as the night the day

terence patrick hughes

THE KID GOT HIT ON THE BRIDGE BY A VEHICLE. My first guess is a sedan or jeep, traveling at enough speed to knock him ten or so feet in the air and then into a tumble another fifteen down the embankment to the creek’s edge. A couple inches of early spring snow covered him up for a day or so, but even with the melt you could see by the streaks of blood running uphill that the boy tried to crawl for his life back up to the road.

His progress was kept to a minimum by two broken legs, a collapsed lung, and a massive gash to the head, in addition to the freezing temperature, but he was alive for a long time after the accident, definitely hours, maybe a lot. As for the driver, by the looks of their boot prints in the snow and mud, they got out, witnessed the tragic scene from several angles on the bridge, and then got back in the car and peeled away.

I got the call a little after 5 AM. A couple of old guys, who claimed to be fox hunters but were likely out for duck two months out of season, had the misfortune of their dog discovering the body and the dutiful, yet poaching citizens reported it directly to Sam at the diner in town.

“You pick now to call?” I mumbled into the phone, my other hand reaching over to the empty side of the bed.

“What? Sherriff, it’s Sam.”

“Oh, shit.” I sat up right away, no one ever calls this early just to say good morning. “I thought you were…”

“Listen, I got these guys here…said they found a body. I mean, the dog did but I guess it’s, you know, dead.”

“I’ll be right there.”

The house was cold and dark and I stumbled my way downstairs to get on the uniform I had only discarded a few hours earlier. In better days, Tammy would’ve gotten up with me and started coffee before I could even get my belt and gun out of the lock-box. She had this way of whispering to not wake up Cliff, a practice formed in the boy’s infancy so that we might enjoy a few moments alone to talk in the kitchen or have some fun on the sofa. Nowadays, any talk is acrimonious and curt, while the fun has gone away like a packed-up circus that never did break even, so you know it won’t ever return to these parts again. A sad last act to the greatest show on earth.

Without breathing it to a soul, I consider Tammy to be one of two drastic mistakes that I made before I turned twenty. The first was signing up as a sheriff ’s deputy, which at the start was wonderful summer and weekend work while I was battling my way to a degree as a commuter student in Farmingdale. Sheriff Bueker was an old friend of my dad, who had passed away when I was sixteen, and unfortunately old Bueker followed him to the great hereafter a little over a year into my job. Suddenly, I was sworn in as sheriff and although I figured the next election would cure me of that, the town overwhelmingly voted me in again and again and again. My mom was still alive then and in pretty much financial ruin, so I needed the money and some of the candidates that ran against me were honestly psychopaths, which equated to goodbye college and hello cramped existence in a small and stagnant world. Tammy chased me down at probably the lowest point of my life, fresh from dropping out and inundated with the tediously dull details of my new and unwanted job. She had moved to town my senior year of high school and we managed to have a fling or two before I graduated, but it wasn’t until I started hanging around the Deuce’s Wild Tavern that we really got heavy, so heavy that we sunk into marriage and continued on to uncharted depths. But the treasure we managed to pull up from the marital sea bottom is Cliff. Always the cutest little kid and now a handsome young man on his way to college in Massachusetts in the fall and as god is my witness, he will manage to get the hell out of here.

Once out into the chilly, still dark morning, I let the car warm up good and long and dialed the night operator at the station.

“Rock Hollow Sheriff ’s Office, Stacy speaking.” She sounded fresh for the hour.

“You don’t need to say all that when it’s me.”

“I know. Hey, you’re up early, can’t be good.” Her tone then turned serious, “Listen, Mariel Hinckle called not a half-hour ago, said her youngest, Billy, never been home since night before last and cause a school vacation she thought he was stayin’ over at…”

“Shit,” I spat and pulled the car out into the street.

“I figured I’d let you sleep, you was here so late with that B&E, sorry...”

“Nah, Stace, it’s not you. I’m on it. If she calls back, tell her I’ll get to her house soon.”

