The Deputy

by Victor Gischler

  Then she did climb on top, grunted as I entered her. “I applied to an art school in New York?”

  “Oh yeah?” I thrust upward, finding a slow rhythm.

  “I think I can get a scholarship. I have to, like, get all my stuff together into a portfolio and everything.” She started to grind little circles, bit her lower lip. “You could come with me.”

  I couldn’t do that, not with Doris and the boy. She knew that. Probably why she asked, so she could get credit for asking but with no danger I’d take her up on it. But it would be pretty cool to go to New York. I could probably get in with some band. I liked picturing myself there, but I hated thinking about a life I couldn’t have.

  She asked, “What’s going to happen with Luke Jordan?”

  “Don’t know.”

  But I didn’t want to talk anymore, and I thrust sort of desperate and quick, picking up speed, filling my hands with her ass, pulling her into me as I arched upward. I jerked and twitched, and we collapsed, pressed together in the heat and the sweat and the dark, dead night.

  I lay there for a little while, time not seeming to mean much, but it was probably only like ten minutes. I got out of bed and pulled my sweatpants up. Molly turned over and pulled the sheet up to her chest. I waved bye and climbed out the window.

  On the way back to Luke Jordan’s truck, I tried to think if I felt bad about Molly or not. I told myself Doris would never know, so it wouldn’t hurt her. And Molly would be gone in a couple months. Fuck, what did I know? Maybe I should just break it off now, but I probably couldn’t do that any more than a junkie could give up the stuff. It’s hard to do the right thing.

  I made it back to the truck, stopped, blinked, circled the truck three times, a jittery sense of panic fluttering in my gut.

  Luke Jordan wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I ran around the truck looking for the body, looking up and down the street, my head spinning, trying to see everyplace at once. The world seemed to tilt a little and go wobbly.

  Luke was gone.

  “Oh . . . fuck.”

  There was this one time, a couple years ago, I was in Austin trying to catch a flight to Tulsa so I could come back for Mom’s funeral. I was at the airport, and I felt for my wallet and it wasn’t there. You know that feeling in your gut when something bad has happened and you know you can’t fix it in time? Just like I knew I couldn’t get home and back to the airport in time to make my flight. Take that bad gut feeling and multiply it by about two million and that’s how I felt, on my hands and knees looking for Luke’s corpse under his truck.

  The difference is that the wallet turned up in another pocket. Luke Jordan didn’t turn up.

  I jogged up and down the streets, looking in every shadow. Maybe he hadn’t been all the way dead, crawled off some place. A person thinks of shit like that, impossible miracle scenarios to somehow undo the calamity. I ended up back at the pickup truck, staring stupidly at the patch of road where his body should have been.

  I was totally fucked.

  Skeeter’s was dark, but I went to the front window anyway, cupped my hands against the glass and looked inside. Maybe Wayne was still in there cleaning up. Maybe he’d seen something. Another miracle scenario, inventing it as I went along. Maybe Wayne came out and took the body inside. I knocked on the glass. No luck.

  I lit a cigarette, tried to think what to do. I had completely and totally fucked this shit up. They don’t put you on full time if you lose a body. More like I’d be fired, and then what? The boy went through a hundred diapers a day. There was no way we could make it on Doris’s paycheck and tips. I’d have to get some shit road crew job or something. Hell. Doris was going to be pissed.

  The three minute walk to the police station turned into ten as I meandered along waiting for an idea to fall out of the sky. I smoked a cigarette in front of the stationhouse door. Last one in the pack. I crumpled the pack, made like I was going to toss it into the street then remembered I was supposed to be the law. I held onto it. Not that I’d write myself a ticket for littering. But still.

  It occurred to me maybe Billy was pulling some kind of prank on me, or maybe him and Karl together. Karl was one of the other deputies along with Amanda, but Amanda wouldn’t fuck with me like that. Mom always said girls matured faster than boys, and some boys never got around to maturing at all. My first week on duty, Billy and Karl had radioed me all kinds of crazy shit, wild goose chasing me all over the county.

