Sandra McDonald - The Hero of Ward 6.pdf - Sandra McDonald - widez2

The Hero of Ward 6

by Sandra McDonald

Driving home, Jack saw a crude sign written on cardboard and nailed to an oak tree near

his house:

"Poison on gras! Harmful too dogs. BeWARE."

The thin triangle of land beneath the tree belonged to the city, leftover from when the first

subdivisions moved into and carved up the old farms between the river and University

Boulevard. The oak was a majestic old thing, at least a hundred years old, that had been left

in place as the road was put down around it. Spanish moss hung from its huge branches.

Scraggly winter grass covered the ground beneath it. Neighbors often let their dogs take

dumps there, and a few scofflaws were known for not cleaning up the mess.

Jack pulled into his carport. His stomach growling with hunger, he carried his suitcase into

the kitchen. Stan was straining hot pasta into a blue colander at the sink. His nose was pink

and his glasses foggy. The heady aroma of garlic and tomatoes hung in the air.

"Who put up that sign about poison?" Jack asked.

Stan carried the colander back to a stainless steel pot on the stove. "Ward 6 Hero, last

night. No welcome home kiss?"

"Hello." Jack kissed Stan's grizzled cheek. Fifty-five years old, the two of them, though most

days Jack felt much older. He put his briefcase down and shrugged out of his jacket. "What

poison?"

"Some kind of pesticide the city put down. It burned the paws of Janie Napolitano's German

Shepard. You know—Butch?"

"Dutch." Jack pulled a beer from the steel-gray refrigerator. The kitchen was warm and

clean and modern, with black counters and gray cabinets, and splashes of blue. All Stan's

doing, of course. Jack wilted in home improvement stores. "Not Butch."

Stan lifted the lid from a pot of sauce. "And Mrs. Washington's little terrier, too. Emo?"

"Nemo," Jack corrected. His gaze focused out the window. "Ward Hero never was able to

spell very well."

"Still, I love him." Stan tweaked Jack's nose. "Hungry?"

"Starving."

Go take your shoes off and relax. Dinner in ten."

Jack put his shoes and coat in the closet, swapped his teaching clothes for sweatpants and

a comfortable Gators jersey, and settled in the den with the day's mail. Outside, another

January evening settled over North Florida and a brisk wind pushed leaves into the St.

John's River. He opened a thank you note from the Lewises over on Clemson Street,

tossed a reminder for the monthly meeting over at Hero Hall, and pondered a letter from an

address he didn't recognize.

The reigning cat of the house, Harrison, twined through Jack's legs and let out a plaintive

meow.

"So ignored," Jack said, scratching one soft ragged ear. Harrison had seen his share of

fights and danger in the neighborhood. Sometimes he led Ward Hero to children who

needed to be pulled out of wells (once) or lonely old men having heart attacks in front of their

TVs (twice, with a seven year lapse in between). He raised the alarm if black widow spiders

spun their way onto backyard swings (twice for the Harper family and three times to the

Shahs) or if a carelessly discarded cigarette set the trash to fire (once, three years ago, to

the family renting the house at the corner of Duke and Fordham).

Jack knew none of this firsthand, of course. His body did the work under Ward 6 Hero's

persona while his mind slept on, blissfully ignorant. He only had the Chronicles for

testimony. Twenty years of leather-bound journals sat neatly on the shelves by the window,

each one labeled in the neat handwriting of Ward 6 Hero's official companion, The Sidekick

Kid. When the district began requiring electronic reports, The Sidekick Kid had switched to

the Mac computer on the desk. Jack preferred the old-fashioned way, ink on a page, over

submission forms, text boxes, and computerized spell-check.

That was progress for you. Damn progress, all around.

"Dinner's on!" Stan called.

"Coming," Jack said. He opened and read the letter from the stranger, a Mrs. Alice Waters

of Elm Street. Afterward he put the letter aside. Her lamentable situation was no job for

Ward 6 Hero.

She had her own Hero, wherever he was.

* * *

The one o'clock class at the community college left Jack feeling strangely exhausted. For

years he'd taught literature in a fancy classroom at the university, but those classes

eventually grew too painful. Few students read anything these days that didn't arrive on a

flashing screen accompanied by explosions, loud music and headache-inducing special

effects. Composition was easier for him to teach and easier for them to pass, as long as

they turned in some semblance of work on time and attended seventy-five percent of their

classes.

