by Ed Gorman
“What if she called and asked you to get married?”
“I don’t know. That’s the only answer I can give you.”
“She walked all over you.”
“Yes.”
“And ditched you for somebody else.”
“Yes.”
“And you’d still consider taking her back.”
“I’d consider it, I suppose.”
“Well, that’s exactly how I’d feel, McCain. I’d consider it.”
“We’re a couple of fools,” I said, “is what we are.”
“Damned fools.”
“Double-damned fools.”
“We’re really pathetic, you know that?”
“Do I know it? Do I know it? I make myself sick I know it so much.”
And that’s when I saw this guy working his way up the street, slipping leaflets under windshield wipers.
“I’ll call you at work this afternoon,” I said.
“I’m really going to need you tonight, McCain.”
“Good. Because I’m really going to need you, too.”
She grabbed my hand. “You are?”
“Sure I am.” And then I did something I really shouldn’t ought to have done. I leaned over and gave her a kiss right on the mouth. A married woman—well, a somewhat married woman—right on the mouth.
Just the kind of thing I’d expect from you, I could hear my ninth-grade nun, Sister Mary Florence, saying. Just the kind of thing I’d expect from you.
Eleven
John Parnell was a chunky guy with a limp that resulted from a grade-school tractor accident. He wore a lime-colored
T-shirt and jeans and sandals. He was bending over a Ford station wagon to slap a leaflet beneath its windshield.
“Hi, John.”
He backed himself off the car hood he’d been bent over and said, “Hey, McCain, how ya doin’?”
“Fine. Or I was till I saw you putting those leaflets on car windows.”
He grinned. “Yeah, that’d make the nuns mad, wouldn’t it?”
I nodded to the stack of leaflets in his car.
He was still the freckled, snub-nosed guy I’d always known. I couldn’t connect him to the leaflets.
“You printed them and now you’re distributing them?”
“Yep. That’s what God wants me
to do, McCain.”
“He told you that?”
“Now you’re being blasphemous, Sam.”
Maybe this wasn’t the old Parnell I’d known.
“You’re a Catholic, Parnell, and you’re handing this stuff out?”
He shook his head. “Not anymore I’m not.
A Catholic, I mean.”
“Since when?”
He shrugged. “Well, the wife—I’m not sure you ever met her, gal from Sioux City I met when I was doing my printing apprenticeship up there—anyway, she was raised as an evangelical. And what with one thing and another she kinda got me interested in the whole thing. She always says you should feel bad when you go to church.
And I tried ‘em all—Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian. But they always tried to make you feel good. But bad’s the only way you know your religion’s workin’ for you. When you feel terrible.
And that’s what we both liked about Reverend Muldaur. His whole deal was how unworthy we all are. And I believe that, McCain. You might believe something else—but that’s what I believe, McCain.”
“But the snakes—”
“That’s what people don’t understand.”
“What don’t people understand?”
“They’re not snakes.”
“They sure looked like it to me.”
“They’re devils. Really and truly.
Devils. Evil spirits. I’ve held them. I can feel their evil. I truly can. But they didn’t bite me because Reverend Muldaur cleansed my soul before he handed me the snakes.”
“But all this bullshit about Jews and Catholics—”
“I don’t use words like bdds. anymore, Sam. But I’ll tell you, they’re both out to conquer the world. They know they can’t do it alone, so they’ve joined forces. And the only people who can stop them are people like me.” He leaned forward confidentially. He smelled of sweat and onions.
“And there’re a lot of people in this town who believe the same way I do, Sam. But they don’t want people to know it.”
“So you just gave him all this printing free?”
“Heck, no. A friend of his paid for it.”
“What friend?”
He leaned toward me again. He mst’ve had an onion sandwich with some onion rings and onion juice on the side. “Like I said, Sam, there’re a lot of folks in this town who agree with everything we do. And one of them was nice enough to pick up the tab for the printing. I just charged my costs.
No profit. That wouldn’t be right, seeing’s how I was doing it for the Lord.”
Parnell, Parnell, what did somebody drug you with? How can you possibly believe this crap?
Then I realized it was time for me to go pick up the rabbi and the monsignor. We were doing some target practice this afternoon with the guns in the church basement.
“I’d really appreciate it if you told me who paid for the printing, John. I’m trying to find out who killed Muldaur.”
“I know you are. We all hear the Judge is trying to get it all cleaned up before Nixon gets here. Now, there’s a guy with almost as many Jew friends as Kennedy has. Hard to know who to vote for.”
I couldn’t deal with it any longer.
“You’re making me so damn sad, Parnell.”
“And you’re making me sad, too, Sam. I saw you over there eating with that Jewess. She’s not fit company for a true Christian, Sam.”
“Well, she’s fit company for me. She’s a damned good woman, in fact.”
He shook his head. He really did seem sad. “The ways of the flesh, Sam, the ways of the flesh.”
