Yellow Medicine

by Anthony Neil Smith

  We slipped into the back yard, another motion sensor triggering near the back door. Shit. We flattened against the wall, couldn’t do anything about the shadows.

  “We’ve got to do it now,” I said.

  Drew nodded, lifted the .357, as long as her face.

  She stayed on the wall as I heaved off. Slammed my foot into the back door. The lock held. Slammed again. Again. Again. The frame gave way and I followed the momentum inside.

  Yes, the kitchen light was on. It had been left on for whoever happened to stumble across it once the mail piled up and the smell overwhelmed the neighbors.

  Our clerk, slouched in a chair with a Glock in his hand, riddled with many more bullets than I’d plugged into him. They’d come from another pistol, the one in the hand of Aziz, dead on the floor barely six feet away. Just like the man had said—he’d taken care of the problem, then immediately cleared out.

  “There’s no one here,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Oh god.” Drew had sneaked behind me, gripped my shirt into a tight snarl.

  Then I thought, Bomb bomb bomb bomb—

  “Out! Go! Get out!” I turned and shoved her running into the backyard as far as I could without stumbling, then fell onto the ground beside her. Covered our heads. We waited.

  Nothing exploded. We waited still. The chatter on the deck next door picking up in speed and volume—Should we call someone? Look, out in the yard! I don’t have a gun. Yeah, just dial it, 911. I don’t know. Maybe it is the cops. Never trusted those guys.

  We sat up, looked back at the house. Perfectly still and in one piece. Made sense—no need to blow up this house and bring more attention to themselves for a pointless act. They were saving the fireworks for the big metaphors. The bomb at the motel was a tiny sneak preview.

  Drew said, “Long gone. Maybe they knew we’d come looking for them.”

  “They left as soon as we did. Graham was right. I don’t know what else we can do.”

  More lights coming on in the yards around us.

  Drew glanced from yard to yard, back and forth. “We need to get out of here. Someone’s going to call the cops.”

  I shook my head. “I need to stay behind, try to explain.”

  “No, come on. You know what they’ll do to you.”

  I tried not to think about it. If I ran, then I’d be putting both of us in more danger. Terrorists on one side, the government on the other. Running was the coward’s way out. Now that Graham was dead, all the fight bled out of me.

  I said, “You have your phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get to the car and go home. Call my dispatcher, Layla, on the way. Tell her I sent you.”

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “You need money?” I dug into my pockets, pulled out the wads of loose cash I’d accumulated at truck stop diners along the way. Enough to get her out of danger. “And my credit card for gas. In my wallet.”

  I reached for it as Drew grabbed my wrist. “I don’t want to. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  She hopped to her feet and pulled me with all her strength. I couldn’t do it, though. I didn’t want it to look like I was trying to run away. Graham had died because of me. Drew was nearly killed because of me. I had to stop and take my lumps.

  “Baby, you need to leave now. Don’t let them get you. Go back to Minnesota, find Layla, and tell her what happened. I need you to do that, okay?”

  She was still pulling. I worked my wallet from my jeans with my free hand, handed it to her. “You don’t have much time.”

  Her breath was labored, frantic. She finally let go of my arm and took the wallet, clutched it to her chest and paced. More neighbors shouting, more dogs barking.

  I yelled at her, “Would you fucking run already? Run!”

  She did, sprinted through the open gate. I didn’t move a muscle. Sat with my hands in my lap and waited. The sirens closed in. Drew only needed to run half a block. Then drive for two days without getting noticed. I hoped she could make it.

  As for me, I would probably never see her again. They would hide me away, maybe one of those bunkers they had built to survive a nuclear war. No Drew, no Ginny, no Ham and Savannah, no Dodge Ram, no riverside cabin, no Mississippi, no Minnesota. Man without a country.

  I hummed “America the Beautiful” to myself until the police showed up, pinpoint flashlights, garbled commands, and German Shepherds.

  “On your face!”

