Those That I Guard

By Stephen Johnson

A small-town Police Chief is shot. Although his wound isnt serious, it was inflicted by his sister. It seems an inexplicable act and yet, as the Chief tells his wife, people always have a reason and its what sets things in motion and once things are set in motion, whats going to happen is simply going to happen. A novel of superbly realized characters and compelling dialogue, Those That I Guard explores this notion of inevitability, how we set things in motion, often without intent, and how our acts modify, and in turn are modified by, the lives of others. Our deeds go on and on, another character explains, like spreading ripples on a pond, pregnant with opportunity for unexpected others. As events move toward a crisis, the characters struggle to make sense of how their lives are defined, not only by their own acts or choices, but by their relationships with those around them. Some succeed and some do not, but everything that happens follows from that opening gunshot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781503516892

Stephen Johnson

Stephen Johnson has taken part in several hundred radio programmes and documentaries, including Radio 3's weekly Discovering Music series. He is also presented on the Classic Arts Podcast series Archive Classics. He has contributed as guest interviewee on BBC 4 coverage of The Proms, ITV's The Southbank Show and more recently, on BBC1's The One Show. Stephen Johnson is the author of several books, including The Eight: Mahler and the World in 1910 (Faber) and How Shostakovich Changed My Mind (NHE).

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Copyright © 2014 by Stephen Johnson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover: Detail from ‘Der Beethovenfries’ by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Rev. date: 11/22/2014

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Contents

Cast Of Characters

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate

Those that I guard I do not love;

W.B. Yeats. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

Cast Of Characters

ROGER WHITMORE, Chief of Police, Putnam’s Crossing, Maine.

TERRI DICAPRIO WHITMORE, Roger’s wife and teacher of dance.

ROSEMARY WHITMORE (Rose), Roger’s sister and passionate abortion opponent.

ELEANOR WHITMORE, Roger and Rose’s mother.

TOMMY WHITMORE, Terri and Roger’s younger son and petty criminal.

AARON RULE, Mayor, Putnam’s Crossing and Roger’s best and oldest friend.

JENNIFER BLAINE RULE (Jen), Aaron’s wife, high school principal and political aspirant.

KITTY GLYNN, a nurse.

BOB MURRAY, Jen’s political rival.

DR. AMORY WHITMORE (deceased), Eleanor’s husband, father of Roger and Rose.

VINNIE DICAPRIO (deceased), Terri’s father and prosperous bookmaker.

ELIZABETH CASTORP (aka ‘The Well-Tailored Girl’)(deceased), Eleanor’s mother and artist manquée.

SUZANNE MYERS, Assistant US Attorney, District of Nevada.

ERIC WADDEL (aka WAYNE CROSLEY, JR), a deputy sheriff and collector of illegal guns.

CARLOS ESTRADA, a thug and acquaintance of Tommy Whitmore.

MIKKI and MAYA, Rose’s Nubian goats.

Chapter One

Aaron Rule is speaking. Perhaps this is unwise and he’s misjudged the nature of events or his ability to guide them. It might be more discreet to stand in mute commiseration by Roger’s bed or, if he must speak, to offer brisk reassurance to Roger’s mother, Eleanor, and wife, Terri, and to Roger himself, no more than a few awkward words of sympathy followed by a joke or two, lest the occasion grow too womanish. But such restraint does not come naturally to him and so he speaks, for things have come to a crisis. He is Roger’s best and oldest friend and, although Roger’s wound is far from mortal, Aaron is certain it was deliberate. Enough is finally enough, he’s told himself, and it’s time he put Roger’s house in order. Indeed, it’s unavoidable now; he’s sure he has no choice. His day, which he’d expected to fill with the necessary press of business, has already been lost to him, so much of it spent on the telephone. Yet, he’d accepted the loss with unruffled satisfaction, feeling he was at the center of things, as if he drew events to himself, his authority or person a force as irresistible as gravity or hunger.

