THE SAFETY OF DEEPER WATER

Chapter 2: Where a Woman Just Goddamned Wasn’t Supposed to Be

56 2 Where a Woman Just Goddamned Wasn’t Supposed to Be A half moon and two mercury vapor lights illuminate the grounds around the black water in the hatchery pens, and he watches through binoculars, hidden in the trees up the hillside. Gentle wind shushes through overhead branches, tree trunks creak and bend, dead leaves and twigs fall to the forest floor, water runs through underground springs, insects hum in flight, deer tear leaves from bushes and low branches, nocturnal rodents comb the hillside for food, an owl swoops down upon a foraging field mouse. He marvels at how much sound fills a sleeping forest in the middle of the night. This time the county newspaper, always eager for anything to report, had run a single-column story about his latest killing. The what, when, and where of the killing were adequately covered, but the how had remained a bit uncertain, pending results forthcoming from the state fish and game laboratories. Nothing of the who or why. He knows that who is the only concern of law enforcement officials and J.D. Callander, the local fish and game warden. He doubts they give much thought to or could even understand why. The Safety of Deeper Water 57 He’ll have to be careful. For the last two weeks he has kept his vigil through the night on the hillside above the hatchery, watching. With only four deputies on staff, the county sheriff has only one cruiser and one officer to patrol through the night. He’s seen a deputy swing his brown and white car through the hatchery only twice in the last two weeks. A state police cruiser drove through, flashing its spotlight over the pens, twice a night for three consecutive nights immediately following his last killing and hasn’t returned since. The game warden has apparently been unable to convince traditional law enforcement authorities that the slaughter at the hatchery merits priority attention. He has plenty of time. The fingerlings now in the troughs won’t be ready to stock for another few weeks. Letting the binoculars rest against his chest, he lies back on the hillside and listens to the noisy life of the forest around him until the gap between the sound and his ears collapses, dissolving the night air into a single solution. * * * Some time ago, Inmate #52674 at the Bland County Correctional Facility wrote and mailed the following letter: Dear Sandy, So we’re divorced now? They brought the papers and made me sign them today. Traitor. After all I’ve been through, after all the wrong you’ve already done to me, you just throw me away like trash. I never did anything but love you, want to be with you forever, take care of you, and now you betray me again, like this. I signed your papers. They made me. But they don’t mean a damn thing to me. You’re my wife. Mine, do you understand? And no damned legal piece of paper will ever change that. Do you think you’re going to get some other man? Or have you already, you slut? Well, forget it. As long as I say Tim Poland 58 you’re my wife, you are. Mine. Always mine. Right up until the moment I kill you. Your loving husband, Vernon The letter was duly delivered but received no response. * * * Late spring is melting into early summer around the little house in the pine trees on Willard Road, and Sandy sits on the small front deck, sipping a cup of herbal tea and listening to Stink growling under her porch. Over the last couple weeks, she has arranged her few possessions and pieces of furniture in the little house and has settled into the pace of her new life and job rather quickly. Nothing unexpected about that to Sandy. But, as she drinks her tea and watches the rising sun behind the ridge begin to turn the undersides of clouds pink and orange, she thinks about the few things in her new life she did not expect. Stink growls again, more of a grumble really, and cautiously pokes his face out from under the porch, inching toward the bowl of dog food Sandy has set out for him. The woman who rented her the house neglected to tell her that Stink came with the property. Sandy first noticed him the day she moved in, sitting just at the edge of the trees around...