Fire Point

by John Smolens

  “What bet was that?” the judge asked.

  “That I could eat the cork dartboard,” Pearly said. “I won the bet, but with all the beer it bloated my stomach something awful for about a week.”

  “I imagine it would,” Judge Anderson said.

  “Excuse me, Your Honor,” Owen said. “May I have a word with my client?”

  “Of course.”

  Owen tugged Pearly’s sleeve until he sat down. Cupping his hand in front of his mouth, he whispered into Pearly’s ear, “Don’t admit to the flagpole.”

  Pearly nodded, then stood up again. “Your Honor, were you going to ask me about a flagpole, too?”

  “Was I? Do you mean the one that used to be in front of Whitefish Harbor’s town hall?” The judge poured himself more water and held the glass to his chest as if it were a cocktail. “Well, now that you mention it . . .”

  “I’ll plead the fifth on the flagpole,” Pearly said.

  The judge sipped his water. “You will, will you.” He took another sip. “I suppose we’ve had enough truth here for one day. Please sit down, Mr. Blankenship. The charges against you are not sustainable.”

  Pearly wasn’t sure he understood what the judge had said and stood there until Owen grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down into his chair. “That’s it?” Pearly whispered.

  Before Owen could respond, the judge said, “Now, Officer Colby.” Reluctantly, Colby pushed back his chair and got to his feet. Then Alice Hooper stood, too, as though they were about to hear punishment for a capital crime pronounced.

  “Officer Colby, on the night in question, was there any evidence of tampering with your car?”

  “As I said before, sir, he was found lying in the front seat and it appeared—”

  “Were there signs of a break-in?” the judge asked. “Locks jimmied?”

  After a moment, Colby said, “No, Your Honor.”

  The judge put his glass on the bench. “You left your squad car unlocked?”

  “I had just stepped inside to get a cup of coffee. It was sitting at the curb right outside the window. I could see—”

  Judge Anderson said, “Tell me, Officer Colby, do you like your squad car?”

  There was one snicker from the back of the courtroom, which the judge ignored.

  Finally, Colby’s voice was very small. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Well, I’ve seen little evidence of it lately,” the judge said. “Not long ago in this court a charge was brought against Sean Colby—he would be your son, wouldn’t he?—for abusing this same squad car. I believe a headlight was broken with a bottle—a beer bottle, am I correct?”

  Alice Hooper said, “Your Honor, that case is hardly relevant to—”

  “Pipe down, Counselor.” The judge leaned forward and folded his hands as if in prayer. “Officer Colby, if I were your superior I would take that squad car away from you before something really bad happens to it.” Here, there was laughter echoing through the courtroom, and the judge waited patiently for it to subside. “What I’d do is have you walk your beat. You know, when I was a boy, growing up on the streets of Detroit, that was what our fine officers in blue did—they walked the neighborhoods, day and night. We talked with them—on the street corners, on front stoops, in shop doorways. They knew us. We knew them. I tell you it was the greatest deterrent to crime this country has ever had!” The judge stood up. “But right now, Officer Colby, I want you to walk out of this courtroom—consider doing so in honor of your predecessors, if you will—and don’t come back here again with such lame accusations concerning your squad car.” He tapped his gavel on the bench and said, “Case dismissed.”

  16

  HANNAH HAD DUG UP a good portion of the backyard. With string and stakes, she had cordoned off a rectangle twenty-four by twelve feet, with a four-foot-wide path to the driveway, and another to the back steps. She was going down twenty-two inches—a lot of dirt, which she’d deposited in long rows behind the garage. Rocks she worried loose with a crowbar. Borrowing Pearly’s truck, she brought in loads of pea stone, sand, and red bricks. Several times a day, Martin and Pearly would take a break from their work up on the second or third floors and look down from a window at her progress. She labored with the relentless obsession of a dog digging for a bone, yet she was tidy and methodical. For someone who never laid a brick patio before, she was doing one fine job.

