Happy Policeman (22 page)

Chapter Fifty-Four

Jimmy Schoen’s eyes were glued to the television, where Russian Orthodox worshipers trod the splendor of a gilt-laden church.

“That’s all real interesting about building new universes, DeWitt.” Doc, hands in pockets, paced the restaurant. “And it’s fun to think Tyler’s praying in the cemetery convinced Seresen we’d been Torku-saved. But I’m a practical sort of man, and it’s easier for me to believe that while we was behind the Line, life went on like it was supposed to. And that, weird or not, this Russian revolution would have happened anyway. Maybe there just wasn’t no nuclear war.”

Staring at the television, Schoen realized that God had turned from him. He didn’t understand why. Perhaps God loved darkened churches, incense and candles, and the sonorous chanting of priests.

Then Doc said, “Maybe Jimmy lied about Bomb Day.”

Schoen couldn’t lie. He was God’s anointed. When he opened his lips, what issued forth was divine truth.

Doc went to Schoen, peered into his face. “On Bomb Day, when we lost the TV transmission and all the lights went out, did Civil Defense call you like you said?”

Schoen’s gaze floated over the restaurant, over the sinners’ angry scowls, over his parishioners, who averted their eyes. Somewhere, out beyond the summery hills, God’s voice faltered to silence.

“You Bible-thumping bastard! Answer my question! You never got no call before the phones went dead, did you? You let us live six goddamned years thinking our world was gone just to prove your tight-assed, fundamentalist point!”

Schoen turned and walked out the door, hearing a rumble behind him, reverberations of secular judgment. Climbing into his car, he drove home, and at the front door fumbled numb-fingered with his keys.

The house was dirty. On the kitchen counter lay the refuse of lonely meals. Schoen thought to open his Bible, but didn’t. Thought to turn on the television, but couldn’t.

He glanced at the wall phone and had the overwhelming urge to talk to someone. But he knew that, like God, no one would accept the call.

Chapter Fifty-Five

DeWitt, stirring his coffee, ignored the gaiety around him, careful to guard his thoughts. Keeping the universe balanced was trickier than he had imagined. So much to remember. He even avoided Janet and Hattie, because he wasn’t yet sure what he wanted to happen next.

Foster came up to the table. “Hey, Wittie.”

“What’s up?” Maybe if DeWitt could change the future, he could also change the past. Hell, he could make anything happen.

Foster tugged at an ear. “The whole town’s running around like kids at Christmas.”

“Uh-huh.” He could get rid of Bo. That’s what DeWitt could do. Or maybe not. There might be rules.

Foster picked up the salt shaker. Put it down. “Boy! You should see how things have changed. Everything’s light now. Doritos light. Fat-free this. No cholesterol that. The town’s tearing into bags of these new Keebler chips, and Stan’s trying to tell them they have to pay. You might run over there later and just remind everybody about . . . well.”

“Okay.” A Ferrari? Too selfish. How do you top world peace?

Foster’s gaze roamed the ceiling. “My house has new drapes. A new couch. There’s an interesting message on my answering machine from a Gulf Breeze Travel. My suitcases are gone.”

Oh. Feed the hungry. House the homeless. That was it.

Foster cleared his throat. “Bank’s all redecorated. Mauve and gray. Nice. Very nice. Chic.”

Protect the orphans. Heal the sick. DeWitt could—

“And . . .” Foster’s voice broke. “And almost everything’s normal. Almost everything’s . . .”

DeWitt finally looked up. The banker’s face was ashen.

“What’s wrong?”

Foster collapsed into a chair.

“A little problem.” “What kind of—?”

“Just a little. Oh, just a
small,
I guess . . .”

DeWitt grabbed his arm.

The man’s eyes were wide and frightened and empty. “Money.”

“You mean nobody being used to paying—?”

“No.” Foster squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, Jesus, Wittie. The money in the vault’s missing.”

“Oh.” DeWitt sat back. “I can fix that easy. No, really, Hubert. Seresen taught me all about universes and creation and stuff. Come on.”

They got up and walked across the street.

In the bank, he shut the front door, then pushed the vault closed. “Now calm down,” he said. “And just picture the money in there.”

Foster squeezed his eyes tight with what looked like a constipation of faith. DeWitt opened the vault: it was empty.

Foster wailed, “I knew it! I knew it couldn’t be this easy!”

“You’re ruining my concentration, Hubert. Go on outside.”

Foster left. DeWitt closed the vault. Opened it. The shelves were still vacant. He tried to control his growing panic. He slammed the door shut. Jerked it open. He thought about the money so hard that in the un-airconditioned bank sweat rolled, down his back.

