Titus thought about Darlene. He had moved on. He had come home and found someone who was good and honest and devoted to him. That wasn’t to say Kellie hadn’t been all those things too. She was, but she was also a smart-ass with a singular intensity that had constantly challenged him in ways he had both craved and feared. If Darlene was sunny days and lemonade, Kellie Stoner was moonshine and a sky gone full dark with no stars … but he was happy living in the light.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t listen to her podcast, did it? He probably should, just to know what to expect once she hit town.
“Sure, send it on,” Titus said.
“Same number?” Kellie asked.
“It hasn’t changed. You still got it?”
“Duh. If I had deleted it I wouldn’t have said same number,” Kellie said.
Titus suddenly felt exceedingly foolish.
“We’ll talk when I get to town. Later, Virginia.”
The line went dead.
Titus hung up the phone.
* * *
Titus had asked his neighbors to report anyone who was acting strange or suspicious, especially someone who owned a large shed or outbuilding or had been behaving erratically. The tips would come flooding in soon enough, most of them worthless but all needing attention, so Titus spent the rest of the afternoon going over the minutiae of small-town administrative bureaucracy. He’d put in a request for body cams and more beanbag guns to the Board of Supervisors three months ago that had been denied so forcefully it immediately made him think someone was embezzling from the county treasury.
He filled out a new request and sent it on over for the next board meeting. Titus hoped they would be more receptive to the idea of body cams after their kids had almost had their heads blown off. It wasn’t his proudest moment, but if it was possible to pull something constructive out of this tragedy, then he had to try. It would probably be the only good thing that came out of all this.
He went over the expense reports and the gas receipts. He posted on the county social media page about the press conference. He went over the arrest reports from the last twenty-four hours. As inconceivable as it seemed, the seven holes in the ground that held the bodies of those murdered children that surrounded Tank Billups’s weeping willow tree like a honeycomb were not his only responsibility. Ben Thomas and Wayne Hodges had been found passed out in Ben’s truck, ODed on what appeared to be heroin laced with fentanyl. Louise Tallifero had thrown a bowl of hot chicken soup on her daughter because the little girl wouldn’t stop crying. The little girl was two years old. Darryl West had called in to report that his neighbor Lenny Barkers and his wife, Stephanie, were beating the shit out of Lenny’s father, an eighty-nine-year-old World War II veteran who had moved in with them last year. Darryl had reported that he saw Lenny and Stephanie kick the old man after he had fallen in the front yard. Darryl said he thought the old guy had Alzheimer’s. He had a tendency to wander. By the time Steve had gotten there they had cleaned him up and gotten him back in the house, but they couldn’t hide the fracture in his forearm.
As he clicked on report after report, Titus couldn’t help but feel like he was a character in an old Twilight Zone episode. A man cursed to forever miss a departing train by just a few minutes. That was what policing a small town felt like some days. You were always a day late and a dollar short. You stood there over a broken body covered in bruises or a wrecked car that reeked of whiskey, with your broom and your dustpan and a mouthful of regret. Just a janitor tasked with picking up the pieces of someone’s broken life.
By the time Titus finished reviewing all the reports, he felt like he needed a bath. Ugliness seemed to fill the world like a dark elixir.
Titus rubbed his hands across his face.
That wasn’t the whole truth. There was ugliness, sure, but there was beauty in the world, there was grace, if you knew where to look. It was there if you were brave enough or foolish enough to seek it. The star on his chest dictated that he wade through the muck and the mire, but it wasn’t an anchor. It didn’t have to drown him in the slurry unless he let it.
Titus checked his watch.
It was 9:00 P.M. He got up, stretched, heard his back pop like a campfire, grabbed his hat, and headed for the door. He’d had enough poison for the day.
Titus pulled into his driveway and parked next to his father’s truck. When he got inside the house he found his father dozing in the recliner he had tried to dissuade Titus from buying for him. Titus got a blanket out of the closet near the front door and spread it across his father’s lap. Albert snorted once, then pulled the blanket around himself. Titus went upstairs, stripped out of his uniform, and put on his sweats. He came back downstairs and got the leftovers out of the fridge and made himself a plate.
