by Jess Lourey
I walked straight to the front counter and was not pleased to find the teenage girl who had sold me the mask the day before, her dishwater hair in a ponytail. Why couldn’t they have the decency to sell pregnancy tests in bathroom vending machines, like tampons and condoms? My culture had always taught me that anything related to the vagina was not supposed to be talked about or acknowledged in public, and here it was letting me down. “Hello!” I said. I wished I had come in disguise.
“Hello,” she said, flipping the page on US Weekly.
“I need one of those EPTs.”
“Those what?”
“The pregnancy tests. Behind you.”
She turned around. “Which one you want?”
“The EPT one. It has the letters ‘EPT’ on it. On the front. That one.”
She put her hand on the generic one. “These are cheaper.”
“Right. The EPT, please.” Like I was going to trust my urine and my entire future to a generic brand.
She smacked it onto the counter and rang it up. “$16.99.”
It never failed to amaze me how expensive these were. I suppose silencing crazy voices in your head doesn’t come cheap. And of course, if I was sane I would just rely on the fact that Jeff and I had used a condom every time and that my period wasn’t even late. If I was sane. I handed her a twenty and waited for change.
On my way out, she called after me. “I like your coat, hey.”
“Thanks.” Unplanned pregnancy—the great unifier of females across all ethnic, age, and attitudinal boundaries.
I scuttled back to the library, peed on the stick, and was relieved to find no pink line. I knew perfectly well that it was probably too early to tell if I was pregnant, but I didn’t humor my psychosis that much. I got back to work, and my first job was to snoop in Lartel’s desk.
It was one of those cool roll-top numbers, all the wood glossy and deep red. It was locked, but I had come to see locks as a negotiable inconvenience in the last couple days. About twenty minutes with a metal nail file slid the top off, and once the top was open, all the side drawers opened, too. I wasn’t surprised to find a doll catalog amidst all the library-related papers. After all, a grown man in swishy pants can only buy so many dolls in person before his motivation is rightfully questioned. Actually, the only surprising thing I found was a letter to Karl. It was so smooth it looked like it had been ironed. It featured the letterhead of the Shooting Star Casino, a gambling club on an Indian reservation about a hundred miles north of Battle Lake. The letter was short and politely worded:
Dear Mr. Syverson:
I’m afraid your credit has been extended as far as we can allow. Your $59,000 debt to our company is payable immediately. Please contact our financial counselor at extension 4536 for
assistance in making payment arrangements.
I felt witch fingers on my lower back. A debt that large in a town this small could really start people talking. If one was a banker, it could end one’s career. Lartel must be blackmailing Karl, which would explain Karl’s deep dislike and distrust of him and why Kennie fingered Karl during our encounter in the library. Whatever was going on, my friend wasn’t looking so good anymore. In fact, I was wondering if there was anyone left in town I could trust.
I put the papers back where I had found them and carefully closed and locked the desk. I went to the computer to write the article on Jeff. As soon as I started typing, I could smell the faint cedar of his soap and feel the warmth of that soft spot under his earlobe that he loved to have kissed.
On our second date, he had come over to the doublewide and showed me how to bake vegetable lasagna. We laughed and drank Chianti, and as he baked, he sang “That’s Amore” and talked in a corny Italian accent. The food was delicious, and afterward, as he washed and I dried the dishes, he told me funny stories about his travels in Europe.
I remembered thinking that I could listen to him forever. Instead, I was writing a combination murder investigation and eulogy. My eyes got cloudy, and I decided it was time to switch to some low-impact recipe hunting. Too bad no one had put recipe ideas into the envelope I had put out. As I went to Google, I speculated about what reporters and researchers had done before the advent of the Internet. I couldn’t get my head around it. After a brief search of online Minnesota cookbooks, I had my two candidates for the tasty Battle Lake recipe of this week.
