Lucy by M. M. Valencia

Lucy by M. M. Valencia

I

            The highway stretched on endlessly and wore coats of dirt giving the road an appearance like a plank of wood. Hamilton followed it. His eyes darted to his rear-view mirror from time to time, looking into the night, searching for his long dissolved hometown passed the wake of swimming dust he caused to leap off the ground. Patches of loose gravel would shoot under his jeep and make the sound of pins tapping against steel. He sent up silent prayers to the ghost of his dead Pa, sitting with him now, following him forever.

            “So, you finally made a choice?” The wind asked through the jeep’s window, ajar.

            “You guys made it for me,” Hamilton replied, his eyes once again searching the retreating view. Releasing his grip on the wheel, he shook the blood back into his hand and wiped his perspiring forehead. Giving an unheard sigh over the roaring engine Hamilton moved his left wrist adjacent, ending with a flicking motion: Tic tic tic

       “Watch out—don’t signal yet!” The voice seemed syncopated with the rhythmic right-hand-turn clicks. “You’re still in the county,” and a peal of laughter exploded only to fade into the trees he was racing by. He decided to travel in a way that complimented the night. Hamilton shut off his brights. Embracing the silence, the darkness and his memory.

& & &

       When Pa was alive, it was said by everyone that he was the best lawman the town had ever seen. When Hamilton and his brother were kids and they would play cops and robbers, he would invariably be the crook. This game would stretch to the very fringes of their land. They would trek through the high grass, run up inclines and wrestle down them, and avoid the smelly bog, Andrew would dramatically institute justice and pile-drive his brother into the soft mud. Whenever they were young and they would role-play it was something very real to Andrew: that is, whether he was a cowboy, American soldier, or, what was his favorite, a police officer—not just Popeye Doyle or Dirty Harry but their Father, the Sheriff.

       “It’s, like, it’s really like it is…” Andrew started in his breathlessness after their two-hour chase, “You never get away from daddy, huh?” He smiled and helped Hamilton to his feet. This was the last time they acted-out any of their passion plays; a subtle instruction on morality and character that Hamilton, though always a leading player, was mostly the principal audience of.

II

            This was a decade ago. The boys were about thirteen. Shortly after Andrew went to Annapolis, where majoring in small-town wisdom and grit, he graduated top of his class as what they called a “firsty” (somewhere in between a Warrant Officer and a Chief Warrant Officer). After descending the stairs in that grand auditorium for the ceremony and catching the eye of an on-staff Vice Admiral he walked up to him, moved his diploma from his right to left hand, and wholeheartedly saluted, “sir. Thank You, sir.”

            “At ease,” he responded with a salute back, pausing to imperceptibly relax the tension between his shoulder blades. The Vice Admiral almost looked at Andrew with a soft gaze and with near hesitation when he said: “midshipman, you’ve just made your father very proud.”

            “Thank you, sir. My Pa and my country—” Andrew broke away and lowered his moistening eyes, though being nearly a junior officer and a true father’s son, he collected himself and gave a smile to his four-year mentor.

The Admiral cleared his throat in consolation, “uh, yes, well, will you be doing us both—your Pa and your country—the honor of seeing you gather some stars on that uniform?” His words progressed into a sideways smile at the word “uniform.” Andrew was brimming with a sincerity and self-confidence that should have reassured the grown men around him not to be too fearful of youth.

            “Sir,” Andrew began with a new tone,  “I’ll always live in these moments I’ve had at the academy. These four years have defined me as much as the Ma who gave me Christian blood, and the Pa who showed me about integrity. And as much as the country making it possible to enjoy freedom and duty. However, Vice Admiral, sir, my place is back home—as a sheriff.”

            The three-star officer raised his chin, inquisitively, cocking his head to the side with a squint, then respectfully straightening his posture to its limit, he smiled a little larger, concluding: “son, if that one star is all you wear, make sure you wear it like an Admiral. Wear it like your father did.”

III

            The brothers’ Pa would help around the farm in the earlier days after Andrew’s departure for Annapolis. Rising early to feed their paucity of livestock, reap what had been sown, sweep the collected patio dust, father and son would infrequently talk but whenever he would speak to Hamilton in the first two years following his brother’s departure it was with consideration. He was being considered at all, now. No longer Andrew’s silent partner.

            His Pa would go to town for supplies every morning, and when need be, to sell some eggs and tomatoes. Then he would drive back home. “Put these in the cupboard,” Pa would say about some odds and ends, “also, chain Lucy, for the coyotes are a-prowling. And I’ll be home around nine, so have my dinner ready, boy.”

            “Sure, poppa,” Hamilton was too happy to acquiesce.

            Giving a type of grin Pa would walk into the house. Hamilton would then see him pour two shots of bourbon in his coffee and smoke cigarettes. Before his shift, he would drink and read the paper he got from town. Before leaving he would walk over to a common addler located diagonally from their porch, pet Lucy, whisper a sweet nothing, and, loosened up by the caffeine and alcohol, he would shoot a wave to Hamilton, who, sweeping or reaping, would, in that moment of ritual, never be out of eye-contact with his father.

