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fiction
published in The Bridge
copyright@paulpekin2001
Backroller
by Paul Pekin
When Fineman was fifty-five the best of his life seemed over. He had given up his slot with Chicago, moved to Florida, taken up real estate, lived a little too fast, a little too soon, and returned to the only police job he could now get, this time with the Village of Wireland. A month later his wife had a stroke and died so suddenly it was as if she had been murdered. There were no children. Liquor, which had always been his companion, became his spouse.
It was Friday afternoon. His shift began at five. He went through the apartment turning out lights that never needed being lit, last stop the kitchen to fill his thermos with bourbon. If you didn't have the balls to break a few rules, you probably shouldn't be a cop in the first place.
All week long it had been raining, a big dark system that would not go away. Expressway traffic crawled. The voice on the radio warned of an accident at 16th Avenue. Fineman shook his head. No, not even if they were bleeding on the pavement. Let some other copper take care of it. Eight hours was enough.
The town of Wireland was spread out and old with boarded up storefronts and shut down factories and a blackwater river running through. The police department occupied a frame building that had once been a church. Although the bell tower and most of the stained glass had been removed, and the interior partitioned into offices, no one would ever mistake this place for a real police station.
After roll call Sergeant Rauch called him aside. "Can you work over?"
"What's to stop me?"
"We got a deal by the dam. Drowning. They ain't come up with the bodies yet."
"Bodies?"
"Supposed to be two. Fire's been on it all afternoon. Going to shut down soon as it's dark."
"And you want me to sit?"
"Till daylight. We need a white guy. When you get there you'll see why."
The dam was on the edge of town, a low spillway that served no special purpose other than to create a hazard for canoeists. Fineman knew it well. That spring he had watched the fire department pull an eight year old child out of the pool below, the body spinning endlessly, trapped. "This is what we call a backroller," the fireman explained. "It's the way your dam is built, the water comes over, rolls back on itself, get caught in that sucker, doesn't matter if you can swim or not." The fireman had walked out on the top of the dam, ankle deep in the dark flowing water, and roped the body. It took a lot of nerve to do that.
When Fineman pulled up, there were two fire trucks already on the scene, another squad, several cars, and an ambulance, all parked in a little clearing on the high bank of the river. Medics were working over something in the rain, their slickers reflecting the revolving red light. Three or four men, perhaps a woman, you couldn't tell, were with them.
The moment he touched the brakes, Fineman felt his wheels sink into the mud. Oh well. He would worry about that when the time came. He slipped on his raincoat, and walked over to the firemen.
They had a body on the ground, hooked to a respirator. It was the body of a young man with longish black hair, blue jeans, tennis shoes, a concert tee-shirt. "It's no use," one of the firemen was saying. "He was in too long."
The woman, yes, it was a woman, about forty, maybe forty-five, her hair rain-plastered to her head, cursed. "You can't quit! Bring him back, god damn it."
A Lieutenant named Gromski was in charge. "We're not quitting," he said. "Get him in the ambulance."
"Don't let them turn that thing off," the woman cried. "I know what you're going to do. Don't let them."
"We won't turn it off, Mam. You can ride along and see for yourself."
Fineman spoke. "You got him out already?"
Gromski led him aside. "There's still another one in there. We're quitting until daylight. I'm not going to lose a man in that current. You better get down and help your guy."
There was a muddy trail that led to the river. Halfway down it Fineman saw why the sergeant had wanted a white man for this job. Sanders, one of the young blacks, was trying to hold back a man half again as large as himself.
"Goddam it," the man was saying. "That's my brother in there. If you guys aren't going to get him out, I'll do it myself."
"No," Sanders said. "We have two dead already. That's enough."
"You're going to tell me what's enough? I don't want to hear it. No nigger cop's going to tell me that. Not when my brother's in that water."
Fineman sized up the big man. Biker was the word that came to mind, long dark hair in a ponytail, a sleeveless denim jacket worn next to the skin, jeans held up by a metal chain belt, and heavy boots. Let him jump in that water and he would sink like a stone. Fineman put a hand on his shoulder.
"Easy champ. Maybe you can tell me what's happening."
"My brother's in that river and this nigger thinks he's going to stop me!"
Fineman got the story. It had been a fishing afternoon, two brothers, a cousin, friends, a few drinks, a few laughs, the cousin had gone out on the dam and slipped. They could see him out there, caught in the backroller, calling for help, and one brother had gone in, and suddenly he and the cousin were both were gone, just like that, gone. Someone called the fire department and they had been out there with divers and grappling hooks ever since, but only the cousin had come up. "For Christ's sake, they're quitting! Those motherfuckers are quitting and my brother's still in the water!"
