That Ridge Would Fall

“Badge.”

“No, Oto.”

Oto was a small, chubby, African American man with a buzz cut, a soul patch, and a limp. He carried a lot of dead weight on his shoulders, which is why he applied for a job that required knowing information on equity. Jurisprudence was not a job to him, more like a lifestyle. Tendinitis had reduced his left leg to almost nothing, and the arthritis in his hands posed as a daily tussle. No one knew how he could still manage to be the sergeant with so many injuries.

“Give me your badge, Nellie.”

Nellie was average. Average height, average body weight, white skin with some blemishes and hand made freckles and imperfections. Originally born with jet black hair that gradually became lighter as the years rolled by like the wheels on her old red wagon, she eventually dyed it black again after being a red-head proved to be too much for her.

“Anything but my badge.”

“So give me your gun.”

“Oto, you don't have to do this.”

Nellie wasn't usually as desperate as she seemed. Maybe a little useless at times, but definitely not the type of girl who begged and cried on carpets of malachite green with her hands clasped out in front of her like at service–although it's not like service even mattered to her. There were better things to do, more important things.

Standing beside her was Benjamin, a thin man with a handlebar for a mustache. Her partner. The man who swore to have her back, but presumably was the one to push her under the bus. Now it seemed as though the only thing he anticipated was going on duty by himself, getting to ride in the cop car with only his shadow mimicking his movement and the flashing red and blue lights. He felt terrible, but restless and warm all at the same time.

“Ben.” Nellie shook him by his shoulder. “Tell them that it was only an accident.”

Ben–still unable to even piece together her words–blinked with his long eyelashes that smudged the lens of his bifocals, cleaning them off gave him a moment to think over his response. Oto was tapping his foot impatiently. Nellie drew her attention to his white Oxfords, always spotless, leather shining in the ugly fluorescent light, never an eyelet tab out of place.

“Well, I, um...” Ben cleared his throat. He was sweating under his armpits and it looked as if he might have even sweated between his legs, if not wet his pants. “I honestly don't know what to say, Nellie.”

“That's okay, Ben. Take your time, I'm only about to get fired here,” Nellie growled. Aggressive. That very attitude and that spunk was in Nellie's nature. She had been born rude and raised that way because she had strict parents. Boy, oh boy, it was amazing what a summer funeral and a single church sermon could do for a girl of her kind, having to hide it all under a mask of faulty ceramic skin and pockmarks had hardened her beyond belief.

Ben's eyes were glassy, he had smoked marijuana with Nellie to calm her down, but nothing helped the quiet bustle of her shaking limbs. Locked and unlocked and locking again, she could barely hold herself up with her legs, like jell-o and the London bridge.

“Nellie, there's nothing I can do. It's not in my power.” That hurt the most. Like a shot in the chest or a kick in the face. Nellie knew that Ben wouldn't even try and he wouldn't even think of her when he was writing his next ticket or shoving some druggie into his car. His car, no longer apart of Nellie. It's out of line and it wouldn't be any of her business anyway.

Oto cleared his throat to make his presence known, his deep voice was like a ship lifting its anchor. “Well, if there is nothing else to be said, Nellie, I would like for you to pack your things and go home. It would be in your best interest if you don't come back here anymore.”

“You can't just fire me like that, Oto. Accidents are prone to happen, we're humans and humans make mistakes.” Nellie wouldn't get down on those broken knees and beg for anyone, but she loved her job more then anything. She loved the thrill of a high speed chase, and she loved when she could catch a criminal and put them in their place.

“Things aren't set in stone, Nellie. You especially should know that. Maybe, maybe, you'll come back some day, but today I would like you gone.” He waved his manilla folder at her and his feet shuffled away across the revolting tapestry.

She stood facing Benjamin, seething with rage in a pot that was bound to boil over at any given second. “Why didn't you stand up for me? You know I would've done that for you. You're my partner and you swore, fucking swore, on your grandmother's grave, that you would vouch for me.”

“I'm sorry.”

By that time Nellie's patience was worn thin to blood and meat and wires.

Some teeth were on the ground, they looked like little bloody mints. It took a minute before Benjamin's cheek began to swell and two minutes before he realized that Nellie punched him in the face. The blood was thick in his throat, like a pound of concrete. He was on the floor, staining the carpet with his pain and distress and claret.

“You're not sorry,” she scowled as she watched him groveling on the floor. Nellie stretched her arms through her red pea coat and flipped the collar down around her neck.

“I'm sorry, Nel. I'm so sorry!” Ben called from behind her. No one helped him up, in fact, most people pretended to not even see. He deserved what he had coming, no one ever built up those brick walls of courage to do what Nellie had done to him.

But it was low. Benjamin would never lay a hand on a woman, there was no way he could fight back and still maintain honor and poise, whatever he had left of it anyway.

She didn't want to hear him, but she did. His voice was like jawbreakers and smoking bullets and the middle finger to the law, almost all at the same time in the same moment. They had shared malt liquor over a potluck dinner, fought over the driver's seat countless times, and had even handcuffed each other when the job got serious and one started annoying the other. They were friends, but now it felt more like enemies.

