by Thomas Cobb
“You in Vietnam?”
“I was there. One tour in Phu Bai.”
“You kill anyone?”
“Not there. Mostly I did a lot of guard duty. Broke up a lot of fights, threw drunks in the stockade.”
“It must be hard to actually kill someone.”
“Harder than you can imagine.”
“Who’d you kill?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t even know if I killed him. I was stationed at Fort Bliss, outside of El Paso. MP. I was guarding some trucks heading west and stopping at Bliss for the night. Secret stuff. New weapons systems, I think. In the middle of the night I saw this guy rummaging around in the secure area. I yelled for him to stop, but he picked up something and made a run for it. I fired one warning shot that made him start running in a zigzag. The next shot, I hit him. He went down hard, but then he got up and went on.
“We searched for his body the next day. We found more blood, but we never found him. Maybe he made it back into Mexico. Maybe he drowned in the Rio Grande. Maybe he lived. Maybe not. I’ll never know. But I’ll never forget it, either. It’ll catch me at odd times, and I’ll think about it, wondering if I killed him or not. I hope not, but I can’t shake the fear that I did. The worst thing that ever happened to me. And that’s just one of the things that can happen in the army.”
“A lot of the guys want to join up and go over and kill hajis.”
“I know that. A lot of them get their wish. The lucky ones don’t.”
“You went.”
“I bought the big lie. There’s always a big lie. This one is ‘They’re trying to take our freedom.’ ”
“That’s a lie?”
“A big one. Don’t die for it. Don’t kill someone for it.”
“It’s just down here.” Forbert pointed down the road. “To the right.”
“Here?”
“Next mailbox.”
The driveway was long, winding back into the woods. “You shovel this driveway?”
“Yeah. It takes a while.”
They pulled up to the house. It was a sixties ranch-style, with snow building up on the roof and around the edges. Gordy could see it had once been yellow, but now was mostly gray where the paint had peeled off and the wood had weathered. It looked like it had never been a great house, but once was a lot nicer than it was now. It was like a lot of houses in Lydell, neglected for lack of time, money, and the inclination to keep it up. Twenty years ago, houses were better kept, but that was a time before everyone had two jobs just to afford the things they needed, or thought they needed.
“Well, if you shovel this out, no one can say you’re afraid of hard work. This is a job.”
“We’ve got a snowblower, but it’s old. It works sometimes, but a heavy snow will stop it dead. It’s almost easier just to shovel it.”
“Well, you call me tomorrow. I’ll find you some work. It’ll be easier than this, and we’ll pay you for it.”
GORDY PICKED RONNY up in the late morning. The Forberts’ driveway was clear and easy. “Looks like you put in a full day already.”
“It wasn’t so bad. Seven inches, pretty light and fluffy. I got the snowblower working. It wasn’t too bad.”
“You had lunch yet?”
“No. But I’m OK.”
“I’m not. Let’s get lunch.” Gordy backed the cruiser down the long drive again. He looked over at Ronny, who wore an old canvas coat over his hoodie. “Reach behind the seat there. I brought you something.”
“This?” Ronny held up a navy-blue nylon quilted police jacket with a fur collar.
“That. It’s warm. I grew out of it a couple of years ago. I quit smoking and put on some pounds. Can’t even zip that one up, now. It’s yours. You got gloves?”
Ronny pulled out a pair of soaked leather work gloves that looked really worn.
“There’s some dry ones in the trunk. You can use those.”
At Edna’s on Route 23, Ronny ordered a burger and fries, Gordy a chef’s salad. “You still trying to diet, Gordy?” Diane the waitress asked.
Gordy patted his belly. “Still working on it. Still working.”
“I can put you on the no-pancake list. The no-ice-cream list, too.”
“Oh, no. Don’t do that. You’ve got to attend to your pleasures. I’ll just use willpower.”
“You got some?”
“More than you can imagine, Diane.”
