Absentee List_An Old Horse Mystery

by Elskan Triumph

  Search party did not find body. Recent?

  But one thing didn’t add up: Dan was back.

  “You’re letting Laporte get you,” Horse mumbled to himself.

  What else did he know?

  Peter.

  He thought about the kid.

  Facts, Horse demanded of himself.

  There was no question that Peter suffered from some sort of childhood trauma. Photos of Peter and Dan placed around the living room filled Horse’s thoughts.

  The two smiling.

  Fishing.

  Son and father.

  Horse shook his head, trying to shake a looming sadness that he’d been holding off all day.

  ‘What was the trauma?’ Horse wondered.

  Below his observations, he drew a little house.

  Dan’s.

  In the back he drew a dead stick figure. Then he filled in the wood pile, compost bin, and barn. In the end, he barely had enough information to fill a page.

  Something in his gut.

  Ripping the pack page off Jenkins’ paper, Horse crumpled it up and tossed it in the cardboard box that served as his living room’s recycling bin. He flipped the remaining page over and slapped a grade on it. In his grumpy mood he compensated with a grade higher than she had deserved.

  Then he put the rest away, but didn’t go to bed.

  CHAPTER 19

  “You need to cut the shit,” the voice said in the darkness.

  Horse had just entered his house. Standing in the foyer, keys in hand, he thought of turning around to run. But over his shoulder was slung his work-laden satchel, while his left arm held a heavy bag of groceries.

  Bad idea.

  Instead, he used his left foot to close the door behind him.

  Fumbling with his keys, Horse placed his car key outward from his palm so the point stuck between the middle finger and the ring finger of his left hand. It was a classic self-defense stance he had been told to do in a dark parking lot. Well, honeslty, he had been in the hallway while a self-defense course was being taught at the school one afternoon eight years ago, so he wasn’t sure if he was doing it right. Still, grocery bag in hand, it was all he could think to do at the moment.

  He thought about the voice, keeping a tight fist around the rest of the keys of the ring.

  ‘The voice is older,’ Horse thought. I know that voice.

  “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?” Laporte said from the living room. “That bag looks heavy. I’m guessing there’s a six pack at the bottom.”

  ‘No need for the keys,’ Horse thought.

  He rested the bag on his hip, dropping his keys on the dresser by the door so that he could use both hands on the bag. He passed by the living room and went into the kitchen. Laporte was sitting in Horse’s blue club chair recliner. ‘Get out of my chair,’ he thought to himself, teeth gritted. Like most of the house, it was cold. Laporte hasn’t been here long, he thought, noting that the contractor had started the woodstove but it had yet to warm anything beyond the living room.

  “What makes you think I’m a beer drinker?” Horse had called from the other room.

  “Your recycling bin.”

  Horse looked down and noted the empty bottles at the bottom of the blue plastic bin. Laporte didn’t know that the recycling had been sitting there for months. With so few friends, and even fewer visitors, the bottles did not pile up much. Most of the beer was from Wells’.

  “I’m more of a scotch drinker,” he said, coming back into the living room.

  “I know that, too.”

  Laporte was stretched out as if he owned the place. His coat was off, and he had been reading an old copy of The New Yorker that Horse had saved from the town library’s recycling bin.

  “How?”

  “I’ve poured one for myself.”

  He raised a glass.

  Horse began to regret buying a bottle the day before.

  “Pour me one, will you?” Laporte asked. “You’re up. And get one for youself.”Horse waved off the invitation to drink he own liquor and sat on his couch directly.

  “Don’t like to drink alone?”

  Laporte shrugged, and the two looked at each other.

  “I trust you don’t mind that I let myself in.”

  “We seem to have an open door policy with each other.”

  Horse was clearly agitated, which Laporte both read and enjoyed. He lingered over his drink for a few moments before getting to the point.

  “Our paths keep meeting.”

  “And you have a problem with that?”

  The contractor, who was wearing a black-and-blue lined flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots, leaned forward a bit,. ‘Johnson Woolen Mill,’ Horse first assumed, but he was wrong. Laporte’s wife bought his work shirts at Walmart because they were half the price of local. Sitting in his Chinese-made clothing, Laporte looked Horse straight in the eye.