Nellie gnawed on the dried skin of her lips, lightly flavored with a bean burrito she had for lunch. What else was she supposed to do? She depended on her job in law enforcement and without that she had nothing. Without a back-up plan she was even more useless then she was prior to the situation.

She took a taxi home to her small apartment and when she closed the door, everything dropped from her hands and she just fell. Nellie just wanted to lay in a bed of roses and be cuddled and whispered to, she just wanted to know that everything was okay, but nothing was okay.

Crying would've been a misrepresentation of how things had decided to stack up. Tears wouldn't drown out her sorrow or make rivers with bridges to lead her back to the police station, begging for her job back. Crying had never solved anything, death, illness, or strain. Playing jazz music was soothing but wouldn't exactly smooth over her mood.

The curtains only let a column of light in and Nellie watched as the dust particles rotated and purled through the thick air. It was probably the only peaceful moment she had endured all day long, it was lovely the way the light faded from yellow to gold to honey, she breathed in the sooty air and smacked her forehead.

The phone startled her, she pushed over a stack of books and countless term papers to get to the home phone. They were old term papers that she kept from her college days, she tried learning astronomy but all the pulsars and supernovas and cosmos and dark matter began to confuse her after a while.

She found the phone and answered it immediately, already knowing who it was before looking at the caller ID. “Hey ma. I haven't heard from you in a while.”

“Hello, love,” her mother responded over the line. She sounded weak, weaker then she usually did. “I'm sorry, but you know I've been ill.”

“How are you feeling? Are the scars healing well?” Nellie asked, standing up to lift herself onto the couch. A half-empty bottle of whiskey was tipped over on the coffee table and a cup of cold espresso was on the floor. “I really should clean my place up,” she whispered to herself. A smell lingered over the apartment, degenerated raccoons and toilet water. “Damn, that fucking toilet.”

“The scars are healing fine, the pain has even began to cease itself. Oh, Nellie, let me tell you, it was a painful process my dear. Between that surgery and your father's tears, I didn't know what to do with myself. I don't want you to ever go through that.” But Nellie practically went through it herself, she dealt with her mother's stomach surgery and an injury from a drive-by that resulted in two bullets to the arm. Dispatchers were sent just in time on that night.

Nellie sighed, “Mom, you have a heart of fucking gold. Did you know that?”

Her mother grunted, “Nellie, you know how I feel about you using that language while you're talking to me.” A Saint. She had always been a saint with a gilded heart, her strife and struggle embedded in her crux.

“Sorry, mom.”

“That's better. How have you been?”

“Not good, not good at all.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Thinking about it made her uneasy. “I got fired today. Something happened on the job a couple nights ago and it took the board a while to debate about it, but now I'm out of a job. Mom, I can't believe they fired me, what happened was an accident and no one can see that!” She took a swig of whiskey and it burned her throat on its way down, but the assurance was warming to say the least.

“I don't know what to say other than, find a new job, I suppose.”

“Finding a new job is not as easy as waking up in the morning or taking a bubble bath. I'll have to look for 'help wanted' ads, set up interviews and tell them why I got relieved of my law enforcement duties. Mom, I can't do that.” Nellie undid the wooden buttons and took off her pea coat, slinging it over the Victorian couch. The floral wallpaper in her apartment was falling off the walls and the chipped paint underneath flaked off onto the floor.

“Take a couple weeks off of your life, Nellie. Why don't you go to our mountain house for a little while? Stay as long as you'd like. I'll give you the directions and the keys, even that button that you loved to push as a child for the garage door. You know you're always welcome.”

“That all sounds very nice. But, mom–”

“Just, do it, Nel. It can't hurt you. You'll be alone and have your privacy, I know that smelly apartment of yours could use a break from you too,” her mother cooed. “Come on, Nellie. Make an old woman happy.”

Nellie couldn't help but giggle. “Okay, Mom. I suppose it couldn't hurt.”

“That's great. Goodbye, Nel.”

“Goodbye, Ma. I love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

The line clicked and simmered like stew. Nellie tossed the phone back into the pile of junk and walked into her bedroom.

The furniture had began to collect dust because she barely cleaned anything anymore. She saw her battered guitar and its exhausted strings in the corner, the tarnished wood was dull and had lost its luster years back when she stopped playing. Nellie made her way through the clutter before fiddling with the blinds and letting illumination in through the window. The clouds were a pasty white again the ordinary blue of the sky, she hoped for snow and hail and fog and sleet all in the coming months.

– – –

That night Nellie tried to make meatloaf for dinner. She spent hours in the kitchen seasoning and grinding and molding the meat, but it was all too sickening. Acid reflux and indigestion, oh, how she wished for one or the other. The over usage of garlic salt completely tainted the outcome, the recipe had not been clear from the start, but Nellie went with what she knew and that wasn't a lot. She searched in the phone book and called for sausage and kielbasa pizza to be delivered.

