by Dean Ing
Reminds me: you said once I'd be different after realizing I'd come within an inch of winding up on a slab, Swede. Remember?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it's not true. Did you know it wasn't? For a few days maybe; it shakes the hell out of you. But in the long run, the feeling of reprieve wears off. That little monster almost took me down twice. I know I was lucky but - you don't change that easily, Swede. At least I don't. Did you, really?"
Swede Halvorsen's gaze stayed on Gary for a long moment, then strayed to the ground. At last he sighed and shook his head very slowly.
"Then why tell me it works that way, if you knew it doesn't?"
Another silence. Shrug; then, angrily, "Well, goddammit, it ought to. It would, if we had the brains of a tapeworm." And when he looked up at Gary again, his face held a plea for understanding. "Guess I just hoped you were smarter than I am, Gary."
"I'm a cop, is what I am. And I am smarter than you are - hell, I'm meaner, too. Maybe I forget that for a week or two after a major dustup, but sooner or later I remember. Just like I'll bet you did."
"Oh, you're a cop all right." Swede turned toward his car. His words floated back: "I'll get in touch, one of these days."
"I understand," Gary called to him, knowing with leaden certainty that he really did understand the old man's subtext. Swede was saying, "Let me be the one to get in touch, and I probably won't." Too many memories, too much pain in them.
Gary noticed the two men in work clothes waiting patiently near a backhoe for him to leave. He trudged off another fifty yards, saw Swede's old Polara dwindling along the drive, then sat down beneath a shade tree. He would not leave until the backhoe had done its final work, heaping earth over his hopes, his devotion.
At least, he thought, we know how to do something right.