Alex Bledsoe - The Hum and the Shiver

Bronwyn’s hands tightened on the windowsill. Her nails bent painfully against the wood. Rage like she’d never felt built in her chest, crushing more air from her lungs.

“Bronwyn?” Terry-Joe asked.

She reached for her jeans, then stopped in midmotion. “Terry-Joe, how’d you get here?”

“Kell’s car. I still had the keys from driving him to the emergency room. Figured it might keep him at the hospital a while longer.”

She quickly pulled on her pants, then grabbed her tennis shoes and went to the window. She pushed him back and wriggled out. “What are you doing?” Terry-Joe gasped as she nimbly dropped to the ground. Her leg sent a little warning twinge up her spine, but held firm.

“Take me to the hospital,” she said. “I need to know what happened before my parents find out. He won’t tell them the whole truth, I know him. He’ll make it sound like it was all his fault.” She looked up at the boy, and even in the darkness he could see the rage and certainty boiling in her eyes. “Your brother’s gone too far this time, Terry-Joe. Way too far. Now let’s go.”

Terry-Joe hesitated. Bronwyn grabbed the front of his shirt. “ Listen to me,” she said, softly but with earth-shaking fervor. “That’s my brother. I will go to him one way or the other, but if you don’t want to help me, then you’re singing harmony with Dwayne.”

“So ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us,’ is that it?” he snapped back.

She released him. “Tonight, yeah, that’s it exactly.”

He sighed. “Come on, then.”

The highway was deserted between Needsville and Unicorn, except for Trooper Bob Pafford watching from his usual hiding place. It had been a good night so far: two speeding tickets for well over a hundred dollars, and the chance to slap one smart-ass teenager out of sight of the dashboard video camera. Those monitoring devices had made his job much harder, but they also meant each time he outsmarted them, the rush was that much more intense. At his age, it saved him from complacency.

Some nights he looked at himself in the visor mirror, his skin bluish green in the dashboard light, and wondered if somehow he was off the track. He knew his conduct was considered reprehensible, yet he was secure enough not to care; as long as there were punks and smart-asses, he would continue to treat them the way they deserved. It wasn’t about law or ticket quotas, it was about holding the line against disrespect and chaos. Once a society lost its manners, once it flagrantly disregarded its own most basic rules of conduct, it was doomed. And if he had to sting a few cheeks to accomplish this, he would do it and sleep the sleep of the just afterwards.

He recalled his ex-wife, her own cheek bright red from a blow, as she left him for the final time. “If you come near me again,” she’d said in that cold voice of hers, “I’ll kill you. I mean it. You’ve taught me how to get away with it, too. You’re through intimidating me.”

He shook his head at the memory. A few slaps to keep a wife in line were not “beatings.” Choice words to express his righteous displeasure were not “abuse.” It was that therapist of hers, telling her things that directly contradicted everything Pafford knew to be true. If the man hadn’t moved his practice out of state, Pafford would’ve made sure he couldn’t turn around in his driveway without getting a moving violation.

He got the tingle on the back of his neck before he saw the approaching headlights. He watched them grow larger, and experience told him they were well past the posted speed limit of forty-five miles per hour. He smiled, sat up straight, and watched the radar gun’s readout. As the vehicle passed through the beam, the numbers read 72.

He flipped the switches for lights and siren, and spun gravel as he tore out of the roadside park onto the blacktop.

“Shit,” Terry-Joe muttered when he saw the lights. He immediately pulled over. The shoulder sloped precariously down toward the ditch, tilting the car sideways.

The state trooper pulled in behind them. Terry-Joe sat still, his heart pounding, hands on the steering wheel. He had no doubt who would soon appear at his window. Only one trooper worked off the interstate in Cloud County.

Pafford heaved himself out of his car and walked slowly toward the other vehicle, one hand on the butt of his pistol. He reached the car and tapped on the glass with his flashlight. Terry-Joe rolled it down and was immediately blinded. “Terry-Joe Gitterman,” he drawled. “I’d have expected your brother.”

“You’d be wrong,” Terry-Joe mumbled.

“In kind of a hurry, wasn’t you, son? Where’s the fire?”

“Her brother got took to the hosp—”

Pafford shoved the flashlight slightly, so that the edge around the lens struck Terry-Joe in the temple. The flashlight’s weight did all the work, and the move was invisible to the dashboard camera.

“You need to learn the meaning of ‘ree-torical,’ son. I don’t give a rat’s ass where you Tufa trash were going.”

Terry-Joe’s eyes watered from the blow, and he felt himself turn red with fury. He gingerly touched the side of his head. “Yes, sir,” he said tightly.

Pafford looked into the backseat. “This your car, boy?”

“No, sir. It belongs to Kell Hyatt.”

“Does he know you have it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Pafford shone the light onto his passenger. “And who’s this little piece of ass you’re toting around? Hope she’s over eighteen, for your sake.”

Bronwyn turned and looked straight and steady into the light, willing her eyes not to blink. She heard Pafford gasp in surprise. “Well, I’ll be a goddamned monkey in the zoo. If it ain’t the Bronwynator. Now, I happen to know you’re over eighteen, but I can’t quite recall Mr. Gitterman’s age here. You wouldn’t be out corruptin’ a minor in your big brother’s car, would you?”

“My brother,” she said quietly, “is in the hospital in Unicorn. He got stabbed tonight.”

He snorted. “I bet he did. Probably some blonde’s boyfriend did it. You Tufa boys love chasing white women, don’t you?” He withdrew the flashlight and slapped the roof of the car. “I smell marijuana,” he said loudly, for the camera’s benefit. “Both of you, step out of the car now. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Terry-Joe and Bronwyn did as instructed. They put their hands on the edge of the car’s roof, and Pafford quickly patted Terry-Joe down. Then he turned to Bronwyn.

He took a moment to savor this. Leaned forward, tight jeans hugging her firm ass, she was a sight, and he made sure to take his time. She wore no bra under her T-shirt, and he let his thick fingers caress the sides of her breasts through the cotton. He moved to her waist, then down the sides of her thighs. He grunted as he knelt to continue down.

He stopped suddenly. “How come one of your legs is so much bigger than the other one?”

“I just got one out of a cast,” Bronwyn said through clenched teeth. “The muscle’s all—”

She gasped with agony as he dug one huge iron-fingered hand into the tender skin of her injured calf. Her leg collapsed, and she fell to the ground. Her vision went hazy, and little sparks swirled around the edges.

Terry-Joe jumped back and said, “What the hell, man! You know she was hurt in the war!”

Pafford’s gun was in his hand without a conscious thought. He pointed it at the center of Terry-Joe’s chest and hissed, “You make another sound, and whatever you had for dinner will be splattered all over the pavement.” More loudly he said, “Miss, this behavior won’t help at your trial.”