At one time, the two-room house had probably looked pretty nice sitting all alone by the fast creek in the curve of a copse of pine. It looked like one of those houses a fella could order himself from the Sears Roebuck catalog late in the 1890’s. Such homes came with assembly instructions; the fancier kits even included hammers and other tools. You could see some of these Sears houses standing well into the 1940’s, by the grace of spit and God, as the old saying had it.
Ned Blimes, whose last name and current address I’d learned by asking around, didn’t seem to be at home as I pulled my ragtop behind a stand of pine to the west of his house. I didn’t want my car to pick up any
stray bullets.
A dainty man, he wasn’t. His meals apparently included a lot of self-shot squirrel meat because the grass on the side of his place was strewn with carcasses. Several gleaming crows hovered nearby. I’d interrupted their meal. I’ve never been able to tolerate the smell of squirrel meat frying. The air was coarse and bloody with it.
I knocked on the front door of the shack-like house. The lone front window was filled with cardboard and just a jagged remnant of the glass that had once covered it.
The crows went back to eating. The pollen got to me and I sneezed. And somebody poked something in my back.
The smell told me it was Yosemite Sam himself.
“Put your hands over your head.”
“This high enough?”
“Higher.”
“This is as high as I can go.”
“What’chu want, McCain?”
“I wanted to ask you some questions.”
“About what?”
“About Muldaur.”
“Don’t want to talk about Muldaur.”
“Why not?”
“Because that was part of the bargain.”
“What bargain?”
He guffawed. Or whinnied. I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was a guffaw-whinny. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Gee, I haven’t heard that one since third grade.”
“Huh?�
�
“How about taking the gun out of my back?”
“Then how about you gettin’ in that car of yours and gettin’ the hell out of here?”
Then he started marching me back to my car.
I still had my hands above my head. There was a variety of animal poop all over the buffalo grass. I am happy to report that my black penny loafers didn’t touch any of it.
“What happened out there the day you took Muldaur snakin’?”
“Who tole you somethin’ happened?”
“You did.”
“I did? When?”
“When I saw you at Muldaur’s
place. You said something like “He was the only one who made any money that day.””
“Shit,” he said.
“What?”
“You sure I said that?”
“I sure am.”
“Then I shouldn’t’ve. Me’n my big mouth.”
We’d reached my car.
He prodded and poked me with the barrel of his rifle. I got in and got behind the wheel.
“You just forget I said anything, mister.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Well, you damned well better,” he said.
“You can’t make me.”
“Bet I can,” he said, and put the tip of the rifle about three inches from my face.
“You always talk like you’re in third grade?”
“Do you? Now you get the hell out of here and you don’t bother me no more, you understand that?”
When I got back to the office, I got out my list and added a few more items.
Why were Sara and Dierdre Hall so angry at each other?
Who paid Parnell the printing costs?
What happened the day Muldaur and Ned Blimes went snaking? Jamie had left me a typed note:
I Finisshed Up Tyyping Earlie
So Me And Tturc Went Swimming.
This Time Wit Our Close On.
He-he. I Cracked A Funnie,
Mrr C. Jamie
Well, she was coming along, anyway, God love her. A couple of times she’d even mistyped her own name—?Jammie” and “Jaamie”—s hanging around Turk—excuse me “Tturc”—was apparently starting to pay off. The first time I’d interviewed her for the job, she’d told me, “My dad says he hasn’t got a lot upstairs, Turk I mean, and maybe he doesn’t. But he’s got a lot of common sense. Like one day this big dog was really growling at me and he had this kind of foamy stuff dripping from his mouth. And you know what Turk said?
He said, “Don’t try to pet him or nothing, Jamie. He looks kinda mad.” See what I mean? He’s got a lot of common
sense, Mr. C.”
The Common Sense Typing Method.
A volume that should be in every school library.
Between 2ccji and 3ccec I got four calls.
Two of the callers were clients explaining why they couldn’t pay me this month, and two were people who wanted to sell me some things. Maybe if the first two callers came through with money, I might be able to buy things from the second two.
I looked through some court documents the county attorney had shipped me; a dunning letter from my alumni association; a copy of Time with Ike on the cover. The Wwii people would always be my true heroes. Even a little town like ours lost twenty-eight men and women in the war. And you never forgot. Some people talked about their war experiences and some didn’t. But whether they held their memories public or private, they could never let go of them. There are some things you go through that change you forever —even if you don’t want to be changed—and war is one of them. My dad still has nightmares sometimes, my mom says, and they’re always about his war experiences. I didn’t agree with everything Ike believed politically but I admired him a damned sight more than I did showboats like Patton and MacArthur. MacArthur I gave up on when he said we should drop atomic bombs on China. He enjoyed war too much to be trusted. He loved posing against a backdrop of explosions and bombed-out people trooping down lonely roads. I always laughed about what Ike said when asked what he’d done as an Army captain in the South Seas during the 1930’s, when he’d served as MacArthur’s secretary: “I studied drama under General MacArthur.” MacArthur never forgave Ike for that crack.