  “What were you doing in my woods?”

  “Seeing where syrup comes from.” Not missing a beat, he added, “I thought it was Dan’s woods.”

  “We had an agreement.” Leaning back, he took a sip of his drink.

  “You and me or you and Dan?”

  The contractor didn’t bother to respond. Waiting for Horse to agree with the original statement, Laporte had plenty of time to take the room in, but his mind drifted to the kitchen. The refrigerator was decently stocked, mostly with healthy food. He had assumed Horse was a vegetarian from the meatless black bean patties in the freezer.

  “I was surprised when I heard it was you that found the body.”

  “Were you really surprised?”

  “A little. Perhaps not as much as I should have been.”

  “I spoke with your secretary.”

  “She said she spoke with Mr. Wells.”

  “I spoke for him, I guess.”

  Laporte nodded, thinking of other things. More important things.

  “Listen,” he began. “I don’t know why you’re interested in Dan.”

  ‘The boy,’ Horse thought. I care about the boy. “I don’t care about Dan,” he said.

  “Do you know who was in the snow?” Laporte asked.

  “I suspect you do.”

  No response.

  “With all of the holes I dig, why would I dump a body in the snow?”

  ‘He’s quick to jump to talking about body disposal,’ Horse thought.

  Looking across the room, Laporte looked bored.

  “Look, I care about the kid,” Horse admitted.

  “Of course you do. I get it. He’s a good kid.” Laporte threw back the rest of his glass. “And he’s fine. His dad is back. Drop it.”

  “Drop what?”

  Laporte didn’t dignify this with a response.

  Putting down his glass on the side table, he pushed himself up using the arms of the chair. He was a heavy man, but clearly strong. Without a word, Laporte walked out the front door, closing it gently behind him.

  Only then did Horse fix himself a drink, and look at the dirty glass Laporte had left behind.

  CHAPTER 20

  Great, Horse thought.

  His tires were slashed; all four.

  The slashes were on the sidewall: irreparable. He could see this, even in the winter darkness that passed for morning, as the cuts puckered like a black fish’s lips. It was nearly five-thirty in the morning and Grace Haven would be dark for another hour or so, and the sun wouldn’t penetrate the trees that lined his street for another hour after that. Horse had slept in his chair, which is to say he didn’t sleep. His diet went from scotch and tonic, to tonic, to coffee. Now, he was eating only cold and stupid adversity. This was not petty vandalism; someone did this deliberately to him.

  ‘Laporte,’ Horse thought. He left the house and slashed my tires.

  Of course he didn’t know this. An evening of wresting with all of the things he didn’t know about Dan and Peter—compared to what he felt—left him unsure of the most obvious conclusions. Horse
was a man of answers—a teacher with solutions. He fixed kids. Kids like Amanda Tomlinson. This, now, was uncomfortable territory. Standing in his driveway, looking at his hobbled Festiva, he did nothing but drop his bag full of partially corrected papers, seventeen purple Uniball Vision pens, a copy of The Chocolate War, a cutting tool, and a bag of black licorice all into the snow bank that lined his driveway.

  ‘Times like this you drop it, or become a fanatic.’

  Looking around at the dark outlines, three feet of snow still on the ground, Horse calculated how much longer he would need snow tires. His Fiesta took R12s. Tiny in a world of All-Wheel Drive Subarus riding on R16s and larger SUVs. Snow tires were especially hard to get in a timely fashion, at this time of year, for this size. There were four all seasons in his garage, and he supposed he would have to risk that the roads don’t get too slick before spring.

  Be careful. Drive slow.

  For an eternity he stood, coffee in hand, and stared at his garage door.

  The heck with it.

  Pulling out his phone he called Wells. Then he went in to make another pot of coffee.