  Watching her, Martin was by turns curious and baffled. Pearly thought he might be angry, though it was hard to tell. He’d never seen his younger cousin get really angry, but he began to suspect that Martin actually had a fierce temper, which he was trying to control. For long periods Martin wouldn’t say anything—about anything. Then he’d start in, complaining about Hannah, something he’d never done before. Each night, he said, she’d get in bed exhausted and read manuals on building patios. When he made suggestions about design and method, she’d listen but not respond. When asked if she wanted help, she’d say no. When he asked why she had decided to build a patio, she said she found it “therapeutic.” What really bothered him was that she’d never asked him if he even wanted a patio.

  And she’d left the paint job in the kitchen unfinished. The furniture was still pushed to the center of the room—the inconvenience this caused when they cooked didn’t seem to bother her, while it gave rise to a smoldering resentment in Martin. Yet he refused to move the furniture back to where it belonged. Every time either one of them opened the refrigerator door, it banged against the corner of the kitchen table. It was clear that Martin couldn’t comprehend what was happening between them. For Pearly, it was further proof that cohabitation was an unnatural state.

  When Hannah finished digging the rectangle, pea stone was spread out, followed by sand, which was smoothed over with a twelve-foot two-by-four. One afternoon she said, “Isn’t it ironic, we live in a place full of sand, but I have to drive halfway to Marquette to buy a truckload. If I just went down to the beach and took some, I’m sure I’d get arrested.”

  Pearly couldn’t argue with her. Using his level, she made sure that the patio was gently sloped so that rainwater would run off away from the foundation of the house. When she began to lay the courses of brick, he often looked down to check her progress. She knelt as she placed each brick in the sand, then gently tamped it down with a wooden mallet. Her bib overalls stretched tightly across her hips. Sometimes when she’d sit back on her haunches, he’d get the briefest glimpse down the front of her shirt. There was a beautiful precision to her labor. Viewed from above, it appeared as though she were building a brick wall between herself and the earth.

  ON WEDNESDAY HANNAH stopped working in mid-afternoon and went inside for another glass of ice water, which she took out on the front stoop, where there was cool shade. She collected the mail, two advertising flyers and the Whitefish Harbor Herald, and sat on the brick steps. Photographs of Frank and Sean Colby were on page one, the same two that had been in the paper two weeks earlier. She read the lead article.

  TOWN COUNCIL TAKES JUDGE’S OPINION TO HEART

  by Bettina Laakso

  In an unprecedented move, the Whitefish Harbor Town Council on Tuesday prohibited Officer Frank Colby from using his police car for one month.

  The surprise disciplinary action, triggered by two incidents involving Colby and his car, follows the recommendation of Marquette County Judge Emmett Anderson, according to a letter from one town council member.

  The letter, introduced at the meeting by Councilman Dan Schofield, outlined recent events that have led Schofield to recommend what the letter called “appropriate disciplinary action.” In the letter Schofield described two recent legal cases that concern Officer Frank Colby’s police cruiser.

  The first incident resulted in the front left headlight being broken when a beer bottle was thrown at the vehicle. On May 19, Sean Colby, who had recently been hired as a summer-support police officer, was taken into custody by his father, Officer Frank Colby, and charged with drunk and disorderly condu
ct and the destruction of public property. At a preliminary exam, two witnesses, Lawrence and Mildred Eichhorn, testified before Judge Anderson that Sean Colby, 19, had thrown a quart beer bottle and broken the headlight on Officer Frank Colby’s patrol car, a 1994 Chevrolet. Sean Colby’s lawyer, Owen Nault II, asked for a continuance, which Judge Anderson granted, with the stipulation that Colby continue to be suspended from the police force without pay.

  The second incident regarding Officer Frank Colby’s car occurred on June 18. According to testimony by Officer Frank Colby in Marquette County Courthouse, Pearly Blankenship, 44, was found “at 1:37 A.M., lying across the front seat of the police car while it was parked on Ottawa Street.” Officer Frank Colby contended that Blankenship was attempting to “hot-wire and steal the car.”

