by Chuck Hogan
TRACY
SHE WAS GREEDY FOR HIM. The rum and the foreplay made Tracy greedy, and she had been naked so long she was beyond willing, beyond desire, she wanted more more more now now now. She wanted it all at once. Everything. Right now.
She gripped his sides, pulling him closer to her and pushing him away at the same time. A fight she wanted to lose. Wanted so desperately to lose.
She bit down on his shoulder, but still he did not stop. He did not seem to mind it at all, so she bit down again and sucked on the hard ropy muscle until his hand reached for her neck. He forced back her open mouth, his fingers remaining at her jaw.
She swallowed so that he would feel her throat working under his hand. Feel her vulnerability, her trust. She gave him her throat as she gave herself to him, willingly. But still he refused to remove his tongue from her nipple.
Her bare heels dug at the mattress. His other hand teased the insides of her thighs and she grabbed it and pushed it where it needed to go. For a moment he obeyed her, and her hips jolted to the touch. Then his hand slid back along her leg. She tugged again at his wrist, and he lingered longer this time, but only enough to disappoint.
That hand tugged on hers. He wanted her to do it. Guiding the pads of her own fingers to her trimmed hair.
What he had wanted all along.
Her to do it herself.
She did, and finally he stopped at her breast. He watched.
Closing her eyes was a concession to the pretense that pure momentary ecstasy guided her fingers in their firm, circling touchnot years of shameful practice.
She reached for him, and he was so hard, and she was so proud, guiding him in, lifting her hips to meet and take him.
She held tight. She held on so tight. She was leaving her body, she was going off to that place.
That place.
Right there.
That place that place that fucking place
He pulled out as he came, and she held him to her until he sagged. He lay at her side, breathing hard, and she looked down at his puddle in the bowl her belly made, dipping her fingers to feel the honeyness of him.
Him and the future of him. All his secrets.
Could it be her future?
His breathing evened out as he lay beside her. She knew she didn't want anyone else, ever. But what he wanted, she still did not know.
* * *
A COLD NIGHT in the dark month of February.
Tracy had gone out driving, her only getaway from the monotony of the farm, playing CDs in a portable player hooked up through the cassette slot in her truck, singing along when the mood struck or else just letting the music take her away.
The blue lights behind her brought her back fast. A woman knew not to get out of her car for a Black Falls cop. Tracy was in the hills a long way from the center of town.
She pulled over, watching the cop's shadow come out of the headlights. She rolled her window down just a crack. He shined his flashlight inside the car.
She didn't know him. She had heard that there was a new one in town.
"You follow me," he told her, through the window, then returned to his car.
She tailed him back to the center of town, to the police station driveway. She waited inside her car while he took her license and registration and ran them through the computer inside.
He returned and fed her identification back to her through the sliver of open window, along with a speeding ticket for $115.
Tracy was out of her truck in a flash.
"A hundred and fifteen dollars!" she said. "Do you know how much it costs to feed a llama?"
He stopped halfway back to his car, turning in surprise. "No," he said. "I don't."
"This," she said, shaking the ticket, "is why you Black Falls cops have a bad name." On that, she turned, stomping back into her truck.
"Hey!"
The anger in his voice startled her. She turned to see the steam of the word dissipating around his head.
"Consider that the price of good advice," he said. "Don't go out driving around town alone. Especially at night. You might find yourself at the mercy of a different cop."
Somethingthe dreariness of the month, or the liberating spirit of the drive, or the warmth of her angerkept her going. This outburst wasn't anything like her. "You can't just come into town, put on a stupid T-shirt, and start writing out tickets!"
Then she drove off fast, letting him watch her speed away.
The next day, still hot, she returned to the station to complain. Bucky Pail was at the front counter, shaking his head while she detailed her encounter with the overzealous new patrolman. "Let me see that," he said, taking the ticket from her, looking it over. "Sure, we can take care of this for you. Won't take more than a couple of minutes. Why don't you just come on around in back here "
She had started to go with him. That was the scariest part. She actually walked to the end of the counter, ready to accompany him to the back. Because he was a policeman, and because he was offering to help.
She stopped, looking at his grinning eyes, his crooked thumb rubbing against the speeding ticket in his hand.
Shocked by her own gullibility as much as his leering behavior, she turned and walked fast out of the station.
Don Maddox's next shift was two nights later. Tracy made sure it was him before pulling into the station parking lot just after eleven. "You were right," she said.
She told him what had happened, or almost happened.
"What were you doing driving around out there, anyway?" he said.
