AHMM, Jul-Aug 2005 Read online

  As his cologne cloud dissipated, we sat around the table for a long moment in almost identical positions: smoldering cigarette in one hand, coffee mug in the other, eyes studiously averted. “Chapel of Love” came on the radio. Linda Felice skipped in for a Hershey's, left a nickel on Hervie's counter, skipped back out to her bike.

  Then Nooch said, “Pauper."

  "Damn straight he don't got the dough,” Hervie argued.

  "I don't know why you let him waste your time,” Chas told me, not unkindly.

  "Maura,” Nooch conceded.

  "Yeah,” Hervie said, “you're nice to him ‘cuz of Maura."

  "Which is also hard to figure,” Chas said, “considering how she—"

  "I'm a peace officer,” I cut in. “I'm nice to everybody."

  * * * *

  In our part of the world, a town constable's duties are only vaguely defined. For example, no one ever said I had to make rounds. But I usually did, morning and night. If nothing else, walking Main Street loosened up my leg, which generally knotted tight and painful, sitting there with my friends at the White Rose.

  So after leaving them I walked east on Main Street past the chiropractor's and the post office and the First (and, truth be told, only) Church. Then crossed Main and walked by Dellow's Hardware, the phone company office, the bank, diner, and the Pink Palace, where Beezer's red pickup sat out front already, waiting for LeRoy to open up. All that while, I exchanged greetings with passersby on foot and in vehicles. All that while I focused my attention on the buildings and the vehicles and the people, keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

  And all that while, I studiously avoided looking down at the end of Main Street where Duke's IGA stood. But when I finally did look that way, I saw, angle-parked by the newspaper boxes, the baby blue year-old Imperial Crown convertible, top down, white leather seats gleaming in the sun. I felt my throat knot, my mouth dry up. It seemed like a summons.

  Pushing through the double glass doors of the grocery, I greeted Missy and Deb at the registers and walked around to the right, checking the aisles. Down the last one, by the cereals and the syrups, stood Maura Coltson. Maura Coltson Temblor Leavitt, to account for both her marriages. She was tall and blond, quite tan that year from the hours and hours she spent on their pontoon boat. Her posture was restless and impatient as she stared at the boxed offerings, one thoughtful thumb between her perfect teeth. Her light hair was a medium bouffant, big and poofed out. She wore a white, sleeveless, belted overblouse and snug tan walking shorts and sandals with thongs that snaked up her brown ankles. She'd just turned forty, but still looked nineteen to me. Always had, always will.

  Though she made no sign, she knew I was there.

  Part of me just wanted to stand still and watch her. But the girls up front might have noticed. So I walked up the aisle, which was empty except for the two of us. I wanted to greet her, but I could not trust my voice to be reliably neutral. She did not look at me as I approached. But as I passed her, she murmured, Tomorrow.

  * * * *

  Which came all too soon, all too soon.

  I wakened earlier than usual, my leg afire. Time, I thought, for my yearly trip to the VA hospital down-city. They'd X-ray me, chide and lecture, inform me there was nothing they could do, and prescribe pain pills that I refused to take. But bad though the pain was, I was feeling content that morning. Because tomorrow had become today, the latest wait was ending, and I would, if only briefly, be with Maura again.

  Which I was, of course, though not the way I had planned.

  The phone rang as I laced up my shiny black boondockers. On the static-filled rural party line Bill Leavitt sounded garbled, panicked—something about his pickup, and an accident, an accident he kept saying. Out at their place, a patch of scrub land hard by Telegraph Hill, I saw no sign of his truck by their house trailer. To the left was their pole barn, green steel and tin roof gleaming in the morning sun. In front of it, where the two-track from the road ended, I saw a county patrol car, one of the new black Chrysler Enforcers. Around on the side I glimpsed men in silhouette, one of them maybe Bill. But it was the sight of the pole barn that grabbed my attention. The front wall was punched through with a huge gaping hole, just to the left of the overhead door. Something had crashed through there. Something vehicle sized.

  Parking my Lark wagon by the sheriff's car, I hoofed up the hill toward the barn. The deputy, it turned out, was Brian Haven, resplendent in his summer khakis, and when he saw me he came trotting around the side and down the scrubby gravel to me. His young hero face looked pale behind his spectacles. “You know these people, right?"