  Officer Frank Colby mentioned two witnesses, Lennie Morse, of Shelter Bay, and Jack Cluney, of Au Train. However, because neither appeared in court, Judge Anderson declared that charges against Blankenship be dropped due to insufficient evidence.

  In his concluding remarks, Judge Anderson suggested that Officer Frank Colby be denied the use of a police car “before something really bad happens to it.” The judge went on to say that “what I’d do is have you walk your beat.”

  In his letter, Schofield proposed that the town council follow Judge Anderson’s advice and have “Officer Frank Colby patrol the Whitefish Harbor on foot for one month, starting immediately.”

  Hannah had forgotten about her glass of ice water. She drank it down without stopping. Then she turned to page 12, the back page of the Herald. There she found a file photograph of Pearly, which had been taken in the mid-seventies—his hair was longer then and he had a full beard. Above the article was a photograph of a Whitefish Harbor police car.

  TOWN COUNCIL CONSIDERS JUDGE’S OPINION

  After Schofield’s letter was introduced, several council members stated that the issue should be discussed in a closed session, as it was a personnel matter, but there was not enough support to shelve the subject and the meeting continued. “Our two patrol cars—like all of our police and fire equipment—are necessary to the security of Whitefish Harbor,” Schofield said. “It is essential that our residents know where each member of the council stands on this important matter.”

  The town council went on to discuss Schofield’s letter for over an hour. Councilwoman Marge MacLeod suggested that the cost of the replacement headlight come out of Officer Colby’s pay. This idea, however, was tabled after Councilman Schofield said that contractually police officers could not be expected to pay for damages to equipment incurred while in the line of duty, unless it could be proved that they had been negligent or reckless.

  Councilman Lyman Farr questioned the length of time that Officer Colby would be without the use of a police car. “If he has to walk his beat for a week, it would make the point.”

  There was considerable discussion over how such an action would affect the police force as a whole. Schofield stressed that a “strong message has to be sent,” and he said he had already talked with Chief Buzz Gagnon, who said that if Officer Colby were to be limited to foot patrol for a period of time, it would be necessary to have the summer-support officer, Randy Lapointe, who had been hired as a replacement for Sean Colby, work more hours. “If that’s what it takes,” Schofield said, “that’s what it takes. No halfway measures when it comes to our police force.”

  Councilman Walter L. Brock said his concerns went “beyond a broken headlight.” Brock, who has sat on the council for 24 years, said he was “deeply troubled by how Sean Colby had been hired, particularly in light of information concerning the nature of his early discharge from the army.” Brock suggested that Officer Frank Colby be denied use of his patrol car “until we have a full accounting of exactly how his son got hired on the police force. Convince me that this is not nepotism.”

  Finally, Councilman Whitaker Chase put forth a motion that the letter be accepted as written. Brock seconded the motion, and the town council voted unanimously to accept the letter introduced by Schofield, which recommended that Officer Frank Colby walk his beat for one month, effective immediately.

  The council also agreed to meet next Tuesday, July 2, in a closed session.

  Hannah folded up the paper and brought it, the advertising flyers, and her empty glass into the house. The muscles in her lower back ached. As she rinsed her glass in the kitchen, she stared out the window at her work. She loved the order of it, the smell of earth, the feel of the tools and bricks in her hands, which were becoming rough and callused. The patio was in sunlight now; in another twenty minutes or so the shade from the maple behind the garage would reach across the backyard. She went into the bedroom and lay down, thinking she would just close her eyes and rest until she could work in that cool late-afternoon shade.

  It wasn’t just the physical labor that exhausted her. Though she’d been going to bed early, she’d been having trouble sleeping. She would study the sections of Martin’s books that described how to build patios until she became drowsy, then she’d fall asleep. The difficulty was when Martin came to bed. She always woke up but pretended to still be asleep. Lying next to him, she could feel his anxiety and frustration, which seemed to be greater each night. His hand would rest on her hip, her thigh, as he curled up behind her, but she could not respond. So often in the past, that was all it took for her to turn to him, but now she only remained still. For several nights, at first, he soon fell asleep. She knew he thought she was having her period; she wasn’t, but she left the box of tampons out on the windowsill in the bathroom to reinforce the idea. What first began to bother him, she knew, was that she now slept clothed—sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, which she kept tucked in so he couldn’t get his hands up onto her breasts. She knew he didn’t understand her wearing clothes to bed, and the last few nights it had just gotten worse. Last night he got in bed reeking of beer and immediately turned so that he slept with his back to hers.

