Pursuit (4 page)

The group of foster homes in various counties around the state established twice yearly trips to participating factories in the area. Chuck attended with his foster parent, the other six kids in his foster home, and several other groups of youngsters who arrived expectant and loud at Drew Inc. on a “Way Things Are Made” school trip.

The box factory vibrated with overhead cranes, forklifts, and long, noisy conveyor belts, like a giant Erector Set, a boyhood dream. Chuck and his best friend, Bink, were told a number of times by Mr. Tucker, his so-called nurturing sire, to “Stay the hell with the group, shitheads.” Tuck had a way with words.

They wandered. Bink pressed a button on a yellow metal box that controlled an overhead apparatus moving on rails high in the ceiling. A heavy pallet of boxed tape for cardboard crashed down on Bink and Chuck. Bink died instantly. Chuck suffered a crushed hip and a broken leg.
He could still see Tuck hovering in the background with a wry look. Chuck heard himself scream.

“You're lucky, limp dick. You gotta sign a paper saying you'll behave yourself, but the Drew company did right by you. A lifetime job at your disposal, medical and retirement benefits as per rank and file, and a chunk of earth fit for a baron.”

“What's a baron?” He understood later that Tuck's explanation of the company's generosity was more liberal than what had been advertised to him.

He didn't see Tuck much after that. The man would disappear from the foster home property for several weeks at a time, coming back tan and grouchy.

On Chuck's sixteenth birthday, Tuck drove him to the box factory. “You're on your own, tough guy. By the way, you know anything about Rat? Gloria says she found him hanging by the neck from that elm tree by the outhouse. Anything?”

“He was your cat, Tuck. You should look out for things that are assigned to you.”

It didn't seem that his foster parent understood the reference but simply gave him the finger and sped away.

Charles liked his job, for he didn't have to talk to anyone. After several weeks, he bought the trashed Nomad and spent the weekends at the lake fixing up his legacy, a gone-to-hell fishing shack on a tract of uncut timber. The land was worthless—really too far from town to commute—but he liked it; it was his.

“Chuck, it's a hell of a deal,” one of the older accountants at the factory said. “A real fixer-upper; we'll get the paperwork settled later. In the meantime, I'm off to sunnier climes.”

He never saw the man again, learning that he had died
while on a search for a retirement spot for himself in the Tampa, Florida, area.

Several years later he ran into his old mentor, Tuck, toiling at a Conoco gas station on one of the winding back roads of the lake country.

“You don't recognize me, do you?”

Tuck glanced up at him as he filled Charlie's tank. His long black hair still swept back in a ducktail. “I see a lot of folks passing through here. That'll be nine dollars and eighty cents”—he paused—“cowboy.”

Charles thought him to be the same surly bastard who took money from the county for all those years to raise him and a half-dozen other pitiful waifs.

It looked as if Tuck either owned or ran the station. Charles rode by several times over the next few weeks and saw a woman pumping gas most of the time.

It wasn't Gloria, his old foster mom, though it looked somewhat like her—floozy hair and big knockers.

The mysterious fire that burned the Conoco station a month later at three o'clock in the morning was seen for ten miles. The inferno, listed by law enforcement as “suspicious.” The two bodies inside, charred beyond recognition.

Charles considered the event. On the one side, the world—as rotten as it appeared—was better off having been rid of Ol' Numb Nuts and his big-breasted partner. On the downside, Chuck had to give up his nightly prayer: “Lord, please help me find my old nemesis Mr. J. T. Tuck Gerard; I need to pay my respects.”

Tuck and his big-titted friend went up in smoke for $9.80. It weren't no joke.
Cowboy, indeed.

Charles made it a ritual to drive by the blackened remains. It made him smile as nothing else could.

T
he Show-Me State's
countryside. Age-old trees, shrubs, and vines covered Julie's hillside bungalow. At the white picket fence, she waved to Mrs. Tripette and her cottage,
Serenity
. The name, a little over the top, but the woman seemed pleasant, and Julie believed each to his own. She even felt a comfort in another neighbor's perpetually broken-down slatted corral. She would keep the memory of her early days leaning over that top rung watching the colts and their mothers and wishing for a Shetland pony—not, she thought, the usual young girl's yearning for dolls or a bright dress.

It wasn't to be. Her father stated, “Ponies are expensive toys. They give you nothing back but a brief, bumpy ride and a possible bite on the butt.”

Her daughter, Cheryl, on the other hand, claimed she was more reasonable for never asking for a horse, but rather, only a car. “Mom, everyone has one. You know, get to and from school, shop, go out. Hello, Earth to Mom.”

It was this thinking that further upended Julie, just on her way out for a slow walk. She had given a lecture to Cheryl about their financial situation—generally, to
tighten their unnecessary spending, and specifically, to allot their dollars more carefully.

In Julie's divorce settlement, desiring the least amount of ties to her ex-husband, she took no financial support from him but stipulated a trust fund for Cheryl's college education. Perhaps a tough decision to live with when these tiffs with Cheryl erupted, but Julie would arrange for a truce with her later. She had considered going back to her maiden name, but kept Worth out of respect for her daughter. Getting into this conflict with her girl also reminded her of one particular argument with her ex many years earlier.

