A Knock At The Door

A pair of headlights swept across the front of the two-story red-brick house, followed by the rev of an engine, all eight cylinders working in unison toward a singular goal: Arrival. Four direct lines of bright light focused on the closed and locked front door. The car door slammed. No hesitation, no look around to see if there was a dog waiting to attack. Then, a knock at the door so loud it would wake a passed-out drunk from a three-hour sleep. No sudden eruption of light. No panic. Marcy Findley was already at the door with her hand on the knob.

There was no mistaking the policeman, tall, thin, county, not state, dark brown uniform, pistol anchored on his hip like John Wayne, a Smokey the Bear hat atop his head. “Ma’am,” he said. He looked like the kind of man who had knocked on plenty of doors in the middle of the night to deliver bad news.

“Yes?” Marcy was less confident, girding herself by holding onto the inside doorframe with her fingers; no polish on her nails, cuticles torn by the daily work on the twice-mortgaged land. “Is there a problem, officer?”

She knew there was a problem. It had been years in the making. She’d always made bad choices when it came to the men she picked or the men who picked her, always trying to get attention from her busy, distant parents. Bad boys made them crazy.

The policeman didn’t nod, stood statue-like. “I’m afraid there is.”

Marcy didn’t flinch or offer to let him inside. She wore clothes from earlier in the day: work pants worn at the knee, a sensible blouse for this time of year, shoes with a layer of barn dust building on the toes. She smelled of Dove soap, all the blood and sin washed down the drain.

“Is your husband Raymond Findley?”

“Yes, of course. I’m his wife.” She wasn’t proud of it. Not anymore. Not once Ray had started hitting her a few weeks after their hundred-dollar honeymoon. She couldn’t go home and prove her parents were right about him, about her.

The policeman cut her off before she could say anything else. “I’m sorry to tell you, but there’s been an accident.”

“An accident?” Good, she thought. It worked.

“Yes.”

“Ray’s hurt?” She willed tears to the verge.

“He’s on the way to the hospital.” The shiny brass nameplate opposite his gold badge said Smith.

“Can you take me? We only have the truck and Ray...”

“Yes,” Smith said.

Marcy turned and stopped in her tracks, came face to face with another man, one she had been hoping would stay out of sight until she left; why would he? She gasped, felt the officer’s eyes on the back of her neck, then bounce to the man, his presence unusual, a late-night surprise that he wasn’t expecting.

“I can take you,” the man said. He had said the same thing after he’d stepped inside her bedroom the first time, but with his hands, not his mouth. Ray had been in town at the Silver Dollar. Cal had offered tenderness and desire. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time; he made her feel beautiful again.

“No.” She pushed past him—he smelled as clean as she did—disappearing into the hallway, led by the light over the stove where she had pulled the knife out of Ray’s barreled chest. She’d gone for his heart with one lunge.

Cal walked up to the screen door and spoke through it. “I was just leaving.”

Smith didn’t move. “Who are you?”

“I stopped to see about the horse they have for sale. There’s a sign tacked onto the mailbox. You see it when you pulled in?”

“I saw it.” Smith hesitated. “Awful late to inquire about a horse, isn’t it?”

“The lights were on. I was passing by. And I stopped.” It was the truth, but the timing was off. Weeks before, not today. The lies were already piling up.

“And you’re in the market for a horse?”

“Seems so.”

“Was Mr. Findley here?”

“He was. Then he left to secure a trailer from a neighbor up the road. I guess he didn’t make it.” Cal paused, then asked. “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough for me to be here.”

Keys jingled in the distance. Footsteps in a hurry. Marcy gathering herself.

“You walk here?” the officer continued.

“No. My truck’s around back.”

“You mind if I take a look?”

“Don’t you have to get Mrs. Findley to the hospital?”

“That won’t change anything.” Smith opened the door. “I’ll follow you.”

Cal stepped out the door and pushed past the policeman, close enough to smell Old Spice and cop leather; no cigarettes; Wrigley’s spearmint gum. A beam of light sliced through the night air silently, giving way to unknown ground.

“What’s your name?”

“Calvin Hubbard. My friends call me Cal.”

“Hubbard? You go to Heights?”

“No. My cousins did. We’ve lived out on the east side of the county all our lives. You know them?”

Smith didn’t answer. His heel kicked gravel sideways as he shone the flashlight on the front fender of Cal’s twelve-year-old beater truck. Smith stopped ten feet from the front bumper. Cal stopped, too, as the county policeman tracked the beam of light from hood to tailgate, then back again.

“You can stand here,” Smith said.

The light lingered on Cal’s boots, dust particles competing with nighttime insects, then moved on. The brown and tan uniform faded into the darkness behind the flashlight, but the intention wasn’t lost. Smith was looking for something inside the cab, then out, down to the lug nuts. He felt the hood, gently, checking to see if a stove burner had been left on. “Cold,” he said.

“What did you expect?” Cal said. “I’ve been here waiting for the trailer.”

Smith walked to the rear of the truck, pulled a small paper pad from his chest pocket, and wrote down the license plate number with the flashlight tucked under his armpit.

The porch light shattered the darkness as Marcy Findley stepped outside. Brown overcoat to her knees. Beige purse in her hand. “Why are you out here?”