The man made a move toward the river and Sanders shoved him back. Fineman stepped between. "Rauch says I relieve you," he told Sanders.
"Good enough. But don't let this guy jump till I'm out of here. He wants to drown himself, he don't have to do it on my shift."
"Nigger," the man with the ponytail said, but Sanders plodded away without looking back.
The invisible river at the end of the rail grew louder. Fineman braced. Here he comes, he thought, but the man with the ponytail, as soon as he saw Sander's squad turn out of the clearing, started back toward the firemen and the medics and the body that was being loaded into the ambulance. Fineman watched the ambulance pull away, then the cars of the drowned men's friends, then the two fire trucks. Suddenly he was alone.
Well, not quite alone. At the end of the trail, somewhere in the river, he had a companion. Night was drawing in. Traffic flowed by on the highway, uncaring, unknowing, although it was possible a reporter or some other curiosity seeker might turn up. Before this could happen, Fineman crawled back into his squad, turned the ignition, and began gently rocking out of the mud. The wheels whirled and sank, whirled and sank, and finally caught.
There was a little restaurant down by the intersection where he sometimes ate. The food was terrible, but this no longer concerned him. The woman behind the counter, about fifty with dyed red hair and a dumpy don't-give-a-damn figure, recognized him. "What do you hear about the drowning?" "What drowning?" Fineman replied. He ordered a cup of coffee and a large slice of dark chocolate cake. "Two boys," she said. "They went in by the dam." "Is that a fact," he said.
Some men fooled around with these waitresses. Fineman did not. They were just working women with husbands and children who had no real use for you. Leave a good tip. That made them as happy as anything. He took his time, sipping coffee, smoking cigarettes. Someone had left a newspaper on the adjoining stool and he read that until he saw it already a day old. It was full dark when he crawled back in the squad carrying a half dozen candy bars in a paper bag. That should get him through the night.
Back at the clearing, he was relieved to see that no cars had pulled in. Technically, he had left his post, but who the hell wanted to get technical? What could they do to you that hadn't already been done?
Once again he felt the big squad sink into the mud, and this time he knew he really was in for the night. Whoever relieved him in the morning could help with a shove. Meanwhile there was his little am/fm radio that regulations said you weren't supposed to carry, and All Night Barney who insulted his callers, and when that got old there could always be a nap. Stationary patrol. Wasn't that the assignment?
All Night Barney was on with a caller. "I believe," she was saying, "I believe there is a God, sir, and that God is just. Didn't he say, did he not, 'Suffer little children to come to me?'"
"Come on, Yolanda, get to the point. What has "God is just" got to do with welfare? We're talking about these queens having one kid after another just like vermin. Hard working people get to pay for little Tyrone and Darnell and here comes mama too lazy to work? Let her pick up that thrash in the alleys, who do you think threw it there in the first place . . . "
You could hear Barney's engineering crew snickering in the background. Yolanda was stunned.
"Vermin! I can't believe you said that! Now that is racist, sir, I insist . . . "
"Don't you go calling me a racist, Sweetheart! I don't care what color they are, green, white, or polka dotted. I say it like it is. Get us another caller, Jack."
Fineman leaned back. It was better than thinking; it was better than reliving the past. No matter how often you did that, things always came out the same.
The rain stopped. One moment it was drumming on the roof of the squad, then silence. Fineman waited several moments before stepping out with his flashlight. There was a breeze, steady and cool, and stars were beginning to appear. He started down the path to the river, to the rush of water falling over the dam, aiming his light ahead. At the water's edge, he turned it off and waited for his eyes to adjust. There it was, swift, black, terrible. All summer half dry and stagnant, a stream hardly worth the name, now bubbling death.
Fineman checked his watch. Soon the thermos. Then he heard a car pulling in and hurried back toward his squad.
Not a car, a pickup truck. Someone he would have to chase away. He threw his light on a man with a gray beard and called:
"You can't park here."
"Turn your goddam light from my eyes!"
There were three of them. Fineman recognized the biker brother, then the woman, she the same as before, but dry-headed, wearing an oversize windbreaker jacket. Momentarily she seemed young.
"Sorry," he said, lowering the light. "I didn't recognize the truck."
