Prairie Gothic

by J. M. Hayes

  The sheriff unsnapped his holster and pulled his Smith & Wesson. After Simon’s attempt to draw a gun on him, he had no intention of giving Levi the same opportunity. The sheriff flattened his back to the wall beside Mrs. Burton’s open door. “Benteen County Sheriff! Levi, come out with your hands up!”

  No one came. No one answered. The sheriff gathered himself, silently counted down from three, and threw himself inside. As he cleared the door he found himself face to chest with the mountainous Hornbaker boy. That was when his radio squawked.

  “Englishman!” it demanded in a tinny imitation of Judy’s voice. “Where are the Heathers?”

  It surprised the hell out of both the boy and the sheriff. They stood there, exchanging baffled looks, until something heavy popped the sheriff on the head and things went dark and dreamy inside.

  ***

  Judy tried again. “Englishman! Damn you! Answer me!”

  Mrs. Kraus ran the sheriff’s office with an iron hand. Nobody came behind her counter without an invitation. Nobody touched the department’s radios without her say so. Nobody strode through her crowded reception room, filled with people demanding to know about a baby murderer on the loose, shoving them aside in single-minded determination to get an answer to her question…except Judy English.

  Mrs. Kraus recognized the look in her eye and got out of the way.

  Supervisor Bontrager, back with his followers for more, didn’t. He got bumped. He’d been explaining to folks that Supervisor Hornbaker had already reported from his personal reconnaissance. He had shared knowledge about the case they couldn’t release just yet, but that they had things under control. The collision knocked his hat off and Bontrager lost his balance and stepped on it. Bontrager’s blood pressure spiked as he came around the counter and tried to take the radio away from Judy.

  “You just hold on now, Ms. English. That’s county property. Not for personal use. And you can’t use language like that over the public airways.”

  Judy twisted away from his ineffectual grab for the radio.

  “Englishman, damn it! Are you out there? Is anybody?”

  Bontrager reached again. “Now see here, missy!” Mrs. Kraus could have told him not to do that, but, deep down, she thought she would enjoy the results more if she didn’t interfere.

  The radio made Rice Krispy noises as Bontrager got a hand on it, then found Judy English’s face right in his. “Bontrager, you kumquat. You are a pompous, incompetent, bureaucratic joke. If you don’t take your hands off me, I’ll break them.”

  Mrs. Kraus smiled a little, even though she knew she could kiss one vote for the budget that might have funded her raise goodbye. That vote had been pretty unlikely anyway. A few of the folks crowding the sheriff’s office nodded in agreement with Judy’s outburst.

  Mrs. Kraus didn’t have any kids of her own, but she knew you put yourself at risk if you got between a worried mother and her children.

  “Mr. Supervisor,” Judy continued, backing Bontrager against the counter with the power of her maternal rage. “Unless you can tell me where my daughters are, you will stop bothering me and get out of my way.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with the radio, Judy,” Mrs. Kraus said. “The sheriff was about to check on something over to the Sunshine Home, last he called in. That was just minutes ago. I’m sure he must still be there.”

  Judy turned her back on Bontrager. “The Sunshine Towers?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Kraus.” Judy flipped the radio over her shoulder and Mrs. Kraus caught it just before it smacked Bontrager in the face. Judy headed for the exit. Everyone in the room scrambled to clear her a path.

  ***

  “Oh, oh!” the Heathers chorused.

  “That’s Mom,” One of Two said.

  “She knows,” Two of Two agreed.

  “Do you think we should answer?” Heather English’s question was directed at Deputy Wynn. He was the adult. He was the responsible party, or so she suddenly hoped, given the tone of their mother’s voice. Also, he had the radio. Or, rather, it was down on the floor between his feet where it had fallen when they spun around twice and ended up in the ditch, hood deep in a snowdrift.

  Their father didn’t reply to Judy’s harangue. That surprised all three occupants of the immobile sheriff’s department black and white.

  “Maybe you better talk to her,” the first Heather suggested to Wynn.

