Growth

by Jeff Jacobson

  Sandy followed the horseshoe driveway around past the dark barn and back up to the highway. The Einhorn farm was set back off the road, but sound carried in the corn. The closest neighbors, the Johnsons, had called 911. Meredith Johnson, mother of twelve or thirteen children, Sandy never could quite remember, was standing on her front porch, watching and waiting.

  Sandy sighed. She didn’t doubt the Johnsons could hear the yelling from their front lawn. Their house was right across the highway from the Einhorns. The Johnsons were fundamentalist Christians and homeschooled all of their children, avoiding the pressures and temptations of public school and making sure their family knew the facts regarding topics such as evolution and global warming.

  Meredith wore long dresses, a permanent frown, and kept her long brown hair pinned up in a severe bun that probably wouldn’t come loose in a hurricane. She knew damn well Kurt wasn’t in the backseat, and no doubt tomorrow she would be telling the rest of the sewing circle in the basement of their church all about how Sandy was such a disappointment as the town’s police chief. Why, she couldn’t even lock up an obvious sinner like Kurt Einhorn. Liz, the dispatcher, always referred to Meredith as “Sister Better-Than-You.”

  Sandy pulled up to the mouth of the driveway, working at putting it all out of her head. Nothing she could do about the armchair police in town. And it wasn’t like that was a shock; she understood the scrutiny before she’d even publicly announced she’d run for the position. And in many ways, Meredith was easier to take than other folks. At least Meredith let you know exactly what she thought; the others were happy to smile in Sandy’s face and tell her what a great job she was doing while calling her Chief Bitch when she was out of the room.

  Albert came out onto the porch, holding his hand. Albert was a nice enough guy, but had the cognitive abilities of a bag of hammers. Sandy was close enough to hear Meredith yell at one of the kids inside, “Bring me a bandage. And some rubbing alcohol.” Then, to her husband, “Quit your whining.”

  Sandy called out, “Everything okay?”

  “Possum bit me!” Albert said.

  “Shush,” Meredith said. To Sandy, she called back, “He’s fine. We certainly don’t need help from the likes of someone like you.” Meredith ushered her husband inside and shut the door.

  Sandy wanted to remind them about the risks of rabies, but knew her effort would be wasted. So she pulled onto Highway 17 and rolled down the window for a deep breath of summer air. It was late enough that the heat had finally worn off, and a slight breeze tickled the corn that surrounded both farmhouses. She pulled up and stopped at the four-way stop at the intersection of Highway 17 and Road G and used her cell to call the office. A 10-21 code meant that the dispatcher had information that wasn’t ready for the open frequency on the radio. Too many people got their kicks listening to the police scanner.

  Liz answered it on the first ring, which didn’t surprise Sandy. Parker’s Mill wasn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity. “Got a call from the Whistle Stop. Greg says Purcell Fitzgimmon’s boys are awfully tuned up, causing a ruckus. Says he’s heard your name mentioned a few times. Sounded like they were looking for a face-to-face. Thought you might like to hear about it first, before everybody else.”

  “Thanks, Liz.”

  “Thing is, it’s all three. Guess the middle one is on leave or something. You want me to call Hendricks? He’s still up north on 67, keeping an eye out for the drunks.”

  “Let Hendricks keep an eye on the drunks. Just finished at the Einhorns’. Heading over to the Whistle now.”

  Hendricks was a good cop, a guy who was good at talking folks out of heated moments. He went out of his way to avoid trouble when he was off-duty if at all possible, but had a knack for calming other folks down when he was on the clock. He had the patience to put up with hideous abuse from a drunk, then go and pick up the same guy on a Sunday morning for church service. Hendricks didn’t care a whole lot which church he ended up at. They all told pretty much the same story anyway, he reasoned.

  And despite lacking any discernible skill whatsoever, he was the kind of cop who truly believed riding a unicycle in the Fourth of July parade would help gain him a little more respect from the residents. At least he had eventually listened to her when Sandy had talked him out of juggling bowling pins, but he wasn’t somebody she’d want backing her when she said howdy to hard cases like the Fitzgimmon brothers.

