“I can’t help the heating system, Mr. Bennett.”
“Of course not, Officer Gaines. We’ll just have to make do. Now, I’ve been through the metal detector and you’ve searched my bag, so I think we’re covered.”
Deputy Gaines seems unsure how to handle this. “I need to check with the lieutenant.”
“Maybe that’s the best course.” Bennett’s smile remains perfectly collegial. “There must be some kind of waiver for me on file somewhere. Look under B for Ballbreaker.”
Gaines purses his lips, debates a little longer, then sighs like he doesn’t need the grief. He steps out, pulls the door shut behind him with a clang, and stands post outside the small window.
When we’re alone, Douglas Bennett turns to me. “Warren Giler called me at home. Our kids go to St. Vincent’s together, and I’ve handled all three of his DUIs.”
Under normal circumstances, I’d probably find some grain of amusement in this information. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be talking to Douglas Bennett in a jail cell half an hour to midnight a week before Christmas.
“I’m grateful,” I say, meaning it completely. “Thank you again. This is… I can’t even tell you.”
“Had better nights, I take it?”
“You could say that.”
Bennett offers a commiserating grin. “I spoke briefly with Sara on the phone. How are you doing? Have they treated you okay so far?”
Compared to what? “I guess so.”
“Any problems?”
“Apart from the bogus felony charges, you mean.”
This earns a chuckle. “So you didn’t do it, then.”
I can’t stop thinking about the way Pete and Melody Seward’s porch light extinguished at the sight of me. “No.”
“Terrific. We’ve got that part out of the way.”
Bennett unshoulders his satchel and gestures to my cot. I sit down eagerly. I’m ready to hear every word Douglas Bennett has to say. He takes off his gloves, unbuttons his coat, and sits down on the edge of the cot bolted to the opposite wall, four feet across from me. Under the coat, he’s wearing a Western Iowa University hockey jersey. I didn’t even know we had a hockey team.
“The first thing,” he says, “is to get you out of here.”
“Yes, please.”
“Now the bad news. You’ll have to spend the night.”
Before he’s finished that sentence, I feel the strength run out of my shoulders.
“Not what you wanted to hear, I know. The judge didn’t allow for bail on your warrant, which is a load of horseshit, but I’ll address that at your arraignment in the morning.” He unzips the satchel, reaches inside, takes out a yellow pad and a glossy black pen. He uncaps the pen with his teeth and parks the cap on the butt end. “So. A couple things. Sara tells me we don’t have any sort of prior record to contend with, which is good.” He looks at me. “Is it true?”
“Yes, that’s true. Like I told the detective, not even a parking ticket.”
“Nothing floating around from the wild and crazy days? Something that your wife wouldn’t know about, maybe?”
“My wild and crazy days were never all that wild and crazy.”
“Fair enough.” He makes a note. “How about the two of you?”
“Sorry?” For one crazy moment, I actually think he’s asking about me and Brit Seward. “How do you mean?”
“Everything okay at home?”
Of course he’s asking about me and Sara. I pause, maybe a beat too long.
In truth, these past weeks haven’t been the greatest stretch in our nine years together, but Sara and I have been over rough spots in the road before. We love each other. We have a good marriage. Douglas Bennett looks up from his notepad and waits for me to say so.
I admit to him that there’s been some stress lately. I consider delving into reasons, but the reasons seem irrelevant. Or maybe, deep down, I’m aware that the fault is primarily mine, and I’m too embarrassed to admit it. Or maybe I just don’t like the thought of watching a man I just met scribble our reasons on a yellow notepad. “Normal ups and downs, I guess.”
“Hey, I know all about the normal ups and downs. Be lieve me.”
“Sara knows I wouldn’t do a thing like this. She knows that.”
“That was my feeling when I talked to her.” It’s almost as if Bennett suspects how much I want to hear that. He moves on. “You own your home?”
“We closed the papers in July. That’s when we moved here.”