Chief Whitmore was wounded by a gunshot this morning, Aaron had told the people who’d heard strange and frightening rumors of a gun battle at the new Municipal Office Building and called him, wanting to know just what on earth could be going on. He’s going to be all right. The bullet went straight through, he’d repeated over and over, obliged to offer explanations. He was just shot in the leg, in the calf. Callers blamed Muslims, drug cartels or North Korea. No, no, nothing like that, Aaron had explained. Roger said it was an accident. He was in his office. The bullet came from his own gun. He later regretted this last, for it seemed to suggest Roger was somehow complicit in the matter, not merely its victim.

But perhaps also, as Eleanor has often noted, Aaron simply cannot help himself. He takes such pleasure in his voice and it has utterly seduced him. He’s aware of Eleanor’s report to her diminishing circle of surviving friends that his ponderous gravity, when called upon at some public gathering to lead them in the Lord’s Prayer, is due not to the occasion’s solemnity or to even his own considerable self-importance but instead to his regretful knowledge he is condemned to brevity by his Savior’s own words. He shrugged off the slander; to him, his voice is canny and tribal, revealing the one who gives it breath to be wise without pedantry, humorous without scorn and full of sound judgment, without the harshness of appearing ever to judge, a voice of authority earned and gratefully conferred. No, he’s told himself, it’s just her humor, that strange sense of humor. He cannot believe Eleanor has never liked him.

Earlier this afternoon, walking down the hospital corridor to Roger’s room, he’d overheard Eleanor telling one of her odd, impossible stories of which the confidence and authority of her narration seemed to make her the heroine, even as the exact nature of her involvement remained unclear. He’d stopped, just outside the room, and waited for her to finish.

Yes, you do, she’d said peevishly to someone in the room. Tijuana Bibles. They were called Tijuana Bibles. You must know what those are. Someone else had said something Aaron couldn’t make out. Well, they were comic strips. Pornographic comic strips. You’d open one up and there would be Popeye and Olive Oyl doing something you’d never see them doing in the Sunday paper. She laughed and it had seemed to Aaron the calculated, insinuating laugh of a nightclub performer. There were twenty-five or thirty of them. They belonged to one of the grounds keepers. Or maybe they were communal. I don’t know. They were in one of the sheds where they kept their tools. Sally Jewett, who I promise you would steal anything except a red-hot stove, took them. There was one with Cary Grant. It was called ‘I’m No Fairy!’ He was supposed to be queer, you know. Can you imagine! All the girls used to pass them around. If the teachers had found them, we’d have been severely punished, maybe even sent home, so we’d go to the most extraordinary lengths to keep them hidden. Sylvia Bannister wrapped one in plastic and put it under the gravel in a fish tank. It leaked, of course, and the thing was ruined. Poor Sylvia. She died in a hotel fire, in Baltimore, where she was from, a few years after The War. No one knew what she was doing in that hotel and she was reportedly very drunk. Oh yes, it’s most unpleasant to contemplate, she’d continued cheerfully, but the students at Miss Fischers’ were as depraved a bunch of girls as you’d find outside of, I don’t know what, a child brothel, I suppose. Then she’d fallen silent and Aaron had heard Terri’s uneasy laugh, the sound of a woman who doesn’t know whether to be shocked or amused. She’s right, Aaron had thought. What could be the point of such a story at a time like this?

When Aaron stepped into the room, Eleanor had fixed him with her bright little eyes. Well, well, she’d said. Rudy Giuliani. Her smile showed no pleasure, merely the cold generosity of a woman who still believes every important contest must be decided in her favor. It seemed to Aaron, as it had for nearly forty years, a challenge to charm her and win her blessing.

He had expected Terri; a wife should be with her husband at such a time. Terri is a tall woman, and ample now, as Aaron, too, is ample, although Terri’s bulk seems to make her seem simply more herself. She’s no longer young, indeed, a full half century and her hair, cut feathery and close to her scalp, is as black as a raven’s wing. Her soft face is pretty still and her voluptuousness, while not precisely wanton, at least hints of transgression. Certain of the boys in her ballroom class, every Thursday evening on the rented second floor of the old Odd Fellows’ Hall, the official studio of The Terri Whitmore School of Dance, lasciviously speculate on her past as something louche: a Vegas showgirl, say, and the companion of mobsters. Yet Eleanor, that old woman, more than eighty now, worn away and sparse, eroded to her very core, the granite from which all the soil has washed, is able to diminish Terri simply by her presence. Roger doesn’t want Eleanor here, Aaron thought and then realized how unkind that thought might be-and perhaps untrue, as well.

