American Rust Part 18

He stayed like that for a long time, looking out at the trees rushing past, afraid to touch his eyes and get dirt into them. Keep going, he thought, wash your eyes out. Outside now it was fully dark.

4. Harris

He'd gotten the call from Glen Patacki at lunchtime. Bud, Glen Patacki here, long time no see. Why don't we have a drink on my boat this afternoon? Bud, Glen Patacki here, long time no see. Why don't we have a drink on my boat this afternoon?

Glen was twenty years older than Harris, the local justice of the peace, the one who'd put in a word for Billy Poe last time. He'd been chief for much of the time Harris was a sergeant, one of the first people Harris met when he moved to Buell. This was the first social call in eight or nine months. The timing is no accident, thought Harris.

Driving up and down the steep hills, all woods and farmers' fields, the sudden ravines and valleys, so much hidden away, you could get to the highest promenade around and still not be able to see half of what was in front of you, the land was so tucked in on itself. Everything green, swamps in the lowlands.

Ho had dropped the morning paper on his desk, Billy Poe's picture on the front page, a story made for newspapers, football star turns murderer. It was the sort of story people couldn't help wanting to read. By tonight, he guessed, there would be few people in Buell, or maybe the entire Mon Valley, who hadn't seen or heard about it.

He downshifted into third gear coming down the long hill so as not to overheat his brakes. He could remember clearly when he'd had ten years left till his pension kicked in but now he was down to eighteen months. Counting down the end of your life. Hoping things will go by faster. He wondered if everyone was like that, he wondered if, say, doctors or lawyers thought the same things. He was fifty- four now, forty when he'd made chief, the youngest in the history of the town, the youngest in the whole Valley, it was Don Cunko who got him voted in, along with a big push from folks such as Glen Patacki. At the time they'd had fourteen full- time guys and maybe six part- timers. Now those numbers were reversed.

Harris was nineteen when he'd joined the marines, put down law enforcement as his preferred MOS and now, thirty- five years later, here he was, riding out a decision he'd made as a kid. I enjoy my life, he thought. It is work to be happy about things. She is the one who taught you that. Maybe the fact that you had to work at being happy meant it wasn't the natural condition. But he had no excuse. If you had a certain level of comfort, which he did, you just had to decide every morning. Will today be a happy day or a sad day? Listen to that s.h.i.t, he thought. The only one you'd ever say that to is Fur.

He could imagine himself following Grace until he was old with wandering, he knew he would be comfortable with that. Never close enough to get really burned, or to lose anything. Keeping her just over the next hill. The feeling for her preventing him from finding anyone else. In her own way, she was his even keel.

It was not her fault, to have someone like Billy Poe dependent on her; it had really taken a toll. Don't get too sympathetic, he thought. But it was true. He got worried sick about Fur if the dog was gone too long on one of his runs.

He saw the sign for the marina and went down a long green road under a tunnel of trees. How long had he lived here? Twenty- three years. Before that it was six years with the Philadelphia PD and four as an MP in the marines. He had not planned any of it, he'd enlisted because it was better than getting drafted and the number he pulled made being drafted a certainty. Someone told him MPs were less likely to get sent out on suicide missions by s.h.i.tbag second lieutenants, not to mention you'd end up coming out, if indeed you came out, with a skill you could actually use.

Coming into the parking lot there was Glen Patacki's black Lincoln, a judge's car, freshly waxed. There were those who waxed their cars and those who didn't. Below that, there were those who washed their cars and those who didn't. Harris being the latter.

Glen was waiting on his boat, he waved from a distance as soon as he saw Harris come out onto the green by the water. A thirty- eight- foot Carver, twin 454 Crusaders. A yacht, as river boats went. Harris had his own slot but his boat, a nineteen- foot Valiant, had been out of the water three years now. One of these days he would sell it. Owning a boat was like having a second dog, except a boat didn't love you for sinking half your paycheck into it.

"Christ what a day, isn't it?" said Glen. He waved his arm, indicating their surroundings. "Couple miles upriver, you'd never know it."

It was a different world. As wooded as Buell was, the southern Mon Valley was beyond the reach of industry. Just trees, branches hanging low over the water and the slow muddy river itself. Quiet, the occasional pa.s.sing boat, sometimes a tow of barges.

Harris climbed onto the boat. Glen motioned him to sit.

"Bud, to cut the bulls.h.i.t, the reason I asked you out here is I got the guy from the Valley Independent Valley Independent sniffing around, asking about any warrants." sniffing around, asking about any warrants."

