The Weatherman

by Steve Thayer

  The Marine sat down on the oily planks of the walkway and leaned his back against a railing pipe, his tortured face to the towering light show in the north, his back to the south. There may have been better places to end his life, but few more poignant or spectacular.

  Just stop it.

  He heard Angel’s voice again. And this time he smiled to himself. But the man in the mask couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t make the hurt go away. His teeth were chattering so loud they seemed to echo through the valley’s stillness.

  When he was a little boy he’d ride along with his father in the old Nash Rambler as they traversed the roads and highways of the valley. Signs along the way read: WATCH OUT FOR FALLEN ROCK. Fallen Rock was an Indian Chief, his father had told him. He went into the woods one day to find food for his cold and hungry people and never came back. The tribe was lost without their bold and noble leader, so they posted those signs along the road. The little boy kept his sweet face pressed to the glass, believing every word of it. On the last night of his life it was these precious childhood memories that came floating down the river and back into his mind.

  Rick Beanblossom pulled the Navy Cross from his jacket pocket and held it before him. “Tac air! Cover! Cover!”Shaking, he draped the honor around his neck. A hypodermic needle came out of his other pocket. He removed a chunk of Styrofoam from the tip and held the milky poison up to the northern lights shimmering in the sky. Enough pure heroin to kill a platoon—but what a way to go. So what’s the last thought a man has before he leaves this world? He thinks of a woman he loved a long time ago. “I’m sorry, Angel.”

  The master sergeant hummed the Marine Corps Hymn as he rolled his sleeves over his elbow, choking his veins. During the last stanza he stuck the needle into his arm and sent the boys into battle. It was the last needle Rick Beanblossom would ever pop into his skin. When the job was done, he tossed the needle over the edge and imagined it spinning through the frosty air before hitting the receding river below and sinking point-first into the clay bottom.

  Suddenly he was freezing. This dying business was cold. The veteran of Vietnam, the veteran of a hundred battles fought in city newsrooms, curled into the fetal position and laid his masked head down on the cold, oily planks that ran along the rails. The cross around his neck slipped over the side. Dangled from the bridge. Swayed in the north wind. Reflected the crazy dance of the northern lights. He closed his eyes to the powwow in the sky. It got so quiet the only sound he could hear was the lullaby of the golden river on its way to Stillwater. Then the Marine dropped into a deep, deep sleep. And the valley temperature dropped right along with him.

  * * *

  "All squads, effective immediately we'll be going to a channel dispatch for the remainder of dog watch. All squads at two-fifteen"

  Captain Les Angelbeck sat behind the wheel of a state squad car and watched in tears as the last photographs were snapped and the dead body was placed on a stretcher and loaded into the back of the ME van. The overnight photographers from the TV stations flooded the vehicle with klieg lights as it pulled away with a full police escort, red lights flashing in the crispy night air. The old cop tried to remember the last time he had talked with him. It was on the phone. What was said? Who was telling his family? He blew cigarette smoke at the frost on the windshield and choked on a cough. This was difficult. The killing of a police officer in Minnesota was rare.

  It was unseasonably cold. The sky was cloudless, but there appeared to be lightning off to the north. The wind down from Alberta was sharp and icy.The mercury dipped below the freezing point, chilling his heart. That the dying police captain had outlived the young and lively lieutenant from Florida who loved the state but hated the weather sent pangs of guilt rippling up his crumbling spine. He stared through the smoky windshield at the horde of angry black faces gathered at the intersection of Plymouth and James Avenue North.

  * * *

  “Squads, do we have an Able car for the Hennepin Bridge? Eastbound, above the island, report of a DK pedestrian in traffic.”

  Lieutenant Donnell Redmond had just left the Fourth Precinct in North Minneapolis when he spotted him. He was wearing high-top athletic shoes so new and so white it looked like a pair of feet trotting down Plymouth Avenue. The North Side rapist? Redmond had a hunch. He pulled the unmarked squad to the curb. He was feeling good about himself. His testimony at the Weatherman’s trial was considered exemplary. There was talk of promotion.

  This inner-city rapist never garnered the media coverage the white-ass rapist in Edina was able to generate, but he had police puzzled for a year. A young black man was preying on black women in their homes in the neighborhood around North High School. He came through open bedroom windows, unlocked back doors, and twice he barreled right through the front door. He was described as being of medium height and build with very dark skin. His trademark—he always wore new athletic shoes so white that’s all some of his victims could see while being assaulted. Cops called it the case of the horny sneakers.

  Redmond was out of the car. “Yo, bro, hold up there.”

  The suspect stopped and turned, both hands stuffed into a black baseball jacket that said SOX, only the SOX had been inked over. “Watcha want, man?”

  Redmond flashed his badge. The suspect had dark skin and he was the right size. “Awful cold night for a stroll, ain’t it?”

  “Just got offa work. Goin’ home. Why you harassin’ me?” The jive talk sounded scripted, probably learned by rote at gang meetings.

