The Misguided Hero

A short story

Everyone agreed that the summer of 1967 was a bad one for Anthony Freeman.  Being the son of a doctor in small-town Tennessee set some heavy expectations on the shoulders of the boy, and more than one person said that it was only time before he cracked anyway.  They just didn’t expect him to fall so deeply into the mess of trouble that he and Jenny Burrell ran into that night when they hit old Mister Fleming. 

The cops picked him up at the plant, right at the end of his shift when everyone was milling around and talking about stopping for a cold one at McQuiddy's down the street.  He barely heard the officers as they informed him of his rights, his ears were filled with an angry buzzing, like that sound he heard once when he passed out after running a few miles in the heavy Tennessee heat.  He looked around as the words ‘vehicular homicide’ cut through the noise.  His friends Jerry and Miller were watching with a mixture of surprise and sorrow on their faces, while the rest of the guys looked on impassively.  Not for the first time, Anthony regretted staying in this town with all these people that he’d known his whole life.  At least in some other place, there’d be less gossip chasing the police car down the street.

He wondered where Jenny, was, and if she was aware of his arrest, or if she, too, was being arrested.  When they met, Anthony had thought Jenny was like any of the girls from the Heights.  Those girls only had eyes for him and his friends when they were bold enough to leave the safety of the Heights for a little excitement.  They’d always head for the Deuce, the bar on the rough edge of town.  Anthony knew coming to the bar was their little game to play, a relief from the pressure of being perfect, to play at being women in a room full of men they’d really never consider, not for more than a dance or a quick kiss if no one was looking.  He sure didn’t envy them.  Most of the time, he didn’t even pay them any attention while they sat in little protective clusters, giggling at each other when they weren’t trying to draw attention to their tissue-puffed chests and over-glossed lips.  Something about Jenny was different, though.  The color was high on her cheeks when she glanced up and met men’s eyes, but she’d watch the rest of the girls coolly while they chattered �" like she was the only one of them aware of their own insignificance.  Anthony had to look twice, then three times, then met her eyes and couldn’t look away.  He’d finally approached her, to the shrill excitement of the girls.  They’d spent the rest of the night in a corner booth, the one nobody sat in because of the sag in the bench seat, talking about everything and nothing, while every eye in the Deuce tried hard not to look their way.

Anthony could still see her brown eyes flashing with laughter and her pale slender fingers twisting a cocktail napkin.  He’d fallen a little in love with her in a few hours that night, enough to make him think about futures and inevitabilities and impossibilities.  That had been only four months ago, he was shocked to realize each time he considered how he felt about her.  They’d become inseparable after that first night, to the chagrin of both their families.  His parents hadn’t yet grasped that he had no yearnings for the pastoral contentment of being a general practitioner like his father, and Jenny’s family were set on her joining her uncle’s law firm in Atlanta. Neither family thought that Jenny and Anthony would last, not for long.    

He pictured Jenny, crying and panicked after the accident, and their hasty decision to say he’d been driving, instead.  In that moment, he had to be able to salvage something, for one of them.    Mister Fleming’s blood on the street was the color of the ripest tomato in his mother’s garden.  Jenny’s eyes were enormous in her pale face, and he focused on them until he could hear clearly what she was saying.

“He’s hurt.  He’s hurt bad.  What are we going to do?  We have to call the police.  He needs help.  Oh God, Anthony, what have we done?  Should we call but leave?  Maybe we could leave and not get caught?  No one would have to know.”  She was talking nonstop, her hands fluttering around her face and in her hair, trying to find comfort in her own skin. She must be in shock, he thought.  He looked at the Mister Fleming’s broken body on the ground and nodded.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll take care of everything.  You had nothing to do with it.  I was driving.”  His tongue felt thick as it formed the words.  He wanted to vomit.  He heard sirens in the distance and shook himself.  Someone must have seen or heard the accident and called the police.  He grabbed her arm and said, forcefully, “It was me. I was driving. Remember that.  Say you were sleeping or something.  But tell them I was driving.”