  Wynn wanted to do no such thing. As he picked up the radio they heard Judy English clearly, though less distinctly, threaten the person of Supervisor Bontrager.

  Wynn fumbled with the radio, passing it off, like it had suddenly turned molten, to Two behind the steering wheel. She declined, batting it back to One. By the time One worked up enough nerve to try a tentative “Uh, Mom?” Judy was no longer within hearing range.

  Since, in the process of playing walkie-talkie volleyball, Wynn and the girls had accidentally changed frequencies, the small mob watching the door swing closed on Judy English’s heels failed to hear either.

  “Mom? Dad? Mrs. Kraus? Anybody there?”

  Nobody was.

  ***

  “Are you all right, Sheriff?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’m fine,” the sheriff lied, trying to remember where he was. He stood up and had to grab the edge of the doorway to keep from being thrown to the corner of the ceiling by the wildly spinning room. Gradually it slowed and he tried to figure out who had asked. It wasn’t easy, because his eyes were having trouble getting just one image clear enough to recognize.

  “Maybe you should lie down on the bed for a minute.”

  She was little, with chopped white hair and bright red tennis shoes. He should know her. Something about a baby.

  “No, really. I’m fine. Uh, how about you?”

  “Some of us locked ourselves in a room down the hall after Simon and Levi came in and started going crazy, searching rooms and threatening folks if they didn’t give back what was stolen.”

  “Give what back?” His ears were ringing and his head felt like it was being used by the drummer for a heavy metal band.

  “They never said what they wanted.”

  “Never said?”

  Geez! He sure had a knack for law enforcement. Such a snappy interrogation technique. It was working though.

  “Nope. They just demanded to know who was with Tommie before Mad Dog came and got him, then they started telling us to give it back. Not what, just it, though I’m sure it was that ring.”

  “Ring?”

  “Big heavy silver-looking thing. Ugly, but Tommie wore it all the time until the last few days. Someone asked if he’d already given it to the family, but he said no. ‘If I can’t take it with me,’ he said, ‘then I’m not going.’ Didn’t make any sense, ’cause he already wasn’t wearing it. But he was taking a lot of morphine then.” She got a distant look in her eyes and sighed.

  “Simon asked me what Tommie was wearing when we wrapped him up for Mad Dog and I said nothing, ’cause that’s what we’d been told to do, just clean him up and wrap him naked in a blanket. I thought that might shock Simon, only it didn’t. He just pointed at his finger and asked, ‘Not even jewelry?’ When I told him no, he didn’t seem to believe me.”

  It was coming back. Mad Dog, of course, had started this whole crazy day by taking Tommie Irons’ body out of here sometime before dawn. And then the old folks had decided to take a walk and came back with the baby and…

  “Mrs. Burton. She was tied up in her chair.”

  “I undid her. She’s in the bathroom, getting a damp cloth to clean up that nasty place on the back of your head. I’m sorry about that. I flung a silver hairbrush at Levi from down the hall, but it wasn’t aerodynamic enough to fly true. Lucky you were wearing that hat, though it’s gonna be hard to get a proper shape back into it.” She reached down and picked up the sheriff’s Stetson and handed it to him. Sure enough, the back had been flattened as effectively as if someone had put it betw
een a hammer and anvil for a few hundred blows—much like his head.

  Simon Hornbaker. He remembered now. “I handcuffed him. How’d they…”

  “Levi just hefted him up.” It was Alice Burton’s voice as she came out of the bathroom. She hurried around the bed and handed him a damp washcloth and he experimentally dabbed it against the back of his head. He was surprised to discover a kind of a bloody lump there, instead of shattered pieces of skull and oozing brains.

  “Picked Simon up and ran him down the stairs. From the sound of it, maybe dropped him a time or two on the way. They drove off just a minute before you started coming around again. Would you like me to get you some aspirin?”

