by James Sallis
"Val."
"I'd figured just to look around, maybe wait till you showed up. But I introduced myself, told her who I was, and we got to talking. She told me what's been going on, and that you were up here. I was waiting to turn in at the motel when I saw the Jeep pulling out."
"So you followed. Keeping well back, from the look of it."
She shrugged. "Old habit. Check exits before you go in, try to figure what's going down before you step in it. Like that."
"Cop thinking."
"You know how it is. Kind of takes over after a while."
Later, after one last stop in the city, well out of it and coming abreast of a long line of tarpaper shacks bordered by a service station and a church whose white paint had long ago gone to glory, we'd pick up the conversation. J. T.'s head turned to read the sign that told us we were entering the town of Sweetwater.
"So this is the South."
"Part of it, anyway. Disappointed?"
"Not really, just trying to get the lay of the land. Disappointment requires expectations. Like people have these scripts running in their heads about how life is supposed to go?"
"And you don't?"
"Mostly, no."
"Just take things as they come."
"I try." After a moment she added: "Seems to have worked for you."
We rode on past Sweetwater, through Magnolia and Rice-town, into mile after mile of cotton and soybean fields, plumes of dust on far horizons where pickups and farm machinery stalked the land.
"How's your mom?"
"Speaking of expectations." She laughed. "Somewhere in Mexico, last I heard. One of those gringo artist enclaves. That was over a year ago."
"She's an artist now?"
"I think she applied for the Grande Dame position. I'm sure they needed one, whether they knew it or not. Actually, she's mellowed."
"Some of us do. Others just wear down… And your brother?"
An ancient, battered lime green Volkswagen bus with lace curtains in the windows came up behind. Pointing to the VW's bumper sticker, J. T. said, "Kind of like that." GOD WAS MY CO-PILOT BUT WE CRASHED IN THE MOUNTAINS AND I HAD TO EAT HIM
When I looked at her, she said, "You don't know, do you?"
I shook my head.
"Don died last year. Had a little more fun than he planned one Saturday night, got deeper than he thought, and flew off forever on his magic carpet of crack." Her eyes came to mine. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be crude. Or cruel."
"It's okay."
Problems had lay coiled up beside Don in the crib from the day of his birth. Even then he wore a tense, fretful frown, as though he knew bad things were coming, as though he knew he had to be constantly on guard-though it probably wouldn't help much. Everything was a challenge, even the simple routines of daily life, getting up, getting dressed, leaving the apartment, shopping, a succession of near-insurmountable Everests. When things were going well, he managed to kind of plod along. But things didn't go well very often, or for very long. Choosing between breakfast cereals paralyzed him. On the phone, back when he used to call, he'd talk for hours about all these plans he had, never manage to carry through on the first half-step of any of them.
"I thought you knew. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's not as though we couldn't see it coming. The surprising thing is that he held out as long as he did. Were the two of you close?"
"Not for a long time. I tried. I'd go over to wherever he was crashing and check on him, try to be sure he ate something, got some rest."
"But you can't…"
"No," she said. "You can't. Like you said: we wear down. Or wear out."
CHAPTER TEN
" I 'm sorry, I don't remember you. Should I?" His eyes moved aimlessly about the room. Guards had told me he was almost completely blind now. When I spoke, the eyes would come momentarily to me. Then they'd move away again.
Because of the blindness, Lou Winter had been kept out of the general population. But they'd got to him a time or two anyway, as the wing-shaped scar splitting the side of his face attested. Cons totally lacking in conscience, people who'd slit throats over a supposed insult and murder a grandmother for bus-fare, can get themselves worked into a moral frenzy over child molesters.
I told him who I was.
"I'm sorry. I'm afraid I don't remember much these days." Guards also told me that he'd had a series of small strokes over the years. "Everyone says that may be a good thing. I don't know what they mean by that. But thank you for coming."
After a pause he added, "Is there something I can do for you?"
"I just stopped by to say hello."
For a moment then I sensed the effort, the force of will. If he could just get hold of it, could just concentrate hard enough… But his eyes moved away, the curtains stayed shut, the play was over.
"I brought you this."
His hand reached out and found by sound the box I pushed across the table.
"It's not much. Some of the peppermints and circus peanuts the guards say you like, toiletries, a few other things."
But he had found the totem, the tiny cat carved out of sandalwood that Al had given me all those years ago, and was not listening. He held it close to his face, smelled it, rubbed it against his cheek where the scar ran down. I told him what it was. That a friend gave it to me.
"And now you've given it to me?"
I nodded, then said yes.
"Thank you." He shifted the totem from hand to hand. "Were we friends, then? Are we, I mean?"
"Not really. But we've known one another a long time."
"I'm sorry… so sorry I don't, can't, remember."
He held up the totem. "It's beautiful, isn't it? Small and beautiful. I can tell."
"Do you need anything, Lou? Is there anything I can do for you?
"Good of you, son. But no." For that moment I would have sworn he was looking directly at me, that he saw me. Then his eyes went away. He closed his hand over the sandalwood cat. "I'm pretty well set up here." He nodded. "Yessir. Pretty well set up."
