What I Needed to Believe

I wasn’t drunk. Ask Sheriff Ty, he’ll tell you. I took a blood alcohol test immediately after the accident. A man has the right to drink if he wants and it doesn’t make him a killer.
Everyone knew the four Greymalkin sisters. I didn’t learn their first names until long after the accident and I don’t figure I’m alone in that. Always the four of them, like a small gray-haired tribe. Some of them got married and took their husbands' names as the good people of this town do but they were always the Greymalkin sisters. There were three of them in the car that afternoon, coming back from the funeral of the fourth. You can’t tell me that’s not strange. It points toward something more than Jim Fassbinder drinking a little much on a Sunday evening. I’ve had my share of bust-ups, but no one’s ever been killed before.
Ty’s making me wait this out in jail. I don’t mind. Better that than everyone in town calling me a murderer. I can’t imagine driving around with everyone pointing and whispering. It makes me glad that Maggie and the kids live in another town now. I’d be hard-pressed to explain this one to them, but I know it wasn’t my fault.
Jail’s almost better than my house anyway. Ty orders me a helping of whatever takeout food he picks up on his shift. The deputy brings me a newspaper and coffee in the morning. It’s like a hotel, except I can’t leave and my toilet is right in the cell with me. And I can’t drink. Didn’t want to the first day, on account of the guilt and all, but I’ve had a lot of time to replay the accident in my head. The more I think about it, the more I am sure that those sisters rammed their car straight into my truck.
One the second day, Sheriff Ty and I go over the accident in detail. We sit at his desk and drink black coffee from mugs with Go Wildcats! written in blue letters.
“All three of them. You wiped out a family, Jim.”
I stare down into my coffee, watching the shiny film on top swirl as I tilt my mug. He does have a point. Three of them in one shot. The whole Greymalkin clan. One of the daughters is set to arrive in town on Thursday. I am hoping like crazy she doesn’t ask to visit me here in jail. They do that sometimes, victims’ families. I saw it on TV once. I don’t think I’d enjoy trying to explain to her how that big cream puff Oldsmobile came sliding over onto my side of the road.
Ty makes me go out to the site of the accident. I point out to him how there’s no skid marks on the side of the road that the Greymalkin car was on. “See, they was aiming for me.”
Ty doesn’t answer. He just points to my own set of skid marks, the ones that neatly parallel the yellow meridian lines.
“Maybe I was trying to get out of the way,” I say. But I can’t figure out why I would have been in the middle of the road. Seems logical that if I were trying to steer from the car then my skid marks would have been pointing toward the ditch. I shut my eyes for a moment trying to remember the accident. It was late afternoon, and damn foggy, one of those sudden Maine warm-up days that happen in early spring. The breezes switch and balmy air blows in off the coast and all the frost rises up out of the ground like wet, gray ghosts. You can’t do much of anything on a day like that. Not a good day for building or for planting either. Might have been good for fishing on shore but I was feeling a mite queasy from the night before and the thought of baiting hooks with sea worms or bits of raw bacon seemed unappetizing. Better to head over to Donahue’s Hideaway and have Betty fix me up with a bowl of chowder and a Miller or two. Or three, I don’t remember, but I wasn’t drunk. I know that ‘cause I left. When I’m drunk, I stay from afternoon into evening and then sometimes after that I help Betty clean up and she says, “Jim, you shouldn’t be driving home tonight,” and so I don’t. But not that day. I told Betty I had an early morning the next day helping Micah Sark patch up his roof. He was going to pay me twenty bucks an hour under the table, and that’s as good a reason to stay sober as any.
My truck was running fine that day, I remember that. She can get sluggish on wet days but she started right up, and I went back down Flagstone Road toward home. Round the corner and that big silver car came rolling out of the fog like the goddamn Flying Dutchman. Can’t tell me it was an accident. Miss Cora’s hands wrapped around that big steering wheel, guiding it right toward me.
“Sounds damn fishy to me, Jim,” says Ty. “Why would Miss Cora do that? And with her sisters in the car? Even if she were suicidal, she wouldn’t go killing her sisters. Besides they were all church-going women. Miss Cora would know God wouldn’t look too kindly on a woman who rammed her car into an innocent man’s truck.”
These were all good points. I couldn’t think of anything to help out my case so I just sat quiet in the car while Ty drove back to the station. He locked me back into my cell. “I’m sorry, Jim,” he said, “I’d like to believe you. It’s just the facts, and all.”
“I ain’t holding any of this against you, Ty. I know you’re just doing your job.” Yeah right, see if I ever gave money to the annual police charity softball game again.
