Home Sweet Home

by April Smith

  It was dark by the time they found a motel, since most were still closed for the winter. After tripping over a loose step on the porch, the proprietor—half drunk, with a tubercular cough and falling-down pants—managed to open a frigid bungalow that hadn’t seen fresh air since last year’s Labor Day. When they discovered the room was too tiny to accommodate both their luggage and a rusty folding cot the owner had grudgingly dragged over, Betsy burst into exhausted tears, and Cal ended up sleeping on the cot with his feet sticking out the open door.

  Tourism abandoned, the objective became getting to South Dakota as fast as possible. For seven days they drove with purpose, on turnpikes and toll roads, blacktops and main streets, stopping every few hours because the secondhand engine would be overheating again, until they crossed the Missouri River and realized that they were entering the promised land.

  The sky was huge and their spirits rose. The prairie was hardly flat, but filled with vivid moss-green folds undulating across millions of acres of open plain—no markers, no fences, just the ageless tracks of winding creeks, spectacular as the African Serengeti, they imagined, and filled, it seemed, with as many wild animals. Herds of golden antelope sprang across their vision, and everywhere the air was filled with birds: chickadees, finches, flashing clouds of swooping terns, and, grandest of all, great blue herons, eagles, and hawks coasting high up on the thermal currents. Pitch-black cows and their babies wandered beneath the bare cottonwood trees, foraging on clumps of winterfat and sage, and the Kuseks stared in awe at their first sight of real cowboys.

  They passed through empty towns with stunted names: Presho, Murdo, Kadoka, Wall. They spotted a family of wild mustangs, and man-made ponds with windmills to draw the water that was blanketed by hundreds and hundreds of squawking ducks and geese. In the distance there were flat-roofed farmhouses, but often, because the road had gone this way since the gold rush, they’d see miners’ shacks so old that nothing remained but charcoal studs and air.

  Finding their destination became a game. Cal would veer off sharply, calling, “That’s it! That’s our house!” while Betsy, trying to keep hold of Lance, would cry, “Cal, don’t!” and Jo would jump up shouting, “Where? Daddy! Stop! You passed our house!”

  “Uh-oh! Daddy made a mistake,” Cal would answer. “That house isn’t nice enough for us. Let’s keep looking.”

  “Okay!”

  This went on until a dark gray storm line manifested on the horizon and quickly grew into a towering thunderhead—so fast that Cal and Betsy barely had time to roll up the windows. The clouds were ugly beasts, sheared off at the top, with columns of black rolling undersides coming directly at them. A forked lightning strike hit the ground and everything turned chalk white, then a burst of rain came down so hard that Jo screamed and took cover, crying, “Mommy!” It sounded like when you spilled a can of marbles on a bare wood floor, only this was a giant pelting them with pails of marbles and thunderously shaking the car. A solid curtain of water obscured the view through the windshield. Cal struggled to keep the car steady, but the hardtop was flooded. The danger now was out-of-control vehicles coming toward them, whose headlights they couldn’t see, so when they glimpsed a turnoff through the downpour, they took it.

  Immediately they felt good hard gravel beneath the tires, and with relief continued on a little ways. Then the road turned bumpy, and without warning the gravel ended and gave way to slushy mud, causing them to fishtail wildly back and forth between the gullies on either side. Betsy, wide-eyed, clung to Lance, and Jo was thrown across the backseat. Cal gritted his teeth and fought the wheel, until they came to a gentle, almost anticlimactic stop. All at once they felt the right rear end of the wagon sink, and they couldn’t go any farther.

  Betsy struggled out of the car, still holding Lance in her arms. Instantly, like a slap in the face, the wind blew the door shut. You’re not wanted here, it said. This was not the fresh fall wind that flew along Fifth Avenue, streaming the bright colors of department store banners and knocking off ladies’ hats. This wind was burly and powerful, more than thirty miles an hour without a pause; this wind owned the prairie. Always had and always would, and everything that was there was because of it—what could grow and what couldn’t, where the rain fell or was sucked up by drought, which direction the buffalo took to graze and how the Native Americans followed their migration.

