Fred Barnes lived in the classic suburban setting. His morning commute was only about twenty minutes, if he didn’t stop for coffee, and if he drove at or about the speed limit. He closed up the white-painted front door of the cinnamon brown, brick-fronted, four-level split where he lived with his wife Dolores.
Then he hopped into his grey sedan.
He backed out of the driveway, scene of so many good memories. Like the games of catch with their son Jonathan as a teeny-bopper. Past the clump of lilac where daughter Debbie and, ‘the newest member of the family,’ Brad, posed for their wedding pictures. Barnes went out past the rural mailbox, and onto the two-lane blacktop which wound through the prim lakeshore village of Comelichmie Bluffs.
Fred was impatient this morning. Dolores slept in, and then she needed help with her bag. A recent colostomy was quite frankly adding a level of complication to both of their lives. Along with the depression she suffered, it was a real crimp in her daily activities. Having to give up her job at the walk-in clinic, where she once earned a small salary on the reception desk; was a real blow to his wife. He hoped she would find a new reason to live; and new ways to get involved with life. To be out there helping people, who quite frankly needed her.
Barnes was in a bit of a hurry. The strident chirp from the front wheels of the grey Honda sedan attested to the pressure he felt. After a lifetime of endless deadlines, he knew he would eventually pay some kind of price. He didn’t care to speculate as to what that price would be. Barnes liked his quiet. One good reason not to turn on the radio.
Sometimes he even shut off the phone.
‘Stress is a silent killer,’ as one of his previous editorial headlines read. Having written that, Barnes would have thought he was okay with it; and coping just fine. Being late ten or twenty minutes was stressful, but the news would go out. His people might make jokes if he walked in late; with what sounded like an excuse.
It’s just that Dolores hated him telling anyone about her affliction, and the fact was; no one at the office was really welcome inside of his personal, family life. He owed his family that much, after dragging them to a dozen different cities during the formative period of his career. They were all so young. Back then, he was filled with enthusiasm, and working his way up the ladder.
Yes, moving the kids was a tough thing for them, but they turned out fine, and thank the Good Lord for that. Too much craziness in the world these days. Like many a parent, when the kids got to a certain age, he began to think of their future. He felt a sense of concern. Perhaps a kind of dread.
Not exactly naked fear or anything like that.
He had a lot of confidence in his kids, but there were too many temptations, too many potential pitfalls.
“Without temptation, there is no virtue.”
That damned Brubaker again.
So wise in his words, so immature and confrontational in his behaviour. At least that was the impression Barnes got from his letters. Brubaker pushed his buttons, and made him mad. Barnes could live without the slanderous way he attacked the police, the courts, the municipal government, any government or authority figures.
Brubaker called him a few names.
You didn’t do that in writing.
No one ever did that. Brubaker was unique in that sense.
It seemed calculated.
Not like some hockey mom just losing it; a momentary aberration.
Fred had a lot of power, and everyone wanted a piece of it.
Everyone wanted his time. That’s where the objectivity came in. It was a kind of litmus test. An editor with a grudge could cause a lot of unnecessary harm.
The classic, official line was that it represented, ‘compassion.’
Sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t also a kind of cop-out. Did it mean he couldn’t get involved? And sometimes it wasn’t too pleasant. It felt like sitting in judgment on people, when a story just had to go in the paper. As often as not on the front page.
He knew people got hurt. It was a hard call, sometimes.
Sometimes it really did feel like, ‘the odious arts of the informer,’ or whatever.
To really bust someone. Like the unfortunate Mrs. Achmed-O’Malley, for example. She used to be a Member of the Provincial Legislature, and a Cabinet Minister to boot. Mrs. Achmed-O’Malley had a lot of friends, some of whom would be more or less well-balanced than others. As an editor you could make a lot of enemies without getting personal. Truth is, everyone took it personal. When someone freaked out on you, you never knew just how far it would go. Sometimes you wondered what they were even capable of. The plain truth was, she shouldn’t have lied!
Why should Fred feel guilty about that?
Brubaker was as mouthy as all heck, and deep inside lurked a heart of gold! Always fighting for the disabled, in the worst possible way. Anything short of violence.
He had to admit, it took a while to figure that one out. They were focusing more on those issues at the paper lately, precisely because Brubaker just seemed so darned incompetent.
Fred felt a small grin steal over his face.
Barnes had seen it all.
From the soft-spoken science teacher who showed up with a baseball bat at the front desk, to the people whose last name was the same as a convicted felon in a news story.
They were slightly apologetic; but all their friends were phoning them. The mistakes in the grocery ads. Apologies, retractions, and lawsuits threatened both ways.
