When I Was Sheriff of Beavertooth County

“They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.” He was reading poetry again, out loud.

“Did you write that?” I looked up from the Sports Illustrated I was reading and pretended I was interested. Poetry sometimes got him hot, so who knew, maybe I’d be getting some tonight.

“I wish. That’s by D. H. Lawrence, Starsk.” We were sitting together on the screened-in porch of our cabin and having his idea of fun. There was no TV, the radio only worked when one of us stood by it, and there was something big buzzing in the trees that sounded pissed off and hungry. Yeah, I was spending another summer at the lake. “The sound of the loon in the distance, a herald of home, I longed for the lake in misty recall, my faraway water world called childhood.”

“D. H. Lawrence, right?”

“No, the struggling poet and writer you’ve been sleeping with for the past twenty years.”

“I like it.”

“The poem or the sex?”

“Both.”

“You do have a personal preference, don’t you?”

This seemed like one of his I’ve-got-a-doctorate-and-you-don’t trick questions. I had to watch my step. “Sure.” I tiptoed around an answer.

“Which is?” He looked at me over his half-moon reading glasses.

“Which is for you.”

“Which is for me to what?”

Now we were getting somewhere. Foreplay was going to be wordplay and I just might get lucky after all. “Which is for you to read me another poem?” Hutch took off his glasses, stood up and turned off the camping lantern. In the cool white light of the rising moon, he began to slowly undress. I started to get up out of my chair.

“Don’t move. Just watch.” He got off on me watching him. I liked looking, even after all these years. He turned so that his back was to me. His crack was first just a hope and then a promise. He stepped out of the shorts and turned around. His dick said that he wanted me. He moved close to me and knelt between my legs. He leaned into me, pressing his weight against my hard-on. I felt in charge while he was naked like that and I was dressed. I felt like he was mine.

The moment was a still place in time and the thing in the trees seemed to be taking a smoke break. The moonlight kissed the soles of Hutch’s feet, while we hid in the shadows. I wrapped my arms around his bare shoulders and almost understood what he meant by the lake being home. He pulled away from me and I felt alone. “Don’t go.”

“‘Since feeling is first, who cares about the syntax of things?”‘ he said. “To never wholly love you and wholly be a fool…’ I forget the rest. Can you do something for me?” He used his body to open my legs wider and put both hands on the arms of my chair.

“Whatever your heart desires.”

“Can you take it out and put it in my mouth and feed it to me real slow?”

I heard the sound of a loon in the distance as I came in his sweet wet mouth.

 

So, maybe it wasn’t that bad here after all. Maybe I’d start liking the fishy smell that surrounded us whenever the wind was wrong. Maybe the land of 10,000 lakes and 10,000,000 mosquitoes would start to be as special to me as it was to him. Maybe fish would fly and the thing in the trees would go the hell away soon. It seemed to be right outside the window and plotting something against me. But Hutch loves this place and I love Hutch, so here I was wide awake in the middle of the night at Lost Limb Lake.

My partner says that a long, long time ago the lake was named for the great big oak tree that used to be nearby. During a terrible storm, the tree was struck by lightning and lost its biggest branch. He says that, but I don’t believe him. I think that the thing in the trees gnawed off some guy’s leg one night. This poor schmuck was only there because someone he was very, very, very close to thought it would be a great idea to spend time at the lake and do some writing.

There was a flash of lightning and the sound of thunder. Terrific. Just what I needed, a severe thunderstorm to lull me to sleep. But the storm was moving off. I learned to count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder from seeing the movie, Poltergeist. I also learned that you shouldn’t build your house on top of an old graveyard if you plan on being able to sell it later.

The lightning got me to thinking about when I first met Hutch. Something strange happened when I put out my hand to shake and he put out his hand to meet mine. When we touched, zing! There was a spark, a zap, an energy and a heat, like a tiny burning pain. We both pulled away real quick. We both felt it. I guess you could say it was static electricity or something. But I knew better. When lightning strikes, you know deep down it’s meant to be.

That was years ago, in a bathroom on our first day of the Police Academy. Which got me to thinking that I needed to pee. Was it the prostate going or all that root beer I drank before bed? That thing that was making all the cluttering, chirping and screeching sounded like it was back in the trees, so I probably wasn’t going to run into it on the way to the toilet. I got up and took the Sports Illustrated with me, just in case. Rolled up, it made a good weapon.

He was still sleeping when I got back from killing the spider that ambushed me on my way out of the bathroom. I look at it this way: if it’s on my turf and I see it and it can’t move fast enough for me not to see it, I’m going to make like The Terminator. Nature Boy says: We should trap it in a jar and set it free in the natural world from whence it came. Right. Let him get a spider bite on his ass sometime and see how he likes it. He’d change his I-love-every-creepy-crawling-creature tune real fast.

So now, I not only had a possible prostate problem and insomnia, but a contract out on me from the spider-Godfather for killing his son, Vinnie. But did Hutch care? He just snoozed on, sometimes mumbling a little, maybe farting once or twice, totally oblivious to my needs. I read this story once where this woman is looking on her lover while he is sleeping. She thinks how beautiful and vulnerable he looks. It was fiction.