“OK, Sheriff. I just figured with Tammy taken off again, I’d let you…”

I hung up and tossed the phone on the passenger seat. The problem with good employees is that they know all the boss’s shit. My mother-in-law lives about two hours north, deep wilderness for a shallow woman, and without a word, Tammy will often disappear to ‘mama’s’ for a week or sometimes longer. It’d usually be after one of our drop-down fights which never came close to physical abuse but boy can we shred each other emotionally. A couple years ago, she started seeing someone up there, flat-out honestly too, like she had picked up woodworking.

“I’ve started with somebody,” is how she put it with her always pretty face twisted into a bizarre look of hurt and triumph.

So I soon took up woodworking myself and like a million other marriages we held it together for the kid. But this week she played dirty pool and took Cliff with her even though he and I had plans for my day off to do a spring garbage haul to Hookfield and then get some steaks. There’s no telling how long he resisted her tireless begging before leaving me a scribbled note that said ‘Sorry Dad’ on the kitchen table. Yeh, me too. I imagined him sitting around at night with that angry vulture of a grandmother spewing all kinds of shit about me, while her daughter is out practicing serial adultery.

“God-damned,” I whispered and flicked on the overhead flashers as I sped through red lights and stop signs that had no meaning until folks woke up.

After collecting the men and their dog at the diner, they showed me to the scene and I let them continue their hunt with a reminder that foxes do not fly or say ‘quack’. They had been smart not to mess with the body, only the dog’s prints on the slope except for my own as I took some photos with my phone of the kid’s impact and landing spots and the hard to look at last slow crawl to his death. I stood for a long time near the body. I’d seen the boy around, a few years younger than Cliff, one of many faces in the crowd of sort-of-well-behaved teenagers within my jurisdiction. I felt anger starting to brew inside and I fought it down by finishing my job up on the bridge, capturing some half-decent tire prints and sending them along with the other images to the state police before I called to wake up our local grim reaper.

“Hello?” Daniel Milton croaked after picking up on the seventh ring.

“Sorry, Dan.” I was whispering and didn’t know why. “We got a local teen out by Hopkins Creek Bridge. Hit-and-run.”

“Oh, my,” Daniel muttered and I could hear him getting himself going, “Are you helping?”

“Can’t, I gotta go break it to the family. Soon as you get here.”

We exchanged our usual business bullshit and hung up. Daniel would take his own photos of the scene and then transport the body back to the funeral home where it’d have to sit on ice until the staties could get their ass down here to make it official, hopefully in a day or so, but likely longer. An upside to two-bit law enforcement is that it’s rarely eventful but when something bad does happen, the slow moving gears can turn life into one big downside. After twenty minutes or so of wishing that I still smoked cigarettes, I heard the distinct rumble of Daniel’s minivan. As soon as he turned the corner, I kicked my own ride into gear and when I sped by he gave a cheerful wave with the odd demeanor of one who profits from dead people.

The visit with Mariel went as bad as expected partly because we knew each other; her husband is in the army and Tammy’s had her over for dinner a couple of times. She took one look at me and busted into hysterics. There were a couple of her grown kids hanging around and they did the best that they could until I offered to pour her a drink. After three good belts, she was able to sit with me alone on her back porch. It was chilly but she only had on a blouse and jeans and didn’t shiver once.

“We gotta find the fucker that did this,” she kept repeating every minute or so, squeezing tight to a fistful of tissues.

“We will,” I replied, bumping my shoulder lightly to hers for assurance. “Staties’ll help.”

Once I gently explained that she had to go over to Daniel’s and identify the body, I tried to calm her by detailing how a lot of hit-and-runners get caught and this one would do big jail time.

“No.” She sat up straight and stiff. “I don’t want ‘em locked up. I’m callin’ my brothers.”

“Listen, Mariel, I’m not about to put up with…” I began to warn her against vigilante justice but in a few seconds she was heading into the house.

“So help me if you don’t catch ‘em fast…” she warned right back at me and stepped inside, but before closing the door she added quietly, “Thanks for coming, Blake.”

As I walked to the car, Mariel’s sobbing wails started up again inside the house and through a window I caught sight of her shuddering body in an armchair flanked by the consoling siblings. For a moment, I imagined that if I had married her instead of Tammy, then none of this would have happened, but then quickly shook it off. When you get personal like that about the job it lands you in deep shit every time.

