Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“I just came for lunch.” I smile as if I’d divulged a secret.

The policewoman’s smooth face doesn’t alter, just processes info. “This is a hospital, sir.” She glances up at Haddam Doctors four-storey tan-brick facade as if to make sure she’s right. On her yellow slicker a black name tag says Bohmer over a stamped-on black police badge. A microphone is Velcro’d to her left shoulder so she can talk and still hold a gun on you.

I know it’s a hospital, ma’am, I’m tempted to say; my son died in it. Instead, I chirp, “I know it’s a hospital, but the cafeteria’s a super place for lunch.”

Officer Bohmer’s smile renounces a little of its definiteness and becomes amused and patronizing. She sees now that I’m one of those people, the ones who eat their lunch in the fucking hospital, who sit in libraries all day leafing through Popular Mechanics, World War II picture books and topless-native layouts in National Geographic s. The ones who don’t fit. She’s rousted my type. We’re harmless when kept on a short leash.

“What happened inside there?” I ask again, and look toward the police goings-on, then back to Officer Bohmer, whose heifer eyes have fixed me again. Outside air is making my hands and cheeks cold. Her shoulder microphone crackles, but she doesn’t attend to it.

“Tell me again, sir, what your business here is,” she says in a buttoned-up way. She takes a peek through at the backseat, where I’ve got two Realty-Wise signs I’m taking to the office.

“I came for lunch. I’ve done it for years. The lunch is good. You should eat there.”

“Where do you live, sir?” Staring at my signs.

“Sea-Clift. I used to live here, though.”

Her eyes drift back to me. “You lived here in Haddam?”

“I sold real estate. I own my own company on the Shore. Realty-Wise.”

“And how long have you lived over there?”

“Eight years. About.”

“And you lived here before?”

“On Cleveland Street. And before that on Hoving Road.”

“And could I just have a look at your driver’s license?” Officer Bohmer is the picture of female resolve and patience. She glances up and over the hood of my Suburban, checking to see how quick her backup could arrive in case I produce a German Luger and not a billfold. “And your registration and proof of insurance.”

I get about retrieving these documents — first from my wallet, then, under Officer Bohmer’s interested eye, from the glove compartment, where a pistol would be if I had one.

She takes my documents in her pink digits, pinching the papers and getting them wet, looking up once to match my face to my picture. Then she hands them all back. More static crackles in her mike, a male voice says something that includes a number, and Officer Bohmer turns her chin to the little speaker and in a different, harder-edged voice snaps, “Negative on that. I’ll maintain a twenty.” The man’s voice replies something unintelligible but also authoritative, and the transmission is over. “Thanks, that’s great, Mr. Bascombe. Now I need you to turn ’er around and head on out again. Okay?”

“Can you tell me what happened over there?” I ask for the third time.

“Sir. A device detonated outside the cafeteria this morning.”

A device. “What kind of device? Anybody hurt?” I say this to Officer Bohmer’s raincoat belly.

“We’re trying to find out what happened, sir.”

In the blast area, I see police are huddling around something on the ground, and another uniformed officer is taking a photograph of it, the little digital camera held clumsily out in front of him.

Officer Bohmer’s slick yellow raincoat front and imposing black flashlight barrel are all I can see from inside as she steps back from my window and with the flash makes a tiny sweeping movement to indicate what she’d like to see my car do. “Just turn ’er around right here,” her police academy voice says again, “and take ’er right out the way you came.”

A gas leak is what I’m thinking. Some pressurized container for hospital use only, that got too close to a pilot light. Yet something that requires the ATF?

My tires squeeze and scrape as I make the tight turn-around in the hospital drive — a Suburban doesn’t change course easily. I take a look at the boarded cafeteria windows and the squads of police and firemen and hospital officials milling in the drizzle and the lights of their idling vehicles, the black-suited commandos standing roof guard just in case. The faces at the windows are all taking note of my car. “What’s he doing?” “Read the license number.” “Why are they letting him go?” “Who’s to blame? Who’s to blame? Who’s to blame?”

Officer Bohmer is now gone from sight as I “take ’er right out.” But another policeman in a yellow rain slicker and black cop’s hat is up ahead, stopping cars as they turn in and dispatching them elsewhere.

“Any idea who did this?” I say to this new man as I idle past. He is an older officer I know, or once did, a big Polack with heavy brows, a pale, smooth face and mirthful eyes — Sgt. Klemak, a Gotham PD veteran, escaped to the suburbs. He once gave me an unjustified yellow-light summons that set me back seventy bucks, but wouldn’t remember me now, which is just as well.

“We’re doing our best out here, sir !” Sgt. Klemak shouts over the traffic and rain hiss. He seems to be having fun doing his job.

“Are you sure something exploded?” I’m speaking upward, rain needles pelting my nose and chin.

“You can go ahead and turn right, sir!” Officer Klemak says with a big smile.

“I hope you guys take care of yourselves.”

“Oh, sure. Piece a cake. Just take ’er right around and have a splendid day. Get ’er home safely.”

“That’d be nice,” I say, then ease back out onto Pleasant Valley and put the hospital behind me.

I now have a fierce need to piss. Plus, violent crime, instead of dousing my appetite, has inflamed it to queasiness. I drive straight out 206 to the remodeled Foremost Farms Mike and I passed earlier. I park in front, hustle in for my leak (which I now do more than seems humanly possible), then find the cold case, pick out a cellophane-sealed beef ’n bean burrito, radiate it in the microwave, draw a diet Pepsi, pay the Pakistani girl in the purple sari, then hustle back to my car and consume all in three minutes with paper napkins spread over my lap and jacket front. The burrito’s been hecho a mano by the Borden Company down in Camden and is as hard as a cedar shingle, the interior as cold and pale as mucilage, and of course tastes wonderful. Although it’s 180 degrees off my prostate-recovery, tumor-suppressing Mayo diet of 20 percent animal product, 80 percent whole grains, tofu and green tea, which only monks can survive on.

When I’m finished, I stuff my garbage in the can provided, then climb back in and turn on the local FM station, in case there’s some news about the hospital incident. And indeed a metallic backyard-radio-station sound opens up — WHAD, the “Voice of Haddam,” where I once recorded novels for the blind. Static, static, static —the rain’s a problem. “…in Trenton have been dispatched…” Static, static, static. “…an average of ten threatening…a month…been…no name pending…” Crackle, snap, poppety-pop. “…all critical-care patients…mercy…a search is under way…Chief Carnevale stated…. credible…” Static, static, static. “…more on our regular…” Ker-clunk …“Stran-gers-in-the-night, dee-dah-dee-daaah-dah…”

Little help. But still. Hard to contemplate — a medium-anxiety, good-neighbor suburban care facility like Haddam Doctors, where the whole staff’s from Hopkins and Harvard (no one tops in his class), all sporting eight handicaps, all divorced a time or two, kids at Choate and Hotchkiss, everyone as risk-averse as concert cellists (no one does serious surgery) — hard to contemplate here being the target of a “device.” Unless somebody wanted his vasectomy reversed and couldn’t, or somebody’s tonsils grew back, or a set of twins got handed off to the wrong parents. Though these wrongs have tamer remedies than renting a U-Store-It, stockpiling chemicals and brewing up mayhem. You’d just sue, like the rest of humanity, and let the insurance companies take the hit. That’s what they’re there for.