  “What work you coming from and what home you going to?” Redmond was in his face now, his hands on his hips. The big lieutenant wanted nothing more than to get into his warm squad car, go home to his warm wife, and crawl into their warm bed. Past midnight now, it had been a long day. But at the very least he was going to get a positive ID out of this man with the costly new shoes.

  “Squad ten-fifteen is requesting more help at Plymouth and Emerson. Who’s there now? Ten-four. We’ll call State Patrol.”

  It was the difference between Minneapolis and St. Paul. In St. Paul blacks cheered and generally cooperated when police arrived on the scene. In Minneapolis blacks grew to riot proportions at the sight of flashing red lights. Les Angelbeck could never figure out how a river could put so much distance between two cities. The old police captain watched as the Minneapolis officers tried to get statements. No body was talking. Everybody was yelling. A large white and orange ambulance was parked outside the perimeter. Prostitutes worked the busy corner like flies, uninhibited by the weather or the law. It was that kind of neighborhood.

  By New York or Los Angeles standards the area was probably respectable. But by Minnesota standards North Minneapolis was as bad as it gets, a predominantly black, low-income, no-income, high-crime, drug-trafficking area squeezed between freeways leading out of town. Urban renewal had been there and gone, along with every other social experiment the government had to offer. It was once the proud domain of the postwar working stiff. Now whole blocks of new housing had been built in North Minneapolis to look like town homes, with colonial and Victorian façades and splashes of the popular midwestern Queen Anne style. Architecture comes to the poor. But in reality it was nothing but a plywood slum. The projects. Fresh paint on old problems.

  Squads from the housing patrol tried to keep the angry crowd on the curbs and off the streets. Les Angelbeck sucked cigarette smoke into his rotting lungs. The river between blacks and whites was so wide maybe it could never be bridged—not even in Minnesota.

  “Squad four-ten, make twenty-three-seventeen Fremont on a domestic dispute. She’s got a restraining order . . . he’s there.”

  The inner cities had become a darker version of the Old West. Instead of white, the gunfighters were usually black. Instead of facing each other in the middle of the street, they faced each other toe to toe on cracked sidewalks. The guns, smaller and deadlier, didn’t hang from the hip; they were hidden in jacket pockets, tucked into a holster, slid beneath a belt. Donnell R
edmond waited for answers to his questions. “Where you from? You from Gary? Chicago? East St. Louie? You ain’t from around here.”

  The White Sox fan, probably a gang member, maybe a rapist, looked about to run. He was shivering up a storm. Redmond’s police instincts told him to go for his gun even before the suspect went for his. But it was too late. The magnum force came out of the Sox jacket so fast he saw only the exploding flashes, heard the roaring thunder, then felt the body blows to his midsection. In the end there were four shots fired. Lieutenant Donnell Redmond only got off one of them. The last thing the tall cop saw as he fell that cold night was the pair of horny sneakers stumbling down Plymouth Avenue. Somebody was crying, “I been shot,” but he couldn’t tell who. It may have been himself.

  “Three-ten Able. Twelfth and Queen. See the yellow cab there on a no pay.”

  The shooter was found dead on North Emerson, four blocks away. There was a big handprint on his shiny white sneakers where his last gesture on this earth was a feeble attempt to wipe away the specks of blood.

  The mob in the street didn’t know exactly who was dead or why, but their inner-city instincts told them a cop had shot a black man. Black leaders were already shouting warnings into the TV cameras. They could sort out the details in the morning. Tonight they were promising the revolution.

  Les Angelbeck rolled his window down and flicked the cigarette butt into the street. The biting north wind blew the last sparks into the crowd. They were beginning to disperse, retreating to their subsidized housing. It was too cold to protest. The revolution would have to wait until summer.

  One by one the muddy white squad cars of the Minneapolis Police Depart ment began to pull away. So did the State Patrol and the housing authority. When the news photographers saw that the cops were leaving, they too packed up their vans and got the hell out of there. Yellow tape was left strung from tree to tree, as was the chalk outline of a tall man curled up on frozen grass beneath bare trees. Tomorrow the TV reporters would stand in front of the spot and reduce the man’s life to one minute and thirty seconds.

  The old cop turned up the heater to fend off the cold. He dropped the squad into drive, wiped an angry tear from the corner of his good eye, and rolled away.

  “All squads, Lieutenant Donnell Redmond of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was killed in the line of duty tonight in our city. Lieutenant Redmond leaves behind a wife and three children. Funeral arrangements will be announced. See your supervisor for burial duties. All squads at two-fifty-eight.”

  Anatomy of a television news story:

  Begin with a brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty in her mid-twenties. Her name is Melissa. Or Alyssa. Or let’s call her Tricia. She earns nineteen thousand dollars a year on a two-year contract. When her contract is up and she asks for a raise she’ll be television history. She begins her story with a live shot, standing in front of a hospital emergency entrance talking at the camera. It is nighttime. An ambulance can be seen behind her. “Well, Brad, it seems our friends up at Channel 7 make as much news these days as they report. This is the remarkable story of an award-winning reporter and Vietnam veteran apparently determined to commit suicide. But fate intervened.”Tricia the TV reporter glances down at her portable monitor.

