My
greatest achievement as a police officer actually occurred when I was
off duty, over twenty years ago during my first week of paid vacation
from the force. An acquaintance of mine and I had driven up to
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for the beginning of deer hunting season.
We
could see our breath that pre-dawn October morning as we trudged up a
hunting ground recommended to us by a flannel clad logger we had a few
drinks with at a bar the pervious night. There were a large number of
vehicles parked in the available spaces between balsam fir, cedar and
maple trees lining both sides of the road leading to the trailhead.
A
police officer, dressed in a heavy dark brown nylon jacket, with a wool
cap pulled down around his ears under a smoky the bear hat, separated
himself from the crowd milling around a knot of emergency vehicles and
walked up to us.
“Sorry
boys, but you’re gonna have to hunt someplace up the road. I’m not
much of a hunter myself, but I’m sure someone here can recommend a
place.”
He explained that a little boy of seven had gone missing the night
before. My friend and I already felt the effects of a cold spell coming
in from Lake Superior. The radio station we tuned to on the way in from
the hotel said they expected the first freeze of the season that night.
We
returned our hunting rifles to the rack behind my pick up truck and
volunteered to help out. The officer thanked us and assigned a local man
to keep an eye on us because we had never been to this area before.
We’d
been searching for half the day when we came to a steep natural rock
formation. The rocks were covered with moist algae, already
crystallizing with the cold in the spaces hidden away from direct
sunlight.
The
local man was in his mid-fifties, and although a lifetime outdoorsman,
didn’t appear to be in the best physical shape. He thought we were
crazy to climb up the formation, but my friend and I were twenty-two
years old and full of enthusiasm. According to the local, we were
wasting our time; a boy would never bother to go up there if he was lost
and scared in the woods. Huffing in exasperation, he agreed to
meet us on the other side after we insisted that we’d make the climb.
We
found the boy near the top of the formation, wedged in a narrow cave,
conscious but going into the first stages of hypothermia. We wrapped him
in our jackets to stop his uncontrollable shivering. I stayed with the
kid as my friend continued down the other side of the formation to hook
up with the local man, who had the radio.
The kid was in much better shape after we’d gotten his body
temperature down and packed him into the ambulance at the trailhead. At
least two search parties had been by the rocks the day before, and I
asked the boy why he didn’t respond when the volunteers had called out
his name.
He
said his parents told him to never go with a stranger, even if they knew
his name. I thought the whole situation ironic and near tragic, until
years later, when I learned that evil often did call you by name, but
the words were more often spoken by someone you would not necessarily
consider a stranger.
* *
*
I’d
been called to Hank’s farm on official business before. A disgruntled
farmhand once poured a five gallon can of gasoline over the contents of
the equipment shed and held a lit zippo lighter out at arms length as I
talked him out of a pyrotechnics display. Hank’s elderly father had
experienced chest pains during a Fourth of July weekend barbecue. A
domestic dispute whisky had helped get out hand called in by a wife who
later refused to press charges.
Dent
corn, interspersed with an occasional county road was the only feature
for miles around Hank’s place. This part of Iowa was given over to
cornfields and small towns, both emptying out fast after several years
of low produce prices.
Sheriff’s
deputies and state troopers formed a circle around Hank’s field. I
noticed a garish Cadillac with Louisiana license plates parked amongst
the police cars. A rookie state trooper with his hat turned backwards
leaned over the hood of one of their patrol cars, an unnatural eagerness
in eyes staring down the sight of a fifty caliber Beretta sniper rifle
that could punch through a half inch steel plate from three football
fields away.
“Who
called the state boys in on this?” I asked Deputy Sanderson when I
caught up with him as he stood talking into a radio behind his cruiser,
looking at two vehicles facing each other across an expanse of cut corn.
Hank
sat on the hood of his pick up truck, a shotgun lying across his thighs,
sipping from a Stroh’s can. Hank’s five-ear old combine stood
impotently in the field on three flat tires. I couldn’t make out the
features on the man’s face behind the combines controls, but he was
talking into a cell phone.