J. T. asked no questions when I got back to the car. But for some reason as we drove out of Memphis I started telling her about Lou Winter, about my first months on the force, about how hard it had been, going through those prison gates and doors. We sat together quietly then for a while until, looking out at the sign welcoming us to Sweetwater and the tarpaper shacks beyond, she said, "So this is the South."
Getting in towards town, I pointed out the Church of the Ark, a local landmark. It had once been just another First Baptist Church, but in 1921 during a major flood that wiped out most of the area, the building had miraculously lifted off its moorings and floated free, pastor and family taking aboard other survivors clinging to trees and housetops. It was renamed shortly thereafter.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She'd grown up wherever her mother lit in her never-ending pursuit of best job, best house, best climate, best schools, best place to live. Took the name of her first stepfather, then resolutely refused to change it when others came along. That was the Burke. Just after she turned twenty-one she started calling herself J. T. Never felt like a Sandra, she said. It didn't stand for anything, "just your initials."
She'd graduated high school at seventeen, done two years of prelaw in Iowa City, where Stepfather of the Month, a teacher of religion, had moved to study the Amish, then when that household broke up (and the marriage shortly thereafter-"in a roadside diner on the way to their new home's the way I always imagine it, him hugging his Bible as Mom steps out to flag a ride with some trucker"), she stayed behind, crashing with friends, hanging out in college bars. Got all that essential youth experience behind me in record time, she said, couple, three months, and was done with it. Never could get the knack of small talk, parties, hobbies, that kind of thing.
She'd driven to Chicago with a friend one weekend and stayed behind when the friend headed back. Worked as a corrections officer, which led to process serving, which led to a stint as a federal
marshal. Now she worked up in Seattle, detective first grade. Knew she'd hit it right the first day on the job, went home glowing.
Then she hit the second day.
A sixteen-year-old had come in late one night and quietly murdered his whole family. Drowned his baby sister in the kitchen sink so she wouldn't have to see the rest, then with a Spiderman pillow smothered the six-year-old brother with whom he shared a room. Got the father's ancient service revolver from a box in the garage, loaded it with three bullets he'd bought on the schoolyard (just chance that they proved the right caliber) and shot both parents to death in their bed. Before shooting himself, he sat down at their bedside and painstakingly wrote out in block letters, vaguely Gothic, a note, just one word: ENOUGH.
But it wasn't, because the boy survived. Brian was his name. The round had gone through the roof of his mouth, wiping out any higher brain functions but leaving the brain stem untouched. He was still breathing, after all these years. And his heart went on beating. And one could only hope that his mind truly was gone, that he wasn't trapped in place somewhere in there going through all this again and again.
J. T. and her new partner, who had about two weeks more experience than she, were first call, right after patrol responded. Nothing can prepare you for a sight like that, she said. Or for what happens afterwards. It gets in your head like some kind of parasite and won't turn loose, it just keeps biting you, feeding on you.
She was quiet for a time then.
My partner quit the force not long after, she said. Why did I stick with it? Why do any of us?
So I told her a few stories of my own.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Worst thing I've ever seen?
Not something I brought home from jungles halfway across the world. Not a body dead ten days of a long hot summer, not a black man hanging from the streetlamp of a strip mall in the New South. Or a gentle old blind man waiting to be strapped to a table in the name of justice and injected with poisons that will stop his lungs and heart.
I got the call one Friday night a year or so back, 11 p.m. or so. We'd had three or four quiet days, just the way we liked them. Traffic accident out on the highway, troopers would meet me there. I chalked code and destination on the board on my way out.
Four teenagers had taken a Buick for a joyride. Doug Glazer, the high-school principal's son; his girlfriend Jennie; local bad boy Dan Taylor; and multi-pierced Patricia Pope. They'd left a high school football game and seen the Buick there, keys in the slot, motor running. Why not. Drove it through town a couple of times, then out onto the interstate where they ran up under a semi at eighty-plus mph. I seen them comin', the driver said, I just couldn't get out of their way fast enough, I just couldn't get out of the way, not fast enough.
Most of Jennie's head was on the dashboard, mouth still smiling, lipstick bright. Dan Taylor and Pat Pope were a jumble of blood and body parts out of which one silver-studded ear protruded to catch light from the patrol car's bubble light. Glazer, the driver, had been thrown clear, not a mark on him. He looked quite peaceful.
We never know, do we? The hammer's hanging there as we go on about all the small things we do, paying bills, scouring sinks, restringing banjos, neglecting yet again to tell the one beside us how much he or she is loved.
Troopers had beat me to the site. The younger of them was throwing up at roadside. The senior one approached me.
"You'd be the sheriff."
"Deputy." We exchanged names, shook hands.
"Just a bunch of kids. Don't make any sense at all… Yo, Roy! you done over there?" Then to me: "Boy's first week on the job."
Since it was the interstate, they'd do the paperwork. I'd be left to notify the families.
"Gonna be a long hard night," Trooper Stanton said.
"Looks like."
"That yours?" he said, nodding towards the fire truck that had just pulled up. Benny waved from within. All we had was a volunteer department. Benny in real life worked at the auto parts store just down from city hall. He'd been through EMT training up at the capital.