The local news talked of a high speed chase on a freeway that ended with the death of a fellow police officer. Mickey Hughes. Nellie winced, a broken heart intact with moraines and furrows, she quickly changed the channel to a late night soap opera.

Mickey Hughes was a strong guy, he had rows of muscles upon muscles upon muscles, almost like mountains or hilltops. He always had that five o'clock shadow painted on his face, that face, it was the nicest thing Nellie had ever seen. Overweening blue eyes, sharp cheekbones, and he walked with a swagger that could intimidate even the strongest man. He was so cocksure, damn, that was probably why he died.

Nellie figured it wouldn't hurt to find out.

She switched the news back on and listened to the insecure newswoman talk.

His comrades all agree that he was, to say the least, an influential and thoughtful man who would sacrifice anything to save a life. Everyone appreciated his service, Mickey Hughes will be missed. Oh dammit, I missed it, Nellie thought, silently cursing to herself. It would be on tomorrow morning, and tomorrow night, and the morning after that, and the week after that. There was no way she'd miss another showing of it.

Back to the soap opera.

The girl cried over her husband's infidelity, another man is there to bring solace, they kissed and had pitiful intercourse with one another. More lies, more lies, more sex, more secrets, codes to decipher, all in one jam-packed hour of lust. None of this would ever happen in real life. Is anyone really that miserable? But, who was she to talk? Sitting on her soiled sofa, hair in a slipshod french braid, angrily waiting for a pizza that would never come because deliveries aren't reliable, everyone knew that.

She turned to volume up because she could hear the neighbors upstairs, today was their anniversary so celebration was obviously necessary. Nellie was a lonely person, no guy would ever stick around because dating a policewoman could be scary sometimes. It would be a lie if any cop said that whatever had happened that day at work didn't follow them home.

There was one who had stuck around for nine months. It was 2007 if she recalled it well enough. It felt like so long ago, she couldn't even remember his name or if he was German or Italian. He spoke Inuit, that most likely had to make him Alaskan then. Long red–no, brown–hair and a lisp or a stutter that made it hard to understand him, and possibly an accent. He only wore frock coats when it was cold outside, sometimes even when the temperature rose to the high 70's. He was crazy, but he was fascinating all the time. That man had a noiseless laugh and spaces between his teeth so he was disappointed that he could never whistle like Nellie.

But he was old news, yesterday's tabloid and last week's cultism. Solitude was in style now, having a rancid apartment on the fourth floor of a moss covered building made Nellie the Queen of Emptiness.

Her best friend wouldn't talk to her and her brother was always out setting houses on fire with a group of beatniks. They called themselves 'The Flower Children', but that couldn't even soften the blow the first time Nellie heard that her older brother was in jail. He was a 27-year-old man with a child who already had a criminal record the entire length of the Czech Republic. How had he turned out to be the desperado in their family?

One whole hour had passed and Nellie was still waiting for her pizza. What had she expected from this anyway? “30 minutes or less. 30 fucking minutes or less,” she growled.

Like clockwork, a knock on the door reverberated the paper thin walls. She stood up from the couch and the door swung ajar to reveal a skinny boy with pustules spotting his face. Nellie recognized the boy, maybe from a drug bust or a speeding ticket, but decided to dismiss the thought completely.

“Sorry for my timing, ma'am. The car broke down on the interstate and a tow truck brought me here.” He was congested, sinus pressure or post nasal drip, but his whiny voice was annoying.

“I'm going to be as frank with you as possible–” she looked at his name tag, “Jeff. I've has a very rough day, I'm exhausted, I'm angry, and I just want my goddamn pizza if you don't mind.”

His eyes were on her breasts, cleavage was easily visible in her wrinkled camisole.

“Jeff,” she said. He looked up after several moments of quiet chimera mind trips. “My eyes, are right here.” Nellie snatched the pizza box from his sweaty hands and slammed the door hard behind herself.

“Wait! Where's my money?” She could hear his tumultuous voice.

Nellie laughed aloud, “You're not getting paid shit! Tell your boss that next time I order a pizza and it's delivered late, we're going to have a problem!” She dropped the pizza box on the gate leg table in front of her and sat back down on the couch, it had managed to hold her form for the time she was gone. Nellie grunted and slapped her forehead upon opening the box. “You could have at least got my order right.”

She picked up a slice of the baby leeks pizza and cautiously bit into the crust. After proving to be pleasant and of no harm, Nellie kept eating until there was nothing but half a pizza and a bell pepper left in the box. She took a sip of her cranberry soda and burped.

Everything she did couldn't stop how she was feeling, idle and beaten, forced to asphyxiate in her own self-pity and salty tears. She had put so much into her job and asked for nothing in return, her gunshot wounds, burn scars, broken bones and cartilage didn't mean a thing to anyone. As many times as she had told herself not to cry about it, she had in fact, cried about it. Crying was not going to help, but crying was not going to hurt.