Today's topic had been dangling modifiers, one of his favorite pet peeves, but the blank

looks on his students' faces had told him they didn't understand a word he said.

And he was tired of trying to communicate. So very tired.

As the class was letting out, a middle-aged brunette in a bright yellow sweater and brown

purse sidled through the door.

"Professor MacKenzie?" she asked.

"Yes, that's me." At first he thought she was one of the college faculty or staff, but there was

a hospital badge poking out of her purse. He feared that something had happened to Stan.

Wouldn't the emergency room have called him, not sent a doctor or nurse?

"I'm Alice Waters. I wrote to you?"

Jack let out a worried breath and snapped his briefcase shut. The classroom was empty but

for two students lingering in the back. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Waters. As I told you on the phone, I

can't help you. Your ward has its own Hero."

She nodded, her eyes wide and mouth frowning. "Yes, I know. Michael Beamer. But he

hasn't put on his tights in months, Professor! He doesn't do anything. And the situation's

getting worse."

Jack moved past her to the door. He couldn't quite remember the names of his

students—Shaniqua and Sharonda, perhaps. "Come along, ladies. Time to lock up."

The girls dutifully exited. Jack followed them to the cement sidewalk that connected all the

classrooms on campus. Mrs. Waters, close behind him, said, "Your Ward 6 and my Ward 4

are only one street apart, Professor MacKenzie. One street. But yours is well-kept, and mine

is going to seed."

"It's not up to me," he said as he coded the lock. "I wish it was. But everything is handled by

Hero Central. You can complain to them."

"I have! Believe you me, Professor. But Mr. Beamer's uncle is very well-connected, from

what I understand. They've known about the problem for weeks and haven't done anything."

Mike Beamer's uncle wasn't just politically connected. He was second in command at Hero

Central, and had been responsible for Jack's demotion all those years ago.

"Mrs. Waters, really -- "

"I know there's all this bureaucracy," Mrs. Waters said. "I know that you're not allowed to

cross ward lines under ordinary circumstances. But if you know there's a problem and you

don't do anything about it, isn't that as bad as the people who cause the problems? That's

what I teach my children, Professor. And I don't know what to tell them when they ask me why

our neighborhood hero isn't doing his job."

Jack was silent. The sky was gray and overcast behind the palm trees. January was a cold

dreary month, even in Florida. Mrs. Waters appeared to be the exact kind of upstanding,

responsible citizen that heroes were supposed to help.

"I'll talk to Mike Beamer," he finally offered.

Mrs. Waters shook his hand. "Thank you! Thank you very much."

He regretted the promise almost immediately, of course. Regretted it during a two-hour

faculty meeting in which Ph.D. holders were instructed on how to order pens, and regretted it

on the drive home through heavy, wet traffic. Stan, who was working on a new freelance

project for a bank, looked up from his coding when Jack told him.

"I'm glad you agreed to help her," he said. "I've heard stories about what's going on over on

Elm."

"What stories?"

"You know. The same things she's talking about. High-volume drive-by traffic. Different cars

parked outside every night. Beer cans on the lawn. There's a pit bull in the yard that worries

the neighbors."

"You never told me."

Stan's fingers rested lightly on the keyboard, the coding forgotten. Carefully he said, "Ward

6 Hero knows. But he won't cross official lines, just like you."

Jack made a non-committal noise and went off to fix himself some hot tea. It was his turn to

cook dinner, which meant they'd been eating pizza brought by the nice man from Pizza King.

First he looked up Mike and Kate Beamer's number in his Hero Directory.

The phone rang and rang with no answer and no voicemail.

Later, after he'd graded eleven essays and flunked three of them, after Stan was done with

his freelance work and the house was quiet around them, Jack opened the bedroom closet.

His and Stan's uniforms hung side-by-side on white hangers. Dark pants, waterproof

jackets, comfortable shoes. When Jack had first started, tights and a cape had been

mandatory. The dress code had changed years ago, thank goodness. Jack had never felt

comfortable in green velvet slippers.

"We patrolling tonight?" Stan asked, yawning, as he hugged Jack from behind.

"No." Jack closed the closet door. "Not tonight."

* * *

When he woke the next morning, two of the uniforms were dirty and Stan had a bruise on his

chin.

