Chickenhawk: Back in the World

Chuck look concerned, nodded, and came over. I stood up and he looked behind me. I felt him tug the cuffs. “Is a little tight.” He said to Sam, “You got another cuff, Sam?”

“That was it, Chuck,” Sam said, shrugging.

Chuck nodded and said to me, “That was it, Bob.”

“Can’t you just cut the fucking thing off? I mean, where am I going to go, Chuck? I don’t think I deserve to lose my hands over this, do you?”

Chuck shook his head, seemed to be thinking. “Just a minute.” He went into the office where the state cops were talking cop strategy, working the phones, radioing messages to search teams and stuff. A minute later he came out with a new plastic cuff. “They had a spare,” he said, smiling. He fished a pocketknife out of his pants. “Turn around, I’ll fix you up.”

Chuck cut off my cuffs and let me rub my hands together. They were blue, swollen, numb as dead flesh. After a while I could feel them tingle. I put my hands back behind me and Chuck put on the new cuffs and cinched them up loose enough so they didn’t cut my circulation, but tight enough so I couldn’t get them off. “Thanks, Chuck,” I said.

“No problem, Bob.”

I sat down and stared at the posters on the wall. There was going to be some kind of county fair in McClellanville in a couple of weeks. The Clyde Beatty Circus was coming. A big tiger jumped through a flaming hoop. On the other wall was an OSHA safety poster with diagrams showing you that you should not bend over to lift heavy objects; you should squat down, use your legs. Most industrial back injuries, the poster said, are caused by workers using improper lifting techniques. An electric clock over the secretary’s desk said it was five o’clock in the morning. Funny, I wasn’t the least bit tired. Guess it was the nap. I stared at the carpet. What a dingy color, brown with yellow speckles. Probably it was supposed to not show dirt. Nice. You could puke on this carpet and never know it.

“Okay, Chuck,” the state cop said to the Sam and Chuck from the doorway of the office. “You guys can go. The feds want us to take them to Charleston. Boss just said he wants you to know he thinks you and your boys did a great job, Chuck.”

Sam and Chuck smiled. “Hey, it was nothing. All in a day’s work,” Chuck said. “See you at the trial.” Chuck and Sam said good-bye to the cops and to us and left. Friendly guys. I could see the dim glow of dawn outside when they went through the door.

“Okay, let’s go,” the cop said. John and Ireland and I stood up.

One cop held each of us by the arm and they escorted us outside. They led Ireland and John to separate police cars. My cop, a quiet guy who’d been at my interrogation, took me to his car, an unmarked Ford LTD. He opened the passenger door, told me to get in. I sat down on the front seat with my arms wedged behind me. He closed the door and walked around the front of the car, watching me the whole time, like I might gnaw my way through the door with my teeth. He got in behind the wheel.

The cop was silent until we hit the main highway. “You seem like a well-educated guy,” the cop said. “I’d’ve thought you’d be smart enough to cooperate with us. They had to say they can’t guarantee you anything. But I know they’d go easy on you if you told me where you guys came from, who’s on the shore team. They’d be extra-special glad if you told them who you work for.”

“That’s why we’re in separate cars? Give us our last chance to confess?”

“Yeah. That and to prevent you from cooking up a story together.”

I nodded as we joined a stream of commuter traffic. “Yeah. I guess if you left us alone we’d be able to come up with some real clever story—explain away all that fucking pot, all right.”

The cop laughed.

It was almost six-thirty. The highway was packed with commuters on their way to work. The cars moved in slow clots along an artery to the city. I stared into the cars we passed, looking at the people. We stayed beside one guy so long, I got to know him. He looked drowsy, tired, pissed off. He sipped coffee from an insulated plastic mug with a picture of Yogi Bear on it.