This Is What I Want (10 page)

THE CHIEF

Adair didn’t like anything about this.

To start with, the rumor grinders beat her to Mina Pollard’s place. The women from her knitting group formed a ring around her to offer succor, with Mina alternating between crying jags and offering assurances that she’d leave the whats and the whys of Fredo’s horrific killing “to the Lord.” Somebody had even rousted her boy Carl from his job at the service station, because he was there, too, jabbing a meaty finger entirely too close to Adair’s nose and telling her that he wanted someone’s head on a damn stick. And by someone, he said, he meant the oil-field trash out by the highway. She’d had to warn him off twice before finally saying, “Carl, you poke at me once more and I’m running you in,” and that had shut him down right quick. Here he was, forty-two years old and already six DUIs on his record. He didn’t need more trouble.

With that, Adair had said, “Now, we don’t know anything for sure yet, and we don’t even know it’s your dog, Mina, but when we do . . .” and it had pretty much gone south from there, with Mina launching into a new round of crying and gnashing. “What do you mean it’s not my dog? Of course it’s my dog! Would these people be here if it wasn’t my dog?” Adair was left to crease her hat while Mina and the others accused her of not taking seriously her missing-dog report. “Look what’s happened now because you couldn’t be bothered,” one of them said, as the rest of the knitting ninnies had clucked their disapproval. When Adair left, Carl had shouted at the closed door, “Get a goddamned man on the case.”

Now, Adair stood behind the serving line at Clancy Park and watched the way folks moved around. Her weekend deputies had been the first to eat, and four of them had taken up positions at the corners of the park, munching on burgers and trying not to be too conspicuous. They weren’t the problem. It was the civilians—the ones who congregated in small packs and talked in low rumbles—and Adair didn’t have to wonder if she’d grown paranoid about the topic of conversation. Every now and again, someone would point across a borderline beet field, and she’d follow the trace of the finger to the rig encampment. What was being said and bandied about was clear enough, and she figured it for a problem sooner rather than later.

She scanned the growing crowd till she found the mayor, jimmied up next to the author, who’d caused a bit of a stir himself when he went through the food line. Raleigh Ridgeley. She’d read
The Biggest Space
in college. Liked it, too, though she thought the main character, Perry, suffered a bit too eagerly for his art. Roman à clef,
perhaps? Ridgeley, though a bit taller and more athletic looking than she had imagined him from his book-jacket picture, looked like he could tilt toward the delicate-flower end of things.

She made a straight line to them, getting there just as Sam Kelvig approached.

“Mayor,” she said, “need a word with you.”

“Sure thing, Adair. Have you met Raleigh?”

She shook hands with the author.
Yep,
she thought.
Delicate flower
. “Pleasure.”

“Likewise,” Ridgeley said. He and Sam nodded at each other.

“Raleigh here is our celebrity,” the mayor said, and Ridgeley closed his eyes and shook his head. “Only person in Grandview, past or present, with a Wikipedia page.”

“That’s great,” Adair said. “Listen, sir, can we talk real quick?” At this, Sam inched in.

“Of course,” Swarthbeck said. “Is it . . .” He held a finger to his lips.

“No,” she said, “here’s fine. I assume you’re going to get on the microphone and say something.”

“Planned to.”

“Well, we’ve got a situation—”

“Mina’s dog.”

“Shocking,” Ridgeley said.

“Look,” Adair said, “we don’t know anything, so let’s not go there just yet. I just think it’s a good idea, considering what everybody thinks they know, that you tell folks to keep their cool. After you welcome them, of course.”

“This is what I was going to suggest, too,” Sam said.

“Yeah, OK,” the mayor said. “You want to do this now?”

“I think we should,” Adair said.

The three of them left Raleigh behind and walked to the bandstand, maybe thirty yards away, where the microphone and speakers had been stashed. On the way, Adair radioed Joe LaMer and got a status report from the roped-off downtown stretch.

“All clear here,” he said.

“OK, send your four down here for dinner. As soon as they get here, I’ll send the others back to you.”

“Roger.”

The mayor took up the microphone and gave it a couple of taps with his finger. A squeal of feedback diverted attention to him.

