New Leaf (24 page)

When Taffeta looked at all the photographs that she’d collected from people all over town, including the newspaper office, she came to understand things about Barney Sterling that she’d never imagined. He was a big, strapping man, yet he could gently lift a dog with a broken leg without being bitten. Even more important, if the dog had bitten him, she could tell by the determined expression on his face that he wouldn’t have cared. He was a true hero, helping the injured, or needy, or frightened, and he didn’t do it for the glory. She came to love him even more as she organized the pictures that showed so clearly what a dear person he truly was. She had not made a mistake by trusting in him.

On her laptop at work, she created the story of Barney’s life as a deputy in Mystic Creek with pictures that she had scanned into her computer. She contacted the school to be sure they had the electronic equipment needed to project the slide show onto a large screen, and she was told that not only did the school have the equipment but an
experienced operator would be on hand to play the show for the children.

She expected Barney’s objections when she told him, “I think you need to prepare your opening speech and nothing more. I don’t want you to see the images in the slide show beforehand, Barney. I want you to watch the photographs come up with the kids and be spontaneous with them. You’re so warm and natural with everyone. If you go in prepared, you may sound like a recording.”

He had just poured each of them a glass of wine before dinner. Holding his glass halfway to his mouth, he gaped at her. “You want me to fly by the seat of my pants?”

Taffeta wanted to hug him. “That’s how you do your job, by the seat of your pants. I want you to just talk to the children, as if they are your friends. I’ll admit, I have a stake in this, but I don’t think I’m making a bad call. I’ve listened to too many well-rehearsed lectures, and they are often boring. It’ll be more fun for you and the kids if you’re searching for me in the crowd, asking where I found that picture. And then you can tell the kids about it. They’ll love it.” She paused to swallow. “Sarah will love it.”

•   •   •

The following Tuesday, Barney was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of Irish line dancers. Taffeta accompanied him during the long drive, chattering excitedly about his presentation, saying the kids would absolutely love it. Barney hadn’t seen any of the pictures that she’d scanned into her
computer and organized into a slide show. He kept glancing with growing dread at her laptop case, which rested on the floorboard at her feet. Most of the time, he enjoyed being spontaneous, but he felt out of his element stepping onto a stage without any of his lines rehearsed. He could only hope that he didn’t blow the whole thing.

Taffeta chose to sit with her ex-father-in-law in the front row. The school janitor had set up what looked like hundreds of chairs in divided rows where the audience could sit to watch Barney on the stage. The podium, sporting a microphone, sat off to the right so that Barney could make eye contact with the kids as he talked and also see the huge projection screen.

Today he wore his uniform, and he was worried about that. The whole idea behind this performance was for him to win over Sarah, and she started to hyperventilate when she saw any man wearing a badge. Offstage, Barney watched through a crack in the back curtains as the auditorium began to fill with kids. The kindergartners came first and filled the front rows. He had eyes only for Sarah, who made a point of glaring at her grandfather and mother before choosing a chair as far away from them as she could possibly get. She clearly hadn’t yet forgiven Cameron or her mom for what she believed had been a betrayal.

The principal, an attractive, well-dressed blonde in her forties, stepped up to the podium first to introduce Barney. “Today we have a very special
guest who is going to speak to you about what it’s like to be a law officer. His name is Deputy Barney Sterling. He is a peace officer in Mystic Creek, a small town on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. Over the last week, all of you have learned a lot about policemen. Today you are going to hear a real lawman speak to you about what his job is like.” She stepped away from the stand and turned toward the curtains. “I proudly welcome Deputy Barney Sterling.”

When the principal began to clap to invite Barney onto the stage, all the kids followed suit. Barney’s knees turned to water. He’d never experienced stage fright. Normally he felt at ease when he spoke to large crowds. But he’d never had so much at stake all those other times.

He stepped out and somehow remembered to shake hands with the principal before he moved behind the podium.
Showtime
. Only his well-practiced, introductory speech fled from his mind. He drew a complete blank. All he could think of to say was “Hi. My name is Barney.”

