Illustration by Jonathan Bartlett

I did not eat much the winter of my last year in high school. I read compulsively and rarely slept. I didn’t know what I felt when my classmate Ginger Graham died three months after coming to school one day with a bump on the underside of her chin, several months before we were to hear which of the Seven Sisters had accepted or rejected us, and two days after my father hurled a heavy crystal glass across the living room of our penthouse over East 73rd Street, shattering the windowpane in a thousand pieces, and marking one of his last nights in what had been, for all these years, our home.

Miraculously, the heavy tumbler in which he drank Scotch and water, then Scotch and Scotch, bounced back into the room and landed on the grand piano no one played.

It was early 1972, and my parents were good Democrats who opposed the war in Vietnam, supported civil rights, and hated Richard Nixon. It was not politics that pulled them apart, but the political moment—the previous decade of protest, war, burning cities, burning bras—that gave my father the idea that marriage did not have to be a lifetime obligation. And the fact that I, the youngest of three children, was about to leave home. Why couldn’t we all just leave?—that must have been his thinking.

“Are you out of your mind?” my mother shrieked from the armchair that held her, a few beats after the crescendo, once we could see that the drinking glass had boomeranged back to the living room.

“No more than usual.” He did not shriek in return. No need to; evidence of his feelings was everywhere. Bits of glass covered the surfaces like confetti. The air was hushed, electric, and frigid. Cold air blew in through the jagged hole in the pane, and the wind threatened to dislodge even more pieces of glass.

It was her way to shriek and his to respond in dulcet tones, an effort of many years, to make her sound like a madwoman. It didn’t work that night. I felt a sliver of something on my cheekbone, and I could see that my mother was afraid to move. For one thing, she would have to cross my father’s path and feel, from close up, how much distance there was between them.

“Anybody want a refill,” my father said, “besides me?”

She didn’t look up. When he disappeared into the kitchen, she turned to me, her expression as flat and hopeless as I had ever seen it. In 1972 she was a pretty 47-year-old woman—I’m startled by her loveliness in the snapshots I see now, the bright brown eyes and soft smile, her abiding kindness laced with deep despair—but to me that night, she was old and haggard.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Since you’ve got shoes on, would you go to my closet and get my slippers and a pair of socks? I’m afraid to get up.”

When I returned, my father had a broom, a dustpan, and a brown paper bag. He wasn’t a liberated man doing his share of the cleaning, nothing like that—more like he’d made a mess building a cabinet or drilling a hole in the wall, and it was part of the project to tidy up afterward. But to do it properly, he’d need a vacuum cleaner, even I knew that—and he wouldn’t go that far. That was women’s work.

He had chosen the apartment for the view of Manhattan’s skyline that unfurled and glistened through the oversize windows that circled the living and dining rooms and that he hired someone to clean every two weeks. Through them, he could see from high above what he had come to conquer all those years before.

Now he was all out of dreams, out of rage, expectations, and money too. And it was impossible to see the skyline through the web of broken glass.

My mother put on her slippers as my father picked up what he could with his fingers, and I stood watching until I saw that I could retreat to my room, crack open the window to smoke a cigarette, and read a book of letters from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter. They were mostly written when she was at Vassar, and she was so alienated from her frequently soused father that when they arrived, she’d check them for money and news and toss them into a drawer—“these gorgeous letters,” she says decades later, full of regret at not having been a better daughter. I blew smoke rings out into the cold, keeping the tip of the cigarette in the night air. They knew I smoked, but the rule was that I couldn’t do it in the apartment. It was the only thing they agreed on anymore, maybe the only rule left in our household.

We’d moved to the city when I was 8 and my brothers were 11 and 12. The first year, my father ordered Christmas catalogs from Tiffany and Harry Winston, and we played a game with them well into the spring. One of us would cover the prices of things with our hands, and the others would guess how much they cost. He was schooling us in the ways of the rich for future reference.

It wasn’t until my last year of high school that I learned he usually had more credit than money and now had very little of either. He had made bad investments in real estate. He drank too much and made deals with people like himself. That winter a check that was supposed to come any day now did not come, and we ate a lot of spaghetti and were not allowed to charge anything at Bloomingdale’s.

He ate, when he ate with us at all, in a trance, and did not speak unless asked a question. But there must have been someone he liked, because he spent many nights out and returned as I left for school in the morning. We met sometimes at the front door of the apartment and maneuvered around each other silently.

The doorman on duty in the mornings had begun to say “Good morning” to me in a full, somber voice and dash to open the door, which he knew annoyed me. He must have thought I needed caretaking, and I suppose I did, but I wouldn’t know it for many years.

That winter was also the season of my floor-length navy-blue cashmere coat, which I’d bought for $3 in a thrift store and loved to feel billow around my ankles as I charged through the city. When the hem fell and I mended it with safety pins, my mother said I couldn’t leave the house unless it was sewn. My father said, “Since when are we so poor you have to buy your clothes in a thrift store?”

I wasn’t a fighter like my brother Daniel, but a peacekeeper. If I’d been combative, I’d have zinged back a barb: “Since when? All you ever do is complain that you don’t have any money.” Enter pandemonium.

Paris in the Twenties The Saturday Evening Post

“You were right,” Susan said. “The view’s great from the other side of the road.”

Jimmy Duncan watched her approach, the sun behind her and the wind riffling her hair. She fiddled with her camera a moment, then plopped down beside him on the grassy hillside. To their left, loomed a wall of black forest; jungle birds screamed and chattered in the trees. To the right, beyond the rented Jeep, a line of ragged mountains marched away into the blue distance.

“How do you know this place?” she asked. “You never said anything about all this.”

“I don’t know the whole country. Just this area.”

She grinned. “And I thought you’d told me all your secrets.”

When he didn’t reply, Susan’s voice turned soft. “This has something to do with the accident, doesn’t it?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I know you. The look on your face.”

Jimmy sighed. “That was a long time ago.”

“So?”

“Besides”—he plucked a blade of grass, examined it, twirled it between a thumb and forefinger before the wind took it—“I’m not even sure you’d call it an accident.”

“What would you call it?”

…

“A miracle,” the cop said.

Jimmy turned his head toward the voice. Not his eyes, just his head. His eyes were bandaged tight. “What’d you say?”

“I said it was a miracle. That car of yours was squashed so flat we thought you was too. You’re one lucky fool.”

Jimmy groaned. He didn’t feel lucky. He felt blind, and nauseated, and achy. From somewhere down the hall, he heard the sad rattle of a cart as patients were brought their lunch trays.

“The other driver?” Jimmy asked.

“Not even a bruise. Them 18-wheelers are built like tanks.” Jimmy heard a rasping sound, and realized the cop was scratching his chin. “Want some advice, kid? That truck’s company owns a thousand stores, and we got three witnesses say it ran the light. Sue ’em, settle for a couple million, and move to Hawaii. Beaches, sunsets, girls in grass skirts.”

“What if you can’t see them?” Jimmy asked.

“Yeah, well, that could be a problem.” The cop cleared his throat. “Catch you later.”

Which was a lie. The cop didn’t return. The doctor, however, did. Along with a parade of nurses and orderlies and even a few lawyers. But no friends, and no family. Jimmy didn’t have any of those.

He didn’t even have a home. For the past two months, since the layoff from the warehouse in East Texas, he’d been on the road. Footloose, but not fancy-free. His savings were gone now. He’d hoped to sell some of his paintings, but that notion had suffered the same fate as most of his other ideas. In San Francisco he’d heard about an art colony near Vancouver and headed north. Why not? He’d never seen Canada. Then, in Oregon, a truck had failed to stop for a red light. What had stopped was his tour of the Northwest.

Broke, alone, homeless, blind. Even his artwork was gone, destroyed in the crash. He didn’t know what hospital he was in, or who was paying for his treatment. Uncle Sam, probably.

He almost wished he hadn’t been thrown clear, wished he’d been squashed as flat as his 10-year-old Civic. Easier for everybody.

But life went on.

As if proving that, Jimmy soon learned to ID the hospital staff from their voices. He had little choice; his hearing was one of the few senses he had left. He wondered if he’d ever see anything again.

“Pressure on the optic nerve, plus a scratched cornea,” the doc said. “A specialist is coming in. We’ll know more then.”

Three specialists and two surgeries later, Jimmy was told he would regain his sight. Two months from now, maybe less.

His body was another matter. Multiple head and back injuries, partial paralysis. He could move his neck and his left arm, but only slightly. Otherwise, zip. Each day he was lifted into a wheelchair beside his bed, and each day he wondered why the wheelchair. Did they think he was going someplace? He was left to sit there a couple hours, and then they swung him back into his bed, like a sack of feed. Day after day.

And then he met Maria. She came one morning like a fuzzy dream while he was in the chair and whispered in his ear. He turned his head in the direction of her voice. Many people had spoken to him during his stay, but this was the first whisper. It had a Spanish accent.

“The weendow,” she said. “You must make it to the weendow.” And squeezed his hand. Then she was gone.

A nurse told him later who the woman was. Maria Renaldo, from the fifth floor. A small lady, mid-80s. She loved to talk with patients. No one knew whether her goodwill visits accomplished much, but since she was harmless the hospital allowed her free access.

Fiction: The Outside World The Saturday Evening Post

It was late. Mae finally put on her nightgown and sat down in her favorite chair by the front window for her nightly cup of tea. The snow had started falling a short while ago, and already everything was blanketed in white. The flakes were so big and heavy, she could pick out individual flakes and watch them as they fell and melded in with the others. She loved the snow. She loved the way the earth fell silent and sounds were muffled and distant. She loved how the glow from the streetlights shined like halos around the lamps and illuminated the snowflakes as they fell. It was a perfect Christmas Eve. Silent night, holy night, all is quiet, all is bright, she thought.

This was Mae’s street. She felt like she owned the entire street, along with her neighbors, whom she loved—each and every one of them. Eighty-six years she’d lived on this street. She remembered herself as a little girl watching in wonder from the same window—from the same chair—the snow falling in great soft sheets as it covered the roofs of the same porches and steps.

At one time Mae’s parents had owned all the land on the block where she lived and several blocks beyond that. As a child she’d watched as the land was subdivided, houses were built, and families moved into new homes with the excitement of starting fresh. She had watched as concrete for the sidewalks was poured and streets were paved. Her first friends had lived on this street, and they spent long summer days playing hopscotch down the sidewalks and hide-’n’-seek through the construction sites.

All her childhood friends had grown up, married, and moved away. But no matter. New families had come to the neighborhood. She was always the first to knock at their doors with a pie or a plate of cookies, ready to share the stories of the neighborhood. She wanted them to know they had moved to a special street—a kind street.

As Mae looked out at her street this Christmas Eve she marveled how, when buried in snow, everything looked almost the same as it had when she was 9 years old. Without the snow, the houses showed the weight of their 80-plus years. The porches sagged, and there wasn’t a house on the street that couldn’t use a good paint job. The families had changed, too. Betty Olson was raising her grandson—her daughter had married a scumbag and was now hooked on meth. Next door were the Sanchezes, and Mae could hear them screaming at each other most Saturday mornings. There was a permanent path across her lawn where the children cut the corner on their way to school. She didn’t mind. She’d been there. She knew what went on inside people’s houses. Life was hard. For a kid, cutting a corner across an old lady’s lawn is kind of fun. Sometimes she yelled at the kids to please use the sidewalk—only because that was kind of fun, too. She liked how they waved at her and blew her kisses. Sometimes she got the finger. That made her chuckle. Those little ones thought they were so tough! In the summer when she was in her garden, kids stopped by, and she let them pull carrots and eat peas. She always made sure her cookie jar was full. She loved her street.

As was her tradition, Mae had been up and down the street today delivering plates of her cookies, carefully wrapped in green cellophane, to each family on the block. The Mitchells didn’t have a Christmas tree that she could see. All three of the kids ran squealing to the door when she came with her gingerbread men and frosted bells, snowmen, and stars with sprinkles. She didn’t think there was probably much for presents this year. Owen lost his job six months ago and she thought maybe Wanda kicked him out of the house, as Mae hadn’t seen him around. It wouldn’t be the first time. It was tough for Wanda, trying to keep it all together with what she earned.

