by J. Wachowski
“A letter was sent. It shouldn’t have happened. Nicky thought he was doing the right thing.”
“Do you think he was doing the right thing?”
Curzon made a face. “What does that matter? Nicky took his reprimand and moved on. It’s over and done.”
“Then why are you still trying to protect him?”
“I’m not protecting anybody here. I’m telling you, Nicky’s a good kid.” Curzon’s voice was getting loud. “And a good cop.”
“What about Tom Jost? What kind of kid was he?”
“I can’t help the fact that Tom Jost didn’t have people watching out for him.” The volume dropped abruptly. He leaned forward, crumpling paperwork in his effort to close the space between us. “Nicky is a member of the team, like everybody else. I treat him the same as anyone. I don’t turn my back on somebody for making a reasonable mistake.”
Translation: whatever anyone else thought, Curzon didn’t believe his cousin had done wrong. And he’d kick the ass of anyone who said different.
“Is that what happened to Jost? He made a mistake and people turned their backs on him?”
“Jost’s life sucked,” Curzon summarized curtly, then started rubbing his forehead the way I’d seen earlier. “I can’t do anything about that. Nicky crossed a line and took his lumps for it. As his superior I see no justice in ruining his career over this.”
“I’m not trying to ruin your cousin’s career.” I was starting to feel indignant. “I’m not looking for a scapegoat, Sheriff.”
He stood up and the sheer size of him looming over me was enough to shut my mouth for the moment. He walked slowly around the desk, propped one hip on the corner and stared down into my face. “What exactly are you looking for then?”
I stood up, my chair raking the floor with a screech. “I want to understand what the hell happened. Something happened here. Something more than cheap thrills.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, what it’s like to always be different, no matter what you do. Such as, risking everything and then-giving up.” I was riffing, with no firm sense my story would end up being about any of those things. Maybe it would be about all of them.
Curzon locked on to me with a brain freeze of a look. Then, he nodded sharply.
I decided that was a go-ahead. “How you are characterizing Jost’s death? Suicide?”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure he’d answer. He blinked twice and the tired lines beneath his eyes revealed the flicker of tension he tried to hide. “What else would it be?”
“Accident.”
“No. The report won’t call it that.”
Which wasn’t what I’d said, of course. “Why not?”
“No reason to. Jost wasn’t on duty. He wasn’t vested in his pension yet. There’s no insurance. Why do that? Guy has a family. Such as it is.”
“But if that’s the truth?” I didn’t believe Jost had killed himself accidentally in the throes of a sex act. But a sheriff must have a reason not to believe. “Wouldn’t you have to report it?”
Curzon snarfed loudly. His expression was quite the cocktail of dry humor and skepticism. “What’s this? A reporter who’s concerned about truth?”
“Yeah,” I laughed along, irritation locking my back teeth. “About as rare as a cop who’s interested in justice.”
Both of us spontaneously leaned backward. Sarcasm like that’ll scar at a close range. Curzon relaxed his arms and fiddled with the papers on his desk. He started to say something and stopped, then like a bolt from the blue, he asked, “Would you like to come to my father’s for dinner tomorrow?”
“Excuse me?”
“My family’s getting together for a cook-out. It’s casual. Nicky will be there. You two can…talk.”
“Yeah, sure,” I answered, trying not to sound suspicious. “That would be great. Can I bring a camera?”
“No. But you can bring your niece. There’ll be other kids there.”
“Well.” I stood up. I couldn’t think what to do next. I knew it wasn’t, but I felt like he’d just asked me for a date.
“Funny.” He tilted his head and that reluctant smile crooked his mouth again. He was back to studying me like a specimen, hardly blinking. Days gone by, mobs would drown people with eyes his shade of spooky green.
“What?” I did a quick visual check down the front.
“The way you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Come on like a light bulb when there’s an audience, but here, the two of us behind closed doors, it’s all frosty-” he sliced a finger through the air, “-back-off.”