Great start, Sterling
. He swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper. Stickiness clung to his tongue. When he moved his lips, they stuck to his teeth. His hands trembled. Sweat beaded on his brow. He looked at Taffeta. She smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. That didn’t help him out at all. He slid his gaze to Sarah, who sat in the second row, her thin arms hugging her waist, her expression contorting her sweet little face into a grimace of hatred. He
locked gazes with her, and instead of trying to remember his speech, he said all the things that he’d wished a hundred times that he could tell this little girl.

“A lot of kids are afraid of cops. To me, being a cop who wants to help kids when they’re in trouble, that’s really sad. I know your parents have told you never to talk to strangers, and if you’re smart, you never should. There are a lot of really nice people in our world, but there are also a few bad ones, and terrible things can happen to children who trust them.

“As a deputy, I see all the reports that come in about missing children, and there are so many across our country that it breaks my heart. Most of the time, those kids have been kidnapped, and a huge percentage of them are never found. When I see pictures of those missing kids, I wonder if they were afraid to approach a cop to ask for help right before they were kidnapped.

“Most cops are on the streets to help people. Yes, we arrest people sometimes for committing crimes. Yes, we stop cars and give the drivers tickets for speeding. A lot of kids hear their parents complaining about some cop who stopped them and fined them a lot of money just for the heck of it. But the truth is, when people drive too fast or run red lights, they are putting other people in danger. Your principal introduced me as a peace officer. I like to think that I’m more a safety officer.”

Sarah glared at him. Barney held her burning gaze.

“On television, you’ll see movies about cops in big cities. They shoot guns at criminals. They slam offenders against walls. They act all mean and tough. But most real cops never have to use their guns. Where I live, the town is pretty small. I know most of the people in Mystic Creek, and they are my friends. When they call for help, they usually need me to do little things for them. I’ve never had to fire my gun. I’ve never had to hit someone, not even if they tried to hit me first. Instead I use my training to block the blow, and then I get that person under control, using moves that will cause no physical injury.

“But mostly, my job is pretty boring. I drive the roads to make sure someone hasn’t driven off into a ditch. I look at the houses I pass to make sure the people inside are safe.” Barney smiled at Sarah. “And I eat a lot of really fabulous donuts.”

Barney cleared his throat and directed his gaze at Taffeta. “My wife has prepared a slide show for you. I haven’t seen any of the pictures, so I’ll be winging it as I tell you about each of them. Be prepared. Being a cop isn’t as exciting as you probably think.”

Taffeta rose from her seat and went backstage. An instant later, a picture of Barney in civilian clothes popped up on the huge screen. At first, he couldn’t remember what he’d been doing. He was bent over at the corner of a sidewalk, and hidden behind his legs was an old lady, half sitting up with her feet spread and the tops of her thigh-high support hose showing.

“Ah. That lady’s name is Esther. She lives alone in a tiny, old house. She’s very old and she fell down
one afternoon as she started to cross the street in town. I was off duty, so I wasn’t in uniform, but as a deputy, I’m always on duty to help people.” Barney glanced out at the kids. “How many of you are always on duty to help people if they fall down?” Countless hands shot up. Barney grinned and nodded. “So you see? All of us are safety officers, even if we aren’t cops. The biggest difference between all of you and me is that I get paid to help people. So I spend all my shifts looking for trouble and stop to help if someone needs me.”

The next photo came up. Again, Barney wore jeans, riding boots, and a ball cap. He was crouched in front of Percy Holden, one of the town drunks, an older man who dressed like a homeless person and spent far too many nights passed out on a sidewalk in town.

“To protect his privacy, I can’t tell you this man’s name. He is one of the town drunks in Mystic Creek. I probably shouldn’t call him a drunk. It’s more appropriate to say that he has a drinking problem or is an alcoholic.” Barney looked out at the kids again. “How many of you know people who drink too much alcohol?”

Way too many hands went up to suit Barney. He hoped those kids weren’t dealing with alcohol abuse at home. But what really broke his heart was to see Sarah raise her hand.