Mae had always watched the street from her window. At times, she’d tried to help. She offered to watch a sick child or would walk across the street to Lydia’s house and knock loudly and shout at the front door to make sure Lydia would wake up to get to her day job on time. But Mae’s efforts weren’t always appreciated. She understood that.

Mae didn’t have a Christmas tree either. In fact, other than her baking, Christmas didn’t come to her house. She watched the snow deepen outside her window, and her thoughts turned to Christmases past.

Her dad would put up a Christmas tree they cut fresh from the Beartooth Mountains. She and her mother decorated it with white ribbon bows, long strings of popcorn, and snowflakes cut from white paper. As the days got closer to Christmas, packages appeared under the tree. One year she received a guitar. That was a special year.

By the time Mae’s own children were born, her parents had passed, and she and John had moved back into her childhood home with the boys. Johnny was 4 and Timmy 2. She’d gone all out that Christmas. She purchased colored glass balls for the tree, and she and John carefully placed each strand of tinsel across the branches. They bought tricycles for the boys.

Mae reached up and pulled the pins from her hair and set them on the windowsill. She unwound the coil at the back of her head, and long gray strands of hair fell down her back. She sighed deeply and gazed at the houses on her street. Most were dark now. Yellow light filtered through the falling snow from the windows of a few houses. The houses blended into one another as the snow deepened and erased toys left on the sidewalks and junked cars in the yards. She liked to think the children were snuggled in their beds, just like the story. And, their parents were whispering softly as they filled Christmas stockings and brought presents out of hiding places. But she knew on her street Christmas was one more burden. In fact, she’d decided a long time ago that Christmas was more trouble than it was worth. For the parents on her street, there wasn’t enough time to make gifts or enough money to buy the kids the gifts they really wanted—gifts that would put them on equal footing with the other children at school. She was alone. John had passed away five years ago last October. They’d celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary the spring before he died. Johnny lived in D.C. He was a doctor. Worked for a V.A. hospital. He said the nurses always asked if she’d send her Christmas cookies. She’d mailed Christmas cookies to the hospital for 25 years or more, she figured. She wasn’t sure whether she’d send cookies next year. It wasn’t the baking that exhausted her, it was the packaging and standing in line at the post office. Just too much.

Fiction: Mae’s Street The Saturday Evening Post

Illustration by Jonathan Bartlett.

I wasn’t exactly happy with Jim wanting to change his name to Anatoly, but I tried to roll with it. Change is good 
in a relationship, right? That was the whole reason we went to Yellowstone 
in the first place, to zest up our marriage, have a little fun, do something new.

I didn’t think we needed an overhaul, though. Nor did I think the change needed to bleed outside our marriage. But after the first trip to the park, he started asking our neighbors to call him Anatoly. It was embarrassing.

“Been reading our Dostoyevsky, have we?” said our next-door neighbor Clarence, pleased with himself for dredging up a literary reference.

The other next-door neighbor, Walter, narrowed his eyes, assessed, and then shrugged—neither agreeing nor disagreeing, pretty much just dismissing. I imagined both of them telling their wives, Cathy and Shawna, and having a good laugh on our behalf. Little did I know back then that I needn’t have worried about the neighbors; we’d soon be selling the house.

Still, in the beginning, I tried to find the humor myself. My complaints for the 30-plus years we’d been together clustered around sameness, a hazy boredom that occasionally drifted through our otherwise happy marriage. So a new name? Why not? It didn’t occur to me that it might signify an entire identity change.

Anatoly means east or sunrise. Fitting, I suppose. But how did he know that? Had he been researching wild names before we even visited the park and met the wolf watchers? I heard him tell them his name was Anatoly that very first morning, but I thought I’d misheard. He’d removed his mitten and thrust out his hand, and the reluctant recipient of his greeting had ignored the hand but nodded when Jim said, “Anatoly.” I was barely awake and figured he’d made some obscure joke the other man didn’t get. I got back in the car and unscrewed the thermos lid, poured myself some coffee.

The ranger had told us that the wolves were most active at dawn and dusk, and that the best way to view them was to look for the cluster of people beside the road with viewing scopes. It was the dead of January, but sure enough that morning as we drove out the northern park road and entered the Lamar Valley, we found seven people in one of the pullouts, standing with alert expectation in front of fat cylinders on long legs.

Clouds obscured the stars. The sky was black and the snow, a deep lavender. We parked our Ford Fiesta next to the fleet of SUVs, and that’s when Jim introduced himself as Anatoly. Forgive me for repeating that moment; it’s the part of this life shift I can’t explain. The name must have to come to him in the way dreams lay out whole stories we don’t even know exist in our unconscious. A wild name, Anatoly, parked in the recesses of Jim’s psyche, perhaps for years, waiting for the right mix of circumstances to surface. Or maybe the sight of that black sky and lavender snow, the promise of those long-legged scopes, birthed the name right then and there.

For a few minutes I watched my husband from the car. He asked questions and received brief answers from some of the wolf watchers. Others ignored him. A couple pointedly never even looked at him. I saw him tamp down his eagerness, realize that there was a culture here that he best observe rather than blunder.

This was my first moment of capitulation, although I certainly didn’t recognize it as such at the time. Viewing my husband through the windshield, as if it were a lens that allowed me to see him objectively, I saw a man in longing. For what, I couldn’t have said, but my annoyance at his enthusiasm for a predawn adventure dissolved. He was thrilled to be there, lured by the mystery of wolves, hoping to experience something new. I couldn’t fault him on that. Whatever malaise had settled over our life together, Jim himself had always had a childlike curiosity that I loved. I opened the door and stepped back into the bitter cold air.

The ridge to the east darkened, and the sky directly above it lightened. The mustard yellow burgeoned into a tangerine orange, and then came the first rays of the sun, sheer daggers of light.

A wolf howled.

2013 Fiction Contest Winner: ‘Wolf’ The Saturday Evening Post

Illustration by Jonathan Bartlett.

“Git,” the cook said, “hear me? Git down to Winley’s and tell ’em I’m bad.”

This was the new cook at our school, Mrs. Cullen, who had toppled over in front of me as I was beating honey into the peanut butter. Hot rolls flew up, the cookie sheet slapped the counter and came down on her chest with a noise like a cymbal. So I did what she said, ran up the basement stairs from the kitchen and across the road in the already blazing sun to Winley’s. I ran past racks of stiff work shirts set out to air, and into the hot dark, where I waded over riding boots and galoshes and shouted out for Mr. Winley, without ever thinking there ought to be at least one teacher already upstairs in the school building who could come, without even putting out my hand to see if I could help the giant woman up off the floor.

“It’s the cook at school, she fell down!” I yelled. Hollow-eyed Mr. Winley emerged from the back of the store, his arms loaded with rope and halters and his head slapped to one side. His elbows stuck out of a stiff blue shirt with fold-marks in it as if he had just taken the paper bands off one of the shirts on the sale table. “We’re a ways from being open,” he said politely. Mr. Winley had managed the store by himself since his wife ran off, and everybody said five years was long enough to keep on waiting for her to come back, he ought to get up and start proceedings against her. But my mother said peaceably, “Leave him be, nobody around here for him to marry if he did quit his waiting.”

It was early morning, and there was not much more going on in town than back at home, where if I had not been chosen Kitchen Helper I’d have been still waiting for the bus with my brothers, at the end of our road with dew steaming off the mailbox. The week before school started we had filled our mouths with the blackberries there, and they were the last, there would be no more new red ones, only the hard white ones that never got a start and were promised to the molds.

Usually I rode down to the bus stop with my brothers, holding on behind our father on the tractor, but this was the week after Labor Day, my first week of being Kitchen Helper, and he had had to drive me in. It was the third week of record heat and humidity, and my new school clothes stuck to me.

“What’s the trouble, you say?”

“The new cook fell down. She wants you to come!”

Mr. Winley rolled his eyes and widened his nostrils. He said, “The cook?” and then as if he worked on a rusted spring he jerked my hand and hurried me out into the light and across the deserted road, the way adults always hurried, as fast as they could go without running. All the way into the schoolyard he was swinging his head like a cow being driven.

We got to the basement,and Mrs. Cullen was still slumped against the counter among the rolls on the floor, but by now the second batch of rolls, still in the oven, was smoking.

“Thought I’d burn up time you got here,” she said in a weary voice.

“Don’t open that!” Mr. Winley snatched the potholders out of my hand. I was in the Seventh Grade, I knew how to cook macaroni and butter-beans and make Parker rolls myself, and how to roll out pie dough and how to throw baking soda on flames.

“Don’t matter, let her,” said Mrs. Cullen. And indeed when Mr. Winley said “Stand back!” and let the big oven door down with a thud, the smoke that billowed out was just scorch, although the rolls were done for, not full and golden and puffing comfortably against each other but rolling on the tray, little and firm like new potatoes.

I set them on the counter and Mr. Winley sank down, holding out his narrow elbow for Mrs. Cullen to take, and squinting at her face. He said, “What happened here?” as if it were all in the past.

Mrs. Cullen was five-ten or more, and big, top-heavy, bigger on the floor than on her feet. When she leaned over the counter to bring down the cookie sheets it looked as if her legs would kick out in back as the weight of her drove forward.

“Heart,” she said, drawing the bib of her apron into wrinkles with her big fingers that could shove the gallon cans of baked beans from one hand to the other like a basketball. “All to which-ways.” Only then did I think there might be something other than her weight that kept her down on the floor. Mr. Winley thought so too. “Mercy, girl,” he snapped, “call the Rescue Squad! Don’t you people keep a telephone down here? Isn’t anybody can help?”

So I ran.

Oh, all of this came back to me as if that week of Labor Day were last week. I saw it all before me, in the waiting room at the hospital. I was waiting for my husband’s treadmill and scan to be over so I could take him home again. He was coming back from a heart attack.

It was not the first one. He is a tall, thin man, strong and active, but he has the heart of a fat, sick, stationary man. The heart is in his family. He has been sitting in waiting rooms like this for most of the years we have been married.

While he was getting dressed, the nurse called me in to see the doctor, who said as he wrote out a prescription, “So he retires a bit early and he’s a happy man.”

“A happy man.” If my husband will never be exactly happy—too familiar with calamity from an early age—neither will he act as if he isn’t, or complain, or encourage anybody else to complain. He will never sit back, he’ll always stand up, put on his cap, and go. If one of the children says, “I can’t keep on with this,” he will say, “Don’t then,” but not meanly, and of course they will keep on.

If I had felt like making a point I would have told the doctor, “This man won’t shed a tear for himself. He’s the next best thing to a happy man.”

When I got back to the waiting room I heard the tape this particular cardiology group plays all day—I remembered it from the last time, faint music that suggests some old-fashioned dance floor where couples are turning and dipping in a romantic but dignified way. The kind of music that keeps the present at arm’s length. I wanted to get away from the sight of all those instruments that record the efforts of a heart, so I put my head back and closed my eyes and went back to where I had left off when the nurse came to get me: A place and time in which half the devices in this building didn’t exist, and these three doctors hadn’t been born, where people blundered and guessed their way through primitive rescues, and scratched their heads while the clock ticked.

Hopeless Heritage The Saturday Evening Post

Illustration by Owen Freeman

As part of the master plan, Bonny Oaks was buffered from encroachment by undeveloped woods. Wildlife flourished accordingly. Raccoons. Chipmunks. Deer. Because the deer had no natural predators, they became more and more brazen over the years, tearing up hedgerows and nibbling azaleas in broad daylight. At night, they leapt like fools in front of cars. Residents were divided on the issue. One camp insisted that the deer were a nuisance, a hazard, an infestation to be exterminated like rats or fleas. A number of solutions were posed, including poisoned salt licks. Those turned out to be illegal, not to mention dangerous to pets and children, so this camp contented itself with deterrents like mail-order coyote urine sprinkled around their gardens. The second camp believed that the deer were part of the natural beauty that made Bonny Oaks such a desirable home in the first place, believed the deer should not only be tolerated but welcomed. To this end, several members of the community put out pans of oats in winter, when the woods alone failed to provide. Mr. LaPointe preferred to remain above the fray but before he died, before an embolism stopped his heart forever, he took real pleasure in directing his wife’s gaze toward twilight deer like statues on the lawn.