When she had gone back to the kitchen, Gordy said, “She gets on me about lack of willpower. But I’ve quit smoking, and I’ve quit drinking. I have lots of willpower. And I’ll get away from the sugar, too. One of these days.”
“Good morning, Gordon.” Martin Glendenning stood at the side of their booth. “Fighting crime?”
“Calories, mostly.”
“Have you heard? I’m going to run for the town council in the special election next month. Be your boss one of these days.”
“I heard. Good to get it from the horse’s mouth, though. Think you can win? This here is Ronald Forbert. He’s going to be doing a little work around the station.”
Martin looked at Ronny and nodded. He reached down and fingered the shoulder of Ronny’s new jacket. “Are you a new member of the police force, Ronald?”
“Chief Hawkins gave it to me,” Ronny said.
“Well, wear it in good health. Chief Hawkins is a good and generous man. He’s been our chief for a long time. Do what he says. He’ll keep you on the straight and narrow. Won’t be able to play with matches if you’re a member of the Lydell Police.
“To answer your question, Gordon, I can win, and I will win,” Martin said. “We have to make some changes in Lydell. I think I’m the man to do that.”
“What sort of changes you thinking about? Am I going to still have a job?”
“Nothing is going to be off the table, Gordon. I have to be honest about that. Nothing. We’re getting killed with taxes here. Lydell’s going down fast. I think everyone knows that. We’re going to have to look at some big changes just to keep the town alive.”
“Would that include doing away with the police department?”
Gordy knew that Martin wanted to disband the police department and turn protection over to the state police. And a lot of others did, too. There were opposing sides—those who wanted to keep the town going and those who were content to let it die. Those were mainly the old rural stock whose parents let the school system go and be merged into Warrentown. And then the fire department, which they defunded until it became all volunteer. And now they were after the police department, which they considered an expensive nuisance. Martin saw it as a danger to his enterprises.
“Oh, I don’t know, Gordon. If we didn’t have a police department, the state police could patrol the town. It would save a lot of money. But it’s just a thought.”
Diane reappeared with their orders.
“Good morning, beautiful. How’s your day going?” Martin asked.
“One minute it’s great, and the next it goes right into the dumper,” Diane said with obvious distaste.
“Way of the world, gorgeous. Way of the world.”
“You fellows need anything more here? All right on your Coke there?” she asked Ronny. When Ronny nodded, she turned, a sharp pivot, and headed back to the kitchen.
“She don’t like me much,” Martin said.
“Would have been my guess,” Gordy said.
“Used to like me a lot.”
“Way of the world, Martin. Way of the world.”
“Well, all right, then. You wanted me to let you in on my plans. Don’t suppose I’m going to get your vote?”
“Martin, I do all I can to stay out of the politics. Every election, there’s a fifty–fifty chance I’m going to piss off my boss. Those aren’t good odds, so I pretty much stay on t
he sidelines. I work with whoever the town chooses.”
“Fifty–fifty chance of getting in good with the boss, too.”
“Same odds. Just like flipping a coin.”
“Well, that’s true, but sometimes you just have to roll the dice.”
“Only if you don’t mind losing. Me, I mind losing. That’s why that new casino down in Franklin won’t see a lot of me.
“You know Martin?” Gordon asked when Glendenning had left. “He runs the gravel pit out on Weller Road. Farms some, too, though I don’t see him farming much beyond some corn in the summer and pumpkins in the fall. Deals a little farm equipment on the side.”
“I’ve seen him around.”
“Yeah. It’s hard not to know people in a town like Lydell. Well, eat up. We better get to work before Martin fires me and you, too.”
In the afternoon, when Ronny had finished clearing the sidewalks, Gordy went out to check. The walks were completely free of snow and water, and had been sprinkled with sand. The edges of the path had been cut clean. Amazingly clean. The angles where the sidewalk turned and split were cut sharply at ninety degrees. He had never seen anything quite like it. Gordy guessed that was what you got from a carpenter’s son.
