Ice Shear
Authors: M. P. Cooley
For my mother and father
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
WILLIAM STAFFORD, “ASK ME”
CONTENTS
M
Y OPTIONS WERE LIMITED.
On the one hand, Ned wasn't driving drunk. And he seemed so peaceful curled up in the backseat of the Ford Escort. Under the gentle glow of the streetlights he looked like an apple-cheeked toddler instead of a forty-five-year-old with gin blossoms.
On the other handâthe frostbit oneâI'd be shirking my duty as an officer of the law if I let Ned sleep off a drunk in the back of an unheated vehicle. He'd pulled his Buffalo Bills pom-pom cap low over his eyes, but his threadbare army jacket wasn't going to cut it. Overhead, the Hopewell Falls Saving Bank digital clock blinked: 17 degrees. Several bars on the display were broken, so the real temperature could be as low as 10 or as high as 19. All were too cold.
Of course, the deciding factor was that, well, it wasn't his vehicle. Our one and only bus driver, Janelle DuMaurier, owned it. After his numerous license suspensions Ned spent quite a bit of time on her bus, so I'm sure they were great friends, but Janelle had a bus driver's value for schedules and wouldn't appreciate it if Ned made her late for work. If I didn't roust him now I would have to move him in an hour when Janelle came downstairs and found an uninvited guest. Plus, I'd have to do paperwork.
I rapped on the window. The pom-pom didn't move.
The door handle was iced over, and I pulled three times before it gave. The hinges' screech bounced off the empty predawn streets. Ned slept through it. Ned slept even as I opened the door, his head sliding down the blue vinyl, leaving a trail of saliva. Before he ran out of door and spittle, I squatted, made a basket of my arms, and caught him. He jerked awake.
“Shit, man,” Ned said. He pulled the knit cap up over his brow, rumpling the red, white, and blue bison, and blinked up at me owlishly. “S'cold.”
“That it is, Ned.” The smell of beerâfresh Genny Cream Ale on his breath, stale Genny Cream Ale dried into his clothesâcame off him in waves. He grinned toothily at me, and I found myself grinning back. Ned had a good heart, although not paired with the sharpest mind. Resting one hand on my holster, the other on my radio, I said, “You can't sleep here, Ned.”
“C'mon! S'not fair. You told me not to drunk drive! Drunk driving's bad.”
“On that”âI took a step back out of range of the beer smell and his spittleâ“we are in agreement.”
“I know! I'm so not drunk driving. And last time, you told me not to sleep on the street or you'd put me in perspective, protective . . .”
“Protective custody.”
“Yes!” Ned looked at me like I was a genius. “And I'm not. And hey! This's my car! My private property! And it's not American to tell me not to sleep in my own propertyâ”
I put on my stern face. “Not your property, Ned. It's Janelle DuMaurier's Ford Escort. Your Honda is the next vehicle up.”
Ned took in the Ford, its full ashtray, its
PROGRESS, NOT PERFECTION
air freshener, its Kleenex box hidden under a doll's pink crocheted skirt.
“Oh.”
“Oh, yes,” I said.
Ned clambered out of the car, fished out his keys, and, holding them an inch from his face, flipped through them to find the one that would open his Honda. He missed it twice. I snatched the ring out of his hands.
“C'mon, June. Gimme!” he yelled. “I wasn't gonna drive. Just gonna sleep.”
“Too cold.” I unlocked his trunk, facing a sea of empty beer cans. Ned would make a killing at the recycling center if he ever remembered to go. I dropped the keys in, watching them bounce off Rolling Rock bottles before settling in a nest of crushed Pabst cans. I slammed the trunk closed.
“You can pick them up in the morning when the locksmiths are awake.” I held out my hand. He grabbed his hat. I struggled to keep from laughing. “Give me your phone, Ned.”
“C'mon, June. Gordon'd give me a break.”
“You know he wouldn't.” When Gordonâmy dadâtrained me after I'd joined the Hopewell Falls PD, he'd used the time we cruised around to explain the city. With the exception of two summers spent with my mother in Florida after my parents' divorce, I'd spent all of my first eighteen years in Hopewell Falls, so I knew most of the residents. He'd skipped the statistics because I'd already read up: On average we had one murder per year, but plenty of domestic assaults that stopped just short. Seven rapes in the last year. A higher-than-average number of burglaries committed by people out of a job and out of options, or people so high they couldn't think of any.
Instead, Dad focused on the personalities. He explained that Ned was mostly harmless, ID'ing him as a fall-down drunk rather than one of the nasty, belligerent ones. By the time Dad retired, aka had the massive heart attack, I knew which people were loitering for loitering's sake and which people were loitering with intent.
