The cat laid on my keyboard…

I haven’t seen the body yet. Just the sirens and the flashing lights of the police cars. Blue, red, blue red, blue red. It always reminds me of the club on 3rd and Main where the women come out draped over strange men’s arms. Stan is probably still in the cruiser on the radio. Time, location, conditions, that sort of thing relayed back to the precinct.

I’ve had a lot of partners throughout the years but Stan, he stuck. I’d say he’s my only friend on the force. He was hired three weeks earlier than me, and that bonds people. Being new. Eventually we became partners which was a relief. He’s a follower. Someone I can trust. One of the only people I’m comfortable around. Maybe it’s because Stan doesn’t expect much from me. If only he was a woman. I’d have my perfect match.

He must be somewhere. Probably scoping out the scene. He likes the busy work, getting down the facts. My job is the coordination, talking to the witnesses, and the other cops. It’s a division of tasks that works well, but I should find him. Get the lay of the land.

This place just keeps shifting, though… blue, red, blue, red. “Can someone turn off those god damn lights?” I holler

“Hello, sir, my name is Officer Milner. Can you tell me your name?”

The kid looking at me barely fills out his uniform.

“Detective Ernest Silver. 4th precinct. What do we have here?”

“Mister Silver, Do you know where you live?”

“I said, Detective Silver, officer. And what kind of question is that?”

This guy must be fresh out of training. “Officer, we have a body here that needs my attention, and I’m a bit turned around so could you point me to where it’s at?” I say trying to get the kid back on track.

“Detective Silver, why don’t you come sit in my car while we get everything figured out.”

I shrug off the hand he sets on my arm, and let him lead me to the road. By now the backup will have arrived and maybe even the forensics unit. Someone who knows what they are doing. I vow to be nice to the kid but we aren’t going to be friends or anything. He’s obstructing the case.

I sit in the back of his car. A moan slips out of my lips. I am too old for this.

“Yeah, we found him.” I hear the kid say into the radio. “Okay, okay, yeah. Got it.” It seems they’ve caught the perpetrator already.

“Alright, Mister, umm… I mean Detective Silver. I’m going to take you home now.”

“You mean to the precinct.” This kid just can’t keep it together. “No need. Stan’s the only guy I trust behind the wheel.”

“Umm…” The kid has got to stop the umm’s. It’s just so unprofessional. “I think Stan has left already. I’ll get you there Mister Silver, don’t worry.”

“So Stan found the pervert already huh? He’s one hell of a cop? I’m kind of proud of that guy. Now this is how real police work should be done. You should be taking notes kid.”

“Yes Mister Silver.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me anymore? This was mighty fast.”

“Yep, I’m sure,” the kid says, “We’ve got things taken care of. So what was your address again Mr. Silver?” he asks.

The numbers are there. Somewhere in the back of my brain. I can almost remember them.

“1723 Walnut St.,” the kid says, trying to help out.

“Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

The city flows by. A blur of lights through neighborhoods that stretch on and on, until the car slows.

“Here we are Mr. Silver.”

A woman stands at the end of the sidewalk to a huge house. A long black coat wrapped around her.

The kid opens the back door. It is suddenly cold. My spine rattles with a shiver. The woman’s face twists into tears.

“Oh Dad!” she says running toward me. “Where have you been? I was so worried about you!” The woman squeezes me into a hug. “You must be so cold.” She wraps the belt of my bathrobe around me and ties it in front as though I’m a child.

“I don’t know,” I say, “I don’t know.”

A flash of the key card and they are in. Marv first then her. Maggie had always wanted to stay at a luxury hotel but she’d never have predicted it happening this way. Her dream had included a handsome man with a wallet full of bills. The silky dress she wore, a silver lake on the floor. High heeled shoes and a fake fur lying next to it.

The metal case Marv throws on the nightstand reminds her there is no silver dress or fake fur in this particular scene on this particular night. The black ensemble Maggie found in the “so you’re going to rob a bank” section of the local Goodwill is all there is. She removes her gloves and the black hat that covers her bright blond hair, while Marv puts their stash in the hotel safe.

He reasoned the authorities would never look for bank robbers at a swanky hotel, and she agrees. Maggie back flops onto the mattress next to him. Why would anyone needing money blow it on a bed this size? Marv won’t even notice she’s there in this massive thing. She can have her night with her dream lover and not even shake the bed. Not even a little.

