Into Darkness

Chapter 2

She was going to kill him, he knew it.  It wasn’t like he wasn’t always late that bothered her.  No, he was pretty sure she was used to that by now.  She would understand that, it was a part of his temporary job that he had been doing lately and she had accepted that.  She had learned not to cook a supper and wait for him to get before they ate.  That had gotten old the second week of this temp job.  

​No, she was going to kill him because not only was he coming home smelling like sewage, but his clothes were covered in it, he was covered in it, and the towel on the car seat was soaked in it.  He didn’t want to even think of how by now, their one and only car had to have the smell soaked into it.  His sense of smell had long since evaporated after the second hour of being coated in the stuff, but that didn’t mean he didn’t smell.  He would find out soon enough when he got home.  Robyn would probably take him right back outside and hose him down before he was allowed in her home.

​Her home, yeah, and if he just walked in like he was now, he would be in and out of her home and drenched down.  Maybe he should just do that to himself when he got home.  Not even go inside, but just walk around to the side of the house and spray himself down with the hose.  He had already done it a little bit while still at the sewage plant, but the chemicals still covered him.

And the smell was still coming with him.  He thought he was leaving it there each day, but according to her, when he got home he still smelt like a sewage plant.  Which the joke would have been funnier if he was not leaving a sewage plant to come home.  

Thank goodness the job was only temporary.  Rob Alleto, town deputy, and over all nice guy did not see himself working there for too long.  He was glad it was only temporary and just that nice bit of additional income to get them ready for the winter.  It wasn’t him, but it was what he needed to do to get by.

When Rob first left Chicago, after being a street cop there for just over ten years to become a town deputy, he hadn’t known how much less he would be making.  It wasn’t so much on just how much less per hour the job paid, but he was used to being a cop full time.  When he came down to the small town of Standard, he had assumed he would be full time there as well.  He wasn’t expecting to be the weekend warrior who just covered part time with the occasional week day given to him out of pity by the town’s chief.  

He didn’t know if he would say that he loved being a cop.  It wasn’t love.  How he felt about his wife and his son, that was love.  His career as a police officer was something else.  Somewhere inside of him, he knew that he was a protector, a guardian.  It wasn’t a love that he did what he did, but a part of him that was so intertwined with his being, that it wasn’t something he loved, but just something he was.  Without it, he wouldn’t be himself, who he was, the man he was happy to be.

That had been put to the test just over a year ago, when he had been caught in the mess down in Hammond.  He still wasn’t over that, but he had moved on.  Being there though, he had saved those that he could.  That would have to be enough.  There were so many people he should have been able to save that he hadn’t been.  It was behind him.  It had to be behind him.

He took another long, deep breath.  This time he could taste the sewage smell that hung in the small space of their car.  The sewage he was covered in.  The sewage that as a way for them to get by, he was hauling from the plant to the fields.  It was a seasonal job, just until the end of October, but he was able to work during the week so that it didn’t interfere with his police duties.  Not only that, but it paid and was well enough that not only was the mortgage finally paid on time, but there was extra.  It was enough to get Jake his new school clothes and supplies.