Cripple Creek

by James Sallis

"What do we all want at that age? Everything."

  Dark had fallen. Dead silent now—broken by the call of a frog from down on the lake.

  "Smelling good in there." Val lifted her glass, sighting the moon through it as though the glass were a sextant. Find your position, plot your course. "She'll wind up with the mother, I suspect."

  "You're representing the father?"

  She nodded. "Even though Sarah's where my heart lies."

  "Given the circumstances, she must have . . . what do you call it? a court-appointed advocate, a spokesman?"

  "Guardian ad litem, but more a guardian pro forma, I'm afraid, in this case."

  Taking my glass with its dreg of Glenfiddich along, I went in to check on our dinner. It would be better tomorrow, but it was ready now. I pulled out bowls and ladled rabbit stew with barley and thick-cut carrots into them, laid slices of bread atop.

  Outside, Val and I sat scooping up steaming spoonfuls and blowing across them.

  "It's a messy system," Val said after a blistering mouthful, sucking air. "All kinds of slippage built into it."

  "Slippage you can use, though."

  I was remembering Sally Gene, a social worker back in Memphis. The whole thing just kind of grew, Sally Gene told me, this whole system of child protection and the laws supporting it—the way people'll take a trailer and keep adding on to it, a porch here, a spare room. No real planning. So half of it's about to fall down around you, none of the doors close, stuff flies in and out of the windows at will. You can use that—but it can also use you. It can use you right up.

  "Exactly," Val said. "And a lot of what I manage to accomplish has more to do with slippage than with law. You're standing there before a judge, you think you understand the situation, think you know the law and have made a case, but whatever that judge says decides it. Should one man or woman have that much power? Finally you're just hoping the judge slept well, didn't get pissed off at his own kids over the breakfast table."

  We ate, then Val, miming a beggar's plea for alms, held out her bowl. I refilled mine as well and came back onto the porch, screen door banging behind. Immediately Val began dunking the bread, letting it drip.

  "Always so dainty. Such manners."

  She stuck out her tongue. I pointed to the corner of my mouth to indicate she had food there. She didn't.

  "So often there's just no right answer, no solution," she said. "We always insist there has to be. Need to believe that, I guess."

  Neither of us spoke for a time then. Spooky cry of an owl from a nearby tree.

  "You know, this may be the best thing I've ever eaten. We should have a moment of silence for the rabbit."

  "Who gave his life . . ."

  "I can't imagine it was voluntary. Though the image of Mr. Rabbit knocking at Nathan's back door and offering himself up for the better good is an intriguing one."

  Finished, she set the bowl on the floor beside her chair.

  "Sarah's lost," she said. "Nothing I can do about it. Life with her mother will warp her incontrovertibly. Her father is barely functional. Dresses in whatever's to the left in his closet and through the month moves steadily right, has his CDs numbered and plays them in order. Books on his shelves are arranged by size."

  "Maybe she'll save herself."

  "Maybe. Some of us do, don't we? It's just others that we can never save."

  Within the hour I saw Val to her car. Knew she wouldn't stay but asked anyway. She pulled me close and we stood in silent embrace. That embrace and the warmth of her body, not to mention the silence, seemed answer enough just then to any questions the world might throw me. From the rooftop a barn owl, perhaps the one we'd heard earlier, looked on.

  "Fabulous dinner," she said.

  "Fabulous companion."

  "Yes. You are."

  Owl and I watched as the Volvo backed out to begin the long swing around the lake and away. Owl then swiveled his head right around, 180 degrees, like a gun turret. As the sound of Val's motor racketed off the water, I remembered listening to Lonnie's Jeep as it came around the lake that first time. I'd put a spray of iris in the trunk where Val kept her briefcase and enjoyed thinking of her finding the flowers there.

  Bit of Glenfiddich left in the bottle, meanwhile.

  I poured as the owl flew off to be about its business. This Scotch was mine, and I was going to be about it.

  I'd been close to two years on the streets when I came awake in a white room, hearing beeps and a soughing as of pumps close by, garbled conversation further away, ringing phones. I tried to sit up and couldn't. A matronly face appeared above me.