“From Boston.”
“That’s right.”
Beneath the words No Record he scratches down the word July. “Sara told me that you’re on a lecture contract at the university?”
“She accepted her job contingent on spousal consideration for me.” Truthfully, with the move to Clark Falls I’d looked forward to spending the academic year unemployed. Then one of the assistant professors in the English department drove her car into a drainage culvert on Labor Day weekend, an act that put her in a pelvic brace for the semester. The late- hour shuffle dealt me three sections of composition and a seminar on the Lost Generation, which happens to fall in my area. “They offered the contract in September.”
“When does that contract end?”
“It just ended.”
“Are you contracted for the spring term?”
“No.”
Bennett scribbles some more and caps his pen.
“Okay,” he says. “We’re a little shaky in the ties- to-community department. Obviously no fault of yours. And I don’t know yet what kind of evidence the county prosecutor will produce to substantiate these charges.” He pauses a beat, glances at me briefly, and says, “If anything comes to mind on that front, feel free to educate me.”
Will produce, he said. Not might. Not try.
They don’t do it this way unless they have something, he seems to be saying. The implication is clear enough, but I don’t know what to say in reply.
Bennett doesn’t wait. “Last but not least, we’ll be in front of a judge who has what you might call a leniency disorder. Not to mention young teenage daughters of her own. Emphasis on her own.” He waves his hand. “But don’t worry about that, I’ll get your bail set. Our job tomorrow is to get out of there at a fair price.”
“Wait a minute.” It’s as if the floor tilts beneath my bunk. “Are you saying there’s a chance I might not get bail? Is there … is that a possibility?”
“Anything’s a possibility, Paul. But it’s not going to happen.”
“Let’s say it did. What would that mean?”
“That would mean you’d get to put on a powder- blue jumpsuit and ride a bus out to county lockup until your next court date. But like I said, it’s not going to happen.”
“Could you say that last part again?”
“Say what again?”
“That it’s not going to happen.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
I was wrong. Hearing him say it again doesn’t make me feel better.
Bennett smiles. “I know your needle’s in the red right now, but I’m pretty good at this, so I want you to try not to worry. The thing to do is take it all one step at a time. Okay?”
I exhale, long and slow. Rub my eyes. Nod weakly.
“Good. Tomorrow is Saturday. On Saturdays, felony cases and misdemeanors are arraigned together, felonies first. Which means we’re in court at eight o’clock sharp. I’ll be here in time for us to meet and go over our game plan. Let’s call that Step Three.”
I raise my head and look at him.
“Step One starts now.” He repacks his satchel and stands up. “Sara told me that you’ve been having trouble with your neighbors. Is that right?”
“No,” I say, louder than I mean to. But we’re finally getting to the part that matters, and I want to make things clear. “One of our neighbors. That’s what this is all about. His name is Roger Mallory, and he’s saying… Christ, he’s got Brit Seward telling the cops—
”
“I’ve read your charge sheet,” Bennett says. “And I’m familiar with Mr. Mallory.”
He doesn’t bother telling me what I already know. That Roger Mallory, who lives in the house directly across the circle from ours, is a retired Clark Falls police officer himself. That in his retirement, he runs an educational citizens’ academy for the department, sits on various civic boards around town, built the citywide neighborhood watch program that has earned Clark Falls statewide media coverage, and is widely—understandably— considered an inspiration to this community.
Bennett doesn’t point out that I am some childless East Coast liberal arts academic who moved here five minutes ago. That, jobwise, I don’t even wear the pants in my house. He doesn’t confirm what I can’t help fearing, which is that I am fucked.
“Listen, there’s a hell of a lot that affidavit doesn’t say,” I tell him. “I—”
“Let’s deal with what the paperwork says for now. We’ll have plenty of time to deal with what it doesn’t say.”
“But listen—”
“One step at a time, remember?” Bennett looks at his watch just as the guard thumps his fist on the door. “Right now our twelve minutes are up, and we’re still talking about Step One.”