My partner was zonked out from all his training. He planned to swim all the way across the lake this year, so he had to train. Day in and day out — morning swims, afternoon swims, evening swims, water aerobics, dockside yoga and stretching. Not to mention the low-fat diet he put us both on. There’s nothing worse than the aging athlete. And why swim across the lake? Because like the guy who climbed Everest said: it was there? I think it was more like why Diego Garcia, our sometimes cat (sometimes he’s there, sometimes he’s not), licks his ass. Because he can.

Hutch wants to swim across the lake because that’s something he and Jack Mitchell, his best friend growing up, used to do. He wants to honor Jack’s memory. He would have done it last year, but it rained the whole time and the lake was full of flood debris and unsafe. But, this year, you betcha, he’s going to make that swim, ay. Which is how most of them talk around here, along with ya sure and by golly. I consider it English as a second language. All I’m saying is that I think swimming all the way across the lake is a bad idea. But what do I know? I swim only if I’m in danger of drowning.

 

We were getting towards the end of our ordeal — or what they liked to call training — at the academy. Our main instructor, Sergeant “Iron Mike” Ferguson, hadn’t kicked either of us out, even though he’d mentioned it a few hundred times. We got on his shit list the very first day, when I was late for class and Hutch covered for me. He didn’t even know me yet, but he knew a worthy cause when he saw one. Then he made a smart ass remark, which broke class discipline. So Iron Mike made him do twenty pushups, but Hutch kept going and did over a hundred. After that, we were permanently on The List.

But, things were moving along. Hutch was voted class president; I was top marksman. We passed the courses in constitutional law, corrections, court procedure, interviews and interrogations. We were considered physically fit. I placed first in wind sprints and Hutch got high marks in long distance running. We made it through all those defensive tactics drills where it seemed like the instructors don’t so much want to make you into a cop as kill you. We were just about through. And then they sprang what they called the Survival Skills test on us.

What I wanted to know was, why did a cop need to know how to swim? I was going to be driving a police car, not a motorboat I was thinking of applying to the Bay City Police Department, not the Coast Guard. I would be by the bay, not on it. And when it came to the Pacific, I liked standing by it, not being in it. A swimming test? Were they nuts?!

Maybe I should have mentioned all this to Hutch, but I was just getting to know him. And it was in the early stages when you are trying to impress each other by being macho. Or at least it was like that for me. Hutch didn’t have to try and impress me. It all came naturally — the smarts, the good looks, the couth. And he could swim like a fish. Growing up, he was in the Sea Scouts, which is like the Boy Scouts but you’re wet most of the time. I should have told him about my aversion to water in containers bigger than bathtubs. And I probably should have mentioned that I couldn’t swim.

But we do what we do and we choose what we choose. And while he was at the pool training, I was pissing my pants. And while he was doing speed laps, I was writing my will. And while he was diving in and swimming underwater, I was wondering if I really wanted to be a cop all that much anyway. The night before the test, I decided to casually ask him about swimming. I’d just play it real cool and learn all I could from Flipper.

 

“What’s happening?” he asked when he came out of the shower.

“Not much.”

“Ready for the Survival Skills Test?”

“Yeah, piece of cake. So, what do you think we’ll have to do?”

“Survive,” he said with a smile.

“No, really. What do you think will be on the test?”

“We were given the specifics last week. Why haven’t I seen you in the pool practicing?”

“You were probably somewhere else when I was here. I love to swim!”

“If you love it so much, why haven’t I ever seen you in the pool?”

“Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. Spell it out for me.”

This wasn’t going the way I had planned. He was using his recently acquired interrogation skills on me and I still hadn’t learned a damn thing about swimming. “Listen, swimming is my middle name.” I gave him a look that was supposed to say: how can you be asking Esther Williams here about swimming? For some reason, he wasn’t buying it. He was looking at me like he was the cop and I was the criminal. “I swim. I do it every chance I get.”

“And your best stroke is…?”

Stroke? Like in jerking off? I’m thinking. And, there he is just standing there with a white towel around his waist, almost-Officer Hutchinson, just waiting for me to incriminate myself. He had authority, even when he was half-naked. “It’s the New Zealand crawl.”

“I see. Is that a variation on the Australian crawl?”

“It’s what we call it back East.”

He was looking at me. He was looking through me. He was looking right into my lying eyes. “You don’t know how to swim, do you?”

He tried, he really did, to show me what to do in that last hour before the pool closed. So what if I was trying to learn how to swim in my underpants; these were desperate times. After we dried off, we went back to my place. He tried to show me a basic swim stroke by getting on the floor with me and moving my arms and legs. The more he showed me, the more I realized that I was not only going to fail, but experience death by water.

We were sitting next to each other on the edge of my bed when he said, “Are you afraid of the water?” He didn’t look at me when he asked. Just sat next to me with our shoulders almost touching.

“I’m not afraid of the water.”

“Good.”

“I’m afraid of drowning.”

He sighed and then looked at me with the sincerest light blue eyes anyone has ever owned. “You are not going to drown.” I tried to believe him.

“Maybe I can call in sick.”

“There are no acceptable excuses for missing the test. You know that.”

He was right. Iron Mike said, and I quote: There are no excuses. None. Nada. Zero. Zip. Death is no excuse, even if it’s your own. Be here 0800 tomorrow. You got that? I can’t hear you!

We all hurt our tonsils answering him back.

Hutch loaned me a pair of trunks. Told me that he’d be right behind me in line and that he was a certified lifeguard. He patted my shoulder. “You are not going to drown. Just keep telling yourself that.”

