Scott Spencer - A Ship Made of Paper

It takes barely a minute to drive to theVFW.It’s a squat little asphaltshingled lodge, with squinty little windows and white pebbles in the parking area.Two flags snap smartly in the breeze—the red, white, and blue and the black POW-MIA.Derek parks his car in front and makes his way to the rear ofthe building.A long sloping lawn heads right down to the cornfield.He walks a few feet into the dried brown rows oflast year’s crop, just deep enough in to conceal himself, about ten feet to the right ofthe deer path that boys have been using for probably a hundred years.His heart is pounding with anticipation.He will listen for their footsteps, and when they are almost out ofthe field he will step into their path with his gun drawn.For a moment, he considers unlocking the safety, but he thinks better ofit.He is not without self-knowledge and he senses within himself a desire to do some harm.

Derek waits in the field.The drone ofan airplane passing overhead, the drone oftraffic, the drone ofa million flies who have come to feast on the corn’s rot, the drone ofa motorcycle just picking up some speed.

He feels a cold trickle ofsweat going down his spine.He disengages the safety on his gun.

After ten minutes, it’s obvious that those black boys must have found some other way out.Nevertheless, Derek continues to wait, while the sweat accumulates at his belt line and the humming ofhis mind winds tighter and tighter, higher and higher.At last, he forces himself to con-cede his plan has not worked.He walks back to his car, returns to the basketball court.

The white boys have waited for him, as instructed.He’s watched these two grow up.They used to blush, literally wring their small hands with pleasure when he spoke to them, but now they are at the age ofse-crets and not one ofthem can look directly into his eyes.They claim not to know the name ofeither ofthe black kids they were playing ball with not fifteen minutes ago.

“Ever see either ofthem before?”Derek asks, pretending to believe them, keeping up the fiction that they are all on the same side in this matter.

This isn’t even dignified with an answer, not a grunt, not even a slight shifting ofweight.

“What about it, Todd?”Derek says, figuring he’ll have better luck singling one ofthem out.He choosesTodd becauseTodd’s a good kid, with a brother in the Marines and a schoolteacher mother, on the one hand, and a father who took offfor Hawaii to live in a nudist commune, on the other hand, soTodd’s got to know right from wrong.

“We don’t know them, Officer Pabst,”Todd says.Christ, what a piece ofwork this kid’s become, the insincerity wrapping around his voice like red stripes on a candy cane.“We were just playing a little B-ball with them.”

“A little B-ball,”Derek says.

”Are you charging us with something?”asksAvery Hoffman, an aging cherub with a messy mustache.Avery’s father is a lawyer with the public defender’s office who has argued so many losing cases that he’s become one ofthose crackpot small-town cynics who sense a deal, a fix, or a con-spiracy in every transaction.Derek thrusts his eyes uponAvery with the force ofa nightstick, but the kid doesn’t fold.“Cause ifyou’re not,”he continues,“we’d sort oflike to get back to our game.”

Derek laughs invitingly, but the boys remain silent, removed.“I’ll tell you, this was a real nice town to grow up in.”The boys exchange glances, which Derek quickly tries to evaluate.Are they treating him like an old-timer? Bad enough.Or are they acknowledging some little secret held among them?Worse.He lowers his voice, moves it to one side, like fold-ing back the lapel ofyour jacket to reveal a shoulder holster.“And I want to keep this a nice town, you understand?Those individuals you were play-ing basketball with?They don’t belong around here, not running around.”

“Why is that, Officer Pabst?”asksTodd, laying it on pretty thick now.

”Because they escaped from a juvey home,”Derek says, letting Todd think he’s being taken at face value.“And since then they’ve been breaking a whole lot oflaws.They’ve been going up and down the river, breaking in, bothering people, taking shit, making their own rules.They almost raped a woman right here in our town.”

“Ifyou know so much about them,”Avery says,“then how come you’re like‘What’s their names’and everything?”

“Come here,”Derek says, softly beckoningAvery forward.

”No,”Avery says.

”I said come here.”Derek grabsAvery’s shirt and pulls him forward until their noses are touching.“Be nice,”Derek whispers into the boy’s suddenly gray face.

“We really don’t know those guys,”Todd says, his voice rising.“We were just playing and they came over.We don’t know them.”

Derek listens toTodd but keeps his eyes onAvery.“Is that right?”

Derek says, barely whispering, and he holds on untilAvery finally caves in, nods.Derek pushes him away.

Back in his patrol car, Derek has ample time for reconsideration and regret.He has forgotten little ofhis own youth, recalling not only the scrapes with the law, the lies, the reckless adventures, but also remem-bering with a painful clarity how it all felt —that sacramental sense ofloy-alty toward your friends, how it swelled in your heart, that mad beliefin each other, how you’d do anything for them and they’d do as much for you and with all ofyou pulling for one another no one could bring you down.

As far as those boys are concerned, he’s the enemy, not only old but a cop.

Without admitting to himself where he has been driving, Derek pulls into Kate’s driveway, just as a yellow-and-black van from Centurion Se-curity Systems is backing away from the house, its wheels spinning, throwing up pebbles.Kate is still in the doorway, holding the signed copy ofher maintenance agreement with Centurion, and when she sees Derek she waves the sheet ofpaper over her head, because he has been after her for months to get the house wired up.

As has become their custom, she invites him in for a cup ofcoffee.

She gets her coffee delivered by UPS from a warehouse in Louisiana, bright-yellow cans ofdark roast with chicory, and Derek tells her with each cup that it is the best coffee he has ever tasted.“And as a cop, let me tell you, I know my coffee.”She knows he is flirting with her when he says this, but she is willing to let that happen.When she and Daniel first moved to Leyden, she dreaded somehow being involved with Daniel’s former life in the town, and Derek was emblematic ofall the old friends ofwhom she wished to steer clear.Derek was worshipful and beseech-ing around Daniel, and his wife, the perfume-soaked and the socially am-bitious Stephanie, with her bleached hair, and coarse skin, was anathema to Kate, and provided yet another reason to avoid Derek.But now, Kate looks forward to Derek’s visits and his interest in her offers moments of relieffrom the loneliness ofher days as a single woman.He is surely not what she would have chosen for herself, but she enjoys him the way she enjoysTV, as a slightly enervating diversion.He has a pleasant voice, deep and manly, beautiful hands, with long, tapered fingers, and the hair on his arms is like a boy’s, the color ofhoney.

“I don’t know why I waited so long to have a security system put in,”

Kate says, nursing a cold halfinch ofcoffee while watching Derek enjoy his fresh cup.They are seated in the living room, on the black corduroy sofa in front ofthe fireplace, which is now filled with dried goldenrod and purple loose strife.

“I feel better that you got it done,”says Derek.“Especially…”

“What?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I think I saw two Star of Bethlehem kids on the loose today, two from the gang who broke into your house.”