All things considered, then, it came as no great surprise when Mrs. LaPointe, two years a widow, stepped out to retrieve her newspaper one morning and spotted a dead doe in the middle of Shady Dell Lane. She assumed it had been hit by a car and she was prepared, at that hour, no witnesses in sight, to let somebody else worry about the carcass, when she noticed an arrow buried to the fletchings behind the doe’s right shoulder.

Mrs. LaPointe told her housekeeper, Sadie Petty, how she clapped both hands over her ears at the sight of the arrow, as if she’d overheard something filthy. On the phone with her best friend, Mrs. Penelope Ragland, she described the doe’s eyes—already iced over, she said, as if bored by its own death. And that afternoon, while undergoing her monthly color rinse, Mrs. LaPointe recounted for her stylist, Brenda Wimpel, the way the men from animal control hoisted the doe by its legs and swung it into the back of a truck—one, two, three, like a sack of mulch. She was amazed by the sudden potency of her metaphors. And the more she embroidered the details the more convinced she became that something significant had happened. She was still telling the story that evening to her son and only child, Blackmon, a substitute teacher with literary aspirations. He preferred the flexible schedule, he claimed, because it left him time to write. “The police were no help at all,” she said. “They stood around in my kitchen like, like—”

Her powers of comparison had abandoned her, a fact she attributed to the presence of her son. Blackmon had a knack for rendering her uncertain, for insinuating in her mind a whisper of self-doubt.

“You called the police?” They had finished supper—Sadie Petty’s shrimp and wild rice casserole—and retired to the wrought iron table on the patio. Drifting over from next door were muted, jolly voices, the scent of grill smoke, but none of the lots in Bonny Oaks were less than two acres, the tree lines deep enough to allow for privacy. Blackmon was drinking a Diet Coke and reading her newspaper. He decried the local paper as the work of half-wits and hillbillies, but he seemed pleased enough to take advantage of her subscription. He had been living with her since his divorce. He’d given up their condo in the settlement, despite the fact that it had been paid for by his father, ceded custody of his son despite Mrs. LaPointe’s offer to hire a lawyer so he could fight. The “Arts Section” was open between them, the evening light over Blackmon’s shoulder making a Chinese lantern of the page.
“Well of course I did,” said Mrs. LaPointe.

Blackmon flicked a corner of the paper down. “What about the paramedics? They might have tried CPR?” He coughed up a laugh, then snapped the paper back into place so that his face was hidden once again.

Mrs. LaPointe was about to tell him that he could at least pretend to care, when her neighbor, Herman Pickering, pushed through the screen of trees between their yards, wearing an apron and bearing a meat fork. His apron read Support Our Troops in red and white letters against a blue background. “I thought I heard you folks,” he said. Sweat ran in the folds and creases of his smile. He turned back to his house and shouted, “Douglas, come on over here a minute. Come say hello.”

A few seconds later his son appeared on the LaPointe’s side of the trees. Barefoot. Feet and ankles pale. He had a younger version of his father’s face, as big and square and handsome and uncomplicated as a coffee table book.

Herman said, “Did I tell you Douglas was home on leave?”

Bonny Oaks–May 2004 The Saturday Evening Post

The phone rings. I pull out the electric plug. No matter who it is I will say, “I’m sorry, our computers are down. Please try Monday, and thank you for choosing Blue Health.”

My job is to approve or deny benefits that have been denied at least three times before they get to me. I am the court of last appeals. But no one can expect me to play King Solomon without my electronics.

I pick up the phone on the tenth ring. Anyone who hangs up before that does not have the necessary staying power to represent himself in the arena of managed care.

“Hello, my name is Carlton Bennett. I am calling concerning a claim which has been denied.”

This last line is one I’ve heard before. The name however gives me apoplexy. This is a voice I know, one I would recognize were I unconscious. “Yes, Mr. Bennett.” I’m test-flying my vocal cords, giving our caller a fair shot at recognizing me. Carlton Bennett is my ex. My first ex. My only ex. My first husband. A man I haven’t spoken to in 15 years, five lifetimes ago.

“How may I help you?” I’m being ironic.

“I was told I could appeal a denial on a claim submitted for my son.”

His son? Carlton never wanted children. It was one of the top ten reasons we broke up. I woke up one morning ready to get pregnant and Carlton developed a serious case of not wanting children.

“How old is your son?”

“Ten, the first of June.”

Carlton doesn’t have a clue. He doesn’t recognize my voice at all. It’s like our marriage. He never knew with whom he was dealing.

“Let me pull up your record, sir. Could I please have your member number?”

“776-42-9816,” Carlton says. “Oh, sorry, that’s my Social Security number.” Eight digits that once were slated to bankroll my old age. I might pretend that Carlton’s Social Security number sounds familiar, but I don’t even know my own. “1456-6-779.” Carlton enunciates each number. He always was a crisp, clear speaker. I punch the numbers in and stare at the blank screen till I remember I unplugged it. I plug it in again.

Subscriber: Bennett, Carlton Wilder. Address: 435 North Grant Avenue, Weston, MA 01090.

Weston. He lives not 20 miles away. I had always imagined him living still in Albany where I left him. I’m scrolling through the narrative of Carlton’s new life. Well, new to me. If I wanted to, I could access every cough and cold and strep infection in his replacement family. If I wanted to, I could work out all their maladies. I don’t want to. Disease and illness scare me silly. This is the last job I should have. Half the time I’m terrified to look at the computer screen.

“The treatments for my son were medically necessary,” Carlton says. Loud rock music is pulsing in the background. It must be his kids. Carlton can’t be playing it. Nobody changes that much. “We took my son to a practitioner of acupressure who was able to successfully treat him.”

The Carlton I knew would not have known what acupressure was. Also, he would have split his infinitives only if he were nervous or uncertain of the legitimacy of his claim.

“What were the dates of service, please?” I’m leading Carlton down the garden path here. Blue Health pays for alternative medicine about once every 37 years.

“The treatments began last July and continued weekly for eight months.”

The man would stand a better chance of having us build a clay tennis court in his backyard.

“The practitioner’s name was Paul Johnson,” Carlton says, as though this might strengthen his case. Ideally, we like to see a long string of letters after the name of anyone we write a check to.

James Bennett. Etiology: Rule out father’s exposure to butoxyethanol, Gulf War. Claim referred to Veteran’s Administration.

Butoxyethanol? I used to wonder if Carlton might have contaminated me by his exposure in Iraq. I worried that what I might have taken from the marriage was some unhappy rearrangement of my genes from some nasty chemicals. I fretted that when I least expected it, I would contract some strange disease I picked up in some careless marriage.

Diagnosis: Profound Insomnia.

I breathe a sigh of relief. Number one, Carlton’s kid doesn’t have something terminal, and number two, butoxyethanol is not our problem here. Young James didn’t get insomnia from Carlton’s Gulf War experience; James got insomnia from Carlton, who probably got it from his father, who got it from his father, going back to Adam, who probably never slept the same after that little catnap when God took his rib and gave him Eve.

Carlton was a card-carrying insomniac. By the middle of our marriage, which is to say when we were 18 months into the thing, we moved for the third time because of Carlton’s inability to sleep. We were always being driven out by nighttime noise. In our first apartment the irritant was what Carlton referred to as black slack, a name he never would have acknowledged as having the slightest racist tint, but a name he never used with anyone but me. That’s what marriage is: a place to be a bigot, if that’s what you are.

Ancient African rhythms gyrated out of gigantic teakwood speakers in the apartment below ours. My bare feet would absorb the rhythm through the floor, the music throbbed like a mean toothache in the left bicuspid of the world, and five nights a week Carlton would get out of bed and go downstairs and knock briskly on the door and act all ROTC and explain how he wouldn’t mind the music at all only he had to study, and the husband and the wife would raise uncomprehending eyes and gaze through Carlton from underneath smart Afros that gave them each a good six-inch height advantage and never say a word.

And Carlton would come back upstairs and put his ear to the gold shag carpet and register with his red face the fact that they had turned the music down so imperceptibly that the overall effect was as though they had turned the volume up.

We moved a month before our lease was up to an apartment in an ugly building with thick concrete walls and heavy metal doors designed to keep noise and silence in entirely separate spaces. But our Cornell neighbors overhead owned amplifiers guaranteed to wake the dead and make them wonder, and their rock band played every day from mid-afternoon till 4 a.m., except for those odd moments when they took breaks to smoke dope and make love not war or to drink and fight. I tried to convince Carlton that we would surely find ourselves slaughtered and tossed in the leafy ravine behind the dumpsters if we complained. In that marriage, nighttime noises always ended in fantasies of our abrupt demise.

Our new landlord had an unlisted number (we were not his first tenants), so we would lie in bed and fret and sigh, longing for the gentle rhythms of Africa still pulsing in our last apartment.

In three months time we moved again, this time to the second floor of a house owned by a quiet if hard-of-hearing couple in their sixties who watched television every night from eleven until 2 a.m. We would lie in bed electrified, on edge, through jokes and interviews and monologues, every word as clear as day, and twitch and start with every wave of laughter, and Carlton would pick up the telephone and we would lie listening to it ring downstairs unheard by the snoozing husband and his snoring wife. “I wonder if they’re both asleep,” Carlton would say as he pulled his raincoat over his pajamas to go downstairs. In the end, we were asked to move.

“This is our home,” the landlord said. “We need to feel free to live our lives here.”

It seemed reasonable even at the time.

That retired couple were living their lives. We weren’t, not a bit. Carlton and I weren’t living anything. We were just trying to get some sleep. We spent our whole marriage trying to get everybody in the universe to turn the volume down so we could get some sleep. I should approve Carlton’s request for payment of his son’s treatment for insomnia just because of the grief it will spare the young boy’s future bride. Carlton and I were the oldest couple in America. We could have been out dancing. We could have been home loving.

“I think I should tell you,” Carlton summons me back to our afterlife in Massachusetts, “I know something about the law. I am an attorney.”

Hello? I know that. I put you through your last two years of law school.

“My question is,” Carlton uses his lawyer voice, “on what grounds exactly is this claim being denied?”

“On the grounds of gross insensitivity,” I want to say. “On the basis of gratuitous unkindness.”

A week or two before we married Carlton told me that if I ever got sick, contracted some horrible disease, lost my sight, or was suddenly disabled, he would leave me. He said he just wanted me to know so I wouldn’t go into marriage with any false expectations, and I said, “Okay,” and then, “I do,” a few days after that. I guess I figured I’d stay healthy. Someone should have kicked me around the block a hundred times. I should have kicked myself.

Then three years later with no one sick or lame or blind, Carlton took off as he had promised.

“My main concern,” Carlton says, “is how much more of my valuable time am I going to be required to waste on this claim? I have a life, you know.” Carlton has the temerity to say these words to me.

He has a life. No small thing that. I push some buttons at random and massage the mouse and try to decide if I can make a similar claim. I have my Jake, who is a sweetheart of the first water. I have a job that keeps me off the streets. I have a house and a gym and a church and a well-worn library card and a couple really funny friends. But a life? Do these all together add up to a life? A life with a big hole shot through the middle, a gaping hole where a child should be, a little girl named Eliza, a little boy named Junior Jake.

And on whom do I blame this life? I know for certain if I hadn’t married Carlton, I would never have married Jake. I wouldn’t have taken the winding snake path that brought me to the town. Carlton was the bridge I took to get to Jake, the road I traveled on to get here. And so, I hold Carlton personally responsible for all of the particulars of my current life. Nobody can tell us for certain why Jake and I cannot conceive a child, but I know the reason. Some way or other, the whole thing’s Carlton’s fault. And I didn’t realize before this moment that that is my belief.

“I have made this appeal three times.” Carlton’s voice grows testy. Not a first in my experience. “A subscriber pays his premiums,” Carlton says. “And what does he get in return?”

