American Rust

He had no idea how long he'd been on the train, he'd watched the powerlines hurdling up and down until the motion made him sick. Several times they'd pulled over, sat waiting on stub lines as other trains passed, hours, it seemed, he was restless and bored but there was no point to getting off—it was days trying to get on.

  Later they were alongside a highway and going fast, the train passing cars. There were so many noises he couldn't separate them, the hammering of the tracks and banging of the couplers and the rushing wind and then the brakes were grating, deafening, the car behind him lurched forward, it would crush him, then all the cars were bouncing and recoiling and the shock nearly jolted him off the platform, under the wheels.

  Pay attention. Nearly got lulled to pieces. The ride's either pleasant or miserable. No, it's mostly boring. Nice in the wide open, see a long way out over the hills, other times just a cut through the trees, wall of green in front of your face, claustrophobic. Tunnels the worst.

  Think about Poe, what's he doing now? Probably screwing your sister. Or passed out drunk somewhere. Still, he came into the river after you—you can't change that. And he came along on your little caper. Right, and then he started that fight. Would have been better off alone.

  He shifted positions again, the platform was very small and not long enough for his legs, it seemed there wasn't any part of him that wasn't cramped or bruised. He climbed the ladder and sat on top of the mound of coal, it was a good view, highest point on the train, he could see the Baron up there as well, seven or eight cars ahead, sitting on a coal pile and watching the scenery. A good feeling. Cold though. Be better in summer. After a time he went back down the ladder and crawled into the narrow slot in the back of the car, where there was no wind. It was a small triangular space between the inside angle of the hopper and the outside shell of the car. It was filthy and he could feel the grit everywhere but he was warm again. Look like a coal miner, probably. Wrap the sleeping bag around you. Safest sleep there is—can't get you on a moving train. Last time your head was clear? Months. Eat some. He opened a tin of Vienna sausages and ate them, spitting the grit that stuck to his fingers. He wasn't sure if he felt better or not and he drank more water.

  He woke up sometime later. Sore. No room to stretch. Getting dark now, been on this train an entire day. Could be anywhere, just trees going by. England France or Germany. Imagine it's that instead of… Ohio probably. Unless we're to Michigan by now. No way to know until we get there—everything you're seeing is new. Appreciate that while it lasts.

  Sleeping or awake, no difference. Gray area between them. Dull blue light from the porthole and the view of the car behind you. Noise of the train, vibration, you're a part of it, rattling. Meat tenderizing. Forgive us our daily softness. Pitch black again—another tunnel. Make you deaf— plug your ears. Pray it ends soon—the fumes. Long enough tunnel you'll suffocate. Short tunnel, please. The fumes got worse and worse yet and his eyes began to burn. He put his head outside the porthole, over the platform—worst yet. Pass out here and you don't wake up. Suicide gas breather. Make sure if you fall asleep you stay away from the wheels. Safer in here.

  Then, suddenly, it was bright again and quiet. Get outside before … He hung his head out the portal, the wall of green passing next to the train, breathed the clean air and vomited. What is that? A dollar fifty in sausage. Dog food. And you ate that on purpose.

  Curling up with his head at the edge of the porthole, he rested on his pack so he could see the trees going by outside. Much darker now, ten minutes till night. The life they all live. Alternative must not be good. What the Swede came from, reason they were so angry when they found you in that old building. Their simple pleasures being taken away.

  That's right, he thought, more guilt. Take a lesson from the old man: don't admit you might have been wrong. Lie to yourself and discover true happiness. Lee and Poe the same. An addiction, really, needs its own hotline. No, he thought, the kid should take note. There's gold in them hills. The original business model. Offer forgiveness. Lie cheat and steal and the kid will forgive you. All welcome at the Church of the Kid. Follow his instructions to get to the afterlife. Sixteen virgins and a harpsichord. Your felonies pardoned whether man woman or child. Faith the only requirement—believers go forth and commit. Find forgiveness in reflection. Shine of the collection plate.

