The Nicotine Chronicles Read online

  The dining-room side is outfitted with leatherette booths and plush burgundy carpet, but I prefer the other end, under the three-letter neon sign, where it’s cracked Naugahyde stools and linoleum tiles that still smell like the tar pits they pulled mastodon bones out of when the workers laid the foundation back in ’46. I pull open the heavy wooden door and step inside. “Hullo, Robby.” Bear tosses a coaster on the bar top to help me decide on a spot. “Here for dinner?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  He shakes my usual and strains it into a lowball glass: Wild Turkey, straight up. The first sip is heaven to my lips; the second, a long draw, splits the fog in my head like a cold steel pick. It’s still early and there’s only one other customer in the corner, bent over his video poker machine under the red fingers-crossed sign. A television above the barback is muted on a B-list golf tournament. They say when it’s real, real quiet beneath the bones of this old building, you can still hear the hum of the hot spring coursing underneath. After a big rain, Bear has to bail water that comes up through the subfloor six inches deep.

  “What’s goin’ down, Robby?”

  “Deer hit my beater Buick.”

  “Doe or buck?”

  “Buck, a twelve-pointer.”

  “Out here we say six.”

  “Right.”

  “Did you at least get the venison?”

  “He ran off into the trees.”

  “Next time, track him to the creek. A deer in danger will always go to water. If you hit ’em, you got to kill ’em.”

  “Like I said, he hit me.”

  “They all say that.” Chided by Bear, I let that sink in.

  I tell Bear about catching Dorris from forensics using me for target practice at work. Manny Dorris, old-growth cop, always at the station holding a cup of coffee but I’ve never seen him pick up a report, flashing the gleaming ivories like we’ve been pals since kindergarten. Morning, Sergeant Relleno. Is it? Not so sure myself. Sure! Isn’t every morning great to be sergeant? He brushed past me and I kept my eyes locked on the double-plated glass of the dispatch window at the end of the hall. There in the reflection I saw Dorris stop, pivot, unholster his service weapon, and draw a bead on my shoulders, his expression one of undiluted hate. It made my spine freeze, but I kept on walking. Bear’s only comment on my story is: “You ever need protection, Robby, just come to Omar’s.”

  The front door swings open and silhouetted there against a blown-out column of Siskiyou sun stands a knockout figure in an evening gown. The way she sways inside reminds me of when my dad used to take me for rides on Sundays in his Oldsmobile, and I flash on a private nickname: Eighty-Eight. She sits two barstools from mine and Bear throws a coaster down to cement the spot. “The usual, Bear.”

  He starts fixing her drink and I do that thing guys at bars do like I’m just loosening up my shoulders, then look sideways nice and easy. Beautiful? You bet, but even more than her face it’s that hair done up in great, piled-on tresses like peaks on Grandma’s meringue pie. Bear puts the drink in front of her, something sparkly with a twist. I forgot to watch him mix it or to see whether he even went for the liquor. Could be a skinny bitch, or might just be club soda and lime. Eighty-Eight looks up at the pro golfer on TV silently hacking his way to the bottom of a sand trap. “Sure is hot,” she says.

  I oblige with a “Tomorrow’s going to be hotter.”

  She slides down off her barstool to walk over to the jukebox, and she doesn’t have to pull out any change to punch out familiar numbers with her pretty, painted fingernails. Over the opening riff to “Smoke on the Water,” Video Poker calls out blandly like a guy who finally just won some money for a change: “Better call the fire department. This machine’s on fire.”

  I swig the rest of my dinner and decide to hit the head. The men’s room at Omar’s is a tiny one-at-a-timer: six-by-six with a pedestal sink, porcelain throne, the cascading wall, and a latch on the door I don’t bother to throw when the bar is this empty. Rumors of midnight trysts on these beehive tiles fly around the city like trash on I-5. The piney kiss of antiseptic is overpowering.