It takes a great deal of effort, but I close my mouth and try to pay attention.
“After I’m gone, while you’re stuck in here spinning your gears, I want you to think all of this through.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“As your attorney, my advice is to start at the beginning,” he says. “All the pieces—every detail, every last point between wherever that is and where we are now. Okay?”
I must be nodding, because Bennett nods back.
“You’re an English professor, so you know what I’m looking for here. Clarity, logic, structure. A nice dramatic flow can’t hurt, but we can work on that later. Have the Cliffs Notes ready for me in the morning.”
Step One. My head is swimming. I can’t see how to begin collecting my thoughts.
As the stranger who has agreed to defend me buttons his coat and pulls on his gloves, it occurs to me to ask him, “What’s Step Two?”
“Sorry?”
“You said that tomorrow is Step Three and this is Step One. What’s Step Two?”
“Right.” A final nod. “That’ll be the tough one. But it’s important.”
“Okay.” At this point I’m prepared to hear just about anything.
“Try and get some sleep,” he tells me.
While I sit there, trying to decide if he’s being serious, Douglas Bennett makes an OK sign with his thumb and index finger. One step at a time.
Then he straps his bag over his shoulder and knocks back to the guard.
3.
THE VICTORIOUS WARRIOR WINS FIRST, and then goes to battle. Our neighbor Barry Firth said that. I remember because it cracked me up, coming from Barry. At least it seemed funny at the time.
This was only in September. Just three months ago. Pete and Melody Seward had invited the whole circle over to their place for a Saturday barbecue—Sara and me, Trish and Barry Firth, Roger, Michael Sprague.
I remember seeing my new pal Brittany Seward that night; she’d been stuck in charge of her kid stepsister and the Firth twins. I remember—fondly, no matter how that sounds to anyone now—that she’d been reading the beat- up Cambridge edition of Gatsby she’d borrowed from my library while the tots zoned into juice box comas in front of some talking animals on Pete’s giant television inside the house.
Meanwhile, we cultivated adults had stayed out on the Sewards’ back deck as daylight seeped away behind the trees, drinking margaritas and playing Risk, the old- fashioned board game where you build up your armies and try to dominate the world.
Upon capturing Madagascar and the South African peninsula, thus eliminating the Callaway team and our pitiable troops from the game, Barry had nodded sagely, joined his palms together, and that’s when he said it.
The victorious warrior wins first. I still remember the flickering light from half a dozen citronella candles playing dramatically over his brow. And then goes to battle.
Poor Barry. Pudgy, earnest, nice guy Barry Firth. We’d hurt his feelings, cackling like tipsy teenagers, but it was that sort of evening, and we’d all assumed he was trying for laughs. How does anybody deliver a line like that with margarita salt on his eyeglasses and a straight face?
It wasn’t until two or three pitchers later that Trish, to her husband’s booze- blushed horror, had confided the truth to the group: Roger himself had given Barry the board game we’d been playing as a gift for Christmas the previous year, along with one of those popular business wisdom books titled Suit Tzu: The Art of War from Battlefield to Boardroom. According to Trish, Barry had been posting sticky notes with hand- scribbled quotations around the house for random inspiration ever since.
“And who got the Flint account in May?” he’d protested, sending us all howling again.
It strikes me now, in a way that it hadn’t then, that we hadn’t all been yukking it up at Barry’s expense.
Not our friend Roger Mallory. Roger just grinned, chucked Barry on the shoulder, and said, “Keep at ‘em, General.”
Come to think of it, Roger hadn’t been drinking margaritas, either. Within the next few turns he’d single- handedly overtaken the whole of Africa with one massive invasion force. Come to think of it, playing Risk that night, he’d outlasted us all.
• • •
I already feel defeated. How am I supposed to tell this story so that any reasonable person would believe it?