  Betsy felt a vertiginous sense of space. The wind took away all boundaries. It stripped you of past and future. Were her feet still on the ground? Nowhere was there evidence of humankind. Everywhere she turned she found the disorienting absence of buildings, of knowing where you are in the city by the crosshatches of the grid. Cal was coming around the hood to assess the damage. The only anchors in this new frontier were the trustworthy face of her husband and the baby’s needful cry.

  The car was tilted sidelong in the weeds. Jo, ordered to stay inside, was making circles of breath on the window, while Cal crouched beside the rear tire, which was sunk into the clay—not mud, he discovered, and much more slippery. It clung to everything and hardened quickly in the blowing air. Within moments their shoes were caked and their clothing was splattered with streaks. Where they’d turned off was a quarter of a mile away; they could no longer see the main road. They were in the middle of mauve-and-straw-colored alfalfa fields. The storm was holding off, leaving a sky of soft gray clouds that gusted beads of hail. The temperature was close to freezing and the wind kept on. Even outside for a short time, Betsy’s hands were numb with cold and the baby’s face bright red. The first hint of fear crept into her throat.

  With clumsy fingers, she changed Lance’s diaper on the front seat, found two sweaters and put them both on him. She took the keys from the ignition and gently closed the door, absurdly telling Jo, “Play with your brother.” At least they’d be safe in the car. She opened the trunk and dug out their summer coats from the picnic ware and children’s books they’d packed so carefully—useless stuff, she realized, unless they wanted to burn them for warmth. Another jolt of fear. Cal was prowling along the ditch. She brought him a light tweed blazer she’d found in the car.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “First of all, we need something for traction.”

  She joined his search, but it was futile. There were no structures that might provide wooden planks to slip under the tires, like you would in a snowstorm back east; there weren’t even trees.

  “Cal! What are we going to do?”

  “We’ll get out of here,” he promised.

  “I didn’t see any gas stations, did you?”

  “Not for the last fifty miles,” he said calmly.

  Betsy didn’t answer. She had only one bottle of formula left, but didn’t want to burden him with that particular worry. It was four thirty and getting dark. It looked like another storm on the way. The wind that was bringing the developing rain seemed even stronger than before as if to test their resolve to make this move, here and now.

  She clutched the thin summer coat around her, incongruously Easter yellow.

  “I’m scared for the kids. Lance is just getting over a cold—”

  Cal interrupted. “Look at the facts, Betsy. Don’t go by emotions—what do your instruments say?”

  She tried to laugh. “For God’s sake, we’re not flying an airplane!”

  “The facts are…nobody’s hurt, the kids are fine. There’s nothing out here that can harm us. A big hungry bear is not going to come out of the woods, because there aren’t any woods,” he said, going for humor. “We’ll get by, and in the morning I’ll walk to the main road and flag someone down. Relax, honey. There’s a bottle of Scotch in the glove compartment.”

  “Can’t give the baby Scotch,” Betsy observed drily.

  “Hey, wait a minute. Hold the phone. There’s something.”

  Cal’s attention had been caught by the only object standing upright in the landscape of bowed grass. Twenty yards away the remnant of a cattle gate was hanging at an angle o
n its frame.

  “Help me get that off.”

  It was made of pipe and discouragingly heavy. They pulled and twisted, and Cal took a tire iron to the hinges. They got it loose and dragged the thing toward the car, but Betsy’s palms were freezing to the metal and she couldn’t keep up. Finally Cal said, “Let me do it.” He picked the gate up and heaved it over his head like some angry god dressed like a professor, staggering to the car, where he threw it to the ground and kicked it into position behind the sunken tire.

  “You get in,” he told Betsy. “Put the gear in reverse. When I tell you, hit the gas. Gently!”

