New Leaf

  “Heck, no. I was so glad to have her safe that I barely felt the scratches.”

  In the next slide, Barney held on to the box with one hand and held the kitten safely against him with the cup of his palm and fingers. “The operator is taking us down now. Mrs. Dominique, the kitten’s owner, was crying because she was so happy that her kitten was safe.”

  The next few slides showed the old woman holding the wet kitten to her tear-streaked cheek. Then there were pictures that Mrs. Dominique must have taken in the privacy of her home of Barney trying to warm the kitten in a heating pad and then dribbling runny mush into her tiny mouth.

  He explained, “I had to get the kitten’s body temperature up quickly. Kittens are mostly fur and bone, without much fat to protect them from the cold. I thought the warm food would help bring her temp up from the inside out.”

  “Did you save her, Mr. Barney?” a girl asked.

  “Well, she lived, but I can’t take all the credit. Mrs. Dominique said a lot of prayers that the kitten would be okay.”

  The next picture was of Barney standing several feet below a street manhole in knee-deep water. He had a dog tucked under one arm and a rope tied around his waist, which he gripped with his free hand.

  “I think all of you have seen those big, round grates on streets in your town. They are called manholes. The lids can be lifted with a crowbar, and some kids had uncovered this manhole. We’ll never know the names of the kids who did it, but showing you this picture is a good lesson to all of you. A dog was running along the street and didn’t notice that the hole wasn’t covered. He fell through it and broke his front leg. In this picture, I’m waiting for two other deputies to pull me and the dog up out of the hole.”

  By this time, Barney had set aside his concerns about Sarah and had slipped into lawman mode. He was here to inform all of these kids, not only one little girl. And dammit, what he had to say was important. Maybe his job wasn’t as adventurous as it was portrayed in films, but what he did, day to day, served a good purpose.

  The next image on the screen showed Barney, his uniform smeared with muck, crouching over the injured dog with the two other deputies, as he tried to splint the dog’s fractured leg.

  “We had to transport this poor dog to the vet for emergency treatment. We’re trying to stabilize the broken bone so sharp edges of the ulna wouldn’t cut him up inside or sever a main artery. He was a really nice dog. I know it had to hurt really bad when I straightened his leg to splint it, but he never even growled or offered to bite me.”

  In the next frame, Barney was carrying the dog toward a county truck for transport. “We made him a soft bed with our deputy jackets on the backseat of the truck. We got him safely to the vet’s office, and he went home the next day with his leg in a cast. I still see him sometimes when I’m driving the roads of Mystic Creek. One time, I stopped just to say hi and see if he remembered me. I think he did, because he whined and licked my hand.”

  More photographs flashed on the screen. It was the longest hour of Barney’s life. When the slide show was over, the children were allowed to ask him questions. Barney patiently replied to each query, acutely aware that Sarah hadn’t raised her hand and didn’t appear to have any intention of doing so. Okay. He’d given this his best shot.

  Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw her shyly push up her arm. Awesome. He nodded toward her. “Yes, Sarah? What is your question?”

  “What do you do if you find a little girl alone in her daddy’s car late at night?”

  Barney chose his words carefully. “Well, it is dangerous for young children to be left alone in cars whether it’s daytime or nighttime, so it’s my job to make sure the child is safe, and that would be my first concern. How I did that would depend upon the situation.”

  “Do you take the daddy away in handcuffs to throw him in jail and leave the little girl to be cold, all alone, and hungry until her daddy can come back?”

  Careful, he warned himself. “No law officer would ever leave the little girl alone in the car. I would call in for another deputy to come help me handle the situation. When possible, a female officer is sent to the scene.” He winked at Sarah. “Little kids seem to trust lady cops more than they do men cops. I’m not sure why that is, because I’m a good guy and I really like kids. But a child can’t know that about me until she gets to know me.

