Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

The next morning, I was working at my computer when I spied him in the reflection of my screen, flipping through the pictures and looking puzzled.

“Gus,” he said, “are these yours?”

I swiveled around. “Yep. I thought we could run a sort of sequence of photos showing the progress they’ve made on the new rink.”

“Interesting idea,” Philo said. He riffled through them again. “Did you mark the order you took them in?”

“I didn’t. But you can figure it out, can’t you?”

Philo regarded my grin through his horn-rims. “A little game, huh?”

He spread the sixteen photos out on his desk. He quickly discerned the four different angles and arranged the pictures accordingly. Then he stood back and folded his arms. After a few moments, he said, “I don’t see it.”

“You don’t see what?”

“The progression. Which one goes before-” He stopped himself. “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”

“Not at all. That’s how it is.”

“That’s how what is?”

“That’s how the rink is. Four weeks. Zero progress. Lots of trucks and piles of stuff. But nothing actually being built.”

“Well,” Philo said, “if you put these in the right order-”

“Be my guest.”

He pushed his glasses onto his forehead, snatched up a picture in each hand, and brought them close to his face. He looked at one, then the other, then back at the other. He picked up a third picture, then a fourth. I saw the back of his jaw flex as he ground his teeth. He flipped his glasses back down.

“These could have been taken on the same day.”

“You’re right, they could have,” I said. “But they weren’t.”

“OK, I get it. May I keep these?”

I never saw the pictures again. I watched the court docket for Haskell’s replies to the lawsuits and, when those inevitably appeared, I used them as excuses to write stories. Philo seemed relieved that Haskell was getting his public say. I doubt Haskell was pleased, though. Although the stories invariably ran short and at the bottoms of inside pages, I was able to shoehorn in tidbits from my far-flung fishing-liens placed on various Haskell properties around Michigan, litigation over the sale of his Bloomfield Hills house, a delinquent property tax bill on the same. Maybe it all added up to not much; after all, Haskell was a lawyer, and lawyers litigate. Or maybe it meant he’d eventually leave Starvation Lake holding a multimillion-dollar bag.

The town council didn’t seem to think much of it. Nor did the zoning board, nor the road commission. They all did whatever Haskell’s lawyer asked, every step of the way. I wondered why I was even bothering to report things that nobody heard or wanted to hear anyway.

Then late one Friday in January, just early enough for us to make deadline but too late to do much additional reporting, Haskell’s lawyer faxed over a three-paragraph press release stating that construction on the rink had been “temporarily suspended.” No shit, I thought. The second paragraph said, “The local media’s campaign to derail this well-intentioned project has emboldened certain of our creditors and made it difficult at this time to come to an understanding about the most expeditious path forward. However, we are confident…”

That story ran on the front page, above the fold. Twenty-three messages awaited me on my office phone that morning.

“Why can’t you just leave us alone?” said the first.

“Stick to screwing up hockey games instead of rinks,” said the second.

The rest were the same. Different words, same rebukes.

“I don’t know,” I told Belly. “Ice is ice, attitude’s attitude. The Rats are playing pretty well in the old barn.”

“What’s the matter with you?” he said. He set the knife down, tore his hairnet off and threw it aside, his curls tumbling down onto his forehead. “You cursed this place with your fuckup twenty years ago or whenever the hell it was. Now you don’t want to help a team that could put the curse to rest?”

This wasn’t going well. I wanted to ask about what Darlene and Gracie had discussed. “Christ, Belly, I’m just making a living. Are you going to make my sub? Or-or should I have something else? What did you say Gracie had?”

“The chick who offed herself? Jesus, what the hell do you care?”

“Maybe I’m superstitious.”

“Fucking hockey players.” He picked up the butcher knife and pointed it at me. “Well, I don’t know what the hell she had, pal. She was in here twice this week with two different babes and I can’t keep it all straight in my fat head.” He smiled. “Come to think of it, might’ve been an Italian sub. So maybe you’re taking a big chance, eh?”

I turned away and looked through the window to town. A sheriff’s cruiser pulled into a space in front of Kepel’s Ace Hardware. The door opened and Darlene got out. I looked back at Belly. He was pulling his hairnet back on.

“She was in twice?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, tucking his hair under the elastic with the same fingers that would be putting provolone on my sandwich. “OK, enough preaching. You ain’t hearing me anyway. I’m going to make your sub.”

I glanced outside again. Darlene crossed Main and turned into the alley that led to the river walk and the stairs to her apartment.

“Hey, Bel, never mind,” I said. But he’d already gone back into the kitchen and turned the music up loud, an old Rod Stewart tune. I pulled a five-dollar bill out of my jeans pocket and set it on the counter. “Bel,” I said, trying to make myself heard over Rod. “I gotta go.”

“What?” he yelled.

“I gotta go. Hey, tell me-who was the other babe?”

“What?”

“The other babe with Gracie?”

“Onions raw or grilled?”

I looked out the window again. Darlene was ascending her stairway two steps at a time. “Goddammit,” I said, and rushed out the door as Belly yelled again, “Raw or grilled?”

She was already coming back down the steps when I arrived at the landing. She stopped when she saw me. She had a shoe box under one arm.

“Hey,” I said, trying to catch my breath.

“Hey.”

She saw my look at the shoe box.

“They’re just letters,” she said.

“Are you taking them in?”

She looked down at her boots, trying not to cry.

“Darl,” I said. She turned and went back up the stairs.

She finally stopped sobbing.

I stroked her hair as her tears dried on my chest. Her bedroom was silent but for the rumble of an occasional pickup passing on Main Street.

When we’d entered her apartment, Darlene had dropped the shoe box on her kitchen table and shoved me up against the refrigerator. She brought her lips to mine and kissed me hard, unbuttoning my shirt, her deputy’s badge digging into my rib cage. Then she grabbed me by the waist of my jeans and dragged me into her bedroom, though I did not have to be dragged.

We had made love twice before either of us said a word, Darlene crying in between and afterward in whimpers and shuddering sobs. “Ah, Jesus,” she finally said. She turned to face me, propped her elbows on my belly. The imprint of her sheriff’s hatband was still on her hair. She didn’t like the hat, thought it framed her face in a way that made it look fat, but she kept it on when she was on duty so nobody would take her any less seriously than any male cop.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She settled her face into the heels of her hands and rubbed her eyes, then let her chin fall to my chest. “If she had just killed herself, maybe I wouldn’t be crying. Maybe I’d just be angry.”

“Gracie was Gracie,” I said. “Hard to account for anything she did, without getting into her head.”