  They worked for fifteen minutes, easing backward until the tire mounted the metal rungs, nursing forward and gaining traction, but the gate kept slipping sideways. They’d reset and try again, but the spinning wheels dug deeper and finally it was just too cold to be out there. Inside the car, they saw in the mirror that their faces were windburned and their eyes bloodshot red. Cal turned the engine on so they had some heat, but Betsy was shivering so hard, she thought she’d never be warm again. Jo’s teeth were chattering, but she laughed and pointed to their shoes, which had turned to solid blocks of clay.

  “You have dinosaur feet!” she said.

  Clay was everywhere—smeared on their noses, encrusting the seats, floor, dashboard, and no doubt jamming up the drivetrain under the car. Cal took a map from the glove compartment, along with the pint of Scotch. It was hard to pinpoint their location. It hardly mattered. They weren’t going anywhere.

  MERCY MEDICAL CENTER

  DECEMBER 26, 1985

  11:00 A.M.

  The Christmas lights that had adorned the blue Kusek house with the peaceful repose of a holiday evening were overwhelmed by scarlet police car flashers. The well-to-do enclave on West Boulevard had become a crime scene, ringing not with church bells but with sirens. Two ambulances left carrying bodies on stretchers. A coroner’s van pulled up and parked. Coats on top of pajamas and boots over bare feet, neighbors stared in disbelief until the freezing rain drove them inside. Above the clouds the stars were tranquil, but in the pale net of lamplight that fell on the city streets below, a wound had been opened in this city, crimson red.

  Wendy Kusek had been found dead at the scene. When Lance and their ten-year-old son, Willie, arrived at the emergency room of Mercy Medical Center, they were unconscious. Their pupils were dilated and they had difficulty breathing. IV lines were started and the patients were intubated for respiratory support. The doctors began their assessment of further injuries. They noted skull fractures, blood loss, and shock.

  But when Jo Kusek arrived at the hospital from Portland, Oregon, her brother and nephew were no longer in the emergency room and there was confusion about whether they were still in surgery. It took her asking, “Where are they? Where are they?” of every person passing by in scrubs to determine that they had been transferred to intensive care. Former state trooper Randy Sturgis, who had become her protecting angel, walked Jo down from the surgical wing.

  “Has anyone called Wendy’s parents?” she asked.

  He nodded. “It was a big snafu. They’d just left Illinois for vacation in Florida. I believe a relative got ahold of them and they turned right around.”

  Jo clutched at her stomach in a spasm of grief. “Lance will be devastated. Wendy is everything to him.”

  They’d reached the air-locked doors to the ICU. Only next of kin could go inside, so Randy Sturgis waited in the hallway.

  Jo entered the cold hush of the critical care zone. A balding male nurse stood like an oracle behind a gray desk that seemed to be floating in a soft pool of light. Knowing that every word he said would carry the revelation of life or death, she walked toward him in slow motion, dreading his pronouncement, fixed on his clear, expectant eyes.

  The word he spoke to her was “unstable.”

  On hearing this, Jo, too, seemed to lose her footing and become unbalanced. Without any awareness, her right hand had begun to claw at the smooth surface of the desk like an animal trying to escape.

  “What does that mean? Unstable?”

  “They’re both on ventilators, which are breathing for them,” the nurse explained. “They’re getting IV fluids, and their brain functions are being assessed.”

  “Why is that?” she managed.

  “They’ve received significant blows to the head.”

  “Is that how Wendy died? My sister-in-law?”

  “I honestly don’t know. The medical examiner has the last word on that.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Jo was tearless, still in shock. She shook her head. “How can this be?”

  The nurse said, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “Do you have any water?”

  “I’ll get you some,” said the nurse, and returned with a plastic cup. Jo drank it all before she could ask, “What is the prognosis for my brother and Willie?”

  “Really, it’s impossible to tell,” he said.

  The nurse had a pleasant, clean-shaven face and a neutral way of relaying terrifying news. Her mind went blank, and in the next instant she couldn’t remember anything he’d told her.

  “What did you say about the brain functions again?” she asked.

  “We don’t know what’s going on in the brain, which is why they’re doing CAT scans.”

  “Nobody told me about the CAT scans…,” Jo murmured.

  “Would you like more water?”

  Jo shook her head. “I want to see them.”

