This is my first chapter from my attempt at a novel. It's for my Novel class at school, and is still very much in the works. Grammar mistakes and other goofs may pop up (hopefully not, though).
To people who actually know where the Quietside is and have been there, please understand that this is a work of FICTION based off reality (as all fiction is).
I have many plans for Cole in the future beyond this one novel.
1
Locals
call it The Quietside. Bass Harbor’s faded and worn WELCOME sign
approached me on the right, covered with little blue and green splotches.
Paintball guns. It was something us kids used to do in Cutler in our free time,
leaning out of the passenger window and tapping the trigger as fast as our
fingers could, the cool metallic smell of carbon dioxide puffing out from the
barrel as the muffled pop was unheard over drunken whoops and yells. I never
much liked it to be honest, even though every ball I shot hit my target and I’d
get a wet and smoky kiss from some girl in the backseat, two beers long gone.
The
billow of fog was beginning to settle in by the Bass Harbor Head Light as I
drove by it just after supper on my first night patrol there. I drove through
the fog in the Hancock County Sheriff’s cruiser switching between high and low
beam headlights.
I
came from the thick spruce forest that held Bass Harbor against the sea, lifted
off the gas and let the 4.6-liter V8 hum and slow. I drifted past Kennedy
General, a closet of a building with two regular-only gas pumps in front and a
diesel on the side. Across the street, two large garages loomed over a sign
that read KENNEDY AND SONS CONSTRUCTION.
It
was about the time for the locals to start a good smudge that would burn until
early morning, talk about the day, drink shit beer, laugh about relatives and
fall asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows. I had a good idea about how
these people acted, and I liked that. Moving downeast to Portland right after I
got out of the Academy, I had no idea how city folk acted. I’ve heard that a
person’s overall temperament has a lot to do with your home state, but I think
it’s more about the size of the town you grew up in and how people live there.
I learned real quick that most city folk tend to go with the crowd and not
think things through too well. Either that or they’d think about the smallest
things, like if they’d manage to get in line for their coffee soon enough so
they could still make their bus. The Quietside was just a tad bigger than
Cutler, but in both towns they’d think you were joking if you told them people
got in a hissy over their morning coffee.
I
continued to coast, letting the car come to a gentle stop right in front of
Gerald’s Bar and Mainely Good Cookin’. Piles of weatherworn buoys decorated the
front entrance. A plastic deer target with a wide hole above and a little left
of the front leg stood leaning against the bar, head turned, staring blankly at
me. The neon Budweiser signs were still on behind the bar, surrounded by stools
and three booths. There wasn’t a television in Gerald’s like the bars in
Portland had. Didn’t need one. I only got to go in a couple times, real brief,
to talk to Gerald himself about an incident that happened, as I found out,
after he purchased the bar. I never went in to drink. Used to vow against it,
thanks to my old man, the notorious drunk Keith Bubba Wakefield. I bet he
would’ve fit right in at Gerald’s place with the men whose time for work had
passed and time for drinking didn’t have an end in sight. Men who had as many
stories about fishing and fucking as I do about death.
I
tapped the gas so the bar was just behind me, stopped again and relaxed in my
seat. I rolled the window down. The cool night air hit my face and made it
tense up like it does after a couple beers. I smelled the salty water and the
seaweed, the smell of hard work and sore bodies. Not a sound though. Dead
quiet. I can remember realizing how fitting The Quietside was as another name.
Cutler was just Cutler. People knew it was quiet, if they knew about it at all.
A
gust of wind whipped into the cruiser and I caught the smell of the distant but
ripe clam-flats. The one and only time I took my girlfriend and future wife,
Autumn, to meet my old man, she caught a breeze of the flats near my house and
said it smelled like pure shit. I’d never made that connection before. Clam
flats smelled like clam-flats—they’ve never been foreign to me. Autumn’s South
Portland roots didn’t include clam-flats. She tarnished the smell, in a way,
but I still think they smell like Cutler, and I did that first night patrol in
Bass Harbor.
I
smiled, rolled the window up and let cruiser roll forward again, only to stop
at a four-way intersection. I was going straight, towards Wayward Lane, past
the church and then a left to Pier Drive. I’d been to Bass Harbor a couple
times with the Sheriff to look at the house, enough to know my way around the
fog. The town was no bigger than a couple blocks in Portland, a lot less ground
then I was used to dealing with.
A
pickup with a rusty snowplow hanging off the front-end rolled to a stop
directly across from me. The truck looked like an old Ford, maybe an 80’s
model, but I couldn’t be sure because of the fog. I flashed my high beams to
let the truck go, wanting to make a good impression. I wanted the locals to like
me—better yet, respect me, so they could let their ideas about college pricks
out of their heads long enough for me to get my foot in the door.
The
truck didn’t go. That couple seconds was enough to get me jittery enough that I
went for the lights and was about to flick them on when I heard the diesel roar
from ahead of me. The plow tilted upright, as if the truck was being thrown
forward. I watched it go straight long enough to get a glimpse of some writing
on the door, not clear enough to make out though thanks to the fog.
I
sat there for a good minute or two, thinking. I knew what just happened. It was
a town where almost every kid at recess played as robbers and that one unlucky
sonofabitch who was the cop would always lose. It was a town run by the locals
and the locals only.
Sheriff
Wittenburg told me people this side of the island didn’t care for newcomers.
Tourists hoping to see a true costal town instead of the t-shirt shops in Bar
Harbor were told to avoid Bass Harbor by the spruce pigs, who followed their
own preachings, even though Acadia National Park bordered the harbor. Most
flatlanders couldn’t even find it and would turn around somewhere along the
narrow winding road before they saw the shot up welcome sign.
