William Krueger: Ordinary Grace

“He does that a lot.”

“Only when he’s drunk,” I said from the backseat. Making excuses for Gus was usually a responsibility that fell to my father but he was noticeably silent.

“He’s drunk a lot then,” Jake said.

“Enough.” My father held up a hand and we shut up.

We drove Tyler Street and turned onto Main. The town was dark and full of delicious possibility. I knew New Bremen as well as I knew my own face but at night things were different. The town wore another face. The city jail sat on the town square. It was the second oldest building in New Bremen after the First Evangelical Lutheran Church. Both were built of the same granite quarried just outside town. My father parked diagonally in front of the jail.

“You two stay here,” he said.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

He shot me a killing look.

“Sorry. I can’t hold it.”

He gave in so easily I knew he must have been dead tired. “Come on, then. You too, Jake.”

I’d never been inside the jail but it was a place that had always appealed greatly to my imagination. What I found was a small drab room lit by fluorescent tubes and not much different in most respects from my grandfather’s real estate office. There were a couple of desks and a file cabinet and a bulletin board with posters. But there was also along the east wall a holding cell with bars and the cell held a prisoner.

“Thanks for coming, Mr. Drum,” the officer said.

They shook hands. Dad introduced us. Officer Cleve Blake appeared to be younger than my father and wore gold wire-rim glasses and behind them were blue eyes that had an unsettling frankness. Even though it was the middle of a night humid as hell he looked clean and neat in his uniform.

“A little late for you boys to be out, isn’t it?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said to the officer. “Too hot.”

Jake said nothing which was his usual strategy when he was concerned that he might stutter in public.

I recognized the guy in the cell. Morris Engdahl. A bad sort. Black hair slicked in a ducktail and fond of black leather jackets. He was a year older than my sister who’d just graduated from high school. Engdahl didn’t finish school. The story I’d heard was that he was kicked out for crapping in the locker of a girl who’d turned him down for a date. He drove the coolest set of wheels I’d ever seen. A black 1932 Ford Deuce Coupe with suicide doors and a shiny chrome grille and big whitewall tires and flames painted along its sides so that fire ran the length of the car.

“Well, if it ain’t Frankfarter and Howdy D-D-D-Doody,” he said. He had a shiner and when he talked his words came out slurred through a fat lip. From behind the bars he settled his mean eyes on Jake. “How’s it g-g-going, retard?”

Jake had been called all sorts of things because of his stutter. I figured it had to get to him but usually all he did was clam up and stare.

“Jake’s not retarded, Mr. Engdahl,” my father said quietly. “He simply stutters.”

I was surprised Dad knew Morris Engdahl. They didn’t exactly run in the same circles.

“No sh-sh-sh-shit,” Engdahl said.

“That’s enough, Morris,” Officer Blake said.

My father gave Engdahl no more notice and asked the officer what it was all about.

The officer shrugged. “Two drunks, a wrong word. Like putting a match to gasoline.”

“I ain’t no drunk.” Engdahl sat hunched over on the edge of a long metal bench and stared at the floor as if contemplating the advisability of puking there.

“And he’s not old enough to be drinking in a bar, Cleve,” my father pointed out.

“I’ll be talking to the folks at Rosie’s about that,” the officer replied.

Behind a door in the back wall a toilet flushed.

“Much damage?” my father asked.

“Mostly to Morris. They took it out to the parking lot.”

The door in the back wall opened and a man walked out still working at the zipper on his pants.

“Doyle, I was just telling these folks how you came to bring in Engdahl and Gus.”

The other man sat down and put his feet on the desk. He wasn’t dressed in a uniform but from his look of comfort in that jailhouse I understood he was a policeman too. He said, “Yeah I was off duty at Rosie’s. Watched ’em going at it in the bar, mouthing off to each other. When they took it outside, I figured it was time to break up the party.”

My father spoke to Officer Blake: “All right if I take Gus home now?”

“Sure. He’s in back.” The policeman reached into the desk drawer for keys. “Crying shame about the Cole kid. I heard you spent most of yesterday with his folks.”

“Yes,” my father told him.

“I’ve got to say I’d much rather have my job than yours.”

“You know that whole thing’s got me wondering,” Doyle, the off-duty officer, said. “I’ve seen that kid on those tracks hundreds of times. He loved trains, I guess. Can’t figure how he came to get himself killed by one.”

Officer Blake said, “What do you mean?”

“I talked to Jim Gant. He was the first deputy on the scene. Gant said it looked like the kid had just been sitting on the tracks. Didn’t move at all when the train came. Real strange, you know? He wasn’t deaf.”

“Maybe he was retarded like Howdy Doody there,” Engdahl said from his cell. “Didn’t know enough to get his butt off that rail.”

Doyle said, “One more word out of you and I’m coming in there and kick your ass.”

Officer Blake found the keys he was searching for and shut the drawer. “Are they pursuing it?”

“Far as I know, nope. Officially an accident. No witnesses to say otherwise.”

Officer Blake said, “You boys stay out here. And, Morris, you behave yourself.”

My father asked, “Is it okay if my son uses your bathroom, Cleve?”

“Sure,” the officer answered. He unlocked the metal door in the back wall and led my father through.

I didn’t have to use the bathroom. It had simply been a ruse to get inside the jail. I was afraid Doyle might make a point of it, but he didn’t seem at all interested.

Jake stood staring hard at Engdahl. Staring knives.

“What are you looking at, retard?”

“He’s not retarded,” I said.

“Yeah and your sister’s not a harelip and your old man’s not a friggin’ pussy.” He laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

I asked Doyle, “What did you mean about Bobby?”

He was tall and lean and looked tough as jerky. He wore his hair in a crew cut and his head was shiny with sweat from the heat of the night. He had ears every bit as big as Jake’s but he wasn’t the kind of guy anybody in their right mind would dare call Howdy Doody. He said, “You know him?”

“Yes.”

“Nice kid, right? But slow.”

“Slow enough he couldn’t get out of the way of that train,” Engdahl said.

“Shut up, Engdahl.” Doyle looked back at me. “You play on the tracks?”

“No,” I lied.

He looked at Jake. “You?”

“No,” I answered for Jake.

“Good thing. Because there are bums down there. Men not like the decent folks in New Bremen. You ever get approached by one of them men you come straight here and tell me. Ask for Officer Doyle.”

“You think that’s what happened to Bobby?” I was thunderstruck. It would never have occurred to me that his death wasn’t an accident. But then I wasn’t a trained policeman like Officer Doyle.

He began popping the knuckles of his fingers one by one. “I’m just saying you watch out for guys drifting along those tracks. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goblins’ll get you if you don’t watch out,” Engdahl said. “They love tender meat like you and Retard.”