  Sandy knew something like this would happen. Somebody was bound to test her. Somebody exactly like those boys. They had been raised not only to question every authority on earth except for their father, but to defy that authority as well, and thanks to Charlie’s arrest, their grudge against Sandy and the rest of the Parker’s Mill police department had gotten personal.

  Back in November when she was only Deputy Chisel, Sandy had arrested Charlie Fitzgimmon for drunk driving and property destruction after he’d knocked over half of the stop signs in the county and was hauling them around in the back of his truck. This was the night before he was to report for basic training in either the Army or the Marines. She’d heard both versions.

  Sandy had come upon his truck on the median, engine dead. Charlie was slumped over the wheel, snoring violently. She knocked on the roof.

  Charlie blinked at her and eventually worked out that she was wearing a badge. He opened the door and got out all apologetic. “Thank you so much, Officer. I’m on my way, see, to an appointment with the government.” He tried his damndest to walk a straight line over to her and instead stumbled and fell. He wound up on his back, shoulders and arms in the gutter, legs on the sidewalk, pissing on himself.

  She hauled him in and didn’t let him make a phone call until seven the next morning, making him almost late for his deployment. He’d never forgiven her.

  A pair of headlights popped into view, way down the gentle curve to the west, moving fast. Sandy hesitated before pulling out. She squinted out of her window as the headlights grew brighter and brighter, eating up the darkness. The night was quiet enough that she could hear the diesel engine, straining and howling as the driver put the gas pedal on the floor and kept it there.

  The truck blasted through the intersection as if the four stop signs never existed. The backwash rocked Sandy’s cruiser. If the driver had seen her, he didn’t react beyond pushing his vehicle as fast as possible. She automatically reached for the lights and siren, but stopped just short of clicking them on.

  She recognized the truck. It was Bob Morton’s. Latest model, all the bells and whistles. He was about the only one in the county that could afford a new truck, each and every year. He either owned or leased every damn cornfield in the county, and Sandy couldn’t see any immediate reason why he would be driving so fast.

  She knew she should go after him. The man deserved a ticket. He probably deserved a lot more than that. On the other hand, the Fitzgimmon boys were no doubt getting drunker and rowdier. Liz’s tone suggested that things weren’t out of hand yet, but serious trouble wasn’t far off.

  Behind her, Morton’s taillights grew faint. At least he was heading east, where the roads dead-ended in yet more of his cornfields, so at least it wasn’t likely he would hit anyone else.

  Ahead, she knew the Fitzgimmons were waiting for her at the Whistle Stop. And the more time she gave them, the meaner they’d get. They’d been waiting seven months for something to happen.

  She promised herself she’d have a talk with Bob the next day and headed to the Whistle Stop.

  A year ago, if you asked people in Parker’s Mill who they’d vote for in the upcoming Police Chief election, Sandy’s name wouldn’t even have been on the ballot. They knew her name, certainly. Knew her mostly as that teen mom who fucked up her life. She was no more than an example that mothers would use to remind their daughters of the inevitable consequences of fooling around with boys.

  For a while, Sandy was inclined to agree with them. Once Kevin had been born, she started applying for jobs and discovered how ver
y few qualifications she actually possessed. Getting her G.E.D. was the first step. Then she saw an ad for earning her Basic Officer certification. The pay was worse than stripping, but the health insurance was better. She applied and was accepted. This news was met with less-than-enthusiastic applause within Manchester County. She graduated with honors, which made everything worse.

  Amazingly enough, the earth did not crack, open up, and swallow Parker’s Mill whole when the second woman in the history of the town joined the police force. She proved to be more than capable of arresting drunk drivers, nailing out-of-state cars for speeding, and giving talks on first aid to Boy Scout Troop 2957. The scout leaders wanted to put their scouts through a real threat, so they’d designed an elaborate scenario around the detonation of a nuclear suitcase bomb. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sponsored the whole thing, and even provided Vietnam-era gas masks for the scouts as well.

