Heat Lightning

“I’ll go get some. You can pick me up outside—if that’s not too quick for you.”
    “Fifteen minutes,” Virgil said, and he was running.
     
DAVENPORT’S CABIN was twenty miles east of Hayward, a bit more than two and a half hours from the Cities, but they ate lunch in Virgil’s truck and never slowed down and made good progress. Mai had never been in a police vehicle before, other than Virgil’s, and wanted to know what all the pieces were, and for a while, when nobody was around on Highway 70, Virgil ran with lights and sirens to give her the feel. Mai was wearing blue jeans and a black cotton blouse, and her physical presence was all over the truck, her high-pitched girly voice, a tendency to giggle at vulgar jokes, a flowery scent.
    “Peach blossom,” she told him.
    “I thought perfumes were called ‘Sin’ or ‘Obsession,’” Virgil said.
    “Eh, that’s so inane. Do you wear a scent?”
    He smiled at the word. “Aftershave sometimes, ‘Big Iron Panzer Diesel. ’ It makes me feel more masculine.”
    They talked growing up in the Midwest, about going to Big Ten rival schools in Madison and Minneapolis. She confessed to never having gone to a Wisconsin football or basketball game, though she’d once gone on a date to a wrestling match, Wisconsin against the University of Iowa. “We got crushed,” she said. “I mean, they got crushed. I personally didn’t wrestle.”
    “I bet that disappointed everybody.”
    “Especially my date,” she said, and patted him on the thigh.
    Virgil said, “Have I told you about my illustrious baseball career?”
    “You haven’t mentioned it.”
    “The salient fact is, I couldn’t hit a college fastball. I could hit the covers off a high school fastball, but not a college fastball. Anyway, I played for a couple of years and we went down to Madison three or four times a season. I’d hang out on the Terrace, eat ice cream, try to pick up women at the Rat ...”
    “Successfully?”
    “Well—college successfully,” Virgil said. “Never got laid, but we got some to talk to us.”
    She asked him how he felt about shooting people. He’d shot two people in his life, and had shot around a couple more. Of the people he’d shot, one man and one woman, he’d killed the man and had shot the woman in the foot. The same woman, as she lay wounded on the sidewalk, had been shot and killed seconds later by a second woman.
    “Does it make you feel bad? Shooting people?” She was genuinely curious; the question wasn’t a hidden accusation.
    “Yes. Of course. People, you know . . . Neither of those people I shot had children, and here they are, at the end of millions of years of evolution, ancestors lived through the ice ages, hunted bison and mammoths, and here it all ends in a puddle of blood on some street, or out in a weed field. Their whole line, whatever potential they may have had in the centuries ahead of us . . .”
    “That sounds pretty dry and intellectual.”
    “Because I’ve thought about it a lot. Intellectualized it. At the time, I felt pretty bad. I find you feel less bad the further you get away from it—but I dunno, it could come back on you later.”
    She said, “It’d be a pretty big load, killing people,” she said.
    “Yeah, well, you are what you do,” Virgil said. “That’s my take on it. I’m officially a killer. I think about it.”
    He asked why her father, big shot that he was, a leading antiwar critic, environmental activist, full professor at the University of Wisconsin, deigned to take a year to teach at Metro State.
    “Burnout. Pressure to perform all the time,” she said. “Always had to be out front on every issue. Maybe just getting old—things didn’t work out the way he thought they would. Also, maybe, he didn’t impress anybody at Wisconsin anymore. His big days are gone. He still impresses people at Metro State.”
    “Why didn’t he get one of those fellowships or foundation grants and go live in New York or Paris or something? Go for long walks.”
    She shrugged. “Some people are teachers and take it seriously. He does. That’s what he is—a teacher. So he looked for a job where he could stay in touch with things at Wisconsin.”
    “And you came with him,” Virgil said.
    “I’m trying to break the Madison spell—I’ve gotta get out of there. If I’m going to do anything with my life, I’ve got to start figuring out what it is. I can’t take dance lessons forever. I’ve pretty much