The Great Reminder

by R. R. Irvine

  Bill gagged and mumbled something that could have been “Moroni.”

  Startled, the dentist turned away from his patient to face Traveler, the drill in his hand aimed like a weapon.

  Bill pulled the saliva ejector from his mouth. “Please, Moroni. Not now.”

  The dentist looked from Traveler to Bill and back again as if gauging his chances if it came to a fight. Then, slowly, he deposited the drill in its holder.

  Traveler sighed. Despite the pain in his shoulder, he felt like punching someone.

  “You’d better give him the crockery,” Bill said.

  Guthrie shook his head. “You touch me and I’ll sue.”

  “When Moroni gets that look,” Bill said, “watch out.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Guthrie said. “We’re in the middle of a root-canal. If I don’t finish before the novocaine wears off, you’ll be screaming your head off.”

  Traveler smiled. “You’re going to finish, all right. As soon as I get what I came for.”

  “I’ve got a lot of money invested.”

  “Did I ever tell you that Moroni played linebacker for L.A.?” Bill said. “Once he crippled a guy he hit him so hard.”

  Guthrie collapsed onto his dental stool; his shoulders slumped. “That urn was to be the centerpiece of my collection.”

  “Where is it?” Traveler asked.

  He stared at a metal dental cabinet that took up most of one wall. “The bottom shelf.”

  As soon as Traveler had recovered the pottery, he asked Bill, “Why did you do it?”

  “I wanted to be independent for once. I wanted to pay my own way.”

  “Why him?” Traveler glared at the dentist.

  “He saw us once, Charlie and me, tithing at Era Antiques. I wouldn’t have taken it if I’d known how much the damned thing was worth.”

  “Next time you want independence,” Traveler said, “get a job.”

  “I do God’s work, Moroni. You know that.”

  23

  AFTER DELIVERING the stolen Mormon pottery to Era Antiques, Traveler and Martin followed U.S. 89 down the center of the state, through Utah and Sanpete counties to Sevier County. Along the way, ramshackle barns and faded billboards advertising long-gone products—Mail Pouch tobacco, Nehi soda, Studebaker cars—gave Traveler the feeling he was ten years old again.

  “I miss the Sunday drives we used to take when I was a boy,” he said.

  “The ones with or without your mother?”

  A Dairy Queen went by, the only sign of fast food they’d seen for fifty miles.

  “Nothing changes around here,” Martin said. “It makes you realize just how good the old days were.”

  When Traveler reached the Milburn turnoff halfway down the state, he pulled the station wagon onto the gravel shoulder but kept the engine running. His shoulder ached from holding onto the steering wheel.

  “What about it, Dad? Do you want to detour and go looking for Moroni the third?”

  “As things stand, I’d better keep an eye on the one son I’ve got.”

  Traveler smiled.

  “Don’t get sentimental on me,” Martin said.

  Traveler opened the door and got out. “You drive for a while.”

  “Why didn’t you say your shoulder was bothering you?”

  As soon as they exchanged seats, Traveler fashioned a makeshift sling out of a dish towel he’d brought along and slipped his left arm inside. “We ought to make Salina by lunchtime.”

  ******

  Martin cruised Salina’s two-block business district until he spotted the Salt Lick Broiler on Main Street across from the sheriff’s office. He parked in front of the cafe, a narrow one-story building of rough oolite limestone, and then turned to his son. “It might be a good idea if we asked the sheriff where he eats.”

  Traveler untied the sling and winced. Immobility had caused his shoulder to stiffen.

  Martin shook his head and started for the sheriff’s office without waiting for his son’s answer. Out front, two folding metal chairs stood on the sidewalk. A hand-printed sign behind the glass in the door said, HAVING LUNCH AT SALTY’S.

  They recrossed Main Street and entered the cafe. There were no customers at the six-stool counter or at either of Salty’s two tables.

  “Today’s special is a hot beef sandwich,” the man behind the counter said. His faded bib apron and a straw cowboy hat looked as old as he did, somewhere in his fifties.

