Frederick Busch: Girls

It was an old, scuffed black Trans Am fitted out with an air scoop and a spoiler, and it probably sounded, running flat out, like the Concord jet clearing its throat. It was parked outside the student union, nose to the low brick wall, and I pulled up behind it tight, so I knew it would stay there. I asked the dispatcher to run a check with the state police, and to ask Big Pete, who was barely five foot six, to back me up, no lights or sirens. The car had a Masonville sticker on the rear window, a Grateful Dead head on the right rear, and a big silver crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror. I saw three crumpled brown paper bags on the floor of the passenger’s side. I knew I could safely bet a week’s wages that the kid who owned or drove the car had carried such a sack inside the union with him. I mean, these were upper-middle-class students, and they were accustomed to service. You sell them grass, you have to deliver. And the kids at Masonville, who were the children of parents supporting themselves through service jobs, if they lived with their parents and their parents worked, didn’t mind making a call.

“You got a problem with my car?” the kid said. He’d come limping up after pausing only once — long enough to see I had his car and I’d seen him approach and he was mine.

“If I use my best party manners, would you open it up and show me what’s in the bags in front on the floor?”

He was short, broad, pale, a fine-boned Irish kid with curly dark hair and an angry mouth. His limp was the city stud’s tough-guy walk, and it grew even more exaggerated as he came closer. He said, “Would you like to maybe go fuck yourself? Or you got a warrant lets you look in my car? Or would you maybe want to show a little respect for a private citizen’s constitutional rights?”

By then, Big Pete was there and sizing us up. He came over after a minute, and I said, “Pete, this visitor to the campus has been making a delivery. I asked to see the goodies he brought, but he said I should go fuck myself.”

“ Maybe fuck yourself,” the kid corrected, smiling. “A suggestion made with manners, same as you. It was just an idea. Maybe you got a better idea. I’ll listen.” He was under twenty, I thought. He seemed to consider himself an independent businessman, and he seemed to think of Pete and me as make-believe cops. He was right. The wind was shaking the vehicles and moving us around.

“Get into my car,” I said, “so we don’t freeze. We can talk in there.”

“Now, I got a choice? Or this is a show of force? Or what?”

“Pete, you want to call in we’re having a conference and then wait in your vehicle awhile?”

“Watch him,” Pete told me, with his gift for talking uselessly.

When we were in my Jeep, the kid said, “We gonna deal?”

“I don’t know what you think a deal is. If we’re trading, I’ve got your car, and I know you’d like it back eventually. What’ve you got for me?”

“You can’t keep the car. It’s private property. I bought it, I paid for it, and I pay the insurance on it. I’m on my lawful way, good-bye. You keep smiling when I talk. I’m funny? All I got to do is call a cop. You can’t. You’re breaking the law. I studied up on this shit in college, man.”

“I’ll give you my radio and help you make the call. Then I’ll tell the cop what’s in the front of your car.”

“You don’t know.”

“We’ll let the cops find out. What do you like, local guys, sheriff’s deputies, or state troopers?”

“No, see, they got to obey the law, too. It’s to protect a citizen like me from guys like you, they throw their weight around. I got a professor could tell you this shit like he told it to me.” He had a sweet smile. He must have destroyed the girls with his lost outlaw number. “Any kind of cop,” he said, “they got to have a warrant.”

“What’s your name, Mr. Bill of Rights? It’s coming in on the radio any minute.”

“You ran me?”

“I saw it in a movie one time, so, yeah, I made the same noises they did. And guess what?” I was hoping the dispatcher would call back with the registration.

“You fucking ran me? You can do that?”

Dispatch came in with it. William Franklin of Staten Island, New York. He had enough points on his license so that one more ticket would ground him.

I said, “Dispatch, this is Jack. Over.”

“Dispatch.”

“Ask Elmo St. John to stand by. Nothing yet, just stand by. I think I may need him to write a town citation for disturbing the peace. Or dangerous driving on a county road. Or reckless you name it. Something you could detain someone for. Over.”

“Elmo to stand by. Roger.”

“He’s the village cop,” I told William Franklin. “He’s a prick like me in a silly uniform. Except he can write something besides parking tickets,” I said. “We’ll get your license canceled for a year or so. It’d hurt your education in constitutional law. Wouldn’t it?”

“What’ll it cost?” he said. He sounded older than me.

“Who you deal to here.”

“Names?”

“Unless you prefer to go by the customer number on the label of their L. L. Bean catalog.”

He breathed out a long, sour breath.

I picked up the microphone and clicked it.

“Dispatch. Somebody in trouble? Over.”

“This is Jack. Is Elmo ready? Over.”

“Dispatch. Elmo’s curious. He says to tell you he never wrote a dangerous-driving. He’s curious, and he’s on his way.”

I said to the kid, “You ready?”

He nodded. “You made up your mind,” he said. “You own my ass and that’s that.”

“That’s that.” I canceled the local police, I sent Big Pete back on his rounds, and I wrote down the names the kid from Masonville gave me. I knew he was lying and so did he, but short of some kind of savagery, some battery and mayhem, I was getting nothing from him but a little hesitation, the tiniest beginning of fear. He might shy away after this, though I wouldn’t have sworn it.

William Franklin was in the right-hand seat in front, half-turned to me, and he was telling me lies.

I said, “That’s everyone?”

“That’s everyone, boss.”

“You need to see this from my point of view,” I said. “I’m supposed to protect these kids. Their mommies and daddies want me to, you know, watch over them a little.”

He smiled what was really an attractive smile. He had a nicely textured complexion and clear dark eyes.

I turned to face him directly. I squared up on the seat and laid into his left cheek and temple with my right forearm. It was a short chop, which is how you want to do it. Long, loopy blows diminish the power that a short one will focus. His head snapped back and struck the passenger-side window and his eyes rolled up. They didn’t stay shut. They fluttered, so I knew he wasn’t quite out.

“Please don’t come back to campus,” I said.

He said, “I—”

“Please,” I said. “Don’t call me anything. Don’t threaten me with lawsuits or the real police. Just go away. Leave these boys and girls to spend their money on booze and prophylactics and carfare to wherever they go to get their tans. Just leave, please.” Then I said, “You feel all right to drive?”

I reached across him and opened the door and shoved him. He spilled but landed on his feet, holding on to the door frame.

I said, “Don’t dare to slam the door.”

He left it. I reached across and shut it, then backed up. He unlocked his car and sat in it awhile. I backed up farther, and he came back, then drove downhill. At first, he went quickly, but I stuck my hand out my window and made the downward-pressing signal to go slow, and after a while he saw it and cut his speed. I followed him until he was at the light across from the Blue Bird. When he drove out of town, he lifted his hand out the window and hoisted his third finger into the air above the roof. I went back to the campus, telling the dispatcher where I’d been. My arm felt a little strained under my coat, but I knew it was my imagination. The body was just remembering the blow it had delivered. It had been an excellent shot. And the rest of me, that minute, sad to say, felt exceptionally good.