  "You've been shot, Officer. You're fine now. But you need to rest."

  Her hand rose to the IV beside me and thumbed a tiny wheel there—as I sank.

  When next I came around, a different face loomed above me, peering into my eyes from behind a conical light.

  "Feeling better, I hope?"

  Male this time, British or Australian accent.

  Next he moved to the foot of my bed, prodded at my feet. Checking for pulses, as I later learned. He made some notations on a clipboard, set it aside, and reached towards the IV.

  I grabbed hold of his hand, shook my head.

  "Doctor's orders," he said.

  "The doctor's here?"

  "Not at the moment, mate."

  "He's not, and we are. But he's still making decisions for both of us?'"

  "You're refusing medication?"

  "Do I need it?"

  "You have to tell me."

  "That I refuse?"

  "Yes. So I can chart it."

  "Okay, I refuse medication."

  "Right you are, then." He picked up the clipboard, made another notation. "Surgeons here like to keep their patients snowed the first twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Some of the nurses question that, and rightly so. But who are we?"

  "Besides the ones at bedside going through this shit with us, you mean."

  "That's exactly what I mean."

  "How long have I been here?"

  "Came in around six, p.m. that is, not long before my shift started. That's to intensive care, mind you. You were in OR before, I'd guess an hour or so, started off in ER. They wouldn't have kept you down there long with a GSW, you being police and all."

  "What's your name?"

  "Ion."

  Dawn nibbled at the window.

  "Do you know what happened to me, Ion?"

  "Shot on duty's what I got at report, just back from OR, standard ICU orders, no complications. Always anxious to get home to her young husband, Billie is. Hold on a sec. I'll get the chart, we can sort this out."

  He was back in moments. Phones rang incessantly at the nurse's station outside my door. There must have been an elevator shaft close by. I kept hearing the deep-throated whine of the elevator's voyage, the thunk of it coming into port, the shift in hallway sounds when the doors opened.

  Ion pulled a molded plastic visitor's chair up beside the bed, went rummaging through the chart.

  "Looks as though you responded to a domestic dispute called in by neighbors. Got there and found a man beating his wife with a segment of garden hose. You took him down—"

  "From behind, with a choke hold."

  "Oh?"

  "And the wife shot me."

  "Coming back to you, is it?"

  "Not really. But I know how these things usually go."

  Perfunctory rap at the door, around the sill of which a face then leant. Young woman with something very close to a Marine buzz cut and a diamond stud in her nose.

  "That time already?" Ion said. "Be right with you, C.C. Just give me a minute.

  "Shift change," he told me, looking back down at the chart. "Here we go. . . . Bullet passed cleanly through your upper thigh, no major vessels involved. There'd have been a lot of blood, I imagine. A couple of major muscle groups got more or less dissected. All put back right, but muscles take an amazing time to forgive you."

  "That why I can't move?"
<
br />   "That would be the restraints. Sorry." Ion unlashed trailing nylon ties from sidebars of the bed, slipped padded cuffs off wrists and ankles. "Seems you reacted poorly to one of the sedatives, hardly uncommon. But all that lot should be well out of your system by now."

  The stud-nosed face appeared again in the doorway.

  "C.C. What is it, you've a bloody bus to catch? You're here for twelve hours. Go take some vitals, pretend you're a nurse. I'll be along straightaway, just as I said."

  I thanked him.

  Standing, he pulled up a trouser leg and rapped knuckles at the pinkish leg thereunder, which gave off a hollow sound. "I've been where you are, Officer, right enough. Compliments of Miss Thatcher."

  He never showed up beside my bed again. When I asked, I was told that he'd been assigned to another unit, that all the nurses rotated through the various intensive cares.

  "How many ICUs are there?"

  "Seeks." Six.

  "That's a lot of care."

  "Is hard world."

  Angie was, what, twenty-four? On the other hand, she was Korean—so maybe she did know, from direct experience, how hard the world could be.

