Blowin' Smoke Read online

  Tanya slides the key into the ignition of her Jeep Wrangler and exits the parking lot. As she pulls onto Main Street, she passes Officer Jones. She assumes he is going home after his day at the precinct. He’s been riding the desk since the night after Muriel’s arrest. Tanya can’t figure out why her partner of three years is sitting behind a desk after one baby’s death. Death was part of the job and Jones knew this. He was so calm and collected in every domestic call they had been on, so it was unusual this one shook him up so badly. Yeah, Jones was hot-headed and stubborn as an ox, but what cop wouldn’t be after 4 years on the force and every day it’s the same people arrested for the same offenses and seems like everyone wants a fistfight when they see Jones’ 6’3” stature approach them. Jones wasn’t unreasonable, he just wanted things done by the book. After three weeks she thought he would be back in the squad car with her but no, they gave her the rookie, Johnson. Don’t question orders, follow them. Maybe Jones asked for the desk for a while, but as a partner, wouldn’t he have told her?

  She closed her eyes and said a short prayer to get her partner back to her as soon as possible as she exits her Jeep and walks into the precinct. Another day, another dollar. Shift work has always been the downfall of this job for her. It is never straight days or straight nights but a rotating wheel of both.

  Fax

  To:

  Chief Tandy

  From:

  Dr. Tom Jeffers, MD

  Fax:

  555-244-2888

  Pages:

  2

  Phone:

  555-244-2525

  Date

  October 12, 2019

  Re:

  Officer Tanya Bradshaw

  ☐ Urgent

  ☐ For Review

  ☐ Please Comment

  ☐ Please Reply

  ☐ Please Recycle

  Comments:

  Officer Bradshaw returned to my office upon my request with no arguments. Her continued cooperation is a wonderful sign of coping mechanisms and seeking answers to normal questions after a tragic experience. No further treatment is required and there is no reason she cannot continue to serve your police department and our community.

  Tom Jeffers, MD

  Brandon Jones

  Hawkins County Police Department

  Officer Jones heads towards the door of the doctor’s office in full police uniform minus the utility belt. No reason to wear that now, since I can’t carry a gun because they assigned me desk duty with no radio it makes little sense to put on the extra weight. “If this stupid shrink would just give Tandy the order, I need to get back on the street I wouldn’t need to be here,” he thinks.

  The overwhelming odor of cedar mixed with some sort of air freshener every time he walks in the door makes him think of being stuck in some summer camp in a mildewed cabin out by the lake. He hated summer camp, but every year his parents insisted he couldn’t sit around the house all summer and do nothing or trouble would find him as his mother would say. Trouble didn’t have to find him as a teenager he found his fair share of it. Nothing illegal just typical teen-age boy trouble, racing cars down Main, hanging out at the car wash slamming back a few beers way before he was legal drinking age, but he never got caught and certainly had never any trouble with the police. Just fun, plain teenage fun.

  “Afternoon Ma’am, here to see the Doc.” He says to the receptionist whose hair is too bright red to be natural, it almost blends in with the burnt wooden color of her desk. Brandon smiles to himself at the joke he’s made in his head about the receptionist and she returns the smile with pearly white teeth that look fluorescent next her burnt orange-red hair.

  “Officer Jones, I don’t think Dr. Jeffers was expecting you so early I believe he is in his office finishing up a few things if you want to head on back to the room, I can grab him for you.”

  Head back to the room he thinks, I’ve been here so many times they let me walk around on my own. Down these log-lined hallways to the room with the red couch. Ugh. Why won’t this shrink just sign my release and let me go back to doing my job? When Dr. Jeffers walks into the room, Brandon is just sitting down on the couch.

  “Hello, Officer Jones.” Says the doctor.

  “Just Brandon is fine. Not on police duty in here only here because I have to be.”

  “But you are always an officer even when you aren’t in the uniform.”

  “Let’s just get this over with so I can go on home, Doc.”

  “Brandon, you know as well as I do this can be over as soon as you want it to be over.”

  “Yeah well I’ve been here four times in the last month and I still haven’t gotten my release to go back to work.”

  “Brandon, I cannot release you to go back to work until we are sure you are mentally healthy and can deal with the situations your job requires you to deal with.”

  “Doc please, I’ve been through worse things than the death of a baby. My mental state is fine. I am fine. Would you please just sign the release that says I can go and do my job?”

  “Brandon, tell me how you feel about Muriel’s suicide since you say you are otherwise fine.”

  “Muriel? You mean that baby’s mama?” Brandon rolls his eyes. “One less criminal off the street. One less person I have to see cycled through our jail for a drug that’s made from urinal cakes.”

  “So, you have no empathy for the mother that lost her child?”

  “Lost?!? She didn’t lose that child, she as good as murdered that baby. So, do I feel empathy for a mother that committed suicide after she murdered her own child? No. No. I guess I don’t. Her suicide saved the state a lot of tax dollars if you ask me.”

  “Brandon, your lack of empathy is what has me concerned. How are you supposed to be able to serve the community if you can’t empathize with the community?”