The worst part of being in jail is the nights. At home, I’m used to falling asleep in front of the TV. Here the high, small window lets in threads of moonlight, and I’ve only got the one pillow so I can’t pull one over my head like I do at home. So I just lay here in the dark and try not to think of anything. Not thinking of things is hard, but I am sick of trying to be sad about the accident, whether it was my fault or not. Makes me wish I could do one of them séance-things and call the ghosts of those women back into the room with me. Have them tell Ty it wasn’t my fault.
Love and grief are hard things. Maybe those sisters couldn’t live without one of them being gone. If they had all their lives been four and then suddenly were three, maybe that was too much. Could be the funeral ate up all the money for the rest of them. I reckon Miss Cora did it because she was afraid. Afraid of waiting for the Grim Reaper to take the next one by the hand and not knowing who he was going to pick next. Like watching a TV show where they kill off your favorite character but you want to keep watching the show so you pretend your next-favorite character was really your favorite only he wasn’t and the more you watch the more you really start to hate that guy.
And the one that died first, Miss Ella, maybe she was the best of them. The oldest and the sweetest, maybe she took care of the others and they all went to her house for Thanksgiving and ate chestnut stuffing and pumpkin pie. Maybe Miss Ella was like the sun in their lives and they just couldn’t imagine life without her. I’d seen Miss Ella in town a bunch of times; she didn’t look like the sun to me. More like a potato in a dress, dragging a little dog behind her that looked like a scouring pad with legs. I never did say two words to Miss Ella except ‘Trick or Treat’ on Halloween or maybe ‘Merry Christmas’. Miss Cora, I knew a little better. She’d been the special needs teacher at my school. From ages eight to twelve, I’d go twice a week to Miss Cora’s office and work on my reading skills. That’s why it makes me so mad that Ty and the whole town are thinking I killed Miss Cora, even accidentally. A man that kills his teacher, that’s like killing your own momma. Miss Cora wasn’t the best teacher; I don’t even think she was listening half the time while I read. She’d just nod at the end of the hour and say “Good job, Jimmy” and give me one of those red and white peppermint candies. She had a big apothecary jar full of them. The slow kids at my school were called the peppermint kids on account of those candies, so I never ate mine. I sold them to Teddy Noones for a nickel each. Teddy was the fattest kid in school so being peppermint was the least of his problems.
The other two sisters I didn’t know at all. One of them hadn’t lived here in Breakwater for years and the other one hardly ever left the house. Lived up in the old house with her sisters and never really came outside. Bunch of spooky old women. The whole lot of them must have been at least eighty. Seems to me that a man shouldn’t have to do much time for hitting some old ladies.
In the morning, Ty starts talking to me about vehicular manslaughter. I tell him it was a damn accident, but he doesn’t change his expression at all. Manslaughter seems a cruel word to me. Murder is a cool word, a quiet, directed word. Manslaughter sounds like I went crazy with a machete one night. Ty sets me up with a lawyer who spells it all out. Each one of them counts separate which is a little unfair since it happened all at once.
“They did it on purpose,” I tell the lawyer. He smiles and says that there is plenty of time for discovery on the case.
The easiest thing to do is to plead guilty. The lawyer says you don’t have to really be guilty. It just means you acknowledge that it happened. He confuses me. I know it happened. I’ve got the bashed-in hood and eggplant bruise on my forehead. But saying guilty makes it seem different.
“They were a really close family,” I explain. “And when the one died, well, the other ones got sad and so that’s why they did it. I don’t think I should be guilty if they was the ones coming for me.”
“Mr. Fassbinder, we will certainly look into the facts of the case. The mental state of the other driver may indeed become a factor. But at this point, I think the smartest thing to do is to plead guilty and see if we can cut some sort of deal. This is your first offense?”
“Yeah, sorta. How about self-defense? They were coming at me with their car so I defended with my own. Like if a guy came after another guy with a gun and then that guy shot him.”
“Have you ever been arrested before?”
“Sure. But it wasn’t nothing like this. Drinking a little, ran my old Chevy off the road once but I didn’t ever hurt anyone. Those Greymalkin sisters, they kept to themselves. Probably didn’t have too many friends outside the family. Husbands all died, kids moved away. Maybe they all agreed on it, like a suicide pact. You gotta tell Ty that, so he can search the house.”
The lawyer just sighs and packs up his papers. And I figure once he gets Ty to pull my record maybe he wouldn’t think it’s such a firecracker of an idea to have me plead guilty. Sometimes a guy does things. Sometimes the things add up.