  “If available, a lady deputy would approach the car, talk to the little girl until she felt unafraid, and then would take her to a safe place where she would be warm, get food, and wait for a responsible adult in her family to come pick her up. Most kids ask for hot cocoa. Do you like hot cocoa?”

  Sarah nodded. “With marshmallows.”

  “Of course, marshmallows. All cocoa needs marshmallows to be really good. So the little girl would be safe and happy until her mommy or grandma or grandpa came to take her home.”

  “What would happen to the daddy?”

  Barney really, really wished that Sarah hadn’t asked that question. “Well, it is against the law for an adult to leave a young child alone in a car. The police didn’t make that law. Very smart people at a higher level of law enforcement made that a law. Lots of car windows roll up and down by pushing a button. Too many children have been badly hurt by poking their head out a window opening when the window is sliding up. Kids also tend to play with the gadgets inside cars, so bad things can happen. The car can roll, sometimes out into traffic. Or, if it’s cold outside, the child may freeze to death. Or if it’s hot weather, a child can suffocate.

  “So there are many very good reasons that it is against the law to leave a young child unattended inside a car. A parent—or any adult, for that matter—who leaves a young child alone in a car is cited by an officer for what we call Child Endangerment and sometimes also Neglect. That means that an adult who deliberately left a little girl unattended in a car did a very bad thing. If it’s a first offense, meaning that the daddy has never been caught doing it before, he’ll probably receive only a warning. The second time he’s caught, he’ll receive a fine, which means he’ll have to pay money to the court in that area. If it’s the third time, his punishment may be harsher. He might be fined even more money and be put in jail for a short period of time.”

  Sarah pinned her gaze on Barney, her brown eyes wide with wariness. Though Barney yearned to talk with her longer, he hadn’t come here for a one-on-one, so he pointed to the next child with a question.

  • • •

  Barney chose to sit alone at a picnic table for lunch outdoors rather than with Taffeta and Cameron. He hoped that Sarah would join her mother for lunch, and he felt fairly sure his presence at Taffeta’s table would prevent the child from approaching. Cameron had brought sandwiches, sliced fruit, and juice in brown sacks today because Sarah’s small pail couldn’t hold enough food for three adults and a child.

  Barney, keeping his eye on Taffeta’s table and hoping to see Sarah join her mother, had just removed his food from the bag and was about to unwrap his sandwich when he glimpsed Sarah from the corner of his eye. He froze and turned to look at her. She stood about three feet from his table.

  “Well, hello, Sarah.” Barney didn’t have to feign the tone of surprise in his voice. He’d never expected Sarah to approach him. “Would you like to share my lunch?”

  She glanced at the bagged food. “I have my own. My grandpa has it.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Barney opened the zipper closure of his sandwich bag. “Well, I hope you enjoy eating with your mom and grandpa.”

  She watched him take a bite of his PB and J. “I could bring my sack to your table and eat with you, I guess.”

  Barney quickly swallowed. “I’d like that. It’s kind of lonesome sitting by myself.”

  “Why aren’t you sitting with my mommy, then?”

  Honesty was always the best policy. “I know you don’t like me,” he replied. “I
was afraid you wouldn’t sit with your mommy if I was eating with her.”

  “I like you better now.” She tugged on her red T-shirt. “Not a whole lot better, not enough to sit next to you. But I could sit far away.” She pointed to the farthest edge of the opposite bench. “Right there, maybe.”

  Barney smiled. “I’d like that.”

  Sarah scampered away to collect her lunch bag from her grandfather. When she returned, she perched on the other bench, as far away from Barney as she could get without falling off onto the ground. He noticed Taffeta gazing in their direction. He wouldn’t allow himself to look her way.

  Sarah took a bite of an orange slice. “How often do you save tiny kittens?”

  “Now and then. I’m called to get grown-up cats out of trees a lot more often than kittens.”

  “Do you like climbing trees to save them?”

  Barney grinned. “I used to love climbing trees. Now that I’m older, not so much, so I only do it when I have to. And not all the things I save are kittens and cats.”