"Sure is."
Took us better than two hours to clear the scene. Almost 3 a.m. when I knocked on Principal Glazer's door. I was there just under a half hour, then passed on to Jennie's parents, to Dan Taylor's father, Pat Pope's mother.
Sheila Pope lived in a trailer park outside town. She came to the screen door in a threadbare chenille robe, wearing one of those mesh sleep bonnets. It was pink. When I told her, there was no response, no reaction.
"You do understand-right, Mrs. Pope? Patricia's dead."
"Well… She was never a good girl, you know. I think I'll miss her, though."
That night I got back to the office not long before Don Lee showed up to take day shift. I made coffee, filled him in on the MVA, and headed home. In the rearview mirror I saw June pull into the spot I left.
A lazy, roiling fog lay on the water as I came around it to the cabin. One of the sisal-bound kitchen chairs on the porch had finally come apart. I suspected that the possum sitting close by may have had something to do with that. Maybe as a trained officer I should check for traces of twine in its teeth. I went in, poured milk into a bowl, and set it out on the porch.
She was never a good girl, you know. I think I'll miss her, though.
That's what a life came to.
Years ago, back when I had such arrogance as to think I could help anyone, I had as a patient a young woman who'd been raped and severely beaten while jogging. It happened near a reservoir. Every time she lifted a glass of water to drink, she said, it was there again. Of the attack she remembered nothing at all. What she remembered was being in ER just after, hearing caretakers above her talking about brain damage, saying: She'll only come back so far. I'd help her up from the chair at session's end. A well-mannered young man, her fiance Terry, always waited for her in the outer room.
Restless, turning as on a spit, I sensed a shadow fall across me and opened my eyes to see a possum crouched in the window. Possums are wild, they are resolutely not pets. But this one wanted in. I opened the window. The possum came in, sniffed its way down the bed, eventually fell asleep beside me. Not long after, I fell asleep myself.
J think Til miss her, though.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Outside, inches away, a face leaned in close to the plateglass. Soon it loomed above our table.
"Trooper Rob Olson," he said without preamble. "We spoke earlier."
"Right."
"Okay if I turn the town over to you? Sheriff's been pulling more weight than he should, I don't really want to buzz him on this. When I signed on, I never counted on clocking this much time. Now the wife's threatening to change the locks."
Trooper Olson slid something across the table.
"What's this?"
"The beeper."
"We have a beeper now?"
" You do, anyway," J. T. said.
"Wear it in good health," Trooper Olson said.
By this time we were sitting in Jay's Diner over scrambled eggs, sliced tomatoes, and toast, complete with the little rack of bottled vinegar and oil, ketchup, steak sauce, and pepper sauce. Neither of us had been in the mood for dinner-type food.
"More coffee?" Thelma asked. Near as I could tell, she was here any time the diner was open. Hard to imagine what the rest of her life might be like. Which was odd, the fact that I didn't know, given what I knew about so many other lives hereabouts.
Both sides of the booth, we nodded.
"So you're on vacation."
"Only because they made me take it."
"And with nothing better to do, you figured What the hell, I'll track down the old man."
"Like I say, never got the knack of normal pastimes. I'd been thinking for some time about looking you up. Wasn't sure how you'd feel about that."
Nor was I.
"No one back there?"
"A guy, you mean?"
"Anyone."
"Not really. Handful of friends, mostly from th
e job." She glanced up to watch a new arrival, eyes following him from door to booth. Not from around here, you could tell that from the way he looked, way he moved. She saw it too. "I'm good at what I do, very good. I put most of myself into the work. Until recently that seemed enough."
"And now it's not?"
"I don't know. And most of all I hate not knowing."
"Maybe you just inherited a little of your mother's restlessness."
"Or yours."
Come home to roost, as they say around here. Probably didn't bear too much thinking, what other prodigal chickens might have shown up, for J. T. or for her brother Donald.
I set my cup down and waved off Thelma's query, via raised eyebrows, as to another refill.
"I have to thank you for what happened back there, J. T. But I also have to ask why you're here."
There was this strange energy to her, this sense of contained intensity in everything she did. It was in her eyes now, in the way she canted forward in the booth.
"I wanted to meet my father," she said. "It really is that simple. I think."
"Fair enough. How much vacation's left?"
"I'm still in the first week."
"Any plans?"
She shook pepper sauce onto her last piece of toast and made it disappear. Good eater.
"Tell the truth, I've started thinking maybe I could hang out here. With you. If you don't mind."
"I think I might like that."
"Done, then." She reached across to spear my last piece of tomato with her fork.
J. T. was half asleep as we drove to the cabin. When we came to the lake, she opened her eyes and looked out the window, at the water shimmering with light. "It's like the moon's come down to live with us," she said. Despite protests I got her settled in, insisting she take the bedroom, and to the sound of her regular breathing called Val. I hadn't had a phone at first or wanted one. Working with Don Lee pretty much demanded it, though. So I had one now. And I had a pet, Miss Emily the possum, gender no longer in doubt since she'd recently given birth to four tiny naked Miss Emilies living in a shoebox near the kitchen stove.
