Page 16 of So Far Gone
the Nike Cross-Trainers he wore under his chinos and sports coat, giving her his warmest noncrazy smile, and saying to her
friend with the black eye and the broken cheek, in the Glass Animals concert T-shirt: “Dude! Let’s do this!”
***
They sat in stiff wooden chairs at a long table in a cavernous coffee shop, Lucy Park and Chuck Littlefield on one side, Kinnick
on the other, as he explained what had happened from the moment Leah and Asher showed up on his porch the day before. The
big ex-cop had a small pocket notebook open on the table, though he hardly wrote anything down at first. He spoke quickly,
in a clipped way that made Kinnick think of a typewriter.
“Uh-huh,” Chuck said. “Right. Then what?” Every few seconds, he’d say this, “Uh-huh, right, then what?” as if Kinnick were
unaware of the concept of chronology and might suddenly tell some part of the story from the 1940s, or two weeks in the future.
“Uh-huh, right, then what?”
Kinnick repeated what Asher had said, that “maybe Dad killed Mom.”
“Smart kid,” Chuck said.
“What? You think so?” Kinnick felt suddenly sick. He hadn’t really thought Shane was capable of something like that. He’d
been trying to not think of that possibility.
“No, I mean, that’s probably not what happened. He just sounds like a smart kid.”
When Kinnick got to the part of the story that took place at the abbey parking lot, the two AOL goons taking his grandkids
and one of them hitting him with a blackjack, Chuck reached across the table and took Kinnick’s chin between his thumb and
forefinger, turning his head to both sides. “They broke your zygomatic arch. I can see the dent, even with the swelling.”
This was the third thing Chuck wrote in his little notebook, after “Chess Club” and “Smart Kid.” “Blackjack. Zygom. arch.
Broken.”
Kinnick wondered how he could have managed to spend the last seven years reading almost a thousand books and still somehow
be the only person in the world to not know the scientific name for a cheekbone. He tried not to be intimidated by the retired cop, who was younger and more muscled,
with fast-blinking eyes, salt-and-pepper hair and beard, and, evidently, a deep knowledge of facial bone structure.
“So. Can you help him out?” Lucy asked.
“Sure,” said Chuck Littlefield. “Sure. It won’t be easy. But there are some steps we can take. First, this guy, Shawn?”
“Shane.”
“Shane, right.” Finally, he wrote the name Shane in his notebook. “Since this Shane is the boy’s biological father, and has
adopted the girl, your daughter will be the only one with legal standing to stop these paintball yahoos from marrying off
your granddaughter. So, first step, find—what’s you daughter’s name again?”
“Bethany. She might have gone back to Oregon.”
“Right.” He wrote in his notebook: Betheny: Oregon? “We’ll find her, but in the meantime I’ll have one of the lawyers I work with draw up some kind of writ—and since these shit-sticks
can barely read, the writ can say anything as long as we get a county official to stamp it—that’s the only authority these guys recognize—then we go in strong, present our paper, grab your grandkids,
and go find Brittany—”
“Bethany—”
“Right. Bethany, Bethany, Bethany.” He underlined her misspelled name in his notebook. “Yep, and if we’re lucky, one of those
camo pansies will try his blackjack trick on me so I can politely send him home wearing it as a thong.”
Kinnick made eye contact with Lucy, who gave a slight shrug of her left shoulder that Rhys took to mean, Hey, I was lonely. Don’t judge.
“But listen.” Chuck slapped the table in front of Kinnick. “This whole thing... it could get intense. Are you up for that,
the possibility of seeing these guys again?”
Kinnick could feel Lucy’s eyes on him. He cleared his throat, suddenly feeling the need to both compete with, and differentiate
himself from, this jittery ex-cop, who was clearly trying to impress his old girlfriend.
“?‘Who then is invincible?’?” Kinnick asked rhetorically, then answered: “?‘The one who cannot be upset by anything outside
their reasoned choice.’?”
Lucy and Chuck both stared at him.
“Epictetus?” Kinnick said.
Lucy and Chuck continued to stare.
Kinnick’s face flushed. “I mean—yeah, sure. I’ll do anything to get them back.”
Lucy stood. “I should get to work. I have reporters to babysit.” She put a hand on Chuck’s arm. “Thank you, Chuck. This means
a lot.”
He put his hand on her hand. “Of course, Lucy. Anything for you.”
Kinnick stood, too. “Uh, can I talk to you for a second, Lucy.”
“Sure. Walk me to the door?”
They started to move away from the table, and then Chuck said, “Lucy, can I get a minute when he’s done?”
Lucy looked from one mistake to the other. “O-okay.”
At the door, Kinnick glanced back at the fidgety cop. “I just wanted to say that I appreciate this.”
“I hope he can help you.”
“I also wanted to ask...” He turned back to Lucy. “Are you sure that he’s... stable? That he’s up for this?”