“Good evening, everybody.” His voice boomed across the park.

“Listen,” he continued. “I say the same thing every year, so you know it by now. We’re pleased to see everybody for Jamboree on this, the centennial of our town, so thanks for coming out to the annual town supper.”

He waited for the applause and the hoots to die down.

“Just one other thing,” he said. “There’s a lot of talk about something, and a lot of people assuming they know what’s happened, but let’s keep our cool, folks. We don’t know what exactly happened, so let’s let law enforcement do their job”—here, he gestured to Adair—“and let’s concentrate on having a good weekend. We’ve got all kinds of good stuff over there at the tables if you haven’t had something to eat yet. Thanks, everybody!”

Adair watched as the downtown crew arrived on foot and got into the chow line. She radioed Phil Sakota and told him to get the park crew moving out to replace them.

“Well, Adair, that’s that,” the mayor said. “Looks like you’re going to be busy tonight.” He wore the kind of smile that made her wonder now if he’d just been playing games with her all along. Was every kind word calculated? Was every inquiry loaded with an agenda? She didn’t know, and she didn’t like not knowing, and she especially didn’t like having to be so suspicious. Not about the mayor, anyway. She had plenty of suspicion for those who demanded it. She hated to see it spent in his direction.

“Looks like some people have been busy all day,” she said, and she walked away, the radio at her mouth.

“I’m headed that direction,” she told LaMer.

PATRICIA

She wore her favorite yellow dress, the backless one she got from Herberger’s the last time they’d gone to Billings, and to that she added the white pumps she found at that wonderful store in Denver. She’d made up her face and dabbed on just a bit of Cashmere Mist, and sure enough, Denise had looked at her and said, “Mom, it’s just the stupid town supper,” and she’d been ready for that, too. “Hush up, Denise,” she’d said. “This is a big weekend for your father.”

Now she stood at the serving line and dished up slices of pie, and when she could, she stole glances at Raleigh, who was making the scene. She liked how he glided in, lightly dropping a hand onto the small of the ladies’ backs to say hello. She giggled at the reactions, how rigidly they seemed to hew to gender. With the women, she could see the light behind their eyes flare up when Raleigh was near. The men would take a step back, faces tight, while Raleigh moved in with the easy banter. He intimidated them, and she liked that he could do that.

She’d had only a brief exchange with him when he came through the line, but it had made her heart flutter just the same. “You are a vision,” he’d said, and she responded by dropping an extra-large dollop of potato salad on his plate.

“Thank you, sir,” she’d said, just a smidge of coyness threaded into her voice. He’d promised to come back for pie, and she had a big slice pulled back from the rest, waiting just for him. Elmer McFadden had reached for it a few minutes earlier, but she’d managed to slide a smaller one his way.

Now she watched as Raleigh stopped Sam and initiated a conversation, and the trilling of her fanciful notions gave way to a spreading dread. There, in a single frame, lay fantasy and reality. She and Sam had traded sharp words while they got dressed for supper. His contention was that she needed to make some extra time for his mother, that he didn’t like her cooped up by herself like that, especially with Henrik lurking about. She had countered with the pies she’d baked and the emergency fill-in on salad duty and the hundred thousand tiny things she was always doing that he couldn’t possibly fathom, and besides, why did he always choose these moments before they went somewhere to upset her so? The angry words had come out incongruously soft, from both of them, because the kids were just a couple of rooms away, and they didn’t need this stress on top of everything else. Patricia had a hard time with staying circumspect amid disagreement. She wanted to shout it as loud as she could, to flail against what the marriage had become—a series of debates over protocols and procedures.

