Fast Falls the Night

by Julia Keller

  Charlie waited. He had no choice.

  The good news was that there had been no commotion from the second floor. Jake’s call had not awakened Doreen. If it had, a predictable series of sounds—the soprano squawk of the warped floorboards on her side of the bed, a slight creak throughout the old house as she padded barefoot across the hardwood, the slozzy gurgle of a flushed toilet, because Doreen’s first stop when she got up, no matter the time, was the toilet, same as his was—would have sparked and wheeled directly over Charlie’s head.

  “Okay.” Jake was back on the line. “Got some trouble.”

  “Yeah?” Charlie said. They hadn’t talked for a few weeks. Charlie, like most newly retired people, had resented that at first, missing the contact, but then he realized how busy Jake was—as busy, frankly, as Charlie had been when he was on the job—and let it go. They would talk when they talked. If Jake needed him, he’d be here.

  Apparently he needed him now.

  “Yeah,” Jake said.

  “Do tell.”

  “Three overdoses. One fatality.”

  Charlie sighed. “That’s rough. But come on. We’ve seen that before, right? Two or three ODs per week. It’s bad, but it’s not shocking. Not anymore.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m not talking about days. I’m talking about a couple of hours. They’ve all come since midnight.”

  “Jesus.”

  “One at the Marathon. That was the fatality. The other two’re here at the Burger Boss. Place is closed up tight but they were passed out in the parking lot. Not in a car—right out in the middle of the damned lot. And get this—the body at the Marathon was Sally Ann Burdette. Sammy Burdette’s niece. That’s what I was told.”

  “Jesus.” Charlie was aware of the fact that he had already said it once. But surely there would be no harm in the repetition. Of all the words you could be excused for repeating, that had to top the list.

  He had known Sally Ann Burdette from the time she was a tiny little girl, “no bigger’n’ a minute,” which is how her Uncle Sammy put it back then. Charlie’s head instantly filled up with memories. He couldn’t stop them from coming.

  As a rambunctious five-year-old, Sally Ann would ride her red tricycle on the sidewalk ringing the courthouse while her aunt Dot—Sammy’s sister—finished up work at the bank down the street. Sally Ann was the daughter of Clyde Burdette, the older brother of Sammy and Dot. When Clyde’s much younger girlfriend announced she was pregnant, Clyde fled the state, unable to handle “the kid thing,” as he said to Dot during a quick, apologetic call made from a pay phone somewhere in New Mexico. He wouldn’t say specifically where he was, afraid that Dot might sic the law on him. But of course Clyde had miscalculated in this matter—as he had in so many other matters, too. Dot didn’t want Clyde back. She adored her niece and was more than happy to raise her, which is precisely what she did, with love and care, after the girl’s mother had made it clear that she, too, was completely uninterested in parenthood.

  Charlie always wondered what had made Sally Ann turn out the way she did. It could not have been for lack of affection, because Dot Burdette cherished that child. But the day came when Sally Ann was no longer a bright-eyed kid on a tricycle, riding around and around the courthouse, singing a little song to herself, but a shaking, shuffling, emaciated teenager with blank eyes and rusty sores on her arms. Her appearance told Charlie—told everybody—that she had fallen victim to the Appalachian virus: drug addiction.

  Jake was still talking. Charlie didn’t know what he had missed, but he felt pretty sure he could figure it out from context.

  “… and so the paramedics just left,” Jake said. “These two might make it. They got ’em Narcanned in time, I guess. Sheriff told me to sit tight until she gets here. Thought I’d call you while I was waiting.”

  “Okay.” Charlie was a little surprised at himself. Why wasn’t he more upset? He knew how distraught Dot Burdette was going to be about her niece’s death. Sammy Burdette would be upset, too, but it was Dot who commandeered his thoughts. He could imagine her face, owned by sorrow. It was going to be hell for her. So why didn’t he feel that swishy motion in his gut, that anticipatory dread of watching bad news wreak havoc on decent people?