It wasn’t his comment, so much as the implication that threw me. I slid sideways toward the door, opened it and threw back over my shoulder the first playground defense that came to mind. “Yeah, well, I think you’re cute when you’re pissed-off, too, Sheriff.”
Somebody heard me and whistled. Some other joker called, “Ooh-so do we, Sheriff.”
I could feel the heat in my face.
Should have kept it simple and gone with oh, yeah?
5:27:54 p.m.
“Are you okay?” Ainsley asked me for the third time.
“Same answer. Stop asking,” I said. Town hall was not where I wanted to be. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s blow.”
“Not much of an afternoon person either.” Ainsley amused himself. “Follow me.”
My funk made it hard to appreciate either the tour by the mayor-elect or Our Town’s Sesquicentennial celebration. College seemed to have a vision, so I let him go with it. He shot general footage and some distance shots of Amish mingling with the crowds, selling vegetables and sizing up livestock. I interviewed a couple geezers in plaid shirts about how the town gets along with the Amish community. Unraveling a story with so little of the groundwork prepped was tricky. The whole thing could end up flat, dull or predictably salacious. After an hour of shooting B-roll we had decided to call it quits.
While Ainsley packed the truck, I phoned home. Tonya reported she and Jenny were on the way out to the Sally’s Discount Beauty Supply-no need to hurry back. She also told me they’d taken a weird call an hour before.
“I think it was a kid,” T explained. “Said her name was Rachel and you were expecting her to phone. Told me she’d wait in the Buona Beef parking lot until sundown.”
“Until sundown?”
“Yeah. Sounded like she’d been watching too many old movies.”
More like living them. I’d be willing to bet Rachel Jost didn’t own a watch. “Thanks, T. See you back at the house.”
Two hours had passed since Ainsley had last put food in his mouth, which meant the boy’s blood sugar was plummeting. He whined about making another stop until I told him where we were going. Buona Beef is a Taylor Street original, straight from the downtown Chicago neighborhood where real Italians have lived and cooked since before the city had indoor plumbing. The suburban copy isn’t totally authentic, but they serve a decent beef sandwich “joo-zee, wid peppas.” It was one of the few signs I’d seen that civilization had crept west with the population.
“There she is.” Ainsley pointed as we rolled into the lot.
Rachel Jost was sitting at a picnic table in the dusty grass that edged the parking area. She’d changed from her dark gown, white apron and bonnet, into jeans and a shirt that would blend at any mall. Her braid was tucked down the back of her collar, disguising the length. But everything she wore was a size too big, and her shirt was mis-buttoned; the tail long on one side, collar cock-eyed at her neck. Her feet were bare, her heavy farm boots abandoned nearby. She looked like a runaway in stolen clothes. I doubted it was ignorance of modern clothing that rumpled her. It looked to me like grief, that great disheveler.
Ainsley brought both cameras from the van. Rachel eyed them like attack dogs.
“What are those?” she asked bluntly.
“This is my assistant, Ainsley Prescott. He helps me make the TV show.” I sat down beside her on the woo
den bench. Ainsley sat down at the second table with the cameras. I settled in for a wait. Sometimes an interview only happens if you’re willing to sit first. I doubted we’d get any footage but maybe I’d get an idea about where to go next.
Ainsley was rapt. He stared at the girl with the expression of a big game hunter on his first safari. I wasn’t sure if he had work or recreation in mind. The girl was pretty enough. She made me think of that statue of The Little Mermaid-classic features, solid feminine curves, all frozen forever in a permanent state of yearning.
She glanced at Ainsley and blushed.
“College, how about you get us some Cokes?”
“Sure. Do you drink Coke?” he asked her tentatively.
Rachel nodded without making eye contact. Her arms were wrapped tight around her middle in the teen-girl hunch that disguised the shelf of the bust, while otherwise fortifying the heart. I wondered if she’d called my house today hiding in the same bush where I’d first seen her.