  When Hannah was in the bathroom preparing to take a shower after working on the patio, she’d look at herself in the mirror. It had taken a day for the bruises to surface fully; she thought of it as a kind of blossoming—on her ribs, beneath her collarbone, and down on the inside of her left thigh. The worst of them turned a deep plum color, which then slowly diminished to an ugly brownish-yellow.

  They would go away.

  But the deep scratch across her breast had bled, leaving a long rough scab that often snagged on the fabric of her shirt while she worked. Anticipating the next snag was worse than the snag itself. Finally, the scab came off in the shower, but the scratch was still clearly evident, and she was afraid there might be a permanent scar. The new tender skin was a pink streak, trailing behind the comet of her nipple.

  AFTER THE ARTICLE came out in the Herald, there was a lot of speculation about Frank Colby: He was hiding out in his house; he was, some believed, going to resign. But Friday morning he came out of the police station, which was in the town hall, and strode across the parking lot and down Ottawa Street. He was in full uniform. He moved with apparent ease, pausing to look in store windows or to converse with shopkeepers. He took his sweet time. The consensus was that Colby was okay with it. In fact, some believed that Judge Anderson’s point about law enforcement was well taken, and a number of shopkeepers said they were considering asking the town council to require the police to walk their beat regularly during the summer months.

  Sean learned about his father’s activities through Arnie, who heard local gossip and opinion at the gas pump. There had been a number of small incidents—gestures—that indicated support. Ron Deitz, who owned Deitz Hardware on Ottawa Street, met Frank Colby on the sidewalk and asked him his shoe size; then he took him into the store and, back in the work clothes section, fitted him with a good pair of black walking shoes. In addition, several of the restaurants in the village provided free lunches and cold beverages. Sean knew that walking the beat was his father’s way of fighting back. He was certain
that at night the man went home and seethed while his mother smoked menthols and worked through her nightly ration of bourbon. He could imagine them in the kitchen, his father silent, his mother talking in petulant bursts between drags. It had always been her contention that her husband was underappreciated by the town. She believed that Buzz Gagnon was chief simply because his father had been chief.

  Tuesday afternoon Arnie came up to the apartment after work, got a beer from the fridge, and said, “Dan Schofield stopped by for a tank of premium.” Sean was lying on the couch. “He and my dad go back to high school. Mentioned something about the town council meeting—the ‘closed’ meeting that’s scheduled for tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Sean said. “It’s when they’re probably going to talk about what to do about my father and me.”

  “Well, it’s not,” Arnie said.

  “What’s not?”

  “On.” Arnie went into the bathroom and began to take off his jeans and T-shirt. He always reeked of gasoline after work. “The meeting’s been canceled. Don’t ask me why.” He shut the door and in a moment there was the sound of water running in the shower.

  Sean knew why the town council meeting had been canceled: public opinion.

  His father’s strategy was working.

  MARTIN HAD ASKED Hannah if she wanted to go out for something to eat and watch the Cubs game, but she said she was tired and told him to go ahead without her. He went to the Portage, which was crowded with locals and summer people. The Cubs were hosting the Dodgers. After a few innings he struck up a conversation with a girl at the bar. She had sun-bleached blond hair and an aqua-blue halter top. During the eighth inning Hannah walked into the bar. Martin didn’t notice her at first but when he looked up, Hannah was already pushing her way through the crowd and out the door. He put his beer on the bar and stared at it for a moment. The girl in the halter top smiled and leaned a little closer. After a moment, he said, “I gotta go. Sorry.”