  “How many can you spare? No, wait,” he said as she turned to go check. He had the feeling that no matter how many she found, it wouldn’t be enough. The room listed to starboard again, then settled back into place. He turned until he could look Alice Burton in the eyes. Her memory was a lot better than most people thought. He believed she could tell him, so he asked.

  “Mrs. Burton, where did you find that baby?”

  She peered at him through long lashes. In spite of the deep lines that creased her face, she was still an attractive woman. She must have been spectacular once.

  “May I have my baby back?” she asked. Her mind seemed to be going somewhere else again.

  “I’ll get him for you,” the sheriff offered, “if you’ll tell me where you left him.”

  “Klausen’s,” she said. “On the back stoop at Klausen’s, where I got the other one.”

  ***

  It was manicured pasture, closely trimmed by Tommie Irons’ herd of Brangus cattle. Under other circumstances, Mad Dog would have preferred more cover. Not today, though, since the wind and snow had picked up so much that he couldn’t see either side of the field. There was no hint of his Saab back there, no sign of the white pickup he thought was following him, and no evidence he was being pursued. No proof he wasn’t, either.

  Conditions were deteriorating, approaching white-out. Somewhere ahead, he knew, there was a hedgerow that separated this pasture from an adjacent wheat field, and, at the south end, a cluster of trees and outbuildings around the Irons’ farmhouse. Mad Dog couldn’t see any of it. No sign of the cattle either, which was just as well. The herd bull was pure Brahma and pure meanness. Mad Dog just pumped his legs and fought for balance and tried to guide himself toward where he thought the house would be. Occasionally, he found some of Hailey’s tracks to follow. Even a tundra wolf, he figured, would be looking for shelter on a day like this.

  Mad Dog was breathing hard, harder than his exertions explained. He tried to analyze it, and was surprised to discover it wasn’t because he was afraid of another bullet. No one back at the road could see him. Unless they could run, blinded by a blizzard and across a frozen pasture, a lot faster than he could, they weren’t going to catch him or come in range of a good shot. No, it was that very absence of road behind him and of trees ahead that bothered him. The wind and the snow were closing him in, shutting down the kind of view he was accustomed to—horizons that reached from here to forever, flat earth stretching to infinity and arguing against the possibility that the world was round. What it was, Mad Dog finally realized, was claustrophobia.

  And then there was something, looming behind the swirling snow. The shadows of trees appeared, naked branches reaching to snag the sky and tear it open, and behind them something big, something boxy. A tool shed, maybe, or a chicken coop. He was a lot closer before he realized there were more shadows beneath the trees. Cattle. The biggest stepped out into the wind to stand between his harem and whatever threat Mad Dog might constitute. It was the Brahma bull Tommie was said to have named, on account of its color and disposition, Black Death.

  ***

  Supervisor Bontrager was stumbling around the sheriff’s office in search of his lost dignity when the telephone rang. It had been ringing pretty regularly all morning.

  “Ms. Kraus?”

  The voice was faint and distant, the connection a shade worse than you could get by attaching a couple of tin cans to a long piece of string.

  “Yes?”

  “Ms. Kraus, it’s me.” Mrs. Kraus knew a lot of people called “me.” Most of them had voices she recognized. She was inclined to say so, but there was a crowd there with Supervisor Bontrager listening in on everything. She controlled herself and settled on polite.

  “Me who?” Well, semi-polite. Polite wasn’t her strong suit.

  “Me, Hank Wilson. Benteen County Deputy Sheriff. I’da used the radio, only my batteries are dead.”

  “Where the hell are you?” Mrs. Kraus rasped. Bontrager went into conference with some of his cronies over near the door. She could hear something about gathering the rest of the county supervisors for a special session.

  “What we got here ain’t law enforcement, it’s fascist, Godless communism,” Bontrager said, working his way around the political spectrum. “The sheriff is out of control,” he continued, getting further and further out of control himself, “and his wife…”

  “I could use a deputy right here in this office at the moment,” Mrs. Kraus continued. “Shouldn’t you be here by now?”