Now, Eleanor, he’d chided, the voice in full cheer, you can see from what I’ve brought that I’m only here in my capacity as Roger’s friend. He’d held up to her as an offering, boldly, a great bouquet, white and pink roses, lisianthus and sweetpea, his totemic bounty and all this mad luxury of vegetable growth had announced him to her, to both of them, as he stood and grinned, a plump, sly Bacchus, seeking votaries among these women.

Oh, Aaron, Terri had said, how lovely. They must be some of yours. Look, Roger, aren’t they lovely? She’d looked pleased by the gift, but perhaps had also been grateful to escape her mother-in-law’s demands for attention. She rose from her chair and took the bouquet from Aaron.

Yes, Roger had said, I see them. The upper half of his bed was raised, holding his body upright in a sitting posture, as befits a man receiving visitors, but he’d looked exhausted and very pale. As well he ought, thought Aaron. His injured leg lay outside the cover, the wound completely bandaged and no blood now. Aaron remembered how Sherb, the Deputy Chief, had wrapped his belt around Roger’s leg, just above the knee. It was an accident, Roger had told them over and over, even though no one believed him, what with the gun right there in Rosemary’s hand, her face bright with anger.

Terri, put them in water, dear. Move the flowers out of Ginny’s vase. This was Eleanor.

Roger had looked at Aaron, his face expressionless, and for a moment Aaron wondered if Roger might find this visit unwelcome. But then Roger had nodded and smiled at Aaron. I hope you’re not planning to bill me for those. I could never afford your better arrangements. Roger’s voice had been slow and Aaron had realized he must be medicated. Roger, to whom frivolity did not come naturally, had surely made this small joke to reach out to Aaron, to welcome him and on Aaron’s own terms, as if Aaron were the sufferer and Roger should offer the comfort, which Aaron would gratefully accept. Indeed, Roger had gestured toward the end of his bed, signaling to Aaron he should sit there.

The three of them, Terri, Roger and Aaron, were all of an age now, but Roger seemed the youngest of them. His brown hair was still thick and curly and there was almost no grey in it, even though the true nature of Terri’s was a mystery to all but her and Roger, and Aaron’s had departed some decades past. Roger was as thin as he had been at seventeen. Why, the arm with the intravenous needle and the tube leading up to that bag, things that spoke of weakness and infirmity, even that arm’s stringy muscles were youthful, still defined beneath the skin and the veins like small cables! And too, it may not have been his appearance alone that created this effect, but his open earnestness as well, an unreflective and guileless willingness to engage the world. This was his manner as boy and it sometimes pleases Aaron to pity his friend, to believe, without considering whether it was truly so, Roger never earned his youthful air, but acquired it merely, when he stopped aging sometime around his eighteenth year.

You can take my seat, Aaron, Terri’d said, standing before the table on which she’d placed, and was arranging, Aaron’s flowers, while Eleanor wondered aloud if the lisianthus wouldn’t really look a little better on the sides and Terri hastened to comply.

No, that’s ok, Terri, he’d replied. I’m not so old and broken down I can’t stand up for a few minutes. And as for the bill, Roger, hey, if I were going to bring you something I though you’d actually pay me for, I’da picked a bunch of dandelions from the Town green and wrapped them in wax paper. He’d smiled at the joke he returned for Roger’s and thought his friend was beginning to relax. How are you feeling? he’d asked, earnestly. Are you all right? Roger had closed his eyes and nodded. Well, the doc says you’ll be out of here in a day or two, Aaron had continued, his good cheer restored. You were lucky, Roger. It could have been worse. It could have been a whole lot worse. You were very lucky. His voice lowered and became the voice of a public man on a serious occasion. Aaron had become aware of Eleanor watching him carefully and thought he read in her face not only agreement with his benediction but encouragement, as well. At that moment, it had seemed to him everything could be made all right again. So Aaron Rule began to speak.

