Dandelions

Hansen leaned against the side of his truck, still in his cop uniform, soda sweating in his hand. Dandelions shook their seeds in the evening wind along the edge of the lot, and he watched them drift, thinking about how small things lasted and how most things didn’t. His second toe throbbed faintly, arthritis maybe, and he knew it wasn’t going to get better.

He finished the soda in one long swallow and crushed the can a little before setting it on the semi’s hood. Hansen looked at the dandelions spread across the truck lot. There were more of them than he thought at first. He shifted his weight, felt the ache in his foot again, then glanced around before unzipping his pants.

He pulled his penis out and stood there a second, not looking anywhere in particular. The gravel shifted under his boots as he jerked, small sounds in the quiet lot. He let out one low grunt and watched his seed cover a dandelion that had already gone to seed.

He used to bring the white ones home when he was a kid. He stood there a second, catching his breath, then zipped up.

The cab still held the heat from the day. He climbed in and sat for a second before reaching down to pull his boots off, slower now with the dull pain settling into his toes. The bunk he sat on was made up, a blanket folded and a pillow pushed against the wall. A couple shirts hung from a hook by the door. The rest of his things stayed in the compartments under the sleeper, packed the same way they had been for months.

He retrieved his phone from the compartment by the seat and scrolled through his emails. His pickup for the next day had come through, early in Kansas City.

After that, he opened a text from his mom.

“You working today?”

He typed back.

“Yeah. Worked a shift at the precinct. Just got done.”

The reply came quick.

“Come by tomorrow? I’ve got your mail. I’ll make breakfast.”

He glanced at the time, then back at the message.

“I’ll come by early. Eat and grab it before I head out.”

He set the phone down and leaned back against the bed.

Osage Beach wasn’t far from his mom’s place. Close enough he could stop in, eat, still make pick ups on occasion without rushing it.

He’d been parking the truck here awhile now, renting the spot off a guy he knew.

It had been two years since he stepped back from the force. Thirty years in, then just done with it mostly. He still worked a shift here and there, enough to keep his post. Enough to still be Officer Hansen when he needed to be.

His phone buzzed in his hand.

He glanced at it, then answered.

“Hey.”

“Hansen. You busy?”

“No. What’s up.”

“You still down by the lake?”

“Yeah. Been here a couple days.”

“Alright.” A pause. “You coming next week?”

“For what.”

Matt huffed a laugh. “My retirement, man. Don’t act like you didn’t know.”

“Oh. Right.” He shifted back against the wall. “That’s next week already?”

“Yeah. Creeps up on you.”

“Yeah, I guess it does.” Another pause. “Alright. I’ll be there.”

“Good. I figured you would.”

Hansen adjusted his leg out in front of him.

“You still running loads?” Matt asked.

“Yeah.”

“How is it.”

“It’s alright. Keeps me moving.”

“Yeah, that’s you.”

A beat.

“You working at all?” Matt said.

“Here and there. Just enough.”

Matt chuckled. “Couldn’t let it go all the way, huh.”

Hansen gave a small smile. “Didn’t say that.”

“Alright.” You could hear something in the background. Voices, a door closing. “Six o’clock. Same place.”

“I know it.”

“Yeah, I know you do.”

They sat there a second.

“Be good to see you,” Matt said.

“Yeah. You too.”

Hansen ended the call and set the phone beside him, thinking about Matt.

They had worked the same roads his whole career. Same stretches of highway, same calls, same people getting pulled over year after year. Matt had always been steady.

There had been that one report, though.

Hansen could still see it the way it was written up. Clean on the surface, but off if you knew what you were looking at. Enough to keep a friend of Matt’s from catching a charge.

He hadn’t said anything at the time. He signed where he needed to and left it.

The guy never came back through their system.

Hansen shifted back against the bed and looked up at the ceiling.

Matt had been good to him.

Matt had helped him move out after his first divorce. Showed up again when the second one went the same way.