"On what?"

"Anything we might have forgotten to file the seal order on. He's sniffing around, is the point, on anything that might look even worse on this Billy Poe murder."

"There isn't anything to find. If that's the only reason you dragged me all the way out to Millsboro."

"I missed you, baby," said Glen. "You know that's the real reason."

"I know."

"The other thing that's been crossing my mind recently is that I'm not much longer for this job. I thought we might discuss that."

Harris looked at him.

"I'm fine," said Patacki. "It's only that I've made my nut and I was thinking that when I retire, you might consider running for my spot. It'd be a good thing for you."

"Never thought about it."

"Never?"

"Not really."

"That's the beautiful thing about you, Bud. I could have told ten different people that same thing and all of them would be sucking my d.i.c.k right now."

"I better have a drink first."

"Sure. You know where they're kept."

Harris reached next to him into the cooler and found a High Life.

"From a professional advice standpoint, and, in having a few years on you, I wonder if it might be better if you stayed clear of Billy Poe vis-a-vis this thing in the newspaper," said Patacki. "Which includes his mother as well."

"You don't have to worry about me, you fat p.r.i.c.k."

"The only thing that gives me any hope is I hear that the case against him is airtight."

"I did those things for his mother, not him. I always knew he was a lost cause."

Patacki grinned. "You know you made it harder on yourself, not marrying. People want their public servants to act normal. Not have any vices. Like me."

"I hear you," said Harris. "You know I appreciate you going out of your way for me last year. Sorry it's coming back to bite you."

"No, Bud, you're doing alright, I'm just an old drunk and I got worried, not to mention I had a martini powwow with that p.u.s.s.y Huck Cramer and he got me all in a lather."

Huck Cramer was the mayor of Buell, and, like Don Cunko, he was caught up in the town's sewer- bidding problem. "Cramer might have other things he ought to be worrying about."

"Keep in mind that your job is an appointed position, Bud. You end up taking your pension down there in Daniel Boone County, I give you a year before you eat your gun. You're a social animal same as the rest of us."

Harris shrugged.

"I don't envy you, I know that. I heard about the G.o.dd.a.m.n budget, which I know means more of these part- time f.u.c.ks."

"It's the benefits," said Harris.

"I can't even get your guys to write tickets anymore, half of them are working twenty- four hours straight, they pull a shift in Charleroi, head down to Buell, then finish up in Brownsville. Meanwhile they live in Greene County. No clue as far as the communities they're policing."

"They're not supposed to work more than twelve straight."

"To be honest I don't care what they do," said Patacki. "As long as they write G.o.dd.a.m.n tickets. Even ten years ago I did six thousand cases a year, now I'm down to forty- three hundred. My office takes in four hundred and fifty thousand dollars where it used to take in over eight hundred. There's your budget cut right there. h.e.l.l, we used to take in one hundred thousand a year just from parking tickets, but now the girl we got working the meters, she's hardly ever out there."

"It's all just symptoms anyway."

Patacki nodded and checked his watch. "Late for my shot," he said. "You mind?" He pulled his briefcase over and opened it and found a small syringe, then lifted his shirt and gave himself an injection into the pale skin on his belly. He smiled at Harris, slightly embarra.s.sed. "They told me all this booze is probably what brought on the diabetes, but..."

"How's a man supposed to live?"

"My sentiments exactly." He took another sip of his drink. "Let me give you a scenario I've been turning over in my head. What if, before all those properties got bought up and turned into HUD, we'd just burned them down, say around 1985, every vacant house in the city had been razed before all those people moved in. If you think about it, by now half the city would be all back to woods. The tax base would be exactly the same but with half as many people and none of the new problems."

"Those HUD properties bought Danny Carroll his condos in Colorado and Miami. Without him ..." Harris shrugged. "There's your problem right there."

Patacki nodded. "A fact I find convenient to ignore, obviously."

"Which is not how I meant it."

"No offense taken." He put up his hand. "Everyone knows you're a good man, Bud. Most of the guys running things are like John Dietz, skimming quarters off the video poker machines. But you," he said.

"That's not my angle."

"Your angle is Grace Poe. That's your slippery slope."

"Not this again."

"Do you still see her?"

Harris looked away, out over the river. It suddenly occurred to him that the Fayette prison, where they were holding Billy Poe, was in La Belle, just on the other side of the water. Less than a mile, probably.