  “Nope. I know you saved a dog.” She drew half of her sandwich from the unzipped plastic bag. “You were brave to go in that deep hole. It was dark and scary down there.”

  “The other deputies kept their flashlight beams on me, so I wasn’t really brave. I had plenty of light. I just didn’t like standing in all that icky water.”

  “Why was it icky?”

  Barney sighed. “Well, I’m not really sure how our city sanitation works in Mystic Creek, but judging from the stink, I think there was some sewer water in the mix.”

  “What is sewer water?”

  “I don’t want to ruin your lunch by telling you.”

  “You won’t ruin my lunch.”

  “Well, when you flush your toilets at home, the water and everything else in the bowl goes into sewer lines.”

  Sarah wrinkled her nose. “Yuck. Was there a lot of shit down there?”

  Barney decided then and there that he wasn’t going to pull his punches with this child. “That’s a word I will try never to say in your presence, Sarah, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t say it around me.”

  “Shit, you mean?”

  Barney nodded.

  He half expected her to tell him to stuff it and leave, but instead she shrugged. “My grandpa and grandma don’t like that word, either. I’m trying to talk nicer, but sometimes I forget and say bad words anyway.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re trying so hard. Is it okay if I remind you when you forget?”

  “I guess. I won’t be talking to you very much, though.”

  Roll with it. “That’s true,” he agreed.

  Cheek bulging with a bite of sandwich, Sarah asked, “Do you ever save other kinds of animals?”

  Barney took a sip of juice to clear the food from his mouth. “Well, sure. Horses get loose a lot, sometimes cows. When I’m out cruising, I can’t just leave them on the roads to cause car accidents. So I find out who they belong to, call the owner, and help get them herded back into their fences.”

  “Aren’t you scared?”

  “No. I have horses and a cow. I’m used to them.”

  “What other things do you save?”

  Barney sorely wished that he could save one very cute little girl who was wrapping his heart around her little finger. “Have you ever seen baby chickens?”

  She nodded and frowned with a distant expression on her small face. “Mommy took me to a store once that had baby chicks in a big, long bucket.”

  “A trough,” Barney clarified. “At feed stores where they sell chicks, they keep the babies warm in deep troughs with a heat lamp. When people buy chicks, they bring them home and do something similar, but they don’t always have a box or trough that’s deep enough, and sometimes the baby chicks escape.”

  Sarah had stopped eating, her gaze fixed on him. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh is right,” Barney agreed. “One night I got a call from a lady who was keeping baby chicks in her bathtub. One of them got loose and climbed into the cupboard under her vanity.”

  “What’s a vanity?”

  “In bathrooms, a vanity is a cabinet, normally with a sink, that has a mirror or medicine cabinet above it. This lady’s vanity had a sink, which meant that she had water pipes inside her vanity cabinet. Plumbers cut holes in the wall to fit pipes through for sinks, and they often leave a larger hole than the diameter of the pipe. The lady’s escaped chick somehow climbed through the hole around the pipe and ended up inside the wall.

  “The lady didn’t know what to do. She could hear the chick peeping inside her wall, but she had no way to get the baby back out. So she called the sheriff’s department, and I just happened to be on duty.”

  “Did you save the baby chick?”

  “I did. But I had to listen with my ear against the Sheetrock to figure out where the chick was, and then I had to saw a great big hole in the lady’s wall to reach inside and catch the chick. I put it back in the tub with all the other chicks and told the lady she needed a big trough and that she should put wire over the top of it to keep her chicks from escaping again.”

  “Was she mad about the hole in her wall?”

  Barney laughed. “Well, fixing holes in walls doesn’t fall under my job description, so she had to hire someone to come out and do the repairs. I’m sure she wasn’t happy when she got the bill.”

  Sarah wiped her mouth with a section of paper towel that had been in her sack. “Well, what the hell did she expect? You had to make a big hole to reach in and get the baby.”

  “There’s another word you should try not to say,” Barney observed. “Hell, I mean. Have you heard me say it?”

