by Dean H Wild
Copyright © 2019 by Dean H. Wild
All rights reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Artwork by Andrej Bartulovic
Interior Layout by Lori Michelle
www.theauthorsalley.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
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For Doris and Arlene—greatest joys, deepest sorrows.
And for Julie. Always for you.
PART ONE:
A LONG DAY
CHAPTER ONE
LUCK IS A THING that comes in many forms.
The phrase popped into Mick Logan’s head as he climbed the retractable steps into the attic. Hemingway, right here under the shapeless veils of insulation drooping from the underside of his roof and for no good reason other than it might have something to do, vaguely, with the task set before him. Of course, that would make it luck comes in the form of a box. And boxes there were in this narrow third floor area. Stacks of them on the dusty plank floor, each one marked in Judy’s neat handwriting.
He gazed at them, hands on hips. It seemed like such a simple task: to go home, empty the clutter from a few cartons, and take the empties back to the village hall to use in the cleanup. Looking at them, however, invoked a prediction, a poor man’s premonition of sorts, in which Judy pointed out displaced picture albums and stray fondue pots and asked what in the world he had been thinking. He listened to the unseasonably strong May wind whoop around the eaves outside, and he thought about going back into the morning light empty handed. Maybe come up with another solution to the box problem, one that didn’t involve the controlled and sensibly charged wrath of his dear wife. He still had a few days to get the village hall cleaned out before the big vote. And maybe if he checked with Copeland’s gas station again he’d come up with some boxes, because he was pretty sure Roger Copeland was holding out.
But things didn’t get done by waiting. It wasn’t how the city-dwelling Mick Logan ran his classroom all those years ago, and it wasn’t how the small-town Mick Logan ran his village maintenance job, either. He bit down on his lower lip, harder than usual because it brought a dull flash of pain, and he gave the attic another, more intense onceover. A box caught his eye; a reddish-colored carton with only a corner showing behind the greater bulk, like a shy child shuffled to the back of the crowd. For some reason it seemed like a good place to start.
He dragged it into the open and felt ambushed by recognition as he brushed ten years’ worth of attic dust from the counter-folded flaps on the top.
Written there in his own hand: CLASSROOM.
No revelation, no excitement. Just the last box he’d picked up from the school in those numb and hazy days surrounding the move from Royal Center to Knoll. His hands seemed to slow down as they undid the flaps and folded them back. He considered the jumbled contents with dull reluctance, drawing a mental breath, and then began to pick through the artifacts of his previous working life.
Textbooks and lesson plans were the bulk of it: Intermediate Grammar, Introduction to Great American Literature. A desk plaque reading MR. LOGAN was slipped in next to a rolled-up poster of twentieth century authors and poets. He ran his fingers through an assortment of desk pens and paperclips. Touching them was like tapping selected seconds of the past, bits of his time at Lincoln Middle School trapped inside flint-strikes of memory.
Pushed down next to a faded desktop calendar was a small bag made of sleek gray velvet, and he pulled it out before he could reason his way through whether this was a good idea or a bad one. He let it rest in his palm and considered its drawstring top. He was into it this far, might as well finish it. He opened it and dumped the contents into his waiting palm, his heart thudding with a slow, deliberate cadence.
The items clicked together in his hand; two chess pieces—a horse head knight as gray as the bag it came from and a darker king, each carved from a veined mineral, highly polished. The wind keened across the eaves as he thumbed each piece with slow, thoughtful strokes.
“Robbie Vaughn,” he said at last.
His voice was barely above a whisper.
The house settled around him. Outside, something crashed over in the wind and rattled with a tin bucket sound. His flesh rippled beneath his Village of Knoll uniform shirt. His fist closed over the chess pieces.
The voice awakened in his memory belonged to one of the brightest, funniest kids he’d ever known. That’s a checkmate, Mr. Logan.
He made an evaluative, almost congratulatory smile. Despite the remembered voice, his mental barriers put up long ago against all Robbie Vaughn matters were holding, and he could not let these psychological levees be breached by this discovery. No images came—not the upstairs school hallway drenched in merciless March sunshine, not the funeral home and its own unsympathetic harshness. All contained, properly cinched and calibrated.
Good.
One of the carton’s corner seams split with a dry popping sound. It made him jump. Books spilled onto the floor. The remainder of the chess pieces, stacked in a loose jumble for the last decade, rolled out and clattered like gumballs. The wind slammed against the house again. If he were the type to believe in omens, he might have found a reason to be uncomfortable under his own roof just then. Instead he dealt the carton a hopeless swat. No longer of use to him. But stacked in the shadows behind it were more boxes. And they were empty. Luck, in one of its many forms.
Before taking the empties downstairs, he repacked the classroom stuff into a new, stronger carton. All but the velvet bag containing the knight and king, which he put in his pocket next to his car keys. There was some type of comfort in the act.