Yes, it could have been worse, he says. Much worse. It was only good luck or God’s will it wasn’t. And we know, Roger, all of us know, something like this was bound to happen, sooner or later, it was bound to happen. Changing his mind, he takes the chair Terri had offered him. He doesn’t sit in it, not all at once, but instead turns it around, so its back is facing Roger. He straddles the seat and lowers himself, pushing his body forward and, placing both forearms atop the chair back, leans into it, confident it must receive him. As a boy, he often saw his father’s friends mount a chair in this manner and it seemed to him they had not occupied the thing as much as mastered it, as was expected in the company of men. Then something occurs to him. Say, do the boys know about this? I could contact them if you like. Someone in town might get ahold of them with the news and they ought to know you’re all right.

We called Larry. He already knows, says Terri. And Tommy? She smiles apologetically. Well, we’re not exactly sure where Tommy is.

Aaron nods. It may be only his acknowledgment he has heard and understands but, coming from Aaron, it cannot escape a suggestion of assurance, that he has considered their behavior and approves. He turns back to Roger. You say it was an accident, Roger. I’m not judging you. I’ve known you all my life. I’ve known Rosemary, too. You want to protect her. I understand that. Hey, if she were my sister, I’d want to protect her too, but this thing is gonna get out of our hands very quickly. It’s just too much. You were shot, you, the Chief of Police, right in your office. Why, the papers have already… .

One would think, says Eleanor, the Mayor and the Chief of Police could contain this incident. Good Lord, Aaron, we’re not dealing with Lizzy Borden here. She’s just an excited girl.

In Eleanor’s attempt to evade the home truths here, Aaron sees an opportunity to set them straight.No, Eleanor. She’s too…well, too conspicuous. And with all due respect, she’s no girl. There’s a history, here. She’s been going on like this for years, ever since that thing in college. No, it’s been going on for years. And yesterday, not twenty-four hours ago, the business with that woman doctor and the blood.

The business with the blood! Eleanor’s face is full of scorn. From the way that doctor carried on you’d have thought it was her own. A doctor ought to be used to blood.

Not when it’s thrown on you while you’re walking on a public sidewalk, Aaron replies with perhaps more force than he meant because Eleanor looks offended.Roger had almost gotten her out of that mess, his tone conciliatory now, but now I’m afraid it’s going to come right back. Our District Attorney can’t keep looking the other way.

Where do you suppose she got the blood? Terri wonders aloud. Do you think she cut herself, you know, bled herself a little bit every day? I keep wondering, but no one seems to know. This mystery in what Rosemary has done, and not the doing of it, is what confounds Terri. Aaron knows that’s how far this thing has come. No matter how bizarre Rosemary’s behavior, it’s now expected and we no longer speculate about why she did it, but only how she managed to pull it off.

Yes, Aaron feels obliged to answer Terri, even as it takes him further from his subject, I guess that’s possible. Likely even, I suppose. She could have cut a small vein and bled off a little over several days, well, weeks, really, considering how much blood there was. God knows, she’s crazy enough to do that, he thinks. All that blood. Where did she store it? A picture comes to him of jars and jars of it, little jelly jars full of blood, stored in her refrigerator next to the milk and eggs. The image of Rosemary’s blood makes him uncomfortable and he shifts his weight in the chair.

No, Roger says and for the first time seems to acknowledge this discussion. Not hers. Chickens. She kept chickens. Go out to her place and I’m sure you’ll find some dead chickens and the pail she bled them in.

Did she keep chickens? Aaron wonders. He knows she keeps goats, but not about the chickens. He realizes he’s never been to Rose’s place, even though she’s been there more than twenty years.

There! Eleanor exclaims. It was chicken blood. All of that fuss over nothing but some chicken blood.