“TELL US, SAMMY. Tell us what you saw. You saw Matt Laferiere get killed, man. You saw him dead.” That was the worst thing he had ever seen, the worst thing he hoped he would ever see. You shouldn’t see someone you knew like that. Dead. Really messed up. He had seen Matt Laferiere’s brain, and his teeth scattered among the gore.
“It was gross,” he says.
“I heard that his head was, like, smashed. You see his head smashed?”
He just nods.
“You see the car hit him, dude? You see that?”
“Yeah,” he says, almost believing that it’s true. He wants to just get away from this, get away from the questions, but more people are coming up. “Sammy’s telling the story. Sammy’s telling what he saw.”
“Did the cop really throw him into the road as the car came at him?”
He looks around at the kids, guys and girls both, crowding in, waiting to hear the story. Waiting for the story he said he wouldn’t tell. They’re paying attention to him, wanting to hear what he saw. What he saw and none of them did. He likes the way everyone’s eyes are on him.
“Yeah,” he says. “I saw it. He just grabbed him by the arm and threw him out into the road. The car was coming fast. Matt didn’t have a chance. The car just rammed into him, sent him into the back of the Jeep.”
“Did he, like, fly through the air?”
“Yeah. He did. Like nothing you ever saw. Headfirst right into the Jeep. Totally smashed his head.”
“God. That’s cool, man. That cop killed his ass, man.”
“Yeah,” Sammy says, though he doesn’t know why.
RONNY HAD LEFT the station with no particular destination in mind. He doesn’t want to go back to the apartment. He knows that. So when he gets to Route 417, he hooks a left and heads northwest toward Warrentown. Two miles down the road he pulls off onto a narrow dirt road that leads toward Stark’s Pond. It’s a place where he’s spent a lot of time.
When Ronny moved out of middle school into the regional high school that combined the tenth through twelfth graders from the three towns south of Warrentown, including Lydell, he lost his best friend, Max, whose parents moved to Vermont. They were only forty-some miles apart now, but since neither had a car, and neither had parents willing to drive the forty miles a couple of times a week, and they were now going to separate schools, they may as well have been in separate countries.
Ronny and Max had been bound by a love of the outdoors, especially the woods and the animals that lived there, and a vague but aching longing for girls, though neither was adept at attracting them. They had stayed young for their ages, preferring to play in the woods where they seemed separated from the rest of the world by miles and years.
In summers they would fish and swim in Stark’s Pond and when it got too cold for that, they tracked game—deer, fox, raccoon, pheasant, grouse, and the occasional coyote, which often turned out to be someone’s wandering dog. Neither had a real gun, so they didn’t hunt, just tracked. Or they sat in makeshift blinds, smoking stolen cigarettes or pieces of grapevine, fingering stolen magazines, masturbating and waiting for bear that never showed up. Left alone long enough, they reverted to earlier childhood games of war, or Indians and settlers, popping up from behind their makeshift shelters to fire BB guns at marauding trees and falling back behind cover. They would stay from the time school let out until it was too dark to see before heading back to their homes.
But while they played, they learned. Finding the nests of deer, the burrows of raccoon and fox, and learning the seasons by the plants that appeared, from the skunk cabbage that came up in the woodlands when the snow was still on the ground and frost in the air but warmth underneath, to the rotation of goldenrod, joe-pye, and jewelweed that signaled the coming of winter, and the long, sloppy V’s of geese making their way south in the late fall.
Alone at the regional high school, Ronny would slip out between third-period social studies and fifth-period English to smoke the cigarettes he stole from his father along the unpaved service road that came into the back of the cafeteria. There were always other kids out there, singly or in small bunches. He was a moderately good student who fit with neither the grade chasers nor the misfits. One day, one of the kids in a familiar group waved him over.