I gave you my youth, buster. My twenties. My only twenties, although I did not know it at the time. The best years of my life. Only that’s not quite the truth. They weren’t the best. In some ways they were the worst. The now is so much better. Even I know that. What I have with Jake is solid and kind, warm and openhearted.

Only half the time I can’t see it because of this child of ours who will not come to be.

“I sincerely hope we can conclude this business with this call.” Carlton’s voice has become seriously annoying.

The phone rings again.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I say. “Would you hold please?” I push the button before he can start to sputter. For some reason I am entirely out of patience with the man. He kept me waiting nine months while he was making up his mind on a divorce. It won’t kill him to wait five minutes.

“Mattie, I can’t find the metal file box with our taxes.” It’s my Jake. “It’s not in the kitchen or in the closet in the hall. Mattie, tell me you didn’t give it away or throw it out.”

“I did neither.” I am almost certain that the words I speak are true, or very nearly. “Jake, I’m busy here.” I only say this to put things on a more equal footing. As it happens, I am not averse to keeping Carlton on the line till Christmas.

“Sorry,” Jake says. “But where could it be?”

“Are you in the den? Look in the window seat.”

“Hold on. Great. Terrific. Here it is. Good girl.”

I forbear to bark as he reaches through the wire to pat my head.

“Jake,” I say. “I’m thinking maybe we should reconsider that adoption thing.” I had not a clue that this was coming. The thought did not exist inside my brain before the words came out.

“What? I thought you said it was out of the question. The last time we talked I pretty much thought that it was.”

“Well, maybe it was, and now maybe it isn’t anymore.”

“Well,” Jake says. “Well. Good. Well good. Well, fine. Okay. Let’s talk about it. We really could use another tax exemption.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s what I was thinking.”

After Jake hangs up I sit here palpitating up a hurricane. I cannot believe what I just said. I’ve always thought that adopting was the one thing I could not do. Too many unknowns. Too many variables. What kind of child might you get? (Unlike having your own baby where it’s all written down in ironclad guarantees.) And, it only hits me now. Adopting a child is no more of a crapshoot than anything else you do. It’s an illusion that anything is guaranteed. Life is a free-fall, start to finish. Name one thing in life that worked out the way I had it figured.

When Jake and I were sure that we would never have a child, not even with space-age sextuplet drugs and obscene medical procedures, Jake started talking adoption. I said we were too old. We’re 79, if you add our ages up. “Who adds up ages?” Jake said. “Our baby won’t.”

Jake hasn’t mentioned it for weeks, but I know he still thinks about it. I saw a book in his car about foreign adoptions and he goes out of his way to talk to Paul and Chris across the street who, at the combined age of 97, adopted a little girl, flying all the way to China to bring her back to grow up on our street.

I want a baby as much as Jake does. More, I think. It’s just that I have always been afraid to take the chance. Then Carlton calls up from the long past to remind me about the shelf life of a sure thing. When I married Carlton, I was signing up till death did us part and then for six weeks after that. Carlton was the surest sure thing I ever knew. Mr. Forever.

Adopting a baby. If anything comes of this and then goes badly awry, I’ll blame Carlton. It’s nice to have someone to blame your life on. If I hold him responsible for my serpentine life up till now, I might as well blame him for the rest. He’ll never know. Or, I’ll drop him a line when I’m 88: “Dear Carlton, Thanks for the phone call at Blue Health 50 years ago. Our daughter Eliza turns 49 today. She is and always has been the joy of my life.”

Carlton. Geez. I push the button on the phone to reconnect us.

“Carlton?” I say.

“Yes.” His voice hints at a decided preference for last names here.

“Carlton Bennett?” I say, regrouping.

“Yes,” Carlton says, all spit and vinegar.

“Yes, well thank you for waiting,” I say. “Sir. Your reference number for the approval is 33987.” I make the numbers up. I’ve found people like to have a number to wrap their amazement in, on those rare occasions when we agree to pay.

“Did you say approval?” Carlton sounds something in the neighborhood of pleasant.

“Yes, we are approving your claim for reimbursement.”

It seems the least that we can do.

“Call me again sometime,” I say.

“What?” Carlton is bewilderment in ten-pound, wing-tip shoes and a three-piece suit.

“I mean if you have any additional questions.”

“Oh.” I think for the first time Carlton recognizes my voice or wonders if he does. “Right, thank you very much.”

“Thank you,” I say. I mean it. “And thank you for choosing Blue Health.”

(Linda McCullough Moore’s newest book is This Road Will Take Us Closer to the Moon, lindamcculloughmoore.com)

Processing Claims The Saturday Evening Post

“You doing okay?” I asked.

He grinned, his teeth showing nicely through his puffy lips. “Like I’ve been saying, as well as could be expected.”

I kissed his forehead. “You okay moving around by yourself?”

“Of course.”

“Good,” I said. “But you be careful. You go and break your other leg, that means you’re stuck in bed. And I don’t think this whole ‘in sickness and in health’ covers bedpan duty.”

He moved up against the pillows, winced. “You could have warned me earlier.”

“But you wouldn’t have listened.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you’re madly, hopelessly, and dopily in love with me, that’s why.”

As I headed out Peter said, “Erica? Be careful.”

I hoisted my heavy purse on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I will.”

And then his face darkened. “One more thing. Sorry I got dinged up.”

I shook my head. “No time to talk about that.”

I blew him a kiss, which he pretended to catch and slap against his heart with his free hand.

My sweetie.

Cooper, Massachusetts, is one of the largest and poorest communities in the commonwealth, and I drove this warm May evening to one of its three police precinct stations. In the station’s lobby were hard orange plastic chairs filled with residents, most of whom didn’t speak English and were busily arguing with each other or with the suffering on-duty officer behind a thick glass window. When it was my turn I said, “Erica Kramer, I have an appointment to see Captain Miller.”

The harried officer looked happy to confront an easy issue, and in a manner of minutes, I was brought into the rear of the precinct station. Captain Terrence Miller sat me down at his desk and passed over a clipboard with a sheet of paper.

“Look that over, sign at the bottom, and you’ll be on your way,” he said. Miller looked to be on the upside of 50, with an old-fashioned buzz cut and a scarlet face.

The paper was a release form stating that one ERICA KRAMER was going to accompany OFFICER ROLAND PIPER as part of a civilian ridealong program, and that by signing said release form, myself and my heirs promised never, ever to sue the city of Cooper if I was shot, knifed, killed, mutilated, or dismembered. I scrawled my signature on the bottom and passed it back.

He checked the form and then he checked me. I knew the look. I had on black nylons, heels, short denim skirt, and a one-size too-tight yellow top. He seemed to consider what he was doing and said, “Well, I guess I’ll bring you over to Roland.”

“Thanks,” I said, grabbing my purse.

Officer Roland Piper was even older than his Captain, and in his crinkly eyes and worn face, saw what I knew: a cop satisfied with being a cop who didn’t want the burdens of command and was happy to be in his own niche. In the tiny roll call room Roland looked me up and down and said, “All right then, come along.”

We went out to the rear of the station where a high fence surrounded the parking area for the police cruisers. I followed Roland, him holding a soft leather carrying case in one hand and a metal clipboard in the other. He was whistling some tune I couldn’t recognize and he unlocked the trunk of a cruiser. There were flares in there, chains, a wooden box, a fire extinguisher, and Roland dropped his leather case in and slammed the trunk down. He went to the near rear door and opened it up, then lifted the seat cushion, looking carefully in the space behind the seat. He pushed the seat cushion down and closed the door.

He looked over at me. “If you’re ready, get aboard.”

I went around to the side and got in.

Roland ignored me as he opened up his clipboard, wrote down some notes, and then turned on the ignition. Then he flipped on the headlights, then the strobe bar over the roof of the cruiser—the lights reflecting on the rear brick wall of the police station—and then flipped on the siren, quickly going through four different siren sounds. Next to the siren console was a pump-action shotgun, bolted upright.

“Everything looks good, sounds good,” he said, backing up the cruiser. “Thing is, you test this stuff, every night. Don’t want to find out the sirens or lights don’t work when you need them.”

I opened up my notebook pad, scribbled a few lines. “Why did you open up the rear seat?”

He nudged the cruiser out into traffic. “Checking things over. Sometimes perps, they get arrested, even with their hands cuffed, they can dump stuff back there. I don’t like stuff dumped in my cruiser. Don’t like surprises.”

We were now out in traffic. He picked up the radio microphone, keyed it and brought it up to his mouth, and said, “Dispatch, 19 out and available.”

He looked over to me. “Got that? I don’t like surprises.”

I made another note.

“I got that,” I said.

I looked at the dashboard clock. It was 8:02 p.m.

We went through about a half-dozen blocks before he spoke up. “All right. Why me?”

“Excuse me?”

He made a right-hand turn past a row of old three-decker homes, the last one on the end a burnt-out shell. “You heard me. There’s about 60 or so cops on the department. Why me?”

“Because you’ve been here the longest,” I said. “With a half-dozen citations for bravery and excellent police work. I thought you’d be an interesting human feature story.”

“You writing for The Cooper Chronicle, then?”

“No,” I said. “I’m freelance. I’ve done articles before for other papers in the valley, but I thought maybe I could interest Boston magazine or even the Sunday Globe about your story.”

“Hah,” he said. “That’ll be the day.”

We went on for another couple of blocks and he said, “You want to know the deal?”

“Sure,” I said. “What kind of deal is that?”

“Deal is, I didn’t have to have you with me tonight. Captain couldn’t force me. And if he did, I could tell you nothing at all. But you see, the department’s getting a new allotment of cruisers next month. I made the deal with the Captain. I put up with you and your dumb questions, I get the best cruiser. No more riding along in this six-year-old deathtrap.”

“I don’t do dumb questions,” I said, my hands clasping the notebook tight.

“Hunh? What’s that?”

Now it was my turn. I said sweetly, “Officer, you heard me the first time. I don’t do dumb questions. You’re good at what you do, and I’m good at what I do.”

He looked at me, scanned my legs, and offered me a thin smile. “All right. Point taken. Just so there’s no misunderstandings, there’s two rules.”

“Go ahead.”

We stopped at a traffic light. A group of kids in Red Sox jerseys were on the street corner. When they spotted the cruiser, they faded into the shadows and were gone.

“Rule one. You don’t get in my way. You stay behind me, and if I tell you to stay in the cruiser, by God, you stay in the cruiser. Rule two. No questions about my personal life. I owe you and the taxpayers of Cooper eight hours a shift, 40 hours a week. What I do on my own time, what hobbies I got, hell, who or what I like to date, none of your damn business. Got that?”

Illustration by Jonathan Bartlett.

The light changed and we moved ahead. And he looked at my legs one more time and said, “You really thought dressing up like that was a good thing for a night like this?”

I flipped a page of my notebook. “Here’s a rule for you, officer. No comments on how I’m dressed. You got that?”

Another thin smile. “Gotten.”

We rode around Cooper for a while in an aimless pattern that I was sure was anything but. The radio crackled with different calls for other units, and I said, “Why have you always been a patrolman? Why not try for a promotion?”

He waited a few seconds and said, “Why put up with the aggravation? Same streets, same crime. You’re a patrolman, you’re responsible for yourself. You become a sergeant or a detective, then you got to manage people. Ugh. I have enough problems keeping myself in line. Hate to think of doing that with other people.”

“Then why this part of town?” I asked. “There are three precincts in Cooper. Hillside, Tremont Avenue, and here, the Canal Zone. Why are you here?”

I noticed that while he drove his eyes were rarely on the road. They were always scanning the sidewalks and the intersections, like a hunter searching for the ever-elusive prey.

“Describe them for me,” he said. “The precincts.”

“Hillside … well, that’s a bunch of nice neighborhoods and the outer suburbs. And Tremont Avenue covers the business district. And the Canal Zone … everything else, I guess.”

Roland raised a worn hand to the old brick mill buildings built along the banks of the Micmac River. He said, “That’s what powered central Massachusetts last century. These mills, making shoes, making leather, making woolens, shipping them out on the canals. And in the space of a decade, it was all gone.”