I spent the rest of the morning checking out the town garages and auto repair shops up and down the bypass. No recent collisions to report, but each mechanic was now on the lookout for a banged-up front passenger section that will probably be explained away as a deer hit. Next, I did a few miles sweep on the road to and from the bridge in case any wheel damage might’ve forced the culprit to dump the vehicle in the woods. While I was driving, the state police came back to me and said they’d have two patrol men at my disposal first thing Monday, which gave the rest of today before Mariel’s brothers arrive to perform their harsh brand of Sunday services. The smartest thing would be to call up Frank Sweeney and his son who occasionally perform as deputies, but Frank drinks like a fish and is useless on weekends, while his son is an ornery little bastard and would likely sign on with the posse as soon as he caught a whiff of blood. Not to mention that when the staties rang I thought it might be Cliff calling to crawl back into my good graces, but instead it was a dispatcher named Toby. I think Toby could tell that I was starting to feel like an ornery bastard myself.

By the time I got back into town it was early afternoon. I parked at the station, which used to be an old laundromat and still looks like it on the outside, and checked in with Barbara, the day operator. Next, I headed straight to the tavern. It felt good and familiar pulling open the Deuces’ heavy wood door with the big brass handle, like going back to an old friend’s house, albeit one I used to crawl home from. It was nice and dark inside, where a few folks were having liquid lunches at the tables and of course Elmore the early bird was anchoring the bar.

“Greetings, Marshall!” he crowed upon catching sight of me.

Elmore used to teach lots of things at lots of colleges up and down the east coast until he could no longer outrun his indiscriminate dalliances with the bottle and various undergraduates. Now he does a couple of online lectures a week and the local joke is he finally doesn’t have to wait until after class to take his pants off.

“Hey, El.” I grinned and rested my palms on the bar. “Gettin’ a head start?”

“‘Come what may…’” Elmore raised his glass of bourbon, “...all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.’”

He knocked the drink back, placed the glass on the bar, and tipped on his stool toward me.

“That’s Virgil. Do you know he may possibly have predicted the birth of Jesus Christ? Imagine the killing he’d make in online betting.”

“Hey, Sheriff,” Mickey bellowed as he came out from the supply closet behind the bar, “long time no see.”

“Yup, been survivin’ on milk and cookies.”

“Poor man,” Elmore lamented.

“Wanna Coke?” Mickey offered, reaching below to the fridge.

“Nah,” I sighed because I wanted way more than that, “gotta ask you some questions.”

“OK.”

“Shall I sequester myself during the interrogation?” Elmore inquired. “And if so, please pour me a double, Mikhail.”

“S’all right. You’ll hear soon enough. Had a hit-and-run. Mariel Hinckle’s kid’s dead.”

“The little one?” Mickey winced.

“Yup,” I glanced over at the tables and then back at Mickey. “She’s all broke up. Gonna have my hands full with a lynch mob of her brothers tomorrow.”

“The tear drops of fascism,” Elmore added.

“So first off,” I went on, “Anybody been kickin’ it up more than usual? Last night or the one before?”

“I mean…we got happy hour on Thursdays. Place is always packed.” Mickey let his words drag as he looked down at his feet.

“Mickey,” I put severity into my words, “don’t screw with me.”

“Well…I guess…Keith Griffin was pretty messed up,” Mickey admitted and then he was sure to cover his tracks, “I didn’t serve him nothin’ but beer and only a couple. He was shit-faced when he got here.”

“Happen to know what he was drivin’?”

“I…no. No. I didn’t give ‘em more than two beers, sheriff,” Mickey was starting to stammer.

One of the patrons at the tables called Mickey over and he was glad for it. It was OK, I was done with him.

“You be good, El.” I nodded his way and turned to go.

“There’s no mystery to it.”

I turned back but didn’t answer right away. The reflection in the mirrored wall behind the bar caught my attention. It wasn’t that I looked any different, but everything else, the backs of the bottle rows, the lights strung from the ceiling above our heads, the people knocking back drinks at their tables, it all looked so much better on the other side of the glass than out here.

