Harder Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  Her partner, Brindle Brown, had just retired and was yet to be replaced, which left her alone. She didn’t mind. Way more than two officers could do, much less a solo, but BB had taught her how to flip off the duty switch when she went home at night. It had been a great gift. She laughed when she heard some officers in country counties having fifty or sixty contacts a week and bemoaning the workload. She had some days pushing two thousand contacts during the silver bass runs, and hardly thought of it. You looked quick and corrected what needed addressing.

  The silver bass run was almost a festival, like Mardi Gras. Thousands of brothers and sisters with cane and telescoping poles on the riprap banks while white guys in bass boats caught walleyes out in the river, a study in real-life contrasts, white versus black.

  “Here’s my whatfor men. I’m hearing reports some bo in rollin’ stock whackin deer from the state herd, sayin’? I ain’t likin’ ’at shit.”

  “Ain’t my people,” Billboard said. “We stay own stray since you brung us to Jesus way back was ought nine. We want fish, game meat, we get word G-Lata, you bring, yes ma’am, too damn bad whole gov-mint so snappy with citizenry. Ain’t no boxcar bo you huntin’. More like some hoosier yegg rider sneak out at night, make the shoot.”

  Billboard was alleging a local poacher got on trains at night for one purpose. He could be right. “You gone eat snowbaws this year?” she asked, meaning was he going to spend the winter up north.

  “Could be so, I speck. Bin laid up boneyard, pin ulcers, sayin’?”

  “All healed?”

  “Nuh-uh, but I heard ’at black bottle make a rattle and I lit out fore I catch the westbound,sayin’?”For some reason hobos believed government and welfare hospitals had death pills in black bottles, pills reserved for eliminating the country’s unwanteds.

  “I seen bo croaker tell me use jigger on his sores. An I brang some them white pills over fum the boneyard eat evil one the inside, and keep the stank down. You want smell how good it work?”

  “I’ll take your word.” Jigger was a lye-based paint acid rumored to be a street cure-all for skin problems. “You eat snowballs, you be ’round. You and your colleagues keep your ears on for me?” She passed him a business card. “Hear something, you know how to get in touch. Or call the RAP line. It’s anonymous and there are rewards. You got a phone?”

  “Four G,” the man said. “The best, they say.”

  “Fall off a Chinese truck did it?”

  “Wunt s’prise me none.” He looked at her. “I’m thinking woodtick come D, see them deers as brown sugar lump, easy take, bambigumbo yumyum. You hear caliber spoke of?”

  “Rifle, two two Henry or long probably.”

  “Huh, can’t hide ’at in a bindle, lessen mebbe he use it for bindle stick, sayin’?”

  Sticks were something the bos carried over ashoulder, all of their worldly goods in a bag suspended from the end. “You might could be right,” she said.

  But six months ago she’d assisted Metro to bust a gun house on the river where there was a case of USAF M-6 Scout over-under rifles made by Ithaca Gun company and packed in survival seat packs pilots and aircrews sat on. Fourteen-inch barrels, could shoot 22 Hornet and 410. Thousand bucks a copy on the black side. They’d recovered twenty-five weapons, missed a hundred more that had already gone out the door and into the streets. A little M-6 was easily hidden under a winter coat. The weapons had a greenish sheen to them. The ATF agent leading the raid told her the color was typical of weapons stored in armories and in high demand with collectors. She never understood the allure of guns. She liked to shoot and practiced regularly, but guns weren’t any kind of religious experience and she’d grown up watching dumbass motherfuckers whack each other over imagined insults. Nice tools, but just that: tools.

  Her parting words to Billboard and his companions. “You hear something, let me know, hear?”

  Billboard saluted crisply as she took a deep breath and swung across to the handholds, but this time climbed up top and made her way back to the caboose, where she could safely dismount when the freight stopped.

  Every railroad had its own cops and company management as a rule didn’t like other cops prowling their properties, but she knew if she asked for and got official permission, it would take months to actually happen. If ever. Likewise, she said nothing to Sergeant Larue Bobbs, her supervisor. Bobbs was a good sergeant, kept out of the way of his officers, backed them when they needed backing. His officers never had to look to see if the sergeant had their backs. Bobbs was always there.

  •••

  One week later she was checking a report of an illegally kept alligator in a squat-row on Livernois, and instead found T. J. Bellman, who until eighth grade promised to be the greatest ballplayer in Rouge history, but T. J. “Thunder Jumper” discovered drugs and pussy and gangs and easy money and was lost to the other life. He had been in and out of jail for twenty-five years, would never get his act together, but she had always had a soft spot for him because she saw him as a kind and generous boy who took a wrong turn and was lost. Had she not had her Granny-ma’am riding herd on her she might have gone down the same road.

  “T. J.”

  “G-Lata,” he said in a honeyed voice. “You know dude, Billboard?”“I do. How do you know him?”

  “Start hang with bos. They don’t cut no slack for dope and such, good way stay clean, safe.”

  It sounded like he was making an effort. She had to give him credit for that, knowing deep down he was doomed. “What’s Billboard want?”

