Brazil was struggling with emotions he didn’t want anyone to know about. West couldn’t tell if he was angry or close to tears as she chipped away at him with her own investigation into his past.
“He’s plainclothes,” she said, ‘decides to pull a stolen vehicle.
Number one violation. You don’t do that in an unmarked car. And the asshole turns out to be a felon on the run, who points his gun close range. Last thing your father said was, “Please God no,” but the fucker does it anyway. Blows a hole in your daddy’s heart, dead before he hits the pavement. Your favorite newspaper made sure Detective Drew Brazil looked bad in the end. Screwed him. And now his son’s out here doing the same thing. ”
Brazil sat on the swampy lawn, staring hard at her.
“No, I’m not.
That’s not the point. And you’re cruel. ”
West didn’t often have such a powerful effect on guys. Raines never got this intense, not even when she broke it off with him, which she had done five times now. Usually, he got mad and stormed off, then ignored her as his phone didn’t ring until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Brazil she did not comprehend, but then she had never known a writer or any artist, really. She sat next to him, both of them in a grassy puddle and drenched. She tossed the hammer and it splashed when it landed, its violence spent for the day. She sighed as this young volunteer-cop-reporter stared at drops streaking past, his body rigid with rage and resentment.
“Tell me why,” she said.
He wouldn’t look at her. He would never speak to her again.
“I want to know,” she persisted.
“You could be a cop. You could be a reporter. But oh no. You got to be both? Huh?” She playfully punched his shoulder, and got no response.
“You still live with your mother, I got a feeling. How come? Nice-looking guy like you? No girlfriend, you don’t date, I got that feeling, too. You gay? I got no problem with that, okay?”
Brazil got up.
“Live and let live, I always say,” West went on from her puddle.
He gave her a piercing look, stalking off.
“I’m not the one they call gay,” he said in the rain.
This did not threaten West. She had heard it before. Women who went into policing, the military, professional sports, coaching, construction, or physical education were oriented toward same-sex relationships. Those who succeeded in any of these professions, or owned businesses, or became doctors, lawyers, or bankers, and did not paint their nails or play round-robin tennis in a league during office hours, were also lesbians. It did not matter if one were married with children. It mattered not if one were dating a man. These were simply facades, a means of faking out family and friends.
The only absolute proof of heterosexuality was to do nothing quite as well as a man and be proud of it. West had been a known lesbian ever since she was promoted to sergeant. Certainly, the department was not without its gay women, but they were closeted and full of lies about boyfriends no one ever met. West could understand why people might assume she was living the same myth. Similar rumors even circulated about Hammer. All of it was pathetic, and West wished people would let their rivers flow as they would and get on with life.
She had decided long ago that many moral issues were really about threats. For example, when she had been growing up on the farm, people talked about the unmarried women missionaries who kept busy at Shelby Presbyterian Church, not far from Cleveland Feeds and the regional hospital. A number of these fine ladies had served together in exotic places, including the Congo, Brazil, Korea, and Bolivia. They came home on furlough or to retire, and lived together in the same dwelling. It never occurred to anyone West knew that these faithful ladies of the church had any interest beyond prayer and saving the poor.
The threat in West’s formative years was to grow up a spinster, an old maid. West heard this more than once when she was better than the boys in most things and learned how to drive a tractor. Statistically, she would prove to be an old maid. Her parents still worried, and this was compounded by the nineties fear that she might be an old maid who was also inclined elsewhere. In all fairness, it wasn’t that West couldn’t understand women wanting each other. What she could not imagine was fighting with a woman.