Fictional Novel Exerpt
Posted on February 16, 2008
Filed Under General |
Fictional Novel Excerpt
By: A. M. McKeon
Blue Mustang
Prologue
The driver of a patrol car following a moderate distance behind watched as the blue Mustang weaved from side to side. When it crossed the middle line and was jerked back he thought that it was looking for a place to have an accident or worse. The Mustang’s brake lights flashed and the car slowed down to a crawl before he saw the wheels straighten and move ahead correctly. Obviously a drunk! A strong tanned hand, hit the siren button, and simultaneously the switch operating the revolving blue and red lights, giving notice to the driver of the errant car to pull over. Deputy Timothy J. Decker pulled off the road and parked directly behind the blue Mustang and thought, Nice Ride!
He got out of the patrol car cautiously. One hand hovered over his hip where his holster hung comfortably at his side. He unsnapped the holster cover. The other hand pushed his aviator sunglasses with the reflective lenses up on his nose. He was tall, extremely fit for thirty-three, and he walked with a slight swagger.
The young lady sitting at the wheel of her Mustang watched his approach in her rear-view mirror. Damn!
He approached the driver’s side of the car and called to the driver through the open side window, “Step out of the vehicle, please.”
She opened the door and her long bare and tanned legs stretched out to the gravel as she
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stood up, resting one arm on top of the door. This action pulled her up her shirt and he saw her breast rise and strain beneath the fabric.
He thought: She is goooood!
She had on a pair of short-shorts topped with a green and white Jimmy Buffet T-shirt.
Decker also noticed that underneath she was wearing a green bra; maybe a top to a bathing suit. Her blonde ponytail was held with a rubber band and she wore a green baseball cap, the brim pulled forward to shade her face.
As he got closer, he could not smell alcohol. He thought: Whatever made this gorgeous dish swerve so dangerously, it obviously wasn’t booze. I guess I won’t have to administer a breathalyzer test.
“May I see your license and proof of insurance please?”
“Yes sir, officer, just let me get it from my purse.” She was polite enough. Her purse was on the front seat leaning against the passenger side door. She rested one knee on the driver’s seat and bending over, reached for her handbag.
Watching he thought: Nice butt, too. “You can get back in your car now, if you want too,” he said.
“Did you think I had been drinking?”
He looked her up and down and noticed a brown spot on the front of her shorts in a very interesting place. “The way you were swerving back and forth on the road, it certainly looked like you were.”
She reached in her purse, retrieved her wallet and withdrew her drivers-license. “My proof of insurance is in the glove box.” She sat back behind the wheel and while he was copying down the driver’s license information on his pad, she popped open the glove box and was getting her proof of insurance out for him. “The reason I was swerving,” she said, “is that I dropped the ice cream off my cone and it fell—” she gestured toward her crotch, and then smiled. She lifted the little plastic trashcan she kept on the floor and showed him the contents. A slightly soggy sugar cone and a large scoop of chocolate mocha nut lay now melting in the container, along with a tissue or two. “It was cold, and really startled me.”
The door was still open, and since it was obviously a true tale of woe, he couldn’t help but laugh; nor could he keep his eyes off the front of her shorts.
“It wouldn’t be so funny if it happened to you. The stuff got caught in the cuff of my shorts, and I wouldn’t just push it off onto the floor, by the time I actually got it off my leg, it was pretty much an icy cold mess in an uncomfortable place.” He had already decided not to write her a ticket, but the story was too original to ignore.
“I don’t suppose it would do me any good to ask you where you got the ice cream?”
“It wouldn’t hurt—I stopped at that new little ice cream place back there on the corner.
He glanced at his notebook, “Elaine Gessup?” He asked, “Mrs. Gessup?”
“Nope, Ms. Gessup. Soft g. Still single!”
“Okay, then, Ms. Elaine Gessup, you can go on your way now but the next time you buy ice cream on a cone, make sure it is pushed in before you start out driving on the highway, otherwise eat it first, Okay?”
“Yes, sir, officer.”
One week later, he was patrolling the same stretch of highway, when a blue Mustang passed him going ten miles over the speed limit. It couldn’t be the same one! My luck isn’t that good! Again, turning his siren and blue and red lights on, he pursued the car, pulling it over. Again, carrying his little pad of tickets, he approached the driver’s side of the car with caution. “Elaine Gessup, I presume? With a soft G?”
“Yes sir,” she said. She automatically reached for proof of insurance in her glove box and pulled her drivers license from her wallet to hand him before he could ask. Today, from what he could see, she was wearing a colorful summer dress that left her tanned shoulders bare.
“You realize that you were traveling ten miles over the speed limit?”
“Not on purpose officer. My heel got caught under the gas pedal, and I tried to pull it out, I’m afraid I was pushing my toe downward as I pulled on my heel to dislodge it. But you are right, I was speeding, but not for long, less than half a minute maybe.”
He pushed his glasses back up. Then he said, “Show me!”
He opened the car door, and saw her long tanned bare legs, wearing sassy sandals with high heels. Nice legs! He thought.
“See?” she said, and reproduced the heel-under-the-pedal-phenomenon to his satisfaction. He reached in and helped her pull it out. It had been tightly stuck in there. With the over-the-toes straps being the only thing holding the shoe on her foot, she really did have a hard time pulling it out.
“Okay,” he said, folding his ticket book back up and tucking it into his pocket. “I suggest that you be really careful going home and in the future, wear a different shoe to drive, okay? Wouldn’t want to see you getting hurt.” He smiled, and his teeth shown whiter than white against his tanned face. She returned his smile, told him thank you, and said that she would be careful in the future.
