by Julia Keller
His big body pleats and folds. He accordions to the floor.
From behind him, Sheriff Harrison yells at the kid, “Drop it! Drop it NOW! Drop your fucking weap—” and then, when the kid doesn’t comply, there is a second and a third gunshot. They smash into Danny’s chest, slamming him back against the honeycombed rack of cigarette cartons. Dozens of cartons are knocked out of their slots. The kid slumps, hits the floor. His chest opens up like a precious red flower.
He’s dead. And Jake is dead, too, or might as well be, because he can’t speak and he can’t move and somehow he knows, with a conviction that has already lodged in his soul the same way the bullet has lodged in his spine, that his life is now an entirely different thing from what it was just a moment beforehand, that the world—his world—has been ripped out its orbit and is now corkscrewing through the universe, crazy, random, uncontrolled, and he is lost, lost.
And yet some mornings, for a minute or so after he first opened his eyes, he forgot.
He’d go back to being himself again: Jake Oakes, deputy sheriff, Raythune County Sheriff’s Department, based in Acker’s Gap, West Virginia. Everything was the way it was, the way it was supposed to be.
Then he would try to move his legs, and it all rushed in on him again, the eternal present tense:
The gunshot. The spasm of panic and confusion and fear, followed by … more fear. The memory of that fear shamed him, then and now, even though he told no one about it. Not even Molly.
A knock at the front door.
Jake heard it and he scowled. He’d been sitting in the living room, looking at the worn-out, mashed-down places in the thin, cheap-ass carpet made by the wheels of his chair.
“Yeah, in a minute,” he yelled, knowing his words were audible through the front door. The door was as flimsy as cardboard, but then again, so was the house.
It was all he could afford. The rambling old Victorian he had owned before the shooting was unsuitable; it had three floors, and the only bathroom was on the second floor. He had been forced to sell it, and everybody knows what happens when you are forced to sell, and sell fast: Buyers have the upper hand. They take advantage.
Toss in the definitely relevant fact that the house was located in Acker’s Gap—not among the most desirable locations on God’s green earth, it was only fair to point out—and you had all the ingredients for the current situation in which he found himself: stuck in a one-story dump with a couple of postage stamp–sized bedrooms and the won’t-go-away smell of moldy damp. The topper: The house was wrapped up in a revolting peach shade of vinyl siding.
Steve Brinksneader, his buddy, still a deputy in the department, had come by one Saturday right after Jake moved in and built a ramp for him. It descended in choppy switchback segments from the dinky front porch to the driveway. Ugly but necessary.
The knock came again. Harder this time.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jake muttered, lowering instead of raising his voice. Probably Steve, he guessed. Or that neighbor of his, Stan Howell. Retired coal miner. Liked to come over and shoot the shit.
He had a moment of surprise when he opened the door. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Sheriff Harrison in—what was it now? Six months? Seven? Something like that.
She’d been attentive in the first year or so, stopping by often, just as you would expect from someone who had been your boss and who had probably saved your life to boot. Because if Pam Harrison hadn’t arrived at that store when she did, and if she hadn’t shot the asshole punk who had sent a bullet ripping into Jake’s spine, the aforesaid asshole punk would surely have gotten off a second round and finished the job.
But then her visits tapered off. Predictable, Jake had thought, but it was still tough to swallow. She was busy. Everybody was busy. Who had time to stop by and watch him push himself in a chair around his crappy little house, while The Price Is Right shrieked and brayed from the big-screen TV?
“Hey,” he said.
“Can I come in?” Harrison glanced down at his lap, which he’d turned into a handy staging area for his next Rolling Rock. He hadn’t yet opened the green glass bottle. He had been saving that familiar pleasure for a few minutes from now.
Harrison didn’t comment on the Rolling Rock, but Jake could feel the heat of her disapproval.
Screw you, he thought.
“Sure,” he said out loud.
He turned the chair around and guided it back toward the couch. Tough going on the raggedy-assed carpet, but he powered through. He assumed she was following him. On his way, he picked up the remote from the coffee table and clicked off the set.