  I am catching up on the fights in the Trib when I hear hinges squeak. Between door and jamb slips a delicate, feminine hand, pretty fingernails curling sinuously over the chipped paint. I’d hate to hurt whoever owns those digits—thousand-to-one odds it’s Eighty-Eight—so instead of slamming shut I resist with my right hand, breathlessly chirping, “Wait! Wait!” but the pressure does not let up. It’s a standoff until I can manage to arrange myself and zip.

  She slips inside and throws the latch. “Man up, officer, we’re both grown-ups.”

  “What makes you say ‘officer’?”

  “Everyone around here knows you’re a cop. Bear buys you drinks because you’re a cop.”

  “That’s not exactly true.”

  “And because that lowlife car-stereo thief playing video poker out there is flapping his mouth about how you’re a crooked cop, one that skims off the top.”

  I’ve heard enough. I reach past her and pull the latch.

  The jukebox is turned up loud. In the corner where Video Poker sat there are two crumpled bills beside a sweat-beaded glass, but no lowlife, and a quick look out back shows the smokers porch is empty. I turn around and start to ask, “So where is this mystery . . .” but Eighty-Eight is already at the front of the bar, where the heavy wooden door swings open just for her. She turns and stands in the doorway a second and I can’t be sure over Motörhead, but before she disappears her mouth seems to form the words, It’s coming.

  The void she leaves behind is filled by my old friends the farm boys, entering in a line: Sam holds the door, Jordy bellows something about breakfast, and John comes around from behind to throw an arm around my shoulder. “Robby Quizzical! We want to get drunk with you!” When I finally make it past them, Eighty-Eight is nowhere to be seen in either direction on 99.

  Back in the men’s room, the questions swell around my ears like a sink full of soap bubbles. Who was Eighty-Eight? Where did Video Poker go? What, if anything, is coming? I finish washing my hands and go back to the smokers porch to puzzle it over a cigarette.

  A crooked cop, skims off the top. I suppose that rumor is my reward for the promotion I requested when they put me in charge of the contact station. Community Policing, we call it, with public outreaches and open houses and drop-ins during regular business hours. I spend the required hours at the firing range and keep up my gun license, but most days I don’t even carry a service weapon. Worst of all, Community Policing is a success. The city council likes it and the retirees love it. I even have my own petty cash box so the contact station remains flush with donuts and coffee, and these are just a few reasons the old-growths on the force hate me. The tallest tree catches the most wind.

  At the bar I ask Bear, “Who was the lady with the hands?”

  “You mean gin fizz?” So that’s what she was drinking. “No idea.”

  “But you knew her usual.”

  “I know everybody’s usual.”

  “Seemed like she knew you.”

  “Everyone knows me.”

  “How about that guy playing video poker?”

  “Left without cashing his winnings, if he even won.”

  “Did you get his name?”

  “This is Omar’s, Robby. Some people come in here, they don’t even have names.”

  * * *

  A miracle I make it to bed some nights. Wake up and can’t remember how I got home. Shift to the edge of the bed, try to stand up. I don’t have to hurl, not yet, but I postpone verticality until I can make it to the bathroom, get a grip up on the towel rack, let the window tell me the time. I lie there on the tiles smoking a cigarette, and gradually Grizzly Peak lurches back into the picture, enormous shoulders of a giant returned from wandering in the underworld.

  I think about those two words, crooked cop. A phrase on the tongue. Repeat it often enough and it takes root in the ear, starts getting repeated i
nside people’s heads. Pretty soon they start digging in the muck. Makes me wonder: what would that turn up? Go ahead, let them rake. Rafferty keeps the ledger itemized to the penny, right down to the petty cash—my community chest, or so goes the old-growth joke, to plunder.

  Along with the contact station comes an assistant, another thing to piss off the other cops. Not commissioned, not even patrol, but quasi–law enforcement: Carl Rafferty, my right hand, with a full-time desk job, which is what lets me stay in plainclothes. The day the council is set to budget the new senior center, Rafferty reminds me, “City manager wants you to be there, Sarge.”

  “Right. What time do they vote?”

  “Who knows. Public comments could go on forever, even though it’s a nonissue—everybody agrees it’s got to pass.”