  “We’re looking for the sheriff,” Martin said.

  “The special goes off at one-thirty.” The man nodded toward a grimy wall clock. “That gives you five minutes.”

  Martin looked at Traveler, who shrugged his agreement.

  “Two specials,” the counterman hollered through a slot cut in the wall behind him.

  Traveler eased onto a stool. His father remained standing, which made their height just about equal.

  The counterman removed his hat and ran a calloused hand over his gray hair. “Not many people come looking for the sheriff.” His age, Traveler reassessed, was closer to sixty. A very fit sixty.

  “It’s not a criminal matter,” Martin said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “The sheriff’s name is Wayne Woodruff,” the counterman said.

  “There was a prophet named Wilford Woodruff.”

  “There are several Woodruffs in these parts. Of course, there was a lot of polygamy around here in the old days.” The man settled his hat on a plastic pie cover that was protecting a single slice of custard.

  “Funny you should say that,” Martin said. “I was just telling my son the old days sound pretty good to me.”

  The counterman winked knowingly. “If you believe rumors, they say there are still some closet polygamists around here. It gives a man ideas, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve never had much luck with women,” Martin said.

  “Female-caused domestic problems take up most of the sheriff’s time.”

  “The sign on his office says he’s supposed to be eating here,” Traveler said.

  “He already did.”

  A hand slid two plates through the order slot behind the counter. The hot beef sandwiches—white bread topped by thin slices of meat and an ice cream scoop of mashed potatoes smothered in brown gravy—reminded Traveler of boyhood lunches at Woolworth’s.

  The counterman retrieved his hat from the pie cover. “Let me tell you about Salina while you’re eating. We had to be settled twice, you know, once before and once after the Indian wars. Of course, the original families think of everyone else as outsiders.”

  Traveler took a bite and closed his eyes, seeing Woolworth’s, Kress, and Grant’s again, the magic places of his childhood.

  “Smallpox started the war. The Ute Indians, who were dying like flies, decided to get even and started the Black Hawk War. Salina had to be evacuated for five years. Some say we never did grow very big after that. They also say our population is twenty-one hundred these days, but I’d say that was stretching it. The fact is, we’ve been going downhill since World War Two.”

  Martin snapped his fingers. “There was a scandal here in Salina, wasn’t there? Something about German prisoners being machine-gunned in their sleep.”

  The counterman turned around and leaned his head into the order slot. “I’m taking off now, Salty. You’ll have to do double duty.”

  When he faced Traveler and Martin again, he took off his apron, revealing a sheriff’s badge and a holstered revolver.

  “When city folk like you come asking questions, I start getting suspicious.” He nodded at Traveler. “Especially when they’re as big as you are.”

  Traveler removed his ID and placed it on the counter. Martin did the same.

  The sheriff read them carefully. “That doesn’t tell me why you’re here or who you’re looking for.”

  “It’s a missing person,” Traveler said.

  “On second thought,” the sheriff said, “let’s not talk about it here. If we do
, Salty will have it all over town. I’ll be waiting in my office across the street when you’re done with lunch.”

  “We can eat later.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “I insist.” He left the cafe without another word.

  Traveler and Martin spun around to watch him take down the Jeep’s license plate number.

  “This may be the sticks,” Martin said, “but he knows enough to check us out before saying anything.”

  24

  BY THE time Traveler and Martin finished lunch, Sheriff Woodruff was sitting in the sunshine in front of his office, his cowboy hat over his eyes, his metal chair cocked against the drab oolite wall. The sign on the door still said, HAVING LUNCH AT SALTY’S.

  At their approach, Woodruff settled his chair onto the sidewalk and got up to greet them. “As soon as I heard the name Traveler it clicked. There couldn’t be two guys your size named for an angel. You played linebacker for L.A., didn’t you?”

  “Sometimes I feel like it was someone else entirely.”