The first contender was “Fluffy Fish Tacos,” Minnesota style. The “taco” was actually white bread, toasted and buttered. On top of that, one spread the fish of choice, sautéed in butter with parsley. The two ingredients that actually would make this dish Mexican—chili pepper and salsa—were blessedly optional. It was simple and weird. It was Battle Lake.
The second contender was the disturbing “Deer Pie.” The crust of this pie was meaty ground venison sprinkled with rice and salt and scalloped at the edges like real piecrust. Into this bloody shell, one placed a layer of thin potato slices, a layer of Velveeta cheese, another layer of thin potato slices, another layer of Velveeta, and finally, as decoration, coins of venison sausage. Cook the whole pile for forty-five minutes at 375 degrees, take it out and garnish it with parsley for those health nuts who like some green with their woodland meat, and you have a feast worthy of a caveman. The whole concept and the name were clearly some hunter’s wife’s plea for help. I couldn’t save her, but I could introduce her gory invention to the masses. Deer pie it was.
As I was finishing up my shift, I decided I needed to do a little more sleuthing before I went to the class of ’82 party. I was feeling exposed, and I needed to find out who my friends were, or at least clarify my list of enemies. I was going to the cop shop to feel out Gary Wohnt, and then to the high school to verify that it was Jeff’s number I had seen bloodstained in Lartel’s creephouse of a bedroom.
When I walked out of the library, worn field book in one hand, flashlight in the back pocket of my jeans (even though it was still light out), I realized I was starting to feel like an actual sleuth. Before I started to buy into my own myth, I went back to the lost and found and retrieved the horrific doll. It wasn’t as scary as when I first found it, but it was definitely disturbing.
I had the urge to fashion a noose and hang the doll out front of the library as sort of a reverse warning, but nobody had ever taken the time to teach me knot making. Besides, it might turn off the clientele. I decided I’d take the high road and dash over to the nursing home while the library was empty. I set the cheerleader outside the front door. I was sure some old person would take her in and give her a nice home. Out of sight, out of mind.
The cop shop was a block up from the Senior Sunset, located directly behind the municipal liquor store. It was a red brick slug of a building that you could huff and puff and still not blow down. I didn’t know what Wohnt’s hours were, but I assumed he was around all the time. I had this vision of the law as omnipresent. It was only four o’clock on a Friday, so I was hoping to catch him inside.
Sure enough, when I walked in he was at his gray metal desk, staring at the product of two overhead projectors. They each displayed a four-foot thumbprint on the far wall. This passed for technology in Battle Lake. I stared at the bristly side of his thick neck and swallowed hard. The blue uniform and gun belt didn’t help me relax any.
“Chief Wohnt?”
“Yah.” In lieu of turning around, he leaned over and turned the knob on the right projector, clarifying the fuzzy whorls of the far thumb.
I realized I didn’t have a plan for talking to him. I really wanted to ask him if he was one of the bad guys, but I had to find a stealthy way to do it. “I was wondering if you’d found anything more about Jeff’s death?” I shifted my weight from my right foot to my left.
The Chief rubbed his eyes and turned to stare at me. He looked like two miles of bad road. “No, Ms. James, we haven’t found out anything more. Do you have some more information to give me?”
“I just heard that you had arrested someone, a homeless man.
”
He stared at me sideways with his sharp eyes until I had to look away. “Do you have some more information to give me, Ms. James?”
Except for the shiny lips, this was not the loquacious man who had interviewed me immediately following Jeff’s death. He had seemed very animated then; now, he looked like he was fighting some serious demons.
I shook my head. I suddenly didn’t feel like a grown-up. I heard the radio cackle out some numbers in the next room and saw the Chief’s back stiffen. He stood up, grabbed his blue jacket and hat, and strode toward the door. “You’ll have to excuse me.”
Abruptly, I was alone in a police station. Weren’t there prisoners or something who needed guarding? I tiptoed to the back room with the radio and saw it was a standard break room—dorm-room-sized fridge, hot plate, crusty coffee pot, and filing cabinet upon filing cabinet. I tried the top drawer of the closest one out of spite. It was locked. I went back to the main room and tried the two other doors. One was locked and the other was a dingy bathroom. I glanced over my shoulder, certain I was being watched. The room was still empty.