  Well, maybe it was happening. Maybe retirement was finally settling into his soul. Changing him. Doreen had said it would. She had predicted that the day would come when Charlie heard about a tragic blow—the kind that involved law enforcement, the kind for which, a few months earlier, he would have felt responsible for softening for anyone hit by it—and he would feel distant from the event. Aloof. He would care, but not in the same way. Because it wasn’t his lookout anymore. Sure, he would be concerned about his friends and their troubles, but as a regular person now—not as a deputy sheriff. Was that the situation here? He hoped not. He had seen it happen to Nick Fogelsong, the former sheriff. He didn’t like it in Nick. He didn’t like the hint of it any better in himself. It might make life easier in the long run, but in the short, it felt like laziness. And cowardice, too.

  Jake’s voice broke into Charlie’s thoughts. “Do you think I should I start warning folks?”

  “Not following you.”

  “I mean—this looks like a bad batch, right? That just got delivered? Shouldn’t we be sounding the alarm?”

  “Hmm,” Charlie said, to indicate a fair degree of skepticism. Skepticism morphed into sarcasm. “So you aim to warn drug addicts that shooting heroin in their veins is not such a good idea, after all? Downright bad for their health? Maybe they’ll want to rethink their life choices, in light of this new information, and maybe watch the carbs while they’re at it? Eat more veggies? Jake, my man—listen to yourself. How useful you think that’d be?”

  “Okay, forget the addicts. How about the dealer? Whatever’s been added to his supply is killing people. We’ve got to stop it.”

  “Sounds mighty ambitious.”

  “Damned straight. If we can’t get folks to listen, we can at least track the source. Arrest the dealer. Maybe even stop the supply coming in. Get it off the streets.”

  “Tall order.”

  “Didn’t say it wasn’t. Just said we ought to get started.” Jake’s voice was impatient.

  “I think you need to chill out.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. Know why? Number one—there’s really not a damned thing you can do about it. Number two—as terrible as this all looks right now, the truth is, it’s probably a fluke. A temporary spike in the numbers. You might not have another overdose for a week or so. You know what I mean. They come in waves, right? Always have. The thing is, you can’t overreact. Got to keep a sense of proportion. So here’s what you do. Take care of business there. When your shift’s over, go home. Get some rest. Have a nice meal. Good for what ails you. Chances are, it’ll all die down. Settle out.”

  “Spoken like a guy who’s retired.” Jake had calmed himself. Charlie could hear it in his voice. “Any other advice, old man?”

  “Sure. Watch a little TV.” Charlie chuckled. “I recommend Law & Order: SVU.”

  Several hours from now, when Charlie remembered the fact that he had laughed right then, he would wince. His stomach would turn sour. And it wouldn’t just be his acid reflux kicking up.

  He had missed the signs, missed everything. If somebody had been trying to send him a private signal about what was to come, a whisper, a murmur, he had ignored it, drowning it out with his damned stupid donkey-snort of a chuckle. He had been a deputy sheriff for enough years to know that there were always early clues to a coming catastrophe. Hints and glimmers. But you had to be attuned to them. You had to be on the lookout. You had to listen. You had to be sharp. You could not be relaxing in a recliner with a belly full of chocolate ice cream, poking at the stain on your shirt, wondering when Benson and Stabler would finally figure out they belonged together.

  Shirley

  7:14 A.M.

  “You can’t smoke in here.”

&nbs
p; Shirley Dolan flinched, acknowledging the reprimand with a quick grimace. Duh. Of course. Smoking was forbidden everywhere these days. You’d create less commotion if you pulled out a hand grenade and flicked at the pin with a thumbnail.

  “Right,” she said. “Yeah.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” She shrugged. What had she been thinking? Well, she wasn’t thinking. That was the problem. Digging into the pack with a curled-up index finger had been a reflex, a response to stimuli. The stimuli? Her nerves. They felt as if somebody was plucking them like ukulele strings. Somebody who didn’t know how to play but was just messing around.

