I just want to offer my help,” Tom said. “If there’s anything I can do.”

  “You gonna bring my boy back?” Gary asked. He cried openly while he spoke.

  Tom didn’t answer.

  “Then there’s nothing you can do.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Tom said.

  “Everybody’s sorry,” Gary said. “Everybody’s so goddamned sorry they don’t know what to do with themselves.”

  He turned and walked back in the house, waving his arm in a gesture for Tom to go.

  So he went to Caroline Jensen’s trailer. He thought he would be one among many people at her home, trying to help. He was surprised to find her alone. She came to the door, wrapped in a robe.

  “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

  “No,” she said. “No, no. No. They came so early. Still asleep. And now.”

  They stood, Caroline leaning on the arm that held the screen door open against the spring, Tom half leaning in. She seemed feeble in a way that he pitied.

  “I know I don’t know you very well,” he said. “But I had some interaction with Mike. I liked him a lot. He was an interesting boy.”

  “He’s not dead yet, is he?” she asked. She seemed to be asking if there was news she hadn’t heard yet. Tom felt stumped until he realized what he’d said.

  “I want to help h
owever I can,” he said.

  “They say he stabbed that boy. They said he bit that boy. That boy took his truck.”

  Oooh, he thought, not tracking. He thought to ask something concrete. “Do you know where he is?”

  “He’s afraid. He is so afraid. Can you imagine having a son who is so afraid?”

  For a moment, just a flash, Tom wanted to tell her about what it was like to watch a son die, to be there and see it and know that the boy knew he was dying. A thirteen-year old kid who had lived just enough for Tom to understand how much he hadn’t lived yet, cold and bleeding on the pavement, knowing that what he saw, his father’s face, was the last thing he was ever going to see.

  The cold, livid fear in that boy’s eyes. Yes, he wanted to say, I can imagine that. But she seemed so feeble, so unanchored. He wanted to put an arm around her and pull her in. Give her someplace to feel sturdy. But she offered no opportunity.

  “I think Mike needs someone to talk to,” Tom said. “I want to help if I can.”

  “If I talk to him, I’ll tell him to call you.”

  And shit, Tom thought, because Mikie’s actions had collapsed this woman’s life, too. “Can I make you some coffee?” Tom asked her.

  “The coffee’s in the fridge.”

  “Okay, I’ll get you a cup.”

  Normality, he thought. Everybody hates it until they need it, and then they grasp at every piece of it. He stayed with Caroline for two hours and eventually sussed out, because he felt the mob roil of hunger in his own gut, that she hadn’t eaten a thing since the day before.

  “How about I order a pizza and go pick it up?” he said.

  “I can make something,” Caroline said, churning at a higher level all at once. “I have cherry Pop Tarts. He loves cherry Pop Tarts. I always have those for him.”

  “Um, I like those too, but you know what I really like? Pep’s pizza.”

  “Oh, my god. He loves Pep’s. But it’s too far. Stay here. I have coffee and Pop Tarts and mac and cheese. I have so much mac and cheese.”

  Tom understood that she was unhinged. He knew why she didn’t want to be alone, though he didn’t know if he would be much help. Maybe he could bring Jenny back here.