Together, we watched Ainsley walk into the restaurant.
I started with the simplest question. “Why did you call, Rachel?”
“My father won’t tell me what happened.” She straightened and took a breath. “To Thomas.”
“You mean yesterday, after the fire truck took him down?”
“The fire truck that was on the other side of the field?” She wrinkled her nose in confusion.
“Yes.” I drew the word out, hoping to see comprehension. No such luck.
“Before that.” She blinked at me and looked away. “My father wouldn’t let us watch. He ordered everyone to stay away from the fence for the day. The younger children weren’t even allowed out of the house.”
“Oh.”
She waited for me to say it.
“You want me to tell you?”
She nodded, fast.
“It won’t be easy to hear.”
Her eyes were dark and wide and wiser than I’d have wagered. “If I wanted easy, Miss O’Hara, I would have stayed at home.”
True enough.
“He killed himself,” I told her softly, pretending to be completely absorbed by the coming and going of cars through the parking lot.
She didn’t move at all. I glanced over every five seconds or so, watching her face shift to whiter and whiter shades of pale. There was the sound of air moving, a whiney hiss. I couldn’t say if it was going in or out.
“You still with me, Rachel?”
“Ja,” she whispered. “My fault.”
We’d never come to terms on metaphysics, but I tried anyway. “What happened to Tom was a terrible thing. But how could it be your fault?”
“So many wrongs. I don’t know how-” She spoke simply, her voice thin and high. “I am alone. Help me.”
“How?”
“My father and the bishop, they speak of love and forgiveness but do not offer it.” She started to squirm, looking at me, looking away, twisting where she sat. “It is not gess. But how can I obey? How can I be humble before those who break the laws?”
Talking to people for a living makes for curious dichotomies. I’ve interviewed a thousand people, most of whom are still a mystery to me, but every now and then, I’ll have a moment of perfect understanding with a total stranger.
“The world is unfair, Rachel. You find a way to live with it. That’s all you can do.”
“How?” She looked at me, really studied my face as if I was saying something new. Something she hadn’t heard before. Her face was almost unreal, it was so fresh, clear of makeup, earrings, hair doodads. She still had a hint of baby-fat double chin, a last trace of innocence.
“How do we live with unfairness?” I repeated, rejecting the accurate, inappropriate answers flashing across my mental big screen: alcohol-sex-drugs. “People are different. You kinda have to feel your way along. Fall down a few times. Try again.” I laughed at myself. My ineptness. “Sounds like learning to ride a bike, doesn’t it?”
“No,” was all she said, over and over. The teenager’s anthem.
Could you blame ’em?
Across the restaurant parking lot, Ainsley was jockeying with the door, holding it open as an older couple entered. Nice manners.
Wish I had been the one sent for drinks.
I felt as if something had locked me down, forcing me to search for words that might connect with Rachel. “I guess I survive unfairness by listening to other people’s stories. I bear witness. Then, I’m not alone.”
She didn’t say anything, but I caught the tiniest nod of recognition.
“Cokes all around!” Ainsley announced.
Rachel looked up at him as if he’d just beamed down onto the planet.
“Great timing, College.”
Rachel held her drink with two hands and ducked her head to sip. There was a furious sort of concentration on her face.
“Hungry?” Ainsley asked, exactly like they do at Irish wakes.
“No one but you, is my guess.”
He waggled his eyebrows and shoveled another handful of fries in his mouth.
“Get your camera box,” Rachel said. “I will tell you a story.”
“You want us to interview you on camera?”
“No way,” Ainsley whispered.
Rachel made a pinched-lip nod. The look on her face explained everything. Every teenager who’d ever lived had worn that expression, I’ll get you yet, oh mighty parent.
“No,” I interjected. “Beside the fact that you’re a minor, your father will have a cow.”