That morning, in Sidney, she’d silently acknowledged the truth of the matter, and a hard one it was: reality and fantasy couldn’t exist without each other. The kiss had been a mistake. No, the kiss had been delicious, but letting it happen had been a mistake. On the drive home, she had searched her memories for the last time Sam had made her feel that vibrantly alive, and she couldn’t fixate on it. They’d come home last Fourth of July and screwed into sweaty exhaustion, but that was as much the mayor’s hooch as it was rampant desire. She was thinking of something more considered and delicate, some moment where she felt again as though she were treasured beyond anything else in Sam’s life, and she couldn’t find it. And it was in that gaping space of discontent where imaginations of Raleigh Ridgeley could take root and flourish.
He doesn’t really want me, does he? No, he couldn’t
. She shook her head. She knew whom he’d been with, whom he could have. Refined women, famous women, tempestuous women. She thought of Marisol in
Squalid Love
. The critics all said the real-life model was that French actress with whom he’d been connected for years. Pretty, petty Marisol, who left Jefferson Voorhees and took up with an extra on her latest movie, banishing Jefferson to an artistic stubble field, where he drew only her for a year before regaining himself. Women like Marisol, or their real-life equivalents—that’s who Raleigh Ridgeley could have. He’d been nice that morning and made her feel wanted, and she appreciated that, but she knew it couldn’t be real. And knowing that, of course, made life with Sam seem all the more unstable.

Their chat over, Sam and Raleigh shook hands. As Sam headed for the street side of the park, he threw a grim glance at Patricia, his work never finished, while Raleigh a few moments later caught her looking and smiled, bringing her nearly to a blush. He walked over.

“You haven’t forgotten my pie, have you?”

She slid the paper plate across to him.

“Sam says we’re good to go for Sunday. Jamboree book club, right here in the park.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said.

He shoved a bite into his mouth, then closed his eyes, savoring it. “Nobody does strawberry-rhubarb like you.”

Patricia took up the sides of her dress and curtsied. When she spotted Maris giving her a look, she wrinkled her nose.
Eat your heart out, Westfall. He’s talking to me
.

“Are you coming downtown?” he asked.

She’d have liked to say she hadn’t considered it, that she and Sam usually retired early on the Friday night of Jamboree and left the drunken revelry to the younger folks, but her dress said something else. She knew where she’d be going when she put it on.

“I’ll probably be there for a little bit,” she said.

“Let me buy you a drink.”

“Promise?” she said.

“Promise, pretty lady.”

She laughed at that, and batted her lashes. Oh, this was fun. She reached for Raleigh’s hand and she rubbed a thumb across the top of it, and she laughed some more.
Oh, Raleigh
.
You do make a girl’s heart do flip-flops.

OMAR

Every year, it was the same thing. The other kids tended to stay away from the town supper, populated as it was by adults and self-styled dignitaries and old-timers with their incessant hobnobbing. But every year, Omar had to go, dragged there by his mother. So he ate the overcooked hamburger and the mustard-heavy potato salad and the pie—now, the pie was actually pretty good—and he tried to keep his distance from the smattering of his peers who’d been forced to be there, too.

He got it. He understood. When he added up his time in school and her work and his sports, the two of them had only a few hours together each week, and those tended to be spent on rushed-through meals and church, another place Omar would just as soon not be. He knew his mother was grabbing moments while she still could, while he was still her little boy. While he was still here. There’d been some battles over that topic, for certain, but the momentum had swung his way. He was dead set on UCLA, and his mother was making her peace with that.

They sat on the grass on the east end of the park and cleaned their plates, and Omar at last scratched the itch he’d been digging at all afternoon.

“Gabe wants me to go fishing with him at Fort Peck,” he said.

“When?”

“Monday.”

“Don’t you have—”

“Postponed till Tuesday.”

Omar set his paper plate on the grass and wrapped his arms around his scrawny, hairless legs. Coach had told him he’d need to add ten, fifteen pounds of muscle before he got to college and then even more after, because those big boys would toss him around like he was nothing. They’d been working out together every weekday morning during the summer. Technically, Omar supposed that was a violation of the high school association rules against organized workouts, but nobody in Grandview was going to go tattling. People in town were invested in him, urging him forward. He was going to first bring them a state title and later a mention on network TV every time he touched the ball out there in California. The workouts were just part of the plan.

That’s why Omar hated to have to lie about Monday to his mother, and hated to lie about Gabe, too. He hated that he’d have to ask Gabe to cover that lie. As for Coach, another lie would be required to get Omar out of the Monday workout. He didn’t like the way this was adding up.

“I guess that would be all right,” Doreen said. “When will you be home?”