It was kind of like the Cowardly Lion, when he keeps telling himself, “I do believe in spooks. I do, I do.” There I was walking over to the pool, telling myself over and over, I’m not going to drown, I’m not, I’m not.

Iron Mike was standing there with a big whistle around his neck. Two official uniform types were standing next to him. One was an overweight black man who seemed to be giving all of us the once-over. The whistle blew. And the command was given to fall in. “Count off by threes.” We counted off. I was a two, Hutch was a three. Something was not good here. But I’m not going to drown, I’m not, I’m not. “Group one, assemble to the left.” They moved off. “Group two, assemble to the right.” I didn’t want to go. I had two choices. I could run out of there screaming or I could be a man.

“You’re not going to drown,” Hutch told me as I moved away from him.

I kept edging to the back of the line. But finally it was my turn to jump into the deep end of the pool when the whistle blew. I looked for Hutch. He had somehow moved away from group three and joined group one, and was trying to position himself closer to me. He was going to be in trouble for breaking rank. I guess he’d pretend he got confused about his number. Time slowed down. My whole life didn’t exactly pass before my eyes, but I thought maybe I should have learned to swim, but it was too late now and I wasn’t going to drown, I wasn’t, I wasn’t. I was going to sink like a stone.

Which I did. Just when I was going in, I thought I heard someone yell, “Hold your breath!” But, I wasn’t sure. Then it was blue all around me and I was going down. I wondered what I was going to do once I got to the bottom. And then there was something next to me pulling me up instead of down. I was dragged out of my watery grave, dumped on the side of the pool and given mouth to mouth resuscitation. I consider it our first kiss.

Hutch got a commendation and a demerit, which canceled each other out. I got sent to a swim class at the Y with some twelve-year-olds. I learned to swim; I did not learn to love it. Once when we were attacked by thugs, I jumped off a fucking dock into some very ugly water because I thought my partner was drowning. He wasn’t. And all I got from my heroics was a really bad cold.

 

So you can see what I mean about me and Hutch and water. It’s like the way opposites attract: larks and owls, stable cops and unstable writers, swimmers and non-swimmers. Maybe it all came down to my people liking Miami Beach, but hating the ocean. (And, let’s face it, what other group would be willing and able to wander the desert for forty years and not ask for directions?) His people liked nothing better than to row all the way from Vikingland to North America, only to turn around the next day and row back just for the exercise.

I wondered if the thing in the trees had insomnia, too. It was still whining away in a monotonous way, not close but not exactly far away in what was once yesterday but was now today. Terrific. I was starting to write poetry against my will. Then I got to thinking about something that had been rattling around in my brain for a while. Retirement. I was too young for that. Retirement was Uncle Al on the beach with his metal detector trying to find Spanish doubloons. Retirement was for when you couldn’t cut it anymore. Plus, what the hell was I going to do if I retired? I read a quote once which said, “The real Jewish question is this: From what can a Jew earn a living?” I could relate. Before I was a cop, I drove a hack, cooked short order, and sold vacuum cleaners door to door. Being a cop was not only how I made my living, such as it was, but who I was.

Hutch says I am obsessing and not assessing. He’s a great one for the cereal box quote of the day. He was right, though. Because sitting here in this itchy chair across from our bed, I realized that it wasn’t prostate or root beer or spiders or loons or the thing in the tree keeping me awake, but the thought that I had to take a next step that would change everything. It was a hell of a lot easier coming out back in the early 80’s. I had great sex as an incentive. What did I have to look forward to if I retired: a watch, a pension, and reruns of Cops?

Even though my partner retired from the force after twelve years, he never really left law enforcement because he lived with a police lieutenant who brought his work home. Of all our accomplishments, building a life together in which we are usually about 90% of the time in love is what we’re proudest of. Personally, I think I should get some kind of award for living with a writer. It seems real exotic to people when I tell them that he writes. They have no idea what it really means to share a life with someone who spends a large part of his time inside his head being creative.

First, there’s the characters. They either stop talking to him or they won’t shut up. If they aren’t speaking to him, he gets very moody, thinks he’ll never write again, looks out the window all day, drinks pots of tea and eats shortbread cookies, which are only good for dunking or doorstops. If they are speaking to him, he gets very moody, thinks he’ll never write anything good enough again, stares at a computer screen all day, drinks pots of coffee and eats Belgian chocolates that he hides from me. And whether they are talking to him or ignoring him, he drinks plenty of liquids, swims daily, and showers morning and evening and sometimes uses the hot tub in between. Water fetish, writer rituals, or obsessive-compulsive behavior? You make the call.

Then there’s organizing the material into a coherent and comprehensive whole by spreading piles of notebooks, papers, and books all over the kitchen table, while you try to eat dinner on your 1/25th of the space remaining. And, it’s always some kind of microwaved “It’s good for you” meal. What I want to know is what’s so good about two scrawny pieces of rubber chicken hiding under a tree-sized hunk of undercooked broccoli? And after that, one piece of Belgian chocolate for dessert, which I never get to pick. He likes to surprise me. Which means I get to eat the ones he hates. I get assigned the job of finding a fact for a fucking footnote no one but the writer is ever going to read. I wrote a master’s thesis, but the whole process was one I never plan on repeating. I ended up phobic about post-it notes. I was never going to be a real writer. I was too normal. Because when it came down to it, the only thing I heard in my head was the sound of my own obsessing; I mean assessing.