  I check out his latest dashboard report and start to get dizzy. “I better head to city hall.”

  “Sign one thing for me first?”

  I receive mountains of mail and public notices, but it’s Rafferty who opens and actually reads each one. He prepares stacks of paperwork every week for me to autograph, little colored scraps of tape that read sign here: invoices for operating costs of the contact station; surveys the councilors want filled out; annual questionnaires from county, state, and federal agencies; and reams of responses to complaints and concerns sent in by community members, mostly retired. Carl always has the perfect touch in our replies: never ingratiating, but neither too condescending. Grateful I don’t have to be buried in this crap, or how would I ever do my job? So many community touch points, so many so-called stakeholders, so much public entitlement! Feels like I’m always running late to another meeting.

  At city hall I find Lehrers posted outside council chambers. Ed Lehrers: Dorris’s partner, another old-growth but still just a corporal. Always wears his badge, even when off-duty.

  “Nice of you to show, Sergeant Relleno.”

  “Afternoon, Lehrers. Here on duty?”

  “Yep, in case the fogies get rowdy again, but so far it’s endless testimony about paying taxes all those years and now they demand their damn senior center.”

  They were victims in the perfect crime, and the perp was never punished, even though everybody knows who it was: the US banking system. They didn’t just rob a house, they robbed a hundred million houses of half or more their value, and the biggest loser was that citizen fifty-or-better, approaching retirement, who assumed their nest egg would be ostrich or at least goose, but after it got whittled down to hummingbird size, is looking ahead to living out their last decades in a drafty RV at a geriatric trailer park—excuse me: Fifty-Five-and-Over Mobile Home Community. I can’t argue the seniors’ point, but it’s a shame they don’t just get to the vote.

  “If that’s the case,” I tell Lehrers, “I think I’ll grab a quick cigarette.”

  “Remember to keep ten feet from the exits.”

  That funding is coming or trust me, heads will roll. Meanwhile, the public comments drag on; the retirees will be heard. Slipping back in to council chambers after my smoke break, I hear my name mispronounced on the PA followed by “. . . is that okay?” A hundred silvery heads spin my direction, and although I am not sure quite what the city manager is asking of me, it’s clear from her enunciation that she desperately wants me to agree, and I can feel the room trembling with anticipation that an affirmative reply might finally bring the interminable meeting to a close, so I say, “Sure, okay with me.” A motion, a second, a vote, all in favor, opposed, abstaining . . . it’s unanimous: funds for construction of the new senior center shall be administered by Community Policing. The meeting is adjourned. “Wait a second . . .” I say to Lehrers, “wasn’t this supposed to be Parks’ job?”

  “Was. But since the commissioner got shit-canned, Parks & Rec lost fiduciary authority, so the retirees requested that Community Policing act as interim treasurer.” It’s a long contract, with sizable payments every month, and a really big one at the end. Crap. Wait until Carl Rafferty hears about this.

  When I get back to the contact station, it’s the end of the day and Rafferty has already gone home. I am almost out of cigarettes, but Geppetto’s up the road has one of the last great vending machines in the free world, or at least Ashland. Since I don’t have any money on me, I borrow five bucks from the petty cash box, scribble an IOU with the date at the top, and leave it in place of the bill: $5 plundered from community chest—RR. That should be good for a laugh from Rafferty. He might even forgive me for getting us thrown under the senior-center bus.

  I am on the smokers porch at Omar’s when Bear comes out back to hose off the patio. On the horizon, past the freeway and Emigrant Lake, dark clouds are gathering over Grizzly Peak. Not the good kind: huge thunderheads, full of lightning but no water. The problem is when you get an afternoon of quick, violent cloudbursts and six or seven hundred strikes. All it takes is one of them moving fast in those dry forests. The city might get spared a scorching, but for thousands of square miles in every direction we’re surrounded by fuel, and when it burns up there, there’s one thing we can’t escape down in the valley. I want the air to be filled with anything but the sizzle of city water on hot asphalt and the silence between Bear and me, so I say it: “It’s coming.”