Bart (or, as she would say, the rotten bastard she had been married to for less than a year) resisted living in their house, which her father had built after WWII. When questioned, her husband rambled, “It isn't mine, it's not something I built or paid for. Too many cute stories of your parents and all their junk.”

“Junk? You didn't know my parents, Bart, how can you say that?”

“I know you and how you relate to them, your overly sweet recollections of ‘Dad used to say this,' and ‘Mom sat there in the rocker,' and ‘the dog pooped on the rug' in such and such a corner. It's all too cozy and homespun.”

She had stepped out into the fall night air, like this evening, knowing then that to stay inside with her husband would lead to trouble.

But he came out looking for her. “Jules, get your ass in here. Stop the bullshit. You don't like this broken-down shack any more than I do, so stop pretending you do. It's full of memories of your old man and when you were Daddy's
little girl
.” He mimicked a spoiled brat. Then Bart threw up his arms and went in to make a call. Walking back
toward the house, she listened to his shielded conversation through an open window.

“When do you want to get together?”

She watched him through the multipane front door. He stood more erect, grinning, his left hand fiddling in his pocket. She thought it wouldn't be good for her or the expectant baby to pursue this stupid conversation any further.

Julie turned and walked back to the house, her mind drifting over those past years.

Her attraction to Bart mystified Julie. She liked classical music, Broadway tunes, and dance, while Bart existed on baseball, hockey, and boxing. She granted that theirs might have been a typical girl-boy difference, but Bart made his love of sports an inherited right, his father having been a minor league baseball player who had been released for deliberately hitting another player with a ball. His defense being “He asked for it.” It didn't bother him that the other player was on his own team.

Julie recalled another incident. Bart's car starting up and backing down the gravel drive. He pulled up beside her and rolled down the passenger-side window. “Going into town to see whatshisname about that computer thing I told you about. Back soon.”

“Horseshit.” Julie continued to walk.

“What?”

“I said you're full of shit. You're going out, pretending it's to talk over your worldwide start-up computer ‘thingy,' right?” She knew at that particular moment that she wouldn't be growing old with Mr. Barton Worth.

He had sped off in a huff, only to flash his brake lights and back up some fifty yards. “You're a real bitch, you know that? I'm trying to make a better life for us with this
programming idea for a better billing system, and you do nothing but piss all over it.”

Julie leaned against the passenger-side door. “Doesn't it bother you even a little that I'm pregnant and you're hotfooting it around town with your computer boyfriend? Doesn't that rock your self-centered world just a little, Bart baby?”

When he slammed the car into park and got out, Julie thought that Mr. Manly Man was going to prove himself right by beating the piss out of her.

It wasn't a trouncing in the classical sense but more of a mauling, a grabbing hold of arms and scuffling on the dirt road. It took more than a “Get in the car, bitch!” and “You kiss my ass!” before Julie went down.

“Why didn't you get in the car when I told you? Now look what you've made me do. Get up.” He reached down and offered her his hand; she spit on it.

“I wouldn't feel right about having you assist me up after I
made
you knock me down, so fuck off.”

It was, as she got back to the house, a resolution; a sense of closure. She knew she'd reached a change in her life, one that didn't include Barton Worth.

The state patrol opportunity, though, had been the right choice, but her time as a rookie did not pass uneventfully. Her partner at the time hit with a baseball bat as they attempted a drug arrest at a dope house. Tommy had walked much too boldly into the suspect's apartment. He saw the woman, looking contrite and scared, standing against the kitchen wall, her arms cramped behind her. Tommy moved as if to walk past her, and the woman lashed out with the metal bat. He never regained consciousness. The druggie's wife swung the bat again. Julie yelled “Freeze!” to no effect. The missus continued her
windup and uncoiled. Julie stepped inside the arc of the bat and cracked the woman on top of the head with her Sig. The woman went down in a thud. Julie's misgiving came immediately. A young girl stood between the parting of drapes separating the kitchen and living room.

“Mommy, why are you lying down? I'm hungry.”

Every day for the next fifteen years, Julie tried to be an exemplary officer, never again wanting to hear a child's voice pleading with its mother.

The aftermath proved difficult. Because she was a rookie, her superiors and most of the older patrolmen treated Julie as an incompetent. The investigation exonerated her, but it stayed with her. The stigma of losing a partner as a rookie followed her long after others in the department had forgotten. She went out of her way to be thorough and fair, and gaining a reputation for being tough not only on lawbreakers but also especially on herself.

H
is boss, William
Arlen Drew—or Wad, as Charles called him in the privacy of his thoughts—confronted him earlier in the day with the notion that he, Charles, should be more aware of time, taking care to arrive when his coworkers punched the clock, taking only the prescribed breaks during the days, and making an effort to enjoy his fellow drones.

He didn't use the word “drone,” but he might as well have. “It's incumbent for all of us to pull together; to create a sense of commonality in the workplace.”

Each time Mr. Wad spoke to him, Charles grinned like a white-faced circus jester. He acquiesced by moving his head obediently from side to side or acknowledged him with a “Got it, sir” and sometimes a condescending “Wow, that's terrific.” At least he would have described his days as entertaining.