style="font-size:15px;"> Jim Doe looked across to Terra, like for an answer that Gentry would accept. Behind her seat was the mesh that separated the truck into front and back, into safe and unsafe, cops and robbers.
“Chief?” Gentry said.
Jim Doe held his finger over his mouth for Terra not to say anything.
“Out past the school,” he said. “North.”
“Looking at all the pretty clouds on county time?”
“Something like that.”
“Well,” Gentry began, so that Jim Doe could see him in his cruiser, leaned back in the seat the way old men do, like that gives them more baritone, carries their voice deeper into the wire, across the air. “It’s like this. A blue—”
Jim Doe missed the rest: Terra, running the knob of the two-way along the side of her finger, like she was about to tune Gentry away.
I didn’t say anything, she said with her lips.
Jim Doe switched the rig to his other hand, so he could guard the dashboard.
“Say again,” he said into the mike.
There was a long, impatient pause.
“Sure you’re ready now?” Gentry asked.
Jim Doe nodded. For radio, he nodded.
“This guy, Nebraska plates. Blue sedan. Mary says he pocketed something at the Allsup’s. A candy bar, maybe.”
“Dimmit?” Jim Doe said.
“Josie,” Gentry said back. She worked the counter in Dimmit.
“If we start arresting people for candy bars . . .” Jim Doe said.
“You have to live here to get away with it, anyway,” Gentry said back. “But here’s the deal. He’s Indian, I don’t know what kind. White-tail, black feet, something.”
He paused, holding the line open so Jim Doe couldn’t say anything. Jim Doe’s father, Horace, was mostly Blackfeet. With papers, he always said when the settlement checks came. Papers like a dog or a horse. But he cashed the checks all the same.
“And?” Jim Doe asked.
“And he’s got one of those damn chicken feathers hanging from his rearview,” Gentry said.
“Eagle,” Jim Doe said.
“Just thought you might want to be there,” Gentry said. “Smokum a peace pipe with him or something. He’s heading your way, up one sixty-eight.”
Jim Doe ran his tongue against his lower lip, side to side.
Terra was waiting for him to say something back to Gentry.
He didn’t. Instead he just asked did Gentry need him there?
“It’s a boring day, is all,” Gentry said. “What is it, Tuesday?”
“Wednesday,” Terra said.
Jim Doe looked at her. He could hear Gentry smiling through the mouthpiece. “I can take it if you want,” he said. “No problem, chief.”
“Chief?” Gentry said. “You getting racist on me, son?”
“Sheriff,” Jim Doe corrected.
It was their usual back and forth.
“Hell, he’ll likely be gone by the time you get her back to school,” Gentry said, his voice strained from some turn he was making, the steering wheel rasping across the gut of his shirt. “From, y’know, wherever you are. Whoever’s clock you’re on, all that.”
Jim Doe shook his head, trying hard to figure how this could have gone any different.
“Town and Country?” he said, signing off.
“Five o’clock,” Gentry said back.
They never made it.
#
Gentry hit the sirens just past the Episcopal church, where the highway flattened out. It was his favorite place. He had his radio locked open—the Nazareth version of back-up.
“Can he hear us?” Terra whispered.
Jim Doe held his index finger over his lips.
Gentry was reading the plates off to Monica, back at the office.
His car was stopped now, too, you could tell. No more road whine, no more wind through the open window, no more sirens. Just the lights, probably. To keep people from rear-ending him, or slapping him with their mirrors.
“Don’t forget the camera this time, Tom,” Monica said.
Gentry laughed, said something hard to catch, and scratched over the steering wheel again, hit the record button. The recording heads under the passenger seat squealed in protest, then rolled, rolled.
Monica read the plates back just after Gentry stepped out.
They belonged to a black farm truck from Nebraska. They hadn’t been registered since 1952.
Jim Doe studied the radio.
1952?
“Look,” Terra said.
Jim Doe did. It was the cloud, opening up. Streaks of blue sifted down like corn pollen, but there were streaks of white, too: hail. Pale and slight in the distance.
“Watch the corners,” Jim Doe said. “The edges.”
That was where the rotation usually started. Like eddies left behind.
But 1952. Jim Doe said it again, in his head, then keyed Monica open, to get her to run the plates a second time, in case she was eating and typing. Beside him, Terra clicked her seat belt open. Jim Doe didn’t even know she’d put it back on again. The metal head reeled across her chest. She leaned forward to see the edges of the cloud, and Jim Doe was watching her but thinking about an old black truck, rambling down the road, past the Episcopal church, one of its tires slinging rubber.
“Tom?” he said into the mike, holding his hand out for Terra not to say anything, and four miles away Gentry looked back to his car, into the camera mounted on the dash, then hitched his pants up on the left side, kept walking.
The longhair’s car was a blue sedan, a 1985 Impala.
Gentry hadn’t needed the cherries, either, the lights—the car had already been slowing, guilty—but had turned them on just for Mary Watkins and her sister Janna, crossing the church parking lot early for choir, like they’d done every Wednesday for twenty-two years. They’d waved to Gentry then tied their scarves down tighter over their heads, leaned inside. Gentry had smiled, raised a finger over the wheel to