  Bear does not look up. This place was supposedly named for the tree, or maybe after someplace back east by an early pioneer, but anyone who spends more than one summer here will tell you it’s really because of the smoke. The fire and soot and smoke: that’s why it’s called Ashland.

  “Nothing anyone can do about it, Robby.” He knows it’s going to be miserable, but what’s the use in whining? If it’s coming, it’s coming. You don’t talk about it or weep. You keep doing what you do. Even if it feels pointless, you do it.

  * * *

  Over the next couple of days, the valley fills up with smoke. The deejay with the sexy voice on JPR starts saying, “Smoky air. Periods of smoke. Regions of smoke.” Fires get their own family names: Illinois Valley Blaze, Wind River Inferno, Wagner Butte Complex. Your eyes burn all the time, and you always feel like you’ve been crying, because you have.

  One morning I decide to take my hangover to the firing range. I’m cleaning my service weapon when Lehrers leans over and says, “You ever fire that thing in the field?”

  “If you’re asking have I ever had to shoot while on duty, then yeah.”

  “Nah, a warning shot don’t count. You ever let the gun do its job and really shot someone?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Let me give you an example. A lot of people ask me why haven’t I made sergeant yet. I tell them it’s because I haven’t gone up. Why not? Because there’s something on the force called the clock. You get here as a corporal and your clock starts ticking. Don’t try to speed up the clock. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a small adjustment, but you don’t just go to the chief and give yourself three years. That’s bad for your brothers. A guy should wait his turn, especially a new guy.”

  New guy. I’ve been here almost five years, including four smoke-choked summers, and I’m still the new guy. The lead dog always gets his ass bitten. “What does this have to do with discharging a firearm?”

  “If his buddies haven’t gone up yet, a cop shouldn’t try to speed up the clock. When I get a raise, it’s got to come from somewhere. Some cop down the line, maybe my partner, gets shafted. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you, Sergeant Relleno? You don’t have a partner.”

  “I have Rafferty.”

  “Don’t count. Not a cop. Have you thought of how that looks to the average guy on the force? Now maybe that stuff flies in Portland, but down here in this valley, with the gangbangers and the meth heads, you got a problem if you haven’t got a partner.” His words wash over me like verses of a prayer, one of those rambling catechisms that don’t go anywhere. A long, sonorous incantation, a simple refrain: Wait your turn. When Lehrers is finished, he empties his clip in a scattershot pattern across the big paper outli
ne of the perp.

  * * *

  Days on end, every forecast says smoke six or eight times. Smoke in the morning. Sunny with smoke. Rain and smoke. Tonight more smoke. Ash over everything: valley, mountains, and all the trees. Ash on the sidewalks, the shopping carts, the hood of the car. People start acting crazy. They want to be someplace they can see, they can breathe, but they can’t, because there is no place like that, not for a thousand miles, and odds are it’ll stay this way weeks upon weeks more. August, September, October: months of fire, days of smoke.

  The Department of Environmental Quality’s got a map full of gumballs. Some days the valley gets an orange; most days it’s a red. Today cool air gives us an hour or two of yellow, but by midday the hot air will press down the ash and soot and the afternoon will be purple, like breathing hot tar through a wool blanket. The suffocating heat is squeezing sap from the roadside pines, ruining the finish on my beater Buick. Kids collect gobs of the stuff and make obscene designs I can’t scrape off the windshield.

  It’s deserted on 99 and I’m driving past Omar’s when all of a sudden there she is taking a Trib out of the newspaper machine, although I didn’t see her put any coins in. I pull over right there. No way am I going to let her get away this time.

  “Morning, officer.”

  Eighty-Eight is examining the top story when I say, “Who are you, anyway? What’s with the prom dress?”

  “The queen, and it’s midnight. Seen the headline?”

  “Never changes: all smoke, all the time.”

  “Except for when you make news.”

  “Oh yeah? Why?”

  The possibilities flash through my mind. Maybe a mention at the end of an article about the senior center, how Community Policing got suckered into being lead contractor. If I’m naive enough to hope she’s just teasing me, it all ends the moment she says, “The community chest.”