  “You looked outside lately?” Wilson’s voice was not only distant, it was beginning to snivel. “There’s a damn blizzard out there. I’m stuck out to Fred and Virginia Miller’s place, about twelve miles out. I don’t see how I can get through unless a snowplow happens along for me to follow, or someone with a four-wheel drive comes and brings me in. Can you send anybody?”

  Mrs. Kraus probably couldn’t even send someone for hot coffee and a sandwich, and Bertha’s was just across the park from the courthouse, not two hundred yards away. Bontrager was leading his mob toward the foyer, on the way back to the county supervisor’s offices again. Mrs. Kraus gave the mob a thorough once over. She didn’t see anyone with a four-wheel drive, or much sympathy for the sheriff.

  “Not likely,” she said. “You make some calls from there, I’ll see what I can do from here. I’ll let you know if I find someone. You do the same.”

  “What’s that?” Wilson’s voice barely emerged through a burst of static. “Ms. Kraus? You still there? Can you hear…” And then she couldn’t, except for a hollow kind of silence that made her suspect a phone line had gone down somewhere between the Miller’s place and town. She picked up her cellular and tried calling Wilson back. Nothing. She tried the sheriff’s cell phone. Nothing. She tried the radio. Three strikes and she was out.

  She could hear Bontrager’s voice echoing down the hall—something about impeachment proceedings. She wondered what to do next. Using the Glock had a certain appeal, but was probably an overreaction. She would do all she could, Mrs. Kraus promised herself.

  But a chill walked up her spine. Someone just stepped on my grave, she thought. It scared her, because all she could do might not be enough.

  ***

  The massive bull would have stood out like the central figure in a black and white negative, only he’d been plastered with so much snow that his onyx coat had acquired an icy patina. He had faded into the landscape, like those missing horizons, but Mad Dog’s precipitous arrival brought him back—ghostly but real.

  The Brahma snorted and stomped and Mad Dog stopped in mid-stride. The bull stood directly between him and the fence. While Mad Dog wouldn’t object to going around to get where he wanted, the bull seemed to prefer that he go back the way he’d come—just a little faster than its hooves and horns could direct him.

  “Easy big fellow,” Mad Dog soothed. “I’ll bet you’re actually a softy like my Buffalo Bob.” The Brahma shook his head and snorted in what seemed to be clear denial. It edged sideways and cocked its horns. No one had ever blunted those horns. They looked sharp enough for surgical work, which seemed to be what the animal had in mind.

  Cattle exploded from the fence line and the inadequate protection of the scraggly tree row, scattering as if they’d spotted a buyer f
rom Burger King pulling into the farm. The bull spun, searching for the new threat behind him. And then Hailey was there, darting in and nipping his heels. The bull jumped and whirled, like he was coming out of a rodeo gate, bucking and kicking, only Hailey was at his heels again.

  Mad Dog dashed for the fence, scrambled over the strands of barbed wire and between the thorny limbs of Osage orange trees. He had reached his destination, but he hadn’t thought about what to do once he got here. Back on that road, after the gunshot, there hadn’t been time for planning.

  Hailey cleared the fence and joined him. What he could see of the pasture was now empty of cattle. Mad Dog led the way to the leeward side of a shed. The farmhouse huddled in the midst of its outbuildings, just beyond. Fresh snow was beginning to pile up on all the structures’ south sides, not deep yet, but not without promise.

  It was a big house, a boxy two-story frame with a porch that stretched around the sides toward the front. An upstairs sleeping porch hung over the back, an area currently better suited for additional freezer space.

  Mad Dog surveyed the place with interest. He’d never been here before. Few people had. Folks got along all right with Tommie Irons, but they’d done that on his trips to town. He never invited visitors here on account of his sister, Becky Hornbaker.

  A gust of wind sneaked in the hood of Mad Dog’s parka, past his collar, and down his spine. He would have to find someplace warmer soon, but he didn’t want Tommie’s relatives knowing where he’d left the body. He didn’t want to get shot by whoever was in the white pickup, either.