Which doesn’t mean that I’m not supportive of his career. I actually helped him pick out the subject of the new book that he’s working on. He was having a hard time deciding what to write about and it was starting to affect my sex life, so I finally sat him down and discussed it with him. I got him on the floor face down using a questionable, but entirely effective, subduing technique every career cop knows about, but which he had forgotten. And I wasn’t going to let him up until he picked a frigging topic.

 

“Get off me,” he groaned.

“Not until you decide right here and now what the hell you are going to write about. And just to let you know, monogamy and celibacy are not the same thing.”

“Get off! I mean it.”

“I mean it. Choose.”

“I can’t. Not while you’re sitting on me, asshole! People don’t pick topics this way.”

“We do. What’s it going to be? Rene Nadasy, the vampire killer? The Disco Strangler? Those Satan’s Witches wackos? How about Professor Gage?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve got that creep file, just pick a creep. What about Hector, a girl in every port? Or JoJo? They’re all what you’re looking for, right? Not your average psycho, but really weird-bizarre-crazy-nuts.”

“I do have an idea.”

“Talk to me.”

“Get off of me and I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me and I’ll get off of you.” For some reason, despite my superior strength and cunning, ten minutes later it was still a stalemate. The problem was, I might have him face down on the floor and subdued, but we still didn’t have a book topic. And if he dug in, we’d be spending the rest of our lives like this. I had to be the one to make the mature adult decision. I got half off him.

“Carl,” he said. I got all the way off him. “Swenson.”

“Anyone I know?” I asked with a charming smile, which only lasted for as long as it took him to force my left arm behind my back way past where it was meant to go.

“How does that feel?” he growled.

“If it’s your idea of foreplay, I think you need to reread The Joy of Gay Sex.”

“I hate you, do you know that?”

“I hate you, too.”

We ended up hating each other for as long as it took us to wrestle each other’s clothes off. When we were naked and twisted around each other for 69, the war was over. Maybe peace treaties would last longer if ambassadors would use their lips and tongues and mouths on each other. They’d not only get the pleasure of slick, wet, hot, equal time, but would feel really, really close to each other. If they did take the time to lick and suck and taste each other and swallowed everything that the other one had to give, there’d be fewer wars and a lot more satisfied ambassadors. When you’ve got issues to resolve, talking face to face is an option, but communicating face to crotch really gets the job done.

 

So here I was, wide awake in the land of Lutherans and lunatics, not far from the birthplace of Carl “I Sleep with Corpses” Swenson, Minnesota’s very own entry in the top ten list of people you never want to meet in a dark alley at night or anywhere else for that matter. And guess who just couldn’t wait to meet him and interview him and ask him, Why did you do it, Carl, ay? But then again, the author was the same guy who used to be a pen pal with Jeffrey Dahmer. I’m serious. He also got to be friendly with that Russian pervert who assaulted and murdered over fifty children. Well, not friends exactly. But Hutch interviewed him in that Russian prison that made Siberia look like Club Med and asked him, in Russian, “Ivan, why did you do it?”

Which got me to thinking, why should he be asleep while I was wide awake, listening to a thing in the trees that was beginning to sound more and more like a rattlesnake in a marimba band? Why should he be catching z’s while I was worrying about retirement, wedged into a fishy-smelling chair in a cozy, but cramped, cabin? I needed company. I wondered if the suicide rate was high in this state. The call of the loons was lonely and sad. Why couldn’t these people like canaries instead of manic-depressive waterfowl? I’d been a cop for over half my life. What would the other half be? Driving Hutch around in a Winnebago to interviews with homicidal maniacs, lifting those boxes of research material he drags around with him that I swear are filled with bricks, watching him swim, watching him write, watching him sleep, living in Minnesota? Minnesota! Now, that was scary. I needed immediate reassurance.

I went over to the bed and touched his soft blond hair. He had that little bald spot that he was sensitive about; I used Grecian Formula on my dark curly hair for occasional touch-ups. So we were about even in the aging department. He started wearing reading glasses before me, but I had them now, too, when I could find them. We both kept in shape, but he enjoyed it more than I did. I thought sex was the best exercise; usually he agreed.

I put my hand on the back of his neck. He felt cool under the warmth of my hand. He told me that my body heat really turned him on. So far it didn’t seem to be getting through to him. I rubbed the back of his neck. Before I was out, I used to love doing that because it was a place on his body I could touch and feel his bare skin. The neck rubbing was starting to numb my hand and Sleeping Beauty was still dead to the world. I bent over and kissed the place where my hand had been. I started tonguing one of his secret erotic zones. This was a never-fail technique for instant arousal.

What amazed me about the guy was: I could try to show him a great dirty movie, and he’d fall asleep halfway through it, or worse yet, analyze the plot. I could wine and dine him at a high-priced restaurant and if his characters were talking to him, he’d only be half listening to me; if his characters weren’t talking, he’d be dissecting the appetizer with a fork and trying to figure out what they used as seasoning. I could take him on a tropical cruise, plan a different position in every port, but what turned him on was all the unexpected bad weather, while I was too seasick to do anything about it. But the stroking of the tip of my tongue on the back of his neck right where the hairline ends is what would turn him on every time. Guaranteed. Without a doubt. Except tonight.