  The alarm I was starting to feel was a sick, smoldering thing. “Sure I know ‘em, Brian. What the hell happened?"

  "Come take a look.” I walked with him, working hard to keep up. By the front of the pole barn I could now see a pair of vehicle safety ramps and a case of Wolf's Head motor oil and some tools. Through the gaping hole in the pole barn I saw—daylight. Whatever had crashed in, had gone all the way through and out the other side. “Where's Bill?” I asked Brian.

  "The husband? I made him sit down,” Brian said, puffing as we climbed the hill. “Over by his pickup. I told him not to move. I think we should arrest him. But that's your call—"

  "I need to know what happened!"

  "Ambulance is on the way, but it's...” He gave me a stricken look. “I'm afraid she's dead."

  We rounded the corner. Down the hill, nearly to the meadow, stood Bill's green F1 pickup. Up by us, a dozen feet from the blasted-through wall of the barn, I saw Maura. She lay face down on the hardpan ground. She wore white sneakers and tan slacks and tan top. I noticed these things, kind of in abstract. Because what shouted at me was the tangled inert way she lay on the dirty uncaring clay, as if rudely flung there. The odd angle of her head and neck and the deep bloody stains on her back and neck. And more blood clotting her thick blond hair. Worst thing was the absolute utter lack of movement. Maura Coltson was always in motion, ever energized, a go-go-go girl.

  Now here she lay. I see her still.

  I made some kind of sound, and turned away. Brian took my elbow. “He said he was—"

  "I want to hear it from him.” I marched down the grassy slope, my leg for once pain free—in fact, I felt numb all over, insensate, a robot-man going through the motions, while the brain and the heart hid out. Bill Leavitt sat on a cinder block in the meadow, not far from his pickup. I don't remember what he wore. His knees were drawn up, his flattopped head was in his hands, and he looked, for once, very small. I came around in front of him and went down on one knee to face him. “Bill."

  He removed his trembling hands from his angular face. He looked much older, his eyes dark and far away. “It was an accident,” he breathed.

  "Tell me."

  "Needed to change oil,” he said, tone shaky. “Putting the truck up on the ramps. Maura came out to help me. She was standing in front, directing me ... and then...” His voice broke. “The truck, it just ... took off. Gas pedal went to the floor, and the truck hit Maura and bam crashed into the barn. I mashed the brakes, I stood on the brakes, but we kept on going bam through the back wall, bounced down the hill, I'm swerving, fighting the wheel, damn near rolled it, not seeing Maura anymore ... I got it out of gear...” With the back of his hand he brushed at his eyes, forcing control. “It took just a second, just an instant. I almost fell out of the truck, the driver-side door latch is no good ... saw Maura back there on the ground. And I knew, I knew she was dead.” He met my eyes for the first time. “An accident. Something in the truck went bad wrong. Had to be."

  I made him tell the story again, and he told it pretty much the same way. “You just sit here,” I told him, “till we see what's what.” And Brian, the deputy, and I stepped away.

  By then the ambulance had arrived. One sight of Maura and their urgency abated. “I think he's lying,” Brian said, gum snapping. “I think he run her down. Truck defect my Auntie Agatha's ass."


  "I don't know,” I said. “I had a Fordor, that same year even, but with the flathead. What happened was a motor mount had went? But I didn't know it. I just touched the gas pedal and down she went to the floor, clamped down hard, and the car leapt ahead, in first gear, I had the three on the tree. This was out at Artillery Park and thank God nobody was in the way—I got her stopped before anything bad happened."

  Brian nodded thoughtfully under the brim of his Mountie hat. “Bad motor mount, huh."

  "Could be something like that. All I'm saying is could be. I'll have Hervie tow the pickup in, check it out. He'll be able to tell."

  Just then the coroner showed up. Wheezing, sweating under his necktie, and utterly efficient, he briskly pronounced Maura, and then talked things over with Brian and me. In those days, the constable, being the local man, had a lot of say-so. Brian wasn't crazy about it, but he agreed to leave Bill be at least until the inquest.