“Waiting on you, ma’am,” Smith said.

The cockeyed look on her face suggested disbelief. “I’m ready.”

Smith didn’t flinch. “The accident was a hit-and-run. Your husband was run off the road. His truck tried to climb a tree.” He looked to the ground, then up again, a quick show of emotion; he’d said too much or too little. “There’s nothing to see here. We should go, ma’am.” He nodded toward the front of the house, offering Marcy the lead.

A beat. A hesitation. A quick glance between a man and a woman with a policeman standing in between them. Marcy’s feet stepped confidently forward, long past ready to go, to flee Cal’s gaze and Officer Smith’s invisible tether. Handcuffs sat next to the empty leather loop stitched in a black leather belt to hold a flashlight.

There was nothing for Cal to do but stand there and watch them go with a harsh beam of light leading the way. Smith’s right hand hovered at Marcy’s elbow, ready to catch her if she stumbled.

The county police car pulled away slowly, led by the high beams and an easy press of the accelerator. Smith was still looking for something.

Cal was in no hurry to follow them, even though his wife and four kids were waiting for him at home. He should have left before Smith knocked on the door, but there’d been too much to do.

Cal had wanted the horse to be a surprise for his boy. But he’d stepped into something else when he’d knocked on the door on a normal night, a month past instead of that night like he’d told the officer, coming home the long way from the FHA convention in Indianapolis. Darkness had blanketed the other side of the fence, the horse, a golden Palomino, already inside the barn for the night. She’d come to the door not expecting a stranger, just out of the bath in a pink fuzzy robe, slippers, and nothing else.

But on this night, the knock had brought her to the door with a work blouse scattered with red splotches. “Catsup,” she’d said at first. Even she hadn’t believed it.

“What happened?”

“It’s Ray.” She’d said.

“I should go.” He’d launched his heels backward off the stoop.

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

He’d stepped inside one more time when he shouldn’t have. He knew too much, had done too much, to turn away. She could be free of everything. Everything but him.

Now, Cal watched the police car disappear into the night, slow as a turtle, red taillights fading into a thousand acres of corn. He lit a cigarette and stood by his truck, allowing his heartbeat to match the rub of a cricket’s leg, nature’s violin offering a sudden, unexpected lament.

“I stabbed him. He threw the catsup bottle at me again, then he came for me. No more,” Marcy had confessed. “Can you help me? I can’t go to jail. I just can’t.” She was ten years out from being a high school cheerleader at the top of the pyramid, a bright shining future, falling for the wrong kind of man who had left her shattered on the bottom of the pile. Glory days and a horse were all she had now. Both were for sale.

“You should call the police,” Cal had said, looking at the dead man on the kitchen floor.

“They’ll find out about us,” she’d answered. “I have motive. Our lives will be ruined.”

He got in his truck after smoking his cigarette, after Smith was a good way down the road, and he had replayed it all in his head, looking for another way it could have gone. Marcy should have left Ray years ago. He should have put his boy’s dream of owning a horse on hold. He couldn’t afford to keep a horse anyway.

Cal headed away from the Findley place without looking back. It wasn’t long before he came up on a row of flashing lights. Findley’s pickup had been dislodged from the black walnut, forever wounded. The cab was charred, the battered streak along the driver’s side visible in the rotating red and blue lights. The crumbled hit-and-run sideswipe was a week old; that’s what she had told Cal: a drunken night at the Silver Dollar that would have solved all her problems if he had rolled the truck instead of bouncing off a guardrail. He came home mad and beat her like it was her fault. The thin rope that had held the steering wheel had burned up when the truck, aimed directly at the tree, exploded on impact. It wasn’t unusual for a can of gas to sit on the floor of a farmer’s truck. That was the thinking. Raymond Findley had been dead on the kitchen floor for an hour before then. Burn up all the evidence, make it look like an accident. There wasn’t anyone around for miles.

Cal drove on past the accident, his story straight, but he had to believe Marcy and hope she stuck to her side of things and not tell anyone that Cal Hubbard had stopped by the house a month before, Marcy with an ache that needed to be filled by a man who wasn’t angry, disappointed, or absent. Cal knew the feeling, the weight of a dull, predictable marriage, his own burden to carry. He hadn’t gone looking to step out, wasn’t looking for a good time, but he hadn’t said no when the opportunity had presented itself with an invitation to come inside.

He watched the emergency lights disappear in the rearview mirror, his return to the scene of the crime over, the road stretching out in front of him for as far as his headlights would reach. He turned them off. He knew the way home with his eyes closed. He knew Officer Smith would come around asking more questions sooner or later.

BIO: Larry D. Sweazy is the author of nineteen novels, one short story collection, and forty-one short stories. He is a two-time recipient of the WWA (Western Writers of America) Spur Award and a four-time recipient of the Will Rogers Medallion Award. His writing has also been recognized with awards from the Best Books of Indiana literary competition, the Elmer Kelton Book Award, the Willa Literary Award, and the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award. He has been shortlisted for the Indiana Authors Award three times and has been a finalist for several national writing awards. His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The Adventure of the Missing Detective, Hoosier Noir, Boys' Life, Hardboiled, and several other publications and anthologies. Larry lives in Noblesville, Indiana, with his wife, Rose, where he is hard at work on his next story.

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