“Huh?” He pushed me away and rolled over onto his back. “What?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“What?”

“I said, I can’t sleep!” I climbed over him and got into bed.

“I can hear you. I’m losing my hair, not my hearing. What time is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you have a bad dream?”

“How can you have a bad dream, if you never went to sleep?”

“What do you do, stay awake trying to come up with ways to give me sleep deprivation?”

“Never mind. I’m sorry I bothered you.” I pretended to be getting out of bed, so that he’d reach out to me and tell me not to go. I waited. He’d probably want to get it on to apologize. I waited some more. He got out of bed instead.

“Since I’m up,” he bitched, “I’m going to go work out.”

“And just so you know, I’m not retiring in Minnesota,” I told the back of his head as he left to commune with the loons.

 

After three hours of attempted sleep, I gave up, got dressed and stumbled up to High Point Cabin for coffee. We spent last year up there in a guest room the size of a closet when part of our cabin was underwater. After the water receded a gang of frogs moved in, along with a black snake who was noshing on them. So we got to spend a whole lot of quality time with his family. I always got along with his father. It was his mother who had been standoffish. But we reached detente last year, when we became partners in Murder, Inc.

She hated bugs as much as I did. We started killing creepy crawly things behind our significant other’s backs, who were bleeding heart liberal bug lovers. When the father-son naturalist team took off to look at things under rocks, Mrs. H. and I took part in guerilla warfare against things that had no business being in her cabin in the first place. My weapon of choice was a rolled-up newspaper; hers was a spray bottle of nontoxic bug killer. She was a good shot. She told me that she had replaced the gentle-to-nature orange-smelling spray with industrial strength Raid. I asked her how she kept it smelling like oranges. A quarter cup orange juice, she told me. Now I knew who Hutch took after.

 

“Who could have done a thing like that?” I heard Mrs. H. say when I opened up the door to the screened-in porch. Hutch and his parents were having coffee and some kind of cracker with a Swedish name that could be translated as “dry rye.” With gooseberry jam spread on top, my gag reflex went into overdrive. “Do they really think it’s him, Richard?” she asked her husband.

“They’re not sure.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Sheriff Swenson called,” Hutch said. “He wondered if you’d be interested in helping him with a homicide.”

“Who’s the victim?”

“Ol’ Bob.”

“The fish?!”

“At least, they think it’s him.”

“Are you shitting me?” Then I remembered Mrs. H. was present. But she was probably used to me by now.

“Call the sheriff, Starsk. He’ll tell you all about it.”

“I’m not investigating a fish death.”

“But it’s Ol’ Bob.”

“So? Someone caught him and had one hell of a fish fry. So what?”

“He was shot.”

Three pairs of light blue eyes impaled me with Nordic precision on the sharp point of guilt. I was the outsider, the big city detective; I had to make nice.

 

“Do you solemnly swear to uphold the law and order of Lost Limb Lake, Beavertooth County and to protect and serve the citizens of Swensonville?”

“I do.”

Sheriff Arne Swenson pinned a badge on my shirt and shook  my hand. “There’s your hat.” He pointed to a Smokey the Bear hat sitting on his desk. “One size fits most. Here’s the list of interview subjects. And, while you’re at it, if you see anyone fishing without a license, sell him one of these.” He handed me a stack of green fishing permits. “If they don’t have the money, just get an IOU.”

“Yes, sir.”

For some reason, he seemed reluctant to hand over the keys to the cool-looking red Blazer that was parked outside. Maybe Hutch had warned him about my driving.

“Here’s a roll of quarters, if you need to make change for the permits.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, here’s the keys, then. Welcome aboard, Deputy Sheriff Starsky.” I thanked him and headed out to find the fish assassin. “Deputy?”

“Sir?”

“You forgot your hat.”

 

I knocked the hat sideways getting into the Blazer. “Well, don’t you look official,” he told me.

“Here, hold these.” I foisted the permits and quarters on him.

“What are you supposed to do, beat the bad guys over the head with the roll of quarters and then sell them a license?”

I decided to ignore his evident lack of understanding regarding police procedure and use him as a snitch instead. “What’s the word on the streets?”

“No one can believe it. Who’d want to shoot Ol’ Bob?”

“Maybe someone put out a contract on him.”

“Get serious.”

“It’s a fish.”

“He’s more than a fish, Starsk.”

“Yeah, yeah. He’s a legend. He’s the superstar of bass. And if he ran for mayor, everyone would vote for him.”

“I really don’t think you are taking this seriously enough.”

“It’s… a… fish.”

Under gathering clouds of disapproval, I started the Blazer, put it in gear, and tried to pull away. “Parking brake,” was all he said.

 

1100: I view the corpse. It’s on shore. There appears to be a small caliber bullet wound in its head. The autopsy will have to determine the exit wound because there’s no way I’m going to get close enough to turn it over. It’s a very big fish. It’s impressive, especially its smell.

1115: My partner insists that it’s not Ol’ Bob. How do you ID a fish, I want to know. Do you take finprints? Get serious, he tells me. And why didn’t I turn the deceased over to look for the exit wound? I’m waiting for the fishtopsy, I tell him.