When he was nineteen, he thought Darla would be forever and that love was enough. By the time he married Vicki, he knew better, but he still gave it what he had. He never raised his voice, never put his hands on her, and he stayed faithful until the separation, even after he had moved into his own place and they were still saying they were trying to work things out. That was when it happened, the one time he hadn’t been a good cop.

He pushed himself up off the bed and stepped out of the truck, reaching into the side compartment for his pack. He lit a cigarette and stood there a minute, looking out over the lot.

The smoke settled in his chest.

He thought about that stop.

He walked up on the driver’s side, one hand near his belt.

“Evening.”

She had both hands on the wheel.

“Evening.”

“License and registration.”

She nodded and reached for the glove box. When she opened it, something small slid out and dropped into her lap. She caught it quick and pushed it back inside.

“Just papers,” she said, too fast.

He saw it. Small, plastic, not papers. He didn’t say anything.

She handed over the registration first, then went into her purse. It took her a second longer than it should have, her hands not quite steady. When she found her license, she passed it to him and watched his face.

He looked down at it.

Expired.

“Debra Dyer,” he said. “Osage Beach.”

“That’s me.”

He held the license a second longer, then looked back at her.

“Your license is expired.”

“I know.” She nodded, a little too quick. “I know. I just haven’t had the money to fix it yet.”

He didn’t respond.

“It’s not that bad,” she said. “I mean, I know it is, but I’ve been working. I just need a little time.”

“You know you can’t be driving like this.”

“I know.” She shifted in her seat, one hand lifting off the wheel before she set it back down. “I just needed to get home.”

“Where you coming from.”

“Work.”

“Where’s that.”

She hesitated, eyes flicking past him for a second.

“Up the road. A bar.”

“You been drinking.”

“No.” Quick. “No, I haven’t.”

He stood there, license still in his hand.

She looked at him again, and whatever she had been holding together slipped a little.

“Look,” she said. “I just need a break tonight. I can’t catch a charge right now. I just got this job back.”

He didn’t move.

“I’ll fix it. I will. I just need a little time.”

She held his eyes, then glanced down, then back up.

“I can make it worth your while,” she said.

He watched her a second longer. He couldn’t tell if she was flirting because she liked him or because she was desperate. He preferred to think she liked him.

He held her eyes a second longer.

“What do you mean by that,” he said.

She swallowed, then tried to steady herself.

“I mean I can take care of it,” she said. “However you want.”

He shifted his weight and leaned in a little closer to the window.

“You okay to drive,” he asked, “if I have you move somewhere else.”

She blinked at him.

“Somewhere else?”

“Yeah.”

“I can drive,” she said quickly. “I’m fine.”

He watched her a second, then nodded once.

“Alright. You’re going to follow me.”

She let out a breath she had been holding.

“Okay.”

He straightened up and handed her license back through the window.

“Stay behind me.”

“I will.”

He turned and walked back to his cruiser.

As he drove, he kept it steady, not too fast. He did not look back right away.

He had not been with a woman in months. Not since things with Vicki had started coming apart. Not since he had moved out.

He kept his eyes on the road.

If she turned off, he would not follow.

That would be her choice.

He meant that.

He turned onto a side road, then another, gravel kicking up under the tires.

If she stayed with him, that was her choice too.

He glanced once in the mirror.

She was still there.

They parked and she stepped out of the car and closed the door behind her.

“You sure about this,” he said.

She nodded.

“Yeah.”

He watched her a second.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I know,” she said. “I want to.”

He held her eyes, then nodded once.

He told himself that was enough. That she had said yes. That it was her choice.

He was back by the truck before he realized it.

The air had cooled some. He could feel it on his face, moving through the lot.

The dandelions shifted in it.

Not all at once. One patch, then another, like something passing through them instead of over them. The heads that had gone to seed trembled, then stilled, then moved again, out of time with the rest.

Hansen stood there and watched them.

They looked green in the low light. Not the pale white he remembered from when he was a kid, but something darker, heavier, like they hadn’t opened all the way.

He stayed there a minute longer, then looked away.

They had been the same unopened green along the edge of the road with Debra, shifting in the low light the way they had just now by the truck.

It was like they were holding something back.

