by C. R. Corwin
Gordon’s memorial service was nothing like I’d feared and everything I should have expected.
First of all, the music: It was not that dirgey organ music you usually hear at funerals, that squeals away at your ears like it’s being played through the snout of a gerbil. It was jazz. Bebop jazz. Played loud and live by nobody less than Shaka Bop, Hannawa’s answer to Charlie Parker. And it was not just Shaka Bop and his big silver saxophone filling the chapel. There was a drummer and a bass player. All three of them were wearing sunglasses and colorful African dashikis. Shaka was wearing a leather porkpie hat.
Second, the people in the pews: They hadn’t come to mourn Gordon’s death. They had come to celebrate Gordon’s life. Crammed shoulder to shoulder, they were bobbing their heads and snapping their fingers, and whenever Shaka took off on some frantic run on his sax, they shouted, “Blow, baby, blow!”
Eric was thrilled by all this. I nudged him into a back pew. I resisted as long as I could, but as soon as Shaka’s trio launched into Salted Peanuts my head started bobbing along with everybody else’s. I’d forgotten how good Shaka was—and how much I liked that kind of music.
The coroner hadn’t released Gordon’s body yet. So there wasn’t a casket or urn of ashes to keep my eyes busy. There were just the people in the pews. What an odd collection! There were a lot of students, some so nerdy you just knew they had to be archaeology majors, others with tattoos and body piercings and brightly dyed hair that looked like a chimpanzee cut it. I figured they were the current crop of campus bohemians. There were lots of old hippies, too, middle-aged men with ponytails and pasty earth mother-types with long, straight Peter, Paul and Mary hair down to their sagging boobs. Professors, I guessed. Then there were the ancients, the folks my age. Most were dressed sensibly enough, although I did spot a beret or two.
Shaka Bop shifted to a surprisingly unjazzy rendition of Ebb Tide, a soothing old tune from the fifties. When everyone was mellowed out, the Rev. Bernice Wallenburg came to the pulpit. She was not a small woman. She was wearing a flowered dress that reminded me of my grandmother’s drapes. She spoke for fifteen minutes on the ups and downs of life without once mentioning how Gordon’s life ended.
She was followed by a small wiry woman with thick yellow lollipop glasses and hair so short you’d swear she was a lesbian if you didn’t know she was anything but. “Good heavens,” I whispered to myself, “that can’t possibly be Effie.”
But it was Effie. Fredricka “Effie” Fredmansky. We’d graduated the same year, both with degrees in library science. Like me, she was one of the charter members of the Meriwether Square Baked Bean Existentialist Society. Unlike me, she’d been quite popular with the college boys. That popularity had nothing to do with her looks. In the looks department she was as below average as me. But Effie had an extremely relaxed view of sex for those years. She flitted about as she wished, without guilt or emotional expectations. The last I’d heard Effie ran a used bookstore just off campus.
Effie had apparently remained very close to Gordon over the years. She told five decades’ worth of wonderful stories about him. She talked about his good heart and his easygoing ways. It made me wish I’d stayed close to Gordon, too.
Chidsey “Chick” Glass was the next to speak. Like Gordon, he’d returned to Hemphill College to teach. Except for a few wrinkles and the curly, white hair hanging over his ears, he didn’t look much different than he did in his college days. He was still skinny as the dickens. His nose still hung over his lips like the beak of a cockatoo. And he was still wearing a beret.
While Shaka Bop tootled softly in the background, Chick recited a poem he’d written for the occasion. It was in the old beat style we once considered so deep and dangerous, that was now, to tell you the truth, nearly impossible to follow:
“Man, wow,
Sweet Gordon
You vamoosed
So completely
So metaphysically
Without you and me
Resolving ever
That weighty question
That was such a thorny
Hang-up
That split us asunder
So un-copectically
Like Ti-Jean and the Howler
And now
You’ve split forever
And now that weighty question
That never mattered much
Matters not at all
And now I am bugged to the bone
Over the whole terrible ball of wax.”
Eric was the only one who clapped. I stopped his hands. “Quit being so bourgeois,” I whispered. “A beat never applauds. You show your appreciation with a slow nod and a faraway look in your eyes, as if you actually understood what he was saying.”
The service went on for another half hour: kind words and funny stories by Gordon’s old friends, praise and platitudes from his students, more wonderful tunes by Shaka Bop, a final prayer by Bernice Wallenburg that didn’t once mention God. The only thing missing was Gordon’s relatives. And I found that odd. Gordon didn’t have a wife or children, but his obit did mention a sister and a nephew. And certainly he must have had cousins. Everybody has cousins. Didn’t any of them have anything to say? Were any of them even there?
***
After the service we shuffled to the anteroom for cake and coffee. “Stay close to me,” I told Eric. “I mean it.”
“Sure,” he said. Seconds later he made a beeline for a girl with a yin and yang tattoo on her bare midriff.
I retreated to the safety of the refreshment table. There was a big white coffee maker. There were stacks of Styrofoam cups rising from the white tablecloth like stalagmites. There were rows of white paper plates with squares of white cake with white frosting. There were white napkins and white plastic forks and spoons. Fortunately, there also was a white porcelain bowl of tea bags.
While I was making my tea, a shadow drifted across the table. With all that white staring me in the face, it was as ominous as a rain cloud. I looked up and found Chick Glass. “I figured that was you, Maddy,” he said. He playfully flicked my Prince Valiant bangs with his fingers. “You haven’t changed one iota, babe.”
“And I see you still love those berets.”
He sheepishly slid it off his head. “Actually I think they’re silly. But for Gordon—and the poem—I thought what the hell.”
He’d put such emphasis on the poem that I just had to lie and tell him I loved it. Chick had always fancied himself a poet. “Did you really dig it?” he asked.