Maggie is going to make some crude comment about Marv staying on his side or risk losing something important, but it’s too late. He’s already asleep. She doesn’t know how he does it. The last few times, she kept one eye open for flashing cop lights and the other on Google for breaking news.

Maggie yawns until her jaw is about to crack. This new, quote, job of hers is getting tiring. It’s easy enough but the guilt sits heavy in her stomach. She can ignore it most of the time but right before she falls asleep, when her breathing slows and her brain has settled down, the guilt stretches into her chest and disturbs the steady rhythm of her heart. Bump, bump, bump, bang, bang, bang. She coughs hoping it rights itself like it did last time. Bump, bump, bump, bang, bang, bang. She should probably see someone, just to make sure it’s nothing serious. Bump, bump, bump, bump. Her eyes fall closed.

Marv is on two feet, the pistol transferred from his belt to his hand before she hears it. “Bang, bang, bang. Open up!” Maggie’s heart almost flies out of her chest. She rolls to the floor to get out of the way.

“Bang, bang, bang.”

“Marv, I think it’s time to give up,” Maggie says, trying to steady her voice. “It’s over.”

“It’s never over!” Marv shouts as the door cracks into the room. Hinges clatter to the ground. The gunshot throws Marv against the wall before Maggie can close her eyes. The scene will play itself over and over in her mind the next few weeks. Was there something she could have done?

“Ms. Lanners, here let me help you up.”

The hand offered is welcomed. “You didn’t tell me it was tonight.” Maggie says to the officer, brushing herself off.

“No, we didn’t want your actions to tip him off.”

“Makes sense,” she agrees.

“I had an interesting dream last night, Ward. Come sit, let me tell you about it.”

The days had been tough, the fight hard, and the man before Ward looked thinner, more distraught than he had even the night before.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I was wandering the White House, these very rooms we’ve wandered through every day for four years now, Ward, and with God’s blessing the American people have honored me with four more. The war is over. Now we will finally have the chance to move into the prosperity of peace, I can feel it. It is so close now. We will heal the wounds inflicted brother upon brother. Isn’t it a shame, just a damn shame what war will do.”

The weight of every death creased President Lincoln’s face. He pulled his gaze from the dreary window.

“But the dream, let me get back to the dream. There was a dreadful cry that led me forward Ward, forward to the very door of the East Room. I reluctantly entered, fear rising up within, and rightly. Before me lay a corpse wrapped in the vestments of the dead.

“‘Who is this that lies in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers on guard.

“‘The President,” he answered. ‘He’s been assassinated.’”

With this Lincoln slumped back into his chair, unable to speak, his heart pounding to be heard. He sighed.

“You have been more than just a bodyguard to me, Ward. You have been my dear friend. Please tell me what you think.”

“I’m sure it is nothing, Mr. President,” said Ward. “The workings of a tired mind, Mr. President.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” Lincoln replied, forcing life back into himself. “And as dreams go, I knew the man on the catafalque was not me. Some other unlucky fellow.

“You go now, Ward. Prepare for your trip to Richmond. I will be perfectly fine here without you. It will be a short time, and Mr. Crook is capable of taking proper care of me.”

After days of gloom the morning rose with sunshine. The heaviness in Lincoln’s chest had lifted with the night.

“In the dream I was on a vessel moving with great rapidity toward an undefinable shore,” he explained to his wife Mary over breakfast; his voice rising to shrill excitement. “It is an omen! I know it is! This exact dream has predicted almost all of our great victories in the War! Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg…”

“Yes, yes, my dear,” interrupted Mary. “I remember.”

“This is good! Oh, so very good!”

“Yes dear. It is.” Mary placed her hand on her husband’s rough fingers. “And you deserve the goodness, my dear. You really do.” 

Relief released the tightness that held Mary’s body hostage. The light had returned to her husband’s eyes, again. His melancholy would no longer permeate the house, at least for the time being. Though it always seemed to find him again. She pushed the thoughts from her mind.

“And by the way, did you hear that the Grant’s have declined our invitation to the theater tonight?” she said. “I am not disappointed. That Julia is so hard to tolerate. Loud and obnoxious as she is.”