  By the time Wells had arrived the passenger side of the car was resting on cinder blocks, the wheels rolled off into the nearby snow bank. He would have to drag the rims and the all season tires to town. The late model Saab’s headlights illuminated a man bent over the driver’s side front wheel. Wearing his headlamp, Horse cranked on the flimsy jack that came with the car until the wheel was nearly off the ground. Rising up, he put one end of the tire iron on a lug nut and then stood on the other end. His entire weight against the nut, it did not budge. He jumped slightly.

  Slipped.

  On the ground, Horse sat cursing.

  Opening his door, Wells asked, “Having a good day?” In his hand was a small white bag containing three Danishes and two glazed donuts.

  “If you don’t sleep, does yesterday count as today, too?”

  “No.”

  “Then, I’ve had better.”

  Wells nodded at the tiny jack. “Where’s your other jack?”

  A mix of elements had conspired to force Horse into getting a rolling floor jack and carry a fifth tire with him. This was not his first slashing. The mix of his bluntness and a hard, bitter citizenry made October parent conferences a particularly bad time for tires. Often, Horse changed right over to snows. By June, parental tunes had changed. More than once he had been “taken care of” at Dave’s in town, the owner being one of the former disgruntled parents who later saw the light when he daughter made advanced academic classes as a freshman at the high school. Still, on this morning it was cold comfort.; he’d never had to change all four.

  “The jack froze up.”

  Wells looked at the front tire, frozen in place.

  “You have to grease it occasionally. Wait for the sun.”

  “There’s sun? You’re a flatlander if you believe that.”

  “Born in Hardwick.”

  Picking himself off the ground, Horse grunted. Then the two went in to drink the fresh pot of coffee and eat pastries.

  “Need a ride home?” Jones asked, smirking, as a greeting. “I’ll bet narrowing down the suspects will be difficult. I mean, who hasn’t felt the urge to slash your tires?”

  “I trust you have an alibi,” Horse replied.

  “And a good knife.”

  Jones, Horse, and Wells were sitting at chairs in the school library reviewing the test scores from the state, as required by law. They had piles of files on tables and on their laps as they sat for their grade level review of student progress. Each student needed to be assessed and a plan put in place. Prior to this meeting they had sifted through electronic data spreadsheets, although it was Wells who had done most of that. Horse felt the numbers just told them what they already knew, but as an administrator Wells knew that not every teacher drew such logical conclusions from the obvious. Some, like Jones, took avoidance for creative boredom. Thus, he insisted on the meetings. As the official on record, he now flipped through a file before speaking.

  “Next is Jacob Pueblo. What do we know?”

  Not looking up from the magazine he was reading, Horse replied, “He’s a plagiarist.”

  “Can we drop it?” Jones insisted. He’d been waiting for this very remark, knowing Jacob’s file was slowly rising to the top. After Horse had left his room that day, Jones had looked into it and found it to be true: Jacob Pueblo was a plagiarist. Comparing the report to the book, it was a word-for-word translation. There was no way to spin it. “I agree.”

  And Jones thought it was his fault. He’d failed. And if it hadn’t been for Horse he would never have known, and Jacob would have gone off to eighth grade and high school with another corner cut. But what to do? Jones had thought. Sitting in the little chairs of an elementary school library, Jones was at a loss. For a month he had worked with Jacob—trusted him—even as the kid came back with Nelson Mandela as his American hero. Jones worked with that. In the end, it was for naught. The kid had lied.

  Lied.

  As Jones sat in the library, a student’s hand-drawn poster of Clifford the Big Red Dog looking down at him, he became angry. But he couldn’t muster his anger at Jacob—the boy who lied—and so instead focused on Horse: the bearer of news, the messenger, the speaker of truth. ‘Throw more hatred on the fire,’ he thought.

  And exhaled.

  He knew it was pointless. Horse was right; Jacob had cheated. Horse was right; Nelson Mandela was not an American hero. The whole thing was stupid. Jones knew. But he would not admit it, even to himself. Instead, he waited for Jacob’s file to make its way to the top.

  ‘Then it would be done,’ he thought.

  But Horse was not done.

  “And an expert on Nelson Mandela,” he said.

  Wells ignored him. “And, from his test scores, struggles with reading and writing.”

  “These numbers are just a snapshot,” Jones said.

