Bob walked along the side of the hotel and to the patrol car. He let himself in by the backseat; the sheriff sat up and said, “No, kid, come on up here.” Bob got out and walked around to the front while the sheriff sat collecting or steeling himself. He turned the car on and gave it a little gas. “Okay, now pay attention,” he told Bob, and pointed at a row of switches on the dashboard. “See this one here?” He flipped a switch and the patrol car’s siren rang out, loudly enough that it made Bob jump in his seat. The sheriff flipped the switch back and the siren ceased. “When I give the high sign,” he said, leveling a finger at Bob, “I want you to hit that same switch just like I did, on and off, but quick. Got it?” Bob nodded. The sheriff paused, then pointed at Bob and Bob flipped the switch on and off. “Okay, good — perfect.” The sheriff hit another switch to turn on the PA system, and now he addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen? Ladies and gentleman.” The crowd quieted, heads turned to look at the patrol car. “You’re all under arrest,” said the sheriff, and the crowd booed. “Okay, you’re not. But do me a favor and let us through. Me and my deputy need to turn this rig around and get to the highway.” He pointed that Bob should hit the switch and Bob did and the patrol car began its slow crossing through the crowd.
The sheriff was sweating, though it wasn’t hot. He looked over at Bob, then nudged him. “Roll down that window, kid, will you?” he said, and Bob rolled down his window and the sheriff breathed the ocean air in and out through his nose. “That’s all right. Thank you.” He looked at Bob again. “Well,” he said, “how many days did you make it? How long since you been gone?”
“Four days.”
The sheriff ticktocked his head back and forth. “That’s not so long, I guess. But the truth is that most kids don’t get through the night, so actually you made a pretty good showing. Also, I’d say you made a very good showing in terms of distance traveled. How’d you get all the way out here, anyway? Did you hitch? Hitchhike?” The sheriff held up a thumb.
“A train and a bus,” said Bob.
The sheriff whistled. “Nothing to be ashamed of, there. Very good showing.” There was the sound of the patrol car’s tires rolling over the gravel. The sheriff said, “Speaking generally, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the kid who doesn’t run away that you’ve got to worry about. I did it when I was your age.” He pointed at Bob and Bob hit the switch. The crowd was pressing in, and some were slow to move out of the way of the patrol car and so were nudged by the car’s bumper. A man and woman were dancing in tight little circles on the sheriff’s side; as the patrol car passed them by the man leaned toward the open window and asked, “How would you rate that riot, Sheriff?”
“Pretty shabby, buddy. No passion of intelligence in those boys. Just drunks on a mean streak, really. They did some fair bit of damage, I’ll give them that, but altogether I can say they made a poor overall impression.” The dancing man waved and wheeled away with his partner. “One fellow,” the sheriff told Bob, “I got him in my car to run him in and he told me he’d give me a hundred dollars to drop him back at the camp. Said he had the cash on him and that I was welcome to it and he wouldn’t ever tell a soul anything about it. I said, ‘What about all your pals?’ And he said, ‘Well, what about them?’ And I said, ‘You’re not going to leave them to hold the bag while you skip off to bed, are you?’ And this bird said to me, looking out the window he said, ‘Everyone goes his own way in this world, no matter what they tell you.’ I thought about that a minute, then told him, ‘Mister, you know what your problem is? It’s that you’ve got yourself a morbid point of view.’” The sheriff shook his head and spit out the window and pointed at Bob and Bob hit the switch. A group of noisy soldiers began slapping on the hood of the patrol car and the sheriff told them over the PA, “Do not slap the sheriff’s automobile.” Then he said to Bob, “You don’t talk much, kid, do you?”
Bob shook his head that he didn’t.
The sheriff said, “Well, you want to know how many days I ran away for? However many days it’s been from then to now, that’s how many days. Because I never did go home. What do you think of that?”
Bob shrugged. He was enjoying the sheriff.
“You think they still set a place for me at the dinner table?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe not,” said the sheriff. “But, what about you? Think your folks’ll be glad to see you, or mad, or what?”
“Glad, I guess.”
“Not mad?”
“Maybe a little mad.”
The sheriff glanced at Bob. “Reason I’m asking is. If there’s something really wrong going on there, you don’t have to go home. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m saying you can talk to me.”
“There’s nothing wrong.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
The sheriff said, “Okay. That’s okay. That’s good. But you let me know if you think of something that’s the matter, all right?”
They were almost to the highway and Bob was looking out at the crowd when he saw June and Ida standing off and to the right of the patrol car. He saw them only briefly, but with such close-paid attention that the visual became like a photograph in his memory: they stood facing each other, and Ida’s expression was pained, her cheek red and damp from crying, while June was staring at her with a loving look, petting her hair and dabbing her face with a handkerchief and saying kind little things to her. Bob felt himself leaning toward them in his mind, but now the patrol car was pulling onto the highway, past the crowd, and accelerating upcoast. Bob spun around and to his knees to watch out the rear window as the crowd and town became smaller and smaller. The last thing he could see of Mansfield was the weathervane rising crookedly from the tilted tower; after that was gone from view he turned to sit, facing forward now.
Something of the moment had upset his heart. He wished he could have said goodbye to June and Ida, but the idea of an official parting also made him feel shy, and that it might have overwhelmed him. But still and there was this feeling, and Bob didn’t know where to put it. He sat staring at the side of the highway, the pavement gone blurry as it slipped past. The sun was high and bright, angling down and through the front windshield and the sheriff, squinting, was making grabby gestures and pointing to the glove box. “Sunglasses, kid, sunglasses, sunglasses.”
4
2006
AFTER BOB LEARNED THAT CHIP AND CONNIE WERE THE SAME PERSON he hung up the phone and sat in the nook and looked out the window asking himself what he should do. What could he do? There was nothing to do. He took an antihistamine and slept until noon. The sun was out and the snow was melting and he rang Maria at the center, expecting her to take him to task for calling so late the night before but she either didn’t remember or hadn’t made the connection it was him. She spoke of the significance of her fatigue, and mentioned without prompting that Chip was back from her stay at the hospital; also that she and Chip’s son were working together to relocate Chip to more suitable accommodations. “He’s nicer, now that he’s calmed down. He brought me a soggy muffin this morning as a peace offering.” She asked Bob why he was calling and he improvised a story, which was that he had a piece of personal business to attend to which would keep him from visiting the center for a while. Maria was surprised by this. She said, “Personal business is what a volunteer tells me when he wants to quit but doesn’t have the guts to say it.”