  * * * *

  The next couple of days blurred by. We buried Maura by her mom and dad out at Salt River. The turnout was pretty good—most of the town, of course, and a smattering of folks from nearby, all headed up by Bill Leavitt, who cried audibly throughout the service and the burial. Maura's first husband was a no-show, but their daughter Holly Temblor came up. Bad as I wanted to, I could not bring myself to approach her. She looked so much like her mother, it gave my heart a cruel and needless extra wrench. She stood rigid and distant, all by herself, exchanged only the briefest greetings when forced, and was trotting back to her Plymouth Sport Fury before the clods started to drop on the coffin top.

  The guys did what guys do. Sat with me in shifts, forced me to eat, flipped channels on the TV in search of diversion, poured boilermakers down me in the smoky protective confines of the Pink Palace, and in the case of Nooch Nord, took me out fishing the second day. No words were needed; they all understood. Since the day I turned twenty, when mail call brought Maura's letter telling me about her and Temblor, I'd been doing one kind of waiting. Now I had to adjust to a new kind of waiting, and that was awfully hard. Because in those earliest days of being left behind, simply living from one minute to the next seemed like an awful lot of trouble.

  On the morning of the inquest, my phone roused me groggily from an alcohol induced coma. Five something, the bedside clock said. “H'lo,” I grunted, easing my aching leg to a more comfortable position.

  "Hi,” came a small female voice. “It's Holly. Holly Temblor."

  "Uh-huh,” I managed, thinking, what?

  "Sorry I woke you up,” she rushed on. “But I've been awake all night. I had to talk to you."

  "Okay.” I snapped on the bedside lamp, nearly knocking it over with my numb fingers. “Okay, yeah."

  The long distance line had a strong hiss in it, and the faraway murmur of somebody else's conversation somewhere, making Holly hard to hear. “I, uh, I was given a letter, that my mother wrote. To be opened in case of her death."

  And then I knew.

  After a long pause she asked, in a strained tone, “She told you, right?"

  "No."

  "But you suspected."

  "Maybe.” A lot of math had been done, by a lot of people. And the answer always came back: could be, probably not, let it be. “So what are you going to do, Holly?"

  "I don't know. It's so messed up. I have a dad. He's a good dad, even though Mother dumped him. She dumped you too. All her life, it was always like, whatever she had that was really good, she threw away. She said,” Holly rushed on, “in the note, she said leaving you was the worst mistake she ever made."

  That was something she'd never even hinted at in our later, very infrequent encounters—though perhaps the encounters themselves were her way of saying it.

  "Your mom was always restless,” I said.

  "I know.” Holly was quietly crying.

  "So come on up,” I said. “Let's get to know each other. What do you say."

  "I can't just drop everything!” she cried. “I'm not like Mother. I set my course and I stick to it."

  "Good for you."

  "So, sorry. I live down-city, I have my own home, my classes, my car, my job, my dog.... And I already have a dad."

  "I can wait,” I said.

  * * * *

  When I came downstairs to open the constable office, Hervie McGriff was leaning against the wall by the door.

  Mid morning or thereabouts, Bill Leavitt showed up at the White Rose for the first time since the accident. He didn't march in like usual, he kind of sidled through the open door, looking tentative and thinner in a white shirt and navy shorts and sockless brown loafers. The eight-transistor, playing “Pretty Woman,” didn't know to fall silent, but the fellows did. Only I spoke up: “Hey Bill, grab a chair, smoking lamp's lit."

  His angular face flashed a look of gratitude, and he seated himself between me and Chas. An awkward silence followed, broken by Nooch: “Smoke?"

  "Sure, thanks,” Bill said, and took a Lucky from him. “What about the land contract?” he asked me, lighting up.

  "The what?"

  "I put it in your mailbox yesterday."

  "So,” Hervie said, “you're still buying his forty?"

  "Hell yeah,” Bill said grimly. “Moving the trailer out there, soon as I can. Too many memories at—at the other place."

  We all just kind of sat there digesting that for a bit. I said, “Well then, we should take a ride out there. Stake survey just got done."

  "That'd be good,” Bill said. “Just so we're over to Americus by one thirty."

  "Believe me,” I said, standing awkwardly, “I won't forget. Let's saddle up."

