the Buffalo Soldier (2002)

by Bohjalian, Chris

  Quickly she turned and walked back toward the deli section in the store, and tried to busy herself slicing sandwich meat. She knew she'd have to wait on the group soon enough, but this way she thought she might minimize the need for conversation.

  She remembered that Terry said Russell spent his life flirting with trouble. Not big trouble, at least not yet, but the sort of stupid things that embarrassed the state trooper. He had a DWI on his record. A misdemeanor conviction for marijuana possession. And though it hadn't led to an arrest, Terry said his brother had once shot a deer near a highway rest area in September, a maneuver that could have gotten him busted for reckless endangerment and fined for taking a buck out of season.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Russell pausing now before the Polaroid she'd taken of him yesterday with his buck, and she saw the other two men grabbing bags of potato chips off a metal rack.

  Biggest damn one-hundred-and-fifty-pounder I ever lifted, Russell said, loud enough for his cousins to hear him.

  Give it a rest, would you, Russell? one of the cousins said, and she saw he was smiling at his brother at Russell's expense.

  I will. It's just...that animal was one heavy son of a bitch for a hundred and fifty, he said, shaking his head. He turned away from the picture and strolled back toward the deli section, and Phoebe knew a little morning chitchat was imminent. She considered getting it off on exactly the wrong foot by asking the man why he had bothered to climb one more time into his camouflage clothes. He had his deer, and the limit was one in the two-week rifle season. But there was no reason to torment Russell just because his brother was sleeping around on his wife.

  Or, at least, had slept with somebody else a single time. For better or worse, she'd really believed Terry when he said he hadn't been with a woman other than his wife since they'd been married.

  Good morning, Russell said cheerfully.

  She looked up and offered him a small smile.

  How are you today? he asked.

  Oh, fine.

  I'll bet.

  Was this a confirmation that he knew where, more or less, Terry had been the night before? Had Terry actually said something to him? Or was she reading too much into his two-word response? She wasn't sure, and decided to ignore the inference. She asked him what he'd like.

  I'd say I'll have a little of what my brother had, but I'm afraid someone might misconstrue my meaning and I'd wind up getting slapped.

  I don't recall what your brother had, she said simply. I've made you boys lots of sandwiches over the last couple of days.

  Hmmmm, he said, curling his lips over his teeth as he looked down at the meats and cheeses in the refrigerator case. She realized he was staring at her hips and waist through the glass. There's a lot there I like.

  Uh-huh.

  But unlike my brother--you do remember my brother, I bet--I'm comfortable having the same thing day after day. I'm just a one-sandwich man, I guess.

  He looked up at her and tried to offer what he must have thought was a playfully sanctimonious gaze. But the choirboy eyes didn't fit with the scruffy red beard that had grown on his cheeks and chin over the past couple of days.

  Turkey? she asked.

  Is that a guess?

  No, it's an assumption, she said. I believe we are what we eat.

  She held his stare--her eyes wide--until he looked away and murmured, hoping to save face, Turkey will be just fine, thank you very much.

  ALMOST AS SOON as she'd made Terry's brother and his cousins their sandwiches and the men had left for the woods, another group of hunters arrived at the store. And then, just before seven-thirty, Frank got there, and Frank and Phoebe together managed the minor crush that descended upon them every day at exactly this time and lasted until about a quarter past eight. There were the men on their way to the day shift at the furniture mill, and the women who worked at the hospital. There would be the people who drove into Newport to work, and at least a dozen different mothers: mothers who brought their children to the bus stop thirty yards from the store, and mothers who for one reason or another drove their children to school. There was always something they needed, even if it was just information about a neighbor. There was nothing that Frank didn't know and wouldn't share if someone asked.

  By eight-thirty the traffic had slowed, and would remain a quiet trickle till lunch. Phoebe sat down on the squat bar stool beside the register and watched Frank put in his order with the bread salesman who'd been waiting patiently beside his dolly while they finished with the last flurry of customers.