  He thought about the Swede again. I'm not worried about that anymore, he told himself. Give me water and light and I'll knock down a temple. Jesus Christ? No, a hayseed. Light life and love. The old man who said he never liked my name—sounded Jewish. My mother the one who insisted. I am the Truth and the Light. I am the truth in a knife. Trajectory of a thrown object across level ground: y-axis 9.8 meters per second squared, x-axis zero, initial velocity twenty- five meters per second, release angle fifteen degrees. Presuming no air resistance. Presuming flight uninterrupted by a man's head.

  You are going crazy, he thought. Young man you have plugged Science into the hole left by God. Your mother had the opposite problem: plugged God into a hole left by … Except she took the secret with her. Chose the next world over this one. A slight flaw in her plan—where is she now? Just darkness. If that is what nonexistence is.

  He stayed like that for a long time, looking out at the trees rushing past, afraid to touch his eyes and get dirt into them. Keep going, he thought, wash your eyes out. Outside now it was fully dark.

  4. Harris

  He'd gotten the call from Glen Patacki at lunchtime. Bud, Glen Patacki here, long time no see. Why don't we have a drink on my boat this afternoon?

  Glen was twenty years older than Harris, the local justice of the peace, the one who'd put in a word for Billy Poe last time. He'd been chief for much of the time Harris was a sergeant, one of the first people Harris met when he moved to Buell. This was the first social call in eight or nine months. The timing is no accident, thought Harris.

  Driving up and down the steep hills, all woods and farmers’ fields, the sudden ravines and valleys, so much hidden away, you could get to the highest promenade around and still not be able to see half of what was in front of you, the land was so tucked in on itself. Everything green, swamps in the lowlands.

  Ho had dropped the morning paper on his desk, Billy Poe's picture on the front page, a story made for newspapers, football star turns murderer. It was the sort of story people couldn't help wanting to read. By tonight, he guessed, there would be few people in Buell, or maybe the entire Mon Valley, who hadn't seen or heard about it.

  He downshifted into third gear coming down the long hill so as not to overheat his brakes. He could remember clearly when he'd had ten years left till his pension kicked in but now he was down to eighteen months. Counting down the end of your life. Hoping things will go by faster. He wondered if everyone was like that, he wondered if, say, doctors or lawyers thought the same things. He was fifty- four now, forty when he'd made chief, the youngest in the history of the town, the youngest in the whole Valley, it was Don Cunko who got him voted in, along with a big push from folks such as Glen Patacki. At the time they'd had fourteen full- time guys and maybe six part- timers. Now those numbers were reversed.

  Harris was nineteen when he'd joined the marines, put down law enforcement as his preferred MOS and now, thirty- five years later, here he was, riding out a decision he'd made as a kid. I enjoy my life, he thought. It is work to be happy about things. She is the one who taught you that. Maybe the fact that you had to work at being happy meant it wasn't the natural condition. But he had no excuse. If you had a certain level of comfort, which he did, you just had to decide every morning. Will today be a happy day or a sad day? Listen to that shit, he thought. The only one you'd ever say that to is Fur.

  He could imagine himself following Grace until he was old with wandering, he knew he would be comfortable with that. Never close enough to get really burned, or to lose anything. Keeping her just over the next hill. The feeling for her preventing him from finding anyone else. In her own way, she was his even keel.
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  It was not her fault, to have someone like Billy Poe dependent on her; it had really taken a toll. Don't get too sympathetic, he thought. But it was true. He got worried sick about Fur if the dog was gone too long on one of his runs.

  He saw the sign for the marina and went down a long green road under a tunnel of trees. How long had he lived here? Twenty- three years. Before that it was six years with the Philadelphia PD and four as an MP in the marines. He had not planned any of it, he'd enlisted because it was better than getting drafted and the number he pulled made being drafted a certainty. Someone told him MPs were less likely to get sent out on suicide missions by shitbag second lieutenants, not to mention you'd end up coming out, if indeed you came out, with a skill you could actually use.

  Coming into the parking lot there was Glen Patacki's black Lincoln, a judge's car, freshly waxed. There were those who waxed their cars and those who didn't. Below that, there were those who washed their cars and those who didn't. Harris being the latter.

