The Man on the Park Bench
Jackson City Police Chief Ralph Johnson glanced at his watch. Nine o'clock, time to call Mayor Lambert. On the third Wednesday morning of every month, for the twenty years he'd been chief, he'd made that no problems here call before the town council meeting. He reached for his phone.
A button lit up, then the intercom clicked.
"It's Stacey Jenkins," his secretary said. "He sounds upset.”
Johnson sighed and pressed the flashing button with a beefy finger. He'd heard the heavy equipment shut down not long before and expected a hitch.
"Ralph, I've got a problem at the old warehouse," the voice said.
"Your dad with you?"
"Well, we're both here. But Dad's inside, and I'm out."
"I'll be right there."
Johnson pulled the "Jenkins Warehouse" file from his cabinet and walked into the central reception area, his heels clicking on the tile floor.
"Tell Lambert I'll call him later," he told his secretary. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and slid into his cruiser, started it, and turned right toward the river.
Johnson was seventy-five pounds heavier than when he'd joined the force in 1956, just out of high school. A football hero then, perhaps, if a town of four thousand could have such a thing. Stacey was the quarterback, and as wide receiver he’d caught many of his touchdown passes and sometimes competed for the same girl. The town's population had since doubled. That one time muscle was now just flab, and his quickness was gone completely.
But age hadn't treated Stacey Jenkins much better. He wasn't as heavy, but somehow looked older than he should. He'd seemed to grow up faster than the rest of the class. Johnson noticed the change soon after Stacey's mom left town with the chemical salesman their senior year. Several times since, during quiet moments at The Spigot Bar, Stacey had wondered aloud why his mother hadn't even sent him a birthday card all those years. Stacey had married the girl everyone thought he would, had worked full time at his father's furniture polish factory, raised three kids, and become president of Jenkins Products when Byron Jenkins retired five years ago. But his football field fire seemed to be completely out.
Johnson picked up his radio mike.
"Car five."
"Car five here."
"What's the story, Jim?"
"I must'a been daydreaming. I lost Byron Jenkins and finally found him coming out of the hardware store with a package."
Johnson squeezed the mike. "You at the warehouse now?"
"Down the street from it. Stacey pulled up a few minutes ago. The wrecking crew's there, too, but they're cooling their heels."
"I'm heading there now. See what he got at the hardware store, will you? Ten four."
Chief Johnson replaced the mike and frowned. Byron was the one who'd really gone downhill. The seventy-five year old man was frail, became confused easily, and forgot simple things. But he refused to go to a retirement home or to stay with his son. Every day he put on his white shirt and black bow tie and drove to the old and empty warehouse. He'd stay an hour or two, then return to his big house on Fremont Drive.
Byron Jenkins started falling apart three years before, when the state announced it needed his warehouse property to straighten the highway and build a new bridge. It had been vacant since Jenkins Products built new facilities in the industrial park ten years before. Jenkins turned down all the state's offers, and officials finally condemned the property. The building was to be torn down today, but now it looked like there was a hiccup in the plans.
Johnson pulled into the crumbling parking lot and stopped twenty feet away from the warehouse. The two Chrysler New Yorkers belonging to Stacey and his father were there, but neither man was in sight. A large yellow front end loader sat silently in one corner near the low boy that had brought it, and two men sat in a nearby Chevrolet pickup drinking coffee from a thermos.
Johnson stared at the warehouse. It was a tall one story, red brick edifice with the date 1895 set in yellowing concrete over the huge wooden double doors. Tenacle like limbs of centuries old live oaks hung over the structure, and Spanish moss draped down to touch it. The two small windows on this side were set high to protect against burglaries, and a windowless access door was located to the right of the big doors.
Stacey walked into sight from around the building and came over to the squad car. He was bald and wore bifocals on his broad nose. Chief Johnson rolled his window down.
"I tried to get in the back door," Stacey said. "Everything's locked tight."
"What happened?"
"He wasn't home, so I figured I'd find him here."
Johnson nodded. "He really has a thing about that building, don't he?"
"I can't figure it. He's locked the doors from the inside, and he won't answer. I can hear noises in there. Big tapping noises. Maybe he just can't hear me over them."
Johnson thought a moment. He'd had his deputy follow Byron that morning, because he suspected he'd do something. What, he didn't know. Apparently, they'd find out soon.
"Well, we've got to get him out." He picked up the file and got his flashlight from the glove compartment. "I'll show him this legal stuff again, but it probably won't make any difference. Wait here."
He went over and talked with the men in the pickup truck. One got out and climbed onto the crawler loader and started it. Exhaust cap clanking and motor roaring, it dug its tracks into the cracked asphalt pavement and angled slowly toward the warehouse. The loader bucket's corner popped the smaller door from its hinges, and dust swirled up as it clattered to the concrete floor inside.