“Phone,” I repeated. Ned pulled the cell out, bobbled it, and then dropped it, sending it skidding across the sidewalk. I told him to stay put. I weighed 120 and Ned probably twice that, and lifting a drunk off an icy sidewalk would take the rest of my shift.
I knelt and fished the phone out of the remains of a snowbank, gently brushing black ice off with a gloved finger.
“Your wife?” I asked.
“Nah. She gets pissed when I drink. C'mon, June.”
“Call someone to give you a lift now, or we'll have to call someone in several hours for bail. Who's your best friend?”
“C'mon. He's asleep. Don't bother him.”
“How courteous.” Drunks always have strange ideas regarding politeness: they can throw up on my shoes but don't want to put a friend out. I flipped through the names. Ned had his mother listed three times, but I tabbed past. Her funeral had been last May.
“I'm cold,” I said, which was true, but Ned dithered, which made me cranky. “Pick.”
“Fine. Pat. But he's not going to like me waking him up.”
Pat's number rang three, four times, and I resigned myself to spending the rest of the morning doing paperwork instead of pulling an early go. On the fifth ring, a scratchy voice answered.
“Pat!” I said loudly, calling over Ned's shouted apologies. I shushed him to keep the neighbors from calling in noise complaints, not that I needed to worry. Except for a few stalwarts like Janelle, most of the apartments were empty, little demand for converted Victorian rooming houses in a town with no jobs. “Pat, it's June Lyons. Sorry for disturbing you, but I've got your friend Ned down here, outside of Smitty's Pub. He's impaired by drink, I'm sorry to report, and I might have to PC him. Yeah, again. Unless you're willing to pick him up at the Dunkin' Donuts in the next twenty minutes. Work for you?”
A grunt sounded in my ear and the line went dead. I handed the phone back to Ned, who was still whispering, “Sorry.” His life must be one long apology.
“C'mon, Ned.” I gave him a smile. “I'll buy you a doughnut.”
We scuttled down the icy sidewalks past his car and my cruiser to the Dunkin' Donuts, where Susie had my usual waiting for me: coffee and cruller.
“June,” Susie said, her smile faltering as she spotted Ned trailing behind me.
“Susie,” I said, “Ned here will take a large coffee and a”âNed pointed to the top of the displayâ“and a chocolate with sprinkles.”
Susie reached to the upper row, the seams on her salmon-colored uniform straining. I remembered her wearing that uniform when I was in high school, twenty years ago. These days, the capped cuffs cut into her biceps, and snag marks creased the fake crinoline apron where the cash register opened against her abdomen again and again. Susie placed the coffees and doughnuts on the counter.
“He's not going to throw up again, is he?”
“Nah,” I said. “He wouldn't do that to you, would you, Ned?” Ned grabbed his food and parked himself at the table closest to the bathroom. “And if he does, he'll come back and do floors for a month. How much do I owe you?”
“No charge for you on night shift. You know that.”
“But you do charge for drunks waiting for a ride.” I appreciated that Susie would like me to come around more, not less, during these long nights, but I don't think she hoped that Ned would, too.
“Well, if you insist . . . that'll be a dollar fifty-five.”
Counting out my change, I found only a dollar forty-five. I searched my pockets for another dime, digging out a paper clip and a seashell Lucy had given me before my shift, but no change. I pulled out my wallet. “Since I'm using my card, gimme a dozen to bring back to the station. I can be the big hero today.”
A rush of static crackled from my radio, and the night dispatcher's voice rang through the room: “C-12, what is your 10-20?”
“Dunkin' Donuts, Lorraine, picking up a homicide kit”âusing the radio code for the doughnuts. “Anything called in?”
“Channel seven, June.” I switched over to the unrecorded channel. “Nothing called in. Will you be bringing jelly?”
“Affirmative,” I said, as Susie dropped a raspberry filled in the box. “See you in thirty. I'm out.”
While the cruiser warmed up, I took a bite out of my doughnut, swallowed it, and held the rest in my mouth while I backed out of the parking lot onto Mohawk Street. The car was dirty enough that I wasn't eating anything that touched its seat.
My cell rang. I rummaged through the side pocket of the cruiser's door, jabbing my wrist on a pencil as I retrieved the phone, and I parked and spoke without checking the display, knowing it could only be one person.
“Hi, Dad.”
I heard him swallow his coffee. “Busy night?” he said finally.
“Quiet night, actually. Doing one last lap. Lucy up?”