“Hey,” the smallest one said. “I know you. Forbert. You’re from Lydell. I remember you from middle school. Bobby Cabella.”
“Yeah. We had gym together a couple of years.”
“Right. Mr. Porous Morris. What a fag that guy was. You got smokes?”
“Not today.”
Cabella produced a pack of American Spirits, shook one out, and held up a blue Bic lighter. “Lydell, man. We stick together.”
“Thanks.”
“This here is Matt Laferiere, Steve Woodrow, Paul Stablein, and Larry Morrel. We’re all Lydell.”
“Yeah. I know. Hey, guys.”
“What’s going on,” Matt Laferiere asked. “What are you into?”
Ronny was slightly surprised and pleased that Matt Laferiere, the leader of the misfits, was actually talking to him.
“Just stuff. Nothing special. I just come out here to get away from the crap. You know? How about you guys?”
“We’re just figuring out ways to burn the school down,” Paul Stablein said.
“The kitchen,” Ronny said. “Fires always start in the kitchen. Nobody will suspect anything.”
“The kitchen,” Matt Laferiere said. “I like that. This guy thinks. I like that. He’s all right.”
He was all right. Matt Laferiere had said so. That made him proud in a way he had never felt before. Matt Laferiere was, he thought, the coolest guy in school, always walking with a measured pace, smiling, nearly a smirk that said he knew just how cool he was. And he dated Vanessa Woodridge.
Ronny stood in awe of Vanessa Woodridge. She was pretty, though probably not the most beautiful girl in school, but she was cool, always well dressed, always somehow more grown-up than the others. Grace, he guessed. She had grace and money. Nothing seemed to touch her.
Cabella bumped Forbert’s chest with his elbow. “We know, dude. We all know. Lots of shit. Lots of shit to get away from.”
“That would be right.”
“Listen, dude. We’re usually hanging out here before school, at lunch and for a while afterward. Matt here’s got wheels. After school we take off and hang out. Always got smoke, usually some frosties, and sometimes some weed. We do all right. You ought to come along sometime. We have a pretty good time.”
“That would be cool.”
“All right then, dude. See you after last class.”
HE HAD GONE with them that afternoon, cruising the main street of Lydell in Matt’s Jeep Cherokee, a beater four-by-four, and then out 417 into the country where they rode the back roads, drinking beer that Matt always seemed to have in abundance and smoking a little weed.
It became a routine, going out every afternoon after school, and then, after dinner, they would appear in Ronny’s driveway and honk the horn. Ronny would tell his father he was going out for a little while. His father, usually into his second or third Heaven Hill in front of the TV, would raise his glass. “Do your homework?”
“Yeah. Did my homework.”
“Behave yourself and get home early.”
“SO WHAT ARE we going to do?”
“Let’s get Ronny laid.”
“Right. That’s the plan. With who?”
“Katie Montierth.”
“Yeah, Katie Montierth. Let’s head over there.”
They drove quickly back to the state highway, then headed north. Ronny was feeling excited but apprehensive, too. Were they really going to do this? When they got to Ramshead Road, they went half a mile and pulled up outside a ranch-style house with a wooden fence in front. There was a porch light on, and lights in several windows.
“OK. We’re here. Go to it.”
“What?”
“Go up to the door. Knock. Say you want to see Katie.”
“Yeah. Then what?”
“Tell her you want to fuck her.”
“No. I can’t do that.”
“She won’t care. She’ll either say yes or no.”
“No. Not even take her out or anything?”
“She won’t care. She likes to fuck. Just go up and ask her. No. Tell.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Shit. Well, ask her if she wants to go for a ride. Maybe she’ll fuck all of us.”
He got out of the car because he didn’t see any way he could not at least do that. If he refused, they would drop him. It would be the end of everything.
He knocked on the door. He heard voices inside, raised. Finally a woman in sweatshirt and jeans came to the door, barefoot.
“Hi. Is Katie home?”
