Forty Acres

Hutch is dead–Starsky searches for a way to make sense of it.

For the 20 minute fic challenge using the words Fine and Pine. I did have to cheat a bit and write for 30 minutes on this one. No one would want to read a story that ends halfway!

Hutch died alone or at least that was what it felt like to Starsky. Starsky always thought he’d somehow know, somehow feel that Hutch stopped…being. But he didn’t.

He was at work while Hutch drove himself because he had court later in the day—a case he’d worked on while Starsky recovered from Gunther, and he wondered briefly why Hutch was late. He even thought about how he would tease him and how he’d have to teach him a lesson that evening. But then Dobey came to his desk, leaned down, put a hand on Starsky’s shoulder and said, “Dave.” That was how he found out.

It was an accident that took Hutch from him—Hutch stopped to change a tire for an elderly woman with a flat, and a kid speeding, changing lanes without looking hit Hutch. He died instantly—at least that was what the coroner said. Starsky liked to think that was true.

During the months that passed, Starsky learned to put on a smile, to say he was fine when inside he was screaming out at the universe for being unfair. There were a few people he could share his feelings with—Huggy, the Dobeys, his mom. But that was it. The other cops didn’t seem to know how to handle a Starsky without a Hutch. Then again, Starsky didn’t know how to handle himself either.

He didn’t even have a grave to visit. The Hutchinsons, despite their disapproval of their son’s career and choices in who he loved, wanted him buried in the family plot in Minnesota. Starsky had been at the gravesite for the funeral, saw the coffin lowered into a grave beside his beloved grandfather, watched Richard and Carolyn Hutchinson stand dry-eyed and stoic while Hutch’s sister, Elaine, wept on her husband’s shoulder and Hutch’s niece and nephew put their fingers in their ears when there was a gun salute. So even though he understood the Hutchinsons’ need, he didn’t know what to do with his own.

The idea came when Hutch’s lawyer called months later and informed him there was a small life insurance policy that had been taken out years before naming Starsky as the beneficiary and that there were 40 acres of land an hour up the coast deeded to him. All of Hutch’s other assets and his trusts had been left to his niece, nephew, Kiko and Molly.

Of course money didn’t mean anything when it meant Hutch was gone. But one day as he ran in the park, trying to forget the image of him not being there when Hutch took his last breath, he looked at the trees and smiled.

He took a drive later that day, drove up the coast, with the sun shining and the radio blaring, to those 40 acres. The wind whipped off the ocean, salt and cold, and he watched the glint of whitecaps. On the bluff he felt as though he was at peace for the first time in months.

On Christmas Day of the year Hutch died, Starsky drove up the coast again to the 40 acres with a small pine seedling sitting in the seat where Hutch used to. Starsky pulled his wool cap lower and walked on the property until he knew the time was right.

He dug the hole, planted the seedling, and remembered a Christmas when he’d thought a tree was the stupidest gift ever. He wiped away his tears, got in the Torino, and drove back to Bay City where he decided to live his life the way Hutch would have wanted him too.

It became a tradition—the planting of a tree on Christmas Day. Pine trees always, although Starsky couldn’t really tell anyone why. Only that they made him think of Hutch and smile.

He visited the land three times a year, Christmas Day, his own birthday, and Hutch’s. And as the years passed, the land around his 40 acres was gobbled up by developers who built big houses that ordinary people couldn’t afford. Starsky got plenty of offers for his plot of land, offers that would have made him far richer than being an instructor at the police academy ever would. But he refused to sell.

He went to a lawyer, worried that the land would be taken from him, arranged for the land to be given to the Nature Conservancy when he died, and kept on planting trees.

No matter how many trees there were, he could always find the first tree—Hutch’s pine—unerringly. He patted the bark, looked up into the sky through its branches, and thought of Hutch. He wished he could remember the sound of Hutch’s voice, the way Hutch’s hands felt when they skimmed over his body.

Retirement loomed only a few months away when he drove up on Hutch’s birthday. He parked a distance away, needing the walk—part of the regimen his cardiologist recommended. He found Hutch’s tree. It had grown so tall over the years—tall, straight, strong—like Hutch had been.

“Hey,” Starsky said as he tapped his fingers on the bark. He sat on the ground—it wasn’t the getting down that was the problem, it was the getting up nowadays—and tilted back his head.

The sky was a cloudless blue, the wind sighing through the branches of trees, and the ocean a ceaseless heartbeat. Starsky tilted back his head and looked up. He closed his eyes and let his breath match that of the ocean waves.

“Hey, Starsk.”

Starsky opened his eyes. Where had that beloved familiar voice come from?

“Hutch?” He pushed himself up, rubbed his eyes, and when what he saw didn’t go away, rubbed them again.

It was Hutch—straight, tall, strong, just like his tree—smiling and dressed in jeans, a green t-shirt, and that baseball jacket Starsky had always loved.

“Hutch?” Starsky said again and at Hutch’s nod, he launched himself into the waiting embrace.

“How? Why? What?” Starsky hugged him, inhaled his essence, pulled his head down to kiss him, and after he came up for breath, to kiss him again.

“Look,” Hutch said.

And Starsky did—down at his legs covered in faded, snug denim, red socks, and blue Adidas sneakers with a white stripe. He ran his fingers over a brown leather sleeve.

Hutch put his hands on Starsky’s shoulders and turned him around. Starsky saw a man under a tall, strong, straight pine who looked as if he’d fallen asleep. His curls were more gray than brown, his body thicker than the one Starsky wore now.

Starsky turned away, met Hutch’s understanding gaze. “I’m…this is the end?”

Hutch shook his head, laughed that laugh Starsky had tried for years and years to remember, and smiled a smile so bright Starsky thought he’d be blinded. “Oh no, babe. It’s only the beginning. C’mon.”

And Hutch took his hand and they began to run together into a newer, better world just as Starsky knew it always should be.