Most of the tall brick buildings were empty of light, empty of life. I shivered. “There’s squatters over there, drug dealers, pimps, all sorts of action,” he went on. “Oh, some of the mill buildings have been rehabbed with businesses, but it’s slow going. And this is where the action is, Erica. And that’s what I like. Action means the time passes quick, means I get home in a good mood.”

I made a point of taking some notes in my fresh reporter’s notebook. I looked at the dashboard clock. It was now 9:05 p.m.

Something chattered on the police radio, and Roland braked, made a U-turn on an empty street, and flicked on the overhead lights.

Our first call of the night.

We sped for several blocks and came up behind another police cruiser parked right up against a polished black pickup truck with oversized tires. Roland put the cruiser in park and with one smooth motion grabbed the radio microphone. “Unit 19 off at Tucker and Broadway.” He put the microphone back into the cradle and said, “You can come out, but stay behind me, all right?”

“Sure,” I said, and I stepped out with him.

We walked up to the truck and there were two young men wearing baggy clothes and backward baseball caps standing with their hands on the hood. A young female officer looked relieved at seeing Roland, and he talked to her, and then she watched as Roland went through the men’s pockets. Coins, cigarette lighters, and then plastic baggies full of white powder were distributed onto the hood, and within moments the men were handcuffed and placed in the rear of the first cruiser.

More chitchat with the younger officer, and Roland laughed and got back into the cruiser, and I followed.

He put us out on the street and, with microphone in hand, he said, “Unit 19 clear.”

“What was that about?”

“Just a traffic stop, that’s all. Clown driving that pickup truck blew through a stop sign, and Officer Perkins there pulled him over. She sensed something screwy was going on and asked for back-up.”

I said, “I read somewhere that some cops, they don’t like women cops out there on the streets. Think they’re too weak, they’re—”

“That’s a load of crap,” he said. “They’re tough when they have to be, and they’re great to be at your side during a domestic dispute. Man, I hate domestics. And anyone who can help me out here on the streets, I don’t care if they’re male, female, or any combination thereof.”

A few more notes made in my notebook. Roland said, “You surprised me with that comment. I thought you’d stick up for your fellow sisters on the force, something like that.”

I smiled. “Guess I’m full of surprises.”

The dashboard clock said it was 10:12 in the evening.

The rest of the night went on with more aimless cruising, and I eventually learned that Roland was ex-Army military police, received an honorable discharge, and started working on the Cooper force. And as for his citations for bravery, he shrugged them off. “Most of that stuff was just being in the wrong place at the right time, and having the chief wanting to make a big deal out of it, ’cause it made for good newspaper headlines around budget time.”

We also made two traffic stops, one coffee-and-doughnut stop (“And if this gets in the paper, make sure you write that I got a bran muffin, okay? No doughnuts for me,” Roland said), and a fight outside the Sloppy Cow Pub & Grub that resulted in one woman being arrested, two men being put into ambulances, and a good half-hour of paperwork and note-taking on Roland’s behalf.

“You having fun?” he had said after we left the Sloppy Cow Pub & Grub, where the owner was taking a hose to wash off the blood stains on the sidewalk.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “A real blast.”

Now it was the start of a new day, and my legs were getting cold. I watched the light blue numerals of the dashboard clock flip, and with each change of the number it seemed like the air in the cruiser was getting thicker and harder to breathe.

Then it clicked over to one in the morning. I yawned. Roland said, “You want to go back to the precinct, head on home?”

“No, I’m okay,” I said.

“Whatever,” Roland said. We were driving past another burnt-out collection of tenements and Roland said, “There’s a story for you. Someone should trace the deeds of those properties, see who owns what. Bet you dig enough, you’ll find that somebody’s making a lot of money off those arsons—”

The radio crackled to life. “Unit 19.”

Roland picked up the handset. “Unit 19 go.”

“Unit 19, 14 Venice Avenue, the Gold Club. Robbery in progress. Other units responding. Caller said robbers appear to be armed.”

Roland said, “Unit 19 responding.”

He replaced the hand mike, brought the cruiser to a shuddering halt, and then made a U-turn and flipped on the overhead lights. He punched the accelerator and I felt myself thrust back against the seat as we roared down the center of Market Street.

“What’s the Gold Club?”

“Jewelry store. Only one in this area. I know them … got a large inventory.”

“No siren?” I said.

“Nope,” he said. “Sirens just let them know we’re coming.”

Roland braked again and we slewed into a turn, and he said quickly, “Deal is, you stay in the cruiser. All right? Other back-ups will be here in a bit.”

I clenched my purse and notebook tight in my hands. “Right. I’ll stay behind. No problem.”

The cruiser roared down a deserted stretch of roadway flanked on either side by empty brick mill buildings and the still water of the canals, and with a slap of his hand Roland switched off the overhead lights. He slowed and then dimmed the headlights.

My voice shook. “Do … do you know what you’re doing?

“Yeah,” he said. “Alleyway up here will put us right across the street from the Gold Club. You just stay put.”

Another turn and Roland eased his way up a narrow alleyway and then switched off the headlights. He slowly inched his way forward. Up ahead was an overflowing dumpster, and he parked the cruiser. The handset was in his hand. “Unit 19 off at the scene.”

“Ten-four, unit 19. Be advised, other units about ten minutes in-bound.”

The handset went back and with a rattle of keys he unlocked the pump action shotgun and got it out. My heart was racing right along and I knew my face was pale and my eyes were wide.
Roland opened the cruiser door and said, “Erica …”

“I’m not moving. You just be careful.”

“Just my job, that’s all,” and he got out and closed the door behind him.

I saw his shadow move in front of the cruiser to the side of the dumpster. I watched for a minute or two and then, with shaking hands, reached down and took off my shoes.

I picked up my purse and got out of the cruiser.

The pavement was cold on my bare feet and I prayed for no broken glass or discarded syringes to be in my way. I reached into my purse and found a comforting object, which I withdrew and then extended. A collapsible police baton. The definition of irony, I guess one could say.

I whispered my way up to Roland. He was kneeling on one knee, shotgun in hand, looking out across Venice Avenue and the shuttered doors of the Gold Club and some construction supplies and the footbridges that went over one of the canals. I raised up the collapsible baton and brought it down hard against the base of his neck.

Three hours later I was home, tired, thirsty. The light was on in the bedroom so I walked in, and my sweetie pie was sitting there, face expectant, looking up at me.

“Well?”

I pulled a few strands of hair away from my face. “Gee, I missed you too, honey. Did it go all right? How are you feeling? What happened?”

His face flushed. “Sorry, Erica.” He moved about on the bed some. “I missed you. Didn’t sleep a wink. Did it go all right? How are you feeling? What happened?”

I dropped my heavy purse on the floor. “It went just fine.”

“So. Where have you been?”

I gave him the dear-why-didn’t-you-empty-the-trash-like-you-said-you-would look. “Where do you think?”

He tossed the cellphone over to me. “Talk to me, then.”

So an hour earlier I was in an interrogation room of the Cooper Police Department, facing an unhappy Captain Miller and a blank-faced detective named Stephens. The interrogation room was stuffy and I was twisting and re-twisting a paper napkin in my hands, which I used sometimes to dab at my eyes.

Captain Miller looked to me and then Detective Stephens, a young hard-faced man with close-cropped black hair going to gray. “Any more questions?” he asked the detective.

The detective stared right at me like he was trying to look through me and beyond. He had a cheap pen that he fluttered through his fingers like a magician.

“No,” the detective said slowly. “No questions. Just want to make sure we have it straight, what happened. Do you mind?”

“No,” I said. “Of course not.”

He looked down at his legal pad, read from his notes. “So when you got to the scene, you said Officer Piper told you to stay in the cruiser, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And after he left … what happened then?”

“What I told you. I saw him go up the alleyway to a dumpster. I saw him crouching … and then … I got scared.”

Detective Stephens said, “And what happened when you said you were scared?”

“I … I scrunched down in the front seat. I didn’t want anybody to see me. And then …”

I wiped my eyes again with the paper napkin. “It was so quick. A man ran by carrying something in his hands. He … he hit Officer Piper on the back of his head and then ran around the corner. I panicked. I got on the floor of the cruiser.”

“You didn’t get out to see what was going on?” Detective Stephens asked.

Snot was running down my nose. “I was so scared … and he told me to stay … and I knew that other policemen were coming ….”

“Mmm.” Detective Stephens said. “But then you had the presence of mind to grab the radio microphone and call for help.”

“Yes,” I said, my voice soft. “I … I knew I had to do something, and I pulled the microphone off the radio and called it in. Officer down.”

Both Miller and Stephens were quiet, and I said, “What … what happened at the Gold Club?”

Stephens looked to Miller. “It’s still under investigation. Looks like a burglary. Sorry I can’t tell you any more at the moment. Later today … if you wish to check in again, we can probably tell you more.”
I nodded, wiped at my eyes. “And … Officer Piper. How’s he doing?”

“He’s at Cooper General Hospital,” Miller said.

“Will he be okay?”

Miller smiled for the first time. “That guy’s got a thick head. He’ll be just fine.”

So about 12 hours after I got home from my ridealong my sweetie Peter was in the passenger’s side of our Toyota Camry, bags packed, the disposable cellphone having been disposed of, and I was heading over to the driver’s side when a black Ford F-150 pickup truck came into the short driveway, blocking us. The door opened up and Roland Piper gingerly stepped out dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black denim shirt.

I opened the door and said to my sweetie, “I’ll be just a minute.”

“You going to be all right?”

“Trust me,” I smiled. “I’ll be just fine.”

I went over to the truck and said, “Officer Piper.”

“Erica.”

“How are you feeling?”

He turned so I could see a bulky bandage around the base of his head and then turned back. “Not bad. Out for a week, and docs said I should be ready to go back on duty then.”

“Good.”

We stood there for a moment, waiting, and he made the first move, for which I was thankful.

“I’m just a cop with seniority but no command,” he said, “but you didn’t question me or insult me last night about being just a cop. So don’t start insulting me now. All right?”

I folded my arms. “Fine. I won’t start insulting you now.”

He leaned against the fender of his pickup truck. “After I was attacked and brought to the hospital I got to thinking. And questioning. And I decided to do some quick digging. You’re not much of a writer, Erica. Three articles in the space of eight years.”

“Good writing takes time,” I said.

“I’m sure,” Roland said. “And your husband … he’s a ghost. Not much of a payroll record, not much of anything. And the two of you … no criminal record at all. Which means the two of you are either simple and dumb or complicated and very smart. And since you’ve had a rental agreement on this apartment for just a month, I’m not thinking simple and dumb.”

I said nothing, waited. He cocked his head and said, “It was no coincidence you were with me last night. You wanted to be on that ridealong because you knew something was going to happen at the Gold Club. Not a bad set-up. Me being knocked out, leaving the scene deserted. Available for whatever. So you’d think … not a bad deal.”

“A deal,” I said.

“So,” he said. “Here’s my deal. A cut of whatever was taken there, and I go away, and you go away, and nothing more is said.”

I kept silent and he said, “Erica, no insults now. It’s a good deal. I won’t even ask you who else was involved.”

I still kept silent, and then he added, “If I got all of that in just a few hours, imagine what the detectives can do in a few days.”

I nodded. “How much?”

“I’ll trust your judgment. Just know you should be fair, or I’ll be insulted, and—”

I jangled the keys in my hand, went to the rear trunk of the Camry, and Roland moved around and said politely, “Just so there’s no misunderstanding. Just want to see your hands. Professional courtesy, wouldn’t you say?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

I snapped open the trunk, went into a side pocket of a knapsack, unzippered it, and pulled out a plain brown paper-wrapped package. I tossed it to Roland, who caught it easily.

“Quick question?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“What tipped it for you?”

He hefted the package in his hand. “You said you were doing a profile on me, you asked me all those questions, and then after I got whacked on the back of the head—according to the detectives, most likely by one of the gang serving as a look-out—you didn’t come to see me at the hospital. That would make your story even better … if you were planning on writing a story. But you weren’t.”

I closed the trunk of the Camry. “So what are you planning now?”

He smiled. “Early retirement.”

“To do what?”

He went back to his truck. “You seem to like stories. So here’s two stories for your consideration. Story one. A grumpy, embittered cop, working long hours, little pay, no advancement … sees his chance to score and leaves for sunnier places.”