  I thought I knew, of course. Weeks of physical therapy, weeks of furiously sending messages down the spinal column to a leg that first ignored the signals then barely acknowledged them, weeks of watching those around me—MS patients, people with birth defects, victims of severe trauma or strokes—taught me different. My world was easy.

  Four months later, back at work though still on desk duty, I had personally thanked everyone else involved in my medical care, but in trying to track down Ion found that he'd not merely been assigned to another ICU, as I'd been told, but had left the hospital's employ.

  Two or three purportedly official calls from Officer Turner at MPD, and I was pulling into the parking lot of an apartment complex in south Memphis. No sign of air conditioning and the mercury pushing ninety degrees, so most of the apartments had doors and windows open, inviting in a nonexistent breeze. Parking lot filled with pickups drooling oil and boxy sedans well past expiration date. The one-time swimming pool had been filled in with cement, the cement painted blue.

  I knocked at the door of 1-C. Had in hand a sack of goodies with a gift bow threaded through the paper handles—candy, cookies, cheese and water biscuits, thumb-sized salamis, and summer sausage.

  "Whot?" he said as the door opened. Puffy face, sclera gone red. Wearing shorts and T-shirt. The foot on his good leg was bare; a shoe remained on the other. Van Morrison playing back in the depths. "Tupelo Honey."

  "Whot?" he said again.

  "You don't remember me, do you?"

  "And I should?"

  "Officer Turner. Came in with a GSW long about August. You took care of me."

  "Sorry, mate. All a blur to me."

  Motion behind him became a body moving towards us. Buzz-cut blond hair, diamond stud, not much else by way of disguise. Or of clothes, for that matter.

  "I just wanted to thank you," I said, passing across the bag. "Forgive me for intruding."

  He took the bag and pulled the handles apart to look in. The bow tore away, dropping to the floor.

  "Hey! Thanks, man." He stared for a moment at the bow on the floor by my foot. "You take care, okay?"

  None of us, I thought later at home, remembering his kindness and concern, thirty straight leg lifts into what amounted to an hour-long regimen, wall slides and step-ups to go, muscles beginning at last to forgive me, none of us are exempt.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE MAN BACK IN our holding cell, Judd Kurtz, wasn't talking. When we asked him where the money came from, he grinned and gave us his best try at a jailyard stare. The stare just kind of hung there in no-man's-land between close-cropped brown hair and bullish neck.

  We made the necessary calls to State. They'd pull down any arrest records or outstanding warrants on Kurtz, run the fingerprints Don Lee took through AFIS. They'd also check with the feds on recent robberies and reports of missing funds. Barracks commander Bailey said he'd get back to us soonest. We woke bank president Stew Daniels so he could put the money in his vault.

  "Want me to stay around?" I asked Don Lee. By this time dawn was pecking at the windows.

  "No need to. Go home. Get some sleep. Come back this afternoon."

  "You're sure?"

  "Get out of here, Turner."

  Still cool out by the cabin when I reached it, early-morning sunlight skipping bright coins across the lake. Near and far, from ancient stands of oak and cypress, young doves called to one another. Mist clung to the water's surface. I didn't come here for beauty, but it keeps insisting upon pushing its way in. Val's yellow Volvo was under the pecan tree out front. Two squirrels sat on a low limb eyeing the car suspiciously and chattering away. As I climbed out, Val stepped onto the porch with twin mugs of coffee.

  "Heard you were back in port, sailor."

  "Aye, ma'am."

  "And how's the Fairlane?"

  "Not bad, once you discount crop dusters trying to land on the hood."

  I'd finally broken down and bought a car, from the same old Miss Shaugnessy who rented out her garage to Jimmy Ray, who bought beer for minors. Thing was a tank: you looked out on a hood that touched down two counties over. Miss Shaugnessy'd bought it new almost forty years ago, paying cash, but never quite learned to drive. It had been up on blocks since, less than a hundred miles on the odometer. Lonnie was the one who talked her into selling it to me. Went over with a couple of plate lunches from Jay's covered in aluminum foil and a quart of beer and came back with the keys.