1130: My passenger continues to insist that it’s not Ol’ Bob. Ol’ Bob is dead, I inform him. He’s gone to the fish farm in the sky. Don’t I know anything, he wants to know. I know I only got about three minutes of sleep last night, I tell him. So what, he says.

1145: The person riding with me still refuses to accept his fish friend’s death. I told you, stupid, that’s not him. Don’t start, I issue him a warning. Ol’ Bob is a foot longer than that fish. Postmortem shrinkage, I inform him. Ol’ Bob has more fish hook scars than that other fish. Plastic surgery, I say. Ol’ Bob is green-gray, this fish is brown. Self-tanning lotion, I tell him. And enough with Ol’ Bob, already!

1157: The intensity of the discussion escalates. I just don’t seem to understand how much this means to all of them here and maybe I should leave it to a sensitive soul such as himself to investigate. I’m the one they asked for, not you. I’m the one who is Deputy Sheriff. Sheriff schmeriff, he says. Enough already with Ol’ Bob; if I hear you say his name again there are going to be serious consequences. Yeah? he challenges me. Yeah, I issue a second warning. Ol’ Bob, he threatens.

1215: I pull up with a screech in front of the Sheriff’s office. It’s a fucking fish, I tell him. It’s a fucking shame that I’m too fucking dense to get it, he irrationally insists. Get out and let me do my fucking job, I suggest and start shouldering him out of my official police vehicle. I tell him in an authoritative voice that maybe, as a civilian, he should let the law handle it.

1217: I notice a tall, blond citizen of Lost Limb Lake giving me a middle finger salute as I pull away. The police get no respect.

1330: I realize that maybe I shouldn’t have pushed the guy who knew his way around this damn lake out of my vehicle, but it’s too late now.

1400: I finally locate the residence of the first witness, Mr. Alva Swenson, the man who found the body. Corpse. Dead fish… Whatever. He offers me coffee. I accept, but decline the dry rye crackers.

1440: I have another cup of coffee while I listen to the witness talk about the time he almost caught Ol’ Bob, by golly. That fish was too smart for him and he broke that line like it was string. He got away with a great big splash and then jumped out of the water just to taunt him with another big splash. That was some fish, you betcha.

1500: Mr. Swenson finally admits that the fish he found on the shore might be Ol’ Bob, or might not be. Who’d want to shoot a fish, ay? More coffee?

1530: I escape the caffeined ramblings of the first witness and head out to the next subject’s cabin.

1540: I return to Mr. Swenson’s for my hat.

1640: After ending up back in town twice, I locate Mrs. Alice Swenson. She offers me coffee. I accept. The witness states that on the night in question she heard a shot or what sounded like a shot or maybe it was a car backfire, she isn’t sure. Her hearing isn’t as good as it used to be and her hearing aid batteries are low and do I know where she can get some, ay?

1730: We return from the hardware store in town. She’s hearing fine now, but seems more interested in her continuing monologue. Her son, Albert, and her nephew, Armand, almost caught Ol’ Bob, by golly. But, that fish was too smart for them and broke their line like it was embroidery thread. Then he got away with a great big splash, you betcha. And jumped right out of the water again just to tease them. Who’d want to shoot a fish, ay? More coffee?

1800: After using her bathroom, I thank her for her cooperation and get into the Blazer. She walks over to me and hands me my hat.

1815: I recognize that I am feeling heart palpitations and a constant need to urinate from all that coffee, and I am starving. I decide to use the $5.00 per diem meal money the county has so generously given me.

1840: I stop at the EAT HE Restaurant. The waitress informs me that the RE fell off during the last big storm. I go off the Hutchinson healthy diet and order two chili dogs with extra onions, a large order of fries, and no coffee. The waitress, Agnes Swenson, seems concerned that I don’t want coffee. It’s only fifty cents a cup with all you can drink refills, she informs me. I thank her and order a soda. She looks confused. You mean like club soda? We don’t have that. No, I tell her, I mean like root beer or a Coke. Oh, you want pop. Who knew there’d be such a language barrier in the backwoods?

1915: I stop in at the Sheriff’s office to see if there are any new developments in the case. I find him sitting in the back room watching “The Price is Right” with his wife, Mrs. Arlene Swenson. They’re drinking coffee and noshing on the ethnic specialty, dry rye crackers with green jam. Any leads? he asks me. No, sir, I have to tell him. I bid $225.00, he says. For the cutlery set and the stainless cookware? she wants to know. You betcha, he tells her. That’s worth at least $500.00, ay. She’s over, he’s under. The TV contestant, Angie Swenson, wins. More coffee? Where’s your hat?

1930: After stopping at the EAT HE for my hat and a free root beer to go — one of the perks of being a charming cop — I head out to talk to the next witness, Mr. Arvard Swenson. I notice that all the trees make it seem darker than it is in town. Much darker.

2030: After finally finding the residence of the witness, I try to decline coffee, but sense suspicion on the part of the subject, his wife, Alma, his mother, Anna, and his daughter, Aria. I ask for a great big mug. The subjects state that they heard something that might have been a gunshot or a backfire, but the way sound carries around here, it could have been farther away than it sounded, ay.

2130: Mr. Swenson recalls the time he almost caught Ol’ Bob, but the fish broke the line like it was dental floss, and got away with a great big splash. And, by golly, jumped right out of the water again just to tell him who was boss. What a fish, ay. Don’t forget your hat.