After he ate, he washed his dishes and the plate his father had left in the sink. He dried them and put them away. He went back to his father.
“Hey, old man. Wake up and go to bed,” Titus said as he gently touched Albert’s shoulder. His father’s eyes opened languidly as he yawned.
“Was working in the garden today. I guess it took more out of me than I thought,” Albert said. He stood up slowly, wincing as he rose.
“Don’t push yourself too hard. You might have titanium hips, but you ain’t Iron Man,” Titus said.
Albert shook his head. “The Lord done seen fit to keep me around this long, I don’t guess I’m going anywhere no time soon. Except to bed. See you in the morning, boy.”
“Hey, Pop,” Titus said.
Albert paused at the bottom step. “I know that look.”
Titus gave his father a tiny bit of a smile. “What look is that?”
“Same look you had when you and Marquis knocked your mama’s sweet potato pie off the counter that Thanksgiving y’all was wrestling in the kitchen,” Albert said.
“Remember I told you about that girl I was seeing when I was in Indiana, the reporter?” Titus said.
“The one you told me got in that fight at the pool hall?” Albert asked.
Titus nodded. “Yeah, well, she coming to town to do a story about the kids we found under the weeping willow tree.”
“Mm-hmm. Coming to see you too, I reckon,” Albert said.
“Well, she wants to interview me,” Titus said.
“Titus, you still got feelings for this girl?”
“What? No, I guess … I’m just thinking how I should tell Darlene about this. You know she can be a little … I don’t know, insecure sometimes. I just don’t want her to get upset. Like, I can’t stop Kellie from coming, and I didn’t ask for her to come,” Titus said.
“But you ain’t mad about it, though, are you?” Albert asked him.
Titus cleared his throat. “I just don’t want this to upset Darlene,” he said.
Albert shuffled back over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Son, the only way this gonna upset Darlene is if she see the same look on your face that I’m seeing right now. You got you a good woman, boy. But if that ain’t what you want, you owe it to her to tell her. Don’t wait till that girl comes to town,” Albert said as he squeezed Titus’s shoulder.
“I hear ya, Pop. Good night.”
“Good night, son.”
* * *
Once Albert had gone upstairs, Titus texted Darlene.
Hey im home
Almost immediately Darlene responded.
U want me to come over?
Titus stared at his phone for a long minute before responding.
Nah that’s ok. I’m beat. Maybe we can go to Newport News tomorrow night for dinner Darlene’s response was slower this time.
K
Titus didn’t need to have a master’s in criminology to deduce Darlene was upset he didn’t want her to come over. He could have said yes, but the last few days were finally catching up with him. He felt a wave of exhaustion coming on that felt like it was enveloping him like a cocoon. He knew he’d be poor company for Darlene if she did come over. He could be surly when he was tired. He would take this skirmish to avoid a full-blown argument. That was the nature of long-term relationships. Dozens upon dozens of tactical decisions and one-sided negotiations to keep the peace, or some facsimile thereof.
Titus climbed the steps to his room with legs that felt encased in lead. By the time he reached the bed he was nearly asleep on his feet. He had just stretched out when his cell phone rang.
“Fuck,” Titus said into his pillow.
He rolled over and grabbed his phone and looked at the screen.
It was Davy.
Titus touched the screen.
“What’s up, Davy?”
“Hey, Titus. Uh, I’m down here at the Watering Hole and, uh, well, I just wanted to call you, um, because…” Davy stammered.
“Davy, spit it out,” Titus said.
“Right, well, Titus, Marquis is here, and he just done about tore up hell around here. And Jasper’s hollering about pressing charges and I don’t know what to do,” Davy sputtered.
Titus closed his eyes. He was too tired to sigh.
“I’ll be right there.”
ELEVEN