The
day the sheriff drove me down to Bass Harbor to show me around, he made it very
clear about how the locals viewed newcomers. “These people keep to themselves,”
he said, “they like it quiet. We haven’t had any trouble, ‘till now. This town
hasn’t seen a cop for, I dare say, oh, about a good ten years. Don’t expect
they’ll be happy to see there’s one living here now.”
I
didn’t need to hear that. I could tell by the stares the Sheriff’s cruiser got
that day. I spent more time staring back at people than at the town itself.
I
turned onto Pier Drive and stopped in front of house number 109. We were moving
in the next day. Wittenburg was letting me off. The man’s a hard ass, but he
has his redeeming qualities. He could have given the offer to anyone else in
the station, all of who had better records than I did. But he didn’t.
The
deal was I live in Bass Harbor as a kind of “outpost,” as Wittenburg called it.
I’d be the emergency responder here if things were to get hairy, which he
seemed to think they would. Southwest P.D. started complaining just around a
month before I arrived, bitching about how many calls they had to handle on top
of Southwest’s issues. That’s where I came in. They gave me a foreclosed house
and a cruiser and turned me loose.
The
house was as bland as my old man’s wardrobe. The siding was a dull yellow,
closer to a cream with the wear and tear of seaside weather. The trim was a
forest green and looked like it was a fresher coat than the siding. A covered
porch wrapped around the front, slanted downward, heading towards the ocean.
Some diagonal lattice had been tacked along the side, but was mostly rotted or
flat on the ground. Wittenburg promised repairs, but I didn’t take his word for
it. I’ve never been one to depend on another, at least people I don’t know too well.
I
pulled the keys out of the ignition and pushed the door open. The salty air hit
me just like the fans they have in the big department stories, blasting more
heat outside than the furnace in our apartment could in a whole day. Even
though it was just four hours south, Portland was always a couple degrees
warmer and the snow never stayed quite as long. Growing up in another coastal
town prepared me for cold, but it felt like it’d dropped a good ten degrees in
the time it’d taken me to get from the bar to the house.
I
walked across the lawn to the front door, past the foreclosed sign that still
sat stuck in the dirt, sagging forward as if it was tired of its job. The tips
of my fingers, my ears and my nose were already cold, turning white and stiff.
I’d
forgotten if I’d locked the door behind me when Wittenburg showed me the house
and gave me the keys the other afternoon. When I asked him to turn around so I
could check, he said that it’d be fine.
“The
people here are kind hearted, Cole. They’re not going rob you. No one’s even
going think of robbing you here, neither. It’s a good bet this town has more
guns than people. You’ll have a nice break in October when it’s hunting season,
I’ll tell you that for sure.”
The
man couldn’t make up his mind about these folk. From what he was saying, I got
the impression that one second they needed to be watched, the next they’d be
bringing you warm blueberry pie and venison. Wittenburg wasn’t some mall cop.
He knew people pretty well, which is why I think I got the job in the first
place. Still, he couldn’t make up his mind.
I
pulled the screen door open and turned the stained door’s handle. Sure enough,
I’d left it unlocked. The door creaked open as I pushed against it, revealing a
dark, barren living room. The previous owners left a couch that must have been added
before the doors were installed because of its size. A worn sheet covered it
from dust.
I
kept thinking someone could have walked in the front door and could be waiting
for me when I started to move in the next morning. No matter how hard I tried,
I saw his eyes, squatting behind the oversized couch, .45 in hand, loaded. He
was wearing that stained Miller Light t-shirt that hung from his scrawny
shoulders. I went for my holster, still expecting the 9mm Glock, the hard
polymer and the cool metal just about the grip only to remember halfway down
that I wasn’t carrying it anymore. I took my Maglight instead, clicked it on,
and shined it inside, expecting to see his eyes sparkle in the light before the
crack of the gun. Or maybe my partner held at gunpoint again. There was nothing
but the couch and a thin layer of dust on the wooden floor.
My
imagination would run off a lot like that, taking a bizarre trip to the past or
the possible future. The therapists told me it would stop after more therapy sessions,
imagery rehearsals, more bullshit. Of course they’d tell me that. A treated
patient doesn’t make you much money at the end of the week. I stopped going to
the sessions about a month before Wittenburg called me and told me he had a
spot open and was looking for somebody with experience, right around the same
time Autumn lost her job and things started to get tight.
It
was always at night, just before bed. Autumn would give me some books to read,
happy ones, to take my mind off the sound in the kitchen, who was outside
Tucker’s room, who was watching Maya’s crib for the right time, who was in the
mirror. It never helped. I’d have all the lights on in the apartment, walk
through the apartment once more, and make Autumn get up and shut them off as I
got into bed.
I’d
talk in my sleep, screaming and thrashing until Autumn would run her hands
through my hair to wake me up. She’d tell me Michael was gone and she was my
only partner left, and I didn’t sleep until the next night.
That
was when we were still in Portland, only a couple months after it happened,
when my imagination was more vivid than it was as a child watching the closet
door.
I
scanned the room a couple more times with the Maglight and made sure to lock the
door. I triple checked, fingers fully numb and nose running as I walked back
the car. Inside the cruiser had already cooled off and would take a good ten
minutes to warm up again on the way back to the station in Ellsworth. As I
turned the ignition, I took another look at the house. I knew it was going to
be the talk of the town the next day, not for the moving truck or the new
family but because the Sherriff’s cruiser sitting in the driveway.