Fifteen minutes later, his arm muscles aching, he walked outside. Foster was waiting on the steps.

“Did it work?”

DeWitt sat on the steps beside him. “No.” Nothing made sense. He had learned Seresen’s lesson, hadn’t he? How could he have caused a Russian revolution, then fail at something so simple?

Foster sighed. “Maybe it’s my fault, Wittie. I burned it.”

“But you said the safe was fireproof.”

“The money wasn’t in the safe. I burned it in my barbecue pit over three years ago, to show Seresen that money wasn’t important.”

Fatigue dropped from DeWitt like an old coat. He sat up straight. Laughed and slapped his thigh. “So that’s the reason! I was starting to worry. If the money didn’t exist in our universe, it makes sense that—”

“Starting to worry?
You
were starting to worry? What do I tell the examiners? What can I say that they’ll believe? The only proof something strange happened in Coomey is lying in Billy Harper’s grave.”

A gust of wind swept down the street, kicking up dust, making the telephone wires sing. The sweat on DeWitt’s face chilled, and instantly he was sober. “Wait a minute, Hubert. You can’t do that.”

“I know l can’t defend myself in court. I just wanted—whatever happens—to make you that promise. DeWitt? Are you listening? I said I won’t talk. In a minute I’m going to go back over to the restaurant and tell all the rest of them they can’t talk, either. Nobody outside Coomey will believe in the Torku, but they’ll believe vigilante justice. They’ll start to poke around. The Texas Rangers, the FBI,
60 Minutes.
Not only you but Granger and Hattie and Curtis. They’ll order an exhumation, they’ll arrest everybody. They’ll . . .”

Shock nudged things into new alignments. Pitfalls opened and quandaries gaped. DeWitt ran to his squad car and drove off, tires squealing. Down Main stood the intact structures of the police station, The Fashion Plate.

He sped down Ledbetter and through the cemetery’s brick entranceway. He parked and ran across the soft ground to the backhoe. The newly risen lawn on the south of the cemetery was undisturbed. No telltale bumps, no sinks.

Car wreck. Please. Billy died in a car wreck. DeWitt started the backhoe and began to dig. Two hours later he turned off the engine.

When he was sure his legs would support him, he got up and walked the long rows of graves. Loretta’s tombstone had vanished, too.

Maybe universes weren’t as parallel as DeWitt thought.

Maybe Billy was still alive. Of course. That was it. He’d be a construction foreman. He’d have a chicken-fried-steak-and-mashed-potato belly. Billy would have gotten lazier, a little more mellow. He’d be in marriage counseling.

DeWitt drove to Loretta’s house. The road was back–a clay trail from the highway through the trees. He inched the car down it. Rounding the corner, he saw the boxwoods, the redbud tree.

He got out of the car. The foundation of Loretta’s house was weathered by winters of ice, summers of drought. Stubborn weeds pushed through cracks in the concrete.

The new world order collapsed, and DeWitt with it. He fell to his knees on the muddy earth and sobbed.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Curtis’s television was on, the VCR blinking a message that the tape had played through and then reversed. Before Bomb Day, the set had been tuned to WFAA.
Jeopardy
was playing.

DeWitt backed out of the room and tiptoed to Curtis’s study. He rummaged through a two-drawer cabinet, through a desk. He went through a stack of papers on a chair. It was there that he found it, stuffed in a Perry Mason novel: the execution order, written in Tyler’s own hand. In an overflowing ashtray he found a Days Inn matchbook.

Only when the note was ashes did he go to the bedroom and shove at the blanketed mound on the bed. “Get up!”

Curtis groaned and tried to crawl lower into the stale covers.

DeWitt poked at him. “Get up, now!”

Curtis sat up, blinking. “What bug bit your butt? And why’s it so hot?” Then his eyes fell on the television. “Christ, Wittie. That looks like
Jeopardy.”

DeWitt pulled Curtis from the room.

“What’s going on? Goddamn it, Wittie, stop pushing. Get your hands off me, will you? Was that
Jeopardy?”

In the backyard Curtis’s marijuana stood bright green and lush, the unculled seeds having fallen haphazard and thick.

Abandoning the stunned Curtis on the back porch, DeWitt darted into the garage and came out with two hoes. “Start digging them up.”

He shoved a hoe at him. Curtis backed away.

“The Line’s down. The Torku are gone. You understand me? We’ve been living six years in a fucking dream world! Now dig these things the hell up!” He began hacking furiously at the plants. The heady odor of sap rose.