  “…from sea to shining sea.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Today

  Rome was kind enough—or evil enough—to let me get a good four or five hours sleep before taking me back to Pale Falls. When the guard woke me, he handed over some water and a couple of Aleves. Good thing. The pain and jitters had ratcheted up while I slept.

  They gave me back half my clothes. Didn’t expect that. My black boots, my jeans and T-shirt, dirtied with ash and blood. Graham’s blood. Another one of Rome’s mindfucks. Outside, sans blindfold, I saw that it was early morning. So it hadn’t been noon back in the interrogation room like Rome would have had me believe. Cold wind on a sunny day, Spring much farther along now. No snow on the concrete here, not even in the shadows. Still, I was goosebumped from head to toe without my leather jacket.

  The guards helped me into the back of the FBI Suburban, black with midnight-tinted windows. Thick bulletproof glass separated me from the front. It was warm and cozy in the backseat. Rome finally showed up, his overcoat worth more than I used to make in a week, and bullshitted with the guards a minute or two before climbing in beside me with a McDonald’s bag in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other.

  “Black is all you get,” he said. Great, a joke. More than I’d expected out of him.

  “Perfect.”

  “And a breakfast burrito. Easier to eat with handcuffs.”

  “Gee, considering how late at night it is, I was hoping for pizza.”

  He smiled at me, then examined his watch, mock-confused. “Well, look at that. I didn’t even notice. Battery must be slow.” He spun the hands to what felt like the correct time for what I saw out my window: 7:13 AM.

  “So, honestly, does that trick with the time ever really work on people?”

  Rome stared straight ahead, tapped on the divider glass. “What trick?”

  *

  Two hours after we started down the two-lane highway that cut through cornfields, we closed in on Pale Falls. They wouldn’t let me stop along the way at a Dairy Queen for lunch. I really wasn’t hungry, but wanted some time to relax, maybe lose the knot that was tightening in my stomach as we edged closer to Yellow Medicine County.

  The couple of times I had tried to raise a conversation, Rome responded with grunts, nothing else. So I spent most of the drive staring out the window, absorbing all the details of the Minnesota morning. Soon enough the tractors would be out there planting crops. The flattened yellow grass would rise, fill with green. The bare wicked-witch limbs on the trees would cover themselves with leaves again.

  I thought back to the day after Katrina. Hurricanes swept out the clouds and the high pressure as they plowed through, and even in the face of apocalyptic devastation, I remembered sitting on the trunk of my police cruiser next to my gutted house, soaked to the bone, and thinking just how clear the air was, how deep the sky, and how I could close my eyes and imagine paradise, if only I didn’t hear my wife’s voice: “Oh God, there’s another photo album. Ruined. Oh, not my hope chest.”

  I’d experienced that same feeling when the world was overcome with ice, and the winds whipping so you couldn’t stand up, and the snow piling higher, coating the ground and trees in such a way as you’d think you might never see either again. Same as watching it melt and fill the rivers and creeks, wondering if the level would overrun the banks, watching it come oh so close. I was learning to accept it all with wonder.

  Familiar rhythms kicked in as we drew closer. Shit, why couldn’t we just be there already? Maybe Rome was right to bri
ng me here. I was already thinking of how much I’d like to get home, go sit by the river. How much I would like to unpack, really make a go at settling down here. My yard was already hallowed ground—Paul’s last stand. Maybe staying there, tending to the house, the land, my own spirit, would help me discover just what the hell drove me to self-destruction, and how to stop it. So, yeah, I could open up to Rome a little more. I needed to trust someone at this point. I willed the Suburban to go faster as my patience wore thin.

  “Can’t they, you know, rev it up some?”

  Rome eyed me with his chin on his chest, then tapped on the glass. The driver checked his rearview. Rome held up five fingers, closed his fist, then opened another five. The driver nodded and slowed down.

  “Asshole,” I said.

  “Traitor,” he said.

  Not long now.

  *

  We arrived at the Sheriff’s Department to a packed house. Every cruiser was accounted for, every deputy standing around outside, outnumbered by Federal vehicles and black suits. Not bad, my fellow deputies showing support. Home field advantage. Pulling into the lot, I watched the faces of the guys I had worked with. They were either blank or angry. Not that we’d ever been friendly, but a cop’s a cop, right?