  With a glance at the guys, who kind of looked at me back, we left.

  As I drove us along the winding road by the wooded shoreline, Bill's babble was nervous and disjointed, covering a range of topics, none of them Maura. I just drove, grunting an assent here and there, staring out the windshield. Ten miles past the village limit sign ("Crooked Lake: The Sweetest Little Town Anywhere Around"), we swung off the tarvy onto the reddish rutted two-track that threaded us through the tall white pines of the Cabinet Hills. I thought about the first time Maura left me, and the morning after her letter came. Two decades stood in between, but today felt the same in a way. Then, we'd gotten pinned down first thing in the morning by a pillbox near Falaise. With guys dropping all around me—those Krauts could really shoot—I satcheled some grenades and extra clips for my BAR and liberated a.45 automatic from our lieutenant who no longer had need of it, and went racing out of the copse straight at the grim, slit-windowed concrete fortress. Five minutes later, eleven Jerries were dead, the pillbox was secured, and I was on my way to the aid station gushing blood from the hamburger that had been my leg. They'd called me a hero, and pinned a Silver Star on me. None of that would happen after today. But the feeling was the same. Nothing to lose.

  We stepped out of the car into the bright morning sunshine, in the middle of my forty, the grassy clearing spreading out for a hundred yards to ranks of oaks and pines, rustling and raucous with the songs of crows and jays. Signs of desultory progress were everywhere: fresh tree stumps, cut-up logs, mounds of earth, Chas's yellow Oliver 1850 backhoe-loader with its Talbert trailer standing nearby. There were, of course, no signs of the stake survey. It had not in fact been done yet. That was just a ruse to get Bill to come out here with me.

  Walking around the front of my Lark, Bill took a deep breath, and I knew what was coming. “Glad we got a chance,” he managed, “to talk things out in private. Man to man."

  "Sure, Bill."

  Bill babbled on: “Y'know, you've always been decent to me, ever since I moved up here. The other guys, they're all right, but ... they snicker at me. They treat me like a down-city dufus. They still act like—like I'm a newcomer. I've been up here ten years! Ten whole years!"

  "I know.” I remembered the day Maura returned to town with her brand-new down-city second husband, back when each apparently thought the other had a lot of mo
ney.

  "What's the deal?” Bill whined. “You're not a native unless your grandfather was born here?"

  "Pretty much."

  "Well,” Bill continued, “I know you and Maura had a thing when you were kids. I know you gotta be hurting. So I wanted you to hear this from me, direct.” He stared down at the ground. “I didn't tell the whole truth. About what happened to us the other day."

  "Let's walk some, huh?” I suggested. “Leg's stiff from the ride out."

  We strode side by side at an easy tolerable pace through the tall grasses around the perimeter of the football field-sized clearing. When Bill did not continue, I prompted, “And?"

  "There was nothing wrong with the truck,” Bill said softly.

  "I know. Hervie told me. He's testifying to that, later."

  "But,” Bill cut in, “you have to understand why it happened."

  "Talk."

  "She was stepping out on me. With Chas Herbst."

  I glanced at him, looked back at the ground, turned a corner by a big mound of fieldstones.

  "I've known something was up,” Bill said. “It was eating at me. I figured it out, from Chas working on our well so much. Conveniently when I'm not around. Little things keep going wrong with it, so he keeps coming out. He was due out that day. My plan was to pretend to leave, hide in the pole barn, sneak into the house, and catch them."

  "Okay."

  "But before that,” Bill said, “I needed to change the oil on the pickup. Maura came out to help me get the truck onto the ramps. Just like I said before. I was behind the wheel with the engine running, and she was in front.... She'd been bratty all morning, just bitchy, impossible, and I started smoldering, man. It's eating at me like acid. I'm thinking, she's always this way just before she sees Chas. And I don't know, man, I just lost it. Punched the accelerator. And held it to the floor."

  We were walking along the north side now. Another pile of fieldstones sat to our left. In the distance, to the right a little, was Chas's backhoe. I was getting warm in my clothes, from the sun and the exertion probably. I slowed us up a little, calculating distances, timing, moves. “Just lost it, huh?"