  One time they called in that there were these high school girls skinny-dipping up to Red Hawk Pond. And that’s a thirty mile drive. I couldn’t get there fast enough to let them talk me out of arresting them. Sixty miles round trip. That’s the sort of thing Karl thought was just hilarious.

  I smiled, felt a little better. Sure that was it. The guys messing with me. Probably had Luke Jordan bagged up in the stationhouse right now, Billy and Karl laughing their asses off while I’m looking every which way for the body. Haze the new guy. No problem. Yeah, I was sure that was it. Jokers.

  I stamped out the cigarette and went inside.

  Billy looked up from his desk when I walked in, nodded at me. “Toby.”

  I flicked him a two-finger salute. I’d play it casual if that’s how he wanted it. I tossed the empty cigarette pack in the trashcan.

  Billy was scribbling at some papers, frowning. He didn’t like paperwork. Who did?

  I looked around the stationhouse. Not much to it. A couple of holding cells, a desk, gun cabinet, room in back. A ceiling fan turned so slow it was almost going backwards.

  “You got any cigarettes?”

  Billy shook his head without looking up. “You smoke too much.”

  I went into the back room. We each had a locker back there, mine at the end next to Amanda’s. There was also a small safe and a filing cabinet. A door that led out back to the alley.

  I opened my locker. My spare khaki deputy shirt hung on a hanger. I searched the pockets hoping for a pack of smokes but no luck. Damn. And the only place open was the Texaco up by the Interstate. Maybe I wanted smokes that bad, maybe not.

  I heard something in the alley and opened the back door. This yellow dog I’d seen around was there again. Some kind of mix, Labrador hound mutt looking thing. Big. He’d knocked over this old metal trash can we kept back there and was pawing through everything.

  “Git! Go on.” I made a go-away motion.

  The dog growled at me, and I backed into the station and shut the door. I went back to Billy at the desk.

  “That dog’s in the alley again.”

  “Yeah, I brought something for that.” Billy opened the desk drawer and brought out this bright green gun, plastic. Shaped like some Buck Rogers laser ray gun.

  “You want me to disintegrate him?” I asked.

  “It’s a squirt gun filled with ammonia,” Billy said. “Trick I learned from a mailman. Stings the skin, especially around their nose and eyes. That’ll send him packing.”

  “Okay.” I took the squirt gun back out to the alley.

  When I opened the door, the dog backed up a few steps, growled again, but mostly he just seemed scared. I kicked most of the trash back into the can with my foot, put the can back upright and stuck the lid on again. The dog wasn’t growling at me any more. Just looking at me. He looked sad and hungry. I couldn’t bring myself to zap him with the ammonia.

  I opened the can, fished around until I found part of a hamburger, not too old. I put the lid back on the can, and set the green squirt gun on top. Then I squatted, held out the burger.

  It took a few seconds, but he came forward and took the food. He let me scratch him behind the ears. Tail wagging. He appeared thin but not unhealthy. Probably make a good hunting dog for somebody. I watched him trot away down the alley.

  I went back inside. “You squirt him?” Billy asked.

  “Sure.” I sat on the edge of the desk.

  Billy jerked upright. “Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be standing over Luke J
ordan?”

  I smirked. “Like you don’t know nothing about it.”

  He stood, leaned forward on the desk. “I’m not kidding, Toby. Who’s out there with Jordan?”

  Shit. Billy was serious. I had to rethink this. If he and Karl weren’t messing with me than I really had just lost a fucking dead body. God damn, why does this shit happen to me?

  “Look …” I tried to figure some way to say it that did-n’t sound like a colossal fuck up. “I just went to the bathroom for, like two minutes—”

  “Cut to the chase,” Billy said.

  “I don’t know where the body is.”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t even gone two minutes.”

  “Oh, Christ, Toby!”

  “I thought maybe you and Karl were fucking with me.”

  He rubbed his eyes and groaned.

  “Fuck, I’m sorry.” I reached for the radio. “Let me call the chief. I’ll tell him.”

  “No,” Billy said quickly. “Just give me a second.”