  She kept thinking of the state trooper she'd slept with, and comparing him to the few state troopers she knew. They weren't a single breed, that was for sure, but they all shared one thing: They were control freaks. That wasn't a bad thing--in fact, it was probably a pretty good thing professionally--but it seemed to be something they shared.

  They were control freaks and they were decisive.

  In an instant she had a vision in her mind of Terry Sheldon sitting in the front seat of his idling green cruiser somewhere on Route 22A, with a silver BMW he has stopped just before him. He was making a flatlander from New York City wait an extra minute or two--stew behind the wheel while his wife and kids watched him, or looked uncomfortably out the window at the woods--before he was issued his ticket, because the New Yorker had the temerity to ask if it was possible that Terry's radar was in error.

  Terry probably did such things all the time. They all did. He said there were few things that annoyed him more than someone handling three or four thousand pounds of metal recklessly. Speed and metal were a bad combination, especially in a state in which there were still many more miles of dirt roads than paved ones, and there was a whopping 375 miles of four-lane interstate. The rest of the paved roads were two lanes: picturesque, yes, but also twisting and narrow and filled with people frustrated by the notion that they were expected to drive between thirty-five and fifty miles an hour.

  She didn't ask, but she figured Terry had seen some pretty nasty car accidents in his time. She figured he'd seen a lot of nasty things, on and off the roads. Theft. Assault. Women whose men had just beaten the living hell out of them.

  Domestic abuse, she knew, was Vermont's dirtiest little secret. The state had only ten or fifteen murders a year, but the vast majority of the time the victim knew the assailant. And though a batterer wasn't likely, in the end, to actually kill the poor woman he had under his thumb, she'd heard far too many tales of wives and girlfriends who'd had their heads rammed so hard into walls there were permanent indentations in the Sheetrock, or who had been bludgeoned with wrenches and shovels and two-by-four pieces of wood.

  All that blood and violence and gore. The injuries and the death. It had to affect how the man grieved.

  Of course, even when the violence was of the more random sort that plagued less rural states, it had its own twinge of rustic excess. Not too long ago, a lunatic in central Vermont had allowed his grudge with the town clerk to fester, and then decided to shoot the fellow and the town treasurer--a young mother who'd had the misfortune of being in the town clerk's office at the wrong time. Then he grabbed some guy on the road crew who stopped by the office to take a pee, and lit out. Quickly there were troopers on his tail, and after a looping forty-minute car chase along both back roads and the interstate, he holed up inside his cabin and held off the state police there for almost six hours. Supposedly he'd had an arsenal inside with him that would have impressed some Third World nations, and he had ringed the perimeter of his property with bombs.

  She knew this had happened somewhere near Hancock, a town not too far from Cornish and Durham.

  You had to be impressed with what the troopers had accomplished that day. Somehow they'd convinced the man to walk out the front door without anyone firing another shot, and the fellow from the road crew had dinner that night with his family.

  She figured there was a good chance that Terry had been involved. This had happened in his county--in what amounte
d to his backyard--and by the end of the standoff there were dozens of troopers there. Literally, dozens. She'd seen the pictures on TV.

  It seemed to her that you probably wanted someone decisive in charge when there was a madman with a hostage and an armory in his house. Most of the time, all anyone figured the state police did was assist motorists who'd slid off the road, stop people from speeding, and catch unruly kids who were drunk. But there was a lot more to the job than that, and perhaps she could forgive Terry one marital indiscretion.

  At least she would try to if their paths ever crossed again. She'd forgive him and she'd forgive herself. But she also wouldn't go out of her way to wind up naked with the man in her friend Rose's trailer.

  "I saw them from the top of the ridge, and I knew they couldn't cross back over the river. What do you do? Do you take your children and run so they, too, won't see? Or do you go to your husband? Maybe some people would have run, but I didn't. I couldn't. I stayed."

  VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

  WPA INTERVIEW,

  MARCH 1938

  *

  Laura

  There had been a period in the nineteenth century when the headstones for the children who died were shaped like sleeping lambs. At least that had been the fashion in northern Vermont. One epidemic in 1857 had resulted in whole clusters of the small granite and marble animals in the Cornish cemetery.

  Laura's girls' headstones were more conventional--each was an arch--though she had insisted on the whitest marble that could be found, and each had a slightly abstract carving of an angel chiseled into it: an angel's shape and an angel's wings, but no features or face.

  She found the two-year anniversary easier than the first, though that by no means meant it was easy. But this year she and Terry went alone, they weren't accompanied by her parents from Massachusetts--her fine, dignified parents, he a senior officer on the verge of retirement after a distinguished career with the Federal Reserve in Boston, she his regal wife, the perfect complement to an upper-echelon financial manager--Terry's mother, or his sister and brother. They had been joined by this considerable group last year, a reenactment in too many ways of the massive funeral that had packed the small church a few days after Hillary and Megan died, and then everyone had gone back to the house, where they'd looked at pictures of the girls and tried to be cheerful. A year ago, she and Terry had taken the day off from work.

  This year they hadn't. As soon as Terry had reminded Alfred not to act up at recess and the boy had climbed onto the school bus, they had walked together up the hill to the cemetery, holding in their hands two of the lilies Terry had brought home the day before, as well as a few of the gerbera daisies. They'd made two bouquets they could leave on the plots.

  The girls were buried in the newest section of the cemetery, at least two or three acres away from the 1857 sheep. Laura wasn't positive, but she believed Alfred never visited this section when he wandered up here alone. It wasn't as interesting as the older parts, nor was it as panoramic. But although you couldn't see Mount Ellen or Abraham from the girls' spot, there was a nice view of the hills that rolled south into the state forest. Sometimes both Terry and Laura wished there was a tad more shade, but that wasn't a big deal and they both knew why there weren't more trees nearby: In the days after the girls' death--days in which most decisions were made with little or no thought--Laura had said something to someone about wanting the location to be sunny. And so it was.

  When they arrived at the twin tombstones, Laura knelt and placed the flowers on the ground and allowed herself to cry freely. She was about to get up when she felt Terry crouching behind her, one of his hands on her shoulder, and she decided to stay where she was. The earth was still soft and spongy from the warm front that had arrived on Tuesday, but she didn't mind.

  Before leaving, she brought her fingers to her lips and then pressed them for a long time against each of the slick and solid marble slabs.

  SHE CHOSE A black-and-white Border collie with fur that was thick and soft, and walked into the cement pen with the animal. Then, almost in a single motion, she rotated the collar around the animal's neck so the metal loop was at the back and clipped the collar to the clasp at the end of a long canvas leash.

  She runs and she barks, but she's very gentle, Laura said to Alfred as the animal pulled her out of the cage. Trust me, she's a real sweetheart.

  She handed the leash to the boy and watched as the good-sized dog yanked the boy's arm so it was almost parallel to the ground. The dog really wasn't all that big, but then neither was the boy. Sometimes when he'd move in a certain way and she'd see the shape of his knee or the width of his thigh in his blue jeans, she'd realize just how baggy the pants were on him and how thin his legs really were. One time at dinner she noticed his wrists, and they were so small that she feared he could probably have worn a napkin ring like a bracelet.

  And I should take her up the dirt road in the back? he asked as the dog pulled him down the hall toward the door.

  That's where most people walk them, she answered, but take her wherever you'd like. Then the boy and the dog were off. They raced out the shelter's back door, and the moment they were out of sight she experienced the slight tremor she always felt when the child was in her care and she couldn't see exactly where he was. Something would happen, and she would be powerless to stop it. To save him.