“Invite someone else,” said Lincoln. “We can not skip this engagement. The papers have made it known that I will attend. We do not want to disappoint anyone, especially not now. The country has followed me through these terrible times. We should be seen getting back to our lives, so they too can regain some sense of normalcy.

“It is an illusion, I know. How can anyone feel their life is normal after so much death and destruction, but we must try. We must try.”

President Lincoln was hunched over his desk singularly engrossed in the preliminary plans to rebuild the country’s railroads. The lines in the south had taken extensive damage.

The maid was forced to clear her throat to get the man’s attention.

“It is time to get dressed, Mr. President. Your carriage to Ford Theater will be ready in less than an hour. And I’m sorry to say that Mrs. Lincoln is considering staying at the White House tonight. Her headache has gotten much worse.”

“Oh, she will go,” he said, distractedly. “Tell her I am no man without her on my arm.”

“Yes sir, Mr. President.”

“I will be there in just a minute.”

“Yes, sir.” The woman curtseyed as she was taught and left knowing she would most likely need to return to fetch him again.

“You are late,” Mary said, as her husband came down the stairs.

“Yes, yes, I am, but there is so much to do and so little time to do it in.”

“If I know you, you will do great things with every minute you have.”

Lincoln smiled at his wife’s kind words, helped her into the carriage, and fell quietly into thought.

Was Mary right? Could he do great things? It had been five days since General Lee signed the treaty officially ending the war, but it was naive to think that conflict ended with a signature. The difference in ideas around state’s rights and the necessity of slavery did not just go away. Half the country had lost and were angry. Could the man whose election triggered the secession of the south, pull the country back together again? Was he, Abraham Lincoln, up to the task of mending the biggest divide the country has ever faced? Could he bridge the gap and make the country whole again?

He did not know.

The one thing he did know for sure was that it had to be done right. No shortcuts. No exclusions, with precision, tack, and a love for all Americans. The future depended on it.

The carriage door opened and framed the marquee of Ford Theater. 

“I hope you enjoy the show, Mr. President,” the valet said offering his hand.

“Oh, thank you,” he replied. “I’m sure I will.”

She crouched in the grass at the side of the road, around eighteen, thumb stuck out. My headlights caught the shine of her guitar case. I slowed to a stop. It was after midnight, and I hadn’t seen anyone for hundreds of miles. Her rugged smell slid in seconds after her petite frame.

“Where’re you headed?”

“North,” was all she said.

I ran through the radio stations just to cut the awkward silence, but at that time of the night there’s only the clipped twang of southern music.

“You from around here?” I asked.

She leaned back, closed her eyes. Soon static filled the car. It pulled in the darkness, I looked down to stop the suffocation.

When I looked up the buck stood broadside in my headlights. At sixty miles an hour there was no doubt in my mind there’d be a collision. I froze. My passenger’s dainty hand, rings stacked on every finger, calmly rested on the steering wheel, pulling it ninety degrees. The buck spooked into the ditch, inches from my bumper. Wheels screeched stopped. A belated terror throttled my heart.

“Thank you,” I stuttered. There was an eerie quiet. I was alone, the guitar case still shining in the back seat.

The puppies run across Ashley’s legs. There are at least ten little black and white bodies wrestling and barking and tumbling across the loose hay. Ashley plopped herself in the middle. The man whose farm they are on has built a small house out of some of the hay bales in his haybarn to keep the January chill at bay. Border Collie puppies get a good price in farm country, and he doesn’t want to risk losing any to the cold winter nights.

“Are you warm enough?” her dad asks, before getting involved in a proper conversation with the farmer.

Ashley nods. She doesn’t notice the temperature even though her toes are starting to disappear one by one. She’ll pay for it later when the warmth of inside brings on a burning, thawing pain. Puppies are her thing, and she isn’t going to rush this precious time with them just because it’s cold.

When Ashley was younger her family raised and sold puppies, two litters each year but their mother and father dogs are long dead. Mandy, their Blue Heeler, died when a cow kicked her too hard. She flew at least ten feet onto the hard dirt of the cowyard, and never got up. Charlie, their Aussie, was old and one day watched him walk into the grove of trees next to their house and not come back out. Her dad buried the body after he was done milking cows that night.

Since then they’ve had a few more dogs on the farm but none have stuck around very long. When her mom had questioned this trip to see these Border Collie pups, her dad reasoned that “these would be good working dogs, not like the others,” and he is probably right.

