Radcliff gave the sheriff a puzzled look.
“Old man Hazlett's dogs got loose,” he explained to her. “They dug a few holes in the garden, and now he has it in his head that somebody laid in a mine field around the house.”
That was typical. It always started that way. There would be some commonplace thing-- like holes in the garden-- and the old man's mind got all twisted up. The next thing you knew he believed people were after him; aliens were landing, or some such nonsense.
“Yes, I'm sure.” Sheriff Miller was now saying toward the window. “Rich, I've walked around your annuals about ten times already. If there were land mines, my fat butt would have been blown to kingdom come. Now, listen, Bill: Radcliff is out here. You need to stop acting like this. You think you can calm down. You think you can do it for her, if for no other reason?”
Hearing her name mentioned, Radcliff thought, Oh, no, don't drag me into this-- please! The sick feeling in her stomach suddenly dropped deeper, and assumed a grinding quality that threatened to churn up her last meal-- whatever that had been. She wished she could cry out, Hey, just leave me out of the this, but she couldn't, because that was her father in the house and whatever he did was eternally linked to her. That was the whole problem with her life, or so she thought; if she just had a normal, sane, father, everything would be perfect.
Her old man said something then. He must have been standing right next to the front window, in the living room. It didn't sound as though he was yelling now, just talking normally.
“All right,” Sheriff Miller said. “Well, you think you can un-barricade yourself and come out so that I can see you're okay. Otherwise I can't leave. You know, it's getting late already. My wife will be looking for me. I'm already way late for dinner.”
A long moment passed, and then you could hear the deadbolts slide inside the front door, which slowly opened. Rich Seagrove hedged as he stepped onto the front porch. It didn't look as though he shaved in a couple days, and you could see where gray whiskers were invading his beard. He was wearing a t-shirt whose arms had been cut off. He had a faded tattoo on his right arm: a heart with a knife running through it. His feet were bare below his baggy jeans. He glanced at Radcliff, and then his eyes dropped shamefully to the ground.
Sheriff Miller labored to rise from the swing. He waddled up to Rich then.
“You going to be okay, guy?” he asked, placing a large, comforting hand on his shoulder.
Rich just nodded his head abjectly.
“All right, then,” Sheriff Miller said; it was almost a whisper, although no curious neighbors lingered nearby and the closest house was a good two hundred feet away. “Don't worry about it. This is between us, as always. We're all family here. Nobody else needs to know about it.”
Though the sheriff spoke sincerely, Radcliff didn't believe it was true. Within a day or two, she was sure, the whole town would know her old man had had another episode. And when people came up from Chicago and Milwaukee to go fishing during the summer they would return home with stories of the loony bird who lived on Jeffery Road and who ran the bait shop. It was supposed to be the sleepy little town's secret, but she was sure half the Midwest already knew by now. She knew for a fact when she finally went away to the University of Michigan, people there would just wander away from her when they learned her name.
She walked up onto the porch, squeezed round the old man, and went inside. She ran up to her room, and locked the door. She'd lie down in bed, then, and put on her stereo headphone and play music, any music, just so it was loud and she didn't have to hear through the open window as the sheriff and her old man finished talking outside. Finally the spot light went out, and her room was pitched in darkness. She removed her headphones in time to hear the sheriff's car as it went down the unpaved drive, the loud crunching of gravel dissolving into nothingness. Then the entire house was silent, except for occasional enigmatic creak from a wall. She lay there in the dark for a long, long time, wondering why her mother had to die, why she had to have no brothers or sisters, why she had to endure everything alone.