Seven days after that, same time, same place the blue Mustang barreled through the corner, past the ice cream stand, on a yellow light, and just missed colliding with a turning vehicle. This time the top was down on the Mustang. He could see the driver. Reckless driving, if I ever saw it, he thought, and pulled the car over. He already had her name and address on the ticket before he got to the car. He approached the car and she was sitting in the driver seat smiling at him when he got to the window.
“Deputy Decker! We have to stop meeting like this!”
Taken aback, he started to upbraid her for recklessness, when she interrupted.
“You have my name and address, why don’t you just mail me one warning every week, then you wouldn’t have to stop me.” Even with her sunglasses on, she squinted up at him with a smile that deepened an incredible dimple in her cheek.
“Would you like the ticket this time?”
“Only if you’ll let me buy you a cup of coffee on your break.”
He stood perfectly still, thinking furiously. She is one fine looking woman, he was thinking, but do I really need to get involved? Would coffee constitute unprofessional conduct? He thought a minute more, tapping his pen against his ticket book. She was driving recklessly, she does deserve a ticket, and she already has had two warnings. On the other hand–”I’m due for a lunch break in fifteen minutes and I usually eat at the restaurant down the street. If you happen to be there, I will share a table with you,” he said and he tore the ticket from the pad, and handed it to her, He returned to his vehicle.
He heard her mutter, “Damn.” He smiled, as he got into his car.
Chapter 1
Elaine Gessup grabbed up her camera case and ran to the Channel 11 News helicopter where Pat Riley and a soundman were waiting impatiently for her. She had been getting her things ready to go home when the order came down to cover a pileup on the highway. That is all she knew so far. How many cars were involved at this point was unknown as the only information so far received by the station was from the police dispatches on the audio scanner from two counties, two state police posts and three cities and townships. The chatter was so complex that it had been difficult to discern. Whatever it was, it was big.
As a cameraman for the local news on Channel 11, Elaine did not film in house; that is, she didn’t work in the studio. Being a cameraman who follows the news reporters out to the news sites, she often rode in the Channel 11 mobile news van along with a reporter and soundman.
Elaine was good at her job and the reporters liked her because neither “rain, nor hail, nor dark of night” kept her from many on site stories; she followed them with nary a grumble. Reporters stand in wind and rain, sometimes feeling like they are going to be blown away. In winter she followed reporters out in snowstorms to survey slippery highways while they stood covered up in goose down jackets with hoods pulled up as far as they could pull them to keep warm and still let the audience see their faces.
On every channel, it is the same. It is almost as though the news directors do not think the viewing public would believe a weather or news report without those visuals showing their own reporters suffer in the elements.
Sometimes there was some action, sometimes there wasn’t. The worst times for both the reporter and the cameraman, was when there was an accident. Writing and reporting stories of injury and death is difficult at best, but when it is a scene of multiple deaths it is worse. It doesn’t matter if it was a shooting from a domestic violence report, or a drive-by shooting, whether it was armed robbery or a homicide. If a reporter was allowed in, Elaine the cameraman was sure to follow. If the reporter was in a harrowing scene, someone was taking the pictures.
From what Elaine heard, as she bounded after Pat Riley, her daytime partner and news reporter, a small plane had crashed onto the highway hitting a tanker truck. The tanker and plane literally rolled over together. Vehicles behind the tanker ran into each other in an attempt to avoid the crash. a couple of cars didn’t avoid the rollover. Traffic was backed up one mile already.
Elaine hurried to the helicopter pad out back of the station. Elaine lifted her camera case up to the soundman who was already aboard. The pilot was warming the engine, and the rotor blades were beginning to turn when she and Riley hopped through the open side door. There wasn’t a lot of room but it was sufficient for the three of them and their equipment. Elaine hung out near the door so that she could take pictures. Her film would be worked into a story later but right now information was of the essence, so Pat would be sending his initial report wireless; audio wouldn’t be too good over the sound of the rotors, but later the soundman would submit his tapes and after audio editing the sound would be better.
Coming to the accident site from the northeast, the pilot flew over the highway, turning due west into the setting sun. The pile up of cars was on the westbound lane. Elaine yelled for the pilot to come in from the other side, so that the photos would be without glare. Meanwhile she shot straight downward and did the best she could. He would have to turn around anyway, so she could shoot from the front to the back of the double lane highway and hope there was no reflection from the windshields of the vehicles below.
“Oh, my God it looks like a war zone,” she said out loud. She wasn’t heard over the roar of the helicopter.
Cars, pickup trucks, semis, Greyhound buses, and two school buses were stopped, some sideways on the highway and some smashed into the vehicle in front of them. The rest of the vehicles were lined up behind the accident scene. Apparently, they hadn’t started detouring drivers off at the earlier exit yet. She could see people lying out on the grass, some covered with blankets and some not. Many were still sitting in their cars slumped over their steering wheels. There were police cars at both ends of the scene. A few of them had attempted to drive in the meridian but were stopped when they couldn’t get around crashed vehicles. Some who had come in on the other side of the highway, just drove across the meridian to the accident.
Ambulances also had to come in from the other side, and then the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) had to carry their equipment. There were so many cars that none of the service vehicles could get where they needed to be.
The copter pilot yelled that he could drop them off after they did the aerial shots, and Elaine yanked her film cartridge and sent it with the pilot back to the station. Riley pointed out an area where he wanted to be set down, in the midst of a group of parked police cars.
Riley, Elaine, and the soundman jumped out of the side of the copter and it took off again. Because of the size of the event, it was thought that bringing out another crew from the station was a good idea. Riley was too excited to argue because he saw no other reporters from surrounding cities yet on the scene. The three of them ran to the first car they found, and worked their way to the front. Elaine tried to ignore the stupid questions Riley was asking everyone: “How do you feel?” “Are you hurt?” “Are your children okay?” “Is he dead?” She thought she would vomit, but swallowed hard and kept the camera rolling. After half an hour, she reached into one of her mammoth side pockets, and switched out the cartridge, and started again. She was running now, to keep up with the reporter, and noticed that somehow they had lost their boom man. She sure wished the reporter would do his own recording. She wasn’t sure her equipment had been close enough to pick up the answers that some were giving Riley. A couple of people just swore at him.
