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Story
by Emily Shelton


Real Stories of the Highway Patrol



Indiana, Interstate 90, East                              K808 FM

                             “...I often drift when I drive...”

A mother and son are walking on the beach in Gary, on a wan, wet day, early spring, the air swollen, silver. She’s just picked him up from school, they’ve each got a gyros with extra sauce, they’re taking the long way home; her brother’s probably still sleeping last night off in their living-room anyway, with a girlfriend, maybe, or someone else’s dog. They’re almost finished eating when they spot something upholstered in the water; no; wait; a bloated body washes ashore. It’s a young man, they see at once, in brown corduroys and good shoes, with the eyes of an old cat, all green, no black. They roll him on his stomach, go through his pockets, what’s his name? In his wallet an Illinois State University I.D., Patrick R. Burchard, eight bucks in cash, some change, no cards. Luckily, the boy spots a pay phone right up on the sidewalk, and they wipe their hands on their pants and, yes, well, shudder and run and call the cops right away. The cops come. It turns out to be the body of a young man who went missing in Chicago on New Year’s Eve, last seen puking in the gutter outside the Ambassador East Hotel. The doorman refused to let him come in. But my friends just went in! I need to go in! So.

That week Mom gets her name in the paper, and her age (thirty-three). There are a few calls, better than the ones that come through the dating service, but not as good as the Reader. The boy has several bad dreams, all of them about some weird metallic monster gestating in the dumpster out back and Carol Ann from Poltergeist walking by with a Dixie cup, they’re here, and waking up in a cold sweat. After two weeks, the dreams stop. After six weeks, the check arrives from the Chicago Police; $2500, cash. “But the reward was twenty-five k,” Mom says, brows knit, “not twenty-five hun.” She yanks the phone from the kitchen counter. “Oh, for Christ.” Once she reaches the correct precinct she gets passed along from one person to the next until she finally speaks with someone willing to admit they’re in charge and who apologizes profusely; there must have been some misunderstanding somewhere along the line, the reward fund was originally much larger but the funeral was very expensive and the young man’s mother was a widow, and this was all that was left... “The reward said twenty-five thousand,” Mom said, one hand flattened into an arrow, as if readying for a salute, “for whoever makes the call that leads to that kid, and I was the one found him, and I deserve what I’m owed. I have a son of my own, too, to think about. And without me, there wouldn’t even have been a funeral.”

Eventually she hires a lawyer, and the boy’s dreams start again. This time Carol Ann has a fishing-rod, and the monster sings nursery rhymes. What a good boy am I. Kissed the girls and made them cry. And took an axe. And gave my father forty whacks. And when I saw what I had done. Gave my mother forty-one. See how they run.

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