Back in the cell at night, I can hardly touch the shepard’s pie that Ty brought special from Maisie’s restaurant. I never did have much luck with judges. Sitting up there all judgy in their big black robes like they didn’t ever do anything wrong. A man’s a man whether he puts on fancy robes or construction boots. My daddy taught me that. Still, they got money and they got law books and all I got is this idea that them women set me up.
I never did anything to them. Maybe flaming bags of dogshit on their doorstep sometimes. Rotten eggs at Halloween. Kid stuff. Ramshackle Victorian houses and spinster ladies are natural targets for kids with time on their hands. Winter here is awful long and spring when it comes, just makes us all go a little crazy. It’s like the flowers. First warm day and all of a sudden, flowers everywhere and trees budding and the whole of Mother Nature gone postal. Kids are the same way. Exuberant, my mother used to call it. But that was years ago.

In the morning, they bring me up before the judge. I let the lawyer do the talking and when it comes time, I say guilty just like they said I oughta. The judge keeps flipping through the file and looking at me like I’m some piece of trash that got caught under his shoe.
I don’t look for the family. The prosecuting attorney talks about victim impact and the family so I know they are there. But the rules of court are simple; keep your head down and your mouth shut. I’ve been in this position enough times to know that you just try to look as quiet and pitiful as possible.
My lawyer asks for bail but doesn’t get it. Wasn’t anyone likely to put up bail for me anyhow. Hell, if they let me out, the first thing I would want to do was go get drunk anyway. I don’t think that would be such a good idea.
They give me a date for the trial and I go back to the cell. Ty fixes me up with a little black and white TV he brought in from his basement. On account of how I’m going to be there for so long. It only gets a couple of channels and each time I want to switch it I have to get up and readjust the rabbit-ear antenna. At least it’s noise.
At my apartment I had cable. All them channels with nothing on, just like that Bruce Springsteen song said. Still, I’ve had cable since it first came up here to Maine. Lots of times, Maggie would get mad at me for always making sure that I had the cable bill paid when sometimes we didn’t have money for other stuff like diapers and car insurance. But I always told her, a man works and he deserves certain things. Cable TV is one of those things. Like if they had cable TV when God had invented the world, there would have been eleven commandments. Thou shalt have cable television. Maggie wasn’t ever much good at understanding a man’s needs.
Sometimes though, I think maybe cable television is what went wrong with my life. It makes a man feel inadequate. All those women he will never touch. All the places he will never go. All the things that his wife sees on the home shopping channel and thinks he is less of a man for not bringing home. As if she needed that workout equipment. Fat ass. What she needed to do was stop eating.
On the fourth day, one of the Greymalkin relatives comes to visit me. Ty says I can refuse to see her, but I’m in the mood for anything to break up the routine. Who knows, maybe she’s cute.
She ain’t. She’s just a younger version of those same sourpusses. Hard to believe she doesn’t live in Maine anymore. She dresses the same way local women do, sexless and warm. Maybe she’s got a few years on me. It’s hard to tell, what with the sweater and all.
“I forgive you.” She sits down slowly on the metal chair opposite me.
“I didn’t do anything.” I mumble low, not meeting those cloudy-day eyes of hers.
“It was an accident,” she says it slow, then makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Guess that’s what happens to you, Jimmy. A lot of accidents.”
Now, nobody has called me Jimmy since before me and Margie settled down. Back when Daddy was still alive and kicking, kicking mainly. I look up at her and a name pushes up from the marsh fog of my memory. “Ally Potter, is that you?”
She laughs out right. A clean, girlish sound that brings back years past. “Ally Mayfair, now.”
“Girl, it is good to see you.” My mind is whizzing back to those first summers out of high school, nearly fifteen years ago. Then I remember why we are here. “They were your kin?”
“My mother’s mother and her sisters. Momma’s pretty mad at me for coming to see you. Says she always knew you were trouble. Except I think maybe she was figuring you’d knock me up or something. But I was never really your type.” She fixes me with a stare that tells me it would be useless to argue.
I had a weakness for curvy brunettes, it’s true. Like Maggie was then, all skintight T-shirts and that wild hair falling halfway down her back. ‘Course I didn’t know it was a perm, just like I didn’t know that girls with huge breasts and wide belling hips have a tendency to run to fat as they age. Sucker me. “You were dating Mike Bettencourt back then anyways.”