  They staged a real-life disaster scenario procedural drill; at least, that’s what they called it. Hendricks put out blinking sawhorses to close off Third Street between Main Street and Franklin, but by that point, there were so many people crowding along the Main Street crosswalk taking pictures, it was clearly impassable.

  The leaders parked a few cars at random between the new Walgreens and Vincent Smith’s Butcher Shop and left the vehicle doors open. Everybody involved agreed that was a chilling touch. Somebody blew fog from dry ice down the street. Volunteers from the Springfield Drama Institute draped themselves across the street and Boy Scout leaders went around with red-colored Karo syrup and thawing chitterlings.

  They fully expected her to fail. They wanted her to be overwhelmed, wanted to shock the boys, wanted to teach the town about chaos and the end of the world. So they kept the troop and Sandy in the firehouse where she reviewed the basics of first aid until the stage was set. They didn’t tell the boys or Sandy, just pushed them out into the thick of things, while playing explosion sound effects from a scout leader’s pickup sound system. Sandy took a moment to take it all in, then organized the twenty-six boys into five teams that spread out over the street, reminding the boys of the three categories of the triage triangle: 1. Those who are likely to live, regardless of what care they receive; 2. Those who are likely to die, regardless of what care they receive; and 3. Those for whom immediate care might make a positive difference in outcome.

  She spoke low and reminded the boys that it was just a game. “Have fun.” She sent them out into the late spring on Third Street to bandage to their hearts’ content. Twenty-six scouts in gas masks ran through the street full of smoke and fake blood. She drifted around, making sure each team was organized and working, helping decide a few on-the-fence cases, all overacted with far too much screaming and moaning and groaning and thrashing around.

  Sandy tried not to laugh while she stood with nine scouts watching two hapless, dying citizens who were not destined to survive got to act out their very own death scenes. They put on a show, Sandy had to give them that. Problem was, neither one of the actors wanted to be the first one to die. So they kept flopping around, trying to be the last to move. The Boy Scouts all saluted when they finally died and stayed still.

  Eddie Hudson, the previous chief, knew she had been set up for failure and goaded the City Council to publicly recognize her achievements in the disaster scenario. After that, he noticed she had a head on her shoulders and took her under his wing. But even with her impeccable track record, nobody outside the Parker’s Mill Police Department took her seriously as a law enforcement officer.

  Then everybody in the country saw the video footage from her dashboard camera.

  It is night. She is pulling over a weaving, possibly stolen, gray Lexus. When she goes up to the driver’s window, a man pops up on the passenger side and shouts good-naturedly, “Hey there, sweet tits.”

  She takes three sideways steps toward her cruiser, following procedure, as if she were a basketball player on defense, creating a triangle between herself, the ball, and the basket. “Please get back in the vehicle, sir.”

  He laughs and says, “Aw, don’t be hatin’. I got what you need, baby.”

  The driver starts to get out of the car as well, all slow and controlled, but then lunges at her like a Jack-in-the-box, arms outstretched.

  Sandy draws her revolver. Back then she carried a Smith & Wesson Model 686 Plus with a four-inch barrel, loaded with seven standard .38 rounds. Since her attention was on the passenger, the driver is on her before she can bring the barrel up. The driver, nearly a foot and a half taller and at least one hundred and fifty pounds heavier, crashes into her.

  Sandy fires the revolver as he drives her to the ground.

  They fall out of sight in front of the cruiser with a howl of pain. Sandy rises back into sight, backing away, keeping the gun trained on the driver, still on the ground in front of the cruiser’s grille. The mic can still hear him though, as he screams, “Oh BEEEP my knee, oh BEEEEP Jesus, my knee, my knee.”

  The passenger comes around the back of the Lexus and rushes at Sandy.

  She plants her feet and pivots her hips and shoulders, smoothly tracking him. She yells, and even though you can hear her quite clearly, the TV stations always felt the need to stamp her words across the bottom of the screen in all capital yellow letters. “STOP. YOU WILL FREEZE OR I WILL SHOOT.”