“Huh?”

“The hit-and-run,” Elmore raised his wiry, gray eyebrows. “Par-ticularly in a fatal case. We live in a society dedicated to discipline and punishment. In such matters, one is essentially guilty upon impact. As for the human condition, when faced with such instant and severe circumstances, flight is a logical and overpowering nervous impulse.”

“You sayin’ it’s OK to…” I didn’t want to stick around, particularly to tussle with an overweight, overeducated drunk but my nerves were jumping.

“I pass no judgment. My point is that human beings are treacherously weak to begin with and when plunged into seconds of terror, the mind will command one to flee. It’s afterwards that the ethical questions may begin their haunting harangue. What in god’s name is taking so long?”

Elmore turned to ascertain how long it would be until his next drink and I rested a hand to his back.

“I appreciate your smarts, El. But you smash into a boy and leave him to bleed and die in the freezing cold…then in my book you got no ethics and you deserve to go in the same way…or worse.”

“Spoken like a soldier of justice.”

I gave him a harsh look and then a wink, satisfying myself with the thought that you can read every book in the world and still not know shit. On the way out, Mickey caught up to me at the door.

“Don’t tell him I said he was wrecked.” His concerned whisper showed that like many men in town he was scared to death of pissing off Keith Griffin.

“Deal,” I assured him and left the place with Elmore’s sing-song farewell following me out.

“Until we meet again, Marshall!”

I went across the street to grab a turkey sandwich at the meat store and hardly tasted a bite of it on the ride over to Keith Griffin’s place. Keith was a few years younger than me and we weren’t friends back in school although we played the same sports and went to the same parties. Long after graduation, we got paired up during a bass tournament and that one afternoon in a boat in the middle of Echo Lake catching fish and crushing beers turned us into decade-long drinking buddies. Any time I felt like raising hell, which was a lot in the years after Tammy and I quit trying to be husband and wife, I’d call Keith and wake up a day later looking like a rat drowned in a rum barrel. Only he wasn’t a very happy drunk and it was tiring extricating him from all the social mayhem and drop-down brawls. Finally, after a couple of drop-down brawls with each other, I had enough and cut Keith off like the bad habit he was, only seeing him on the occasion of locking him up for his own safety, always a mighty task, and one time requiring the use of a taser. He even did a long stretch in prison for assault after a bar fight on the coast when he nearly killed a guy who had offered to buy his wife a drink. She left him while he was away as did a series of girls after he got out. Maybe if we’d stayed friends, he could’ve turned things around. More than goddamned likely not.

Keith lived about fifteen miles out of town near the old paper plant, which was a massive and crumbling edifice of red brick and receding mortar that at one time employed over a thousand hands. His house sat a hundred yards from the mill near the edge of the woods and is the last standing structure of an abandoned worker village. Although only consisting of three rooms that Keith heats with wood, cut illegally of course, it had electricity run in from the main road on a series of wires, also done illegally but who’s asking. Still, it manages in its rustic simplicity and rural isolation to be more cottage than shack, if you don’t mind snow plows and engine blocks as lawn ornaments or conducting one’s private business in an outhouse. It’s a miracle that he survives the winters. Must be the cold blood. Keith’s pick-up was parked to the side of the house and it had his tools in the back, so he was around for sure. As I got out of the car and made my way to the covered porch, he pulled open the front door and stepped out, first zipping up his puffer and then plopping himself down on a canvas camping chair.

“You’re early, Sheriff. I ain’t even robbed the bank yet,” he offered and took a long sip of the beer in his hand.

“Glad to almost bust you,” I chuckled, but he could see the fire in my eyes. You get shit-faced enough times with a man and he catches a glimpse of your soul. “I gotta ask you some questions.”

Keith set his shoulders and took a long look at me. I stared back at his booze- and weather-beaten face that still had a bit of that devil’s youth about it.

“What happened?”

“Mariel Hinckle’s kid got hit by a car. Dead. Driver took off.” “So you come here.”

“Listen, Keith,” I put a foot up on the good front step, the other two were rotting out, “I got other people to talk to, so…”

“Woo-eee, I’m first in line.” Keith stood up fast and I thought there was going to be trouble, but he headed into the house.