The truck belonged to the man with the beard. He seemed to be attached in some way to the woman, but Fineman would have bet they were not married. The woman had a good face with high well shaped eyebrows and a decent Anglo-Saxon nose. "They turned him off," she said. "They just turned him off and he died."
The man with the beard put his arm around her. "They were right, Honey. All that time in the water, there'd be brain damage. Would you want that? Tommy a vegetable?"
"Gone," she said. "I can't believe it."
It had been her son in the ambulance and now he had been pronounced. She was taking it well, Fineman thought. You could see that she had that toughness. But what now of the other boy--suddenly he was thinking of both victims as boys.
"They were like brothers. They were practically raised together. Oh, my God. We've got to tell Louise . . . "
"We've got to get Bobby out of that water, that's what we got to get," the biker brother said, his voice thick with rage. "He's in that water, goddamit, are we gonna just stand here and talk, cause if that's all we're gonna do I'm going in myself."
"No, you don't, Bradford Boy," said the bearded man. "The police are right. If they can't get him out in broad daylight with divers and everything, what can we do now? We gotta wait till morning."
Bradford Boy. It seemed an odd name to call this big ponytailed biker. Fineman resisted a smile. "You couldn't swim in that," he said. "That backroller would pull you right down. The best swimmer in the world couldn't do it."
"That's right," the bearded man said. "Was a river back home had a dam like that. I remember . . . "
"Oh, God damn it!" Whirling on his booted heel, big Bradford Boy slammed a solid punch against the side of the pickup truck.
The man with the beard pulled him back before he could do it again. "All right, now stop that, Brad. You're not helping anything. We're just going to have to wait till it gets light and they start again. That's the right thing to do. Why don't we take the truck and go get ourselves some coffee?"
"I'm not leaving," the woman said.
"Well, stay. Me and Bradford Boy will get the coffee and you can wait here with this officer. He's not going anywhere. Are you?"
Fineman thought of his squad stuck in the mud. "You don't have to worry about that."
As soon as the pickup turned down the road, the woman drew a pack of cigarettes from her jacket. Fineman produced his lighter.
"My Tommy's gone," she said. "I saw him under that sheet and I still can't accept it. Maybe that's how these mothers feel that lost their kid in some war. You're never going to accept it. Never."
Fineman watched the woman smoke. He liked her, a strong woman, a warm woman near the age Marti had been before things began to go bad. Leaner though, tougher. Poor Marti, would it have helped if she had been tougher?
"I don't know how I'm going to tell this to my sister," the woman said. "Tommy and Bobby, we carried them at the same time, they was born the same month, people took them for twin brothers. Now I lost them both and that fool Brad wants to jump in too. He never had sense, that boy. God forgive me, I wish it could have been him instead of his brother." She drew on her cigarette fiercely, cast it aside, and thrust her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "In that water!"
"Would you like to wait in the squad," Fineman suggested.
"Yes," she said. "Oh yes. It's terrible cold out here."
All Night Barney was still on the radio. Fineman turned the ignition and started up the heater. "Good Jesus. Would you believe this weather in the middle of August?"
"It doesn't make sense," she said, fumbling for another cigarette. Again Fineman snapped the lighter. "What could they have been doing out on that dam? I wish to God I'd been here. They called me, you know, at work, and one of the guys drove me down. On that dam, what kind of craziness is that? It was Brad's idea, you can't tell me it wasn't. It's always him that comes up with the crazy ideas, like that time they took that car.'
She fell silent. All Night Barney was talking about homosexuals. "They say we got to call you guys gay. Why? What's so gay about you anyway? Now if I called you a queer or a fag or something like that, okay, maybe I shouldn't, but I said homosexual and that's what it is in the dictionary and why the hell should I let you rewrite the dictionary?"
"It's the same as with the blacks," the caller said in a clear young voice. "They choose not to be called Negroes and we respect that, and we . . . "
"There you are," Barney said. "I don't see why I should call a Negro a black. There was a time they would have come at you with a razor for that. And who knows, anyway, what they're going to change it to next."
"Does that radio of yours get fm?" the woman asked.
"You can try. It don't pick up too good out here."
The woman took the radio in her lap and played with the dials. "Music," she said. "That All Night Barney, he's nothing but a hypocrite. He goes out with nigger girls, did you know that? I heard him say it one night, honest. I suppose it's all right but I can't imagine what kind of a nigger girl would want to go out with him."
"He's got the money," Fineman said. The woman had found a station that played country music. It wasn't coming in very well but she left it on.