Curtis’s fist connected with his side. DeWitt fell into a pile of marijuana. Curtis threw himself on DeWitt’s back and hit him again.

Untangling himself, ducking blows, DeWitt grabbed Curtis’s wrist and cuffed it.

“What’s got into you?” Curtis asked. “You ain’t acting like yourself at all! Jesus, Wittie, I thought we was friends! I thought . . .”

“Get real, Curtis. I’m still a cop.”

Manhandling Curtis to the house, DeWitt locked the other cuff around the outside spigot. A silent heap of dejection, Curtis sat watching DeWitt level the rest of the plants and carry them to the compost heap.

DeWitt stood over the pile, wondering if he should burn it. He didn’t dare. The sheriff’s department would be cruising the town, the Department of Public Safety prowling the highway. DeWitt’s own daddy might drop by. He would have to remember that life in this world continued without a blip, except for those six lost months. Time was so fucking arbitrary.

He went to the bait store and took four economy-size bottles of Liquid-Plumr. He got the ginger jar out of the bathroom and his own trash bag from his trunk. By the time he had soaked and buried the evidence, the sun was low in the sky and his shirt was soggy with sweat.

He freed Curtis.

Curtis struggled to his feet, swaying. “You sorry son of a bitch,” he said. “You‘re fired.”

* * *

Half an hour later, DeWitt climbed Hattie’s porch, weighed down by a dark loss of faith. The house was empty. He looked around the living room. A photograph of the young Hattie with Al Shieba and his blue ribbon; a photo of a girlish Hattie and two infant boys at the beach.

It was time. He walked out the back door and across the yard. Hattie looked up from grooming her bay mare. With the hand that was holding the currycomb she pushed an errant lock of hair back into place. It didn’t stay.

“You okay? You look . . .”

Of course he was okay. His father was probably alive. Everyone safe on the other side of the Line. So what if he hadn’t created the universe? There had been no war. Happy endings were still happy, weren’t they?

Hattie turned her eyes to her work. “Are you going back to Janet?”

“Yes. “

The currycomb made a teeth-on-edge sound through the mare’s mane. More hair slipped from Hattie’s bun; it hung about her face like spiderwebs. She would always be older than Janet, always plainer; she couldn’t help that.

“You never were any good at changes.” She dropped the currycomb into a bucket. “Do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

She looked up. “Don’t ever feel sorry for me. Don’t do that. You’re the one who’s the loser.”

“Hattie, don’t—”

“Damn it, DeWitt, don’t make a face. Don’t patronize me like that. And don’t you walk away! Don’t you dare walk away! You owe me enough to listen.”

Facing her was so difficult.

“No one else understands how much Seresen took from you. Not Janet. Not Curtis. Not Bo. For six years you were an important man, running to Seresen, getting things done. Life was easy. Now it won’t be. Not ever that easy again.”

DeWitt closed his eyes.

“You’ll look around town and you’ll remember, because importance is something a person never forgets. You’ll go back to your house and resume the payments on your mortgage. You’ll scrimp to buy clothes for your kids, because we never paid you enough, did we, Wittie? And every day from now on, you’ll have to face the fact you’re just the police chief of Bumfuck, Texas. But you’ll remember and sometimes you’ll want the Line back, even if it means people on the other side dead.”

“Are you finished?”

“Yes. “

“Curtis wants to fire me. When the City Council meets, will you support him?”

She turned away. “No. But if I wanted to be kind, I would.”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

With a brush and yellow paint DeWitt obliterated the penis. Doc hadn’t been the author of this graffiti, although he had been guilty of the rest. No need for the physician’s rebellion now that the Torku were gone.

The anonymous artist had given the crosswalk figure a parody of a young man’s forty-five-degree erection, and one that was uniquely bowed. DeWitt thought that if he could put the town’s male teenagers in a lineup, tumescent pricks exposed, he would be able to pick out the model of that self-portrait.

Dipping the brush into the can of paint, he paused and looked at the library windows. Although the holiday was three weeks away, Halloween fever was building. The children’s drawings in the windows were play-scary, dominated by stick witches and green goblins and amoeba-shaped ghosts.

But there were other ghosts in the drawings. Here a pink-eyed Torku held a child’s hand; there a Rocky Road-colored Torku delivered pints of chocolate ice cream.

Everywhere a Torku.

Two months gone, and DeWitt could barely remember Seresen’s face. Two mind-numbing months of the speed trap and refencing cattle and ticketing runners of Coomey’s single red light.

He squatted and tamped the top back on the can. Beside him he heard the hollow
tunk-tunk
of a basketball on the sidewalk.