"You should have been here for the seventies, Bud. The department was buying new cruisers with Corvette engines maybe every three years. And then came the eighties, and then it wasn't just that we lost all those jobs, it was that people didn't have anything to be good at anymore." He shrugged. "There's only so good you can be about pushing a mop or emptying a bedpan. We're trending backwards as a nation, probably for the first time in history, and it's not the kids with the green hair and the bones through their noses. Personally I don't care for it, but those things are inevitable. The real problem is the average citizen does not have a job he can be good at. You lose that, you lose the country."

"Did the wife stop talking to you or something?"

"I'm old and fat," said Patacki. "I speculate and theorize."

"You ought to drink more," said Harris. "Or get an intern."

"I do. And I should."

It was quiet for a minute. There were other people sitting on their boats, watching the quiet scene, the sh.o.r.elines and the sun coming off the water, drinking like Patacki and Harris. Many of the boats never left the dock-gas was too expensive. People drove to the marina to sit and drink on their boats, then went home without ever starting them up.

"Who's getting the axe?" said Patacki.

"Haggerton. Also Miller and Borkowski."

"The new guy?"

"He does more policework than the rest of the department put together."

"Except Miller and Borkowski are lieutenants."

"Just Miller," said Harris. "Borkowski keeps failing the exam. Not to mention the new guy does half his work off the clock."

"You'll have problems with the union."

"I'll handle it."

"This the Chinese guy?"

Harris nodded.

"I can tell you like him," said Patacki. "That's a good thing."

"I guess."

"Permit me a final indulgence, Bud."

"How final?"

"I would like to tell you about the best job I ever worked."

"Why do I suspect that it's Magisterial District Eight?"

"Not even close. It was the Sealtest Dairy making ice cream. Sixty-four to sixty- seven, before I became a cop. This big building, it could have been a mill or something, only you would punch in and change into fresh clothes, then walk under a blue light before you were allowed to touch anything. You were never allowed to get dirty. Big buckets of pistachios and fresh fruit, peaches, cherries, anything you could imagine, mixing it up in the machines. You've probably never seen ice cream before it gets frozen, but I promise you there isn't anything like it." Patacki sipped his drink. "It really was like heaven, just being in there. You'd finish each batch and then take the barrels into the hardener to stack and sometimes, because of the humidity from the door always opening and closing, it would be snowing in the hardening room, ice cream stacked to the ceiling and it would be snowing down on you in the middle of the summer. You're making ice cream, it's snowing on you, and you look outside and it's ninety degrees and sunny. I'd take that job again right now if they offered it. It really was like heaven."

Patacki reached into the cooler and took a handful of ice and refreshed his gla.s.s. Then he splashed more gin into it. "Have you seen that lime?"

"I never would have known," said Harris. He handed Patacki a lime quarter.

"I'm worried that you're going down a road, was my point, where maybe you better think if you got one of those jobs you wouldn't mind going back to. Unless it's already worse than I've heard."

"It's not worse," said Harris.

"No?"

But he knew. Patacki could see right through him. He nodded but it was only kindness.

"It will always get worse, old friend. Good deeds will not go unpunished."

5. Poe

On his third day he walked out to the yard following Dwayne, it was full of convicts, alone, in small and large groups, pacing in circles, all with something different on their minds, planning how to improve their positions in life, all that could be gotten had to be taken from another. Nonetheless the DC Blacks stuck to their side and Poe was happy to stay on his. The sun was high and the guards looked down from their towers, M16s against their hips or some other rifle, he wasn't sure, no it was M16s, it would be a ma.s.sacre if they ever wanted it, they could turn it on like water. Beyond the double forty- foot fences and razor wire the Valley was still there in all its greenness but he no longer knew what to make of it, it was a different place to him now.

There was a hierarchy at the weight pile, the shotcallers and their lieutenants pumping out squats and dips and hanging out against the fences while a few dozen yard rats, the meth- heads and a.s.sorted trailer folk, they maintained a sort of perimeter, ran errands, occasionally stood close together so as to block a happening from the view of the guards. Poe was in the inner circle with Black Larry and the others, there were maybe seven or eight other men. But his position was tenuous, he could tell he was on a trial run, that was all, he was careful to laugh along with the others and get angry when they did. Once in a while a person who was not part of the group would come in to use the weight pile and one of the lieutenants would take their name down on a piece of paper.

"Nonmembers pay ten a day" said Clovis.

Poe looked at him.

"Least they got an option," Clovis said. "The ones over there-" He pointed to the weight pile run by the DC Blacks. "You go anywhere near there they'll start tossing weights at you, they brained a f.u.c.kin fish a few months back, a thirty- pounder right in the temple."