  “The police in Salt Lake say I can trust you.”

  “Who’d you talk to?” Traveler said, thinking of his encounter with Anson Home.

  The sheriff adjusted his straw hat. “Before we go any further, I’d like to know why you’re here.”

  Traveler and his father had already agreed on a straightforward approach.

  “A German prisoner of war,” Traveler said. “A man named Karl Falke went missing from the camp in Cowdery Junction in 1945.”

  “What’s that got to do with my town? Cowdery’s a dozen miles south.”

  “We’ve been told that a few POWs settled around here after the war. We’d like to talk to them if possible.”

  The sheriff opened his office door and turned the sign around. It now read, BACK IN AN HOUR.

  “Salina may not be much to you Salt Lakers,” he said, “but I’ve never had the urge to move on. Come on, let me show you around.”

  Woodruff’s patrol car looked brand new. He drove it that way, too, a steady twenty miles an hour through the business district and the residential area, with Martin in the front seat and Traveler in the back. Woodruff slowed to a creep when he reached a dirt road leading to the town’s rodeo arena, then rolled to a stop without raising any dust.

  “This is where it happened,” he said. “This is where they held the prisoners during the war. Every time I come here, I remember what it was like. I was just turning draft age when the war ended. Those buildings over there”—he pointed to a row of barrackslike wooden structures—“they were built back in the Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps, but the army used them to house the soldiers who were guarding the prisoners.”

  Traveler tried to open the sedan’s rear door but the handle wouldn’t work.

  “A missing person sounds safe enough,” the sheriff said, eyeing Traveler in the rearview mirror. “But I’d still like to know how a man your size got himself hurt.”

  “Someone tried to run me down.”

  “The driver got killed trying,” Martin added. “A man named Broadbent. Mahlon Broadbent from Cowdery Junction. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  The sheriff shook his head too late; his eyes had already given him away. “There are a lot of Broadbents in Sevier County. Now that you mention it, I think some of them did settle in Cowdery.”

  He stepped out of the patrol car and opened the rear door. “This place still gives me the willies,” he said, heading for the corrals next to the grandstand area. “Because my father was sheriff here before me, I went with him that night.”

  Woodruff stopped in front of the corral and gripped the top rail. “The war was over, for Christ’s sake. It shouldn’t have happened. There was an ugly mood in town, a lot of talk about German atrocities. Even when my father told them a guard had gone crazy and shot the Germans in their sleep, a lot of people said they had it coming to them. Only they hadn’t seen the blood and heard the screaming like me.”

  He paused to take a deep breath. “Things changed, thank God, when the wounded started coming into the hospital. My mother was a volunteer there, like so many of our neighbors. I remember her saying, ‘They were just young men in pain. They could have been my son.’ She was right, too. They weren’t much older than I was. She kept asking my father, ‘Why give the guards on those towers machine guns when the war was already won? There was nowhere for those men to go even if they tried to escape.’ ”

  “That’s one of the reasons we’re here,” Traveler said, “to find out why Karl Falke disappeared after Germany surrendered.”

  The sheriff took off his hat and wiped its sweatband with his fingers. “Escaped prisoners were handled by the army, not the sheriff, though my father was supposed to be notified.”

  “And was he?”

  “He knew prisoners had escaped, but as far as I remember they were all recaptured.”

  “Does the name Falke mean anything at all to you?” Traveler asked.

  The sheriff shook his head and started back to the car. He didn’t say another word until he parked in front of the Salina Hospital. “This is where we brought the wounded that night.”

  He motioned them out of the car. As soon as Traveler and his father were standing on the sidewalk, Woodruff said, “If you want to know anything else, you’ll have to talk to Doc Sorenson. Keep one thing in mind, though. We’re lucky to have a doctor in a town this size. So you be nice to Parley. Otherwise, you’ll answer to me.”

  25

  THE DOCTOR’S office stood across from the hospital in one of those bleak stone houses so common to rural Utah, a story and a half of oolite disguised as Victorian Eclectic.