  “Say tell Oaf-a-sir G-Lata Treat word go round there be dude work CR marsh track to Tecumseh yard. Bambigumbo boy, Billboard say. This dude was workin’ further north, yah know? Now he gone come south and Billboard he say tell the man. How a be-otch ballplayah become the man?” T. J. asked, puzzlement on his face.

  “Just fell into it,” she said.

  “Ah know how ’at tune go,” the man said.

  “How far north, T. J.?”

  “Oh, I think Billboard he say that Moun’ Olib grabeyard and like dat.”

  Rough neighborhood out by the city airport, now named for Hizzoner Coleman Young. “You done good, pass word to me, T. J. You got walk-around?”

  “Man, I’m flush,” he said.

  She slipped him a twenty. “Give somebody a good tip.”

  The man stared at the bill and smiled. “Indeed,” he said and she immediately hoped she had done the right thing.

  “T. J.?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “You take that twenty, buy hash, beans, spuds, makings fo ’at Mulligan them bos like eat when it get cold. You hear me T. J.? They got your back, you give back, sayin.’ ”

  “I hoyd. God bless you G-Lata. Give my best your old Granny-ma’am. I pray she ain’t gone over to the Lord yet.”

  “She still with us, praise God.”

  •••

  The reputed area was a dark track, no lights, off the beaten main-lines, a backwater flanked by fecund marshes, and deer aplenty, perfect poaching ground. She drove her truck back down a mile of tracks. To leave the truck anywhere but close to her was to invite vandals at least, theft at worst. Here in the D you learned to work close to your truck. This wasn’t like some country above the bridge where you could park and walk off into the woods for four hours and still find your truck intact. In this way, Wayne County and some other counties were like different countries.

  A mile or so down she stopped and opened the windows, turned off the engine to keep exhaust clouds from shrouding the darkness. Seven o’clock she heard one sharp crack, got out, locked up, and headed for the sound. She got to a place where she saw a light near some dry cattails and she stopped striding and went into creep mode, got close and switched on her own SureFire, and found herself looking into the rheumy eyes of Billboard, an Air Force survival weapon in hand, a dead
doe at his feet, shot once through the head.

  “Way I see dis t’ing go down,” the royal bo said, “dey say I gone lose dis laig to this thang ain’t got no cure. But boneyard dey got dat black bottle and I never heard about the bluebar, sayin’? So, I say you take this dead gal to my peeps and me to the hoosegow. Dis damn laig dis way I never make spring alive and I got no choice. Wid me or agin me, G-Lata?”

  Here was a good man, not normal by any means, but good as best he could define such values, taking care of others like it was a sacred trust. “You been doin’ some deep thinkin’ on this, Billboard.”

  “Hab indeed. I always done planned good.”

  Which never helped him out of the transient, homeless life, she thought. Twenty-first century and millions of people still living day by day on the edge of disaster. When are we going to get it together as an actual country, of one people, where citizenship mattered and nothing else? Not in your lifetime, girl.

  “Okay, your Majesty. I’ll pull my truck closer, we’ll load the meat, drop it off with your peeps and get you booked. Gonna charge you with hunt no license, illegal deer, hunt out of season, use rifle in shotgun zone, vagrancy, theft. You stole that over-under, right?”

  “Oh yes ma’am, sackly where I steal it fum?”

  “Fell off a Chinaman’s truck.”

  “Yah, that ’at fo show wha’ happen. I forget, but now I ’member some.”

  “We get enough on you they’ll remand you to a head-checker before any trial. Don’t plea bargain, no matter what. Make them go whole hog, spend whole damn dime. You hear me?”

  “You think dey try me?”

  “If I do my part and you do yours.”

  “My lips to God’s ears. You come visit me?”

  “You bet,” she said.

  “I get out, we have big party when warm-up come. You think they keep me through warm-up?”

  G-Lata Treat smiled. The life you chose, girl. It’s not great, but it could have been a lot worse.

  “You ever jump outten an airplane?” the bo asked.

  “No.”

  “I was Airborne,” he said. “Eighty-Second. We always used a stack line, you know what dat is, Stack line?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Open your chute when you step out, so you don’t gotta do it. Sure thing to be safe,” he said. “Static line. I ain’t never forget ’at.”

  “Assures the opening, but not the landing,” she said.

  “Speck ’at’s right-own,” Billboard said. “But little doubt is spice of life, sayin’?”

  Leprechauns

  It bothered Mary Vallier to know she had what amounted to the most common name in the country; she’d always thought of herself as unique and now she felt more like a plain brown wrapper. Fiancé Ringo Atola had told her about the name thing two weeks ago. It had quickly turned into an earworm and she was still pissed at him. What was it about him that annoyed her so damn much? More to the point, why’re you marrying the jerk? Marry. God, that word again.