It took Barney a moment to collect himself and remember what he’d been saying.
Sarah
. He knew for a fact that the child had been exposed to far more than mere alcohol abuse, and it sickened him to think that she thought such behaviors were normal.

He glanced at the projector to recall the story he’d been telling. “Anyway, this old fellow spends all his money on booze, and that morning, he asked me for a few dollars to get some food.” Barney shrugged. “You can see in that picture that I’m handing him money. I knew he’d probably spend it on liquor instead of nourishment. But when people are in a jam, I feel an obligation to help if I can. What that man did with the money was up to him. At least I knew that I’d given it to him in case he was really hungry.”

One little boy in the audience shouted, “My dad buys homeless people food and takes it to ’em. That way he knows the money goes for food and nothing else.”

A little girl cried, “My mommy says that we always need to ask ourselves, ‘What would Jesus do?’ So she always gives people at least a dollar!”

Barney remembered that this was a Christian school where the children were taught faith values. He also realized that Taffeta had been right. These kids weren’t bored. They couldn’t wait for the next picture to come up.

When it came, Barney grinned. It was a photo of him, clinging to the spindly top of a pine tree with a huge blue boom box high in the air behind him.

“Uh-oh. I’m not at my best in this picture,” he told the kids.

A boy yelled, “How’d you get so high in the tree?”

Barney explained how an equipment operator had lifted him up into the air in the big box. “A little kitten had climbed nearly to the top of the tree. It was my job to go up there to save it for her owner, Mrs. Dominique, who is an old lady and lives all alone. The kitten was all the family she had, and she loved it very much. You can’t really see the kitten yet.” He winked at Sarah. “But I have a feeling you’ll see her in the next few shots.”

The next photo came up, showing Barney with one leg hooked over the edge of the boom box. “It was really icy that night, and the sound of the equipment and seeing me in that big boom box frightened the kitten, making her climb even higher to get beyond my reach. I climbed onto the edge of the box to gain height, holding on to branches to keep my
balance. But my boots slipped. In this picture, I’m trying very hard to get back inside the box so I won’t fall.”

The next photograph showed Barney safely back inside the box. The children clapped and cheered.

Barney said, “I don’t remember losing my hat. The branches of the tree must have knocked it off. At this point, I still couldn’t reach that poor kitten. She was wet and shivering. I was afraid she would get so cold that she might die.”

The picture changed. The newspaper photographer had caught the kitten in midair as she jumped from the tree toward Barney. “In this picture, the kitten must have decided the loud noise and big box were a lot less scary than being trapped in the tree was. She jumped at me without warning.”

The next shot showed Barney with a bedraggled kitten clinging to his shirt. “She was so scared when she hit my chest that she dug her claws clear through my shirt.”

“Were you mad at her?” a little girl asked.

“Heck, no. I was so glad to have her safe that I barely felt the scratches.”

In the next slide, Barney held on to the box with one hand and held the kitten safely against him with the cup of his palm and fingers. “The operator is taking us down now. Mrs. Dominique, the kitten’s owner, was crying because she was so happy that her kitten was safe.”

The next few slides showed the old woman holding the wet kitten to her tear-streaked cheek. Then
there were pictures that Mrs. Dominique must have taken in the privacy of her home of Barney trying to warm the kitten in a heating pad and then dribbling runny mush into her tiny mouth.

He explained, “I had to get the kitten’s body temperature up quickly. Kittens are mostly fur and bone, without much fat to protect them from the cold. I thought the warm food would help bring her temp up from the inside out.”

“Did you save her, Mr. Barney?” a girl asked.

“Well, she lived, but I can’t take all the credit. Mrs. Dominique said a lot of prayers that the kitten would be okay.”

The next picture was of Barney standing several feet below a street manhole in knee-deep water. He had a dog tucked under one arm and a rope tied around his waist, which he gripped with his free hand.

“I think all of you have seen those big, round grates on streets in your town. They are called manholes. The lids can be lifted with a crowbar, and some kids had uncovered this manhole. We’ll never know the names of the kids who did it, but showing you this picture is a good lesson to all of you. A dog was running along the street and didn’t notice that the hole wasn’t covered. He fell through it and broke his front leg. In this picture, I’m waiting for two other deputies to pull me and the dog up out of the hole.”