  She stood there until the sensation had passed, and then she went back upstairs to her office. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving, and the schools were closed for the week. She hadn't been sure what she would do with Alfred, and she'd considered taking the week off herself. She had no meetings of consequence over the next couple of days, and there was nothing critical she couldn't accomplish from home. But today, at least, Alfred had wanted her to go to work and he had wanted to go with her. He'd been to the shelter before that fall, but never for more than half an hour at a time.

  The county shelter was built into the side of a hill, and only the first floor was visible to any cars that happened to pass by. It had two and a half undeveloped acres around it, and around that was the road on one side and forest on the three others. In the back there was a dirt road--what had once been a logging trace--that went into the woods, and it was here where the volunteers usually walked the dogs.

  Upstairs, a mother with a baby in her arms and a seven- or eight-year-old girl beside her were still looking at the cats. The baby's nose had been running so long, there was a crust above his lips the color of melon, but he didn't seem unhappy. They'd been there for almost an hour, and had probably considered at least a dozen of the animals so far. Briefly Laura wondered if they had no intention of adopting an animal but were simply here as an outing. Perhaps they needed someplace to go with the schools on vacation, and Mom had decided the shelter was about as close to the zoo as you were going to get if you didn't want to drive all the way to Quebec.

  The girl looked nothing at all like Laura's own daughters, and she was glad.

  For a moment she joined the group and watched as Caitlin, one of the women who worked at the shelter for Laura, took a massive gray cat from a cage and gently placed it on the floor beside the little girl.

  The cat was named Rikki, and Laura knew it wouldn't be a good fit with this family. It was an ottoman and it was old. If this family really wanted anything, they wanted an animal that would chase string and jump after moths. Something cute. Rikki was eight, unfortunately, and pretty set in her ways. She'd been at the shelter close to three months now, and Laura knew she wouldn't be there much longer: Either a miracle would occur and she would be adopted, or they would have to put her down. No animal should have to live that long in a cage.

  Nevertheless, she thought she should put in a good word for Rikki before returning to her office. She knelt on the floor and ran two fingers along the top of the cat's head, and said to the mother, Rikki's very good with small children. Sometimes the feistier cats will scratch a little one by mistake, but not Rikki. She is incre
dibly serene--perfect for a house with a little baby.

  The girl joined Laura on the floor and started to stroke the cat. The animal stretched out a paw and then glanced up at the child with a look of complete indifference on her face.

  LAURA FIGURED ALFRED would spend about ten or fifteen minutes with the Border collie before returning. She figured the next dog she would give him would be the sheltie, and after that it would be Gilligan--a mutt that was part black lab and part something considerably smaller. Gilligan looked a bit like a dwarf.

  If Alfred wanted to walk still more dogs after Gilligan, she'd have to give the subject a little more thought. The other seven dogs at the shelter that day included German shepherds, Gordon setters, and a couple of mongrel strays. The dogs were generally sweet-tempered and happy to be around people, but they were big and unused to being walked on a leash. And though Alfred was strong for his size, he was still only ten and he had never been around dogs this large in his life.

  One of his homes had had some breed of small dog, but it didn't sound as if he was ever walked. Alfred said they only had him for a couple of months. The owners would tie the dog to a clothesline in the backyard in the morning and then bring him in at night. When Alfred and an older child who lived at the house came home from school, the dog would start barking, but the kids weren't allowed to bring him inside the house. Until it got too cold, on occasion Alfred would go outside and play with the animal. But the dog wasn't trained, and it didn't sound as if Alfred spent much time with him. There wasn't much you could do with a dog on a clothesline. Alfred was too young to have serious homework then, but an older child--a girl, Laura believed--said the dog's yapping made it impossible to study. The neighbors complained constantly of the noise, and eventually the owners grew tired of the protests and got rid of the animal. Alfred had no idea what that meant. And so although Laura could only hope that what she was saying was true, she told the boy the owners had probably returned the dog to their nearby animal shelter, where the creature had, with any luck, found a good home.