On the Road with C. T. Savage

FEATURED AUTHOR—MEREDITH SUE WILLIS On the Road with C. T. Savage Meredith Sue Willis I'm sitting here in the South Berkshire County Police Station on a molded orange chair, staring at the green painted block walls and scuffed vinyl floor tiles. They put me between the cart with the coffee machine and a big, blue water bottle, and they've gone back to their computers and scanners. I think they're bringing in a psychiatrist because I've refused to speak. I hug my pocketbook like some old country lady on a bench in the bus station. I didn't mean to stonewall them, but I closed down. I wasn't hungry; I didn't have to pee. I've seen this happen to patients after a trauma, and I've been watching it happen to me. But a little while ago my stomach growled, and I've begun to feel prickles of embarrassment. I'm ready to start signing papers or whatever they want me to do. C.T.'s wallet is still in my bag, but they have the truck license, and I expect by now they've ID'd him and soon they'll gethold of my kids. Or else I'll call them myself, which of course is what I should have done in the first place. There was a ruckus over my pocket book, a brown leather hobo bag that I've had for twenty years, expensive at the time I bought it. The nice young Massachusetts police officer's lips got tighter and tighter as he kept trying to get some information out of me: "We know you were with him, ma'am. We just want some information." I appreciate that they are polite up here just like back home in West Virginia, but when I didn't talk, the young cop tried to lay a hand on the pocketbookgently , he didn't try to grab it- but I snatched it back and hugged it, and some of the people in the parking lot at the lake started to mutter, and then his boss came over, and they asked me if I wanted to go in the ambulance, but I could tell that the emergency people had already given up on C. T. They got him out of sight as soon as they could, so I was pretty sure he was gone. The older cop offered me a ride to the police station. I didn't have a lot of choice, did I? The truck was in the lake. I've lost track of the hours now. At some point one of the women police came over and told me they were sorry, but my husband had passed away at the hospital. I was so frozen I didn't even say, "He's not 16 my husband. I divorced him twenty years ago." But now tears have started trickling out of my eyes. I'm crying because now I'm hungry as well as exhausted, and I feel such a fool for being here. Maybe also a little bit because C. T. won't be showing up on my doorstep anymore, assuming, just assuming, that I'm ready to hop on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and go for a ride because he happens to be in the mood. He always liked his motorcycles black and classic. He never cared for choppers or custom painted orange flames. He never cared for helmets, either, and he used to join the younger boys when they had one of their bare-headed parades to protest the helmet laws. But this time he came in his old Chevy truck, no motorcycle, but with that big old motor boat in tow. Goddam C. T. Savage. I still choke when I think of how he walked out on me thirty years ago saying he was looking for ajob and leaving me with two babies and out of everything, I mean out of everything, from milk to toilet paper, and there's C. T. looking all mournful and saying, "Merlee, honey, I just can't take this." He can't take it, but Merlee can! That's C. T. And...