Gone 'Til November

FIVE

The hill. It was always the hill that killed her.

Sara ran hard, her legs like lead, eyes on the road ahead, the top of the hill. She was waiting for the pain to stop, for the bliss of oxygenated blood to take over, but it hadn’t. Just more pain and more hill, the sound of her breathing and the noise of her sneakers on the blacktop.

Counting the paces now, distracting herself from the pain, and then she was up, at the top, the road long and straight in front of her. She resisted the temptation to slow. Engine noise behind her. She moved farther up on the shoulder, kicking up pine needles as she ran. An empty flatbed truck went past, Howie Twelvetrees from the municipal garage at the wheel. He blew the horn, and she waved to him without breaking stride.

Ahead was the creek, the wooden bridge, her turnaround point. She crossed it, sneakers thumping on the wood, then circled to the other side of the road, started back. One mile up, one mile back.

Downhill she had to watch her speed or risk taking a header onto the pavement. When she reached the bottom, she slowed, breathing hard but knowing the worst was over.

She thought about her interview with Elwood and Boone that morning. It had been shorter than she’d expected, less than a half hour. No, she hadn’t heard the shots. Yes, Billy had told her what had happened. No, she had no reason to believe it had gone any other way.

The questions touched only briefly on their relationship, and Boone had seemed almost embarrassed about it. Still, the sheriff had been right. In Hopedale everyone knew your business.

She slowed when the house came in sight, breathing deeper, filling her lungs. She saw the front door open and Danny come out on the steps to meet her, JoBeth behind him. Sara felt the smile come to her face unbidden. She lifted her arm in a weary wave.

A half hour later she was showered, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, Danny on her lap. After JoBeth had left, they’d filled the bird feeders in the backyard, fed and watered the rabbits.

There were four of them, kept in a hutch she’d made from scrap lumber and chicken wire. He’d named them after cartoon characters-Bugs, Wile E., Daffy, Yosemite. It pleased and worried her. He’d grown close to them, and she knew someday they’d go out to feed them and there would be only three, or fewer if a dog got into the hutch. It would be his first experience with death, something she wanted to postpone as long as possible.

Now they were reading a book of Aesop’s fables, one they’d read a half-dozen times before. He knew it by heart. She was always surprised how fast he learned, how he forgot nothing.

She felt warm, relaxed, had tried to put last night’s awkwardness with Billy out of her mind. She felt centered here, in her house, Danny’s reassuring weight on her lap. This was where she belonged. This was where she was strong.

She saw the fresh mark on his forearm then, hoped it was juice, Magic Marker maybe. She brushed at it. It was another bruise.

“How’d you get this?”

“I don’t know. I bumped into something. Can I watch TV now?”

“Only for a little while, while I’m making dinner. It goes off when we sit down at the table. You know the rules.”

“Okay,” he said and tumbled off her lap, got the remote from the coffee table. He flicked it on, and the TV glowed into life. He stretched out on the carpet, legs kicked up behind him.

She got up, set the book on the table.

“Halloween’s coming soon,” he said.

“I know.” They’d had this discussion before.

“I’m not sure what I want to be yet.”

She looked at him. He didn’t turn.

“Danny, we talked about this, remember? I know you want to go trick-or-treating, but I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because of how tired you get. Because you’re sick, and being outside that long isn’t good. All those reasons and more.”

“All the other kids are going.”

“Well, you’re not all the other kids.”

He was silent then, staring rapt at the cartoon blaring from the television. As she entered the kitchen he said, “Mom?”

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“How did I get sick?”

She stopped in the doorway, looked back at him. He hadn’t looked away from the TV.

“I don’t know, Danny. No one knows. It just happens.”

“I’m tired of it.”

“I know.” She came back into the living room, sat cross-legged beside him, touched his thinning hair. He didn’t respond. She leaned close, kissed the top of his head. “We’ll get you well,” she said. “I promise.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, baby, I do.”

She got up then, turned away, not wanting him to see her cry.

In the kitchen she got a pan down from the cabinet, hamburger meat from the refrigerator. The sound of cartoons filled the kitchen as she busied herself, set the pan on the stove, got the heat on. Focusing on what she was doing, shutting everything else out of her mind. The patties sizzled as they met the pan.