When they got to the front, Riley headed out to talk with the police and fire chief, leaving her with instructions that he would call her back on the walkie-talkies if she were needed. “You can just walk around the tanker and the worst damaged vehicles and shoot everything you can.” Okay, I can do that! Thank God it wasn’t a fuel tanker. I don’t think I could have handled that!
Rescue workers had been working with the injured at this end of the pile-up. It looked like there were at least a hundred cars. One of them had shot over the meridian into the other lane, pushing two smaller cars off the road on the opposite lane. Therefore, on this small section of highway both sides were blocked. She could see a string of impatient rush hour drivers on the eastbound highway waiting for a lane to be cleared so they could be on their way. She imagined them looking at the horrible accident on the westbound side and saying, “Those poor bastards!”
It was about all she could do to keep her late lunch from coming back up on her, but she kept the camera running; she was in an automatic pilot mode, and was working without conscious effort. Her foot caught on something as she was descending into the meridian where several cars were entangled beyond the tanker, and she went flying directly on her face. Habit kept her arm up high protecting the camera at all costs, but when she landed, so did the camera right next to her nose, her hand still clutching it tightly so it did not hit the ground hard. She lay there a minute waiting for the stars to fade from her vision, and then she cautiously attempted to get up.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Someone was yelling at her. “You have no right to be out here in our way.” Then she was jerked to her feet, her cap falling off her head revealing her blond ponytail and two very shocked brown eyes.
Staring at her, equally as shocked was a tall, tanned policeman. A policeman she knew. It took a few seconds for the situation to penetrate her brain and be processed, but he was a lot quicker. “Ms. Gessup, I presume? Looking for another ticket are we?”
Elaine studied him for a moment, touched her scratched jaw and face to find that the parts were still there. She moved the jaw back and forth to make sure the teeth were still in place, and then smiled up into his face impishly, lifted her clearly marked Channel 11 News Camera and switching it on, she photographed his face, then panned the lens ever so slowly over his torso, so that his entire body was recorded in close-up. His fists were on his hips. His clothes were covered in blood and soil. His face was haggard with distress. She felt the camera being pushed aside. She jerked the camera away from his hand, but she felt a guilty surge of pity as she switched the camera and sound off.
“I asked, what the hell do you think you are doing?”
“My job, Decker,” she replied, looking pointedly at the nametag over the pocket of his soiled uniform shirt. His arms were scratched up and bloody; a little like her face. Then more softly, she added: “Just my job.”
He turned abruptly back to the car he was working on and she picked up and replaced her cap and turned the camera back on. There were two firemen, another patrolman and Decker attempting to cut the doors open so that he could gain access to release the child seats in the back. She could see two children secured in the rear. In the front seat, one person lay over the steering wheel, the soggy looking air bag hanging over the man’s shoulder, and E.M.T.s were already taking a woman out of the front passenger side. She picked her camera back up to her shoulder, and started talking into her own recorder, describing what was happening. She had to reach for his first name again, but quickly Timothy came to mind. Timothy Decker, County Sheriff’s Deputy. She filmed the rescue of the children, and their safe return their mother’s side; a mother who was being transported by gurney to a waiting ambulance on the side of the eastbound lane. Then the Emergency Medical Technicians started on the driver’s side. The driver was injured, but was still alive and in the opinion of the E.M.T.s was in better condition than his wife. In short order, he also was on a stretcher and placed in the same ambulance. Elaine had managed to read aloud the names of the E.M.T.s and the fireman displayed on their jackets, and then pan the mangled license plate on the rear of the car. She turned the camera off again. She watched as identification was copied from the insurance forms in the glove box.
She asked Decker hesitatingly, “What are you going to do with the children?”
“They should be transported to the hospital until social workers can pick them up,” he said, as the ambulances were driving away with their passengers on board toward a city hospital. She saw that traffic was finally about to be released on one eastbound lane, and walked over to one of the slow moving vehicles driven by a woman. She simply knocked on her window.
The driver saw the Channel 11 News Camera in Elaine’s hand, and she rolled down her window and stopped. When asked if she could follow the ambulance and transport the children to the emergency room at the hospital to be with their parents, she could hardly refuse.
Elaine turned her camera on Decker as he carried the younger child and held the hand of the older kid and he deposited them into the back seat of the car, sans car seats. The woman asked if there were usable car seats in their parent’s car, so he and Elaine went back and retrieved them, and after installing the seats and confining the crying kids into the seats. The lady slowly caught up with the other moving vehicles, and headed out to deposit the children at the hospital where their parents were taken. Elaine got the driver’s name and recorded the story on her video, and taped the retreating car, thus preserving the license number of her good Samaritan.
Decker had moved on to the next car to see what he could do to help the firemen. Elaine heard the walkie-talkie beep, and responded. She was ordered back to the copter for pick-up in order to return them to the station in time to make the six o’clock news with what they had. Other reporters and cameramen would take over here.
Riley, Elaine, and the now found soundman, boarded the copter and returned to the studio, where she turned her film over to the editors who would hook them directly up to the computers. They would sort the news clips they found usable. Using the reporter’s words from the scene, whatever dialog had been picked up by the microphone in the boom, and what was on Elaine’s camera they got a great story about the rescue efforts. The initial reports recapped the accident that had caused the chain pile-up, and Elaine’s film fleshed out the story. After a telephone call to make sure that the family had actually made it to the hospital, the story about the Good Samaritan who willingly took two children to the hospital to join their parents, was icing on the cake.
