Mick Leigh

Neither of us said anything. We just rode and listened to the rumble of the V-8 and the sound of the radio traffic transmitting thin and brittle in the blue cold. Cowboy was driving. Initially, he had ventured some small talk, only to abandon it when all I did was grunt or mutter one-word responses to his dumb questions.

My usual partner was out with liver trouble so I drew Cowboy. His actual name is Marvin, but Cowboy fits because he’s all brawn and swagger. His father is a judge on the county bench and a force in local politics. For that reason the sheriff and most of my fellow deputies kiss his rookie ass and let him get away with things they wouldn’t stand for from anybody else. Not me.

It was Saturday night and our shift had only recently started when we got our first call, a drunk wanting to buy beer at Pixley’s Quick-Mart and fussing because they wouldn’t sell it to him. On the way there we traveled through open country and I observed how the moon lit the wooded hills and the bottom land along the river. Shafts of harvested corn poked from the snow-covered plots. Many of the houses we passed were dark. Chimney smoke rose against the starry blackness and I imagined the people living in those places, snug in bed, hibernating like bears. That’s where I wished I was. 

We pulled into Pixley’s lot and parked the cruiser alongside a rusting Lincoln squatting heavily on its springs, idling.  I radioed dispatch to advise we had arrived.

“Deputy?” the woman behind the wheel of the Lincoln said to Cowboy when we climbed out of the cruiser. The Lincoln’s window was partly down and her breath came out in white puffs as she spoke. 

“Please don’t put him in jail. He’s got to work.”

Cowboy rudely demanded to know who she was – as if he couldn’t figure it out – and she said she was the wife of the man we’d come about and these were their kids. There were two of them, a boy and a girl. They looked to be grade-school age and were staring wide-eyed at us from the back seat.

“We’ll do what we got to do, and those kids should be home in bed,” Cowboy said.

It pissed me off, him talking to her that way.

Inside, two female clerks who looked to be in their early twenties were staring across the counter at a Black guy gripping a twelve-pack of beer. He was barefoot and standing amid small puddles of melted snow. 

“Where’re your shoes, dummy?” said Cowboy. The man looked at him with dull, wet eyes, as if everything happening to him was a puzzle he was unable to comprehend.

“We ain’t supposed to sell to drunks,” one of the clerks said defensively. “And when we wouldn’t sell to him, he started cussing us and refused to leave. We said we was calling you and he said go ahead.”

“They won’t sell me no beer because I’m Black,” declared the man. This drew a sneer from Cowboy.

“That isn’t it,” I said, keeping my voice soft but firm. I was trying to avoid aggravating the situation. If there’s one thing I’d learned in nearly thirty years of being a lawman, it’s don’t aggravate the situation. “They’re refusing because you’ve had enough,” I went on. “Why don’t you call it a night?”

“You’d better put that beer down,” Cowboy said.

Flinging him a sharp look, I raised my palm, signaling for him to back off and let me handle this. He shrugged and mugged at the clerks, who started giggling. I ordered them to knock it off. All I needed was for this drunk to think we were laughing at him. I asked him his name. He told me and I said, “Okay, William, we’ve got to get this situation solved and that means you have to walk out of here without the beer. Why don’t you help us out?” Looking down, he seemed to understand for the first time that he was barefoot. He sighed and shook his head.

“Let’s go,” I said quietly. “Your wife and kids are waiting for you.”

I carefully took hold of the beer carton and he let me take it. I put it on the counter, then I placed my hand lightly on his shoulder and applied a little pressure to coax him toward the door. I knew if he decided to get violent I’d feel it first through my hand. On the edge of my vision, I could see the clerks stiffen. Cowboy squared his shoulders and put his hands on his hips. The next few moments would tell. Please go easy, I thought. Please. A few seconds passed. Through my fingertips I sensed decision sweep him, and he lurched toward the door, his naked feet slapping on the tile. I took my hand off him and followed. Cowboy leaned back against the counter, grinning as we passed, like he was about to make a crack. I warned him with my eyes.

Outside, I helped William into the passenger seat of the Lincoln and shut the door. He sat there, staring straight ahead as though there was something he was looking for beyond his vision. His wife mouthed thanks to me, then shifted the car into gear and backed away. The Lincoln’s muffler was shot and a belt was squealing. William’s little girl leaned over the seat and put her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. He put his hand over hers, continuing to stare off into space so intently I almost turned to see what he was looking at.