  The pack went back into her purse. She dropped the purse on the floor, using her left heel to wedge it under her chair. To keep it out of the way. Out of her reach. So that she didn’t forget and go for a cigarette all over again. It had been that kind of day. That kind of week. The kind when you forget things. Screw up. Repeat mistakes.

  Hell. It had been that kind of life.

  “So,” he said. He leaned back. Just a little bit. Not a full recline. Still, the chair moaned in protest; the springs and the ball bearings weren’t new. Nothing in this office was new. The furniture was clean, neat, but old. Broken-in. Well-used. She appreciated that. There would be something off about a preacher’s study that featured shiny new stuff, right? Something borderline hypocritical. With all the dire needs in these parts, all the suffering—kids going to school hungry, old folks sitting in the dark to shave a few cents off the electric bill—you don’t want to see a man of God with a fancy new sofa and a leather recliner. No, sir.

  Placed on the front of his desk, facing out, was a short orange bar of polished wood with a carved line of swirling letters: Rev. Paul Wolford. Must have been a gift, she thought. The kind of thing he couldn’t refuse to display, because he was polite, and he wouldn’t want the gift-giver to think he was ungrateful. Even though it probably embarrassed him—having his name out there like that. As if he was bragging. She was just guessing, but still.

  The desktop also was home to a small brass lamp with a beige shade. Pens and pencils, lined up next to a desk calendar. No computer. She liked that. It made him seem more human, somehow. More ordinary. Accessible. Not some saintly creature who would judge her from on high.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Well.” Now that she was here, she couldn’t figure out how to talk about it. How to get started.

  “No rush,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  She nodded.

  Time passed. The silence should have been awkward, uncomfortable, but somehow it wasn’t. The early morning sun slid into the room through the middle third of the tall window off to the right, the part not blocked by the faded curtains hanging from either side. A pillar of listless gray light lay across the carpet.

  “Can I make an observation?” he said, after a minute had sloughed away.

  “Sure.” He could do whatever he liked. This was his office.

  “First thing you told me, when you sat down, was that your sister’s the county prosecutor. Belfa Elkins.”

  Shirley shrugged. Yeah, she had said that. Right off the bat, so he would know. It was a crucial part of what she was here to talk about.

  “And so,” he went on, “you don’t want to embarrass her. You both live right here. That means that when you have a problem—you don’t have a lot of places to go. Must make you feel pretty lonely sometimes.”

  Shirley’s hands were stacked in her lap. She looked down at them, noting the paleness of her sun-wrecked skin, and noting, as well, the way her wrists jutted out of the cuffs of her chambray shirt, the material thinned from a million washings, give or take. Same basic shade as her jeans. She was fifty-five years old. She had a bony butt and a pleated face and stringy yellow-gray hair that fled down her back. She was, in other words, as old and used-up as the décor in this office.

  “Yeah,” she said. She nodded again.

  “But you’re worried. You’re not a member of this church, and so you’re thinking—‘He doesn’t really have time for me.’”

  Shirley didn’t reply and so he added, “Do I have that about right?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was his turn to nod. His tone was cordial but businesslike, which she found reassuring. She was suspicious of instant friendliness from strangers. People who were nice to you always had an agenda. An angle. “Okay,” he said. “First off—relax. You’re fine. I’m glad you came in today. There’s no requirement that you be a member of Rising Souls Church before I’ll try to help you.”

  “That’s what Connie said you’d say. She goes here. Connie Boyd.”

  “Is that who gave you my name?”

  “Yeah. We work together, me and Connie. Over at the auto parts store.” Shirley took a thumb and turned it sideways, rubbing it against her bottom lip, first in one direction, then back the other way. It had become a nervous habit. Especially during the times when she had tried to stop smoking. She wasn’t trying anymore. But the lip-rubbing habit stuck. “I’m having a hard time these days,” she went on. “Got something on my mind. Connie—me and her talk a lot—Connie said you’d be the person to go to.”

  “Well, I hope I can justify her faith in me. And yours, too.”

  “She said you’re a good man. She told me about you and your wife. About how you help out anybody who needs it. No questions asked. You let a man live in the church basement, isn’t that right? A veteran who’s had some trouble?”