"There you are," she said. "Better than Barney. What about you? Would you go with a nigger girl? Maybe I should say black girl, it does sound better. Would you? I mean if you were single."
"I am single," Fineman said.
"Oh." The woman smoked her cigarette quietly, listening to the music. She waited for the station break.
"Divorced?"
Fineman told her what had happened to Marti, how he had reached the hospital too late.
"I am sorry. My brother. His wife had cancer. Maybe to die quick like that's a blessing. Just listen to me. My boy is dead, and I'm saying something like that." The FM station faded into static. Again she played with the dial but the music would not return and finally she switched off. Fineman stared out the window, waiting for what she would say next. Then he heard a sound he at first did not recognize. She was crying. Very quietly, very bravely.
"Hey," he said, and this simple word broke her down. Suddenly she was in his arms.
How long since he had held a woman! Poor Marti, he had forgotten how it felt. Fineman held the woman's warm body against his and smelled her dark hair and it was as if she were comforting him and not the other way around. He felt something deep and primitive and even decent stir his blood and he was not ashamed at all to find himself coming erect. There was nothing you could say at a time like this, and nobody but a fool would try and say it.
She was very brave and had her cry over within minutes. "There you are," she said, sitting back and free. "I guess I had to do that."
Fineman wondered if she had heard his heart pounding. "Listen. I got something. Promise you won't tell anyone?"
He opened the thermos and poured the cap full. The woman drank slowly. "Uh, huh," she said. "That is something."
A few moments later the truck returned, filling the little clearing with its lights. "They must have gone to Kansas for that coffee," the woman said. She crawled out of the squad and Fineman followed, stumbling through the deep mud that held his car fast. The woman saw this. "Hey! You're really stuck in that stuff. I'll get Hank and Brad to push you out."
"It's okay," Fineman said. The bearded man and Bradford Boy had three large white styrofoam cups on the tailgate of the truck.
"You didn't get none for the officer," the woman said.
"Well then, give him mine," Bradford Boy said. "I'll just drink this." He had a sixpack of Old Style, one can already missing.
Fineman accepted the coffee thankfully. Hot, strong, sweet. Now the bearded man switched on his car radio, a good radio that pulled in that country western station just as if it had never faded away.
"What is this, a goddam party?" Bradford Boy said.
The woman sipped her coffee carefully. "You're the one's drinking beer."
"Bobby wouldn't mind neither," the bearded man said. "Beer, music, that's what he liked."
There was a breeze now. You could hear it high in the trees. Looking up, Fineman saw the sky cleared of clouds, brilliant and deep. It was astonishing how cold it had become, and here he was in summer sleeves.
"That Emmy Lou," the woman said. She was speaking of the voice on the radio. "I don't tire of her."
"No, folks don't," the bearded man agreed.
"A song like that, it's good for your heart." She lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, the bearded man's arm around her waist.
Bradford Boy finished his beer and popped open another. "Nothing beats doing the thing you got to do."
"You want something to do? Then you and Hank can help this officer get his squad car out of the mud."
Both men welcomed the idea. They backed the pickup to the squad, attached a heavy nylon rope to the frame, got Fineman behind the wheel, and easily pulled him free. Too easily. Fineman could sense their disappointment, as sharp as his own. Now the night loomed longer than ever. Before rejoining them, he opened his thermos and measured out a taste.
"Aw shit," Bradford Boy was saying. "We can pull that old squad car out of the mud, but we can't do a thing for Bobby. I say it again, this ain't goddam right."
Fineman could feel it coming. He fingered his two-way radio, wondering if he ought to call for help, dismissing the idea as quickly as it presented itself. Who would he get at this hour? Jones? Williams? One was as black the other.
Bradford Boy tossed his empty can aside. "Nope. Ain't right, and it ain't gonna be. I'm going down there."
Fineman moved to block the path.
"Out my way. If you can't do anything, don't stand in the way of someone who can."
Fineman felt the earth fly out from under his feet and rise up to fill his teeth with mud. He could hear them screaming down the path, the woman, the bearded man, Bradford Boy, wild in grief, fear and guilt. Rising to his knees, Fineman pawed blindly in the mud for his radio, lose that radio, they wouldn't care how many years you had in, they'd make you pay for it. As for Bradford Boy, if he wanted that bad to drown, then damn it, let him drown!