Fred Barnes had seen a real slice of human nature.
Yet he was not cynical.
He didn’t think he was cynical.
As he drove, he was kind of pushing it, but he knew there were rarely cops on this stretch. At this time of day, they would almost inevitably be attending to a traffic accident closer to town. The speed limit was technically sixty kilometres per hour, but people usually did seventy-five or even eighty. Barnes was doing about eighty-five today. But he wasn’t drunk. He didn’t do drugs. Visibility was good. He knew the road, and the car was only four years old.
Not like some of the rattletraps that persisted despite clean air tests and safety checks mandated by the Ministry of Transportation.
He’d just had new brake pads and shoes put on.
“What the…”
Up ahead he saw brake-lights and a long line-up of vehicles. They were stopped dead in the middle of the road, surrounded by farm fields, trees, and ditches. No intersections up ahead. Slowing, he gently cussed in the cute little swear-words he used. These were the only ones he allowed himself. To swear eroded his credibility, and to a newspaper editor, credibility is his most precious asset.
The next intersection was a half a mile ahead.
His respectability, his impartiality was all he had as a defense. His professionalism was all that kept him out of trouble. The company hated being sued. It’s expensive and the results were always uncertain. Hence out-of-court settlements. Too much of that sort of thing could be hard on a career. Being late wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a guy, he thought patiently.
“Sugar! Someone must have gone off the road,” he muttered, gently braking to a halt behind a big red work truck.
It was last in line. Difficult to see around, and impossible to see over, with ladders and bins and racks on the back. There was no snow yet, what with the global warming and all. The road was dry. What was happening? Everyone was aware of all the drunk drivers, but lately there was a real spate of them.
Fred had no idea of what was going on up there. There were no sirens, nothing visible from here. Fred edged up closer to the truck, pulling out to the left a little to see around it.
The oncoming lane was clear. The line of vehicles was pretty long, maybe ten or twelve vehicles all jammed up for some reason. The dashboard cl
ock stared him in the face, a persistent reminder that he was late.
All of a sudden, for no reason at all, Mr. Fred Barnes snapped. There is no other way to describe it. While he couldn’t see what was happening, the road up ahead was clear.
Normally, he would be concerned if someone was in the ditch, but there was plenty of help on hand and he was late. Barnes wasn’t in the habit of carrying a camera, so all he wanted to do was get around these people. No one else was trying to bypass the distraction, or whatever it was. The road ahead was still clear, with no oncoming traffic.
He eased out and began to speed up to about forty kilometres an hour. As he cruised up alongside, everyone at the back of the line was in their vehicles; but the front couple of cars had no drivers.
‘Good, they’re getting some help,’ he thought.
Rising impatience made him do it.
He took a quick glance to the right, but there was nothing to be seen as he punched the gas pedal down in gratitude.
He was doing seventy-five kilometres an hour when he suddenly realized that there was a man, “some crazy whacko,” he blurted angrily.
Time suddenly stood stock-still.
There was a man who leapt out; standing in the road and madly waving his arms to warn him about something. Fred stomped on the brakes as hard as he could, gasping in dismay, white knuckles on the steering wheel.
He waited.
‘Whomp-crack-tsh-tsh!’ came the shocking noise as the man’s face came through the windshield. Barnes careened down the road, barely conscious of the fact that his brakes had gone right to the floor and there was no hydraulic fluid pushing on the calipers.
Fred Barnes had just killed a man.
In horror he stared at the shattered face and bloody drops falling on his knees. He held the car steady as it gently rolled to a halt a hundred metres down the road. Fred felt warm gobbets of blood falling on his legs and knees. All of his past successes went through his mind, yet he had no thoughts.
A vision of this person’s family danced through his head.
His heart pounded and his guts ached and tears stung his eyes.
Irrationally, he found his hands scrabbling to pull out a handful of tissues from the space between the seats where the little packet was kept. Failing, he gave it up, hands clenching and unclenching convulsively. All he could do was to hold his head in his hands, covering his eyes from the awful reality. The enormity of what he had just done sank in.
The man’s bulging, dead eyes stared at him accusingly.
When revelation comes, it hits with a bang.
“Oh, God, no!” he moaned.
Fred Barnes was having a busy, happy, and successful life and he had just taken another’s. Barnes had never in his entire life run into anything that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t explain, or couldn’t make good or go away.
Until today.
He sat there shaking uncontrollably. Nauseous; and crying, Fred put the shift lever in ‘park’ more by instinct than anything else. Unable, or unwilling to reach for the phone, he would in fact be unable to talk for some minutes.
There was really nothing more to be said.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Frank putt-putted down the road at twenty-two kilometres per hour…