Elaine begged Glen to erase the half-minute of footage she had taken of Decker’s body as a favor to her. The consummate editor, he agreeably erased those seconds of footage; at least he appeared to. Satisfied, Elaine headed for home.
For once, she drove carefully. She didn’t expect a plane to crash in front of her, but who knows? She remembered a friend of hers that was a week-end pilot. He told her that if he had engine trouble, he wouldn’t hesitate to merge with traffic on a highway.
The fact that Elaine had taken a minute to read the names of the rescue personnel as she photographed them helped a lot, especially since most of their clothing was so badly soiled that nametags were unreadable in the pictures. She was too tired to move, but knew if she didn’t rest tonight, she wouldn’t make it back to work in the morning so she took off for home. No stopping at the pub for rest and relaxation tonight with the gang.
When enjoying a few beers with the guys at the local bar, Elaine was often heard to expound about the unfairness of it all. She liked to ridicule those who climbed Mt. Everest “Because”, she asked, “who took the photos? That is the mystery! When people are filmed while swimming with sharks, who took the picture? When soldiers are dying on a battlefield, who took the video?”
Her coworkers would moan and say, “Everyone can’t work for National Geographic or CNN.”
“The only time a cameraman gets recognition is when he gets blown up with a reporter. Every time a reporter goes into a war zone, the cameraman and even the soundman goes there with him. News crews are driven through a war zone in an armored Humvee, for pity’s sake, and either they peek out of the top or get out to take a photo. Has anyone ever read the name of the rest of the team that might be with them in those vehicles? NO! And what about the civilians who are hurt at the same time? There is almost always an interpreter along for the ride. Anybody know their names? No!”
By this time, her friends learned to cut her off before she ordered beer number three. Three beers put her right to sleep and they couldn’t just leave her in the bar to sleep it off. Finally, she had to live with an enforced two-beer limit. Her co-workers had picked her up too many times and hauled her home to bed, and they really didn’t like doing it.
No one had any secret yearning for Elaine. The thing is, when she worked during the winter she wore ill fitting Wrangler Jeans and Carhart jackets, with heavy engineer boots because she never knew where the story would take her. She dressed just like the other cameramen, and found that her clothing made for a great chastity belt. She also had a collection of caps she wore under the hooded jacket when it was cold out. During the summer, she paired up with sweatshirts and heavy-duty steel toed walking shoes. The camera was heavy and she needed heavy padding on her shoulder. She often needed to bend, squat or kneel, so she also needed her clothes to flex with her. A sound person followed behind her holding the boom up and over the cameraman’s head to pick up the voice of the reporter. Mostly, though, it was just her and Riley, who didn’t mind holding his own microphone because he said that he never knew what to do with his hands.
Sometimes, especially during the spring and summer, she would get to do a cushy job, like going out with a reporter to show the world the beautiful spring daffodils that were planted in the freeway meridians twenty years ago. Thousand and thousands of blooming gold and white covered the green grass. “Food for the soul”, she’d say. Then her camera could show some of the beauty in the world. Honestly, she thought they cut too much out when they edited. She thought that the local news should take a lesson from the Sunday Morning CBS Show that always had a short segment of some place of beauty and simply played it on air with sounds of a rippling brook or singing birds.
Co-workers would describe Elaine as an okay looking woman from what you could see of her. Her eyes were brown and her hair was blond. That was an interesting combination. Her nose was pert and she had a dimple that played in her cheek, depending on whether she was going to smile or not. When her eyes crinkled with mirth, so did her dimple. Elaine didn’t care what people thought of her looks, she covered herself up most of the time anyway unless she was home or going to her brother’s place on the lake. Then she would wear her bathing suit, no bikinis thank you, or her short shorts. When she mucked out the barns it didn’t matter what she wore. However, that was her private life, not work.
She had made friends wherever she had worked, men and women both, but, alas, no boyfriend. Does a twenty-nine year old woman have a “boy friend”? Or, would he be a “lover”? She just didn’t have time! Maybe she just wasn’t the type. She had been burned once and she learned from experience. Dhe didn’t realize that much of her behavior was governed by a deep anger at what she had allowed to happen to her.
Did she mind being called a cameraman? Not on your life! It wasn’t a personal job, so she didn’t take it personally. She was not attracted to any of the men she worked with, especially not the on-air reporters, but she was friendly so they treated her decently. Of course, looking at her while she was at work, who would ever guess what was underneath those layers of cloth?
At five foot nine she was a little embarrassed that her legs seemed longer than most. She had to buy men’s jeans just for inseam length, and besides they were cheaper than the same jeans from a woman’s store. She lived by herself in a little two-bedroom apartment, in a four-unit building just outside of town. She was close enough to the studio but far enough out for it to be relatively quiet. She did like the quiet. She had all of her computers and equipment set up in the second bedroom, and enjoyed a few hours a week working on her own projects. And best of all, she was close to the farm.
She was working on a video of Wild Michigan’s flora and fauna, that she knew would never sell, but it was a self indulgent project for her own personal benefit. She traveled around on her days off, walked through forests and bike riding trails to her hearts content, her small video camera and herself.
The night of the horrendous highway pile-up she hadn’t stayed at work long enough to watch the news report at six. Eight hours at work then two hours at the accident scene had totally wiped her out. She had learned how to hide her emotions a long time ago—way before she started work at the TV station. Without changing her clothes, she removed her shoes, threw herself across her bed and quickly fell asleep.