Just before Sara Hall was due, my dad called and said, “Don’t forget Monday’s your mom’s birthday.”
“God, I’m glad you reminded me.”
“She says she doesn’t want us to make a big deal of it. But you know better and so do I.”
“Mind if I bring somebody new? And she’s not a date exactly. Kylie Burke.”
“That newspaper girl? She’s sure a
cutie. And nice, too. She interviewed a bunch of us at the Vfw last year. Sure, bring her.”
“Maybe Kylie can help me pick out a gift, too.”
“Well, I’m goin’ fishin’, son. Talk to you later.”
Four-fifteen and Sara Hall still hadn’t appeared. I picked up the phone book, found her number, dialed it. No answer.
Four twenty-one. A timid knock.
“Yes?”
“It’s Dierdre Hall, Mr. McCain.”
“C’mon in.”
She was dressed as she had been earlier, but her shades were pushed back on her head.
“Where’s your mom?”
“I-I’m not sure.”
“Boy, are you lousy at it.”
“At what?”
“Lying. Your entire face is red.”
“Oh, shit.”
“C’mon in and sit down and let’s talk.”
“I’m sorry I lied.”
“It’s all right. Just sit down. We can talk about your mom later. What I want to know for now is why you decided to come over.”
She hesitated a long time. “My mom’s going to kill me for coming here.”
“Let’s worry about that later.”
She scanned my office for gremlins, a pretty girl with more poise than one would expect in somebody her age. That was my thought, anyway.
But then she sort of spoiled the impression by jerking up from her chair, covering her mouth with her hand—the way I always did when the Falstaff beer started backing up—and rushed out the door to the john on the other side of the coatrack.
My charm had worked once again on a female.
They didn’t usually go so far as to barf literally.
Only figuratively.
The exterior door opened and Sara Hall, angry and frantic, rushed in, scanning my office much as her daughter had only moments earlier, and said, “Where is she?”
She wore the same outfit she’d worn earlier, too, but her shades were over her eyes.
“Who?”
“I don’t want any of your guff,
McCain. You know who. If you don’t tell me, I’ll have Sykes arrest you for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Or maybe statutory rape would be even better.”
“Why don’t you sit down and quit acting crazy?”
“Where is she, McCain? I’m serious about calling Sykes.”
And then we both heard Dierdre throw up for the second time.
“Oh, Lord,” Sara said. She didn’t sound angry; she sounded drained, weary.
She came in and sat down and took off her sunglasses and then covered her face with lovely fingers.
“Sara, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
She shook her head. Said from behind her hands, “I can’t, McCain. I wish I could. I wish I could tell somebody, anyway.” Then, “This is when I resent my husband dying on me. He should be here. He was stronger than I was with things like this.” Then, whispering, “This whole thing.”
I almost asked what whole thing.
“You’re not weak,” I said.
“No, I’m pretty strong. But this whole thing—”
We were back to the this-whole-thing thing.
Toilet flushing. Water running. Paper towel being cinched free from the dispenser. Door opening.
She came up to
the door and said, “Mom!”
Sara turned in her chair as if she’d been shot.
“How’d you know I’d be here?”
“You told me you trusted McCain,
remember? So when you snuck away this was the first place I thought of.”
“I didn’t tell him anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Sara seemed ecstatic. “Really?”
“Really, Mom.”
Then to me: “Really? She didn’t—?”
I shook my head. “Didn’t have time. Started to. Then got sick.”
Sara was as bad at lying as Dierdre.
“She’s been sick—the flu—”
“We’re way down the road on that one, Sara,” I said.
“I don’t know what that means.” Sounding scared.
“It means she’s pregnant. That’s why she was throwing up.”
Sara gasped the way women in movies gasp.
Dierdre showed no particular expression.
“Then you did tell him!” Sara
snapped, crazed again.
“Mom, he figured it out. Throwing up in the middle of the day. Me coming over here to tell him some kind of secret. You being so wound-up and all—he figured it out for himself.”
Sara turned to me again. “Please don’t tell anybody, McCain. Please promise me.”
My seventeen-year-old sister had gotten pregnant a few years ago. People still whispered about her, snickered, even after she’d fled to Chicago. Nobody deserved that kind of treatment.
“Don’t worry, Sara. I won’t say a
word.”
“I have to trust you, McCain.”
“I know.” I reached over and took her hand.
“And you can.” To her daughter, I said, “How about taking ole Mom home and helping her relax?”
Sara smiled anxiously. “Ole Mom here could sure use one.”
I hadn’t learned anything other than that a high-school girl had gotten herself in trouble, the kind of trouble small-town gossips, lineal descendants of the folks who ran the Salem witch trials, loved to dote on. But now wasn’t the time to push for anything more.
“You’re a good man, McCain.”
“And you’re a good woman, Sara.”
Sara and Dierdre hugged briefly and left.
Leaving me to wonder if her pregnancy had anything in particular to do with our two most recent murders.
