Sleeping Policemen by Dale Bailey Page A

flushed, stared down at brown weave of winter grass, stricken with a voice out of the past, Sue’s voice. This is my friend Nick . The word rankled. Friend.
    He spoke, mostly to quiet his mind: “You think it’ll blow over?”
    â€œLook. We’ve got three days of classes left, a week of exams, four weeks of Christmas break. By the time we come back, this is all ancient history. Who knows? Tuck may even lay out a semester. No way he’s graduating in the spring.”
    â€œAnd if Evans comes sniffing around again?”
    â€œWe deal with it, calmly. He’s got nothing.”
    But Finney hadn’t seen that cockroach scuttle across his wall, had he? Or that hand, nightmarish quick. Nick certainly hadn’t told him about it. He and Sue hadn’t even talked about it. Maybe they couldn’t, couldn’t find the words to wrap around it. It was too much like a glimpse into a parallel universe, too senseless, crazy. He remembered the stack of Superman comics in the corner of the bedroom his brothers had shared. The Bizarro world. Christ, what could you say about something like that?
    When he looked up, Finney was staring at him. His eyes sparkled in the sun. “I’ll sit on Tuck, you keep Sue in hand.”
    Nick stood, glancing at his watch. Almost 1:30. Modern Poetry was shot. He turned to leave, shrugging into the straps of his book bag. He hesitated, then asked, turning to face Finney, “You think about the girl, about Casey?”
    Finney looked at the ground. At first Nick thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he said, his voice quiet, “Every time I close my eyes I see her. Hear her.”
    Nick felt something move between them, tightening, the accident binding them together like a wet leather strap. Unconsciously, he lifted his hand and tapped the videotape.
    â€œGet rid of that tape.” Finney stood. “You realize it’s just us, don’t you, Nicky? If either of us loses it, we all lose. We stay calm, think clearly, we can ride this thing out. Right, Nicky? But it’s me and you—no one else.” Finney’s words bounced among the four walls, disappearing slowly into the void of the sky. They carried the same dead tone as the grunts and groans in the cinderblock room.
    â€œDon’t call me Nicky,” he said, already walking away.

Monday, 1:45 to 11:43 PM
    From the moment he arrived in Ransom, Nick had loved the library, a nineteenth-century sprawl of gables and wings that looked more like a refugee from a gothic novel than the academic haunt of svelte co-eds with Greek pins and lacquered hair. He loved everything about the place: the checkered expanses of black and white tile; the hushed intensity of study, like a big, silent dog straining at its leash; even the dusty odor of the books, about the most alien smell he could have imagined as a boy in Glory. Now he stood in the entrance hall for a moment, just letting the tension flow out of him as Finney’s voice—
    â€” we can ride this thing out —
    â€”slipped away into the silence.
    He shrugged his book bag off his shoulders as he crossed the lobby. Beyond a bank of glass doors, the reference room lay forsaken, students and professors alike drawing a last breath before the final, hectic commotion of exams. For the next night or two the campus would rock with keg parties, but Nick’s taste for barley and hops had evaporated on that stretch of mountain highway. Unbidden, his fingers brushed his jacket, the roll of bills and the videotape hidden within.
    For half a second he hesitated, and then he remembered Tuck’s fear-uglied voice—
    â€” save me that three musketeer shit, Nick —
    â€”and a piece of his dad’s advice came back to him. You got to take care of number one , he had said, one blunt finger prodding at Nick’s chest. You got to take care of yourself or they’ll screw you and leave you crippled in a chair . He had never