CHAPTER TWO
When Mick walked into the village garage, Harley Kroener’s voice wheeled into the high-ceilinged space with an inflection of lament. “Goddamn it, why today?”
Mick looked at his friend who, parked at the ancient wooden desk in the corner, executed two quick movements at once. One was to give Mick a glance of acknowledgement, the other was to slam the phone receiver into its cradle. Town bullshit, Harley’s expression told him.
“What we got?” Mick said and put down his armload of boxes. The village garage was aglow with morning light from the glass block windows. It smelled of grease and the ghosts of exhaust and grass clippings. “People sticking posters to the streetlight poles again, sneaky rascals?”
Harley made a humorless laugh. “I think we’ve got them
cured of that, at least until this Mellar’s nonsense is done. Once the rummage sales kick in, we’ll have to start all over. No, this is something I can take care of before I leave town, I guess.”
Mick gave him a head shake. “You’re not even supposed to be here today. What is it? I’ll fit it in.”
Harley got out of his chair and it was like watching a juggernaut rise from the surf. To say Harley Kroener was tall was an understatement. And he was broad. Not fat but wide set, perhaps a little slouched under the weight of fifty years, but still formidable to behold. “I got out of the house because my pacing around was driving Beth Ann nuts, so whether or not I’m supposed to be here, this is where I’m staying. For another few minutes, anyway. God, I hate this medical consultation bullshit. And they’ll probably tell me it’s nothing, anyway.”
Mick made no reply because they both knew doctors don’t set up consultations just to tell a person there was nothing wrong, especially when they ask the spouse to be in attendance. He would expect a similar silence from Harley, if the shoe were on the other foot. “No, really, I’ll do it, whatever it is. All I have on my plate today is cleaning up next door.”
“And that state inspector is due. What’s his name? Fyvie?”
“Nothing to it. I take him out to the old landfill, show him where the vent pipe is, and come back to town. Five minutes. Four if I take the truck out of first gear.”
Harley slouched a little more. “Yeah, okay. Somebody has been messing with the manhole covers. They’re offset all over town for some reason.”
“Wow.” Mick flashed him a smile. Knoll was not much more than a wide spot on County Highway L, seven streets that formed an unremarkable rectangular grid. The village was annexed into the sewer system of the nearby city of Drury, which gave it a distinction a step above other neighboring small towns. The manhole covers in Knoll numbered exactly three. “I don’t know if I can find an extra minute and a half.”
Harley’s gaze swept over the paperwork on the desk and across the nail-studded board propped against the window. The board was a gleaming collection of village-relevant keys of varying age and size. “Point taken.”
“Manhole covers, huh? Does it have something to do with the sewer backup at the firehouse, do you think?”
“Don’t see how. All I know is if the town’s shit hadn’t bubbled up out of that firehouse floor drain we’d have a place to vote next week and we wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning up that damned village hall as an alternate polling place. If I’m back early enough this afternoon I plan to be right next door with you to help box up some of those old town records.”
“What part of ‘day off’ don’t you understand? It’s all going to be here tomorrow, still waiting, still a pain in the backside.”
Harley went quiet, and a pulse beat at his grayed temples. Mick placed the expression after a moment and felt something wither inside. He was being what Harley considered to be cavalier. Mick could afford to be cursory and dismissive because he could easily move on to something better than hauling brush and running the village snowplow. Judy passed him the same look in quiet moments; a baffled wonderment, nearly an accusation, but not quite.
“Just as well,” Harley said at last. “Beth Ann is due to pick me up. She hates this nonsense, too.”
“You know Judy and I are rooting for you,” he said and nudged the big guy’s shoulder.
“Yeah.”
A car horn sounded outside. Harley flinched and started walking toward the service door. When he opened it up, a gust of May wind shuffled the papers on the desk and made the tools hanging on the pegboard across the room sway and clang together. The board full of town keys caught the draft in a bad way and crashed over. Keys of passage to all the major doors, cabinets and ignitions crucial to the Village of Knoll scattered across the desk and jangled on the floor.
Harley glanced back through the door. “Jesus.”
“I got it,” Mick said and waved him on. “You get going before Beth Ann heads over to that consultation without you. Call me when you know something.”
Harley nodded, seeming daunted and dazed before he closed the door.
Mick looked after his friend, bemused and heartsick. By tonight, Harley Kroener would have confirmation of the obvious and their quaint little town would have something new to gossip about. Knoll was a thirsty place when it came to gossip and there was always room for more.