  Glen was waiting on his boat, he waved from a distance as soon as he saw Harris come out onto the green by the water. A thirty- eight- foot Carver, twin 454 Crusaders. A yacht, as river boats went. Harris had his own slot but his boat, a nineteen- foot Valiant, had been out of the water three years now. One of these days he would sell it. Owning a boat was like having a second dog, except a boat didn't love you for sinking half your paycheck into it.

  “Christ what a day, isn't it?” said Glen. He waved his arm, indicating their surroundings. “Couple miles upriver, you'd never know it.”

  It was a different world. As wooded as Buell was, the southern Mon Valley was beyond the reach of industry. Just trees, branches hanging low over the water and the slow muddy river itself. Quiet, the occasional passing boat, sometimes a tow of barges.

  Harris climbed onto the boat. Glen motioned him to sit.

  “Bud, to cut the bullshit, the reason I asked you out here is I got the guy from the Valley Independent sniffing around, asking about any warrants.”

  “On what?”

  “Anything we might have forgotten to file the seal order on. He's sniffing around, is the point, on anything that might look even worse on this Billy Poe murder.”

  “There isn't anything to find. If that's the only reason you dragged me all the way out to Millsboro.”

  “I missed you, baby,” said Glen. “You know that's the real reason.”

  “I know.”

  “The other thing that's been crossing my mind recently is that I'm not much longer for this job. I thought we might discuss that.”

  Harris looked at him.

  “I'm fine,” said Patacki. “It's only that I've made my nut and I was thinking that when I retire, you might consider running for my spot. It'd be a good thing for you.”

  “Never thought about it.”

  “Never?”

  “Not really.”

  “That's the beautiful thing about you, Bud. I could have told ten different people that same thing and all of them would be sucking my dick right now.”

  “I better have a drink first.”

  “Sure. You know where they're kept.”

  Harris reached next to him into the cooler and found a High Life.

  “From a professional advice standpoint, and, in having a few years on you, I wonder if it might be better if you stayed clear of Billy Poe vis-à-vis this thing in the newspaper,” said Patacki. “Which includes his mother as well.”

  “You don't have to worry about me, you fat prick.”

  “The only thing that gives me any hope is I hear that the case against him is airtight.”

  “I did those things for his mother, not him. I always knew he was a lost cause.”

  Patacki grinned. “You know you made it harder on yourself, not marrying. People want their public servants to act normal. Not have any vices. Like me.”

  “I hear you,” said Harris. “You know I appreciate you going out of your way for me last year. Sorry it's coming back to bite you.”

  “No, Bud, you're doing alright, I'm just an old drunk and I got worried, not to mention I had a martini powwow with that pussy Huck Cramer and he got me all in a lather.”

  Huck Cramer was the mayor of Buell, and, like Don Cunko, he was caught up in the town's sewer- bidding problem. “Cramer might have other things he ought to be worrying about.”

  “Keep in mind that your job is an appointed position, Bud. You end up taking your pension down there in Daniel Boone County, I give you a year before you eat your gun. You're a social animal same as the rest of us.”

  Harris shrugged.

  “I don't envy you, I know that. I heard about the goddamn budget, which I know means more of these part- time fucks.”

  “It's the benefits,” said Harris.

  “I can't even get your guys to write tickets anymore, half of them are working twenty- four hours straight, they pull a shift in Charleroi, head down to Buell, then finish up in Brownsville. Meanwhile they live in Greene County. No clue as far as the communities they're policing.”

  “They're not supposed to work more than twelve straight.”

  “To be honest I don't care what they do,” said Patacki. “As long as they write goddamn tickets. Even ten years ago I did six thousand cases a year, now I'm down to forty- three hundred. My office takes in four hundred and fifty thousand dollars where it used to take in over eight hundred. There's your budget cut right there. Hell, we used to take in one hundred thousand a year just from parking tickets, but now the girl we got working the meters, she's hardly ever out there.”

  “It's all just symptoms anyway.”