  “My lack of empathy? How about their lack of respect for the law? The rules are simple, don’t be a criminal, and I don’t have to arrest you. Empathy…out there on the street…will get me killed! I love my job, sir, but I love my life more. If its empathy you are looking for, you won’t find it here. I am done here today.”

  As Brandon stands to leave, Dr. Jeffers sits shocked by his behavior. It isn’t just his lack of empathy; he is just too hot-headed to try to see the world from any other point of view. “Brandon, your hour is not over. Won’t you stay and finish at least one session without walking out?”

  Brandon closes the door behind him and exits the log cabin building. As he slides into his red Camaro, he begins to shake. “Damn it, this whole therapy thing just gets under my skin. Every time I walk into that building, I feel my blood boiling and I can’t help but scream at that man!” He slams his palm against the steering wheel knowing that any hope of today being the day he would return to patrol disappeared after walking out of that session, but for the first time, he just doesn’t care.

  Brandon drives straight to the local bar, Stevie’s. It isn’t a hopping nightclub, but they have a bar and a jukebox with some pool tables in the back. Booths line three of the four walls in the bar area with a square wooden dance for in the center. The cigarette smoke sits thick in the air and the air smells like alcohol and tobacco. Brandon walks in and Kasey Musgraves wails on the jukebox singing Blowin’ Smoke and Brandon thinks, “What a perfect song for such a perfect small-town hell-hole.” He orders a drink from the bar and takes his seat on a barstool.

  Fax

  To:

  Chief Tandy

  From:

  Dr. Tom Jeffers, MD

  Fax:

  555-244-2888

  Pages:

  2

  Phone:

  555-244-2525

  Date

  October 12, 2019

  Re:

  Officer Brandon Jones

  ☐ Urgent

  ☐ For Review

  ☐ Please Comment

  ☐ Please Reply

  ☐ Please Recycle

  Comments:

  Offi
cer Jones returned to my office for his fourth session. His failure to comply with Department Orders for therapy has me concerned about his mental health. Over the last 4 weeks, he has failed to remain for an entire session. I will schedule another session for next week but cannot sign to release him to patrol duty. He is a risk to your department and our community.

  Tom Jeffers, MD

  Anastasia Chewlewsky

  Anastasia steps out of her Nissan Titan and realizes just how horribly humid the day has become. Even in October, Texas humidity is brutal. So much for the hour spent flat ironing my hair, she thinks as she strolls up the walk to the log cabin. The psychiatrist’s office does not differ from other buildings in Wood, but it has its own aura. Set apart from the other buildings on Main Street, its log cabin architecture gives it a Northwest feeling. For two hours a week, Anastasia steps out of Northern Texas and into Idaho on a potato farm. If only it were so simple to walk into another place, another life. Well, if it was that easy, she wouldn’t be in therapy two hours a week.

  Anastasia pulls the door open and the cold ac air hits her and her skin welcomes the coolness. After just a few minutes in the blazing sun, the ac feels amazing. As Anastasia approaches the desk Claire looks up and smiles. “Oh, I absolutely love what you did with your hair, Claire. Did you do that yourself or did you have it done?”

  “Girl, you know I had to have this done, my natural hair is so dark there is no way a bottle would cover it. Gladys down at the beauty shop did it and I was there for 5 hours last week stripping and bleaching and dying this mess.”

  “Well, it looks good on you. No way could I pull off that color with my dark skin and my dark eyes, but it looks great on you. Is he in yet?”

  “Well, thank you. Yeah, he’s back there somewhere, probably in his office or in the break room grabbing a cup of coffee. Go on back and I will let him know you are here.”

  “Thanks, girl.”

  Anastasia strolls down the series of halls to the room with the red couch. The logs that make up the walls of the hallway are smooth when she runs her fingertips over them. I wonder what sort of epoxy they used to make them so smooth she thinks to herself. As she steps over to the red couch, her mind begins to wander. Does epoxy keep the wood from mildewing? Are the outside walls epoxied too? How does the water not seep in through the cracks during the rain? The log cabin fascinates her but the upkeep on such a building must be horrific with all the dust wood attracts and the polishing that would need doing to keep everything clean.

  “Hello Anastasia,” Dr. Jeffers announces as he enters the room with a clipboard in hand adjusting his round framed glasses. “How was your weekend?”

  “Great, I guess wasn’t much in the way of football doesn’t look like the Cowboys have a fighting chance this season.”

  “I’m not a big football fan myself, but it appears they may be in a season of rebuilding. Where did we leave off during your last session, let me grab my notes?” Dr. Jeffers walks around the big oak desk that sits behind his oversized beige recliner.

  “You aren’t a football fan Dr. Jeffers? You do know that you live in Texas, right?” Asks Anastasia, “You do know that in small-town Texas people here live, eat, sleep, and breathe football. What kind of chit-chat would we have if we didn’t all talk football?”

  “Well there is always the weather.” States Dr. Jeffers.

  “Yes, I suppose it only takes two seconds to say, ‘This is Texas and its hot and humid here.’” Anastasia laughs as the doctor rustles papers on the desk.