The next call was to check on a car in a ditch along Hunter Camp Road. Cowboy radioed in the tag. I got out and shined my flashlight into the windows. They were covered in a thin glaze of ice. I bent a little to get a better look inside and a gust of wind crept up the back of my coat and made me gasp. I didn’t have my gloves on and the metal of my flashlight sucked the warmth out of my fingers. No one was inside the car and I was grateful for that the same as I was grateful William had decided to leave Pixley’s peacefully. A person would be in trouble if he or she were to be caught out in this weather. My second year on the department, my partner and I handled an abandoned-car call in the dead of winter. We found a woman and her baby inside. Both frozen. Their skin was hard and pearly. I’ve seen all manner of death since then, but that sight has stuck with me.

We drove into the hamlet of Rogers, nothing more than about twenty houses, a stop sign and a wide graveled space along the road where once a week the library’s bookmobile stopped. An elderly man had fallen in the bathroom and his wife couldn’t get him back on his feet. Normally the rescue squad would’ve handled this, only they were busy with another call. We helped the fallen man into his bed. Barely coherent, he tossed a withered arm across his face and moaned someone’s name.

“He’s calling for his brother,” said his wife as she looked at him lying there. “Been dead for thirty years.”

As Cowboy and I were getting back in the cruiser, he said, “That old man smelled like piss.”

“You’ll be old yourself one of these days, smart-ass,” I said. “Maybe you’ll smell worse.” He laughed and I could see my point was wasted on him. You can’t tell an ignorant person anything.

It was quiet until about two-thirty when we were dispatched to a house on a prowler call, although I couldn’t conceive of anyone wanting to prowl on a night like this. The woman who let us in was wearing a thin robe and gripping a twelve-gauge. She kept waving the gun around, telling us how she was all alone and scared. I carefully took it from her and stood it in the corner before she accidentally shot one of us. Cowboy stayed to take her report. I walked around outside to search for footprints and saw nothing except a chained-up dog. When it spied me it tucked its tail and slunk inside its house, dragging the chain behind it. When I came back in Cowboy was standing about six inches from the woman. She was saying how her husband drove truck and wouldn’t be back until Tuesday. I told her I hadn’t seen any sign of a prowler. 

“Well, I know I heard something,” she responded in an annoyed manner. I was uncertain if she was irked because there was no prowler or because I had interrupted her and Cowboy.

Later, we stopped to eat at an all-night diner in Savage Branch but had to abandon our barely touched plates when dispatch called and said we needed to get to Mingo Township pronto to handle a domestic dispute.

A young woman answered our knock. She was wearing a long tee-shirt for a nightgown and sporting a purplish shiner. Her lower lip was split and blood had leaked from her left nostril and dried.

“Come on in,” she said. She didn’t sound angry or upset, just tired beyond caring. We stepped into the living room. A honey-voiced man on the TV was inviting listeners to dial his prayer line and to have their credit cards handy. A coffee table with one leg broken was tilted on its side. Near it lay a naked headless doll. The house smelled of cigarette smoke and fried meat. From another room came the sound of a crying child. The woman’s husband, whose name was Briggs, sat on the couch, casually smoking a cigarette and gazing at the TV. A blood-smeared blanket was wadded beside him. His fingers were wrapped around the neck of the Jack Daniels bottle resting on his thigh.

“She didn’t get nothing she didn’t have coming,” he declared. As evidence, he recited a list of her faults. These included backtalking and failing to have supper ready on time and the house cleaned to his satisfaction. It had happened before, he added, as if to impress on us the size of the problem he faced and the patience he had shown in dealing with it. Having explained himself, he raised the bottle in our direction, like we were fishing buddies just stopping by for a visit.

“Snort?” he offered.

Cowboy slapped the bottle from his hand. It was the first thing he’d done all night I agreed with.

“By god that was uncalled for,” Briggs said. He started to get up. Cowboy shoved him back down and told him to be quiet.

I went out to the cruiser to fetch the camera. When I came back in, I instructed Cowboy to handcuff Briggs while I took the woman into the kitchen. There were broken dishes all over the floor. One wall was splattered with what appeared to be blood and brains. She said it was where her husband had flung a pot of spaghetti. I had her sit at the table and write out her statement and sign it. The first line she wrote was, I’ve been a good wife.