“Where you goin’?”

He was just over the threshold inside and stopped with his back to me.

“To get a beer. You want one?”

“No thanks.”

“Good, cause I wasn’t gonna give you one, asshole.”

He left the door wide open and was gone for more than a minute. Because I’d been in a couple of hairy situations serving war-rants to mountain people, I unsnapped my holster and put a porch post between the door and myself.

“Keith.” I wasn’t going to give him any more than this. “Keith!” The crack of his opening the beer was enough to make my hand tremble, but I drifted nearer to the steps as he came out.

“Just openin’ a new case, sheriff,” he scoffed and re-took his seat. “You gettin’ skittish in your old age?”

“You were out Thursday night, right?”

“Plenty of witnesses to that.” Keith drew back his soiled mesh baseball cap and popped a cigarette into his mouth, lighting it from a box of matches on the wicker table by his side. “Can’t say that I remember any of them, though.”

“A kid’s dead, Keith.”

“Heard you.” He took a long drag and blew it out through his nose.

“I’m gonna look around,” I muttered and stepped toward the side of the house where he parks his vehicles.

“Used to be a day…” Keith hollered after me.

First thing I did was take a look at the ground, but the wet air from the nearby river had done its job and made it a mess of snow and mud, impossible to pick out one track from the next. He had two pick-ups, a rusty blue Ford that stood with its hood open and half the motor-parts missing, but I glanced at its passenger side anyway, and the other an old Chevy, beat up but still sturdy. Its hood and sides were scratched and dented plenty, but nothing like I was looking for.

“See them gouges under the side mirror?” Keith came up from behind me as I looked over the Chevy. “Got swiped good playing a round of chicken with the boys. And this one…”

He came around my side and rubbed the badly dented fender. “Got this one when I bet Hank Denning I could kill a cow without a gun. I lost.”

He then came right up to me, taking a last drag of the cigarette and casting it aside. He didn’t blow the smoke out into my face but it was close enough.

“Hell, a few of these dents and scratches are from nights out with you, Sheriff.” He then gritted his teeth hard. “I banged her up plenty. But I didn’t kill no fuckin’ kid.”

“Where’s your jeep?” I shot back.

“Sold it.”

“When?”

He backed off and headed toward the house. “I don’t know. Couple weeks ago.”

“To who?” I started right after him and he slowed as I neared. “I said ‘to who’?’”

He whirled around. I was bigger than him, but he always had a way of surprising his opponents and he did it to me. I took a step back and was embarrassed enough that I purposefully put a hand to his chest, which he slapped away.

“Easy, Keith.”

“You piece a shit. Why don’t you take off that holster and badge and we make this visit unofficial?”

“You gonna answer my question?”

We looked at each other with a readiness for battle and the moment was so quiet I could hear the rush of the river in the distance. “Look at you,” Keith smirked as he spoke, but his breath was hard, “real big man. How’s it feel when you gotta try so hard to be the good guy, all the time?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Bullshit.” Keith grimaced and shook his head. “You used to be bad enough to hang with the likes of me. Then you climbed up on your horse…and put on the white hat. You’re the Lone Ranger. A lawman hidin’ behind a mask.”

“Who’d you sell it to?”

“You wanna treat me like a scumbag…a murderer? Then go get your warrant, Lone Ranger. I ain’t answerin’ any more of your sneaky-ass questions. Get the hell out of here. Get out!”

Keith jumped up over the steps and onto the porch. I stood and watched him chug the rest of the beer and then smash the bottle onto the floorboards.

“I said get out, Sheriff! You’re trespassin’ now. It’s in my rights to put a few shots in the air. Never can tell after that.”

I took a few steps toward him as the cauldron inside me was now bubbling and I was ready. I swear, I was ready. Then, just in time, a plan of action came together in my mind and I got back in the car and pulled out with a fury.

“He wants a warrant?” My head was full of livid chatter. “I’ll get one from the judge, and if he’s not around, tough shit. I’m lockin’ him up on suspicion until the staties get here. Then I’ll get Conner Nason to dredge the pond behind the house. I bet he did it. I bet he did it, the son-of-a-bitch! Maybe let Mariel’s brothers visit him in the cell for a few minutes, tell em they got to stop just short of killin’ him.”