“And the second story?”

“A cop with a wife in home healthcare with a long-term degenerative nerve disease who needs lots of money, who realized long ago that if he just stays as a cop and works lots of overtime he can barely make it go … sees his chance to score and be settled for a long time.”

He got into the truck, rolled down the window. I called out to him. “So which story is true?”

“None, both,” he said. “You’re the writer. You figure it out. And Erica … go far and don’t come back. The detectives still have a lot of questions about what happened last night. Don’t be around … you’re a cold one and you might get by, but don’t tempt it.”

I started walking to the driver’s side of the Camry. “We won’t.”

Inside the Camry I started up the car. Peter put his hand on my arm. “Had to make a payoff?”

“Yep.”

“Things okay?”

“So far, so good.”

I backed us out onto the street, thinking, less than a week. We’ll be in California in less than a week.

And I thought again about last night.

So about 15 hours earlier, after Officer Roland Piper fell to the ground with a moan, I put my shoes back on and continued to work. I slid the collapsed police baton back into my purse and then sprinted across the street to the entrance of the Gold Club. I ducked in a brick alcove near some construction supplies, knowing in a few seconds what was going to happen.

There was a creaking sound.

The door to the Gold Club opened up.

A head poked out. Took a quick scan. Missed me. Ducked back inside.

Hurry up, I thought, hurry up. The cops are coming.

The head poked out again. A whisper.

My unzippered purse was in my hand. I put my free hand inside, curved it around a familiar and comfortable object.

Movement. Two men ducked out carrying small black knapsacks in their hands. They started sprinting up the sidewalk, away from me, and—

I stepped out, dropped the purse, hands now cradling a Smith & Wesson 9 mm pistol, and I shot them both in the back.

They dropped to the ground, the knapsacks tumbling next to them. I stepped up and fired again, finishing off the one on the left. The one on the right was moaning, curled over on his side, and I kicked him over on his back, so he was looking up at me.

I said, “Tsk, tsk, Tommy, do you think I’d let this go? After my hubbie planned it, scoped it, and brought you and your brother in? It would have been fine … but you were too greedy, you twit.”

He grimaced. “Sonny … should have listened to Sonny … he wanted to kill your Peter … and I just wanted him out … by tuning him up …”

“Yes, Tommy, you should have listened to your brother.” And then I shot him again, finishing him off.

I picked up both knapsacks, went back to the construction gear, pulled out lengths of chain and some pre-positioned cinder blocks, and, in a few minutes, Tommy and Sonny were dumped into the canal along with my baton and pistol.

I emptied the contents of the knapsacks into my large purse, ran back to the cruiser and dumped the empty knapsacks into the nearby dumpster, and then made a desperate radio call and waited, shivering on the cruiser’s floor, doing my best to ignore the still figure of Officer Roland Piper on the ground.

As I drove Peter rubbed my leg and said, “Perfect. You were perfect.”

I shook my head and my sweet hubbie said, “What’s wrong?”

“Something not right,” I said.

“What’s that?”

I stopped at a traffic light, noted the exit sign for the Interstate just a block ahead.

“Officer Piper, he said I was cold. Can you believe that? He said I was cold.”

“Wow.”

I turned to Peter. “You don’t think I’m cold, do you?”

He laughed. “Erica … no way. Not cold at all.”

I smiled. “Thanks, hon. I appreciate that.”

My hubbie laughed again. “Of course, if I said anything else, you’d probably kill me.”

I turned, smiled sweetly, and blew him a kiss.

“Honey, you’re absolutely right.”

Ride Along The Saturday Evening Post

“What’s wrong?” Warren asked. “Too old and crummy?”

“Huh?”

“This tricycle.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“What are you staring at?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, turning away.

Another time, Lena happened to spot a hunched figure on a corner waiting for a traffic light, and once again a lost memory began to emerge. No way! Inevitably aged, with glasses and half as much hair, but otherwise no mistaking him. Little Miller! She rolled past slowly, confirmed the sighting, and that evening after dinner, when she and Warren fell into their nightly routine of kitchen clean up, said, “Today I saw a weird guy I used to know. Did I ever tell you about Little Miller?”

Warren, a man who liked to eat large drifts of peanut butter on toast and drive around listening to tapes he’d made with his brother when they were fifteen and had a band called “Mr. Peabody” said, “You’ve hardly told me anything. Who was he?”

The children screamed and fought. But she didn’t have to run to them immediately, did she? Better if they worked it out themselves, and so she began to explain.

The house with fruit trees and flowers had started as hers and Tom’s (her only boyfriend before Warren). They found it together, amazed by their luck. They were juniors, but having a life together off campus was all they cared about. They bought a set of china at the Goodwill and became known for their lavish dinner parties, until their budget gave out. No choice but to rent out the back bedroom they’d been using as a dumping ground. After dozens of calls came in, they settled on Yori, a Grateful Dead-loving free spirit with a Smith Barney account.

Soon Yori was joining them for meals, and before long, Yori’s friend Miller was hanging around most of the time, too.

Miller was a cipher. He was as small as a child, but looked old like a troll if you peered into his eyes. He wasn’t affiliated with the University. Yori said he’d met him downtown at a free concert. He said Miller was down on his luck and that he wanted to help him out for awhile. Miller clearly didn’t mind, happily playing the sidekick, laughing at Yori’s jokes, wearing his cast offs and accompanying him around town in the hand-me-down Volvo from Yori’s parents. Lena both felt sorry for Little Miller and disliked him. It was annoying he was always there waiting for his next meal, and his only possession was a dirty little backpack filled with crummy little things.

Even worse, he had started sleeping in the corner of the living room every night, emitting a slightly fungal smell. The house that she and Tom had loved so much had been invaded. Finally the day came when Lena and Tom asked Yori if he’d stop bringing Little Miller around so much, and to their surprise, Yori didn’t mind at all, as if looking for an excuse to get rid of him. That evening, while Lena and Tom were at a poetry reading at the bookstore, Yori delivered the blow. And when they returned home, Little Miller was finally out of their lives.

But so was Lena’s jewelry! And other things as well. Lots of things. Her stereo. Her clock. Some books. Even a small framed watercolor of an emu.

Furious that he’d been kicked out of the house, Little Miller had clearly gone on a rampage, looting and pillaging. They pounded on Yori’s bedroom door, and found him hanging upside down on the anti-gravity table he’d gotten from his parents for his birthday, listening to the Dead on headphones.

“What the hell happened?” Tom said.

“Did the deed,” Yori replied. “He was cool about it.”

“Are you sure he was cool?” Lena cried. “A lot of our stuff is gone.”

“He ripped us off!” Tom said.

Yori loosened his ankle straps and did a flip off the table. “Miller wouldn’t do that. Miller?”

Lena didn’t like to be accusing her housemate’s friend of stealing, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the little troll swiping a few things for revenge. He could sell the stuff at the flea market, make ends meet for a few days more.

“Why did we ever get a housemate anyway,” Lena cried that night. All her favorite necklaces, rings, and bracelets were gone, things she’d been given by friends and family over the years.

Next morning, as they sipped their first cups of coffee, there came a knock at the back door. To their amazement, Little Miller stood on the stoop. The nerve!

“Hey, I came by to get my sweater,” he said.

“Did you take our stuff?” Lena accused.

“What stuff?”

“You know! All the stuff, everything!”

“I didn’t take anybody’s stuff. I just want my sweater.”

Tom appeared behind her. “Get the hell out of here.”

“Hey man, my sweater!”

By now Little Miller had worked his way into their living room, but Tom was blocking him. “Give us back our stuff or get out.”

Little Miller tried to dart past him, but Tom was much bigger and he pushed Little Miller roughly.

“This is uncool!” Little Miller yelled.

“I said get out.” Tom shoved Miller so hard, Miller fell backwards. Then Tom lunged at him, and tore off Miller’s little knapsack.

Tom yelled, “Open it! See if anything’s in there!”

Lena didn’t like seeing Little Miller struggling on the ground and didn’t want to paw through his backpack, either. When she failed to respond, Tom grabbed the grimy pouch and shook it out onto the floor. A few t-shirts, an orange, some pens, some underwear, and a bag of potato chips fell out.

Illustrations by Owen Freeman.

“You jerk!” Miller gathered up his belongings and tried to stuff them back in. “I hate you guys!” He looked as if he might cry. But to Lena’s surprise, Tom still had no mercy. He began to kick Miller. He kicked his arm. He kicked him in the side. And when Miller stood up to put on his pack, Tom pushed him back out the door, sending him flat on the ground.

“You’re going to be sorry!” cried Miller.

“God! Did you have to be so mean to him?” she said.

“He stole our stuff!”

“So what!” Lena said.

“What do you mean, so what?”

Though they had been together almost three years, Lena and Tom didn’t last long after that episode. Lena was haunted by the way Tom had behaved. When they broke up, she even told him it was partly because of Little Miller.

Funny thing, because a year later, Lena ran into Tom at a Chinese restaurant downtown. He was with his new girlfriend, but he swaggered over to say hello anyway. He said, “Hey, by the way, remember that TA we used to have over for dinner sometimes, Richard, from Philosophy? Remember his spacey girlfriend Sunshine? Remember how we thought she was just using him? Turns out, Sunshine is the one who stole our stuff. She and some other guy. Richard found your emu picture in a box of junk in his garage, so you can get it from him sometime. What do you think about that?”
Lena gasped, “Poor Little Miller!”

The children were quiet now, and Lena was decidedly more relaxed. “So anyway,” she said, “I always felt like the whole thing happened for a reason. That Little Miller was a good luck figure for me.”

“Good god, why?” Warren said.

“Well, because if I hadn’t seen Tom attack him like that, I might not have realized how violent Tom was before it was too late.”

“Oh, so that’s the only reason you didn’t spend your life with Tom?”

“I doubt it, but who knows.”

“But,” Warren said, “maybe if there hadn’t been a Little Miller, Tom would never have reacted that way to anything.”

Lena shook her head. “No. It was just a matter of time.”

Warren said, quite irritably, “Who knows. If Little Miller was hanging around here, I’d probably attack him too.”

“You’d talk to him, you’d tell him to leave. Sure. But you wouldn’t go crazy like that. I know you wouldn’t.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Warren hissed.

“Evie needs a bath,” he sighed.

After that, a peculiar thing began to occur. Lena began to see Little Miller all over the place. Morning, noon, and night, in all different parts of town, she spotted him shuffling down the street with his backpack. Uncanny. It was as if a whole army of them had been unleashed, pacing the boundaries of her world.

There wasn’t much to complain about in Lena’s California town. The weather was clement year round. A little foggy sometimes in summer, and in the fall an occasional wind whipped in from the sea. Storms in winter. Nothing exceptional. Nothing except earthquakes rattling china cabinets and knocking down a chimney here and there. Nothing was perfect. How could she complain about a season of Little Millers?

“It’s weird, I keep seeing that Little Miller guy,” she told Warren one evening during their kitchen routine.

“I thought he was your good luck charm,” Warren said.

“Now I’m starting to feel like he’s some kind of curse.”

“Should I go beat him up?” Warren said, scouring a frying pan.

Warren was a good husband. She couldn’t complain about him, either. He did his own laundry and the children adored him. Nothing was wrong. Yet sometimes, Lena thought back to the days when she’d left this town and worked on the east coast at a distinguished magazine. It was the time of her life—she knew it even then. Sometimes she’d even think, “This is the time of my life.” Staff editor by age 24, bringing home manuscripts in her backpack every night on the T, discussing them the next day with the brilliant editor who was her boss and considered one of the great minds of his time. Lena had her own office at the magazine. It had high ceilings and beautiful moldings and a view from the old brownstone to the swan boats in the Public Garden. By now she would have risen up the masthead and would be spending summers out on Nantucket or the Cape. Her mind would be firing on all cylinders like a Mercedes-Benz engine purring over the Simplon. Full steam ahead.