“Don’t you mention him to me, Jim. I came here to be nice and to tell you I forgive you, for what happened now, and what happened then. Because that’s the Christian thing to do and I’ve got a good life now. But you can’t just sit there and bring up his name all casual like it was something you just remembered.” She was breathing hard as she pushed out her chair to go. It squealed pitifully against the tile, underscoring her words.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Ally. I mean that. But you tell that family of yours it isn’t my fault.”
“Never is.” She won’t even glance my way now. Like I’m not even in the room. She just turns that too-skinny back of hers and motions for Ty to lock me back up. Her Christian charity took a powder awfully quick.
Ty leads me back to the cell and gives me the hint of a shove as I pass through the door. “Hey, what was that for?”
Ty’s heaves a sigh like his side-of-beef shoulders weigh a thousand pounds per. “Just for you being you,” he mumbles, walking away.
“I could sue for police brutality. Get me a million dollars and everything.” But I am yelling at empty space. My voice echoes off the walls and even I don’t believe me.
I don’t want to think about it but I do. Not so much then, but later, long later when the TV stations have signed off leaving me with nothing but the static. I wish there was a shower in here. I want to wash Ally Potter off me. Maybe I am not used to thinking about the past. You can’t change what’s already gone before. It’s an odd sort of pain, to look back on something that was pleasurable and knowing that kind of pleasure won’t be coming around again. Maggie was so pretty then and everything was work hard, play hard. Long days roofing houses with Mike Bettencourt and the rest of the crew. Summer nights drinking beers down on the jetty.
Mike was a year older than the rest of us. The quiet type, which made him the perfect guy to bang nails with. I could just rattle on, and he wouldn’t say much but yes or no to all that I was telling him.
I seemed to take to drinking a little more than everyone else. The beers weren’t quite enough so I carried a flask of Jack Daniels on nights we went out. The Jack caused the stars tosparkle brighter. It made me feel like a man, taking quick swigs from the flask whenever I snuck round the corner to go take a leak.
The flask rested hard and warm against my hip when we pounded nails up on the roof. Sometimes I took a sip or two. Just for inspiration. It made the days pass a little faster.
Summer was almost over. Hot August fading into too-cool September. All the college-bound kids headed out of town. We still banged nails and drank down by the water but the joy was slowly leaking out. Maggie started acting strange, like everything I said was proof I was a liar.
The last hot day of the season. Mike and I took advantage of the weather to finish the roof on the new strip mall on the edge of town. We had a view of the water and the sun was warm on our bare backs. After lunch, we sat on the edge of the roof for a while dangling our feet off the edge.
“Won’t be too many more days like this.” Mike sighed deeply and leaned back.
“Damn straight.” I opened my flask and took a long swig.
“Hey, we’re working.” Mike grabbed for it.
“It’s almost quitting time.” I took another drink. Lately it almost seemed not to get to me. I could drink all day long and never feel much different. The edges of the days were just softer. “Come on, have some.”
Mike took the flask. We rested our feet on the gutters and watched the clouds work across the sky, taking the sun away and then suddenly giving it back. Warm and cold played across my face. Back and forth, we shared the drink between us. Mike finished the last swallow and rested it on the roof tiles near his head. It slid down the incline, coming to rest in the gutter.
“Pick that up.”
Mike shook his head. “I’ll get it later.”
“Now.” I kicked his foot with mine.
Mike grumbled but he pushed off and crept down to get the flask.
It happened all at once. He slipped and I watched it, slow like those instant replay things on ESPN. Down he went into the gutter. With a metallic creak the gutter gave way, and Mike, swearing at first and then crying out, fell to the ground with a loud thud.
I scrambled down off the other side. The other guys all clustered around him. An ambulance was called.
“What happened up there, Jim?” the foreman asked.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “He just fell.”
They took him to the hospital. I didn’t go with him. Sure, I felt bad but after all, nothing I could do.
Months later they shipped him off to a rehab facility. Paralysis, I think they said. Could be permanent. Hard to imagine anything I did would ever last.. A man gains legs again. How could he not? Maybe I didn’t ask. But it’s not like the experience didn’t change me. I married Maggie, after all. Months passed and I made us all honest.
Accidents. I keep thinking about what Ally said about me, like my life was all accidents. Hours pass and night seems the same as day. I get the feeling that I might never be free again and instead of scaring me it makes me feel peaceful. Ty says I’ll have to go upstate and I think that sucks but I think also it’s right. I’ll finally be getting out of Breakwater and quitting drinking just like Maggie always said I ought to. And I am sorry now, for Mike, Maggie, for that whole family. I won’t be calling Ally to tell her I apologize; a man’s remorse should be a private thing. Instead, I pull the blanket over my head and wait for dawn.