Sanderson put the radio away and said, “The guy on the combine’s
named Jimmy Debaneau. He called it in on a cell phone. He and his
partner are New Orleans bounty hunters displaced by the hurricane,
picking up work wherever they can get it. You recognize the last name
because his uncles’ right over there, talking to the other bounty
hunter.”
Sanderson
pointed over to a state trooper van, where a guy around forty, dressed
in tan kakis, imported Italian shoes that looked like they’d be ruined
after five seconds in the corn, and a pale tropical shirt, talked on a
cell phone next to a uniformed state trooper peering through binoculars.
Sanderson
continued. “There’s a lot of farm equipment in default around
these parts after the price fell out of the corn market. I was hoping my
last week would be a quiet one.”
Our
budget had been chipped away little by little over the years as the corn
farmers moved away after they were forced to sell their parcels to
conglomerates who found it economically sound to let the fields lie
fallow while they waited for the prices to go up. We had to let two
officers go this year. One man went out on early retirement, but
Sanedrson was laid off because he was low man on the totem pole.
Lieutenant
Debaneau was the highest-ranking officer from the state police on the
scene. We’d butted heads over jurisdiction a couple of times before,
but I had a high opinion of him, and I wanted to maintain good relations
with his office. Although people were moving away, our case work was
growing exponentially as those who staid turned to drinking during idle
time waiting for unemployment checks to arrive. The state troopers
helped out now that our manpower was down, but they generally only
showed up when we invited them.
Debaneau
took his field binoculars from his eyes and shook my hand when I walked
up to him. “We’ve got ourselves a situation here Lucas,” he said.
“This is Chet Redden. Hank caught him and my idiot nephew before dawn
this morning trying to repossess his combine. He shot out three sets of
tires with his shotgun.”
I
shook hands with Chet. “Is you’re partner armed?”
“I’m
pretty sure he’s carrying a stun gun,” Chet said. “You could ask
him yourself, but his cell phone just died.”
“You
shouldn’t be running around an unfamiliar state with a weapon.”
“I
checked the laws, it’s perfectly legal.”
Lieutenant
Debaneau motioned me to the side with a jerk from his head. “How do
you want to play it?” he asked after we’d moved out of earshot of
the bounty hunter.
“I’ve
known Hank for over twenty years. He’s always been a reasonable
man.”
Debaneau
shook his head and spit out a wad of chewing tobacco onto the ground.
“His wrap sheet indicates otherwise.”
“He’s
perfectly reasonable sober.”
“Check
out the pile of aluminum at his feet.” He handed me the field glasses.
I made it an even dozen dead soldiers on their way to the recycling bin,
perhaps another dozen full ones in the cooler sitting next to Hank on
the hood of his pick up.
I
said, “I’m gonna walk out and have a few words with him. Think you
can put a net on your boy with the fifty caliber?”
“That’s
my sister’s kid out there with a shotgun pointed at his head.”
I
undid my pistol belt and handed it over to Debaneau.
“You
sure that’s a good idea?” he said, looking at the gun belt in his
hand.
“There’s
too many weapons out there already as far as I’m concerned.” I
grabbed a bullhorn out of the state van and said, my voice magnified,
“Hank, It’s me, Luke. I’m coming out unarmed to talk to you.”
* *
*
The
books and TV shows about alcoholic cops usually portrays them as people
driven to drink by the daily obstacles they encounter during the course
of doing their jobs. I think it might have been the terror of the
monotony of the corn fields, combined with a feeling like boredom, only
more profound, that led me to spend so much time in barrooms during the
first decade and a half of my career as police officer. It was on these
worn bar stools, dented like a kernel of corn by the same asses night
after night, where I had first made Hank’s acquaintance.