Mick’s gaze settled on the southeast corner of the garage, maybe because the landfill was in that general direction, and the new state inspector, a Mr. Fyvie, was due shortly to check the methane vent. Yes, that was on his plate, too, getting the new guy acquainted because the old-fart who used to come out, intent and familiar and barely noticed, decided to step through the door marked RETIREMENT. Then his thoughts circled around to luck again and at last returned to the town, and how it, as a collective, believed in omens and superstitions. It was why Cheryl Abitz kissed the lottery machine at Copeland’s every time she bought a Powerball ticket. It was why there was a horseshoe nailed up above the door at the volunteer firehouse, and why the penny on the front step of the decommissioned post office just kitty-corner across the street from this very building stayed there year after year, disturbed by neither child nor chairperson. And it was why that other place, near the landfill, existed at all. Easy enough to find, that place, if you went up Pitch Road, veered away from the old dump and followed the arrow on the rough wooden sign lettered with a single word: CRYMOST. Omens, luck, phenomenon. For these, Knoll kept the door of acceptance wide open.
CHAPTER THREE
Mick began sorting through the spilled and scattered key collection but then abandoned the effort. Other duties were calling. Manhole covers needed to be righted before someone on the way to The Chapel Bar on Backbank Street or the F&F Feed Mill on the main drag dropped a tire in and ruined their suspension (God forbid it should be Cyril Vandergalien, mill proprietor, volunteer fire chief and acting village president; nobody needed to open that gate to administrative hell). One bad part: the key for the village hall, which he would need if he was to begin any type of cleanup next door, seemed to be AWOL. That meant he needed to fit in a stop at the Borth house so he could pick up a spare, provided Chastity Mellar Borth was home and was willing to part with one of her village-appointed keepsakes. And the landfill inspector was due around ten. Let’s not forget about him. Jesus, whatever happened to quiet life in a small rural town?
Most of the days were quiet. Idyllic peace was Judy’s plan when she suggested they not stray from Wisconsin after he quit teaching but rather find a sleepy, low-key town like the one where she grew up. Knoll turned out to be close enough to her new job in Drury and low-key enough to fit the bill. The day they toured the house on Garden Street and fell in love with it was the same day he spotted the HELP WANTED sign taped to the door of the village garage. The rest, as they say, was history.
Ten years later, they were part of the town, as accepted and immovable as the local landmarks or the village sidewalks. True, he and Judy were just sallying forth into their early forties, and one more big move was not out of the question, but he often felt—with a wistful sort of bitterness—there was a better chance of the Wistweaw River on the town’s southeast edge changing course than there was of the Logans packing up and leaving Knoll. The same went for the Kroeners. Or the Prellwitzes. Of course, people did pack up and move away on occasion, but such endeavors were always accepted by the town populace with a resigned disappointment. Knoll liked to keep its own and it demanded, quietly, a brand of commitment. Even idyllic peace bore a cost.
He picked up Harley’s desk phone and dialed the number pinned to the bulletin board above it. The Borth house phone rang only once, as usual, before the answering machine kicked in. He worked his teeth slowly across his lower lip. The receiver felt heavy and slick in his hand.
“Ms. Mellar Borth,” he said at the tone. Never just “Ms. Borth”, which discounted her historical attachment to the town and the
refore was not tolerated. And certainly not “Chastity”. The use of her first name would be a social—nay, a moral—faux pas. Chastity Mellar Borth was five years his senior but the difference between them was defined by something other than time. Mick, Harley, and so many others were part of the town, but Chastity was the town, by lineage and by the reverence granted to her by the town’s inhabitants.
Formality out of the way, he finished his message. “Mick Logan from the town garage. I want to start clearing out the village hall today but I’ve misplaced my key. I’ll be over within the hour if you want to leave one in your porch mailbox for me. Much obliged.”
Quite a day, and it was barely past nine. As he went to the door, his hand bumped the pocket where the velvet bag rested and the knight and king slept in close comfort. Slept? Odd observation, but somehow appropriate. The wind gusted outside and rumbled across the roof of the garage and the town hall next door. The town hall, where neglected invoices, forms and documents stood in precarious stacks like a leaning city covered in dust. Should the wind get in there, the whirling cyclone of loose papers would seem endless. Some things slept, he mused, while others raged around them, and should the two meet, unsheltered and laid bare, there was chaos to be had. Not Hemingway, that. It was pure Mick Logan, and he thought it wasn’t half bad.
He walked over to the truck, wind snapping at his collar, and he started the engine.
CHAPTER FOUR
Orlin Casper remembered his birthday celebration, already two days past, as a real whiz-banger. By ninety-five-year-old standards, anyway. He held memories of the party out before him as he staggered toward his easy chair by the picture window. He hoped he’d make it. The strength was running out of his legs with the ease of warm bath water. His ticker beat heavy and slow, pumping out its last as he tried to impose reminiscence over dread. Such a lovely birthday, not spent in this house on Meadow Lane, his residence of sixty years, but at the nursing home in Drury where the nurses had put balloons in his wife’s room and somebody brought a cake. His dear Irma sat politely in her bed, the removed smile she wore throughout her five-year decline fixed on her face. A photo album was passed around and the nurses made an appropriate fuss over shots of proudly-owned cars, favored pets, and beloved relatives, including the two boys who both would beat their parents in the laborious race to the grave.