2200: It’s very dark. The woods are silent, dark and deep, and I have miles to go before I sleep. And a gnarled oak to find, if I want to get on the right road to our cabin. I don’t want to have to be dealing with something that looks like one of those killer apple trees in The Wizard of Oz, but that’s my marker. Everything around here is marked by old trees, big rocks, and bushes. Why the hell can’t these people use civilized signs like they do in the city? No, they like their tradition of sending newcomers in circles. And isn’t there an old quarry filled with water around here? I’ll probably drive off into it and never be found.

2230: Things are not looking good. There is no gnarled tree and I really have to pee. It seems even darker. Should I listen to my screaming bladder and risk death in the outback or piss my pants? I compromise and hang it out the Blazer’s window.

2300: I end up back in town. Maybe I should just sleep in the SUV.

2330: My pride and a stiff neck say I should make one last attempt to find that fucking tree. If worse comes to worse, I’ll either drive off into the quarry and finally get some eternal sleep in the crushed remains of my vehicle or end up back in town again. I drive slowly and use the spotlight I found under the seat.

0330: When I finally drag my sorry ass into our cabin, my ex-partner is sound asleep in a sleeping bag on the porch. At least he had the courtesy to leave me the bed. I expect to see a forgive-me note on my pillow. I find a spider on it instead. I use my shoe to commit Murder One. So much for the pillowcase.

 

Day Two: I give up on the freaking log. I am wide awake in this clammy bed with a pillow without a pillowcase under my head. If I hadn’t found the gnarled oak, I could have ended up dead. But did he care? No, he kept sleeping there. I hoped a spider would nest in his hair. I was losing my mind, you betcha. And if it wasn’t going to be poetry spinning in my brain, I was going to be stuck with these racing thoughts.

Why were they all called Swenson? That’s what I wanted to know. Why did all their first names begin with “A”? Why did they keep saying, “Ay”? Did it have something to do with their first names or was it a cult code word? Why did everyone have blond hair and blue eyes? Cold blue eyes. If Ol’ Bob was so damn strong, why didn’t someone just go out and get some heavy duty fishing line? Answer me that. And what about their caffeine addictions?

All I needed now was to get up and wander off into the woods alone. Going deeper and deeper into Bigfoot’s turf, I’d get more and more lost. “Hello, hello. Is anyone there?” I’d say real loud the way those idiots do in all those slasher movies. Then every carnivore and Swenson could find me.

The thing in the trees now has a friend. I need a Valium, I really do.

 

Still Day Two: After a breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese, pancakes, home fries, and no coffee at the EAT HE, I felt like going back to bed. I decided to take a nap in the Blazer. The hat would make a good eyeshade. Anyway, what was the use of an early start? The fish was probably on ice and all the Swenson’s could be found in their cabins drinking coffee.

I checked in with the sheriff to see if there were any breaks in the case. He was reading a newspaper. The front cover had headlines that said, “Robot Dog Mates with Cat,” “Shrimp Attack Woman Walking Alone On Beach,” “Child Dies After Eating Demon-Faced Dorito.” It looked interesting.

After impressing him with the fact that I was wearing my hat, I listened while he suggested that I should interview old Arley Swenson, who lived in the old Agor Swenson place, down by the old quarry, back where the old oak that lost its limb used to be. I knew how to get there, ay? Just look for the rock that was shaped like a goose and turn left, but not before I came to the deer crossing, which had the rock that looked like the mallard. I couldn’t miss it, by golly. Yes, sir, I’ll head out now.

Not. I didn’t care if it was broad daylight and high noon, I wasn’t going to drive around in circles looking for rocks in the shape of webfooted animals, or try to find an invisible oak tree, or even get close to that goddamn quarry without backup. What I needed was a trusty Indian guide; what I had was a partner who was giving me a hard time.

 

“Why should I?” he wanted to know for like the zillionth time.

“I told you. Because I don’t know where the fuck I’m going.” He just kept reading. Maybe some cop talk would do it. “Put the book down, now, and move away from the chair! I want your ass in that car.”

“Don’t you mean the SUV, Sheriff?”

“Whatever.” Since that didn’t go as planned, maybe drugs would work. “More coffee?”

“No, thanks.” He just kept reading.

My only choice was to make nice. “What are you reading?”

“A book.”

This was a guy I could really learn to hate. “What’s it called?”

“Swenson’s Field Guide to Minnesota Songbirds and Waterfowl.”

“What’s it about?” Uh-oh, wrong question. His expression said maybe he should just shoot me now, so that he’d be saved from hearing anything else so stupid ever again.

“Birds,” he finally informed me.

Shit, I was at another dead end. I’d be going head first into the quarry of doomed relationships in about another minute here. “Birds, ay?” I said, playing for time.

“You betcha.”

“It must be really interesting the way you keep looking at it.”

“It is. This morning I thought I heard a ruby-throated warbler.”

“Really?” I feigned interest to keep him talking.

“But the ruby-throated is much rarer than the standard warbler.”

“Right.” So far, so good.

“Listen.” He whistled some notes. “That’s the standard. This is the ruby-throated.” He whistled some more notes. “Hear the difference?”