Even then, they moved unevenly, catching the light wrong but somehow more beautiful.

He watched them, and then looked down at Debra.

She was on her knees in the gravel, slobber on her face catching the same light.

He could tell she was the kind of woman who used to be pretty.

He could tell she still was in the right light.

In this light, the one that turned dandelions green, it took years off her face.

It smoothed her out, and made her look closer to what she had been.

Hansen stood there and took her in.

He had never told anyone about it. There had been a gap in the time that night, and Matt would have seen it if he had gone looking, but he never asked. There was no report and no paperwork, nothing written down anywhere that tied Hansen to it.

He let her go. He told himself she needed the break, and he told her the same thing before she got back in her car, that she should get clean and live a better life than the one she was in.

He never put her name into the system after that. He never ran it later and never checked Casenet. That had been the rule he made for himself, and he kept it. As long as he was a cop, he stayed away from it.

He did not look her up, did not try to find out who she knew, where she spent her time, whether she was married, or whether she had a record. He left it alone completely. Left her alone completely.

He stepped off the gravel a few feet and pissed into the grass at the edge of the lot. The stream hit the dirt and ran a little before soaking in, and he stood there a second after he was done, looking out into the dark, then zipped up and went back inside.

He changed into a pair of worn pants and a t-shirt, and the bunk was already made, so he lay down on top of it with one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

After a while, his eyes closed, and he could see it easy enough.

A double wide set back off a two-lane road, with a gravel drive and grass that never quite came in right, and a mower that started on the second or third pull.

He was in the kitchen before the sun was up, with coffee going, the cheap kind, and he poured two cups without thinking about it.

“Deb,” he said, not loud, just enough to carry.

He heard her move in the bedroom, slow at first, then the floor creaking as she got up.

She came out with her hair still a mess, pulling on a shirt and squinting against the light.

“You’re up early,” she said.

“Got things to do.”

She took the cup from him and leaned against the counter, not saying much.

Later there were people in the yard, a grill going, and someone calling her Debbie from across the grass, and she turned at that, smiled, and answered back.

He stood by the grill, flipping meat and listening to it all without needing to be part of every word.

On Sundays he mowed, making straight lines where he could manage them, cutting down weeds and dandelions the same as anything else.

It was not much, but it held together.

He lay there with his eyes closed, still seeing her the way she had looked in that light.

After a while, his foot started to throb.

It had started in the second toe, but now it had spread through the whole foot. Not sharp, not enough to make him move, just a dull, steady throb that settled in once he stopped for the night.

It always did this now.

He shifted it a little against the mattress and let it sit.

It had been five years since that night with Debra. Two years since he stepped back from the force. His parents were in their seventies now. He was in his fifties.

He lay there and felt it in his foot.

He reached over and picked up his phone, opened Facebook, and scrolled without really looking at anything. Pictures of people he half knew, kids growing up, someone’s new truck, a dog, a plate of food, and after a while it all ran together.

He paused on a post from his mom, a photo of her and his dad sitting at the kitchen table with the cat stretched out between them, his dad looking older than he remembered and his mom smiling at the camera like she always did.

He kept scrolling after that, the light from the screen sitting in his face while the rest of the truck stayed dark, his foot still holding that same dull throb that had settled in for the night.

After a while, his thumb slowed and stopped, not on anything that mattered, just held there while he looked at the screen.

He was not really Officer Hansen anymore, not the way he had been, not full time, and people looked each other up all the time, it did not mean anything, it was just something people did.

Looking up Debra would not be much different than looking up anyone else, and he lay there with the phone in his hand, the screen still on, without typing anything yet.

Finally, he typed Debra Dyer Osage Beach into the search bar.

There were a few of them. Profile pictures, names, places that looked close enough to matter. He looked at each one, trying to match it to what he remembered, but none of them settled into place. One might have been her. Another almost. Then not.

He stayed there longer than he needed to, going back over them again.

Then he thought he heard something, enough to make him stop and listen.

He held still, phone in his hand, eyes on the screen.

Nothing came after it.

He set the phone down beside him, turned onto his side, and closed his eyes.