EIGHTEEN

From the Journals of Sheriff Friendly

[Late Summer, 2004]

Everything I touch makes a spark, whether metal or not. Perhaps the night air is metal, everything really is metal, there is nothing that is not metal: time is, space is too; the electrified air, the charged air. Everything I touch. The stillness. Because there is stillness. Yes. It is not mine, but when I touch this, it sparks as well. Everything.

At some point When the telephone rang, I jumped. I couldn’t remember when I’d last heard it ring. At first, I didn’t understand the noise. It seemed so abrasive and unlikely a thing, an alien thing, and had no relation to either myself, where I sat at the desk in the station, or to the room that contained it. But it was the telephone. As I took the time to puzzle this out – what it was and what it needed from me – it kept ringing, again and again. The hour was late, I don’t remember what time exactly, but dark, certainly dark, certainly long dark, the night well-worn, the stars out, bright, speckling the curve of the sky. I ANSWERED THE PHONE

I picked up the phone and said, “Hello?” Not, “Sheriff Friendly,” as I suppose would have been appropriate, but just, “Hello?” And when there was no reply from the other end, no sound down the line whatever, I repeated this, this time louder, “Hello? Hello?” Still, there was no sound. I’d been called by no sound and nothing. All the same, I waited and I listened. With the phone against my ear, I listened carefully to the small speaker, just to detect, if I could, something, some small something, if something, if anything was there. But there wasn’t. So I hung So I hung So I hung it up.

In a moment it rang again. The sound was just as jarring and out-of-place as it had been the first time. Certainly, it was no more welcome. I’ve come to resent any interruption of the silence, the closer that I come to stillness, the better I’m able to approximate it, this thing that is not mine. This time, I answered the telephone properly. Maybe it would make a difference. “Cleric Police Station,” I said in a clear voice… “This is Sheriff Friendly.” But again, there seemed to be no one on the other end. At least, nobody responded, no one spoke. I waited, all the same, while nobody said anything. But there was something different from the last phone call: I could hear a noise coming through, transmitted down the line, a faint buzz or rattle or something, something. “This is Sheriff Friendly,” I said. A clear and commanding voice. Full of A voice of authority.

But there was only a little rattle and a buzz. And what was that? Something else? I couldn’t make out what.

I hung up the phone. It rang again immediately.

“WHAT? WHAT IS IT?”

Still, nobody on the line spoke, but this time the noise had resolved into something that I recognized – or at least I had a pretty good idea about. In fact, it was a completely different noise, nothing like the buzz and rattle of the last call. This was definitely a background noise: voices talking (if they weren’t talking to me) and the sounds of footsteps, among other things, and glasses, thick, heavy ones, being set down onto wood. I knew, I knew, I knew.

“WAIT!” I shouted, hoping they would hear and understand me. “WAIT!”

I did not hang the phone up on my end, but set it gently down onto the desk blotter, on its side. It rested there. It wobbled a little. I shouted again at the mouthpiece, “WAIT!” and ran out the door.

When had I last been outside, at any human hour? Though it wasn’t that late. Late, yes, but…

That was when I noticed the stars. They speckled the sky-curve brightly. They were right there.

And so I ran I ran I ran ran down the hillside, down the street, the winding street, I ran down the street into town, to the upper section of Main Street, which is what the highway turned into, and where I stopped in the middle of the street and I looked first in one direction, at Lorelei’s Diner, all lit up, all bright with light, washed out in its interior light and chrome all reflective and bright, and I saw Amanda inside, in her waitress apron, carrying the food, and I stopped and I looked at her, and I watched her carrying the food, and she had a smile on her face, I should have understood, I know I should have understood, how it was, that she should have that smile, there on her face, and her face was bright with it, bright not only because that was her job, to carry the food with a smile, the same as it was my job to answer the phone authoritatively and to uphold the law, but because she was just like that, just smiling, because she was like that, and she didn’t see me, I was out in the street, where it was dark, where nothing could be seen, and I looked a little further, to the next building over, at the bar, the Tooth Or Claw, where it was, where it was dark, except for the neon beer signs in the darkened window, the otherwise darkened window, and the door propped half-open, revealing a crack of the darkness inside, and I walked up to it, to the door, I walked up to the door and went inside, I stepped stepped inside…