It sounded all the same to me — duck, quail, mongoose, who gave a shit? I needed a guide, not a birdwatcher with musical talent. But I decided to play along. “Yeah, I can definitely hear the difference. Absolutely. So, how about it? Ready to roll?” He looked at me with a look that said, you lying sack of horseshit, you couldn’t hear the difference if a ruby-throated rat came and bit you on the ass. He can say a lot with a look. No lie. I had no choice. I’d have to break down and use the “P” word. “Please?” He seemed satisfied with my groveling and put the book down. Then I leaned in and touched my lips to his in a whisper soft kiss. He opened his mouth and my tongue slipped in, happy to be home. He let me kiss him good and deep. Then he kissed me back with sincere surrender.

“Oh, all right,” he sighed.

 

It really wasn’t too bad driving around the lake when you had a copilot who knew where all the rocks and warblers were. We found Arley Swenson’s place almost right away, except for ending up in town that one time and arguing about a rock that he said looked more like a rabbit than a duck. For once, I was right.

“Ya, I killed that fish,” Arley told us while we were drinking coffee. “He was struggling on his side in the shallows. I put him out of his misery, pulled him on shore and figured the crows would pick him clean. No one would be the wiser, ay. Too bad Alva stumbled upon him; it would have saved a lot of bother.”

“So, it’s really him, then,” Hutch said sadly.

“Who?”

“Ol’ Bob.”

“Who said it was Ol’ Bob? Nah. Ol’ Bob’s some fish, ay. Three years ago, I had him hooked, and do you know what he did?”

“Broke your line?” I asked.

“You betcha. Then, he got away with a big splash. Then he…”

“Jumped out of the water again just to impress you?” I filled in helpfully.

“You’ve met him, too, Sheriff, ay?” The old guy looked at me with new respect.

“I feel like he’s a personal friend of mine,” I told him as I held out my cup for more coffee.

 

The moon made a silvery road on the water. We moved within its borders, our own rhythms pulling us along. I could see him swimming ahead of me as I rowed behind him for backup. He was swimming steadily and was midway across the lake, when he seemed to stop.

“You okay?” I yelled.

“Yeah! Slip the oars; I’m coming over.” He swam over to me and treaded water.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Something big swam right under me over there.”

“Get in the boat.”

“It brushed right against my stomach.”

“Get in the boat.”

“Okay, I’m heading out again. Stand fast until I get ahead of you.”

“Are you nuts?”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s something out there.” I’m thinking lake sharks.

“It’s gone now.”

“Get over here.” He swam over and hung on to the side of the boat. “Everybody out of the pool. Get in the boat.”

“I’m only halfway across. Whoa, there it is again.”

“In the boat, now!” I’m thinking Loch Ness monsters, who knew?

“It’s him.”

“Who?”

“Ol’ Bob.”

“Right. Okay. Whatever you say. Get in the damn boat.”

“Compromise? I’ll swim back from here and call it a crossing.”

“No.”

“This is beautiful.” And he took off, swimming strong, heading back to the dock and dry land, leaving me in the middle of Lost Limb Lake alone with something big underneath a little rowboat that was headed the wrong way.

This was not beautiful. This was agoraphobia. If I ever got back, I would have to just turn myself in, because I was going to kill him for leaving me out here. But I wasn’t going to drown. I wasn’t, I wasn’t. I was wearing a life preserver in a rowboat that was going around in a goddamn circle because I forgot how to refit the oars. Eventually I reached shore.

He was standing on the dock. “What took you so long? Throw me the line.” I whipped it at him. But instead of it wrapping itself around his neck and choking the life out of him, it turned traitor and let him catch it. I’d have to kill with my bare hands. He tied the boat up and stuck his hand out to help me out. That’s right, help me onto the dock and then I’ll kill you. “That was wonderful.” Apparently he was getting off standing there in his wetsuit; maybe rubber was the missing element in our sex life. He gave me a great big lakey-smelling bear hug. “I love you.”

“Well, I hate you.”

“No, you don’t”

“I mean it, I seriously dislike you.”

“The loon, the moon, and you, my water-hating Jew.”

“You smell fishy. Let me go.”

“Pleasure’s a river and we are a boat, floating together on currents of want.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell it to the judge.”

“I want you.”

“It’s just the rubber suit talking.”

We stood on the dock together. He wasn’t letting me go. Obviously, midnight swims, full moons, and unidentified swimming objects were a real turn-on for him. I was wet now, too. Maybe I should wait until after I got some before I murdered him.

“I’m so happy.” He gave me another big squeeze and let me go. Happy? Happy as in that’s my heart’s desire that he should smile more, live a little, and take a break from all that writing once in awhile? And what made him. happy? Not an expensive gift or a cruise or a five star restaurant, but a swim, across a lake. Who could understand a Viking? “Want to peel me out of this wet suit, Sheriff?”

“Depends on what’s in it for me, big boy.” We just stood there on that dock facing each other and holding hands. It felt like some kind of ceremony. I had to honor that even if I didn’t always understand it Then we heard a great big splash,

“Told you,” Hutch said. In the moonlight road on the water, we saw the silhouette of a great big fish as he jumped. Then he came down with another big splash just to let us know he was alive.

 

The moon was a silvery beam on our screened in porch. We moved in and out of the light, our own rhythms pushing us along. I could feel he was pulling ahead of me as I moved behind him and quickened the stroke. We sailed in, tethered together in pleasure, securely harbored and in love. And, for that space in time, he was mine.

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