In the harsh light supplied by a ceiling fixture, I took photos of her face. She turned and pulled up her tee-shirt to show me the back of her legs where he had used a belt on her. I took photos of that, too, explaining it would be evidence. She said she knew. A little girl, about five, wearing pajamas, came into the kitchen. She asked if we were taking daddy to jail, and the woman said yes. The girl considered this with a wisdom someone so young shouldn’t have possessed, then slipped back into the darkness of the hallway, disappearing so quickly and without consequence it seemed possible she was imagined. I went into the living room and immediately noticed Briggs’s wrists.

“I told you to cuff him,” I said to Cowboy.

He began unspooling an excuse as to why he hadn’t, when, on the edge of my vision I saw Briggs inching his left hand beneath the blanket next to him on the couch. I threw myself on him and pinned his wrist. He tried to knee me in the groin. We rolled off the couch and landed on the floor with me on my back and him on top. We were grunting and tussling with each other when Cowboy yanked him off me and wrenched his arm behind his back. Briggs bellowed.

His wife came out of the kitchen. “How you like it, you son of a bitch?” she said to her husband, who was still in Cowboy’s grip and writhing in pain. Her undamaged eye was glinting wildly.

I got to my feet and slapped the cuffs on Briggs, cinching them more than I should have. Cowboy guided him roughly out the door. I still was sucking wind from wrestling that little bit and reflecting on how I was too damn old for this. As soon as my breath got caught up, I lifted the blanket and saw what Briggs had been reaching for.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked his wife but she didn’t answer. The wildness that had flared in her one good eye was gone and she had returned to looking careworn and resigned.

When I came outside, Briggs was on his knees in the snow, puking. Cowboy stood over him. “I ought to make you eat it.”

“Fucker threw me down the steps and kicked me in the gut,” Briggs complained.

“That’s what you get for smarting,” Cowboy said. “Do it again and see what happens.”

We loaded Briggs into the back of the cruiser. As we drove away, I informed Cowboy about the gun under the blanket that Briggs had been reaching for.

“Next time I tell you to secure a prisoner, dipstick, you’d better do it.”

He muttered something I couldn’t make out. I didn’t bother having him repeat it. Everything was quiet for a spell, then from the back seat Briggs matter-of-factly informed us that if he could have reached his pistol, he’d have shot us both for coming into his home and interfering with his private life.

After booking him at the county jail and grabbing a cup of coffee, we got back on the road. The stars and moon shone less brightly now. First light was about an hour away. Cowboy turned off the state route and onto a narrow township road. We drove by cattle huddled in a field dominated by a giant lightning-scarred oak I could remember being there when I was a kid. Steamy vapor rose from the cattle’s backs as though the vital force inside them was being leached into the frigid air. Some of them turned their wooly heads and watched without interest as we passed. The road led into a stand of trees. Among the black trunks I spotted a deer trotting our way with a stiff-legged gait. You could see it clearly against the moon-lit snow. Big body, thicket of antlers. Its line of travel was about to take it across the road directly in front of us. 

“Watch it!” I shouted, putting my hand on the dash, figuring Cowboy would stand on the brakes. But he didn’t. Instead, he floored it just as the deer cleared a shallow ditch and bounded onto the road. The cruiser’s headlights lit it up like a camera flash going off. Its eyes glowed orange, the size of fifty-cent pieces. We smashed into its rear quarter. The deer thudded onto the pavement, its hooves kicking up chunks of snow. Cowboy whooped and finally braked. We slid to a stop and got out.

The deer was struggling. Its back legs didn’t work and it was using its front legs to drag itself, all the time making this awful pain cry. Finally it gave up and lay there with its ribcage heaving up and down. This sorry scene was illuminated by the cruiser’s one remaining headlight. The other had been busted in the collision. Cowboy marched over to the deer. It weakly lifted its head for a moment and let if fall back onto the snow. It had stopped making that terrible noise, thank God.

“Look at that rack,” Cowboy said, poking the air with his finger. “Two … six … eight – twelve. Twelve points! I knew it. Bet he goes two-fifty. Can you fucking believe this?” He took out his service revolver and aimed it at the buck’s head.

“Don’t,” I said. I was standing on the other side of the deer from him. I’d unholstered my piece and was directing it at his gut.