By this time, Barney had set aside his concerns about Sarah and had slipped into lawman mode. He was here to inform all of these kids, not only one
little girl. And dammit, what he had to say was important. Maybe his job wasn’t as adventurous as it was portrayed in films, but what he did, day to day, served a good purpose.

The next image on the screen showed Barney, his uniform smeared with muck, crouching over the injured dog with the two other deputies, as he tried to splint the dog’s fractured leg.

“We had to transport this poor dog to the vet for emergency treatment. We’re trying to stabilize the broken bone so sharp edges of the ulna wouldn’t cut him up inside or sever a main artery. He was a really nice dog. I know it had to hurt really bad when I straightened his leg to splint it, but he never even growled or offered to bite me.”

In the next frame, Barney was carrying the dog toward a county truck for transport. “We made him a soft bed with our deputy jackets on the backseat of the truck. We got him safely to the vet’s office, and he went home the next day with his leg in a cast. I still see him sometimes when I’m driving the roads of Mystic Creek. One time, I stopped just to say hi and see if he remembered me. I think he did, because he whined and licked my hand.”

More photographs flashed on the screen. It was the longest hour of Barney’s life. When the slide show was over, the children were allowed to ask him questions. Barney patiently replied to each query, acutely aware that Sarah hadn’t raised her hand and didn’t appear to have any intention of doing so.
Okay
. He’d given this his best shot.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw her shyly
push up her arm.
Awesome
. He nodded toward her. “Yes, Sarah? What is your question?”

“What do you do if you find a little girl alone in her daddy’s car late at night?”

Barney chose his words carefully. “Well, it is dangerous for young children to be left alone in cars whether it’s daytime or nighttime, so it’s my job to make sure the child is safe, and that would be my first concern. How I did that would depend upon the situation.”

“Do you take the daddy away in handcuffs to throw him in jail and leave the little girl to be cold, all alone, and hungry until her daddy can come back?”

Careful,
he warned himself. “No law officer would
ever
leave the little girl alone in the car. I would call in for another deputy to come help me handle the situation. When possible, a female officer is sent to the scene.” He winked at Sarah. “Little kids seem to trust lady cops more than they do men cops. I’m not sure why that is, because I’m a good guy and I really like kids. But a child can’t know that about me until she gets to know me.

“If available, a lady deputy would approach the car, talk to the little girl until she felt unafraid, and then would take her to a safe place where she would be warm, get food, and wait for a responsible adult in her family to come pick her up. Most kids ask for hot cocoa. Do you like hot cocoa?”

Sarah nodded. “With marshmallows.”

“Of course, marshmallows. All cocoa needs marshmallows to be really good. So the little girl
would be safe and happy until her mommy or grandma or grandpa came to take her home.”

“What would happen to the daddy?”

Barney really,
really
wished that Sarah hadn’t asked that question. “Well, it is against the law for an adult to leave a young child alone in a car. The police didn’t make that law. Very smart people at a higher level of law enforcement made that a law. Lots of car windows roll up and down by pushing a button. Too many children have been badly hurt by poking their head out a window opening when the window is sliding up. Kids also tend to play with the gadgets inside cars, so bad things can happen. The car can roll, sometimes out into traffic. Or, if it’s cold outside, the child may freeze to death. Or if it’s hot weather, a child can suffocate.

“So there are many very good reasons that it is against the law to leave a young child unattended inside a car. A parent—or any adult, for that matter—who leaves a young child alone in a car is cited by an officer for what we call Child Endangerment and sometimes also Neglect. That means that an adult who deliberately left a little girl unattended in a car did a very bad thing. If it’s a first offense, meaning that the daddy has never been caught doing it before, he’ll probably receive only a warning. The second time he’s caught, he’ll receive a fine, which means he’ll have to pay money to the court in that area. If it’s the third time, his punishment may be harsher. He might be fined even more money and be put in jail for a short period of time.”