  He scratched his head, thinking. You could almost hear those rusty gears grinding.

  “Look, maybe …” More chin scratching. “I think maybe I heard the chief say something to Karl about bagging the body. Not sure. Look, I’ll check into it, okay?”

  “I’d feel better if you called and asked him,” I said. “I don’t want to worry about it all night.”

  “I’ll call him in a bit.”

  “It’ll only take a minute or so and—”

  “Go home, Toby.”

  I threw up my hands as I pushed off his desk and shuffled for the door. I could take a hint.

  Outside I paused, stood in the shadow just to the side of the window. Billy was on the radio right after I left. Probably wanted to badmouth me to the chief when I couldn’t hear. Shit. Well, fuck, I did lose a damn body. If they fired me, I’d have it coming. I’d screwed up big and didn’t relish going home to tell Doris. Maybe I’d wait. Maybe things would be better in the morning, or at least I could figure some way to tell her that didn’t make me look so stupid.

  I jerked my head away from the stationhouse window when I heard the tires squeal. At the end of Main, I saw the nineteen-eighty-something Trans Am zig-zagging down the street. I recognized the car. I waited until they were close, stepped out of the shadows and held up a hand.

  The Trans Am stood on its nose a bit stopping. I went over, leaned into the driver’s side. Two teenage pukes. I’d seen them around but still couldn’t come up with names. High school studs fucking around after dark. And on a school night. Was it my civic duty to hassle a couple of more or less harmless kids? Damn right.

  “Out late, ain’t you?”

  The one in the passenger seat offered, “So what?”

  The driver elbowed him. “Shut up, man.”

  Passenger Seat leaned down, got a peek at the star on my t-shirt. “Sorry.” But he didn’t seem too sorry. They’re never really sorry.

  “Should you be home?”

  The driver shrugged, like some kind of half-assed apology. “We were going to the Texaco for Cokes.”

  “You got any cigarettes?”

  They both patted their pockets, not sure which would be better, having cigarettes or not.

  Little towns put out kids like this on an assembly line. Jeans and t-shirts and sneakers. One of them wore an Oklahoma State Cowboys cap, the orange so faded it looked like some vomit color. The driver had fuzz on his upper lip, probably told everyone it was a moustache. They played football and grab-ass until they graduated high school. Some would stick around and have dumb Okie babies, and others would go off to the big world and get the shit knocked out of them. I felt sorry for them, but I knew what they were thinking. They were looking at me and thinking when they got gone from this town, they’dstay gone.

  I felt sorry for myself too because I hadn’t.

  The driver forked over a half-empty pack of Marlboro Lights. I took one, put it in my mouth. I thought about keeping the pack but gave it back. I didn’t want to be that kind of cop.

  “You best get on home. The chief catches you out late squealing tires, he won’t be so nice about it.”

  That sobered them a little. The chief liked things nice and quiet and everybody knew it.

  “We’re sorry,” said the driver. It sounded almost sincere this time.

  “Don’t be sorry. Just get on home.”

  “Okay.”

  They drove away.

  I lit the Marlboro, smoked it. Stood there.

  Shit.

  I walked back down to Luke Jordan’s pickup truck, locked it, closed the doors. I looked around again as if the body might have crawled back on its own. I still couldn’t believe it. I climbed in the Chevy Nova and started driving south on State Road Six toward the Interstate.

  The glow of the town lights faded after three minutes, and I was full into no-shit, outer space dark BFE Oklahoma. You could do that out here, just lose yourself in the perfect nothing of pitch black, except when you looked up. Stars big and glittering, not blotted out by city lights. Diamonds against black velvet and all that crap. Smart people had figured a thousand ways to say bright stars and dark night and have it sound like Shakespeare. But looking up, falling into the hugeness of it all, you could sort of see why the poets would take a stab at it.

  I remember lying out by the lake at night with Doris, sharing a cheap bottle of wine, just looking up at the stars and enjoying feeling so small. I’d done the same thing with Molly too. Strange how it felt more like cheating than the actual screwing, sharing a moment like that.