Mother, what she did was wrong, Roger says, in the careful, detached voice with which he often addresses Eleanor. It was against the law. And so, Rose had been arrested for assaulting the woman doctor and held in the County lock-up. Roger had spoken with the District Attorney, whom he called by her first name, and they had both spoken to a judge, one of many who knew and respected Roger. Rosemary had been released into Roger’s custody. After all, everyone knew she would not have acted in such a manner unless she was unwell. Now Rose was back in the County lock-up.

Since when is it against the law in this country to have strongly-held principles? The woman did abortions, did she not? Eleanor demands. Aaron wishes she would stop. The problem with hanging around crazy people, his father once said about someone, although he can’t remember who, is that they will make you crazy. Surely Eleanor cannot believe these mad defenses she raises for her daughter. Eleanor doesn’t even share those principles, if that’s what you can call them. No. Eleanor would never identify herself as Pro-life, but then, it crosses Aaron’s mind, neither would Rosemary, whom he saw once on television, standing in front of a clinic and holding a cardboard sign on which she’d printed, ‘Don’t Call Me Pro-life, only Anti-murder.’ Goddamn Rosemary.

Having strong principles doesn’t give you the right to physically abuse others, says Roger, but he seems already tired of this conversation.

None of this about the doctor is either here or there. Aaron wants to get things back on course, even though he knows the doctor’s probably going to get tossed back into the pot now, with the other crime. We have to think about the shooting. Roger starts to say something. I know, Roger. It was an accident. Aaron says this in a flat, deliberate voice that leaves no doubt he doesn’t believe it. Roger, I’m not rushing to judgment, here. I don’t want to judge. Should he remind them of what the Good Book says about judging your neighbor? No. Eleanor would only smirk at such a piety and even Roger might think it an odd allusion in what, after all, is supposed to be a private conversation. But, hey, Shelly can’t ignore this, or try to turn it into something else. It’s too big. It’s too much out there. And there’s a simple home truth here, Roger, and I don’t mean any offense Eleanor, but there are people out there who aren’t gonna lose a whole lot of sleep if Rose goes to jail. People think, or some people do, and I don’t agree with them, but you have to take it into account, that she’s gotten away with an awful lot, just because of who she is.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is, Shelly’s gonna have to investigate this and she’s gonna have to go where that takes her. She’s gonna have to do what people expect a District Attorney to do. They’re gonna take your statement, Roger, your sworn statement. And if there’s a trial, you’ll have to testify and you’ll be under oath again. Now, you say it was accident, but what kind of accident? A Smith & Wesson forty caliber doesn’t go off if it falls on the floor or something like that. And remember, Sherb saw her holding the gun. Ok, maybe she was just putting it away for you or handing it to you and she squeezed the trigger by accident. But Rose knows guns, Roger, and I don’t think she’d do that. And tell me this, where was the safety? You never, never even once, in your whole life have had that gun around without the safety on, unless you meant to use it. Never. That’s the right procedure, Roger, and no one follows procedure the way you do. No one. So, how did the safety get off?

Roger continues to look at him without answering. Aaron shrugs apologetically, in the manner of a man who knows the question he’s posed has no happy answer.

Roger, there’s ten million guys out there would perjure themselves to keep a loved one out of jail. I’m probably one of them. They’d perjure themselves and say, sure, it’s a crime, but I’m the only injured party here and I kept my sister out of jail, where bad things can happen to you. I served the higher justice, like they say, and then they’d forget all about it. Ten million guys, Roger. But you know what? You’re the tenth million and first guy in line. You’re the straightest man in this town. Hell, you’re the straightest man I ever met. I’m pretty sure you’d rather take poison than perjure yourself, although maybe you would for Rose, but then you’d know you’d done it and you wouldn’t just shrug it off, not just because it’s a crime, but because if you did it, you’d feel like you were spitting on the whole system. I know you, Roger. We’ve been friends all our lives and I’m speaking as your friend. This isn’t just a job to you, you know, making people behave and then seeing they get punished if they don’t. For you it’s like a mission. Look, I’m not saying that’s wrong. Of course not. I believe in the law, too. People aren’t always strong and they need authority to keep ’em in line. But, you… . Well, you’d have made a hell of a priest, if you hadn’t become a cop. But you did become a cop and we both know you couldn’t get over perjuring yourself. It’d be like a sacrilege to you. So, there you are. Rose goes to jail or you go to purgatory. He stops here, pleased with this summation.

