Anyways, we were just opening the garage door when …yep, you guessed it. A police car was just waiting in our driveway.
“Going somewhere, Bob?” Officer Banes was there, his rather large belly hanging over his belt buckle. His handlebar mustache hung over his upper lip, almost daring anyone close enough to tap the tips of it to see if he really did wax it up each morning as the town rumors told. His thumbs hung in his beltloops- he didn’t have to be upset or agitated, and we all knew it. Officer Banes was never truly scary looking. Every kid in town I’d known had grown up with him as a kind of constant, vigilant presence. Not so much a boogeyman as a watchful guard who wouldn’t give you any trouble if you didn’t start any, but worse news for you than the four horsemen of the apocalypse if you did start something. More than one town drunk had found out the hard way that if you lipped off to him or didn’t show respect, he wouldn’t hesitate to pull out his nightstick and give you a sound attitude adjustment in the leg, elbow, gut or (in very, very extreme cases) a rap on your noggin.
Jenny Farkle’s dad had been on a hundred-dollar bender when he’d made the big mistake of telling Officer Banes just where he could shove his nightstick, and then pulled out a knife to emphasize the point. Officer Banes took issue with Mister Farkle’s characterization of the situation, and had two of his officers first disarm him, and then hold him while Officer Banes adjusted Mister Farkle’s knees, elbows, gut, groin and the right side of his head before dropping him just over the county line at midnight, and told him never to come back. Jenny Farkle hadn’t been upset about this; quite the opposite, in fact. She smiled every day for a week and blossomed that year. And while her mom never got divorced from him (they were hellfire Baptists), Jenny and her mom became shining stars in town for their volunteer work and other social circle events without “Mister Drunkle” sucking away their money and souls.
Yeah, Officer Banes could use that force of nature inside him for good. But it didn’t mean you didn’t have to worry when he stopped at your driveway.
Dad smiled at him. “Stay here,” he said. “Don’t get out of this car unless he or I tell you to.”
“Okay,”
Dad got out, still smiling. “Officer Banes!” he said with a jaunty air as he climbed out of the driver’s seat and sauntered down the driveway. “Good thing you caught us! We were just going to do a little hunting for the weekend.”
“Really? You don’t have to work, Bob?”
“Playing hooky, Ed. You know . . .” Dad started talking low. Then Officer Banes talked even lower. I wished I could be a fly around them and hear what they said, but after just a few seconds Officer Banes started laughing, looking over at me, then laughing again. Were we in the clear?
Pop came back a few minutes later. Officer Banes was still in our driveway, writing something down on a pad of paper.
“Well?” I asked when Dad got back in the pickup truck.
“I told him I was forcing you to go on a hunting trip, make you do something a little more masculine besides going into that shed all the time and tinkering with your wings.”
“Dad!”
“Just shut it. We’re fine. Banes and I go way back. He’s got a nephew who’d rather knit than shoot anything, so he gets it. You just act all eager to go hunting when he comes up to the door in a few seconds, and . . .”
A shadow loomed over me. Officer Banes was in our garage, his gut pushing up against the door. He looked down at me, smiling.
“Roll this down, wouldja boy?” he said.
I pumped my arm in a circle as I rolled the window. Boy, Jane, I am so glad I don’t hafta do that now, with my arm in the shape it’s in! God bless the man who invented power windows, you know? Well, I rolled it down and Officer Banes just looked me in the eye for a few seconds.
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“So, going huntin’ with yer Pop, huh?”
“Yessir.”
“Ever been huntin’ before, son?”
“Nosir. First time ever.”
“You hear anything about the Reichert car getting’ vandalized, son?”
“Well, sure, officer. Everybody’s talkin’ about it at school.”
“Hm. What’d they say?”
“I heard them say that someone dumped a lot of slops of some kind on the car belonging to Reichart’s daddy.”
“You hear about who done it, Icarus?”
I paused for a second at that one. Almost no one ever called me that. Not even during the couple of days when folks were actually talking to me. I was either ‘Carus’ or, for a day or two when it looked like I was gonna actually become one-of-the-guys, a few people were calling me ‘Russ.’ But my full name? Even my teachers didn’t do that anymore.
Then I had a little idea.
“Well, I did hear a bit, but I don’t know if it was true or not.”
Officer Banes looked at Pop, then me. “You alright,” he said while keeping eye contact with me, “if I talk to your boy for a few minutes a’fore you fellas head out?”
“Not at all,” Pop said. I could hear the tension behind his voice.
Officer Banes stepped back and I got out of the car, feeling like I was walking on a tightrope and had to watch my steps very, very carefully over the next few minutes.
“Give us a minute, would you Bob?”
Now, today that’d be a reason to take the cops to the cleaners in court. I know. But remember, this was Indiana in the 1940s. Back then, for a lot of cops, the Constitution was kind’ve like a nice bunch of suggestions that you followed if it was convenient for you, or something your kid might study in History class. If you had a crime to solve, though, the whole damn thing went out the window.
My Pop? I don’t blame him. He thought Banes was a straight shooter, a good guy. But when he left and the door shut, Banes gave me the kind of look that makes a grown man want to sit down, say ‘yessir,’ and pray he don’t get his knuckles rapped.
Banes turned to look at me, thumbs in his beltloops and with a toothpick that’d magically appeared sticking out of his teeth.
“Young man,” he said, “let’s get a few things straight. First, I’m gonna talk, and you are going to listen. I can interrupt you, you will not interrupt me. Is that clear?”
I nodded.
“Second, I know what you did, and I’ve got all I need to have a jury send you to county for the next month or so. Piss me off or cause trouble once you’re there, we’ll say you assaulted an officer and you’ll end up in the pen for two to five years. Piss me off while you’re there, or your Jew-Daddy does something really stupid like hire a lawyer from outside the county, and you’ll be shot trying to escape the pen like that drifter last year. Is that clear?”
I nodded. I was sweating.
“Third, you are going on that hunting trip with your Daddy, and you are going to stay gone on that trip when he gets back. I don’t care what you do, but your days living in this county are done as long as the Reichert family hold sway here. As soon as I get word you are even visiting for Christmas dinner, or whatever it is you people do during that time, I will be here with a warrant in my hand and you’ll be locked up in county before the turkey hits the table. Is that clear?”
I nodded.
“Good. Last, I will talk to your daddy myself, and when I am done, you won’t tell him a single thing we discussed, or you’ll be visiting the local crossbar hotel afore you leave this driveway. And I know that’s clear.”
Sure was. He made a number of things clear that day, not the least of which being that the law was just a big fellow with a bigger stick, pretending to be your friend until you had something he wanted or decided you were in his way.
And that was the last day for many, many years that I set foot in that county. I was seventeen then, and I was thirty and Banes and Dad Reichert were safely in their graves before I came back. Pop and Mom stayed in town- his job was there, after all- but things changed after that.
Pop drove me a long, long ways to the big city…no, not New York. That happened later. Nope, I first ended up in Indianapolis- we were in Indiana, remember? That ‘hunting trip’ lasted just long enough to get me dropped off at his sister’s place- an aunt I’d never met.
It was hard, sure. But it was a different time. You didn’t cry. Not in front of anyone.
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TO BE CONTINUED...