  “The initial evaluation by the neurosurgeon is still ongoing,” the nurse replied steadily. “He’ll be out to talk to you when he’s done, and then he’ll let you know more. You’re welcome to have a seat. There’s coffee.”

  Jo did what she was told and sat in a chair. The tiny waiting room was darker and more comfortable than the public area in the surgical ward. The upholstery was new. Burgundy and navy. There was a low table with games for children to play with. She was alone, but her nervous system could not relax. She’d been on high alert for almost twenty hours.

  Early yesterday morning the phone had rung in the Portland apartment Jo shared with her boyfriend, a firefighter named Warren Vitelli. It was not unusual for Warren to get an emergency call to duty, but when he realized it was from the Rapid City Police Department, and that it was for Jo, he snapped on the lights and their lives were changed forever.

  It was Christmas Day. He couldn’t leave because of work and she couldn’t get a flight until the following morning. Then the plane had sat on the ground in Portland for ninety minutes while a crew was located to clean the toilets, because that was a federal regulation, the pilot announced, over boos and jeers. Upon landing in Denver, Jo had less than ten minutes to make the connecting flight. A tragedy was unfolding, but it would take too long to explain, so she commandeered an electric cart, gave the driver five bucks, and begged him to go to her gate, where she leaped off just as the doors to the aircraft were closing.

  At the terminal in Rapid City, waiting on the tarmac to deplane, there had been another delay. Trapped in the aisle with winter-coated travelers clutching oversized gifts, Jo had been stymied into an unfocused daze when she was jolted awake by a woman’s voice asking, “Are you all right?”

  The woman was unremarkable in every way—middle-aged, a dark coat and dark hair, and an unexpected smile was all Jo would remember. She realized that she must have looked totally miserable, clutching the handle of her carry-on and ready to sprint.

  “There was an accident, and I have to get to the hospital,” Jo offered.

  “I’m sorry,” said the woman. “Are you from here?”

  Jo nodded. “I grew up outside of Rapid.”

  “We live in Custer,” the woman said, naming a nearby town. “I’ll pray for your loved ones.”

  The line began to move.

  “Thank you,” said Jo, totally taken aback, and then a second miracle occurred. Another woman, younger, who’d been waiting in the aisle in front of them
, overheard their conversation. She turned around and said, “I’ll pray for them, too,” before hurrying off the plane.

  In the broad-minded city where Jo was living now, strangers didn’t pray for you. They didn’t ask if you were okay or facing the unthinkable.

  As she sat alone in the waiting room outside the intensive care unit, Jo wondered where those openhearted ladies were when she was growing up. She already knew the answer, and it didn’t make her feel any better.

  2

  It had stopped hailing long enough for State Trooper Randy Sturgis to spot the station wagon stuck by the side of the road, down on the turnoff where he often checked in on Wolf Harrington, who had been his high school math teacher, now in his eighties and confined to a wheelchair. It wasn’t graveled good up there, he knew, and the road would be a sea of muck, so he turned off the highway and stopped a dozen yards in.

  At that time Randy Sturgis drove his own car for the department, a maroon 1948 Plymouth Special Deluxe, which didn’t have a siren or revolving lights, just POLICE gamely written on the doors. He grabbed his flashlight and walked through the misty dusk to where he discovered there were people huddled inside. The husband got out and shook his hand—an outsider, for certain, with New York license plates and a nice sport jacket just about ruined.

  “Glad to see you,” Cal said.

  The officer was tall enough to tower over him. He was also unusually thin, but you couldn’t see that beneath the gleaming rain-soaked slicker. He had two-tone hair, white at the temples and black toward the crown, but you couldn’t see that, either, beneath his waterproofed hat covered in transparent vinyl film that gave off a pop! with every raindrop. The forehead was high, the brows ordinary, but his eyes were wide in unguarded amazement. You had the impression that nothing in the course of duty—not a bloody double murder or a speeding ticket—would change that look of good-natured, childlike bewilderment.

  “Stuck in the mud?” he asked with a friendly smile.