The mutt that first showed up on their doorstep after Mandy and Charlie died, they named Penny and was good at devouring the food in her dish, but shied away from the cows. Her dad figured if he got another dog that knew what to do, she would learn something, but he didn’t get around to it before Penny decided to take off one night and not come back.

Ashley jumps when one of the puppies bites down hard on her mitten and accidently punctures her finger with its sharp little teeth. It pulls and growls and swings its head side to side trying to free the fluffy foe from her hand. She pries its mouth open and relocates it as far away from her as she can. It is not the one she has her eye on. She likes the shy one in the corner. The one that keeps its eye on her, not quite sure what this new person’s intentions are.

Its stare reminds her of the first days with Lady, a Collie her dad showed up with one day. At the beginning they chained her to the dog house so she’d get used to them before she had the run of the whole 425 acres of the farm.

“Don’t get too close,” her mom warned. “Lady doesn’t know who we are.”

So Ashley set up a lawn chair just out of reach of the chain and told the dog everything she knew about their family. How her dad had grown up on this farm and took it over from her grandpa and grandma when he got out of the Army, then married her mom. How her oldest brother Teddy was in college and never came home, and the twins Jeff and Steve thought she was a little kid and wouldn’t play with her. And how she liked to play piano but not practice it.  When there was nothing left to tell, she read out loud from Little House on the Prairie as Lady inched closer little by little until the chain stretched to wherever Ashley was sitting. For almost a year, protecting Ashley became the dog’s full time job until the one day when it got too close to the milk truck and was hit by the wheel.

Ashley decides the perfect name for the puppy she wants is Walter. When she says it out loud, the puppy’s ears perk up; the rest pay no attention. She says it again and can tell the exact moment Walter decides she is okay. He licks his tail then bounds toward her. The puppies around him see the movement and another opportunity to play. One tackles Walter before Ashley is able to stop it. She pulls the two apart and brings Walter onto her lap. He licks toward her cheek and she lifts him up to feel the cool softness of a puppy’s tongue.

Rufus, the big red Golden Retriever her dad picked up for free from an ad in the paper, always took the opportunity to lick Ashley on the cheek. She’d sit on the front step of the house and he’d place his nose in the crevice her arm made with her torso, and pushed his head forward until he successfully draped her arm over his body. The struggles of her life would pour from her as he stared up, tongue periodically licking her cheek and hand. After all her woes had been expressed, she’d kiss him on the side of his snout and holler, “Come on boy!” and they’d run side by side to the grove of trees for a stick to play fetch with.

The one morning Ashley woke to her dad’s voice at the breakfast table. It forced its way through the walls and floor upstairs to her room. Rufus had gotten into the fence that held the chickens from wandering the yard and shook one until it was dead.

“We can’t keep a dog that kills chickens,” she heard him tell her mom.

Her mom’s response was muffled and lost.

“I don’t care who loves that damn thing. We can’t have a dog that kills chickens.”

Silence followed.

Ashley shook with the fear that an angry voice causes but knew she had to act. She dressed quickly and made her way downstairs just a touch too late.

Her mom blocked the window out to the yard with her body, “sit down for some pancakes,” she said.

Ashley tried to get past, but her mom was stronger and held her tight. Tears fell down her cheeks. “Dad can’t get rid of Rufus,” she sobbed into her mother’s apron.

“Your dad is doing the right thing, now have some pancakes.”

Ashley obeyed. She could barely eat the first one on her plate. Her mom had just placed the second on top when the gunshot rattled the window.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” her mom answered. “I think your dad said something about chasing away the sparrows roosting in the silo.

“Oh.”

Ashley forced herself to believe.

Walter has settled down and is lazily biting at Ashley’s jeans. She pets him from nose to tip of the tail. He is a good dog. She can tell.

“Well?” Ashley’s dad appears next to her. He reaches out his hand and helps her stand. “So which one do you want?” he asks.

Walter settles down next to her shoe,  oblivious to his fate.

“I don’t like any of them,” Ashley replies.

“None? Not even that little guy untying your laces? He looks like a smart one.”

Walter tips over and rubs his back against the straw. He stretches and yawns as though he hasn’t slept for days.

“Yeah, um… no,” Ashley mutters, “especially not him.”