“Late.”

“I want the garage swept out before you go.”

“I will.”

She set her plate on top of his.

“Nice evening,” she said.

“Yeah. Are you going downtown?”

His mother slapped her knee, squashing a mosquito. “Goodness, no. I’m too old for that scene.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back. She
was
old. Omar certainly couldn’t see himself at thirty-eight. He wondered sometimes if she’d squandered her youth on him, unplanned as he was. It wasn’t a question he dared ask, but he thought he could see some wistfulness in her sometimes, as though the life they had together wasn’t everything she had wanted for herself. He had a plan, though. A couple of years at UCLA, grow into his body—the coaches there said he could get up to six eleven or so—and get a pro contract. He and his mom could leave Grandview forever. Whatever she’d given up could be hers again. He could do that for her.

“What are you and Gabe doing tonight?” she asked.

“You know, hang out. The usual.”

She reached around him and pulled him in, and he took it. Her public displays were something else he’d just have to live with this last year at home.

“Be careful,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”

It was the worst thing she could have said, given the heap of dishonesty he’d just dropped on her. After Omar kissed his mother good-bye, he trudged up the street to the Country Basket convenience store, where Gabe was set to come off his shift. They hadn’t really made any plans for the evening—it seemed that every summer night ended up with them back at Gabe’s house, playing Xbox into the wee hours, Omar sometimes sleeping over—but Omar figured they’d do what every other kid would be up to tonight. They’d lurk on the edges of the downtown party and try to scam their way into some booze.

It wasn’t a difficult trick if you knew the right people. The cops kept the street pretty well locked down. You could get in, but if you weren’t of age and wearing the designated wristband, you’d be found out pretty quick. The kids who’d been successful at filching drinks in years past either had somebody on the inside—a cousin or a brother who’d hand cups of beer over in the alley—or they got lucky and slipped into an unlocked storeroom at the Sloane Hotel or the Double Musky and made off with the goods. It reminded Omar of what he’d read about computer systems, how hackers were always probing them, looking for a way in, while the security experts tried to keep the invaders at bay. Cat and mouse. He could think of worse ways to spend an evening.

Omar nodded at the police chief as he made his way along Main Street. That afternoon, he and Clarissa had still been on the bridge when the commotion started down below, and they’d clambered down when they heard Ashley Teaford screaming. Once he’d heard the words “dead dog,” he didn’t bother looking. He didn’t need to see that to know it was awful. He just wanted to go home. He’d made sure Clarissa was all right, assured her again that he’d help her get to Billings, and got on his bike. The chief had passed him on the highway. She must have been doing ninety, ninety-five.

The streetlamps flickered on, the official ushering in of night. Omar looked up at the Country Basket sign, cast against the purple-pink dusk. Gabe emerged from the glass doors, his work smock folded under his arm. He gave a wave, and Omar jogged over to join him.

“How’d it go?” Omar said. The friends bumped fists.

“It’s a job, you know,” Gabe said. “Same old.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“That’s because big-time basketball stars don’t have time for jobs.” Gabe chuckled, and Omar playfully punched him in the arm. It was the first time all day Omar had felt halfway decent. Gabe was a good friend—probably the only real friend Omar felt like he had, certainly the only one he knew he’d be in contact with a year from now, when Grandview would be just part of his story. Gabe, the only black kid in town, was going to be valedictorian. Omar, the only half-Indian kid in town, was going to be a sports star. A couple of high-achieving misfits, they’d been tight since the eighth grade, when the Bowmans moved to town after his dad took a job as a pipeline supervisor. They’d sized each other up quick and realized their commonalities in skin tone and background. No matter how long Gabe stayed, he was the black kid from Oklahoma. No matter how long Omar lived, he was the kid with half-Indian blood and no known father.

“So what do you want to do?” Gabe asked.

At that very moment, as if an answer straight from the gods, the first electric notes took wing downtown, and a mighty cheer went up from the gathered crowd. Stone Cold Cherry set down the opening bars of “Hold On Loosely,” the electric riffs and the booming bass drum rattling the street, and the two boys looked at each other, smiled, and took off running in the direction of the action.