  But the passenger is too full of rage and wildness to listen. When he is less than ten feet away, Sandy pulls the trigger. Twice. Two sharp cracks, so close together they sound almost like one shot, and with the suddenness of a taxi clipping a pedestrian, the passenger drops.

  For a moment, the only movement is from the spinning red and blue lights, fading away into the night as rendered by the stuttering pixels of the dashboard cam. The silence is broken by the driver howling, “My BEEEEP knee. You BEEEEP.”

  She slips off the screen and the mic picks her up, breathing hard, “Shots fired. Repeat. Shots fired. Officer needs ambulance. Two individuals in need of medical attention.”

  Cut back to the anchors and one of the newscasters would say something predictable like, “Truly incredible, breathtaking footage,” in their special voice, a balance of solemnity and admiration, reserved for the stories that came after the daily tragedy and politics, before sports and weather.

  Sandy’s fifteen minutes of fame lasted long enough to get her elected as Police Chief of Parker’s Mill. Eddie Hudson backed her, but it wasn’t easy. Sandy had two strikes against her. One, she was a woman, and two, even worse, she was a single mom.

  The sheriff of Manchester County, Erik Hoyt, never had seen eye to eye with Hudson and wanted one of his own troopers in the position. He thought it would be easy, but the residents had seen the video, of course, and felt that Parker’s Mill boasted its very own genuine Annie Oakley. Some folks had private fantasies about their new police chief shooting all the goddamn illegal immigrants who were taking every job in the county. Others thought for sure she’d go down to the river and shoot anybody cooking meth. And still some in the town thought that if nothing else, she would at least keep those disrespectful teenagers in line.

  Seven months later, the shock and awe of the video had worn off, and while Sandy was officially the chief of police in Parker’s Mill, she was no longer the woman who had single-handedly taught two rich thugs a lesson they’d never forget, let alone the new law officer who rode in on a white horse and straightened out the town.

  She was back to being a woman, a single mom, and a pain in the ass.

  CHAPTER 4

  Bob Morton Sr. had promised himself he wouldn’t cry.

  At least, not until he reached his son’s cornfield.

  He didn’t think he was going to make it.

  Sobs kept threatening to erupt out of his chest like something alive struggling to get out into the open air. He gritted his teeth and a low keening sound seeped out. Through blurry tears gathering on his lower eyelids, he could see that he was doing at least eighty miles an hour. He had
to slow down. If he crashed, then where would that leave Belinda? He couldn’t do that to her, taking away both her son and husband on the same day.

  He forced himself to pull his toes back, easing off the gas. The big diesel engine’s whine dropped to a low hum in relief. At least he could see in the high beams that the field was coming up soon. He pulled over and turned down a dirt road, mostly used by the tractors and harvesters, and followed it to the end.

  The tears were flowing now. But that was okay. He was here. He had bitten back a cry that almost escaped, because he wanted—no, needed—to wait until he was kneeling in the rows of corn to properly grieve for his son. He tried to tell himself that it was completely different from when he was a boy, running up the long driveway from the bus for the bathroom at home and failing every time, pissing his pants every time he had to come home from school and face that empty house.

  He knew he was lying to himself.

  It was exactly the same.

  If he could just hold on to his control, hold on to his dignity, his manhood, then everything would be okay. His son would still be gone, true, but at least he would have shown the universe that Bob Morton Sr. was a man. A man who took care of his business.

  Crying before he gave himself permission would make him weak.

  He hit the brakes when the road ended in a T-intersection, knowing that he was too late. He was openly weeping now, tears and snot running down his face, and there was no hiding it. He barely managed to twist the key, killing the engine, before stumbling out into the humid summer air, wind alive in the cornstalks. He plowed forward into the rows, boots crunching across the countless caterpillar husks that carpeted the soil, before sinking to his knees, and finally, finally let out the scream that had been building ever since he had talked with the man from Allagro.