"What happened?" Jack demanded, cupping Stan's face.

"Mr. and Mrs. Slater were at it again. The Sidekick Hero didn't duck in time."

"I don't like it." Jack got ice from the fridge, fetched aspirin from the bathroom and made a

note to start looking again for property in the countryside. Decades of selflessly sacrificing

for the neighborhood, and some angry drunk husband dared to throw a punch at Jack's

partner?

Stan took the aspirin and ice and kissed Jack's fingers. "Stop looking like that. Slater's just

a guy with his own problems, and I'm sure he's feeling bad about it this morning."

"Not bad enough," Jack said.

It didn't help things that he couldn't reach Mike Beamer by phone, and when he walked over

to the Beamers' house no one answered the door. He crossed more streets to Mrs. Waters'

house on Elm. The houses there were like Jack's, concrete tract homes with gardens and

square lawns, but many had gone neglected of late. The windows all had drawn shades and

junk littered several carports. At mid-day on a Saturday, even given the drizzle, there were

few signs of life.

The house at the corner of Elm and Pine, the subject of Mrs. Waters' concern, was an

obvious eyesore. The roof sagged and the lawn was nothing but dirt and dead grass. Two

barrels of garbage gave off a rancid smell in the empty driveway. The pit bull chained in the

side yard was a dark, scrawny dog with jagged teeth and a fierce bark that made Jack

cringe. An open sore was weeping pus on its back left haunch.

He used his cell phone to dial Animal Control, casually mentioned his hero status, and

waited a half hour in the rain for the officers to arrive. They took one look at the dog, rang the

doorbell without response for ten minutes, and then cut through the fence to confiscate the

animal. The dog was anything but happy about being rescued, and snarled and snapped

under a muzzle as they wrestled it into a cage.

The ruckus raised by the dog brought a teenager with long-hair to the front door. He had the

glassy-eyed stare of someone who either hadn't slept in days or was under the influence of

illegal drugs, or maybe both. Jack didn't eavesdrop on his conversation with the animal

welfare officers, but from the way the door slammed a moment later, he guessed it hadn't

gone well.

"Thanks for calling this in," one of the officers said to Jack. "Hate to see a dog suffer, even

the vicious ones."

"What will happen to him?"

"They'll try to rehab him. Otherwise, he'll get destroyed."

Jack trudged off in the rain. The next day he got a call from Mark Cho, the Precinct 3 Hero.

"Mike Beamer is complaining that you crossed wards," Cho said without preamble. "You

had a dog confiscated from one of his residents?"

"Jack MacKenzie did, as a regular citizen." Jack was alone at home, folding laundry still

warm from the dryer. "Ward 6 Hero didn't have anything to do with it."

"You used your hero code when you called it in."

He rolled two socks together. "No, I didn't. There's no code on the report. And even if there

was a code, it wouldn't be a case of crossing wards, because every hero is honor-bound to

report animal abuse regardless of jurisdiction. Regulation 12.1.4, paragraph a."

A pause on the other end of the line. Then Cho sighed. "Jack, what's going on? You've got a

beef with Beamer?"

"I don't have a beef with anybody who does his or her job."

"Do me a favor. Come to the meeting tomorrow. It's been a long time, Jack. People will be

glad to see you."

The doorbell rang, saving Jack from having to make a commitment. When he peered

through the spyglass he saw the long-haired kid from Elm Street standing in the weak

sunlight poking through rain clouds. The kid's T-shirt was plastered to his skin and had his

arms folded over his chest.

"You're the guy who had my dog taken away," the kid said when Jack opened the door.

Jack replied, "I reported an abused animal to the city. They took him away."

The kid's gaze was fierce. "I was going to buy his medicine! I got my paycheck today."

"You can apply to get him back."

"If I pay for his license! And get his rabies shot." The kid wiped his nose with the back of his

hand but didn't break eye contact. "And for the medical care they're giving him at the shelter.

You know how much that costs? I don't make that much."

"If you paid all that money and got him home, would you really take care of him?" Jack

asked curiously. "It's cheaper to just get another dog."

"He's all I have left from my—" the kid said, and then looked away.

The boy's name was Ronald. Stan had brought up the property and rental records, and

Sandra McDonald - The Hero of Ward 6.pdf

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