  Something about the deep colors in this room works. Beige and red were never a color scheme Anastasia would have expected to work together, but maybe it’s the log cabin and the relaxing place it takes you to that pull the whole scheme together. “Oh yes, we discussed addictive personality and the hospitalization of your brother.”

  “Yes, and I went home and reread some of my old diaries and all the signs are there even going back to when we were children. I am now beating myself up because I never saw them sooner.”

  “Anastasia this is something we talked about, your brother’s addiction, his choices, his reaction to a situation are his. They are not yours. That is where these sessions are going, you will see the only person’s actions or reactions you can control are your own. Other people and their problems cannot weigh on you unless you allow them to weigh on you.”

  “I know,” Anastasia sighs, “but that’s easier said than done.”

  “Ok. Well, why don’t we go back a little bit into that world and see what we recognize? How far back do you think you remember?”

  “All the way back to the day he was born.”

  “Let’s start there then, the day he was born.”

  “Ok. When I was eleven and in the fifth grade, my mother is rushing off to the hospital with my father because we are going to have another baby. I am the oldest of three, almost four children in our family. I have two younger sisters and there was a baby between them, but everything is so secretive I have no idea why, but the baby died. Maybe I was just too young to understand or maybe no one ever talked about it because it hurt too much. I can remember hoping this one was a boy, so we will not have any more babies any time soon. It wasn’t all bad having babies around, but babies grow up and then they are just pests that I had to share a room and toys with. I swore to never have children of my own, not ever. Not even if I marry the most handsome man on the planet, will I EVER have babies. Goes to show you how much you know when you are little. I now have 6 of my own.”

  “My parents dropped us off at my grandma’s house while they rushed to the hospital. We are only there a few hours until Dad shows up to get us and then we head to the local flower shop before returning to the hospital to see Mom and baby. Dad is so excited he just glows when he announces, ‘It’s a boy.’ If we had given my dad his way, that child’s name would have been Son. We were all so happy a new baby was here and it was a boy, so we rush in the flower shop buying blue ribbons and blue flowers and blue bubble gum cigars and everything we can find that is that pale blue color that welcomes a baby boy into the world.”

  “The next year is a blur, there are diapers and milk and food and toys; all for boys, more cars and trucks than I have ever seen fill up our living room floor. My baby brother is only bottle-fed when Mom isn’t home, which is rare because she is a stay at home mom. Having a boy around is different from when my sisters came home from the hospital, maybe because I am older but I can easily pick him up and carry him around or move him when I need to get by, he isn’t in my way often because he sleeps in the room with my parents so it is no inconvenience for me to have a new baby around, I was at school most of the day, anyway. Summer comes and it is your typical country summer, playing in plastic swimming pools, running through miles and miles of grass in our very own front yard and don’t forget the dewberry picking that my sisters and I do filling basket after basket of juicy red and black berries so Mom will make us cobbler.”

  “When school begins again, I am a sixth-grader, biggest kid at my house, smallest kid at school, not that it matters hardly noticeable is great, I had no desire to tell everyone our house is so full it is busting at the seams. Our three-bedroom trailer is so full of noise and life it’s unreal. School is a break from the chaos. My little sister is in first grade now and she comes home with the chickenpox, of course, we all then get the chickenpox. My chickenpox breakout keeps me home from school all day with my siblings for five days straight it was summer break without outside playtime. Day after day of miserable itching and listening to the babies cry because they wanted to scratch so bad but my mom kept their tiny hands in mittens so they couldn’t scratch themselves raw. After chickenpox is over, I went back to school like any other child. Funny how parents used to think the earlier we got chickenpox the sooner we would be over it. Not like today when there is a vaccination given before you even go to school to prevent you from getting them.”

  “A couple of months after our chickenpox break out, I clim
bed off the school bus one day and our sometimes babysitter Angela met me at the bus doors with my littlest sister in tow. In my almost teenage mind, all I could do was wonder where my mother was and what would keep her from not being home when my sister and I got off the bus. “Hey Angela, where’s Mom?”

  “Oh, well, she had to take your brother to the hospital, he fell in the pool today.”

  “Pool is an understatement, it is a round plastic pool that you buy at any local dollar store, you know the kind that is approximately 8 inches deep and has turtles, fish, and sharks on the bottom? Yes, that was our pool and apparently my just turned one brother had fallen out of it. How does this even happen? To this day I still wonder how something like this happens. Never have I ever seen it happen to another child why it happened to this one never made sense in my twelve-year-old mind.”

  “So later that evening, my mother and my father show up with my baby brother in tow. He is now in a cast that runs from his chest all the way down his right leg and halfway down his left leg with a hole in the middle for his diaper. My mind reeled. Will he ever walk again? We just taught him to walk. How will he learn it all over again? My parents assured me he would walk again, but still no explanation as to how a child falls 8 inches and breaks a femur other than he slipped and fell. My childish mind only thinks, “I am so glad I wasn’t home when he fell, or Mom would have been so mad I wasn’t watching him closely.”