  “No, but I’ve heard lots of other people say it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, because five-year-old girls shouldn’t use that word.”

  Sarah shrugged. “I know. Grammy says she’ll never wash my mouth out with soap, but sometimes she wants to.” She cocked her head to give Barney a questioning look. “If I come to see my mommy at her house someday, maybe I can go with you sometime to rescue a kitten.”

  For that privilege, Barney would be willing to deposit a kitten at the top of a tree so Sarah could watch him risk breaking his neck to save it. “It’s a date, little lady. I’d love to have company on a kitten-rescue mission.”

  Sarah put her half-eaten lunch back in the bag. “I’m going to sit with my mommy and grandpa for a while. I like you better than I did, but I still don’t like you lots.”

  Barney was glad to have made some progress, even if only a little. “Do you think you could come to like me better if I came for lunch on Tuesdays? You could still sit far away from me. All we’d do is talk.”

  Sarah considered him with a solemn gaze. “What if I don’t always want to sit with you?”

  “I’ll understand. You don’t have to sit with me. I’d just like to be available to visit with you in case you’d like to sit with me.”

  “Why?”

  Barney replied, “I love your mommy. Your mommy loves you. I think it would make her very happy if you and I could be friends. Maybe not best friends, or anything like that. Just friend friends.”

  Sarah mulled that over. “Okay. You can come on Tuesdays.” She raised a tiny finger. “But if you’re an asshole even one single time, I’ll never sit with you again.”

  Barney watched his stepdaughter flounce away, swinging her lunch sack at her side. “Oh, Taffy,” he whispered, “you’ve got your work cut out for you with that little twerp, and so have I.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  After the lecture in the auditorium, Barney made the long drive to and from Erickson every Tuesday. Taffeta wished she could accompany him, but she drove over by herself for visitations with her daughter in order to allow Barney and Sarah to grow acquainted on their own terms. Sometimes Barney
came home looking deflated because Sarah had chosen to sit with her teacher to eat lunch. Other times, he walked into the house beaming from ear to ear and regaled Taffeta with accounts of his talks with Sarah.

  She still cussed like a sailor, he told Taffeta one night, but the nose stud had finally vanished. Another night, he related that Sarah hadn’t uttered one bad word during the entire meal. Another night he walked in with tears in his eyes. As Taffeta waited for him to speak, believing that something horrible had happened, she watched his Adam’s apple bob as he struggled to talk.

  His mouth contorted. His strong features twisted. The tears he battled not to shed spilled over his lower lashes onto his sun-weathered cheeks. “Today she asked me if we could be best friends,” he pushed out. And then he grabbed Taffeta into his arms, bent his head to press his face against her hair, and started to sob. “Jesus, Taffy, those w-were the most beau-beautiful words I e-ever heard. Sh-she wants m-me to be h-her best fr-friend. Do you underst-stand how m-much that m-means to me?”

  One of the most beautiful gifts in Taffeta’s life was to know just exactly how much Sarah’s offer of friendship, the best-friend kind, mattered to this big, skilled law officer who could take down a grown man lickety-split and pin him to the floor. That kind of war was a matter of course for him in his line of work. Overcoming the hatred and fear of a little girl was, in his opinion, the greatest victory of his life.

  Knowing how much Barney loved her—knowing that somehow that love he felt had extended to her daughter—meant everything to Taffeta. She wept with him. They sobbed, clenched in each other’s embrace, and swayed like two intertwined saplings being buffeted by a strong wind.

  When both of them finally recovered from the storm of emotion, Barney cradled Taffeta in his arms, still swaying slightly, and said, “What does being best friends with a little girl mean? Will I have to wear pink ribbons in my hair and nail polish with polka dots?”

  Taffeta started to laugh, and then so did he. They finally collapsed onto chairs at the table and held their sides until their mirth subsided. Barney held up a big, broad hand. “I think clear polish might work. I could live with that.”