He stared at me, suddenly confused and uncertain. “What?” he bleated.

“You ain’t shooting nothing,” I said. Shifting the muzzle of my gun away from him, I tugged the trigger. A spout of orange flame leaped from the barrel and the woods seemed to quiver from the thunderous blast. The bullet jolted the buck and the heaving of its chest slowed then stopped. Beneath its head, blood pooled in the snow like a halo.

“That’s what I was going do,” said Cowboy.

“You would’ve enjoyed it too much.” I went to the cruiser and came back with a sheath knife and pitched it to him, telling him to get to work.

His face got pouty. “You hunt.”

“Not with my car I don’t.” I could feel myself getting mad all over again. “Now, shut up. I don’t want to hear you for a while.”

The sun was creeping over the horizon by the time he finished. We put the deer in the trunk atop a moth-eaten army blanket. The carcass was so big we couldn’t close the lid all the way, so I tied it with a piece of twine. When we got back inside the cruiser, Cowboy was shivering and complaining that his feet and fingers were nearly frozen. He’d be telling his father the judge about this, he assured me. I said I didn’t care, and I meant it the same as I had meant it when I pointed the gun at him. 

I had him drive us to Junior Purdy’s place on Logtown Road. He came out and we dragged the deer into the leaky barn behind his house as his three little kids watched from inside with their cherub faces pressed against the window. Cowboy sat slumped and moping in the cruiser, rubbing his hands together to warm them. Junior rigged a block-and-tackle. I fastened a gambrel to the deer’s back legs. Standing shoulder to shoulder, we tugged together on the rope and hoisted the buck until it hung about a foot above the barn-floor planking with its antlered head down, its body slowly twisting. I ran my hand over its thick winter coat and pictured it moving through the trees, unaware of what was about to happen.

After my shift, I drove my pickup to the truck stop. Joanne was at the door watching for me. The hem of her pink waitress uniform showed beneath her coat. She waved and signaled for me to wait. Then she went off somewhere inside. The new day was brightening and the sunlight glared off the snow. I put on my sunglasses. Several eighteen-wheelers were parked beyond the diesel pumps with their engines grumbling and clattering, reminding me of the cattle I’d seen huddled in the field. Joanne came out with the paper bag she’d gone back for and picked her way over a blackened snow pile. She climbed in, slid across the seat and pecked me on the cheek.

“I hate this goddamned weather,” she complained, drawing her coat tight against her. In the bag was cherry pie. I could smell it. She asked how the night was. I told her everything, although I’d promised myself I wouldn’t.

At her place, she fired up the furnace and, soon, warm gusts of air whooshed from the registers, causing the drapes to billow. She started breakfast and I went in to shower. I stripped and saw myself in the mirror. You don’t notice your body change, but youth passes and there comes a point when you can picture yourself old and spent. I made the shower as hot as I could stand it and let the water pour over my shoulders. I rubbed my neck. It was stiff from wrestling with Briggs and helping Junior hoist the deer. Clouds of steam drifted up and filled my mouth and nose and seeped into my skin until the coldness of the night was drawn from my bones and the memory of all the troubles and sorrows that lived there was washed off me and swirled down the drain. When I shut off the water and stepped onto the mat, I saw Joanne had come in and set out a fresh towel. As I dried myself, I could smell coffee percolating, decaf because I had to sleep. I came out to the kitchen. She had bacon and eggs frying in the cast-iron skillet her mother had given her. The pie was warming in the oven.

We sat at the table, enjoying the Sunday morning light coming in from the window over the sink. There was something peaceful and right about it. She watched me eat and got up to bring more food and to freshen my coffee cup without me asking, and that was one more thing I loved about her. Before long, the shower, the food and the warm house made my eyes start to close.

“You’d better lie down before you fall down,” she said as I finished a thick slice of pie.

I offered to clean up and she told me to never mind. In the bedroom, I stood at the window, watching for a moment as the neighbor shoveled a narrow canyon through the deep snow. His face was red and chaffed and his nose dripped onto the shovel handle. I pulled the blind, undressed and slid beneath the covers, which carried the flowery smell of her. I lay there, listening to her in the shower and hoped I’d left enough hot water. Then she was climbing in beside me, all warm and powdered. She snuggled into my back, and I could feel her breathing softly against my neck. As I drifted toward sleep, I asked her to wake me before dark.