“Mom?” he called from the living room.

“Yeah, hon?”

“I’m not a baby, you know. Not anymore.”

She laughed, used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes.

“I know, Danny,” she said. “I know.”

Monday at noon, she drove out to Billy’s house. For no reason she could name, she took the long way, across the freight tracks and into the Libertyville section of town. Big Victorian houses, most in disrepair, some boarded up. She passed tree-shrouded overgrown yards, a street-corner Baptist church.

The neighborhood had been founded by freed slaves after the Civil War and had once boasted a flourishing black business district, a response to the segregation in the rest of Hopedale. But neither history nor architecture had been enough to keep people here. Most of the houses she saw were condemned or for sale. No gentrification here, just a neighborhood left to die, families moving out the first chance they got. Driving through now, she couldn’t blame them.

She caught the county road, took it southwest. Once she passed the old drive-in, there was nothing but farms and fields. Ten minutes later, she turned down Billy’s driveway, pulled the cruiser up behind his truck in the front yard. Lee-Anne’s old Camaro was parked in the carport. Sara sat there for a moment, wondering if she should turn around, go back. Since when have you let that bitch scare you off?

She got out of the cruiser, switched on the handheld radio at her belt, plugged in the shoulder mike. No calls yet today. Finally catching a break.

She went up the steps, knocked on the screen door. She could hear music inside, reggae. She knocked again, heard noises, then the inside door opened. Lee-Anne looked at her through the screen.

“It’s you,” she said.

“I came to check on Billy. See how he was doing. It’s my lunch break.”

Lee-Anne looked past her to where the cruiser was parked. She wore a sleeveless black Jack Daniel’s T-shirt, breasts loose under it, nipples visible through the material. Her long blond hair was braided and beaded on one side, and she wore low-slung jeans that showed an inch of skin, a navel ring. A barbed-wire tattoo circled her left upper arm.

“This police business?” she said.

“No.”

“Billy,” she said without turning, “that woman’s here.”

Sara looked past her into the living room, saw clothes on the floor, smelled the sweet tang of marijuana. Lee-Anne didn’t move.

“You’re looking butch these days,” Lee-Anne said. “That uniform and all. That ain’t no way to get a man, pretending to be one. Though I guess there’s some might like that.”

Sara felt the heat in her face.

“I’ll be outside,” she said and went back down the steps.

She was standing by the cruiser when Billy came down, tucking a white T-shirt into jeans. He looked happy to see her.

“Hey, girl. I thought you were staying home today.”

“Sheriff offered, but I turned him down.”

“Why in hell would you do that?”

You wouldn’t understand, Billy. You never did.

“People would talk,” she said. “Say I was getting special treatment.”

“Bullshit. Nobody’s ever given you any special treatment. If they did you wouldn’t take it anyway.”

He got a pack of gum from his pocket, offered her a stick. She shook her head. He took a piece, rolled the wrapper up, and flicked it away.

“You drop a specimen?” she said.

“What, for Elwood? Yeah, soon as Boone got there. Why?”

“Was it clean?”

“Sure. Why do you ask?”

She lifted her chin at the house.

“That’s just Lee-Anne,” he said. “Can’t get her to stop. She doesn’t do it too much these days, though.”

“Secondhand smoke can make you test positive, too.”

“It’s not a problem, Sara. What’s up?”

“Just came by. See how you were doing.”

He shrugged, leaned back against the cruiser. “Sheriff wants me to see a counselor, man works for the county.”

“Probably a good idea.”

“I may not have a choice, the way Hammond puts it.”

“Even better,” she said. “Keeps you from having to make the decision yourself.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Sometimes.”

He looked away, squinted. “Elwood called me a little while ago,” he said.

“About what?”

“He told me you’d been in there. That your story matched up.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know. You never know what people are going to say in those situations.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” she said. “I talked to the sheriff again this morning. He said there’s still some paperwork to do, but it looks like they’re going to rule it a clean shoot.”

“He really say that?”

She nodded.

He blew air out, seemed to sink back against the cruiser, letting it take his weight.

She looked up, saw Lee-Anne at the kitchen window, watching them. “I don’t think she likes me very much,” she said.