Instant silence. He half-wished he’d left the TV on, forcing her to speak over the squeals and the gusts of applause and the bright, punchy music.
She took a seat on one end of the couch, back straight, hands clasped, feet together. Formal as hell.
Jake looked her up and down. That was one advantage of his current state: He could stare at anybody, anytime, and they had to take it. He wasn’t sure why, but people were afraid to call him out on the staring thing; maybe it was because they were aware of their own desire to stare at him, and felt guilty about it. So they let him slide.
She wore, like always, her brown polyester uniform. Black boots, shiny black belt. No hat. She must’ve left it in the county-issued Chevy Blazer that she had parked out front, not in the driveway. He had seen it when he opened the door and he understood: The driveway that went with this runt-of-the-litter house was too narrow for the bull-necked SUV.
Harrison had always looked younger than her age but now, in her mid-thirties, she looked older. She was heavier; the shirt fit tighter around her midsection. The skin around her eyes was crinkled like a used paper sack. A few flecks of gray had infiltrated her eyebrows and her solid cap of dark straight hair; more gray was on the way, Jake thought uncharitably, and soon. Mainly, though, what he perceived was an all-over, nonspecific fatigue that had left its blurry stamp on her. He knew that kind of fatigue, from back when he was on the job.
Back when he had a life.
“How’s it going?” she said.
“Well.” He smacked his palms against the tops of the wheels. “I reckon you can pretty much guess how it’s going,” he added, and then he grinned at her to leaven the negativity, the bitterness. Good old Jake. Kidding around, like always. “What can I do for you, Pam?”
He could read the relief on her face. Okay, then: We’re getting to the point. She wasn’t being forced to engage in polite chitchat.
“Got a proposition,” she said.
All at once he realized—with an oversized hope that flared up so suddenly that it was there before he had time to beat it back again, like a fire that starts on the stove—that she was here to ask for his help on a case. Maybe somebody he had arrested years ago was out on the streets, and she needed to know how they should approach. Maybe one of the two deputies she’d hired to replace him—Dave Previtt and Sawyer Simmons—needed to spend some time with him, a sort of refresher course. Taking advantage of his expertise.
He had been waiting for this moment. He didn’t know that that was what he’d been doing—but he had. And now the moment was here.
“What’s going on?” he said.
He kept his voice level. He was trying to sound casual. But he was already lining up his requirements: He wanted to wear the brown uniform again. If they wouldn’t let him—well, that was a deal-breaker. Oh, and he’d need a new one. Yeah, he still had the old one, but it would be too big for him now, especially in the arms and chest. He’d lost a lot of muscle tone.
“We’re getting slammed,” the sheriff said. “The regular stuff—overdoses, of course, but also burglaries, car theft, shoplifting, domestics, DUIs. And some big-time stuff, too. Armed assaults. It’s been relentless. That’s why I wanted to stop by.”
So here it was. She was getting ready to ask him to come back. To rejoin the sheriff’s department. Christ, it had taken two people to replace him. That said something. That to
ld you all you needed to know, didn’t it, about how valuable he was? About the kind of lawman he’d been? Sure, he’d been easygoing, like any other good-ole-boy deputy—but you could tell what was in his core. What he was made of. It showed through. Couldn’t hide it.
“Yeah,” he said. “Heard things’ve been rough.” That wasn’t true. He’d heard nothing. He didn’t hang out with anybody in the department anymore. After building the ramp, Steve had backed off. Kept his distance. And Jake’s best friend, retired deputy Charlie Mathers, was dead.
But he wanted the sheriff to believe he was up to speed. And he would be—just as soon as he was back on the job. He was a quick study. You could ask anybody. That Jake Oakes, he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Anybody. Just ask.
“On top of all that,” Harrison went on, “the prosecutor’s still feeling her way through, after three years. Lovejoy tries her best—but she’s no Bell Elkins.”
That brought another grin from him. “Nobody is.”