I looked at the Chief’s gray desk and felt my bad judgment kick in. I slid the top drawer open. I pulled it harder than I needed to and caused an avalanche of paper clips and pencils inside. I pushed the detritus around and saw nothing of importance. I had my hand on the cool grip of the left uppermost drawer when I heard a heavy foot outside the front door. I snapped the drawer shut and jumped down to my knees.
“What in the hell are you doing?” The Chief’s frame ate up the doorway and spilled inside. Every heavy breath he wheezed pumped him up a little bit larger, and if I didn’t say something smart real soon, he was going to explode all over me.
“I’m tying my shoe.” Jesus. Thank God I was wearing shoes that actually had shoelaces, my recently washed tennies, a fact I hadn’t bothered to verify before I bald-face lied.
I felt the air move as he swung his head from side to side, looking for something to disprove me. His body had stopped expanding, and now only his neck was swelling. He reminded me of one of those African lizards that run at the National Geographic camera, legs splayed and gills flying.
“Get out of my office. Now.”
“Good idea,” I said. I had slammed the drawer shut before he had charged back into the room, but not before I saw the silver invitation with the words “For Your Eyes Only” embossed in green on the front.
I walked the mile to the high school, taking the long route and running my hands along the edges of the lilac bushes on the way. Hidden water drops slipped onto my fingertips. If the Chief had an invitation to the party, that meant I hadn’t found his invitation in the library. Maybe nobody had lost their invitation; maybe it had been intentionally left there to get me to the party. I was going to find out one way or another in a few hours.
By the time I got to the Battle Lake High School, it was almost five. The original architect must have had a bomb shelter in mind when he built it. The whole structure cried out, “I’m sturdy, not pretty!” Fortunately, a wealthy patron and 1954 Battle Lake graduate—the same one who had sponsored the library—had donated a million dollars to the school a couple years back, and an innovative art center, library, and new gym had been added on. That section looked like something out of Epcot Center, but it was all done in the same shade of puce for
continuity.
There weren’t any people out front of the pale building, so I went to the doors of the original section. There must have been some sort of extracurricular practice going on, because the green doors opened with a sigh. My hair lifted up slightly as a gust of pheromones, fish sandwiches, freshly copied paper, and some syrupy Calvin Klein imposter cologne kissed my cheeks. Aaah, the smell of high school.
The front lobby had a few vending machines, recycling bins, and droopy ficuses. This space was the bottom leg of a T, with the head being a gigantic trophy case and the arms row upon row of gray lockers. The entire layout of the trophy case was set up to display the crucified green and white football jersey with the number 17 emblazoned on the back, underneath the name WILSON in all caps. The fallen football player effigy in Lartel’s creep room had been Jeff.
I walked closer to the case and was alarmed and validated to find a group shot of Lartel, Kennie, Karl, and Jeff. Karl and Lartel had on coaches’ clothes, Jeff was in full football uniform, and Kennie was a cheerleading princess. Their arms were on one another’s shoulders, and the caption read, “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Beautiful. Division Football Championship Game, 1982.” I wondered which one was which, and where Gary Wohnt had been when that picture was taken.
I eyed the halls to my left and then to my right. They were identical except for an open door at the far end of the right hall. I thought I could hear faint processional music coming out of it, and I walked in that direction. My soft shoes made no sound on the tiled floor. I smiled at the sameness of all small-town high schools. The lockers were papered with “Go Team!”–type stickers, and there were cheerleader-painted pep posters on the open walls—“We’ve got spirit, yes we do, we’ve got spirit, how about you!”
It brought me back to my high school days. I had always gotten along OK with my classmates, but I hadn’t made any lifelong friends. The people I thought I knew the best faded after my dad’s accident.