She woke up at ten, took a shower, dabbed some salve on her scratches, put on her pajamas and made herself a bowl of cereal. She sat in her dining room with the TV on, waiting for the Channel 11 news to see what the other reporters had brought in after she and Riley had gone home. When she flipped on Channel 11, she was surprised to see Riley looking chipper, sitting side by side with the eleven o’clock anchors talking about the accident scene as the video footage ran. During the footage report, she was shocked to hear her own, sometimes breathless, voice describing the pictures she had taken, but then the silent shot of Sheriff’s Deputy Timothy Decker popped on the screen. Yikes! That damned Glen, he said he deleted that part. She stared at the screen. Even in color, the pictures were monotone because she had taken them when the sun was setting. This put the light behind Decker, making it appear like he was surrounded by a halo. But why would they use that shot? It certainly wasn’t news – But what a shot! Every woman in the county will be after that man! She was shocked to feel an unfamiliar clenching in her belly, but wanted to smile.
Then she heard the voice of Riley: “Deputy Timothy Decker, one of a group of heroes this night, saving the lives of a whole family from at least one vehicle.” The scene flashed to Decker carrying the children to the lady’s car before it followed the ambulance carrying their mother and father to safety and to the hospital —and blah, blah, blah. Riley didn’t even know what had happened at that site, just what he saw and heard on the tape. He was making it up. She had to admit, though, that the story was good for six o’clock. What about now? Isn’t it old news now?
It turned out that the driver of the tanker and the pilot of the plane were both killed. There were only about six people injured enough for hospital care, everyone else received first aid at the site, and were advised to see their own doctors in the morning. The highway would be open again for westbound traffic by midnight. She shivered a little bit. She regretted the injuries and deaths, but part of her realized that the best part of the entire news story was hers! Wow!
She called her brother, and found him just turning off the news himself. “Bud, did you hear?”
“I sure did. That sounded just like you. I thought you were behind the camera not on it.”
“I wasn’t on it, but there was no sound man with me, so I turned the sound on my camera just to record the information. It never occurred to me that they would use it!”
“Congratulations, kid. Now that you have become a real photojournalist, do you get a raise?”
“Not likely, Bud, but it sure is nice to be recognized.”
“How could anyone not recognize you?” She just grinned a little and hung up. Then, she went to the fridge to see what she could find to eat. Not much there. The cereal just made her hungrier. She was considering peanut butter and jelly when she heard a loud knock on her door. Peeking through her peephole, she was surprised to see the top of a curly head of hair. Who?
He had been resting with one hand outstretched to either side of the door, a stance that many men take when they have to wait and are too tired to stand upright. Then the head rose up, exposing one irritated looking police officer! He knocked again, just as she reached for the doorknob. “You are intent on waking the entire building, Decker, so come in before you do.” She said.
He came in as ordered, but was transfixed by her appearance: Bare feet, cotton pajamas, sparkling clean blonde hair, and small scratches across a cheek still shiny from the shower. At first he couldn’t get his breath to speak.
“My God, get in here!” she dragged him into the kitchen and got him a large glass of cold water. He was too tired to argue. She pushed him into a chair and took off his shoes and his socks, and then dragged him into the bathroom.
She ran the water, filling the tub as high as she could, with as hot as she could stand, testing it with her elbow like she would have if it were her niece’s bathwater. She didn’t want to burn him. She dropped in some Epson salts that spun with the gush of water and dissolved. “Now,” she said, “strip and get into this tub.”
He did as she asked, hesitating a little with his underwear. Since it was apparent that she wasn’t looking at him stripped, he sank gratefully into the hot water. She tossed him a washcloth and soap, gathered up his clothes and left the room.
Elaine stood outside the door, puzzled at her own actions. What the heck am I doing?
Regardless of the fact that the tag said dry clean only, she began filling the washing machine with cold water. She laid the shirt and pants on top of the washer and poured a full bottle of peroxide over it all. Then a second bottle followed. Over the sink, she rubbed the surfaces together, and worked the peroxide into the shirt, then rinsed it out, the bloody water washing down the drain. “Make it or break it,” she said aloud, pouring enough heavy-duty laundry detergent in the machine to wash an entire football teams scrimmage uniforms, and set it for a second rinse. She heard no sound from the bathroom, but in thirty-five minutes the washing machine shut off, so she popped everything into the dryer with a nice smelling dryer sheet. Then she smiled for the first time since Decker arrived, thinking, He’s going to love the way he smells.
Again, at the fridge, she examined the contents. Okay, she had at least six eggs. She had half a tomato, some cheddar, and a left over salad. From the salad she removed four green pepper rings and couple of onion slices and a chunk of tomato. She was heating a skillet and beating the eggs when she heard a bump from the bathroom. She turned off the burner and went in to see what was going on. Decker had fallen asleep and woke up just as he was slipping under the water. She stood at the door, and with a little smile said, “Hurry up. Your clothes aren’t dry yet, but there is a one size fits all terry robe hanging there on the back of the door. I’m making some scrambled eggs and toast.”
In a few minutes, he came out of the bathroom, hair curling over his forehead and dripping a bit, wrapped in the robe that only came to just below his knees.
Funny, it fits longer on me and I’m tall. How big is this guy, anyway. “It’s too late for coffee, and I bet you guys had a lot of that tonight so I made hot chocolate,” she said. She placed a stack of whole-wheat toast, homemade fresh strawberry jam from her grandmother’s house, and a plate of scrambled eggs with veggies and cheese in front of him. After putting her own plate on the table, she got the chocolate pot and set out two cups. The butter and pepper grinder and salt were already on the table, because living alone she never saw any reason to put them away.
They ate in silence for a minute, then she asked, “Okay, Deputy Decker, why are you here?”
Setting his fork on his plate, he pushed it back a bit and rested his arms on the table. The parts of his arms that she could see out of the end of the sleeves were scratched in dozens of places. The cuts looked red and mean. They must be sore.