“‘Chief,” B.J. said, hugging the basketball to his stomach.

I got a warrant. Open up that fly and let me see your erection.
But the artist couldn’t have been the shy, diffident B.J. “How’s it going, son?”

B.J. held the basketball like a stuffed toy. “I buh-buh-been muh-muh-meaning to . . .” he began, hampered by emotion.

DeWitt’s eyes narrowed.

The boy’s face worked. A blush spread across his cheeks, darkening his umber face. “It was muh-muh-me, Chief. The Torku left buh-because of me.”

DeWitt rose from his crouch. When B.J. stepped back, DeWitt realized how threatening he must look. He turned to the sign. A yellow drip was bisecting the stick figure’s leg.

“I never muh-meant to hurt anybody.”

The drip continued down; it sliced through the black border to hang, a yellow teat, on the bottom edge.

“You were part of the rebellion, weren’t you, B.J.”

“Yes, suh-suh-sir. You gonna arrest me?”

DeWitt leaned his back against the squad car and stared at the long blue shadows on the library lawn. “No.”

He propped his hands on his wide belt, again surprised to feel the presence of his gun. Two aimless months and DeWitt had begun to wonder what it would feel like to put the muzzle of his new Glock 9mm into his mouth, and if he could pull the trigger. It wasn’t that he wanted to. It wasn’t even that he believed he’d do it. But time and again the thought rumbled in his mind like approaching thunder.

“Muh-mama afraid I get in trouble. She say she expect more out of me than throwing gasoline bombs at the chief of police.”

DeWitt nodded.

“It just that everybuh-buh-body just got into the mood of it, you know? And we was all real sure them Torku was killing us and putting germs in the well and all. Felt real ashamed when I learned the truth. Kept thinking as how them Torku never done us no harm.” His face crumpled like brown tissue paper. He hugged the basketball tighter. “They never duh-done us no harm.”

After an awkward moment DeWitt put the paint can on the floorboard, got into the squad car, and drove off, leaving B.J. On the sidewalk with his basketball: the statue of a sad god with the world in his arms.

DeWitt stopped behind a Department of Public Safety car parked at the curb. Across the vacant lot where the rec center had once stood, grass was already wearing its autumn tassels. In the center of the field stood Bo, facing the woods expectantly, hands clasped, head slightly cocked, as if waiting for a bus.

If the bus should come rumbling and swaying across the grass, Seresen driving, Loretta and Billy and their two kids in front, and Pastor Jimmy in back, DeWitt wondered if Bo would get in.

The officer had returned for the funeral. He looked strange in his DPS uniform, his sunglasses in his pocket, his guileless eyes sad. When DeWitt had gone up to shake his hand, Bo whispered, “My fault. My fault.”

But it was Seresen’s fault. And it was Jimmy’s. Pastor Jimmy and his terrible fear of freedom.

Of all the bodies, his had been the most peaceful. DeWitt found him dressed in his Sunday best, the bottle of tranquilizers beside him, Doc’s name printed on the label.

A mutter in DeWitt’s mind, a gun-oil taste on his tongue. He lit a Marlboro and rolled down the window. Nothing moved but the heavy-headed, wind-tossed grass. A few blocks away he could hear the piercing shrieks of children’s laughter. To the east a big dog gave a thick-chested bark.

Bo turned, started back to his car, but halted when he caught sight of DeWitt.

“Surprised to see you,” DeWitt said, getting out. He dropped the butt of his cigarette to the asphalt and ground it out with his boot. They watched each over the hood.

“Came in to meet the Realtor. Wanted to see Hubert. A shame that the bank failed, anyway. He was the only friend I ever had.” Bo’s melancholy gaze wandered. “So. How are the reserve officers working out?”

“Fine. Don’t need more than a couple of reserves. Not much happening anymore.”

“Hubert told me it was your recommendation that got me the job with DPS. I suppose I should thank you for that.” When DeWitt didn’t respond, Bo went on. “He hasn’t forgiven me for what I did to you. To Janet. Maybe it was senseless to come.”

I forgive you,
DeWitt wanted to tell him, but couldn’t. Bo’s little-boy eyes returned to DeWitt’s face.
I wish I could forgive myself,
they said.

“DeWitt? That bank robbery. Strange how it happened, the night after the Line went down. No fingerprints, no suspects. I read your report. I talked to Hubert, and . . .”

“Don’t ask.”

A pause, and then, like a promise, “No. I won’t.”

Bo walked away, tall, straight, and solitary. DeWitt got back in his car and drove home in the dwindling light.

