“Transfer. To where?”
“Back to Halifax.” It was almost a whisper.
I love you so much, he thought. But he could only sit there and listen to the dial tone.
Dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut.
Seven
Constable Ed Nolan is back at work three days after being released from the hospital in Timmins. He has suffered a concussion — or MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury), as his file states — and his lacerated scalp is closed with eighteen staple stitches. He lies when the doctor asks if he feels dizzy upon standing, if he experiences double vision, a general feeling of being “out of it.” Of course his head spins when he stands — he was hit with a shovel, for God’s sake — but he holds his ground. He remembers those days he stood for early morning parade back when he was a soldier in basic training. Out all night with the boys in the platoon, having literally crawled back to barracks as the sun was rising, it was a monumental achievement to stand at attention and try not to breathe as the platoon sergeant screamed into your face.
Nolan wears his toque all day now, even as he sits at his desk in the station, because it hides the bandages wrapped about his skull like a mummy. The Chief has ordered him to a week of administrative duty, which means he can’t attend calls. Administrative duty on a force this small, with so few calls and reports, may as well mean a week of staring at the coffee pot. He tries to read the various magazines to which he subscribes in his attempt to remain connected to the greater world — The Economist, Newsweek, Maclean’s, Atlantic Monthly — but the lines jump and his head begins to pound from behind his eyes.
His first concern upon his return to the station is obtaining a status update on Travis Lacey. He pulls the report and scans it, squinting, taking long breaks to close his eyes in a vain attempt to clear his vision. The report, filed by both the Chief and Pete Younger, pieces together the moments which are lost to Ed Nolan’s memory.
At 9:48 a.m. dispatch received a call from Bob Lacey reporting Officer Nolan had been assaulted by Travis Lacey. Constable Younger is dispatched. An ambulance is also dispatched from the small medical clinic in town — there is one ambulance which runs between Saint B and Big Water First Nation. At 10:06, Constable Younger arrives at the scene and reports “Officer Down” to dispatch. The report lays out the facts: “Constable Nolan is lying sideways on the snow, unresponsive but with vital signs, blood pooling at his head.” Younger asks the Laceys to gather blankets to keep Nolan warm until the ambulance arrives. The scene secured, Constable Younger’s attention immediately turns to the search for Travis Lacey.
Younger does not need to look far. Younger reports that as he makes his way down the laneway, Travis appears “around the right side of the garage, holding a snow shovel in a threatening manner.” Constable Younger pulls his weapon. Here Nolan stops, conjuring the image in his mind’s eye, knowing it is the first time the young cop has removed his weapon from its holster — not insignificant in a policing career. But the chaotic arrival into the scene of the boy’s mother, her shouts and pleas, must reach through the trance. Travis Lacey sets the shovel aside and starts to laugh as though it all must be some sort of joke.
Nolan scans through the report, his headache pulsating with each heartbeat. Travis was arrested at the scene, booked into the single Saint B holding cell. The Chief was called down to the station and it was decided to lay a charge of attempted murder. The boy was transferred to Monteith Correctional Centre outside Timmins to await a first appearance on the serious charge.
“Jesus,” Nolan says as he sits there in the quiet of the station. He tries to imagine how terrified Travis Lacey must be right now, sitting on a jail range with a bunch of reprobates and hardened cons. Or the worry his mother must be experiencing. He needs to help here, to do what he can. Whatever has been started here, this youthful experimentation with drugs, must be made right again.
He sets the folder of paperwork aside. He sits there for a long time, trying to form clear thoughts against the white noise of his headache. He picks up the phone and calls the Chief, who works from home for the most part these days, at least when he’s not out informally campaigning for mayor.
“Gallagher.”
“It’s me, Chief.”
“Nolan, how’s the noggin’?”
“Not too bad,” he says, eyes clenched. “Listen, I was just catching up on the report on Travis Lacey. I’m trying to get my head wrapped around an attempt murder charge for this kid. Maybe we should suggest a downgrade to assault. He obviously needs help.”
“I hear you, Eddie, I do. But listen, we can’t have people swinging shovels at our heads without any consequences. You see what I mean? He hit you in the goddamned head with a shovel, Ed. Could’ve killed you sure as shit. You’re lucky he didn’t. I was scared to hell when I got the call about you. We work up here in the north all alone, takes the OPP an hour to make it up here. If we don’t set an example, the drunks and moonshiners will have their way with us. Anyway, I already talked to the new circuit Assistant Crown, Amanda Jason. She’s a real tough cookie.”
Nolan eases forward, rests an elbow on the desk and his head on his free hand. He says, “This tough on crime line doesn’t have anything to do with running for mayor, does it?”
Chief Gallagher laughs. It’s a laugh Ed Nolan has come to interpret as Gallagher offering a polite applause or perhaps an easy way out of a bad joke, the politician in him.
“Eddie, you need to get some rest. Go lay down, will you? Let Younger hold the fort. You don’t owe this Lacey kid anything. The courts can get him set up with counselling once he’s in the system.”
They hang up. Nolan sits back in the chair and looks around the small office. Three desks, a coffee pot, a cork board with notices for a potluck at the church and a charity car wash for the high-school hockey team, a few old posters about drunk driving and seatbelt laws. More than big city cops, he and Younger and the Chief are in a position to truly serve and protect this small community. They know the people, they are of the people. He can’t shake the image of Travis Lacey out of his mind, the teen’s eyes wild and zoned, his hands around his mother’s neck. He wishes someone had spent a little more time with him when he himself was a teen, that corrosive adolescent poison coursing through the veins of his brain. He learned a lot of things, or perhaps most things, the hard way.
Constable Ed Nolan stands and steadies himself. The floor pitches a little as though he is on the deck of a boat. He grabs his jacket from the back of the chair, zips up, and takes the keys to the second cruiser from the lockbox on the wall. He scrawls a note on the chalkboard by the door, a board which they use without any regularity to track their ins and outs.
Gone to Monteith — Ed, he writes.
Dear Journal,
Fuck you.
Cold, tired, sore. Almost out of pills.
Back home. Strange days. Strange feelings.
Did I really come from here?
Where have I been … where am I going?
Love, Charlie
Eight
Peggy has begun to put more effort than usual into her appearance. The fact is not lost on McKelvey, who stops by each morning at the same time for a coffee. He makes sure to comment on her hair. She brings a hand to her head and touches the new curls. She smiles. The smile is small but genuine, and McKelvey gets the sense it is a gesture this woman does not offer every customer.
“Usual?” she asks, already pouring coffee into a take-away cup.
“I’ll take one of those cherry sticks I’ve heard so much about.”
“It’s all hype,” she says as she puts one of