"Just driving." She shrugged. "Getting away from this place without actually getting away. Trying to sort out my life."
"By singing along with the Foo Fighters?"
She smiled. He had a good memory. "Why not?" she said. "You like the Foo?"
He shrugged. "I likes me some Foo."
He said it just like that. The last thing she had expected to do that night was laugh.
"You could do better?" she said. "At sorting out a life?"
"Someone else's, or my own?"
"Someone else's."
She remembered the way he watched her smile. The way he had tried to be cool, deliberate and deliberating, with his shrug and a quick glance back at the station. "I'm going to be taking my forty in about a half hour."
"Is that really such a good idea?" she said. "Drinking a forty-ounce malt liquor on the job?"
"Radio code," he said. "For my midnight lunch."
They sat in the front seat of his patrol car, parked at the base of the twin waterfalls, splitting his tuna sandwich and watching the cascades spill out from beneath great caps of white ice.
* * *
SHE TURNED OVER beneath the cooled sheet, stretching a little, the muscles in her legs still pleasantly sore. This tussling between them, the struggle that manifested itself during sex, was like a play that mysteriously exposed the true hearts of its actors, revealing the tension in his, and the suspense in hers.
She couldn't feel him with her knee, and, opening her eyes, found him sitting at the foot of the bed. She watched him there, his broad, bare back, his face turned toward the window where the air conditioner blew its red ribbon. All new to her, this relationship thing. She was trying hard not to see every little mood change of his in terms of their success or demise. "Where are you?"
He looked back at her, not all the way. "Thinking about my mother," he said. "Living alone here. Dying alone. How I should have been with her."
They were on the new double bed in his old bedroom. The queen bed in the master bedroom across the hall was stripped to the mattress and box spring, as though his mother's body had been taken away just that morning.
The caffeine from the rum and Coke kept the alcohol pumping through him, the closest thing she had to a truth serum. This empty hour after sex was the only time he was vulnerable. She was learning how to navigate him. Asking the obvious next questionWhy weren't you with her?would have shut him right down. Besides, these m
isgivings about his mother's death were one reason he kept dragging his feet about selling her house. Which was fine with Tracy. Anything to keep him in Black Falls longer. Anything to give her more time.
She sat up with the sheet. "How did you get out in the first place?"
"Ah," he said, "that's a fun story." He turned down the air conditioner, lowering the volume of the rattling windowpane, then came back to lie down beside her. "The mill closed while I was in high school. Someone realized that Black Falls was suffering this 'brain drain,' meaning that everyone who could get out of townthe smarter kids, the motivated oneswas leaving and never coming back. Why the town wasn't getting anywhere. So to break the cycle, they came up with a plan. The Black Falls high school student graduating that next year with the highest grade point average would receive a full scholarship to a Massachusetts state universitywith only one catch. It was a doozy. The recipient had to promise to return to Black Falls after graduation and work and live in the town for a minimum of five years. Like Black Falls ROTC, in a way. Not legally binding, but for a son or daughter of the town, a pledge." He was on his back, telling this story to the ceiling. "So they ran bake sales and bottle drives, they had pancake breakfasts and raffles, got sponsors, anything they could do to raise money. Pinty got behind it, figuring the town needed something to rally around as a ray-of-hope project in that first post-mill year. My mother didn't have much money, so this was my only real shot at affording school. And I busted my ass. And won it. I was the first, and, it turned out, only 'Black Falls Scholar.' Went to UMass Amherst, the honors program there, did my four years, graduated and then never came back."
"No."
"Yep."
"Oh my."
"I jumped bail, basically. Sounds terrible, but honestly, I didn't plan it. Just that, when the time came, I couldn't bear to go back."
"Butyour mother."
"I know." He nodded. "I know. She said no one ever gave her a hard time about it. It had been four years since I'd wonpeople forget. Besides, things were getting worse fast, and the town had enough to worry about. Letting Pinty down was the worst part. How I did that to him, I still don't know."
"Obviously, he forgives you. I mean, just the way you two were standing together at the parade. You're like the son he never had."
"Yeah, well." Donny shifted on the bed. "Actually, Pinty did have a son."
"He did?"
"You know at the diner, that one big wall with all the crap about the town?"
"Sure. Maps, old postcards, photographs."
"There's a portrait of an Army Ranger in uniform?"
"That's Pinty's son?"
"Gregory."
"Really? Was it Vietnam?"
"No. Yeshe fought in Vietnam. But he died after coming back. On a foam mattress in a friend's basement in Montague. With a needle in his arm."
She covered her open mouth. "Pinty's son?"