Meanwhile, Warren often spent an hour driving home from the supermarket, circling around the neighborhood, just to listen to his old tapes. He always claimed the lines in the store were long, but Lena knew what he was really doing. She’d seen him once, barreling down the road, howling his head off with the windows up. Why did he have to listen to Mr. Peabody secretly? Looking back was a guilty pleasure, it seemed.

“It seems fairly certain you had lots of adventures before you decided on me,” Warren grunted, drying his hands.

“We’ve had lots of adventures too,” Lena said.

“Have we?”

“Of course!”

“Name one,” Warren said.

“What about having children and living in this house?”

“I suppose picking out grout and tiles and carpet squares is pretty adventurous,” he said.

She’d met him freshman year. Back then she thought of him as too straight-laced for her. The rest of her friends were sitting around listening to loud music and wearing hippie clothes. Warren wore plaid shirts with pens in the pocket.

Whenever he saw her standing at the bus stop, he’d pull over and offer her a ride into town. He had an old Datsun with ripped seats and a rattling dashboard. Wires hung from beneath it and tickled her legs. The heater was on all the time. If you let go of the wheel it took a nosedive off the road.

One Friday night she knocked on his door, her pupils wide and black as tiddlywinks.

“It’s Friday, Warren!” She could see he was studying with a hot gooseneck lamp on his desk.

“I have a mid-term Monday,” he shrugged. “How about you?”

“Well, there’s a party downtown if you feel like going.”

“Hmm. Okay,” he said, as if agreeing to a journey he would not complete for some time. “I could use a break.”

They lurched down the hill from the college. The air was so warm they had the windows down, and the sky was bright with stars and a moon nearly full, and when they reached the party people were putting eggs in the microwave and watching them explode. There was an apparatus in the living room you could hang upside down on to stretch your spine, and people were trying that, while others were dancing, and yet others were giving foot massages and smoking loosely rolled cigarettes of marijuana in the hall. Tom had invited her, and introduced her to his friends. After awhile she noticed Warren standing outside, his back to the party, perfectly still. Warren was strange, she thought. He didn’t care if he seemed like an oddball. He didn’t care if she saw him outside, standing alone.

In a while she came out to check on him.

“Shhh,” Warren said.

“What?”

On the moonlit lawn sat an opossum with brindled fur and a harlequin-shaped face, and it hissed at them, showing its pointy teeth.

“Wow,” Lena said.

The opossum hissed again.

“It’s stuffy inside,” Warren said.

“And it smells like rotten eggs,” she added.

“Do you want to stay?” He pulled his keys from his pocket. She assumed he wanted to get back to study, so she let him go. And it was the night she and Tom got together. But Warren had made a sound investment, and they stayed in touch over the next few years. One thing led to another. When he visited her in Boston, no longer did Warren seem square. He had become a nice looking man. He called it the opossum party—I didn’t want to go home and study, he told her. Didn’t you know? She hadn’t seen that at all.

One night, scrubbing chocolate out of a baking dish, Lena said, “So want to hear the latest chapter of the Little Miller story?”

“Okay, if I must.”

Yes, she had spotted Little Miller again, tiptoeing down the sidewalk like a mouse. This time, she pulled over and jumped out of her car and stood waiting as he approached.

“Hello there!”

He stopped in his tracks and peeled off his dark glasses.

“You’re Miller, aren’t you?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Lena. We knew each other a long time ago. Remember Yori?”

“Yori,” said Little Miller. “The clown?”

“Yori was a clown?”

“Yori the clown was a clown,” Little Miller said.

Lena said, “I was thinking of the Yori who lived in the house over on Cayuga Street. Who liked the Grateful Dead. I was his housemate. Remember? We used to eat together a lot?”

He squinted. “I meet a lot of people.”

“Remember when I accused you of stealing my stuff?”

Little Miller pursed his lips. “Don’t think I want to do business with you, ma’am.”

“Remember my boyfriend Tom, grabbing your backpack and shaking it out?”

Little Miller began to move on. “You’re stuck in the dismal past, lady.”

“We found out later you didn’t do it,” Lena called after him. “See, I’m trying to tell you I’m really sorry!”

He kept walking. How could she make him understand how much she’d thought about it all this time?
“You know, I was so mad at Tom for the way he treated you, we broke up,” Lena cried.

“Truth is,” Little Miller turned, “some bad things happened to me and I got mixed up with some really bad people, which is regretful, but people took advantage of me. Lots of them! Then I decided to draw the line. Now life is peaceful. Very serene. Beautiful. I’m blessed. God bless you.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Lena. “Anyway, I made you some brownies. Here.” She uncovered the plate she was holding. Wrapped in Saran, it was heaped with thick, chocolaty squares.

“What’s in ’em, rat poison?”

“Mostly just butter and cocoa,” Lena replied.

She took a few steps his way. He took a few towards her.

“Here,” she said, and bit into one herself. “Yum.”

With unexpected speed he advanced and latched onto the plate. He peeled open the Saran and neatly stuffed an entire brownie into his mouth. “Excellent,” he said, choking it down. “Bliss to you.”

“You did that?” Warren nearly shrieked. “Today?”

“Yep,” Lena said.

“You should have told me first. I probably would have said no. He’s obviously a mental case!”

“Warren,” Lena said, “if you said no, I would have done it anyway.”

“You would have? Don’t my feelings count?”

“What’s with you? I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

“I can’t believe you approached some borderline personality on the street with a delicious dessert. He’ll probably start stalking you.”

“God, Warren. You’re so sterile!”

Warren did the pots and pans for a while in silence, his elbows jerking wildly.

“He might have attacked you,” he said, after awhile.

“Warren, I’m the one who attacked him, remember?”

The children were watching a documentary about gorillas, gentle ones. There was static in the air, and Warren dried his hands.

“Then does this lift the curse? Are we free of Little Miller?”

“I think we are,” she said.

“You know, I’ve had a few adventures in this town.” He lifted the garbage pail towards the door.

“I’m sure you have.”

“Once I stole a birdbath. From the chancellor’s house.”

“A birdbath?” Most mischievous, most unlike him. “Why?”

The past flickered in his smile. “Someone wanted it. I had my reasons.”

“Tell me!” she cried.

“Never assume you have a man pegged,” he admonished, tripping out into the night.

The Little Miller Attack The Saturday Evening Post

Over the past year, she’d come for two of his best friends. Both went kicking and screaming into that not-so-good night. Poor old Wayne didn’t even know who he was for the last couple of months.

Charlie resolved to go with more dignity when his number came up. He told the guys down at the Lucky Wishbone that before his health got too bad he planned to stuff his pockets with bacon and walk into the Bitterroot Mountains for a one-way hike with the grizzly bears. His wife, Rachel, had scoffed, judging that such an idea proved his mind was “well past gone” and went on to dub him A Man Called Pooh.

Unfortunately for Charlie, his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer snuck up on him in the middle of winter. All the grizzly bears had long since curled away in hidden dens and would offer no help at all.

The Saturday before he was supposed to start chemo he woke up early, dressed in the dark, then kissed Rachel on the cheek. He stood by the bedside for a long moment, staring down at this woman who’d spent so many years by his side. He kissed her again and patted her softly on the rump. She was used to him getting up early and mumbled a reminder for him to put on the coffee.

Outside the bedroom, under the grinning portraits of five freckled grandchildren, he slipped into insulated winter boots and shrugged on a heavy wool coat. He pressed the start button on the coffee maker before slipping quietly out the kitchen door.

He would have to take care of this himself, without the aid of bacon or grizzly bears.

Montana was an easy place to be lost. He didn’t have to trudge very far off the logging road where he left his pickup before he was out of breath and chilled to the bone. He’d strapped on a pair of old snowshoes, but they didn’t make traveling much easier in the deep snow. As frail as he was, he didn’t figure this would take very long. He made it about three miles deep into a good stand of tamarack before he found a likely spot and sat down on a stump to wait.

Charlie had been sitting there on that stump, letting the cold wrap in around him, for nearly half an hour when the woman shuffled to the edge of his clearing. A weary back protested as he groaned to his feet. He chuckled despite the popping in his arthritic knees. Rachel would have been proud. Even with death coming for him through the snow, he’d retained a modicum of chivalry.

The gal staggered in from the tamarack shadows, into the pale blue glow of a forest snowfall. She moved as only a woman with high principles could stagger—shoulders pinned back, each hip pausing slightly before the other moved forward to take the lead.

Countless popcorn snowflakes floated down on still air, vacant the slightest breath of wind. Chickadees fluffed themselves on silent limbs. Even the chattering red squirrels had fallen mute. Apart from the squeaky crunch of the woman’s snowshoes, the clearing was quiet as a tomb.

She wore a plaid green mackinaw coat and charcoal gray slacks of the same heavy wool. It was impossible to tell her true build under the bulky clothing, but judging from the rosy, round apples of her cheeks, Charlie guessed she was somewhat on the stout side. Red hair spilled in a riot of curls from beneath a camel hair tam. The hat tilted jauntily above a flawless, oval face. She wasn’t young, but if she was anywhere near Charlie’s age, her years had been much less burdensome. Her green eyes held an inquisitive but world-wise sparkle.

If this beautiful creature was Death, Charlie decided he’d go along without a fuss.

“Oh, you gave me a fright, I don’t mind tellin’ you.” She pressed a hand to her breast, panting at the effort of maneuvering wide rawhide snow-shoes across the deep drifts. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be. When I spied you through the trees, I feared I’d run across a banshee or some such thing.” A thick Irish brogue curled from her lips like smoke from a fine briar pipe.

Charlie tilted his head to one side, grinning like a fool. “No ma’am. Not a banshee. Just plain, old Charlie Muldoon.”

Surely Death would have recognized him for who he was—a sick man on his last legs—easy pickings. Still, he supposed the real deal would have some sneak to her. She was, after all, a redhead.

Charlie shivered in spite of himself. A cloud of vapor enveloped his face as he spoke. “I hope you have a cabin hidden nearby.”

“I fear ’tis not the case, Mr. Muldoon,” the woman said, still panting. Charlie supposed Death might be tired enough to pant, what with all the work she had to do.
“I thought you might lead me to shelter,” the woman went on. “And what do I find but a man stuck knee deep in the same fix as I.” She tilted her face toward the sky, one hand on the tam the other still at her chest. Charlie followed her gaze, as if there was something above the treetops beyond gunmetal clouds and endless falling snow.

“How cold do you expect ’tis?” She said, still gazing heavenward. Snowflakes clung at her lashes like bits of feather down.

Charlie hunched his shoulders in a shivering shrug. His nose hairs were freezing, but such a thing seemed too indelicate to speak of with this particular woman.
“Five, ten above,” he said. The temperature would drop like a stone after dark. Bony and frail, he’d never make it through the night. That had been the plan before she’d arrived. Now, with the redhead, an unwelcome hope had settled in with the cold.

He looked at his elk rifle leaning against the weathered stump of a ponderosa pine as big as an oil drum. For a time, after he’d walked off from his pickup and the snow got deeper, he thought about using it. In the end, he decided he was too proud to be found like that. Better to let the elements take him. That wouldn’t be so hard on Rachel. She’d already be left with nothing but his meager retirement. No point in topping that off with the knowledge he’d blown his brains out because he was too big a coward to face a slow death by lingering illness.

“Don’t suppose you have any matches?” he asked the woman, trying to clear away thoughts of his dear Rachel.

“Sorry.” She tossed her head like an insolent filly, smirking at her own stupidity. “I’ve spent enough time in these mountains. You’d think I’d know better than to wander away from camp without a kit…”

She closed the distance between them quickly, the swish of wool against her thighs harmonizing with the crunch of snow.

“Marley FitzSimons.” She extended a mittened hand and met his gaze with a red-lipped smile so genuine it chased away the chill as surely as any fire. “I cook for Cyrus Brune, though I must admit I’m a better housekeeper than a cook… which is to say not too good at either.”

Brune guided elk hunters out of a camp beyond Badger Creek almost five miles from where they stood, over a sizable mountain range.

“You’re a long way from home,” Charlie mused.

“I am at that,” Ms. FitzSimons said. “I grew weary of so much man-talk in camp and strolled off for some fresh air like I was thick in the head with nary a gun or kit. I do have a pair of legs under me, if I you don’t mind my sayin’ so. Before I knew it, I’d gotten myself turned around on these logging roads. This snow’s covered my tracks or I’d retrace my steps.”

