MYER PUSHED AWAY FROM the supper table. He tipped the bourbon bottle into the short glass and topped off his drink and then dropped in a couple more ice cubes before going outside. His rod and reel leaned against the wall in the carport and he grabbed it and walked down to the pond. He set the glass on a tree stump next to him. Rubbed at his knee which always hurt a little this time of day.
He cast across the pond. The lure hitting and sinking and the ripple reaching on and on in a growing circle. Gnats tapped on the water. Lightning bugs blinked in the twilight. Splotches of clouds sat in the low sky touched in the day’s last colors. Through the open window over the kitchen sink he could hear the clinks and clatters of Hattie clearing the plates and washing dishes. He turned and looked at her. Her eyes down into the sink and her hands busy. Trails of her graying hair spilling from a messy bun and falling along her eyes and cheeks.
He picked up his drink.
She had told him when he became sheriff of this county that he would get fat and lazy. There won’t be enough to do. You probably don’t even need a gun. He had turned forty while they were moving into the house. A blond brick house with five acres and some trees and a little pond. This might as well be the end for you, she joked. You wanted a pond and got one. You wanted a fireplace and we got one. You wanted to be a sheriff and now you wear the star. Maybe I should start planning your retirement party.
He watched her in the window and she raised her head and caught him looking. Smiled. Wiped her hands on a dishcloth. He thought of her making fun of him on move-in day those twenty years ago. Thought of wrestling her to the floor, telling her to shut her mouth in the name of the law. Thought of how he let her win and she pinned him on his back and then how they knocked their naked bodies against the boxes stacked around them.
She was right, he thought. Mostly. He spent most days riding around. Checking on crews working on bridges or paving roads. Dragging roadkill off the highway. Eating fried chicken for lunch and sometimes for dinner. Maybe every now and then he had to run some teenagers off a piece of land they weren’t supposed to be on. The only time he had even drawn his pistol was when he came upon a car slid off the road. Spinning its wheels in the ditch. He got out to see about it and a couple of deer sprang from the brush and darted across the road. Scared the shit right out of him and he snatched it as if being ambushed before misstepping and sliding down the slick incline and tearing his knees to shreds.
He took a drink and set it down again. Cast across the pond. The screen door slapped shut and Hattie joined him. She carried her own glass and the bottle and she sat on the stump. He reeled in the lure quickly. Cast again.
“What?” she said.
He looked at her. The dusk was coming on. The world turning vague.
“You always eat in a hurry and reel in a hurry when you’re thinking about something. You’ve done the eating part.”
“You think you know everything.”
She smiled and sipped.
“Maybe I do,” she said.
“Maybe.”
He set the reel on the ground and picked up his drink. Walked a circle around the stump and said you remember my first week on the job. When I had to go over to that house. The woman was sitting on the front steps and her son was on the porch swing. Her face was so red and her eyes looked like something had been trying to claw them out even though she wasn’t crying right then. Seemed to be taking a break from it. I remember she didn’t say not a word when we pulled up and got out. She just raised her hand and pointed around the side of the house like she might’ve been showing us where to find a garbage can or the water hose. I sent my two fellas around back to the workshop but I stopped and talked to the mother and son. They nodded or shook their heads. I think the woman might have even gave me a full sentence at some point. But I’ll never forget that neither one of them would look at me. Even when I tried to lean over and get in her line of sight she’d just shift her head and her eyes. Her son rocked back and forth on the swing. He was sitting on his hands and he never even so much as turned his head in my direction. I asked him his name and he never would say it. Finally his momma answered for him. Colburn, she said.
“Of course, I remember,” Hattie said. “Why are you thinking about this now?”
He stopped pacing and stared across the pond and kept telling her all these things he had told her many times. I tried to say something nice but nobody knows what to say in a moment like that. But I tried. Then I walked around the house. My guys were standing in the yard. Smoking and looking at their feet. Neither one of them ever had to do anything like this either. The door to the workshop was open and we all three looked in right about the same time. I think some part of me expected him to still be struggling. Or swinging. I don’t know why I thought I’d see movement. Because there wasn’t any. Just a man at the end of his rope. One shoe had come off. Shirttail was out. His collar damp with sweat and spit and pink where a little blood had mixed in. Scrapes on his knuckles. His eyes halfopen as if stealing one last look.
Myer finished the bourbon in his glass and poured a little more and did the same for her. She watched him, thinking I know all of this already. Why tonight? And then he said right then I smoked a cigarette. I don’t know why I always remember that. It was like I didn’t know what else to do so I smoked. One of my guys took some notes. Then they held him by the legs while I picked up a stool that had been knocked over. Grabbed a pair of hedgeclippers hanging from a nail. I climbed up on the stool and cut the rope and he folded over. They started to drag him out and lay him in the yard but I said God no. Leave him in here. They don’t need to look back here and see him stretched out the way he is. So we laid him in the workshop and closed the door. Stood around and waited for the coroner. I looked up once and saw the son standing at the window, staring into the backyard. He was as unmoving as his father. I waved to him but he didn’t wave back. I can’t forget that part either. I couldn’t imagine something looking as empty as that boy looked. I’ve laid awake many nights, thinking about the mother and the son. Wondering what they were wondering. Hoping they were talking to each other wherever they were because the day after they put him in the ground they were gone. I went over to their house to see about them and it was emptied out. She must’ve started packing about a minute after we took her husband away from there. I don’t see how else it could’ve been done so quick.
Hattie listened. Something in his voice that blended with the dusk and the drinks that made it all seem new. As if he had cut the man down today and not twenty years earlier. She stood from the tree stump and walked over beside him. Waited. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and said a family has showed up in town. I think it’s a family but I don’t really know. Their car broke down. Hell they’re pretty much broke down wherever they are. A man and a woman and a boy. I was gonna try to help them get their car fixed but they don’t seem interested. And I guess I’m talking about all this because I never forgot how I felt when I stood there with the mother and son. Knowing what was in their backyard. Their eyes way off somewhere else. Damn near twenty years and I never felt like that again until now.
There’s something about that man and woman and boy. It’s almost like you can see them way down in a hole but know you can’t do nothing to get them out. And if that was the only thing stirring around in my head then it wouldn’t be so bad but that’s not everything. You and me both know this place is dying. Has been for a long time which I can’t complain about. It’s kept me out of harm’s way, which is pretty much all you can ask of this profession. But it’s dying if not dead already. You know it’s got so bad the town started giving away property right on Main Street. I guess they figured people here is better than no people here. There was a big story about it in the Jackson newspaper. Storefronts free for artists, musicians, whoever. All you gotta do is live here. Keep the place up. I don’t guess it’s such a bad idea but so far only one has showed up. When I saw the lights on in the building the other night I figured I might as well find out who it was so the next morning I went over to town hall. Asked to see the lease. Colburn, it said. I didn’t even have to read the last name. I stopped right there.
Night had fallen around them as Myer talked. The pond a muddied blue mirror of the sky above. Nightbirds singing in sweet, lovesong whistles. The windowlight from the house like eyes watching. Hattie rubbed her hand across his back. It’s like when something moves in the dark, he said. You can’t see it but you know it’s there. I wonder if that’s where we are.