The house was cluttered, the kids watching TV. DeWitt—a new habit—picked up some of the jumble and set it aright. He walked to the kitchen. It was empty. A pan of squash sat atop an extinguished burner. He got a spoon from the cabinet drawer and took a taste.

The powdery smell of Janet reached him before her arms did. As she hugged his waist, he stiffened. Her hands dropped. He turned in time to see the hurt in her face.

“Scared me.” Simple answers had been better for Hattie, who liked her truth straight. But for Janet the lies went down easier, like oil.

She moved away. “Your daddy’s here, out back with the barbecue. Your mama’s sorting through the kids’ school clothes.”

He took a beer from the refrigerator and opened it, his back to her. His back was always to her now. Asleep, they kept their distance. Awake, they watched their tongues.

Outside, evening advanced. Lights began to come on in the neighboring houses. Beer in hand, DeWitt trudged across the yard toward the flickering orange glow of the fieldstone pit.

“Daddy?”

His father turned, and again DeWitt was surprised how much the man had aged. The plumb line of his back was bent now, the stick-wielding hands gnarled.

“How you doing, son?”

“Fine.”

In the dying light, his daddy’s eyes searched his. Then his daddy picked up the long fork and turned his attentions to the brisket. “Since you lost that weight back toward the end of summer, you seem different. Are things all right between you and Janet?”

DeWitt rubbed the tight muscles in the back of his neck. “She’s tired of being tied down with the house. She wants to do things she’s interested in. She doesn’t keep the place as neat, but that’s all right with me. It’s okay, really.” And he meant it.

The meat sizzled. His daddy prodded the brisket, nudged it this way and that. “You two seemed closer before. I wondered what went wrong.”

“Just . . . some things happened.”

“Bad things?”

“Pretty bad.”

“Oh. “

DeWitt gazed down into the red embers. Smoke rose: the fumey odor of charcoal, the sweet tang of barbecue sauce.

“Your ma and I had our ups and downs, too, Wittie. But we worked it out.” His daddy’s voice was stiff. Eyes locked on the coals, he fussed with the meat.

Certainly the other DeWitt and his daddy had joked together. In that other universe, they had laughed. Where was that happy policeman now? Where did he go? DeWitt had searched the cemetery a second time, and had finally found the tombstone marked WILLIAM HARPER. But he hadn’t read the station records; hadn’t the heart to disturb the grave of the DeWitt he’d replaced.

“Daddy? What would you think of a cop who had done something illegal?”

His daddy didn’t look up, but the fork paused. “What kind of illegal we talking about?”

“Murder.” The confession was out before he knew it, dropped like a lead weight from his tongue. He followed the law when he had done it, but in some other world he had murdered Billy. In this world, he had murdered Bo, and with each cold and angry look, he was killing a little more of Janet.

The gray head jerked up. “Cut it out, Wittie. Billy’s hanging wasn’t your fault.”

In DeWitt’s grip the beer can trembled, spouting foam. Curtis—maybe Hattie—had talked. His daddy’s eyes were kind, but they were disenchanted, too, like a Jesus who has lost His faith.

DeWitt swayed, looked down. The grass needed mowing, he noticed.

Just a second
, he’d say as his daddy handcuffed him.
Just a second and let me mow my yard. Let me paint my trim. Please let me fix the lock on the screen door like I’ve been meaning to.
So much needed finishing,

“I know it happened in your jail. I know you should have took his belt away, but you didn’t. We all make mistakes.”

The leaf can’t escape the pattern of the tree. DeWitt would be the cause of Billy’s death, always.

“Come on, son. His wife and kids killed in that house fire. Her folks taking the bodies up north so he couldn’t even visit their graves. Then him arrested with a collection of women’s underclothes. Billy didn’t want to go through a trial for burglary. Sometimes a man knows when he’s ready.”

DeWitt sucked night air into his lungs. In his mind the thunder stilled. He lifted his head, his eyes misting. Patterns coalesced in the sky’s spangled chaos: Orion, the Big Dipper. He saw the ruddy dot of Mars, where canals once existed because an astronomer believed.

Truth was so easy, really. It was order’s lie that was hard. Flights of birds and stars and lives had patterns, if you stood back and looked at them right.

“Brisket’s done,” his daddy said. “You ready to go in?”

In the light of the kitchen doorway Janet waited, as she always had. As she always would. Because in the world DeWitt just this instant created, he placed her and renewed her there.

“I’m ready.”

Ready.
A satisfying word. It made the world feel as if life were a bag of groceries that had just been put away, and everything was in place.