The former prosecutor, Belfa Elkins, had resigned shortly after the night Jake was injured. The reason why had shocked Raythune County. It shocked Jake, too, when the heavy fog of the painkillers had finally dissipated and he’d heard the story, sitting up in his hospital bed, listening to the particulars from a woman named Molly Drucker as she fed him lime Jell-O—or tried to, bumping the tip of the metal spoon against his lower lip to get him to open up. Come on, Jake, you gotta eat. In the special election for a new prosecutor, Rhonda Lovejoy ran unopposed.
But getting the job—and doing the job—were two separate and very different things. Same as it was for a deputy sheriff.
“And so,” Harrison continued, “I’m hoping you can help us out here, Jake.”
He shouldn’t act too eager. He’d already decided that. When she asked him to come back to work on the hardest cases, he would hesitate. Let his gaze linger for a long time at the drab carpet. And then maybe he’d let that same gaze travel with exquisite slowness up, up, up, until finally it met her eyes again. He would shrug and release a long column of air, and then he’d say, okay, yeah. Maybe he could see his way clear to returning.
Sure. He’d be happy to work with Dave and Sawyer. And Steve. And Rhonda Lovejoy, too. It was the least he could do, right? As a good citizen? As somebody who understood the challenges of law enforcement in a place like this better than—
“I need somebody to answer phones,” Harrison said. “Spell the dispatcher. Beverly’s eight months pregnant. Might have to leave on a moment’s notice. I’d like you to take calls. All you’d have to do is sit there. You could bring a book to read. Whatever.”
He felt as if he’d been punched in the face.
Answer phones.
Because that was all he was good for, right? Sitting on his butt and clicking onto the next call. Listening to liquored-up hillbillies bitch about their noisy neighbors or some beagle that won’t quit barking or some kid who keeps riding an ATV across the damned yard. Wrecking the flower bed.
She was still talking.
“It’s just part-time. Shift only goes to midnight. After that, the calls get switched over to the regional call center in Blythesburg.”
He wanted to yell at her: You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t remember what time the dispatch gets switched over to Blythesburg? Christ Almighty. I was a deputy in your department, I was the best you ever had, I worked there for five friggin’ years, you—
None of that anger showed up in his face, though, or in his voice when he replied to her. He hoarded the anger inside himself. He had done that from the beginning, to keep the counselors off his back, first in the hospital and later during his rehab. He rarely showed his anger. It belonged to him. Not them. It was all he had left.
He wondered sometimes if the stored-up fury had pooled in a certain corner of his body, and if the toxicity was leeching slowly into his system. Could be. He didn’t care.
“Okay,” he said. “Tell you what. I’ll think about it.” He smiled at her. He didn’t want to tip his hand about how disappointed he was.
“Look, Jake. I know it’s not what you wanted. I remember the talk we had. Back in the hospital, when you were starting your PT. But I checked with the commissioners. You’re on full disability. I can’t use you in the sheriff’s department. Not as a deputy, that is.” She read the question off his face. “The dispatcher’s job is listed as clerical. The county has a special provision for hiring the handicapped. I can bring you back for that.”
Clerical.
Handicapped.
The anger was rising in him again. He forced it back in its lair. The effort took everything he had.
He needed a few seconds to be able to speak. He forced himself to sound amiable. Neighborly. A reasonable man.
“No problem, Pam. I said I’d think about it.”
“You could lose your benefits. If I hired you back as a deputy, I mean. And then if it turned out you couldn’t do the job—you’d be screwed. You’d be out of work and you wouldn’t have your disability, either.”
I can do the job. I can still do the damned job.
He shrugged. His palms were stationed on the tops of the wheels, his thumbs hooked over the thin rubber ridge, fingers strumming the spokes.
“Promise I’ll think it over,” he said. A forced smile that he hoped didn’t look forced.
“You’d be helping us out.”
“Got it. I’ll call. Day or so, maybe.”
“Tell you the truth, we could use you before the week’s out. Beverly’s not feeling well. I’d like to know we’ve got it covered.”
