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.