“Lee-Anne? Well, you know the way that goes. It’s a woman thing, I guess.”

“I guess,” Sara said. She got her keys out. “I need to get going, run by the market while I’ve got time.”

“Thanks for coming by.”

They stood there a moment, the silence awkward between them. Her radio crackled.

“Eight-seventeen?” Laurel, the day dispatcher. “Eight-seventeen?”

Sara keyed her shoulder mike.

“Eight-seventeen here.”

“Eight-seventeen, please respond to Bell Hardware, Tupelo and Main, for possible shoplifter. Units already on scene.”

“Responding,” she said. “Ten-four. Out.” She looked at him. “Gotta go. That’s what passes for major crime around here. Guess I won’t make it to the market after all.”

The screen door opened. Lee-Anne stood there, arms folded.

“Looks like you’ve got to go, too,” Sara said.

Billy looked back toward the house. “Then I better,” he said. Looked at her again. “It was nice last night,” he said. “Seeing you again. Outside work. Felt like old times.”

“I know,” she said.

“It did.”

He started toward the house. Lee-Anne disappeared inside. He went up the steps, stopped, and looked back at the cruiser. Sara paused, the driver’s door open. He looked at her for a long moment, then went in. Lee-Anne spoke to him-Sara could see their outlines through the screen-then caught the edge of the inner door and slammed it shut.

It was a little after five when she got back to the Sheriff’s Office. She left the cruiser in the garage, turned in her keys and paperwork. As the only female deputy, there was no locker room for her to use. She either changed in the ladies’ room or went home in uniform.

In the bathroom, she ran water in the sink, looked at herself in the mirror, thought about what Lee-Anne had said. That ain’t no way to get a man.

She washed her hands and face, then changed into street clothes-jeans and black T-shirt, boots. She untied her hair, let it fall. Her uniform went into the tac bag along with the Kevlar vest, her shoes, and the rest of her equipment, the holstered Glock on top.

Back out in the corridor, she slung the bag over her shoulder, checked her mailbox. Reed, the ancient black janitor, was mopping the floor, pushing a yellow plastic bucket on wheels. He nodded at her as he went past.

In her mailbox was the direct deposit stub from her last paycheck. She tore the tabs away to check the hours and amount. Behind her, she heard the men’s room door open.

“I thought you worked here just for the love.”

Clay Huff came up beside her, wiping his hands on a paper towel. He was freshly showered and shaved for his shift, doused with cologne.

“Evening, Deputy,” she said.

“Always so formal, Sara. Even after all this time. That ain’t right.”

When she turned from the mailboxes he was blocking her way. He was younger than her, a head smaller, but heavily muscled. When word had gotten around the Sheriff’s Office that Roy had left her, he’d hit on her relentlessly for almost a year. It had only stopped when she started seeing Billy.

“Like your hair,” he said. “You do something different with it?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Lightened it or something.”

Another deputy brushed past them into the men’s room. She folded her pay stub, slipped it into a pocket of the tac bag.

“Not really,” she said, “and I didn’t realize you were paying so much attention to my personal appearance.”

He smiled, stepped back. “Just trying to be friendly. Compliment a colleague.”

“Thanks.”

“And I thought maybe with everything that’s going on, you might want to have a drink, talk things out.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Let me give you my number, case you change your mind.”

“You never give it a break, do you?”

“No idea what you mean,” he said.

She moved past him down the hall, knew he was watching her hips. When she got to the front, Laurel, the dispatcher, was motioning to her from her elevated desk.

Sara raised an eyebrow. Laurel cocked a finger at her, put the same finger to her lips.

When Sara went over, Laurel pointed at the sheriff’s closed door.

“She’s been in there more than an hour,” she said. “She just showed up in a cab outside.”

Through the glass, Sara could see a young black woman, late twenties, sitting across from the sheriff. He was leaning forward in his seat, elbows on his knees, talking to her. There was a suitcase beside her chair.

“Who’s that?” Sara said.

“I only know who she says she is.”

Sara looked at her. “What’s that mean?”

“You know that man that got shot the other night? Willis?”

“What about him?”

“She says she’s his wife.”