Tunker, the owner, the man behind the bar, recognized me straight off, he stepped back like he’d been stung and held up his hands and he said, “Whoa there, Sheriff, we don’t want any trouble now, I don’t know, there’s been a complaint or something, has maybe somebody complained, about what, about the noise or something, I don’t know, but we aren’t looking for any trouble, you see…” But I walked straight past him and went to the telephone, the small payphone box, the booth, near the bathrooms, there in the back, past the crowds of people all at their tables, at the booths, at the bar, as it was a crowded night, this being what, a Friday night, I don’t remember, but it was a pretty good crowd in there, and I pushed to the back where the payphone was, and sure enough, the phone was off the hook. And there was the skeleton, holding the phone.

I pried the hook, the headpiece, out of the skeleton’s hand and I listened: silence, except for the little hiss of the live line – I could hear that. “WAIT!” I said into the telephone. “WAIT!” and set the headpiece down onto the counter. I couldn’t figure out again how the skeleton had been holding it, so I just let it rest there.

On my way out, I held up a finger at Tunker, as if to say WAIT, and he looked back at me, eyes wide, something not right, definitely not right, but I was out again on the street and moving. Inside Lorelei’s, in all that light, I couldn’t see Amanda, there were only a few customers this late. She must’ve been in back. I ran up the hill, under the bright-bright, shimmery stars, back up to the station, the door to which I found I’d inadvertently left open by a crack, and through the crack a crack of light spilled out over the parking lot, crack over the bumps of the gravel, just a little, but it shone and stood out in contrast against the deep dark of the night.

Inside, the phone still waited on its side. I picked it up and listened. It was hard to hear anything but my own ragged breath, though in time I could make out the sounds of voices, though these were not voices talking, not to me – these were voices talking, talking to each other, these conversations, the sorts, being had, background sounds, sounds in the background, the sounds of laughter, glasses set heavily down to thump the wooden surface of Tunker’s bar, and footsteps, and the other sounds, but nothing held the receiver, no skeleton, nothing, and no one spoke to me. And I said, “WAIT! Okay? Just… just WAIT!” and I was out the door again, this time careful to shut it, and I looked up at the stars.

And they blinked. And they shimmer-shimmered. Everything so close, like I could touch it, like I could reach up and brush the stars away with my sleeve like so much dust.

I took off running down the hill, through the winding bends of the narrow road, down the hill, into town, onto Main Street, the dark of town, most of it sleeping, and again past Lorelei’s – I didn’t even look – and again into the Tooth Or Claw, darkness on darkness, interior red or purple neon sign-light. Tunker saw me, stepped back, raised up his hands, palm open, at chest level, hey, whatever, as if to say, and I scooted past through everyone toward the back, and noticed how the crowd in here seemed thinner than I’d seen it last: thinner, tables left open, partial beers still waiting at empty seats, the persons whom I knew, whom I’d once known, and someone, who is it? she looks up… she looked up at me with recognition in her eyes, in the eyes of her lined face, a warmth, a shock, a sudden recognition, and then she’s gone, the face is just gone, and so is the person. A bottle falls to the floor, it breaks. Beer foam spreads over. Over the. It spreads over the

I picked up the phone from where I’d left it, the line above it still alive, the line still live, and to my ear, though I was breathing hard, I could hear just what? the faint buzz of the live room, my office, police station, the other end of the line in the police station, and I said, into the headpiece, the handpiece, the mouthpiece, “What? What is it?” between gasps.

On the other end I heard a crackle, like something, like the line itself, clearing its throat of static electric gunk, then a voice, just faint, my voice, yes it was definitely my voice, saying, “The skies, where I grew up, these same skies, they were all so full of… of fine, small, dark things… of little fine dark things… and they… they all knew me. They knew something about me. I think they did. I think they all knew my name…”