Only after that last evil notion did I begin to retrieve my senses and remind myself of the differences between me and the goons in a posse. I was still so pissed off that I stopped at the judge’s house anyway. He was not particularly happy about the pop-in, but advised me to spend my time tracking down other leads and promised to approve a warrant on Monday.

“Let the state police get in a shoot-out with that nut-case,” he grumbled before quickly showing me to the door.

For the last few hours of daylight, I drove around town inspecting driveways for suspect vehicles. Every time I pushed Keith Griffin out of my mind, he slithered back in with his ugly smirk and asshole attitude. I could see him standing up on that bridge, knowing full well that he’d hit somebody and either he was so drunk or so lacking in human compassion that he fled. Well, he’s done enough wrong in life where it will eventually catch up to him, and if this is the time then I’m going to help take him down. When I stopped at the station, I was snappy when Barbara asked if there were any leads on the hit-and-run, but I said sorry to her before I headed back out. All of a sudden, I was starving, but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine what was in the fridge at home and grabbing a meal someplace required seeing people and I’d honestly had enough of everybody. It was just about dark with a nice edging of fading silver light on the horizon when I pulled up to the house and any thought of Griffin shot out of my mind. The lights were on and the propane tank was humming away in the backyard.

I parked behind Tammy’s car and stepped up the walk, briefly imagining us all apologizing and then hugging and making lots of food, maybe even a drink or two, and then hours of good sleep next to my wife’s petite, warm body. But by the time I got to the door, it was gone. I was dead tired and if those two wanted to battle like a newly formed alliance looking to show off their power, then I would kill them with kindness, grab a sleeping bag and go crash in the car.

When I stepped into the house, the flicker of the TV in the den caught my eye and there was Cliff but he wasn’t watching it. He was sitting in the dark on the hassock and staring down at his phone as the images from some sitcom danced across his white t-shirt. My first impression was that he was really filling out into a muscular physique, but the lack of greeting got me pissed off all over again.

“How ‘bout a hello?” I said gruffly.

“Hi,” he replied, such a one-word maestro.

“Cell phone works, huh? Thought it might be broke.”

I didn’t need to wait for the single syllable response as Tammy called from the kitchen.

“Blake, can you come here?”

I unbuckled my holster and swung it over my shoulder. Tam-my prefers that I be unarmed when we have our discussions, silly to me but understandable. I held it out to her as I came into the kitchen.

“Here you go, madam armorer.”

She didn’t take it. She didn’t even look at me.

“We have to talk. I…”

“Listen,” I cut in, “I’ve had a real bad day and tomorrow’s going to be worse. So, whatever you…”

She made a beeline for the back door and burst out. I took a deep breath and almost went for the sleeping bag but instead went after her.

“Hey,” I continued my point when I was outside, “you prob’ly heard Mariel’s kid’s dead. Been on it all day and I’m exhausted. You should’ve just stayed at your…”

“Come here.”

Tammy had started smoking again last year and now retrieved a pack from her car. Since she was going to puff away, I figured I’d jump off the tobacco wagon myself.

“Lemme have one,” I said when I reached her.

“Look.”

She was pointing down. The night was dark with just a little moonlight, but I didn’t need any to match it perfectly to the image in my mind: solid impact damage to the passenger front end, almost within inches of where I’d imagined it.

“Cliff swears he wasn’t drunk. He said it was dark and slippery and after…he was just scared. He didn’t…”

Her words flew by me. I was trying to say something but my head ached badly and all I could think about was that mirror in the bar earlier today and how it looked so different on the other side.

“Blake, you have to do something.”

Tammy was talking to the wrong man. The man she wants is on the other side of the glass. When she stepped up and put her trembling hands to my face, I knew that she had already chosen which suffering is worse.

“Do something,” she pleaded.

I did. I hugged her long and tight. She then went in to check on Cliff and I smoked the cigarette right down to the filter before grabbing the sleeping bag from the house and going out to spend a long night in the car.