Then the ambulance was there, and shortly after, the police.  They were questioned, and then a patrol officer had taken each of them home, separately.  Now, with one of the officers pushing him into the backseat of the cruiser, he thought about Mama and her dark eyes filling with tears and fingers endlessly twisting a tissue as he had told her about the accident after the police had brought him home that night.  He couldn’t bear to think of his father’s look of disappointment before he’d stood and silently left Anthony alone with his weeping mother.  He’d considered not telling them, maybe just skipping town, but there was just enough courage left to do the right thing.  Or what he thought to be the right thing.  So he’d sat there, on the good sofa in the front room, looking at the floor as he spoke. 

“We didn’t mean for it to happen.  We were driving along and suddenly there he was in front of us,” Anthony started.  Anthony heard again the wet noise that Mister Fleming’s body made when they hit him, like the sound rotting pumpkins make when he and his friends throw them at houses and cars as Halloween pranks, and shuddered slightly.  “I didn’t know what to do.”  At that, he had been sure his father would interrupt, but a brief pause met with only that cold silence. 

“It wasn’t our fault.  He walked out in front of us.  He must have.  He wasn’t there, and then he was.  He shouldn’t have been there.”

Anthony could hear the whine in his own voice and stopped, frustrated and chastened.  He  started again, softer, “I tried.  We both tried to help.”  He felt his throat tightening and his voice thinned with emotion.  “He was all crumpled up, like one of those rag dolls that has lost most of its stuffing.  I didn’t know how to fix him.”

Anthony’s memory of the conversation with his parents faded as he leaned his head against the window of the cruiser.  He hadn’t really seen Jenny since then, just a couple of desperate phone calls between them late at night, when their families were sure to be sleeping.  When he heard her voice, he had the sick taste in the back of his mouth again, just like he’d felt that night.  He knew that nothing would ever be the same between them.

“I’m sorry,” she said, softly, “I’m so sorry.”

She was crying, he could tell.  He’d never seen her cry before that night, never had wanted to cause tears.  He’d wanted to protect her from life.  Isn’t that what a man did?

“Jenny, don’t worry so much,” he’d whispered into the phone.  “We still don’t know what will happen.”  He couldn’t protect her from what might happen, but he could at least pretend that nothing between them had changed. 

The calls had stopped after two days.  She no longer called, and hadn’t returned any of his calls.  He’d even gone by her house, and although every car was in the drive, no one answered.  After another few days, he figured that she’d realized the truth, that the accident had made it impossible for them to be together.    

Only a week had passed since the accident.  A tense week of waiting to find out what happened to Mister Fleming.  If he had lived, there was only Anthony’s culpability for the accident.  And it was just that, an accident.  Mister Fleming hadn’t lived, though.  Anthony found out that morning, reading the local paper.  The story had made the front page.  The police picked him up the same day.  It was a short drive to the police station.  Too short.  Anthony could feel his freedom slipping away with each block closer to the station.  He saw his parents’ car in the visitor parking as he and the officers passed through to the back entrance.  He caught a glimpse of people in front of the building, some yelling and holding signs.  He couldn’t read them, but could imagine what was printed on them.  The officers parked and collected him from the backseat of the cruiser, checking the handcuffs to ensure they were still firmly locked. 

Anthony felt like he was walking through molasses, and the buzzing in his ears was getting louder.  He could feel sweat on his brow.  Time was passing so slowly.  It seemed like hours since he’d been picked up, but less than twenty minutes had passed.  As they entered the back door of the station, Anthony caught a sudden movement in his peripheral vision.  He turned his head and saw Jenny and her parents, leaving the office of the police chief.  Jenny’s father was shaking hands with the chief and smiling broadly.  Jenny and her mother, Alice, both turned to watch as Anthony was escorted past them.  Jenny’s face was like that of a stranger’s.  He looked at her and finally really saw her.  Everything that Miller and Jerry said was right on.  He was just a good time, her bad boy.  He’d thought there was something special between them.  He’d been wrong.  He was insignificant, too.

Anthony turned his head away from them, and thought about the smell of cut grass and fresh rain and how the tickle of a spring breeze felt against his face after a long winter, and felt something inside him turn cold and hard.