"So, with my father having been his partner, Pinty watched out for me growing up. My mother couldn't always hold everything together, so he helped me. Wanted big things for me." Donny laughed once through his nose. "Yeah. I'm a model son."
He was off the bed fast, turning the air-conditioning back up, standing before the blowing vent. It surprised her, hearing him talk like this. "You couldn't have stayed with her forever."
"No? Probably not. But where does the debt end?"
"I don't know. But if you ever figure it out, please tell me. I'm still paying. Every single day." It never occurred to Tracy that they had this in common: single-parent mothers. "I mean, she's deaf, okay? But she's totally self-sufficient, she can do everything for herself. Except run the farm single-handedly. Now, could she hire help? Of course she could. But she would much rather guilt me into staying. The truth is, she's afraid of being alone. Do you know she doesn't even ask where I go these nights? 'A friend's house' is all I tell her. Never once has she pressed. She knows damn well by now it's a guy. That her only daughter is 'running around.'" She smiled. "But to force the issue might piss me off, and give me that nudge I need to go away. My mother lives basically in fear of me, the most unhealthy relationship possible. I meancan you imagine if I ever came right out and told her I was sleeping with a Black Falls cop?"
Donny said, "All the more reason not to."
"I guess." She rolled over onto her hip, turning more toward him. "Are there other reasons? Myself, I wouldn't mind holding hands in public, even just once."
"Because it's best."
"Best for you? I don't see how it's best for me."
"This is a small town. The other cops don't like me much."
"Well, that's dramatic," she said. "I mean, I kind of liked sneaking around at first. It's getting a little old now. Sometimes it seems like this way just makes it easier for you to break it off with me when the time comes."
He checked her, maybe looking for a smile. She didn't have one for him.
"You never wanted to get mixed up with a local girl," she said. "Did you. You're so afraid of getting trapped here. Of winding up like everyone else."
She watched him brood on that, and noticed that he didn't tell her she was mistaken. "This arrangement is unfair to you," he said. "I know that. But I've been up front"
"Please. Don't."
"I know you don't want to hear it, but I have been crystal clear, exactly so that there are no illusions. I am just passing through here."
"Donny"
"I'm not doing this to be cruel. This is because I don't want to hurt you."
"Just stop, please. You have to not talk like that. Not after I just cleaned you off me with tissues."
Sometimes he looked angry when he was only thinking.
"Please," she said. "Just lie down next to me and shut up now. Please."
And he did. The room was quiet except for the air conditioner rattling the window. She lay on her side behind him, sad now, and sad about feeling sad.
After a while he laid his hand over her hip, and she didn't move away. She never slept, and he didn't seem to either.
She climbed into her truck before dawn, activating the garage door opener he had given her, the one thing of his she got to carry around. One day she was going to show up and open the door and the house was going to be empty, and him gone.
Implacable men. Every misfortune Tracy's mother had suffered over the past twelve years, she blamed on Tracy's father and his leaving them.
Her mother had to be proven wrong. Had to be.
She turned past the FOR SALE sign onto the street. Tracy's eyes remained damp the whole way homenot because things were bad between them, but because things were so good, and could be great, and still he was going to walk away. She drove on under the first candle of sky light like the dazed victim of an automobile accident that had yet to occur.
20
FRANKIE
THE DOORBELL KEPT ringing in the apartment, insistently, like the thumb pressing on the button was jabbing into Frankie's own temple. They weren't going away. Why didn't the Zoo Lady answer?
Maybe it was Dill at the door. Maybe he had lost his key.
A pretty hopeless hope, but you'll grab at almost anything if you wait long enough for someone.
Frankie went into the bedroom. The old floors were creaky and he tried to go softly heel-toe. The dogs howled downstairs like it was the moon itself ringing the bell. He heard them scratching at the walls.
Frankie went up alongside the black curtain over the left window. He peeked out, but couldn't see the door from this second-floor window because of the balcony.
It was twilight at the intersection of Main and Number 8. He looked for a car or something. Maybe Dill's bike.
The bell finally stopped, the silence loud, and then the caller backed out from the doorway into the street. Frankie saw the black cap and the white jersey with the blue word on it. A Black Falls cop checking the windows. Frankie froze. The curtain shifted ever so slightly, and he realized that this particular window was open a crack.
Frankie backed away fast. Too fast.
"Hey!"
The cop's eyes had jumped. He was yelling now.
"Hey!"
Frankie heard boots on the stoop and the doorbell ringing again. Frankie swiped at his nose, pinched it hard. The cop was pounding on the door.