  Patacki nodded and checked his watch. “Late for my shot,” he said. “You mind?” He pulled his briefcase over and opened it and found a small syringe, then lifted his shirt and gave himself an injection into the pale skin on his belly. He smiled at Harris, slightly embarrassed. “They told me all this booze is probably what brought on the diabetes, but…”

  “How's a man supposed to live?”

  “My sentiments exactly.” He took another sip of his drink. “Let me give you a scenario I've been turning over in my head. What if, before all those properties got bought up and turned into HUD, we'd just burned them down, say around 1985, every vacant house in the city had been razed before all those people moved in. If you think about it, by now half the city would be all back to woods. The tax base would be exactly the same but with half as many people and none of the new problems.”

  “Those HUD properties bought Danny Carroll his condos in Colorado and Miami. Without him …” Harris shrugged. “There's your problem right there.”

  Patacki nodded. “A fact I find convenient to ignore, obviously.”

  “Which is not how I meant it.”

  “No offense taken.” He put up his hand. “Everyone knows you're a good man, Bud. Most of the guys running things are like John Dietz, skimming quarters off the video poker machines. But you,” he said.

  “That's not my angle.”

  “Your angle is Grace Poe. That's your slippery slope.”

  “Not this again.”

  “Do you still see her?”

  Harris looked away, out over the river. It suddenly occurred to him that the Fayette prison, where they were holding Billy Poe, was in La Belle, just on the other side of the water. Less than a mile, probably.

  “You should have been here for the seventies, Bud. The department was buying new cruisers with Corvette engines maybe every three years. And then came the eighties, and then it wasn't just that we lost all those jobs, it was that people didn't have anything to be good at anymore.” He shrugged. “There's only so good you can be about pushing a mop or emptying a bedpan. We're trending backwards as a nation, probably for the first time in history, and it's not the kids with the green hair and the bones through their noses. Personally I don't care for it, but those things are inevitable. The real problem is the average citizen does not have a job he can be good at. You lose that, you lose the countr
y.”

  “Did the wife stop talking to you or something?”

  “I'm old and fat,” said Patacki. “I speculate and theorize.”

  “You ought to drink more,” said Harris. “Or get an intern.”

  “I do. And I should.”

  It was quiet for a minute. There were other people sitting on their boats, watching the quiet scene, the shorelines and the sun coming off the water, drinking like Patacki and Harris. Many of the boats never left the dock—gas was too expensive. People drove to the marina to sit and drink on their boats, then went home without ever starting them up.

  “Who's getting the axe?” said Patacki.

  “Haggerton. Also Miller and Borkowski.”

  “The new guy?”

  “He does more policework than the rest of the department put together.”

  “Except Miller and Borkowski are lieutenants.”

  “Just Miller,” said Harris. “Borkowski keeps failing the exam. Not to mention the new guy does half his work off the clock.”

  “You'll have problems with the union.”

  “I'll handle it.”

  “This the Chinese guy?”

  Harris nodded.

  “I can tell you like him,” said Patacki. “That's a good thing.”

  “I guess.”

  “Permit me a final indulgence, Bud.”

  “How final?”

  “I would like to tell you about the best job I ever worked.”

  “Why do I suspect that it's Magisterial District Eight?”

  “Not even close. It was the Sealtest Dairy making ice cream. Sixty-four to sixty- seven, before I became a cop. This big building, it could have been a mill or something, only you would punch in and change into fresh clothes, then walk under a blue light before you were allowed to touch anything. You were never allowed to get dirty. Big buckets of pistachios and fresh fruit, peaches, cherries, anything you could imagine, mixing it up in the machines. You've probably never seen ice cream before it gets frozen, but I promise you there isn't anything like it.” Patacki sipped his drink. “It really was like heaven, just being in there. You'd finish each batch and then take the barrels into the hardener to stack and sometimes, because of the humidity from the door always opening and closing, it would be snowing in the hardening room, ice cream stacked to the ceiling and it would be snowing down on you in the middle of the summer. You're making ice cream, it's snowing on you, and you look outside and it's ninety degrees and sunny. I'd take that job again right now if they offered it. It really was like heaven.”