  Atola was a year younger, heir to Atola Long Haul Trucking. Ringo’s dad had been a drummer in a big-time Detroit band in the city’s rock heyday, saved and invested his money, left the music biz and bought a small trucking business, which he had built into one of the largest trucking companies in the Midwest, the company’s ads everywhere, TV, Internet, radio, you could hardly miss all the paid exposure, and Ringo was daddy’s go-to guy, got paid an exorbitant salary and even had a vacation house in the non-tourist part of the Bahamas. Marriage meant the gravy train and that had seemed pretty good until he announced she would have to resign her commission as a conservation officer and become a housewife because Atola women don’t work outside the house. Her future in-laws were good Republicans with family values they lived by, were proud of it, made sure everyone knew it. It was hard enough to have him rubbing on how common her name was. That same day he’d informed her his family would expect a baby within the first year, and once pregnant, his old man would pay for genetic testing to make sure the kid was perfect.

  She said, “And if the baby’s not normal?”

  “We only have normal kids,” he said.

  “You call that a family value?”

  “Hey, the bloodline for this family is important.”

  She had made her drive him home that night and not seen or spoken to him since. Asshole.

  “You got the ouchies today,” Vallier’s partner of three years said from the passenger seat.

  “I guess,” she told Joe Coalwood.

  “Your idiot fiancé again?” he asked.

  She cringed. Ringo had several times introduced her as his fiancé because “she was gonna be high up-keep, but worth it.” She had been forced to scream at him to get him to stop and he had acted mystified.

  “Wha? What I do?”

  What a wad.

  “He still asking you to resign?”

  “It’s a tell, not an ask.”

  “You gonna be a good little wifey and do what he wants?”

  “Shut up, Joe. I’m conflicted.”

  Vallier felt like she should defend Ringo, even though there was no ring yet. But words failed her. Good words. She had a surplus of negative ones.

  “I caught a RAP call this morning,” her partner said. “Complainant says there are leprechauns hunting the Manistee Dells.”

  The Dells were glacially carved small valleys and canyons between steep, narrow ridges. “South of Grassy Lakes?” she asked him.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Hunting what?”

  “Deer.”

  “With a bow?”

  “Rifle,” the guy claims.

  “Boy oh boy,” Vallier said. “Leprechauns. That’s a first.”

  “No shit,” her partner agreed.

  “Shall we work our way in that direction?”

  “Can’t dance,” she said, making Coalwood laugh; they had bandied about the old joke since they had first met. Get lunch? Can’t dance. For some reason she never tired of this or her partner, who tended toward pathological quiet but who was always there for her. Unlike Ringo.

  “Couple of weeks back he told me I have the most common name in the USA and I ought to feel proud to catch a husband with a unique name from such a well-off family.”

  Coalwood said nothing.

  “He says not only do I have to resign, but he wants a baby boy like yesterday, but only if prenatal testing shows no problems. Said he has a cousin with 47 C-21 and it has been a nightmare to raise. ‘It,’ can you believe that?”

  “A what?”

  “He couldn’t explain it and the whole conversation made me want to puke.” She looked over at him. “You’re single, Coalwood. How come you never hit on me?”

  “You’re too damn good with a gun.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am serious. I feel like Murtaugh, the comic relief partner in Lethal Weapon. You’re Riggs.”

  “Jesus, Joe. Riggs is a damn animal.”

  “There ya go,” Coalwood said.

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  “Half serious, maybe 60 percent.”

  “Don’t be an ass. I am not like Riggs.”

  “Remember that Tippy Dam salmon snagger ruckus last fall?”

  “They started that, not me.”

  “Excuse me, but you Tarzaned off an embankment into four of them and had them all punched out and stumbling before I could even get over there. Looked like they’d fought a tiger.”

  “I saw an opening and took it,” she said.

  “You ambushed them, same as Riggs would’ve. Heroic, but stupid.”

  “I can’t be too scary a partner if you’re telling me this.”

  “I’ve got my seatbelt off and one hand on the door handle.”

  “Jesus, Coalwood.”
>
  “You asked.”

  “Are you telling me you want a new partner?”

  “Nah. You’re gonna resign and get rich. We might as well see this through.”

  Riggs? God. “I haven’t been in the Dells in years.”

  “There’re two truck trails starting west of the first grass valley. One runs north.”

  “Okay, I remember that much.”

  “You’ve got AVL,” he reminded her.

  “Mine’s old and crashed. Supposed to upload the new versions, but the tech keeps canceling on me. My old version’s all froze up.” AVL was the Automatic Vehicle Locator, a system via GPS that tied Lansing to all COs, and all COs to each other. When the system worked. “Anybody actually see the alleged deer hunters?”

  “RAP line said only what I told you.”

  “When was the complaint called in?”

  “Last night, sevenish.”

  She arched an eyebrow, said sarcastically. “God, that’s almost like live and real time.” More often they got reports days, weeks, or months after the fact, complaints with virtually no actionable information, which made them useless. “Exactly where in the Dells?”

  “Swamps behind Snoopy’s Camp.”

  Snoopy was Democratic state senator Elwine Hubbard Fishlock, who was a force as the state’s most outspoken conservationist. As long as the rules applied to others. On his own land, Fishlock was king. Period. Elwine wasn’t a regular violator but COs had had more than a few run-ins with him, which he seemed to assume turned him into some sort of authority of backwoods law enforcement.

  “Elwine himself call it in?”

  “Guy said something to make the dispatcher think he might be the caretaker, but he refused to give his name.”

  “Which dispatcher?”