“He has many cows,” she replied with a frown. “It cannot be worse between us. I am eighteen now, a month ago. Thomas told me I’m free to make all my own choices with this age. Is this true?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t believe him. It didn’t seem possible. To decide such important things, without others, without question.” She did an odd sideways duck of her face that turned into a sip of her drink. I’d seen her do it twice and suddenly realized it must be the way she hid her face behind the stiff brim of her bonnet. It wasn’t only shyness. She seemed ashamed. I wondered if the camera were a punishment she meant for herself, as well as her dad.
She straightened her spine and announced, “I am ready.”
Ainsley raised eyebrows-of-concern in my direction.
“Are you sure?” I asked her, soft and serious.
“Yes. Do not look so worried,” Rachel assured me. “I am not confirmed. It is not so bad. I will tell you what I know of Tom. In return, someday, you will tell me what you know. We have a bargain?”
“All right. Set us up,” I told Ainsley. “I’ll dig up a release form.”
The parking lot backed up to a field of autumn-tall weeds. There wasn’t much wind, and the road traffic was shielded by the building. With the right mic and a lot of luck, we might get something decent.
“Tell me about how Tom came to live with your family.” I moved across the picnic table from Rachel, putting Ainsley behind my right shoulder, forcing him to frame her tight.
“He…Thomas was the son of a man who worked on our farm many years, a good friend to my father. He married an Amish girl. The year I was born, there was an accident. A fire.” Rachel stared at me. “Terrible. Several died. My mother and Thomas’s mother both. His father left our community shortly after that and took little Tom with him. He wished to return to the place where he was raised. Along the way, there was an accident. Thomas never spoke of it to me. I do not even know what kind of accident. Such a little boy and he was orphaned.
“Thomas told me once he thought there had been a mistake; he should have passed on then, to be with his mother. Well, I often reminded him, the Lord does not make mistakes. His life was spared for a reason.” The words faded into her thoughts with a sigh. “It was a long time before the members of our community learned that his father died as well, and longer still before they were able to discover where the little boy had gone. Foster care.” She made it sound as dire as it probably was.
&nbs
p; “How long?” I asked.
“Too long.” Rachel shook her head and sighed. “My father never remarried after my mother died. He asked to adopt the boy. Some said it was a blessing for us, as Father had no other children. Thomas would be raised Amish with the family he might have had. But when Thomas finally came to us, there were many difficulties,” Rachel summarized bluntly. “He was no longer Plain. But neither was he quite an Englischer.” It was clear by her tone, the meaning of the word was something closer to “outsider,” than a Merrie Olde import. “Everyone was ferhoodled…um, mixed-up crazy. Thomas had it worst. He was afraid. It is hard to live within the Ordnung, to be… gelassen, when there is so much fear inside.” Her frustration was clear. We didn’t just speak different languages; we spoke different life experiences.
“I don’t understand-‘gelassen.’”
“Peaceful? But more, to give over. To yield yourself to higher authority,” she tried to explain. “Yield to God and the community. It is a peaceful feeling.”
“He couldn’t yield?”
“Sometimes he was grenklich…um, sick?” she translated. “Upset.”
I didn’t mind that she was having a hard time sticking to English; it was a sign that she was talking from the heart, talking truth in the words that came first. I’d seen people who spoke six languages fluently revert to their native speech in the midst of a crisis when no one could understand a word they said.
“So Thomas felt sick when he had to follow the community rules?”
Rachel shook her head and pinched her mouth tight for a moment. “He wanted to follow. He wanted to be good. But maybe, I don’t think Thomas ever left that place-in between.” Her eyes and the tip of her nose began to glow pink with Technicolor teenage empathy. “Not Plain. Not English. Not ever.”
“Is that why he finally left the community?”
“I can’t say,” she mumbled.
“How did your father feel about Tom leaving? What did he say?”
“To me?” She sounded surprised. “Nothing, of course. I suppose Father had many feelings when Thomas left. He was angry, of course, but also…disappointed, ashamed. He had tried to do the right thing and somehow, it came out wrong.” She clammed up and swung her feet to skim the stubble of grass.