Roger… Terri begins, and Aaron can tell she’s going to say, Roger, you know Aaron’s right, but Roger holds up his hand to stop her. It’s all right, honey, he says to her and then to Aaron, You’ve got more to say. Go ahead.

Thank you, Roger. There’s a third way here and this is what we need to talk about. I spoke to Jack Duggan… .

You spoke with an attorney? Eleanor’s voice has lost its excitement and is cold now. That was presumptuous, Aaron. That was meddlesome. This family will deal with its own problems and in our own way. I have already spoken to Lucas. He will represent Rosemary.

Lucas Perry, Aaron knows, has never even seen the inside of a jail, most of whose inmates almost certainly know more about criminal law than Eleanor’s favorite white-shoe attorney. If he’s going to confront Eleanor, he ought to be standing now, but can think of no graceful way to do this. Sitting was a mistake, after all; the intimacy he gained with Roger came at the expense of the authority he’d lost with Eleanor, and he believes she’s the one he’ll have to sway. Sometimes, he cannot remember ever being as young as she makes him feel.

Aaron’s only trying to help, Mother, Terri all but whispers, yet Eleanor looks surprised by even this soft challenge.

She’s right, Eleanor. I just want to help. I did discuss Rose with Jack, but it was an entirely informal conversation. I happened to run into him at the Town Office. In fact, he’d called Jack in order to discuss Rose, but he doesn’t mind the lie, which will serve his purpose. If we hadn’t talked about it, we’d have been the only two people in The Crossing who weren’t. If you think I’ve stuck my nose in, fine, I’ll take it out. But you know I care as much about Roger and all of you, as much as if you were my own family. So, please, just hear me out. If you don’t want to do what I’m suggesting, that’s ok, but I honestly believe it will be the best thing, not just for Rose, but Roger, too. We can help her. He hesitates, looks at Eleanor and then at Roger. We can put her under care.

She’s under care, Aaron. Eleanor’s measured, deliberate tone is more threatening than any outburst. She’s under my care and Roger’s too, for that matter.

Terri, Roger says. Shut the door, please. She does and then leans her back against it, as if to bar intruders. Then he says to Eleanor, Sometimes it’s not enough, Mother, just to love someone. Let’s listen to what Aaron has to say.

Why? So you can take his part against mine? So you can help me lose my daughter?

Aaron, who has known these people all his life, can see Eleanor’s afraid now, but he’s sure it’s because of Roger, not Rose. In fact, Aaron is surprised by Roger’s statement; it’s unlike him to speak aloud of an intimate matter, particularly one that carries the suggestion of a failure. He begins to feel embarrassed for his friend. Being shot by your sister, he supposes, someone you thought always your duty to protect and care for, will unsettle a man, even Roger. Or maybe, it comes to Aaron, maybe he was just waiting for me to break the ice, to give him a little nudge in the right direction.

Rose is already lost, Eleanor, Aaron tells her, speaking gently. She’s been lost ever since she tried to… hurt herself, down at school, there. Something happened to her. Maybe you know what it is. I don’t, but something happened to her.

That was nothing. It was merely a schoolgirl’s cry for help, says Eleanor, without conviction.

Well, I’m talking about helping her, Aaron says. Look, she didn’t just leave school when she was twenty; she left the world when she was twenty and she’s almost fifty now. She hasn’t a husband or any children. No friends that I know of, just other…true believers, like her. She lives all alone in that little house you and the Doctor bought her out on Adams Road and you support her because she hasn’t even got a job. Just her causes. That’s all she has. And now it’s come to the point where she’s put Roger between a rock and a hard place, just like I said. She’s lost, Eleanor, and you won’t get her back by losing Roger as well.

"Look, Hodgkins down there near Boston is a great place. It’s associated with Harvard, Eleanor. It’s the gold standard for that sort of