In my senior year, a new doctor moved to town and brought along his large Irish Catholic family. His oldest daughter was in my grade, and she was in track with me. She had red curly hair, glasses, sporadic acne, and cool clothes. We happened to sign up for job search on the same day and both ended up in the closet of a room set aside for determining our future. The file cabinet was full of career likeliness tests, and the walls were lined with Occupational Outlook handbooks.
While I was cracking some joke about what a waste of time it all was, Mary sneezed and farted at the same time. We both laughed so hard it hurt. I went to the bathroom to get some Kleenex, and when I came back, a girl whom I had gone to school with since kindergarten was in my seat whispering to Mary. They both got quiet when I walked in, and I knew they had been talking about my dad. It rotated between me being the daughter of a drunk or the girl whose dad had killed a mom and her baby. It didn’t really matter what they called me. It all worked the same. Mary didn’t have much time for me after that. Manslaughter Mark strikes again, this time from the grave, to devastate his daughter’s life. Having a dead person tied around your neck is a horrible way to live.
The gray Battle Lake High halls probably had their own stories to tell, probably housed their own broken kids. Thank God high school lockers can’t talk. As I got closer to the door I could hear music coming out of, I had an Alice in Wonderland moment. The closer I got, the smaller the door got. I was fifteen feet away before I realized it was one of those miniature access doors that usually lead to a furnace room or utility space.
This doorway was about three feet high, and the actual door was thin metal with an indent in lieu of a handle. The siren song of curiosity tapped at me. I looked quickly over my shoulder at the empty hallway, pushed the door open all the way, and crawled in. I felt my way over empty boxes that smelled like mothballs. There was enough light slitting through to show me that I was in some sort of theater storage room and that all the boxes contained costumes.
I inched my way forward to a little barred window. I looked down and realized I was in a storage room attached to the old gym, which now served as the theater for school performances. I knew there must be a way to get from where I was down to the gym, but I couldn’t see it in the darkened space.
The music was much louder where I was, and I could see it was coming from a boom box down by the stage, about thirty feet from my hiding spot. The black stereo scratched out a tinny version of “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong.” I wondered what play was being rehearsed, and I was about to leave when I realized I was listening to the class of ’82’s theme song. I looked back through the slits and was unsurprised to see Kennie emerg
e from the cheap-looking velvet curtains that covered the stage.
She wore a tight, peach-colored chiffon gown, floor length and strapless. I could see pointy heels snaking out from underneath, and they were dyed the exact color of her dress. Her makeup was visibly thick, even from this distance. She had a glittery tiara on her head and a “Miss Battle Lake ’82” banner over her shoulder and wrapped around her waist. She walked strongly from one end of the stage to the other, her chin tipped forward and a brilliant smile on her face.
At first I thought she was waving the parade wave to an imaginary crowd, but then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I pressed my face against the cold metal bars, but I could only see the right shoulder and what looked like a head with a hat on. I was clearly looking at a man, but I didn’t know which man.
I had to see who had come to watch Kennie’s disturbing beauty pageant for one. I leaned back and looked at the vent. In the slit of light from the open door behind me, I saw that only one Phillips head screw held it in at the top. I pulled out the Swiss Army knife attached to my key chain and used the tip of the nail file to turn the screw lefty loosy. I turned slowly and quietly, my movements lost under the music blaring from Kennie’s stage.
The screw was out three-quarters of an inch when I realized that the loosened vent was falling into the gym, not onto my lap as planned. It clattered the twenty feet to the floor and froze Kennie in mid-wave. She stared right into my eyes, and I was halfway down the hall before I realized there was no way she could see me in the half-lit space.
I finished running outside and through a couple alleys before I forced myself into a walk. I didn’t want Kennie or her mystery audience to discover my spying. Who was watching her, besides me? Right now, I figured it was Gary Wohnt or Lartel, but it could just as well be Karl, the way the cards were stacking. I got to my car unaccosted but couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being followed. I decided my safest time passer would be to go home and wait for the class of ’82 party. I had a feeling I would find familiar faces at the gala event.