“I don’t know,” he started, “I had a good reason when I left the station, but right now I don’t know why I am here.”
She didn’t answer him at first, and then asked. “Do they have a TV at the station.” He nodded. “Okay, then, you don’t have to say anything. I want you to know, that I begged the editor to erase and delete that part of the video that I took of you. I know you were angry with me at the time, but I was being smart! I really didn’t mean to be disrespectful to you. Honest–!
He touched her hand, “Don’t! It’s okay–I admit I was mad when I saw it tonight—I felt so foolish. Everyone was out there working, and me? I make the news!”
“The producer approves all news clips, Decker. I have nothing to do with what goes on the air. Imagine my surprise when I heard my own voice? The voice over reporting is usually done by the anchor.”
She got up and went into the bathroom, returning with a tube of an antibiotic cream that also would remove the sting from minor cuts. Opening a new box of facial tissue, she began blotting at the areas on his arms that were still oozing blood. She squirted the ointment onto a gauze pad and began gently applying it to cover each scratch. She saw that some of the cuts were deeper than the others, and then she nicked her finger on a sliver of glass imbedded in his arm.
He watched her move with deliberate slowness, as she walked to the bathroom the second time and returned holding a pair of tweezers and some rubbing alcohol. First soaking the tweezers in alcohol, she rinsed them under the faucet, and shook them dry. She tweezed and removed the tiny pieces of glass from his arm.
Then she applied the ointment, and continued the conversation about the news report.
“What does that mean?” He asked.
“Well, my guess is that tomorrow, when I go into work, the reporters will be pissed off at me, and the other cameramen will make their fun at my expense. Hell, I don’t know!” She gave him the folded tissue holding the six pieces of glass she had removed from his arms. “You may want to keep these for your memory book.” Taking his hand into hers, she rubbed some of the ointment on his knuckles and then blotted it with tissue. “Did you punch a window out with your fist?” Then interrupting herself, she said. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. When you get home, put on a long sleeved clean shirt. There is no place to attach a band-aid so the alternative would be to wrap you up in gauze, which is pretty silly because your cuts aren’t that bad. The air will probably do more to heal these up than a bandage.” Privately she hoped he hadn’t handled any injured people tonight who were bleeding, but from what she saw, E.M.T.s handled the injured patients. This was all Decker’s blood.
He picked up his fork again, and finished his eggs, then started with the toast. He hadn’t eaten dinner and frankly was hungry. This meal was ambrosia to a starving man. She drank her hot chocolate as he finished up the toast, slathering on the jam. She watched him carefully, and studied his features for the first time. Dark blue eyes, arched clean brows, straight nose, full mouth, sharply lined cheeks—still tired but tanned face, and those white circles that guys get when they spend a lot of time in the sun and wear aviator sun glasses. He looked up and smiled at her and her heart actually gave a lurch. At least she hoped it was her heart. The feeling was very pleasant, so she knew it wasn’t her stomach although the clenching she felt earlier was obvious. She smiled back at him, as she refilled their cups finishing off the hot chocolate.
She heard a ding from the laundry room. She gathered up his clothes, folding his slacks to hold the crease. She laid them over her arm. His shirt dangled from her finger and she shook out his clean briefs with the other hand. “You may have to send these to the cleaners just to get them ironed, but for now, they are clean and warm. Go get dressed!” she ordered.
And he did as she asked. When he came out of the bathroom, he finally felt human again. For not being ironed his uniform looked surprisingly good on him. The warmth from the freshly dried clothes relaxed his sore muscles as much as the hot bath had, and he sat back down at the table where she was still nursing her cup of hot chocolate.
“Do you always entertain in your pajamas?” he asked. She tucked the tube of salve into his shirt pocket.
“No, but you were wearing my robe.”
“Oh—”
“Are you complaining about my clothes?” she queried. “If I recall, I am wearing more now than I was the first time you saw me.”
“Yeah. I remember.” Then he smiled again. “I got more mileage out of that traffic stop than I will get out of tonight’s horror!”
“You didn’t talk about me to your cohorts!”
“Actually, I did. You have the longest legs I have ever seen.”
“Please, don’t rub it in. I can’t help the way I am made.”
“Judging by the way you look when you are working, Elaine Gessup with a soft g of Channel 11 News, you do a very good job hiding the way you are made. Why do you hide yourself under those horrible clothes? You dress like a coal miner.”
“I dress like the other cameramen. I am a woman — the only woman cameraman at Channel 11. It is sort of like a uniform. Everyone leaves me alone.”
“But when I first saw you? Ah–those were on weekends?”
“Days off. On my days off I usually head out to my brother’s house. He has a lake front house, he is raising two kids alone, and since they are quite young they still like my company.”
“I would think so! You were very good with those children last night.”
“Thank you—so were you. And apparently the whole world is going to know it. That segment even made a tear come to my eye, and I shot the thing.”
“You are most excellent at what you do, too good!”
“Don’t get sarcastic on me now.”
“Not sarcastic, Elaine with a soft g Gessup.” He got up and headed to the door, she followed him. “I won’t offer to help you with the dishes—I have a feeling I’d better leave while I can.”
“Good night then,” she said, amiably.
He turned toward her, and reached his cut-up scratched hand to her face, rubbing his thumb along her jaw line near where her scratches were. “Damn — ” Then he turned abruptly and left!
She closed the door and leaned against it, “Well—Well, what do you know about that?”
