At End of Day by George V. Higgins Read Free Book Online

the selfsame reason—then
the uniform
wouldn’t look right. So I wouldn’t feel right. No, day comes when I decide, let them retire me, ten-eleven years from now, more important for me to feel right in the uniform than to feel right out of it.”
    With Jim Dowd, some years his junior, feeling the elder’s obligation to transmit wisdom he’d acquired on his own, he allowed himself to be more forthright. “Seen it happen, time and again—men I started working for. They moved up? I moved up too—no coincidence. Their time came to hang it up, they’d get this hangdog expression—tricked into havin’ their balls cut off. ‘Someday,’ they’d always said; thinkin’
they’d
get to decide later, ‘someday’ ever came. Didn’t mean that; meant someone else’d make that decision for them, and had, and now
someday
’d come.
    “Probably true in any line of work, it’s sure true in law enforcement. The more a man loves it, better he gets at it. Better he gets at it, harder it is, put it aside. For
anything
—two weeks’ vacation, or a weekend with the family. Much less think about walking away from it forever;
staying
away? Sees himself getting older; pretty soon he’s gonna
die
.
    “Then all of a sudden, day arrives—he’s
gone
. Comes as a jolt.
    “Early part of his career, it’s all right. Home with the wife and family. His wife’s a good girl and she wants him to be happy, and he is. She sees his dedication, and it does have its rewards. Rankmeans more money. Seniority? A desk job. Less hazardous duty; better chance when he goes out the door in the morning, next time she sees him is, he comes back in that night. Not onna slab with a sheet over him—some young punk put a bullet in him. Or caught a breadknife in the belly from a husband and a wife perfectly happy fighting with each other, until he showed up and got between them. Plus the better hours—and, let’s not forget, more pay.
    “Policemen’s wives—and husbands, too,
and
domestic partners as well, mustn’t leave them out—fine and dedicated lot, salt of the earth. Taking nothing away from them when I say I’ve yet to meet a policeman’s wife who didn’t like to see him bringing home a bigger paycheck.
    “But still, the more successful the man is in his job, because he loves it, more his wife comes to see it as her rival. Gradually, over the years, she begins to compete with it, to fight it. She
tolerates
the fact that it takes him away from her—she
says
‘all that time it takes from his family,’ but she really means ‘from me.’ So if you see him fairly regularly doing something else that doesn’t involve her—
every day
you see him doing it and he’s as happy as can be—you still have to understand it’s only because she’s
lettin
’ him. And also understand that somewhere down the line when she thinks he’s had about enough fun, going off by himself, doing things that don’t involve her, she’s gonna put her foot down and that’ll be the end of it.
    “Control’s what it’s about. When
she
decides there’s been enough of his horsin’ around—stamping out crime and making the world safe for democracy, whatever the hell he’s been doing—then forever and after he’s going to do what
she
wants. And that’s all, and that is
it
.
    “Which, naturally … most men who’ve gotten used to command, exercising power over other people, been doing it for years, the idea of someone else who’s not even a
cop
, a superiorofficer, telling them what to do all the time, when and where they’re gonna do it—their own
wife
? Does not appeal to them.
    “Maybe
especially
their own wife. Mere
idea’s
embarrassing.
    “Husbands don’t like it, kind of supervision shit—and so they fight back. That’s why you’ll see old doctors, old dentists, old lawyers—all kinds of old men who got that way running their own businesses, forty, fifty years, still going to work every day. Money’s not the issue; they’ve got all of