            “Bye, Pa!”

            One day, shortly after the onset of Pa’s illness, he walked over to Lucy, and grabbing her ears the way Padid every morning, Hamilton wouldn’t let go, and she squealed and snapped at him.

IV

            For a few months before Pa was bedridden he would still manage to rise every morning and fulfill his narrow routine. By then Andrew had been gone for two years. He would make occasional phone calls to the police station, and once back home Pa would report the gist of what Andrew related while beaming with a light at first making Hamilton think he was on whiskey, but his crimson skin was only a suntan and his eyes were in a conference with true joy.

            A couple more months passed; Andrew was beginning his third year. Pa was waking up slower and sometimes falling to bed with curses. His extra black coffee would cause him to wrench and squeeze the dinner table each morning. Eventually he gave up the bourbon. His eyes became lusterless; his brazen speech got hung up on simple articulation, so he would often resort to silence. A month later he gave up his coffee entirely. He stopped going by town every morning. Hamilton was chipping away old paint from the barn when he saw Pa rise long after dawn, stumble to his chair and collapse in it. From then on Hamilton did all the work and all the shopping.

            His Pa was still showing up for the job, but Hamilton suspected it was purely given the chance Andrew would call him. He no longer would patrol. He delegated all his official duties to the deputies. Pa would sit in his office and accept complaints, counsel his underlings. However, before the rumors of his weakness had time to scandalize, Pa became an invalid.

            In the last few weeks preceding his resignation there was a lot of hearsay. Pa was broad in his shoulders and refined in his gait. For months his dignified paunch had been receding and his workingman muscles withering. On his last day of work, he was a drooping, slow walking thing… The next day, chipping the paint away from the upper level of the barn, Hamilton again remarked to himself that Pa wasn’t getting up with the sun. When he was only roused by high noon beating directly on his face, Hamilton decided to never think of father again. He never claimed to know him as well as Andrew, but this sleepy man was one who neither of them remembered.

V

            After weeks of interminable smells there was an oblivious moan and a hollow rattle inside Pa’s chest. The funeral was on a Monday. The whole town came. Pa had braved pre-death with integrity—his swan song wasn’t deemed obtrusive to the community, nor did his deputies judge him for dying: “that’s a strong man who suffered greatly and never complained”was the consensus. Indeed, he was a fine man. They all shoveled dirt onto his oak casket. Then everyone left and Hamilton paid the porter. Two weeks later he received a letter about the will.

            Andrew was granted leave but unable to make the trip back home. He was beginning his last year at Annapolis. As a pugilist, he hit harder; as a rifleman, he shot straighter; as a student, nothing changed—straight As. “This kid will make a fine officer,” the ranks said. “He keeps persevering. And you know what he’s been through?”            

& & &

            Over a decade ago Andrew pulled up to the house in a sympathetic deputy’s car. After all the years his first sight of his brother grownup was under ripples of glowing red and blue. His hands wore pallid gloves, immaculate as the whitest of hats on his head.

            “I’m so sorry, son,” the deputy said as Andrew stepped out the car, before backing up and turning around so the driver’s window faced the young man: “but you know, he’d be so proud.” Smiling awkwardly through his lips, he drove away.

            Andrew followed the car for a few moments with his eyes, this attracted Hamilton to the sight. And after a moment of thought Andrew turned quickly on his heels and seemed to notice his brother for the first time. Hamilton was still looking at the car’s exit into the loose foliage it stirred.

            “Hey,” Andrew said.

            His head spun and his eyes bulged like a lizard’s, “brother.”

He took a tentative step toward his sibling. He will never forget it, he will always think of what could have been, if in that most vital moment, one enveloped in time and grief, he could have been bolder and spoken to Andrew. Spoken real words, not childlike utterances. He never got over the feeling of how in that period of reconnection he could have forged an affinity. But overwhelmed, Hamilton faltered, and his brother—now a man, molded from tests and trials—would always see the boy he left in the soft mud, happy to be the criminal.

            “Ha, ha, ha, ha,” Andrew blasted from his chest like a flood of tears. It had been four years, though his brother never recalled hearing his voice take on such character. Something had happened to him. He was hurting his brother without laying a hand on him. When tears become laughter, they are malicious and devastating.

VI

            Andrew gained control of the estate, modernized their near-cabin, attended the police academy, and at twenty-five was second in command behind Ronald, Pa’s number two (the former deputy who drove Andrew from the station on his day back in the county lines).

            After purifying the place, Andrew with charity renovated the barn. And by their late twenties they had multiplied their produce and livestock on Hamilton’s productivity and Andrew’s investments.