  There was no receptionist, only a bell for visitors to ring. The sound was still echoing when a tall, balding man with pale skin and blue eyes appeared in an open doorway. His white lab coat looked freshly starched.

  “I’m Dr. Parley Sorenson.” He shook hands before slipping on heavy, black-framed glasses to study Traveler’s sling. “The sheriff didn’t tell me you were hurt.”

  “It’s on the mend,” Traveler said.

  Martin introduced himself and his son.

  “I have an office in back.” The doctor led them into a converted bedroom no more than ten by ten. The walls were painted an antiseptic white, though the original wallpaper’s flower pattern was leaking through. A small sink surrounded by a plastic splashguard stood in one corner. An oak desk and matching bookcase filled with medical texts took half the floor space. Two patient’s chairs were crowded into what remained. Sorenson waited for them to be seated before moving behind the desk. “Sheriff Woodruff tells me you’re looking into World War Two Salina.”

  “We’re more concerned with Cowdery Junction,” Traveler told him, “but we thought we’d start here.”

  The doctor sat back and laced his hands behind his neck. “There was a time when people thought Cowdery Junction might pass us by. Ever since the war, though, I’m sorry to say it’s been shrinking away faster than we have. As for survivors of that time, there are plenty of them around town.”

  “A list of names would be very helpful,” Traveler said.

  The doctor shook his head firmly. “I see no reason to trouble people after all this time. I am willing to give some medical advice, though. That half-assed sling you’re wearing isn’t going to help your arm any.”

  Traveler flexed his fingers, which felt numb at the tips. “I rigged it myself.”

  “I hear that kind of thing all the time. Usually, it’s after blood poisoning has set in.”

  The doctor left the room for a moment, but soon returned with an adjustable sling. “The sheriff told me you were looking for a missing German soldier.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Traveler said. “We’re trying to clear the books for our client.”

  “An old man who needs help,” Martin clarified.

  “I’ll need his name if I’m going to help you,” Sorenson said.

  Martin sighed and looke
d at his son. “Go ahead, Mo. You might as well tell him.”

  In detail, Traveler explained the situation, including the medical prognosis for Major Lewis Stiles.

  When Traveler finished speaking, Dr. Sorenson took off his glasses and rubbed his diminished eyes. “You say he’s already been hospitalized?”

  Traveler nodded.

  “I can call Salt Lake easily enough to verify that.”

  “We have no objection.”

  Sorenson took a long time polishing his glasses. Finally he replaced them and sighed. “My mother was the nurse on duty the day of the shooting. It changed her life. Mine, too, for that matter.”

  He walked over to stare at the framed degree on the wall. “She and Father saw to it that I went to medical school at the university in Salt Lake. When I graduated, I had offers to stay on at the U as staff, but coming home to practice was always my intention. I owed that to my parents.”

  “We’d like to meet them,” Martin said.

  “Mother’s still a local practitioner and midwife when the occasion calls for it, not to mention my part-time nurse. She went out on a call not long before you arrived.”

  Traveler flexed his itching fingers.

  “Do you mind if I have a look at your shoulder?” the doctor asked.

  “Of course he doesn’t,” Martin answered.

  Traveler clenched his teeth in anticipation.

  “When did this happen?” the doctor said as he helped Traveler remove his shirt.

  “There was an accident last night,” Martin said. “I had to put my son’s shoulder back into place with the help of a bystander.”

  Sorenson’s fingers probed gently. “You haven’t been completely honest with me.” He began manipulating Traveler’s arm. “The sheriff told me he called Salt Lake himself.” The doctor increased the pressure. “He said you hurt your arm when Mahlon Broadbent got himself killed.”

  “He tried to run us down with a truck,” Martin said. “All we did was get out of the way.”

  “Now comes the tricky part,” Sorenson said.

  He rotated Traveler’s arm without warning. Something popped inside his shoulder. The sense of pressure began easing immediately.