Glen Papineau

IT HADN’T HAPPENED EXACTLY THE WAY CLAUDE PREDICTED, BUT once the seed of the idea was planted, Glen found himself brooding over Edgar Sawtelle.

Claude had worried about him filing a lawsuit, but that was the furthest thing from Glen’s mind. The fact was, over the last several months, Claude had turned out to be a pretty nice guy, a fine friend. Dragging them into court wouldn’t be right. They were nearly as busted up over his father’s death as he was, plus they had a runaway to worry about. Anything bad a person could wish on them had already happened, and worse.

No, the way it worked in his mind was, suppose Edgar did turn up? Suppose Glen walked into his office one morning and a description of the boy had come over the wires? Would he call the Sawtelles straight off? Or would he want to check it out first? That seemed like the humane thing-verify it before he got their hopes up. It depended on where Edgar turned up, of course. A lot of runaways stuck surprisingly close to home, which for Edgar meant Ashland, Superior, Eau Claire, or one of the dozens of small towns in between-an easy run to fetch him. Glen could even imagine going as far as Madison, though much beyond that and Edgar might as well be in California.

Yet…suppose it was nearby? Suppose the officer who called him was a small-town cop like Glen and Glen could just walk in and say, “Yep, that’s him.” That would be the right way to do it-identify the kid in person before making calls, avoid any confusion and a bad false alarm for Trudy. He’d make small talk, they’d sign custody over, and after that it would be just Glen and Edgar in the squad car. Of course, he’d deliver Edgar safe and sound, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stop to ask a couple of questions. Discuss what had happened in that mow. Find out, one way or another.

It was natural for Glen to imagine that conversation taking place in the squad car because he did his very best thinking there, right behind the wheel, with the trees and fields and houses sliding across the windshield. He liked to let his mind wander a bit. One thing that really bugged him was the notion that other officers-and he used that word with a grain of salt, because it implied a certain dignity and honor they didn’t all have-mocked him. He had a nickname, he knew, something hung on him since childhood. Ox. He hated it when people called him that. After graduating from Mellen High, he thought he’d left it behind, but somehow the trainees at the academy in Madison had found out. His looks didn’t help. People took one glance and thought, “That must be the one they call ‘Ox,’” practically mouthing the words. Before long, someone saw him in his blues, and that cemented his fate, that memorable but tenuous connection to Paul Bunyan, or rather, to his beast of burden: Babe the Blue Ox.

The name didn’t bother him so much as the implication that he was clumsy or stupid. But most people saw what they wanted to see. Little skinny guys looked smart. Big guys looked dumb. Even police officers, trained to see past appearances, fell into that trap. When they saw Babe the Blue Ox coming, they saw dumb, and any little mistake became emblematic.

For example, the interview with the boy. At a staff meeting in Ashland he’d let slip that Trudy had translated Edgar’s answers rather than having the kid write them out, and people had actually guffawed. Like, there goes Ox Papineau, doing the dumbest thing you could imagine. What they didn’t understand was that his pop had spent the night with the Sawtelles. He’d stopped by the office that morning ahead of them and said, in no uncertain terms, to make it quick, that Trudy and her son were wrecked, barely functioning. There wasn’t any use forcing Edgar to relive the experience and it might very well do damage. So Glen had promised he’d keep it to the point.

Plus, the night before the boiler had gone on the fritz, and he’d spent every spare minute that morning convincing it to work. When the time came for the interview, he maybe hadn’t been as prepared as he would have liked. Yes, he’d had Annie type it up and run it out for them to sign, but that didn’t stop the wingnuts in Ashland from re-enacting the scene, one of them asking questions, another waving his arms around in reply, a third spewing preposterous interpretations. It had gotten so that any time he asked a question, they launched into mock-sign while some wise guy leaned over and whispered, “He says he didn’t do it.” Which cracked them all up: stupid old Babe the Blue Ox.

So whenever he dwelt on the idea of questioning Edgar again, his spirits lifted. Not in an entirely nice way. When he was patrolling, with nothing much else going through his mind, he imagined glancing in his rearview mirror and seeing Edgar sitting back there. And then Glen asking, what the hell did happen up in that mow, Edgar? This is my father we’re talking about. I have a right to know. That’s all I want: to hear what happened.

And then, in Glen’s imagination, Edgar Sawtelle did something he’d never, ever done before: he replied out loud.

He said, “I’m sorry.” That was it, just “I’m sorry.”

In Glen’s imagination, the boy’s voice was as gravelly as an old man’s, because it had never been used. The gratifying thing was, Edgar had chosen to speak those first words to Glen because he knew he had contributed to, if not caused, Pop’s death. That showed true remorse.

Once that little movie got into Glen’s head, it stuck like a burr. He began to rehearse it in all kinds of places. Sometimes they were alone on a country road, without a farmhouse or a car for miles; sometimes he had just parked the cruiser in front of the town hall-a last-chance-before-we-go-inside kind of scene. Sometimes they were caught in traffic in Ashland. But wherever it happened to be, Glen always looked up in his mirror and asked his question, and always, Edgar Sawtelle answered out loud.

Glen had even begun to say his own part out loud as he drove.

“What the hell happened up there, Edgar? I’m asking because I’m his son and I have a right to know.”

The first time it felt silly and he blushed. Despite himself, he looked to see if the mike key wasn’t somehow, freakishly, depressed and he’d been transmitting. (He could see the reenactments of that in the locker room in Ashland.) But it was okay, totally private. And cathartic. He did it again. Even picked up the mike, pretended to key it, and asked his question, letting his eyes burn into the mirror. Sometimes he emphasized “son,” sometimes “know.” He finally settled on a version with emphasis on both, but just a little more on “son,” to make it clear he was speaking as a family member and not as a police officer.

All of that was very satisfying.

Less satisfying was that no one answered.

And that was where things stood for a couple weeks. Then, like a man shaking himself out of a dream, he understood he was being compulsive and bizarre and had to stop. It was a little too much like some other activities he could name: you shouldn’t do them, even if they felt good. Nobody had to tell you that. You just knew it wasn’t healthy.

In order to purge himself, he’d decided to talk to Claude. This time Claude had come to Glen’s house. They’d sat in the living room and talked until the wee hours. After enough beer (and “enough,” for Glen, had come to mean a twelve-pack as the summer went along; he’d stopped going to The Kettle or The Hollow, had even started driving to Ashland to stock up) he’d stammered out the basics of his little scenario.

Confiding in Claude turned out to be the right decision. Claude said two things. First, he was beginning to think that Edgar wasn’t going to come back. If he’d been gone that long-almost two months-he must be pretty committed to staying away. By then he could have made it to Canada, Mexico, or either ocean. Second, and more important, he’d thought Glen’s response was totally reasonable. After all, did Glen want to hurt Edgar? Certainly not. He just wanted to put the question to him, didn’t he? Hadn’t they both lost a father in the last year? Wouldn’t Edgar want to ask the same question if someone knew what had happened to his father? Damn right he would. When you looked at it that way, even Edgar could hardly begrudge Glen a single goddamned question when the tables were turned. In fact, the longer they talked, the more it seemed that if Edgar did show up, Claude would have no objection to Glen taking the boy for a ride before he came home. If that could be arranged. Which seemed possible, since, if he was coming home, it was probably going to be escorted by a cop.