            Hamilton worked the farm in memory of his only love, Pa. He remained unmarried. Andrew loved the force and increased arrests two-hundred percent—also giving rise to the highest prosecution rate in the county’s history. He was a shoe-in for Sheriff after Ronald’s retirement. He married a young girl recently graduated from the local high school. She lived with her father, and, like the brothers, her Ma had died in childbirth. She was the county’s only reported child abuse case. Andrew drove up to her Pa’s one night, where no one knows what transpired between the three, but Andrew was not seen there or with her again, until the following month when Lucinda’s father moved two counties over and she and Andrew eloped in a modest ceremony with Roland as the witness. He never quite knew how to interpret this matrimonial choice of his deputy’s. However, although absent from their sealing, Hamilton knew his brother had fewer ulterior motives than most. He never doubted Andrew’s love for her. It was a family trait to be sincere and transparent. Only maybe you had to be part of the family to know how to see through the foggy glass.

      Andrew, through speaking with local attorneys, managed to acquire Lucinda’s Pa’s estate. More correctly, he was able to transfer ownership to Lucinda. They then sold the property and Lucinda came to move in with the brothers. It took about a week to move in. What turned out to be a clandestine honeymoon took place around this time while Hamilton was busy organizing the house during the couple’s absence.

            Hamilton would roost in the upper layer of the barn when he was away from working the acreage. He would gaze up the skylight at the ashy pink depths. He would sit in the darkness too and occasionally look to the main house. He would see Lucinda smile and Andrew pat her on the head. He saw the kitchen table encircled by more chairs. Little heads darted around the main room now. Screams and thumping footsteps were sometimes halted by a harsh reprimand. And Hamilton felt the tears well up inside him when Lucinda lost her baby girl. That night his pathos was also evoked by the still silhouette of his brother, whose figure was just out of sight, brooding on the hearth inside the warm firelight.

The children loved Hamilton. They would often run around him while he worked the estate. Lucinda respected his quiet nature and the focused precision of his hands.

            “What would we do without you, brother?” She said on a rare instance, and as if sensing the loneliness of his spirit, kissed his forehead.

            “You’d all be just fine.” She made him smile. The children made him want to work well and keep firewood stocked up for the family to burn. His brother would look at him sometimes and nod, expressionless.

            For several years Hamilton saved the small stipends received from the family estate and he collected his small portion of the annual earnings it produced. Andrew was prospering greatly. Lucinda was now a Sheriff’s wife. They had three little boys. And they even got a hound for the first time since before Pa died, naming her Lily.

            Andrew’s shoulders were broader than their father’s had ever been. His marshaling was more judicious than ever in the county (the arrest and the prosecution rate declined greatly by this time, but so did crimes). The brothers had a matching streak of gray hair across their left temple—of course, Hamilton was a bit grayer, though his slenderer frame gave him a younger appearance. His brother’s boys were strong and they began to voluntarily help their uncle around the estate when they were not at school. Lucinda stayed quiet and always youthful looking. Once, he was looking to the patio from his upper recess and he was stricken by how much she still resembled the young girl first brought to the house. She noticed him and he waved to her from the barn.

VII

            Andrew’s oldest was preparing to perpetuate the family tradition of studying at the Naval Academy. He even phoned the Vice Admiral who was now the Admiral Chief of Operations to touch bases and let him know to be expecting “another one like me.” Of course, the Commandant was thrilled and for a moment over the line even broke propriety with a laugh.

            It was about this time Hamilton began searching the penny savers. He came across an old jeep with many, many miles and a missing passenger seat. But he figured he was only going one way, anyhow. So he contacted the seller, haggled a price, parked the vehicle on the outskirts of pines surrounding the estate, and, climbing up under the skylight, he waved to the twilight he had always had time to view. Hamilton grabbed an envelope and put the remainder of his money in it. He stood in the loft until the sun had completely set, the whole time staring at the house across the dirt yard. The front door was closed, and it being a windy night, so were the shutters. There was a strong glow radiating from the perimeters. He climbed down, walked through the stirring dust toward the front porch. With his envelope and a pen in hand, he stood in front of the door. He heard the childrens’ falsetto voices creating harmonies and countermelodies. He heard Lucinda laugh.

            Looking back toward the direction where he parked the jeep, he breathed in the cool night air. He kneeled at the patio chair in front of the closed shutters. He placed the envelope on the chair, and illuminated by the half moon and the escaping light of the house, he lifted his coarse hand to write. He thought of the name Lucinda maybe because these days she would always occupy that chair during the late afternoons and early evenings. He took his pen and wrote “family”on the envelope.

& & &

            Walking in the direction of the jeep, taking deliberated steps on the ground, suspended inside thoughts which were spanning the whole of his life up until that moment, he stopped himself. Turning around he saw Lily looking at him. At his gaze she gave a mild, brief whimper. He went up to her, he pet her head. He grabbed her ears and began rubbing them, cooing from his throat, “Lucy.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright M. M. Valencia 2025