“He’s not the one quoting Epictetus.”
Kinnick winced. “Ouch.”
“How’s your cheek?”
“That wasn’t about my cheek.”
“Good.” She reached in her purse and handed him the bottle of Tylenol from home. Then she looked at him a moment. “Just be
careful, okay? Chuck knows this stuff. But he can get carried away. If he wants to do something rash and idiotic, I’m trusting
you to say no.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Of course.” He felt coddled, like a child, her saying this. Still, it was nice of her to help. And to worry about him. “Thank
you, Lucy. I... well... just thank you.”
She nodded and smiled, patted him on the arm, and Kinnick returned to the table. Chuck passed him on the way to talk to Lucy
at the door. Rhys watched them out of the corner of his eye—Chuck doing most of the talking, and then, after a moment, leaning
in for a hug. From his vantage Kinnick couldn’t see Lucy’s face, or how fully she returned the hug.
Chuck Littlefield returned to the table and hitched his pants. “Great, isn’t she?”
“The best,” Kinnick said.
“Okay then.” Chuck clapped his hands. “What do you say, partner? Should we go find your grandkids?”
***
Kinnick had never seen someone drive the way Chuck Littlefield piloted this extended cab Chevy Silverado pickup: perched forward as if bellied up to a bar, steering with his left forearm, which he draped over the wheel, his head snapping left, then right, then left again, like a driving squirrel, zipping between lanes and speeding between intersections.
Any space between cars seemed to offend him.
“Drive your fuckin’ car!” he’d say as he raced around some cautious motorist.
He glanced over at Kinnick. “So. You and Lucy, huh?”
“What?” Kinnick said. “Oh. Yeah. For a few months. But it was a long time ago.”
“Long time ago,” Chuck repeated. “Right.” He worked the phone in his lap with his right hand as he drove, ringing his lawyer’s
office. He held up a finger to Kinnick and put a single wireless earbud in his right ear. “Shel. Hey. Littlefield here. Look.
I need you to run a couple of names for me, standard checks: address, criminal, civil, whatever you got. You ready? First,
a Shane and Bethany Collins, Spokane address, and before that, Grants Pass, Oregon. C-O-L-L-I-N-S . Bethany’s DOB is—” He looked at Kinnick.
“Oh. Uh, April eleventh, 1987. I don’t know Shane’s.”
“Bethany’s DOB: Four-eleven-eighty-seven. No DOB for Shane. Next, Anna Gaines, Spokane resident, neighbor, apartment in Northeast,
no DOB, husband’s name unknown. And a con by the name of Dean Burris, also no DOB. Truck driver. Federal charges a dozen or
so years ago—” He looked at Kinnick, who nodded.
“Federal charges for poaching, did some time, apparently ran for office up in Stevens County.” Chuck spelled each name and
repeated the information Kinnick had given. Rhys couldn’t believe this was the same guy who had called Shane Shawn and Bethany
Brittany and had barely jotted anything down in his pocket notebook. He seemed to remember every detail now. “Text me whatever
you get. We’re on the road today, goin’ mo-bile , so keep the info coming. Thank you, Shel, I owe you.”
Chuck ended the call and glanced at Kinnick again. “So, what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Between you and Lucy? I’m guessing you didn’t break up with her. ”
“Oh.” Kinnick laughed. “No. I didn’t.” He exhaled. “It was complicated.”
“She does that to people.”
“We worked together, so we wanted to keep it quiet. I was recently divorced and she... wasn’t yet—”
“Ah—”
“Turns out an office scandal is not the best way to start a relationship—”
“And yet people keep trying—”
“Meanwhile, she was having trouble with her son—”
“Christ, that kid—”
Kinnick smiled. Having a conversation with Chuck was like playing ping-pong. Rhys looked out the window, remembering. “But
honestly? The real problem... was me. I was a wreck. All over the place. About to lose my job, estranged from my family,
depressed, pushing away anyone who cared about me, drinking too much—”
“Not hard to find yourself there—”
“—until eventually Lucy asked me to leave her alone.”
“And you did?”
“For almost eight years.”
“Damn. Willpower.”
“Well, I left everyone alone. Daughter, ex-wife, grandkids, family, friends. I moved up to the woods and I just... disappeared.”
“No shit.” Chuck chewed his lip. “I don’t think I could do that.”
“I convinced myself that no one would miss me—”
“I do understand that—”
“—and in the end, it was almost like I wasn’t the one choosing exile—”
“Right.”
“—but like the world was telling me to go—”
“Right!”
“—I had no job and no purpose anymore—”
“Yes!”
“—and it seemed like I was being sent away, like an animal sent off into the woods to die or something. In fact, it was more
than that. It was like my whole species had gone extinct.”
“Fuck! Yes!” Chuck slapped the steering wheel. “That’s how I felt after I retired! Extinct!”