“Be dark soon.” Charlie patted the stump where he’d been sitting. It was already covered with an inch of new snow. “You must be beat, Ms. FitzSimons,” he said. “Please, have my seat.”

“Thank you, Mr. Muldoon. A true gentleman.”

“You’re wel—”

“How long, do you think?” She cut him off, nestling herself down on the stump, snowshoes kicked up before her to make a foot rest, boots still in the bindings.
“How long ’til what?” Charlie cocked his head.

“Until we freeze out here without a shelter or fire.” There was a calm sadness in her voice. No terror, just a practical woman looking for an honest assessment.
“Forgive me for saying so, Ms. FitzSimons, but you don’t strike me as the sort of woman who gives up quite that easily.”

Emerald green eyes locked on him like the twin high beams of an oncoming truck. “Oh, if I were young and still held fast to the notion that everything works out for the best, then,” she cocked her head, “maybe I’d have a wee bit of hope. But we’re miles from another living soul. You said yourself the dark will be on us soon enough—and we have no fire.” Her shoulders slumped when she finished, but only a hair.

Charlie chewed his bottom lip while he thought. “If we had a shelter…”

Ms. FitzSimons stared at the ground. “I’m no woodsman, but I do believe this snow will kill us before we build a cabin.”

“We can build the shelter out of snow.” Charlie shrugged as if it was all so simple. “See how it’s drifted up by those trees? It’s got to be six or seven feet deep there off the road.”

“A cave.” She looked up at him, a hint of jade hope sparkling in her eyes. “What’ll we use to dig?”

“I will use a snowshoe,” Charlie said. “You rest.”

“Rubbish.” She dusted the snow from her lap and wallowed to her feet. “I am a strong woman, Mr. Muldoon, both in will and constitution. If I am to spend the night with you in this snow shelter of yours, I’ll be helpin’ build it. Besides, the work will warm us twice; once with the building and again when we’re inside the cave.”

Charlie located a likely spot where a previous wind had pushed a deep drift against a low swell of ground. He probed with his walking staff and couldn’t feel the bottom.

Once he’d stomped out a sunken trail of packed snow to stand on, he took off his snowshoes and stuck one in the drift.

“Nothing fancy,” he said while he used the curved toe of his shoe to scoop out a rough, T-shaped opening through which he’d excavate. “Just big enough we can squeeze in together.”

His back screamed for mercy by the time the hole was big enough to get his shoulders inside. Perspiration dripped off the end of his nose.

“Slow down, Charlie. We mustn’t sweat,” Ms. FitzSimons scolded, working to pull the snow away as he pushed it back to her. “The cave won’t do us any good if we’re soaked to the skin.”

Charlie stopped to catch his breath. Their wool clothing would provide some insulation even when it got wet, but she was right, hypothermia would creep over him fast once he stopped moving.

“There’s not much chance of me staying dry once I have to crawl in there and dig us out enough space to curl up.” Vapor poured from his mouth as he spoke, settling to the ground at once in the frozen air.

“I see your conundrum.” Ms. FitzSimons was on her knees, leaning on the snowshoe she’d been using as a rake. “We’ll have to strip out of our long drawers while we dig, then put them back on before we go in for the night.”

Charlie slapped his knee. “That way we’ll have dry woolies between us and the damp. You’re a mighty wise woman, Ms. FitzSimons.” He gave her his best smile. The one from long ago. The one he usually reserved for Rachel.

“Well then…” she said, tossing him a quizzical look through the fading light.

“Well what?”

“Well, then,” she wagged her head back and forth. “Turn away if you please. I’ll not have you seeing me in the nip with nothing but my tam.”

“Fair enough,” Charlie mused. This woman was a handful. He turned and began the quick, ungainly dance of stepping out of boots, then his outer layers, finally stripping off his wool long johns. The sloppy wet kisses of snowflakes against his bare skin caused him to scramble back into his wool trousers, suspenders, and heavy shirt. He was buttoning his coat when he heard a throaty chuckle from behind him.

He turned to find Ms. FitzSimons holding a small bundle, presumably made up of her unmentionables. A mischievous twinkle said she’d not bothered to turn around herself.

She winked, reading his thoughts. “You never said I should.”

They hung their long johns on the low branch of an aspen tree that looked as bony as Charlie and went back to work.

Charlie chuckled to himself as he dug. Rachel definitely would not approve of this woman.

A half hour later as the last pale shades of gray light faded from a charcoal sky, Charlie planted his snowshoe in a drift beside a dark hole that lead to their new home.

“She’s done,” he said. “It’s tight—hardly enough room to turn over—but she should keep us alive.”

“I find myself indebted to you, Mr. Muldoon.” The mysterious woman pulled the collar of her mackinaw up tight around her neck. “Now, I have a surprise for you.”

Charlie swayed on his feet, lightheaded from the intense labor of moving over a thousand pounds of snow. “What? I don’t have to turn around this time?”

“Mr. Muldoon!” Ms. FitzSimons’ hand flew to her chest in mock embarrassment. “I’ll have none of your shenanigans.” Her chiding over as quickly as it began, she opened up her fist to reveal a Snickers bar. It was Charlie’s favorite.

“This is my surprise,” she said. “A bit of nourishment to warm us from the inside. I’ll split it with you, though from what I saw of your bony self, you could use it more than my broad behind.” She patted her stomach.

Charlie shivered, grinning like a love-struck school boy. He swung his arms in an effort to push warm blood to aching hands. His feet were nothing more than icy lumps at the end of quivering legs. “No matter which way you decide to look this time Ms. FitzSimons, I need to retrieve my woolies. I’m gonna catch my death if I don’t get into something dry.”
“And we wouldn’t want that,” Ms. FitzSimons whispered, dusting the snow off Charlie’s rolled long johns and passing them to him with a soft smile.

“I have one more surprise left in my pocket,” she said after they’d dressed.

Charlie looked at her, afraid to hazard a guess.

“It’s a tiny flashlight off my keyring.” She held it up like a Christmas present. “It’s not much as far as lights go.”

A skiff of wind jostled the trees around the clearing, pushing the two together against the sudden chill. Charlie took her by the arm and guided her toward the cave. “After you, Ms. FitzSimons, I fear there’s a storm blowing our way.”

He shivered so badly he thought he might chip a tooth. Breathing deeply of the icy, metallic air, he shuffled in on hands and knees behind the woman, first dropping down, and then climbing up to the raised sleeping ledge no bigger than a twin bed. The top of his head bumped against her rear end in the blue darkness. She said nothing.

Charlie had raised three boys at the edge of the Montana wilderness and knew a thing or two about digging snow caves. Once finished, the little shelter was amazingly warm, relative to the plummeting temperature outside.

The tiny LED lit the chamber like a torch, bouncing brilliant white light around the rough, oblong dome.

“This side is a wee bit more your size,” Ms. FitzSimons played the light on the far wall. “You’ll have to crawl over top of me, but I believe you’ll fit better.”

Charlie kept his head low to keep from knocking snow from the arched ceiling. Moving on all fours, he worked gingerly across the reclining figure of Marley FitzSimons. Halfway through his journey, he made the mistake of looking into her eyes. He was close enough he could smell the sweetness on her breath, see the sheen of moisture on her lips. He paused there for a long moment, him not moving, her not speaking.

“Charlie,” she said at length. It was the first time she’d called him anything but Mr. Muldoon. “You have saved my life, that’s certain. It troubles me to say it, but at my age, I’ve found myself looking up from this position at more than a few men.” Thick lashes fluttered. Her body moved under him. “But I can tell from those kind eyes of yours you’ve never looked down on but one sweet girl.”

The spell broken, Charlie shuffled over next to the wall. Maybe Rachel would approve of this woman after all.

“Well, Ms. FitzSimons,” Charlie said with a sly grin. He situated his weary bones next to the wall. “I’m not sure what you’re implying, but I just got back into my dry clothes. I don’t think it prudent to get all sweaty again under the circumstances.”

“That’s the spirit, Mr. Muldoon,” she said, scooting her rear end closer so it rested against his thighs. “You may wrap your arms around me if you wish… for warmth.”

“We fit together pretty good this way,” he chuckled. “Like spoons in a drawer, my wife would say.”

“Everyone fits together this way, Charlie.” She switched off the LED throwing the cave into darkness. “Because we’re all spoons of a sort. Though I fear I’ve become more of a ladle in my later years.”

Charlie let his arm slide under her shoulders. He pulled her closer for the warmth she brought him body and soul. “Women with a little meat on their bones are more my style.” His teeth rattled in concert to his shivering. “You just ask my wife.”

“Women like us…” Her whisper was somber in the darkness of the cave. “…we give shade in summer, warmth in the winter… and when we die, you can use our skins to make a boat.”

Charlie rose up on one arm, knocking down a shower of snow. It sent a wet chill down his back. “Hey, where did you get that? That’s what Rachel always says.”

“We’re not much different,” she said, “your Rachel and I. Now…” She gave his hand a gentle pat where it lay across her waist. “Time for you to go to sleep, Charlie.”

Charlie woke up aching all over. Cold air licked him in the face. Snowmelt dripped down the front of his collar. Screaming muscles told him he was still alive, but muffled, disembodied voices said death wasn’t too far away.

………

“Charlie?” The voice sounded low and vaguely familiar. “Charlie Muldoon, you in there?”

More snow hit him in the face. His eyes flicked open in time to see a plastic shovel break through the top of his cave. A brilliant streak of sunlight sent him cringing into the blue shadows. His hand flung out beside him, searching the snow.

“Where is she,” he said, shielding his face from the light.

“Where’s who?” It was that Sedwick boy who worked for the county paramedics.

“Ms. FitzSimons,” Charlie said, beginning to worry. “She was right here.”

“No one here but you, Mr. Muldoon,” the Sedwick boy said.

Charlie felt himself being lifted out of the cave. Had it really come to this? The scrawny little Sedwick boy could lift him so easily.

“Anyone know who he’s talking about?” Charlie heard the boy say.

Rachel was suddenly by his side, holding his hand as they strapped him on a stretcher with warm blankets.

“He’s always had a thing for Maureen O’Hara,” she explained as the paramedics worked. “Her real name was FitzSimons. He must be imagining things.” She bent to kiss him, tears streaking her face. “What were you thinking, you silly, stupid man? You could have died out here.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said, his voice sounding far away, even to himself.

He tried to make sense of what had happened as they carried him to a waiting helicopter. Maybe Marley FitzSimons was just a figment of his imagination—but oh, what a lovely figment she’d been. She reminded him of Rachel.

He remembered now, falling asleep thinking of his wife, hoping for the first time in a long time that he might have another few moments on earth with his sweet Rachel.

A movement at the edge of the trees caught Charlie’s eye as they loaded him in the medevac chopper. He smiled weakly when he saw the heavy green mackinaw coat. Ms. FitzSimons had taken off the jaunty tam, showing a full head of fire red hair. She waved, smiling brightly, as the men finished strapping in the stretcher.

“I’ll see you again, Charlie Muldoon.” She blew him a kiss. “But not quite as soon as you think.”

Death and Ms. FitzSimons The Saturday Evening Post

From a back room in a small secondhand bookstore attached to their house, Mrs. Abramowitz and Mrs. Silverman control the Black Widows, a worldwide terrorist organization created with a dual purpose—to wage a personal vendetta and destabilize the Western world. When Zach Dayan, a NYPD detective and former Israeli policeman, takes on the case, he is challenged by a series of apparently random, horrific murders with the same brutal chest slashings. He seeks help from his ex-girlfriend and expert pathologist, Dr. Jayanti Joshi. After examining the hearts, Dr. Joshi quickly discovers the common thread of the murders, but unfortunately, the clue leads nowhere.

Zach’s search for the murderer leads him to the hidden caves of Petra, an impenetrable ancient desert city, where he is soon swept into the bowels of an evil plot as he tries to save the Western world from another Holocaust.

To read a preview of the first chapter and order the book, visit dougzipes.com.

The Black Widows The Saturday Evening Post