  I don't remember too much more about that morning. Val and I sat side by side on the porch on kitchen chairs I'd fished out of the city dump up the road. I told her about Don Lee's latest catch. About the money in the nylon sports bag. Told her I was tired, bone tired, dead tired. Watched sparrows, cardinals, and woodpeckers alight in the trees and bluejays curse them all. A pair of quail ran, heads and shoulders down like soldiers, from brush to brush nearby. A squirrel came briefly onto the porch and sat on haunches regarding us. I think I told Val about the pork chop.

  Next thing I know she's beside me on the bed and I'm suddenly awake. No direct sunlight through east or west windows, so most likely the sun's overhead.

  "What, you didn't go in to work today?"

  "New policy. State employees are encouraged to telecommute one day a week."

  "What the hell for?"

  "Clean air legislation."

  "Someone's been trucking in the other kind?"

  "Sorry. Thought you were awake, but obviously you're not quite. I did mention the government, right?"

  "See your point."

  "You said to wake you around noon. Coffee's almost fresh and Cafe Val's open for business. Need a menu?"

  "Oatmeal."

  "Oatmeal? Here I hook up with an older man, expecting to reap the benefits of his life experience—plumb the depths of wisdom land all that—and what I get is oatmeal?"

  She did, and I did, and within the hour, following shower, shave, oatmeal breakfast, and a change of clothes, I pulled in by city hall. The Chariot and Don Lee's pickup were still there, along with June's Neon. Blinds were closed.

  Those blinds never get closed except at night.

  And the door was locked.

  If I hadn't been fully awake before, I was now.

  I had a key, of course. What I didn't have was any idea where the key might be. Time to rely on my extensive experience as a law-enforcement professional: I kicked the door in. Luckily a decade's baking heat had done its work. On my third try the doorframe around the lock splintered.

  Donna, one of two secretaries from the other half of city hall—mayor's office, city clerk, water and sewage departments, the administrative side of things—appeared beside me to say "We have a spare key, you know." Then she glanced inside.

  June lay there, shamrock-shaped pool of blood beneath her head, purse still slung over her shoulder. She was breat
hing slowly and regularly. Bubbles of blood formed and broke in her right nostril with each breath. As on a movie screen I saw her arrive for her shift, surprising them in the act. She'd have keyed the door and come on in. One hand on the .22 that had spilled from her purse when she fell, I imagined. She'd have realized something wasn't right, same as I did.

  Two smaller questions to add to the big one, then.

  Why was June carrying a gun in her purse?

  And was Don Lee already down when she arrived?

  He lay on the floor by the door leading back to the storage room and holding cells. A goose egg the color and shape of an overripe Roma tomato hung off the left side of his head. Glancing through the open door I saw the holding cell was empty. Don Lee's eyes flickered as I knelt over him. He was trying to say something. I leaned closer.

  "Gumballs?"

  He shook his head.

  "Goombahs," he said.

  Donna meanwhile had put in a call for Doc Oldham, who, as usual, arrived complaining.

  "Man can't even be left alone to have his goddamn lunch in peace nowadays. What the hell're you up to now, Turner? This used to be a nice quiet place to live, you know? Then you showed up."

  He dropped to one knee beside June. For a moment I'd have sworn he was going to topple. Droplets of sweat, defying gravity, stood on his scalp. He felt for June's carotid, rested a hand briefly on her chest. Carefully supported her head with one hand while palpating it, checking pupils, ears.

  "I'm assuming you've already done this?" he said.

  "Pupils equal and reactive, so no sign of concussion. No fremitus or other indication of respiratory difficulty. No real evidence of struggle. Someone standing guard at the door's my guess. A single blow meant only to put her down."

  Oldham's eyes met mine. We'd both been there too many times.

  "Not bad for an amateur, I was about to say. But you're not, are you? So I was about to make myself an asshole. Not for the first time, mind. And, I sincerely hope, not for the last." Grabbing at a tabletop, he wobbled to his feet. "I need to look at the other one?"

  "Pupils unequal but reactive. Unconscious now, but he spoke to me earlier and responds to pain. Doesn't look to be any major blood loss. Vitals are good. BP I'd estimate at ninety over sixty, thereabouts."