  I got the Nova up to about ninety. I flipped on the radio, passed through all the country stations until the dial landed on a Blind Melon song. I notched up the volume.

  Usually nobody else on The Six this time of night. And so right then some headlights came up in the distance behind me. Gaining.

  I just knew it was those fuckheads in the Trans Am. That’s the problem with being a part time deputy with your star pinned on a ratty old Weezer t-shirt. Turn around five seconds later and these people are back at their shenanigans. Kids.

  But when the car got closer, the headlights were all wrong. Not the Trans Am. It got maybe three car links behind me and slowed down to match speed. I slowed down too, thinking he might go around, but he hung in back there.

  Ten more minutes to the Texaco at this rate, and I did-n’t want this joker on my ass the whole way, but it didn’t look like he was going anywhere. I tapped the brakes, saw a wash of red taillights flare up in the rearview mirror. Take that, douche bag.

  He backed off a fraction and stayed there. I was hoping to piss him off and make him go around. Okay, we’ll try it the other way.

  I stomped on the gas.

  The V-8 roared, and I steadily pulled away. He could-n’t keep up or wasn’t trying. I saw the headlights shrink behind me as the speedometer needle edged toward ninety-five. The gas needle was going about as fast in the opposite direction. Fucking car drank unleaded like Doris went through Mountain Dew.

  But she could run. A rusty shit-mobile on the outside, but I had my head under the hood every weekend making sure she purred like a damn pussycat. I was good about changing the oil and the filters. She could fly.

  Only two pinpricks of light marked the sedan behind me. East dust, bozo.

  I held it steady like that, only slowing a few minutes later when the fuzzy smear of light signaled the Interstate up ahead. There were no cars in the Texaco lot, but I wasn’t worried about that since the place was open twenty-four hours. I parked up front and killed the engine.

  A Coke and a pack of Winstons, and I’d be set. I checked for my wallet.

  I didn’t have it.

  Hell. My wallet was in the back pocket of my blue jeans back at the trailer. I opened the glove compartment and started checking under the seats, gathering quarters and dimes. Not enough. I went for the nickels and pennies. Underneath my car seats: crumpled Winston packs, pens, ATM receipts, fast food wrapp
ers. I was embarrassed. I liked keeping the Nova better than that.

  There was enough for the Winstons but not the Coke. Priorities, baby, priorities.

  I got out of the car and saw a car parked on the far side of the gas pumps that hadn’t been there ten seconds ago. If it had been the car tailing me down The Six, it sure as hell could have caught up with me if it had wanted to. A totally cherry Ford Mustang Mach 1. And it was tricked out too. That car could chew up my Nova and shit it out the tailpipe no problem. Maybe it wasn’t them.

  I went inside for the cigarettes.

  There was a new girl on the counter.

  “Where’s Wally?”

  “I don’t know no Wally.” Hick accent so thick you’d need a hacksaw to get through it. She flipped through an issue of Modern Bride. Not so bad looking. Buck teeth.

  Freckles.

  “Larson hire you?”

  She nodded. “Started last night.” She put her face back into the Modern Bride.

  “You getting married?”

  “No.”

  “Pack of Winstons.” I plunked the change on the counter in a messy pile.

  She scraped it up and dumped it into the register without counting.

  I opened the pack, stuck one in my mouth.

  “You can’t smoke in here.”

  I tapped my thumb against the star on my shirt. “It’s okay. I give myself permission.”

  “You send away for that? My nine-year-old nephew got one in a kid’s meal.”

  I let that go and ambled past the front window. The Mach 1 was still sitting out there. I tried to see in the front window without looking like I was looking, but I couldn’t see anyone. He wasn’t pumping gas or anything. I suppose I could have gone over there and stuck my head in the window like I did with the kids in the Trans Am, but I didn’t. I don’t know why. I just didn’t.

  “You ever see that car before?” “Nope.”

  I circled the store once like I was still shopping. The car still sat out there. I didn’t want to go outside.

  “Well, I guess I’d better get a move on. You have a good night.”

  The freckled girl waved without looking up. She was back at her magazine.