  Both Wells and Horse looked up; one from the file, the other from a magazine. “He doesn’t struggle with reading and writing?” Wells asked.

  “And I'll guess math, too,” Horse added.

  “Stop!” Jones demanded.

  “And ethics...” As his voice faded, Horse’s eyes returned to his reading.

  Ignoring him, Jones said to Wells, “Look, we can’t make up for what’s missing elsewhere.”

  Which pulled Horse from his magazine. “We have them six hours a day, one-hundred and eighty days a year. We can’t teach them to read to the seventh grade level in that time?”

  “Some kids aren’t meant for college.”

  “I know of a few students,” Wells replied, “who aren’t meant for seventh grade.”

  This was his lifeline to Jones; a message to drop it now or be left to Horse’s sanctimonious verbal wrath. Jones, he knew, was not a bad teacher. ‘We all make mistakes,’ he thought. These meetings—these painful meetings where, grade by grade, Wells dragged teachers to a table and confronted them with data that has nothing to do with personal connections but skills—were supposed to be the starting line where the best laid plans are created.

  Instead, everyone fought the last battle over. Too late.

  Jones’s body was rigid and he stared at Horse. Wells knew that Horse understood the intent behind the principal’s last comment. Back off.

  Surprisingly, Horse got up and left the room.

  After the door closed, Wells turned to Jones. “Do you know the key to good teaching?”

  Sarcastically, he replied, “Please, tell me.”

  “Know your subject. Fuel up on coffee. Throw in a good fart joke.”

  “That’s it?”

  Jones rose from the table and headed towards the door.

  “It works for Horse.” Wells began gathering up the files. He had gotten through more than half of the students, which, all told, was pretty good in a single sitting. Pulling out his calendar he wondered when he would be able to schedule a meeting to cover the re
st. Seventh grade was a critical year: one more year of babying and then they are thrown, ready or not, to the wilds of high school. Then Wells added, “Of course, he knows his subject quite well. And he tells a good fart joke.”

  But Jones was already gone.

  “Are you going to drop it?” Wells asked.

  “Drop what?”

  His friend looked at Horse. The teacher looked small behind his desk, correcting the papers he hadn’t gotten to the night before. After circling a few poorly executed transitions, he looked up.

  “No,” he said, and then returned to work.

  CHAPTER 21

  Police have been unable to identify the body…

  So went the radio, as Horse listened to VPR in the passenger seat of Well’s Saab. In the trunk were his four rims, now with all-season tires on them.

  ‘Who is it, then?’ he wondered.

  “What do you know about Peter’s mother?”

  “Not much. Why?”

  “I thought that since you were so friendly with people’s mothers you might know something…”

  Wells slammed on the brakes: another car nearly rear-ended them. Behind the wheel, he fumed.

  The affair had been a low point in his life. When Amanda’s mother, Sonya, had moved to northern Vermont it had been under duress. The father had gotten a good job in sales at Smuggler’s Notch Ski Resort, forcing the family to relocate. Sonya came for them. Having grown up in Newport, she had left the state with purpose—the purpose being to get out of Vermont and away from her abusive family. Sonya had met Wells in college, and became casual friends in the way that people become friends in college—through happenstance and with little conviction. Both were Vermonters, and they sometimes shared long car rides back and forth. Still, they fell out of touch even before graduation and carried on with their lives. Missing northern Vermont, Wells wound up in Grace Haven, nearly a thirty-minute drive from his childhood home. Sonya fell in love with Tim and they settled just outside of Philadelphia.

  Economic times fell hard on Tim’s sales job, and he was out of work for several months when the Smuggs’ position opened up. In a demonstration on how little he knew about his wife, he had assumed returning to Vermont would be a welcome change. It wasn’t. A successful office manager in a steel fabrication plant, Sonya liked her life. Her role was clearly defined, had a lot of responsibilities, and she punched out every day at five. Having taken a break for the birth of Amanda, she was even more attached to her position when the leave ended. In fact, Tim’s unemployment had shifted the responsibility of Amanda onto him, allowing her more time to focus on work. She was happy.