  Rome opened his door, stepped out. Another agent opened mine and took my elbow, eased me into the cool air that smelled a bit like toasted peanut butter. Must be the soybean processors. On other days, the winds would shift and you’d be stung by the foul odor from the beet sugar plant off to the east. The first time I’d complained, the guy at the gas station replied, “Tell that to the farmers, they’ll say it smells like money.”

  The deputies formed a gauntlet between the Suburban and the front door. That’s when I got the picture. My colleagues, every last one, and a few folks from town were there to see the monster finally get what he deserved. I grinned at Clark, the bartender at the dive where Drew’s band played their first gigs. No response. I tried to stop and speak to Spaceman’s mom, who looked as if she’d aged ten more years since last I saw her a few weeks ago. I owed her an explanation, the least I could do. Soon as I was within a few feet of her, she spit at me. Yeah, this wasn’t the homecoming I wanted, but it was precisely why Rome wanted me here—maybe I’d feel guilty enough to cry him a river of confession. Real officer thinking.

  I passed Nate and Colleen, side by side. I grinned at him, happy to see he’d gotten somewhere with her. Before I could say anything, he shouted, “Nothing but a goddamned murderer.”

  I understood. They thought I was responsible for Graham’s death.

  Well, in a way so did I.

  More taunts: “Hope you die like he did!”

  “Traitor!”

  “Motherfucking terrorist!”

  “We don’t want you here! Go back to Iran!”

  I whispered to Rome, “Thanks for telling them what really happened.”

  He didn’t turn to me. “I’m sorry? I didn’t tell these people anything.”

  This was the guy I wanted to trust? “You’re a professional liar.”

  “Coming from you, that’s a compliment.”

  The mob’s hand-clapping took on a pounding rhythm, along with the chant: “Trait-or! Trait-or! Trait-or!”

  I tried to shuffle faster. The agent held me tight. I had to take my lumps. When a beer can whizzed over my head, the agents moved faster. Louder chanting. More flying cans. A rain of beer on my back. And then we were inside.

  The muffled chanting sounded larger and angrier when the doors were closed. More cans and bottles ricocheted off the glass. Two agents led me to the middle of the room while others stood guard at the front. All the comforts of home¾the smell of burnt coffee, old pastries from the corner gas station, Layla’s favorite talk radio station. But now there were anonymous agents with utilitarian laptops sitting at the desks where the deputies used to field calls. We’d always been so casual. Seemed short-sighted in hindsight.

  Rome stepped over to Layla’s desk, where she stood staring at me, her arms crossed and her lips drawn tight. I had hoped she would be on my side. Didn’t look it. My heart sank fast. If she thought I was the devil, then Drew hadn’t succeeded in getting to her, telling her the truth.

  The new sheriff, George Tordsen, stood beside her. That should have been me. Graham had taught me in those few days what it meant to really help people as a law enforcement office. I was his rightful heir. Maybe if I had listened to George in the first place when he told me to sit tight, I would be headed that way. Not anymore. He was dressed immaculately in a suit, maybe like a French mayor in World War Two welcoming the Germans, knowing he had no choice if he wanted to maintain his lifestyle.

  Rome shook Tordsen’s hand, then waved towards me. “I promise this will be temporary, hardly more than a few days. Then we’ll move him on to a Federal institution, my promise to you.”

  “Fine, I understand. Anything to help.”

  “I take it from the reception that your staff isn’t as reasonable?”

  Tordsen sighed. “I have a handful I trust with my life, and with his.” A nod towards me. “Your team has arranged the cell as you asked. Round the clock electronic surveillance, blacked-out window, and makeshift sound insulation. Just egg cartons, but my son swears it works. He’s in a band.”

  He turned to me when he said it, intentionally reminding me of Elvis Antichrist, all dead except little Drew, all of them local kids trying to forge their own identities out in farm country, struck down in a war they didn’t know they were fighting. The sheriff’s tone told me the people had found a way to pin that one on me, too.