  “That’s Eddie Sutton. But he earns his keep. Works on the furnace when it needs it—which is just about one hundred percent of the time.” Paul smiled a whatcha-gonna-do? smile. “Sweeps the walks before Sunday service. Keeps the pews dusted. So it’s not charity. More like barter. He gets room and board and whatever money we can spare.”

  “Still. Pretty decent of you all to do that.”

  “Everybody needs a helping hand from time to time. Everybody’s got challenges—Eddie more than most. He saw a lot of terrible things over in Afghanistan. It’s been hard for him to keep a job.” Paul nodded to himself, as if he had just done a quick internal recount of the man’s problems and was surprised all over again at the total. “He’s trying to support a child, too. A little girl. Eddie and the girl’s mother aren’t involved anymore. Never were, really. But he wanted to do the right thing. He’s that kind of man.” He scooted his chair closer to the desk. “And if you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this—it’s just to drive home the point that everybody has times when they need help. So don’t feel funny about being here.”

  Shirley liked Paul Wolford, a fact she found surprising. When her friend Connie had suggested the minister as a confidant, Shirley had groaned and put up her hands as if she was warding off gunfire; her experience with religious people had not been positive. But Connie pushed. You’ll like him, she said. He’s not like a regular preacher. He doesn’t do much preaching, for one thing. Outside of Sunday service, I mean. Does more listening than talking. That sounded good to Shirley. But she would withhold final approval, she told Connie, until she had laid eyes on the man.

  Now she had done just that. Paul Wolford was handsome—you’d call him that, no question. Clean-shaven. Chiseled jaw. His eyes were the shade you find in amateur paintings of the ocean—an intense, unalleviated blue. His hair was thick and straight and acorn-brown; no matter how often he shoved it up and off his forehead, a soft chunk of it flopped right back down there again, like the hair of that movie star. The one with the English accent. His name was—yeah, Hugh Grant. That was it.

  There was an earnestness about Paul Wolford, she thought. Like he wanted to make the world right for everybody and even if he couldn’t, he wanted to be on the record as having tried.

  Sitting there in the battered chair facing his desk, all at once Shirley decided to trust him. She had to trust somebody.

  “Things started to go bad for me at the start of the summer,” she said. “Broke up with my boyfriend. We’d been sharing a
place, so I had to move out.”

  “Ending a relationship is hard.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it was. He’s a singer—he’s real good—but he wouldn’t work at any other kind of job, even when the singing wasn’t bringing in much cash. I guess I got tired of supporting the both of us.”

  “Understandable.”

  “Yeah. Connie helped me think it through. Helped me find another place, too. But this other thing…” Shirley let the sentence die a natural death. She started a new one. “Connie stopped me before I got very far. Said it was too much for her. She was over her head.” Another pause, longer this time. “Kind of tough. Talking about it, I mean.”

  He lifted his hand and gestured with it. “Would you like some coffee? A glass of water?”

  Shirley shook her head. She was enough of a disruption in his day without making him wait on her.

  “Just give me a sec here,” she said. She broke off eye contact, pretending a sudden interest in whatever might be happening outside the window. She couldn’t really see anything. Just feeble sunlight struggling to push through the dusty panes.

  She had showed up at the door of the church a few minutes before seven. She didn’t know what time somebody might come along and open the place. The sign said the church office was open from nine to noon on Mondays and Wednesdays, and this was Monday, but she wasn’t here for church business. Or was she? She didn’t know how much ground the phrase “church business” actually covered. And maybe they opened up the place earlier for non-church business. Whatever. She didn’t care to wait anywhere else. They could throw her out if they didn’t want her here.

  A moment later she had heard a scuffling sound on the other side of the big wooden door with the tarnished brass studs. The door swung open. She recognized the man right away, from his photo on the church Web site. It was Reverend Wolford. In his right hand he held a short red leash. At the end of it quivered a small dog, a chubby brown-and-white terrier whose paws had clearly done the scuffling.