Chief Johnson and Stacey stepped into the warehouse and stood a moment, waiting for their eyes to adjust. Johnson turned on his flashlight, and they walked into the huge empty room, its silence broken only by echoes of their steps and a bird's fluttering between overhead steel beams. A musty odor of oil, dirt, and chemicals hit his nostrils.
"Dad? Where are you?" Stacey cocked his head to listen.
"Let's check the office," Johnson said, nodding toward a stud and panel afterthought built into the corner. He opened the door and stepped in, and Stacey followed him. Huge cobwebs turned white in his flashlight beam, and thick dust clouded up around their feet.
"Mom's desk was right there," Stacey whispered, pointing. "Remember?"
"Sure do."
Johnson and Stacey had walked into that room many times together in the early fifties. It had been Esther Jenkins' domain. She kept the books, answered the telephone, and bought the supplies. She sometimes asked them to help pack furniture polish after school, particularly when Byron was on the road selling. Johnson closed his eyes. He could still smell the polish and hear her high pitched laugh.
He touched his friend's shoulder. "Let's keep looking." Stacey nodded and followed him out the door. They turned right, toward the back wall where Byron Jenkins had mixed his polish in stainless steel vats. Johnson swept the flashlight beam back and forth, then down at the floor.
"Look," he said.
A wide path of footprints tracked through the gray dust mantle and turned the corner at the office wall's end. They varied from almost indistinguishable to sharp black imprints, the latter apparently made by Byron Jenkins only today.
Johnson heard a metallic click from around the corner. He froze. A crashing boom filled the warehouse, lingered, vibrated. Birds fluttered and screeched overhead.
Chief Johnson waited several seconds. "Mr. Jenkins? You there?"
They tiptoed around the office end, saw the brick outer wall, and then a four by six foot concrete block cubicle built in the corner. Large jagged concrete fragments littered the floor below a gaping hole in the cubicle's wall. A sledgehammer leaned against the partition.
Johnson shined his light into the hole. The beam hit a body laying face down on what appeared to be a pile of clothing. Johnson grimaced, reached in, and rolled the thin body over. The face was a mass of blood drenched flesh.
Stacey stared, gasped in recognition.
"My God," he said. "He's shot himself in the
face!"
Johnson pulled his friend back. "Steady, Stacey. Look away."
Stacey buried his face in his hands. Johnson peered inside again, shined the beam around. Byron Jenkin's once white shirt and dark bow tie were soaked in blood. Fresh gunpowder smoke hung in the air, and a shiny pistol lay near Jenkin's right hand.
Johnson inspected the clothing under the body. He saw the end of a briefcase sticking up at the side, and leaned in to pick it up. When he turned, Stacey was gone.
"Stacey?" Johnson's footsteps echoed as he took long strides toward the entrance. He stepped into the bright sunlight and squinted. His deputy's cruiser was parked alongside his.
"I found out what he bought at the hardware store," Jim Parker started, leaning out the car's window.
"Never mind that now. Where's Stacey?" Johnson laid the briefcase on the cruiser's hood and opened it. He shuffled through its contents. He already knew what Byron had bought at the store. A sledgehammer and a gun. And a padlock, so he could buy some time.
"He went around there," Parker said, pointing to the warehouse corner where Stacey had appeared only a few minutes before.
"Get the coroner, Jim."
Johnson tossed the briefcase into his own cruiser. He half walked, half ran around the warehouse corner, holding his arms out to protect from overgrown limbs that were mere switches when they were kids. He stepped high through the overgrowth, and finally came out at a clearing at the water's edge. Stacey sat on a big boulder that stuck out into the river, staring dully into the murky water.
Johnson sat next to his friend. He waited a minute, then spoke. "Stacey, I have more bad news."
Stacey stared up at him, then back at the river. He tossed a pebble in and watched the expanding circles.
"There were two more bodies in there," Johnson said. "Under your dad. A man's and a woman's."
Still silence. Another rock, more circles. A car clattered over the old bridge behind them.
"There was a briefcase there, and I opened it. It had letters dated 1956, brochures about chemicals, some other things. Stacey, it belonged to the man your mother ran away with. But it looks like they didn't run fast enough."
Stacey stared at him, and tears ran down his cheeks. He turned his head and cried.
Another clatter came from the old bridge, and Johnson looked up. A new bridge would be built where they were sitting. It would take away the warehouse and let interstate travelers whiz by without giving a thought to what had been there. But the memory would linger. For him, but especially for Stacey, what had been would always be.
He patted his friend's shoulder and stared blankly out into the river.
The Quarantine Flatboat
1770’s pioneer Aaron Reeder thought
he knew what love for his young daughter was,
until he ran into problems going west on the
Tennessee River flotilla to settle the land.