I
wouldn’t say we were friends, until I read an article that outlined
several forms of friendships, including one called an ‘anchored
friendship’. Some people rarely see each other outside of one
location, the anchor. But they formed a floating community, trading
intimate details about their lives in this safe environment. Some of us
find ourselves forgoing the weight and experience of a friendship or
romance in exchange for the anchored friendships we have with the people
occupying the bar stools in the haze around us.
Our
community was called McNulty’s Taproom, and it floated on a sea of
Jack Danial’s shots, backed up by drafts of Strohs. The only time I
saw Hank outside of the bar, besides the occasions I was out to his
farmhouse on official business, was when, on a drunken whim twenty years
before, we’d decided to go hunting in Michigan.
*
* *
Hank
put the beer can down on the hood of his car, shielded his eyes with his
free hand, and waved me in.
“You
could at least strap on some Kevlar,” Debaneau said.
“I
don’t see the point. Hank’s not gonna shoot me, and that 50’d
leave an equal sized hole on either side of the vest.”
Debaneau
reached into the van, pulled out a bulletproof vest and handed it to me.
“Do it for my heart condition then.”
I
strapped it on and walked out to the two vehicles staring at each other
in the middle of the cornfield. Hank was wearing old work jeans,
Timberland boots and a tucked in kaki chore shirt. The shotgun looked
right at home lying on top of the faded denim.
“Sorry
you had to come out here for this mess,” he said. His hair and the
stubble on his chin were mostly gray now, with a few touches of black
left over from his younger days. “Want a beer?”
“Don’t
mind if I do,” I said, reaching into the cooler and pulling out two
cold cans of Strohs.
“I
was only being polite. I didn’t think you were allowed to drink on
duty,” Hank said, staring, as I popped open the two beers and started
toward the combine.
“I’m
just gonna check up on your playmate. We’ll talk when I get back.”
Hank
took a tiny sip from his beer can, shrugged his shoulders and said,
“Suite yourself.”
I
walked over to the combine and looked up into the unconcerned face of an
anachronism. Jimmy Debeneau was wearing a black shirt with flame designs
across the un-tucked bottom. His jeans were black, as was the pointed
leather motorcycle boot propped up on the machine’s huge steering
wheel. Jimmy’s blondish hair was slicked back in a pompadour and he
had an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. I’d guess
he was in his mid twenties.
He
kept an eye on Hank as he opened up the combine’s door. I handed him
up one of the beers and asked, “Do you need a light for your
cigarette?”
He
looked confused for a second, then pulled the cigarette out of his mouth
with his left hand as he took the can with his right. “I’ve got a
lighter, but I didn’t want to smoke in the man’s machine. I noticed
the ash tray was empty.” His accent was working class New Orleans,
sounding almost like he was raised in Brooklyn.
“You’d
steal a man’s combine, but won’t smoke in it out of politeness?
I’m glad to see the concept of a southern gentleman hasn’t gone out
of style.” I said.
“I
ain’t stealing nothing. The man hasn’t made a payment for almost a
year.”
I
made sure he saw my eyes wander to the stun gun sitting within easy
reach of his hand on the combine’s control panel. “I’d feel a
whole lot better about this situation if you’d hand me the stun
gun.”
“No
offense, sir. But I’d feel a whole lot more inclined to give it to
y’all if your buddy handed his shotgun over to you first.”
“You’ve
got to try to see my situation. I’m the official here, and I’m the
only guy unarmed,” I said.
“The
ironies not lost on me,” Jimmy said, switching his attention back to
Hank.
“I’ll
see what I can do,” I said, turning toward Hank.
“You
have my utmost confidence,” Jimmy replaced the cigarette in his mouth
and put the beer can between his legs.
I
smelled gasoline as my shoes crunched cornhusks on my way back to talk
to Hank.
“Where’s
the gas smell coming from?” I took up a position in front of the
truck.
“I
missed the back tire with the shotgun. I think I punctured the gas
tank.”
“You’ve
got to hand the gun over, Hank.”