  I couldn’t help myself. “You know damn well I would’ve died to save them.”

  The sheriff stepped closer. Breath like baked beans. The agents flanking me tensed. “Funny you should say that. We’ve got all these dead folks you claim to protect, but look who’s still alive, Billy. A miracle. Can’t seem to give your life for any cause, can you?”

  “A dead cop’s no good to anyone.”

  He was waiting for something like that. “I feel the same way about a living traitor.”

  The traitor tag was getting old. “All American, sir. One hundred percent.”

  He stepped back, blew out a long breath. “I can’t do this anymore. We done with him?”

  Rome nodded, a smug expression. I figured he thought each new spoonful of humiliation would weigh heavily, pile up, break me. Maybe he was right. All my colleagues really believed I had some part in killing Graham, my ex-wife’s protector, confidant, and someone who’d been a good friend to me when I deserved even more shit than I was being fed now. The one time in my life I tried to put myself aside and serve the county…I was tired of thinking about it.

  Tordsen cleared his throat and said, “Layla, show them to the interview room, please.”

  *

  In the room, Rome and me. No two-way mirrors, no videotapes. Just another legal pad, handful of cheap pens, and us.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  Couldn’t argue with him. “So what was all that talk about this being temporary? What do you have planned for me?”

  “That depends. It’s up to you now.”

  “Not even a hint?”

  He picked up one of the pens and tapped it against the table, one two three. A pause. Four five six. “I’m going to listen to your story one more time. Like I already said, if we think you’re finally opening up, it’s a good future. We think you’re holding back anything, I’ll see if I’ve got any magic persuasion pills in my back pocket.”

  My mouth was dry, my stitches prickly. I didn’t know what else to say. If I were to ask about Drew, he could twist me. I ask about my family, same deal. I couldn’t win.

  Still, in order to get out from under all this I would need to drop the tough guy pose and show Rome that I was cooperating. I gave him the stuff I’d kept to myself so far—not taking Ian into protective custody when I had the chance, not calling for help when I felt that Drew’s band was in
trouble, hiding Paul’s body, holding back the news about Trigger and Spaceman’s deaths. I let it spill. The bribe from the Malaysians, the plan Graham and I set up. Killing one of their cell members. Their retaliation. I’d given the Feds a cleaner version of the same story, but this time I let them have the details. I talked while I wrote. Rome stopped me every now and then, asked me to expand, clarify, asked what I’d been thinking. Asked how I could be so stupid.

  “I guess that’s who I am, and it’s hard to change.”

  “But you can if you try.”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t want to try. Too mad.”

  In fact, I was still holding out on him. Something in me couldn’t give up Drew. If that’s where my story fell apart, fine. I didn’t care. No way was I going to turn on her, especially if it looked like they now had her. I didn’t give a shit how many witnesses at the hotel saw her leave with me. Fuck it. I left her out of everything after that day in the dorms, and I dared Rome to call me on it.

  He didn’t. But I swore he knew more than he let on. That little smirk, the bored way he slumped in the chair. He had the straight flush to my full house, positive. I just couldn’t tell which suit.

  After about an hour, I was tired of breathing the same air, smelling my own stink. Fading out because of the long drive, the lack of real sleep. The jail cell would’ve been a welcome change. The cot was comfortable enough. I’d slept off hangovers on it a few times.

  When I got to the part where the cops found me in the terrorist’s backyard, I signed my name and pushed the pad away. I rested my head on my arms and waited for Rome to look it over, send me off to bed.

  All he said was, “That’s it?”

  “Yep.” It came out muffled through my sleeve.

  “Well then we’re not done. I warned you about this shit.”

  I lifted my head. “Excuse me?”

  He slapped the back of his hand against my statement. “You had plenty of time to color in the details on the way over. It’s still the same soup full of lies you’ve been feeding us from day one.”

  That woke me up. “That’s the story! If you’ve got something else, you’d better lay it on the table so we can end this charade. That’s all there is.”