But they all came back together, big Bradford blubbering between the others, yanking his powerful arms free from their support. "I'm sorry, Bobby. Bobby! Do you hear me? I'm sorry. Oh, god, god, god damn it!" This time he punched the truck so hard he broke his hand. Fineman heard the bone snap, and saw Bradford freeze and grow quiet.
"Brad! Brad Boy!" the woman came on the run.
"Let me be!"
"You're hurt! Please, now, you're hurt."
Clutching his hand to his side, Bradford crawled into the truck and slammed the door. "Get away from me."
The bearded man stepped up and took her into his arms. "Let him be, Baby. I know how that boy feels. There ain't a thing we can do for him right now."
The bearded man had sense. He and the woman sat on the tailgate and opened two of Bradford Boy's beers. "I'd offer you one, but I know you're on duty," he said to Fineman.
"It's all right. It's too cold."
"That it is." The bearded man put his arm around the woman and she, in a gesture so soft and feminine it hurt your heart to see it, let her head rest against his shoulder. "Mighty cold for this time of the year. Back home, you won't see a night like this till September, maybe October."
"On the mountains you will," the woman said.
"That's right, you're a mountain girl. I keep forgetting."
"Well, I don't. I'm taking Tommy back home. I've thought about it, Hank, and that's what I'm going to do. I don't want him buried here, so far from his people."
"I thought you all were up here."
"I want him to lie where he can hear the whippoorwills."
"That's a fine sound."
"I miss it, Hank. I don't know, maybe when we get there, this time I'll stay."
"What will you do?"
"That's what I'm asking myself. All I want is to go home, and there's that question. What will I do. Hank, what time is it?'
"It's after one," the bearded man murmured. Fineman thought he had never seen two people so far away, as far, it seemed, as the stars. He walked back to his squad.
All Night Barney was still at it, this time with a friend. "Barney," the caller said, a woman, by her voice you might guess her at fifty, sixty, inhabitant of a long sour life. "I just want to say how much I enjoy your show. I listen just about every night. You keep it up, Barney, you hear? If we had more people saying the things you do, this country wouldn't be in the mess it is." "Why thank you, dear," Barney replied. "It's listeners like you that make everything worth while." "Oh, we're out here," the woman said. "You bet we are. And that caller you had, the one who didn't want to be called a Negro anymore . . . "
"No, dear," Barney interrupted. "That was a homosexual who wanted to be called gay. I say homosexual, sweetheart, instead of what I'd really like to say, simply because I respect you." "Oh, you don't have to worry about me," the woman cackled. "I've heard it all . . . '
Fineman settled back with his thermos. He would hear his call number if the dispatcher tried to get him, awake asleep, drunk, sober, lying dead on the pavement, he would hear that number. Drowned at the bottom of the dam, he would hear that number. Never would he miss a call. He closed his eyes. All Night Barney grew faint.
It was still dark when the firetrucks returned, but their headlights filled the clearing and woke him up. Fineman had been dreaming. In the dream he and Marti were at a party, she in a low cut dress such as she had never owned, he in a tux with tails and a carnation on the lapel. They were in a receiving line, waiting to shake hands with a very important person who was not yet even in sight, and suddenly here he was, back in his squad.
It was almost dawn, that hour when birds awake in the trees and sing of life. At the edge of the stream, Fineman joined the firemen, the divers in their wet suits, the paramedics, the woman, the man with the beard, and big Bradford Boy holding his injured hand against his chest. Someone had brought coffee and he was given some. He sipped carefully. It was steaming hot.
"I think the water's down a bit," one of the fireman was saying. It was true. You could tell by the diminished rush going over the dam.
Slowly the river became visible, the banks, the trees, the dam itself taking shape out of the mist, A mosquito landed on Fineman's bare forearm, sluggish, half frozen, and allowed itself to be squashed.
The divers finished their coffee, zipped up their suits, and began snapping face masks in place. They were young men, well built, eager to get into the water. "Give it a few more minutes," one of the fireman said. "It's getting bright fast now."
How fortunate the world was to have men like these, men who would rise before dawn, submit themselves to icy water, and bring back our dead. Fineman looked for the woman. He could make out her face now, a face dry and clear and unafraid. Sipping coffee--did she even know she had it in her hand?--she stared at the water, intently examining each emerging detail.
Just as the divers were about to lower themselves she spoke. "Wait a minute. I see him."
The water had fallen. About thirty yards downstream in the direction she pointed, Fineman saw it, an arm curling upward, hooked on a sunken tree, clearly visible at last.
The backroller had given up its victim.
the end