“That
mans not riding off on my combine.”
“You’ve
been in the service, right?”
“Reserves
mostly. I did a tour during our first round in Iraq.”
“You
ever see one of those fifty calibers over there? The state police just
got one, and they gave it to a kid to test drive. He’s got your head
in the crosshairs.”
“He
can take a ticket and wait in line, behind the bank, the credit card
company, the corn growers association.”
“You
can rent a combine and finish up after you make bail. We may even get
them to drop the charges. The whole thing’s a misunderstanding.”
“I
haven’t seen you around McNulty’s recently. Doin the twelve step
boogie?” Hank looked at the untouched beer can in my hand.
I
took a sip from it. “Just slowing my act down a little. I can’t tie
it on like I used to since I hit forty.”
“Sorry
I got you into this mess, Luke.”
“Nothing
to apologize for. You can thank me by handing over the shotgun. I’ll
spring for a couple of rounds after we get the paperwork filed.”
“Remember
the time we found that kid in the woods up in Michigan?”
“We
saved the boys life.”
“I
wondered for years about how he must have felt, waiting in the cold,
more scared of strangers calling his name than the elements.” Hank
finished off his beer, reached into his cooler and pulled out another
one.
“I
think the same thing sometime.”
“I
don’t anymore, haven’t in years. Finish up your beer with me, and
I’ll go in with you.”
“I’m
just gonna tell the plan to the kid in drivers seat.”
“I
don’t have anything against him.” Hand said, staring into the hole
in the top of his beer can, like there was something important in there.
“He’s just doing his job.”
I
ambled over to the combine, waited a second while Jimmy assured himself
Hank wasn’t going to send a shell sailing in his direction before he
opened the door.
“You
lose a lot in the flood, Jimmy?” I asked.
“Everything.
But I didn’t really have that much to begin with.”
“Hanks
gonna hand me the shotgun and we’re walking in. I want you to leave
your stun gun in the combine and come in with us.”
“Sounds
like a plan, my man.”
“I
hear things are getting better in the Big Easy. Maybe it’s time for
you and your partner to head back down south?”
“You
don’t have to convince me. There’s not much left to repossess around
this shithole.”
The
smell of the gasoline was almost overwhelming as it leaked out of the
ruptured tank. “Ease up a little. I raised my family here.”
“They
didn’t stick around too long after graduation though, did they?”
“Don’t
light that cigarette until we’re back at the police cars, there’s
gasoline all over the field.”
“Don’t
worry about me mon, I’m a total pro.”
I
went back to the pick up. “Bottoms up,” I said, and we both emptied
our beers, crushing the cans in our fists when we’d finished.
Hank
handed over the shogun, and I ejected the shells one by one onto the
hood of his truck, and then held it over my head to make sure the cops
saw I had control of the situation. Hank eased onto the field and picked
up a couple of cornhusks off the ground, letting them go from his
fingers; watching them intently as they fluttered in the wind.
Jimmy
climbed down from the combine and we started off toward the cars, Jimmy
on my left, Hank on my right.
I
caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off metal in my peripheral vision
from Hank’s hand the same instant as the kid with the fifty-caliber,
but I was close enough to make out the Zippo lighter Hank flicked open
in preparation to throw behind him on the gas pooling under the combine.
The
lighter fell out of Hank’s hand onto the field too far from the gas to
ignite anything, but the fifty caliber round did the trick; lighting the
combine up like an oil rig exploding out of control after it ripped
apart Hank’s upper torso.
Copyright 2007 by
Patrick J. Lambe
Pat Lambe lives in New Jersey, the cradle of
civilization. He’s had short stories in various web sites and
magazines, as well as short stories in the Plots with Guns anthology,
Dublin Noir, with more coming out soon. My short story 'Union
Card' was listed as a distinguished mystery story in The Best American
Mystery Stories of 2005. I'm currently working on several
novels, while working as a telephone technician.