Sarah pinned her gaze on Barney, her brown eyes
wide with wariness. Though Barney yearned to talk with her longer, he hadn’t come here for a one-on-one, so he pointed to the next child with a question.

•   •   •

Barney chose to sit alone at a picnic table for lunch outdoors rather than with Taffeta and Cameron. He hoped that Sarah would join her mother for lunch, and he felt fairly sure his presence at Taffeta’s table would prevent the child from approaching. Cameron had brought sandwiches, sliced fruit, and juice in brown sacks today because Sarah’s small pail couldn’t hold enough food for three adults and a child.

Barney, keeping his eye on Taffeta’s table and hoping to see Sarah join her mother, had just removed his food from the bag and was about to unwrap his sandwich when he glimpsed Sarah from the corner of his eye. He froze and turned to look at her. She stood about three feet from his table.

“Well, hello, Sarah.” Barney didn’t have to feign the tone of surprise in his voice. He’d never expected Sarah to approach him. “Would you like to share my lunch?”

She glanced at the bagged food. “I have my own. My grandpa has it.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Barney opened the zipper closure of his sandwich bag. “Well, I hope you enjoy eating with your mom and grandpa.”

She watched him take a bite of his PB and J. “I could bring my sack to your table and eat with you, I guess.”

Barney quickly swallowed. “I’d like that. It’s kind of lonesome sitting by myself.”

“Why aren’t you sitting with my mommy, then?”

Honesty was always the best policy. “I know you don’t like me,” he replied. “I was afraid you wouldn’t sit with your mommy if I was eating with her.”

“I like you better now.” She tugged on her red T-shirt. “Not a whole lot better, not enough to sit next to you. But I could sit far away.” She pointed to the farthest edge of the opposite bench. “Right there, maybe.”

Barney smiled. “I’d like that.”

Sarah scampered away to collect her lunch bag from her grandfather. When she returned, she perched on the other bench, as far away from Barney as she could get without falling off onto the ground. He noticed Taffeta gazing in their direction. He wouldn’t allow himself to look her way.

Sarah took a bite of an orange slice. “How often do you save tiny kittens?”

“Now and then. I’m called to get grown-up cats out of trees a lot more often than kittens.”

“Do you like climbing trees to save them?”

Barney grinned. “I used to love climbing trees. Now that I’m older, not so much, so I only do it when I have to. And not all the things I save are kittens and cats.”

“Nope. I know you saved a dog.” She drew half of her sandwich from the unzipped plastic bag. “You were brave to go in that deep hole. It was dark and scary down there.”

“The other deputies kept their flashlight beams
on me, so I wasn’t really brave. I had plenty of light. I just didn’t like standing in all that icky water.”

“Why was it icky?”

Barney sighed. “Well, I’m not really sure how our city sanitation works in Mystic Creek, but judging from the stink, I think there was some sewer water in the mix.”

“What is sewer water?”

“I don’t want to ruin your lunch by telling you.”

“You won’t ruin my lunch.”

“Well, when you flush your toilets at home, the water and everything else in the bowl goes into sewer lines.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “Yuck. Was there a lot of shit down there?”

Barney decided then and there that he wasn’t going to pull his punches with this child. “That’s a word I will try never to say in your presence, Sarah, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t say it around me.”

“Shit, you mean?”

Barney nodded.

He half expected her to tell him to stuff it and leave, but instead she shrugged. “My grandpa and grandma don’t like that word, either. I’m trying to talk nicer, but sometimes I forget and say bad words anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re trying so hard. Is it okay if I remind you when you forget?”

“I guess. I won’t be talking to you very much, though.”

Roll with it
. “That’s true,” he agreed.

Cheek bulging with a bite of sandwich, Sarah asked, “Do you ever save other kinds of animals?”

Barney took a sip of juice to clear the food from his mouth. “Well, sure. Horses get loose a lot, sometimes cows. When I’m out cruising, I can’t just leave them on the roads to cause car accidents. So I find out who they belong to, call the owner, and help get them herded back into their fences.”