He sat in his truck a long time before leaving the parking lot of her apartment house. What was I thinking! Am I nuts? I was standing as naked as a jaybird and she wasn’t even looking at me! She didn’t even look embarrassed, certainly not as embarrassed as I was. Just one of the guys! Nuts to that
Chapter 2
The story of the one hundred-car pile up ran on the local channel and on the national network that depends on the local channels for their stories. The one segment, however, that seemed to repeat itself was the shot of Deputy Timothy J. Decker carrying a child in one bloody arm and leading the other to safety. It didn’t matter if there were dozens of workers there, or if the cameraman was Elaine helping him out by commandeering the ride. A small mention of the Good Samaritan was sometimes part of the story.
The problems started when Decker was called into the Sheriff’s office to be told he had been asked by CBS Morning Show to go to New York and be interviewed on the air, and he refused. The Sheriff was miffed, but had to finally compromise when the show’s rep asked if he would allow an interview at the Sheriff’s office. The Sheriff agreed, ordering Decker to show up. Decker finally said yes if the other members of the group he had worked with that afternoon is included. The E.M.T.s, firemen and the other police officers that had helped him with the victims of the car that held the children also would be part of the interview.
In the meantime, at the studio, Riley and Elaine were ordered to do the interview at the Sheriff’s office. Riley wanted to move up to an anchor position, and this was his chance. Elaine just wanted to take pictures.
Arriving at the police station, Elaine found chaos. They had even called in the parents of the children, even though they wore bandages and the father was in a wheel chair and wore a soft neck brace. This was drama at its best. Their mother had a cast on one of her arms. The children were confused about the whole thing, but they remembered Elaine and ran to meet her when she came in. She suggested using the Sheriff’s office with the overstuffed couches and chairs to make a more informal grouping, and the Sheriff agreed. Sitting in the several desk chairs that had been dragged into the grouping was a very uncomfortable deputy, and the E.M.T.s, firemen and other police officers who were shifting in their chairs and wishing they could be someplace else.
This time the interviewees would be wired for sound, so the soundman and director attached collar microphones to their shirts and little transmitters to their waistbands in back.
Smiling to herself, Elaine stabilized her camera on her shoulder and panned the grouping as the interview began.
Everyone answered the questions asked of them, but offered no new information; the parents said thanks for keeping the children safe and near them, and the Good Samaritan said, “I don’t deserve any thanks. I just did what that guy—I mean woman over there asked me to,” and pointed to Elaine. “And there really wasn’t any reason not to help, so I did what anyone would do. Took the kids to the hospital where their mom and dad were. I heard later that family members picked them up there.” Apparently, in the confusion of the moment the woman hadn’t even noticed that that guy was a woman, and said so. Elaine kept the camera on her as she spoke, holding it carefully so as not to jerk when she heard the woman’s words.
The kids weren’t fooled, however, and one of them ran to Decker, and the other one ran to Elaine and hugged her around the knees again. Then she cringed and shut the camera off. Riley looked truly dismayed with the direction his story was going, then realized that it really was a story, so he took the camera from Elaine’s unwilling hand turned it back on and pointed it at her, panning to Decker, concentrating on the hugs that the kids were bestowing. Giving the kid a quick hug, Elaine whispered, “Go over there with your sister”, and took her camera back, wanting to kick Riley in the shin. Softly she said, “Don’t you ever touch my camera again!”
The story was a wrap and people departed. Riley returned to the Channel 11 van, while Elaine and the soundman were gathering up equipment. She put her camera in the case and started to lug it to the door, when a strong tanned hand reached down and took it from her. “Let me help you.” Then he added, “This thing is heavy!”
“Yes it is. Much of the weight is the case itself.” Looking up, she couldn’t help but smile at the tall hunk of a man. She didn’t know why, but every time she thought of him now, which was often, that was the way she thought of him—Decker the tall hunk! He grinned back at her, as they walked side by side to the van. She noticed that he was wearing long sleeves, as she had suggested. “How you doing? Healing up okay?”
“Thanks to you, yes. That was a pretty bad night.”
She didn’t have to answer him at all. She just shrugged her shoulders because she had been having a hard time sleeping since the accident. Today, she was wearing a T-shirt blazing the words, “If you don’t ask, I don’t have to lie”. Decker was having a hard time not studying the script across her breasts. Usually, the motto was partially covered by a heavy quilted denim vest, but she took that in the heat of the day and was carrying it across her arm. “This thing is pretty hot, but that camera can be heavy, and I don’t want calluses on my shoulder.” She meant this as a joke, but Decker took her words seriously.
“That would not be good at all,” he looked down at her, and couldn’t help but notice the roundness of her breasts through the summer weight T-shirt material. He was remembering the braless top of her pajamas, and felt the sudden urge to cover his front, which he did by holding the handle of the camera case with both hands. “Elaine, could I come over sometime?”
“Why, Deputy Decker, are you asking me for a date?”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “I guess I am.”
“What would you like to do?” He considered quickly, and slowed his walk because they were approaching the van.
“You decide.”
“I’m off Saturday this week. We alternate–the other cameramen and me–this is my week end off.”
“That’s fine, I’m still on days–Saturday will work for me.”
“No encumbrances? No wife or family?”
“Family, no wife. I have two boys, Dean, eight and Danny, ten.”
“Their mother?”
“Janine lives in Indianapolis with her new husband, Donald Donaldson, M.D. I get them every other weekend, and have to pick them up. Weekends that I work, they stay with my parents.”
“This weekend?”
“All free.”
“Come over at three.”
“Three? That’s pretty early.”
“I know it is, but what I have a mind to do, three is good.”
“All right then.” He put her case into the van, handing it to the soundman who had preceded them and had been waiting for five minutes.
“Come on Gessup,” Riley shouted. “Let’s get moving,”
Elaine ignored Riley, and rose on tiptoes gently kissed Decker on his lips. “Be good now,” she admonished. It was all he could do to stay standing, and swiftly turned around before anyone could notice the effect she had on him.