By tomorrow morning, Roger Mallory will have zipped up his side of this so- called case against me so tightly that nobody will be able to see the seams.
What am I saying? He’s done that already. If I know Roger, he moved his pieces into place long before Detective Bell ever set foot on our doorstep.
I need to remember that if I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that I’ve never really known my neighbor Roger at all. I don’t know how he’s managed to set this offensive into motion. I don’t know how he’s managed to put me here. But I still know this:
You can bounce a quarter off Roger Mallory’s reputation in Clark Falls. You could bounce me off Roger Mallory’s reputation in Clark Falls.
And that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
It’s not going to matter how I tell my story. It’s not going to matter what I claim. Douglas Bennett could be the Alan Dershowitz of Iowa, and it still wouldn’t change the simple reality that no informed person within a hundred miles of this town would ever believe that Roger Mallory is capable of doing what he’s doing to me.
Me.
What about poor Brit Seward? While I’m sitting alone in here, outlining the story I need to submit to my defense attorney in a few hours, what kind of nightmare has settled in for Brit Seward out there?
I want to see the evidence that allows the police to show up at my house, charge me with these crimes, and take me away in handcuffs without the first bark of warning. Pornographic images of the eighth grader next door? I want to see that evidence.
What am I saying?
Of course I don’t.
Brit. Kiddo. What have you gotten yourself into? What have I done?
There was some racket for a while earlier, as the detox cage filled up with refugees from the town bars. I could hear the incoming traffic and the fratboy laughter and the occasional drunken bellowing all the way down here in my cell. At one point, from what I could gather, someone threw up on somebody else. Later, it sounded like a fight broke out.
All of that quieted down some time ago. The drunks are sleeping, and I’m still awake. I guess what they say is true after all: time does crawl behind bars.
Enough.
Douglas Bennett doesn’t want this rambling mess in my head. He wants clarity. Logic. Structure.
How about irony?
This isn’t our first involvemen
t with the local law since we’ve been here, after all. That’s where I’ll start with Douglas Bennett in the morning. He wants me to start at the beginning? I’ll begin with our very first day in Clark Falls.
The police came to see us that night, too. A different detective, a whole different gang of uniforms, all shaking the bushes, looking for answers. We were on the right side of things then.
I wonder how they’re coming along with that case by now?
4.
IT’S THE PRIVATE QUANDARY of all untested men, my friend Charlie told me after the attack. It seemed like every bit the kind of thing my friend Charlie, an untested man, might say. He called it “the last question deep down in the stomach.” How would I handle a wolf at the door?
According to Charlie, I had my answer. When it came down to the animal basics, Paul Callaway bared his teeth and stood his ground. The victorious warrior wins first, I should have told him.
But I can be realistic. My friend Charlie Bernard doesn’t have a relationship with the animal basics. He has a PhD in English literature, just like me. The fact is, the guy who broke into our house that night could have split my head open, had his way with Sara, had his way with me, and made himself a sandwich if he’d wanted one.
Either I got lucky, I’d told Charlie, or our wolf hadn’t really been hungry.
The university had called out of the blue that January, during the winter break. They were a third- tier state school with an undergraduate enrollment nearly three times that of Dixson College, where Sara had chaired her department and I had recently come up for tenure in mine.
“What do you think?” she’d asked me on the plane ride home from our first visit to campus in February.
“I think it’s just like Massachusetts,” I’d told her. “Massa chusetts with more cows. Without the ocean.”
But their graduate economics program had begun to make a promising splash in the national publications. A big donation had helped them to establish a heavy- duty faculty endowment, which had enabled them to offer Sara a no- nonsense salary hike. Next to Boston, the relative cost of living in Clark Falls, Iowa, seemed like a clerical mistake. And though she’d never mentioned it before that initial phone call, Sara confessed that she’d developed a private inkling toward an administrative position beyond department chair. We’d flown back to campus again in March, again on Western Iowa’s dime.
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