  Flash to a grainy black-and-white photograph of Rick Beanblossom at work in the Star Tribunenewsroom on the day he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. The photo was snapped from a distance because he refused to have his picture taken. Tricia’s voice was recorded over a slow zoom of the photograph. “Rick Beanblossom is a burn victim who can often be seen around town in his trademark blue pullover mask. Four years ago he left his job at the Star Tribuneand took a news producer’s job at Channel 7. Newsroom co-workers say he wrestled with bouts of depression, and severe headaches for which he took prescription painkillers.”

  Go to tape of the St. Croix Valley. Camera pans the width of the Soo Line Bridge. Tricia is still blabbing away. “Last night the news producer, a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, came to this abandoned railroad bridge over the St. Croix River, apparently determined to take his own life.”

  Throw in a sound bite from a sheriff ’s deputy, not to exceed ten seconds.

  “From the needle kit found in his car, it appears he shot a large amount of heroin into his arm and laid down to die. He had no other reason to be up there.”

  Back to scenic shots of the St. Croix River. Tricia talking. “But what the exMarine didn’t know was that last night we were headed for record low temperatures for this time of the year. He also couldn’t know two canoeists would be paddling beneath the bridge at the crack of dawn.”

  Cut to sound bite of canoeist pointing up at the bridge. This bite most important; it can run fifteen seconds.

  “We were on the river watching the sun coming up . . . It was really bright and it felt good because it was so cold. Anyway, I saw this reflection off the bridge up there, like somebody signaling us with a mirror or something . . . so I climbed up there . . . and this guy with the mask was lying there . . . and I thought he was dead . . . and this cross around his neck was hanging over the bridge reflecting the sun. We never would have seen him up there if hadn’t been for that cross.”

  Go to tape of the cross displayed at the hospital. Tricia speaking over it. “That cross was the Navy Cross that Rick Beanblossom was awarded for saving the lives of his men during a napalm attack in Vietnam. An attack that cost him his face, and like last night, almost cost him his life.”

  Cut to a sound bite from the doctor at the hospital. Be sure to flash his name and title on the screen as he speaks. Give him five seconds.

  “If it hadn’t been for the cold, and being found so early this morning, he’d have died last night. Somebody up there is watching over him.”

  Next, Tricia the TV reporter does a fifteen-second stand-up atop the Soo Line Bridge, taped earlier in the day, talking into the camera as she walks with trepidation along the railroad tracks on the rickety span two hundred feet above the river, about the height of an eighteen-story building. It’s scenic as a postcard, but she looks scared to death. The photographer made her do it. “Doctors say the record low temperatures last night slowed Beanblossom’s heartbeat, thickened his blood, and prevented the overdose from killing him. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning newsman isn’t out of the woods yet. He was rushed from this bridge near death to Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater—ironically, his hometown.”

  Master shot of the hospital, then a quick cut to a second sound bite from the doctor.

  “Basically he’s in a light coma . . . but comas are still a medical mystery. He could be in it for days, or weeks. That much poison is a tremendous shock . . . But his vital signs are strong.”

  Return to a live shot of Tricia standing in front of the emergency entrance at the hospital. “And Brad, the latest word from Lakeview here is more of the same. News producer Rick Beanblossom is still in a coma. Serious but stable condition. Back to you.”

  “Thank you, Tricia.” At the studio the anchor turns to the anchorette. “Our prayers are with him tonight.”

  Anchorette nods her head in sympathy. “I’ll say, he’s a good one.”

  Anchor turns to camera two. “By the way, we want to welcome Tricia to our news team. She’s an award-winning reporter from station WTOL in Toledo, Ohio.”

  Anchorette nods her head in agreement. “We were really lucky to get her. We’ll take a stab at tomorrow’s weather next. Stay tuned.”

  * * *

  “Master Sergeant Beanblossom, I’m Lieutenant Russell. I know this is a torturous time for you, but the colored nurse, Angela, said you might be able to talk now.” “Yes. I c-can talk.”

  “What you did is a credit to the Marine Corps, son. Esprit de corps at its best. We’re very proud of you. And don’t you worry about your face. The burn unit at Fort Sam Houston is the best in the world. When you get back to the States they’ll fix you up like new.”

  “Sem . .
. sem . . . semper some shit.”

  “Semper fi. Always faithful. I understand. Part of my job, Master Sergeant, and it’s not an easy job, is to log and classify casualties and MIAs. On the day you were wounded another Marine, who we know to have been Lance Corporal Robert Joseph Sax from Texarkana, Arkansas, was killed in action. He was the third Marine you tried to rescue that day. Do you remember?”

  “Hard day to for . . . forget.”

  “We don’t want you to forget just yet. You see, after the napalm attack we were unable to retrieve the lance corporal’s body. The truth of the matter is when we withdrew from that position there was really nothing left of him to retrieve. Do you understand? The thing of it is, Lance Corporal Sax for the past several months has been listed as missing in action, even though we know that he was killed. What we need from you is confirmation of his death. We’d like to give his family the peace of mind they deserve. For the record, Master Sergeant Beanblossom, was it Lance Corporal Sax you tried to rescue that day? And was he dead?”