The day for Decker was a long one, he was on patrol again, and wasn’t sure whether he was afoot or horseback. Fact is, he didn’t remember ever being in such turmoil over a woman. A woman who had annoyed him while being in the same room with him while he was naked–a woman who never made a move or said a word about his nakedness. He could have been in the hospital, with nurses around, they never noticed him either! Half the time she didn’t even look like a woman. But when she did–
Elaine didn’t have a much better day, especially when the editors were finished with her video. Riley was in charge, he was the reporter. The interview was sent off to the network after being approved by the local management. In New York, it would be edited again, but the one thing that missed the cut was the kids running to her and Decker. They emphasized the prolonged hugging of her knees and Decker’s embarrassed look. Kids are so spontaneous, and so darling, and so “That’s what the public wants to see” in addition to Good Samaritan’s words and the video of Elaine looking like a coal miner, that it was edited for the network news before it would be shown on the Sunday special.
She was called into the station manager’s office, and was told not so gently “Either you fix up and look like a female, or we will put you in an office somewhere!”
“You can’t do that! You don’t issue orders of what to wear to the other cameramen!”
“They don’t wear T-shirts with messages! They look like the men they are! What is the good of giving a woman a chance if she doesn’t want to look like a woman! You are a woman aren’t you?” Damn, he is getting personal here.
“You know better than that, and I think you are getting close to sexual harassment!”
He backed down, just a bit. “Look, Elaine. When I hired you, you were an amateur who fooled around with cameras. The video you took of the hospital emergency event was good, but not great! I suggested a course of action, and you took it! You learned how to do a professional job, and, inadvertently, you became a celebrity. Now you have to look like it, that’s all I’m saying. Please—do this for me? Buy some clothes?”
Swallowing her anger, she stared at him a minute, then nodded. “What kind of clothes?”
“Start with some jeans that fit you better.” He looked at her, “Then a couple of button up shirts, or a jacket.”
“Are you going to make the other guys wear a jacket?”
“That may not be a bad idea. Put everyone into a jacket with our logo –”
“If you make everyone wear one, I will wear one.” She thought for a minute. “I suppose I can get some other jeans, but actually with the bending and squatting we have to do you can see that it isn’t practical for me.” Then she added, “In the hospital we wore uniforms and the slacks were comfortable. Let me see if I can find some other kind of slacks that may work.”
“And lose the baseball cap!”
“And what’s wrong with my cap?”
“Lose it!”
“Ummm–You had better put this in writing, boss. If the clothes are required for my job, at least I can deduct it.” He shook his head and called his secretary in, dictating a directive to all cameramen. Jackets would be purchased and supplied free of charge, and would be worn when in the field. He couldn’t really forbid the men to wear caps, could he?
She left the office, muttering to herself. At four o’clock she headed to the mall to shop.
It had been a long time since she actually had purchased clothes for herself, and she found that jeans came in many sizes all marked size 12. The problem was her thirty-six-inch inseam, so she found a Tall Girl Shop that specialized. She also found out that some of the new jeans are stretchable, made with Lycra blended into the denim, which gives when you move or bend. There were also slacks that were made out of Lycra blended with heavy cottons, like twill. She found some shoes in size 10-1/2 that looked like athletic shoes, but were built with steel toes. She liked safety shoes, because should she drop her camera case on her toes, she would be laid up for weeks. These shoes were also impervious to oil and dirt that she often encountered on assignments. While she was at it she picked up a pair of Keds for the car, and a couple of pairs of low-heeled sandals. No more engineering boots; she’d have to save them for her trips to the forests.
She purchased a new dress and bathing suit at the Tall Girl Shop. She loved the dress because it was cut low in the back where it was filled with a waffle weave of straps. The dress was of a summer pattern, but without the usual roses. It didn’t look like a bed sheet made over. The pattern of large sunflowers against brown, to her eye, made her dress look cheerful. It would do for Saturday when she would not be wearing short shorts or jeans.
Friday morning at work, she knocked on the office of the station manager, and went in at his call. She stood tentatively just inside the door and waited for him to look up from his desk to see her. Her hair was still pulled back with a ponytail, but she wore a golfers cap, just a brim to shade her eyes in a color to match her shirt. Her shirt was a tailored looking cotton blend that she would never need to iron, and she was wearing a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt’s twill slacks in khaki. Over her arm she had a heavy twill khaki jacket. She also wore khaki socks with her new shoes.
“Well?” she asked.
“Perfect!” he said, with a smile, “just perfect. No one now will think you are a guy!”
“I liked being one of the guys!”
“Yes, I know.”
“If I start having problems with unwanted attention, around here, I will really be getting upset, boss. Be prepared!”
“Your demeanor has more to do with that, than your looks, kiddo.”
“So you say—there are assholes everywhere I look!”
“In this office there’s not. Watch your mouth also, you never know when you will be on the air!”
She stood chastised, and left the office to get her assignments for the day. They had a grade school on the agenda first and Riley was waiting for her. He didn’t say a word about her new look, just told her to hurry up and get in the van. After that, they had a report of union unrest at a local factory, and the garden club flower show at the civic center. At five she went home, looking forward to her Saturday date.
Saturday morning she spent cleaning her apartment, taking a bath, washing her hair. Three o’clock came and went. She was dressed in her new dress, had curled her shoulder length hair, and had actually applied makeup for the first time in months. When the clock on her TV chimed four, she pulled the dress off over her head, and tossed it on the bed. Then she dejectedly tossed herself. No phone call, no nothing. It was nice while it lasted. At four thirty there was a knock on her door. She peeked through the peephole and saw her date, still in his uniform, long sleeves and all. She yanked open the door, and was about to say, “Where the hell-” when she realized she was in her bra and half-slip. He pushed her back, and closed the door behind himself.
“Don’t you ever dress when you answer the door?”