He wanted to work—God knows he wanted to be useful and not just sit on his ass all day long. But he wasn’t sure what it would feel like to be back in the courthouse again—and not as a deputy this time, not as somebody in a brown uniform with a big hat and a gun on his hip, somebody with important work to do, difficult and dangerous work … but as somebody in a chair.
Answering the phone.
“Said I’d let you know.” Another smile. Slightly less neighborly, maybe.
“Okay, then.” She stood up. “Hope you’ll see your way clear to do this. You know the county as well as anybody. You’d do a good job.” Her voice was flat. That, he knew, was her way; she had grown up with a hard, silent father, and the lesson took.
“Like I said—I’ll be in touch,” he said. “Nice of you to come by in person.” He didn’t mean it, and he knew she’d pick up on it. That gave him a small bit of satisfaction. “Hey. Been wondering. You hear anything from Bell Elkins these days?”
“Nope,” she said. “I think Rhonda Lovejoy keeps in touch with her. From time to time. Much as anybody can. You know Bell. Never had much to stay beyond courthouse business. And after all that’s happened—” Harrison cut off her own sentence and shrugged. “Don’t know about any plans she might have, once she’s done with her community service.”
“That’s gotta be happening soon.”
“I guess.” Harrison crossed the short strip of carpet between the couch and the front door. He followed behind her the way a host is supposed to, so that he could close the door after she left. “You think about that job, okay, Jake?”
“You bet.”
The sheriff dipped her head, acknowledging his pledge. And then she walked out the front door without looking back. Even if she had, there would have been little to see. You don’t expect much movement in any case from a man in a wheelchair but Jake’s stillness went well beyond that; his stillness was intensely reflective. It was the kind of careful waiting that might have many different meanings, depending on who was doing the watching, and who was doing the waiting.
* * *
He continued to sit motionless for a few minutes, gazing at the shut door. His umbrage at the sheriff’s job offer was temporarily mitigated by curiosity at his own behavior: What had made him ask her about Bell Elkins? He had his own problems.
The truth was that he and Bell had never really gotten along back in
the days when they worked together. She thought he was a show-off, a fundamentally unserious person doing a deadly serious job, and the disparity between what he was (a jokey charmer) and what he ought to be (a dedicated public servant) offended her.
Well, she’d gotten him wrong from the start. Not that he’d gotten her especially right; he had dismissed her on the first day they met as a tight-assed, sanctimonious know-it-all. It took him months—okay, a full year—to see what he’d missed about her.
And then it didn’t matter anymore, their respective assessments of each other. Far more important things had intervened. The opioid addiction crisis had exploded in their faces.
Everything came crashing down three years ago on That Night, at the tail end of a rocky twenty-four-hour period during which a record number of drug overdoses had repeatedly bludgeoned their small, poor, done-in county. During the weeks that followed, before the town had even been able to catch its breath, Bell Elkins had resigned as prosecuting attorney—the reason for which, when made public, astonished everyone in one black swoop of news, like the moment of a total eclipse—and Deputy Jake Oakes was learning how to live without the use of the lower half of his body.
And through all of the changes (“changes” being an exceptionally tame and oh-so-polite word to describe what he considered to be the total bullshit fate that had befallen him), Jake had gradually come to understand the truth about Bell Elkins.
He discovered more about her in her absence, that is, than he ever had in her presence.
His original opinion of her hadn’t been wrong, just incomplete. She was sanctimonious. She was a tight-assed know-it-all. And that’s what had made her valuable. She was everything the county needed—a hard, steady presence, a counterbalance against the sponginess of surrender to sorry-about-your-luck circumstances. She had standards. Expectations. For herself. And for Acker’s Gap.
She had proved that by the manner of, and motive for, her resignation. Jake didn’t understand it. He didn’t agree with it. He hadn’t understood it or agreed with it from the first moment he was made aware of it, and time hadn’t changed his view that it was maybe the dumbest damned thing he’d ever heard of anybody doing.