“The most,” I said.
He pulled a stack of folded Xerox copies from his suit coat and handed me one. “I ran them off just in case somebody wanted one.”
He grinned at me like a love-struck circus clown while I pretended to read it. I folded it into a manageable square and slid it into my purse. “It’s so good to see you again,” I said. “If only the circumstances were different.”
Chick was suddenly a very sad clown. “He was my best friend, Maddy. For fifty damn years.”
I handed him a paper plate with a square of white cake. He didn’t wait for me to hand him a fork. He took a huge bite, sadly wiggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, and walked away, plate in one hand, beret in the other.
His departure startled me. I was expecting to have a long talk with him—about the old days, about what each of us were doing now, about Gordon’s murder. I finished making my tea. I nibbled on a piece of cake. I tried to get Eric’s attention. He was finally talking to the girl with the tattoo on her belly. Then a sharp trill rattled my eardrums: “Dolly Madison Sprowls, I can’t believe it’s you!”
It was Gwendolyn Moffitt-Stumpf. She had her husband, Rollie, in tow.
Gwen Moffitt had been a year behind me in college. I have no idea what she majored in. She probably had no idea herself. She was one of those rich girls who went to college to find a boy whose potential equaled—and with a little luck surpassed—that of her father. The boy she found was Rollie Stumpf. Rollie was
the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker. But his potential as a husband was dazzling. He had a brilliant mind and a malleable spine. How those two ever found their way into the Baked Bean Society I have no idea.
I do remember that Gwen was one of the few students at Hemphill with a car. It was a 1954 Buick Roadmaster convertible. It was a going-off-to-college gift from her father. A bribe so she’d still live at home. I have no interest in cars at all, but I sure remember that car. From the front it looked like an angry catfish. Like all Buicks back then it had those four nostrils on the front fenders. It was painted bright pink and had an enormous amount of chrome. It had white seats, a white canvas top and fat, whitewall tires that glowed in the dark. We Baked Beaners just loved riding around in it. We called it the Beat Buggy. Can you imagine it? The campus bohemians, sworn enemies of American materialism, crammed like sardines in that decadent car, cackling at our own hypocrisy?
“Gwen, Rollie,” I said. “I figured you two would be wasting away in Florida by now.”
“Not while there’s still money to be made here in Hannawa,” she said. It sounded like a joke but I knew from Rollie’s hounddog eyes that she wasn’t joking.
While Rollie fidgeted, Gwen and I took turns telling Gordon stories. Each one was funnier than the last. Each one made us a little sadder.
There was one story that Gwen and I artfully avoided. It was the one about the Halloween party at the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house, our junior year, when both Gwen and Gordon came as the Wizard of Oz scarecrow. The spiked cider was flowing and poor Rollie was busy bagging groceries at the A&P. As the night wore on, their silly, wobbly-legged dancing led to some serious cheek-to-cheek dancing, and then two hours of serious necking in the basement rumpus room. As far as I know it never went further than that, but they did keep their distance for the rest of the semester.
I’d no sooner pried myself away from Gwen and Rollie than I felt a finger drilling me in the elbow. I remembered whose annoying habit that was. I turned with the biggest smile I could muster. “Effie!”
“I figured that had to be you, Maddy.”
“I really loved your talk, Effie.”
“Sorry I don’t have any Xeroxes.”
Oh, how I howled at that. I’d forgotten what a wonderful sense of humor she had. Dark. Sarcastic. Always right on the button. “You still running that little bookstore?” I asked.
“Of course—and you’re still at the paper?”
“Of course.”
“You get married again after Lawrence?”
I shook my head. “How about you? You ever find time for a husband?”
She stood back and dramatically unfurled her arms. “Would I still look this good if I’d gotten married?”
We laughed. We ate cake. We talked about Gordon. “I saw him just three days before he was—before they found him,” she said. “At the Kerouac Thing.”
“The Kerouac Thing? You’re still holding those?”
She smiled sadly and nodded. “Every year since 1959. Can you believe it?”
I could believe it. To members of the Meriwether Square Existentialist Baked Bean Society, Jack Kerouac’s unlikely visit to Hemphill College was the first and second coming rolled into one. He’d visited the campus in late November 1956. On The Road hadn’t been published yet, but he was already well known among the little groups of beats sprinkled around the country. He only stayed for two days. He drank a lot of free beer and ate a lot of free food and slept on the sofa in Gordon’s apartment. After 48 hours of mooching, he took the bus to New York and became famous. Three Novembers later the Baked Bean Society held its first party to commemorate his already legendary visit. We officially, and breathlessly, called it The Grand Kerouacian Anniversary Ball. By the second year we were simply calling it the Kerouac Thing.
“You had the Kerouac Thing in March?” I asked. “Whatever happened to November?”
“We stopped having it in November ten, twelve years ago. Finals and football kept getting in the way. Not to mention Thanksgiving. Half the time half the people couldn’t come. So I finally said to Gordon and Chick, ‘Jesus, why don’t we just hold the damn thing when nobody’s busy with anything.’ March it was.”
Lawrence and I were already two years out of college and married when the first Kerouac Thing was held. But we attended. And we continued to attend for the next several years. And those get-togethers were great fun. We’d read from Kerouac’s poems and novels. Shaka Bop would play the bebop tunes Kerouac allegedly loved. We’d eat beans and drink cheap wine. We’d remember—and embellish—our precious personal minutes with the great bohemian bard himself. “You still have it at your place?” I asked.
Effie moaned like a seasick walrus. “Hell, no. I gave up that honor twenty years ago. We hold it at the Blue Tangerine.”
“The Blue Tangerine? That’s a little un-bohemian, isn’t it?”
Now Effie laughed. “It’s a lot un-bohemian. And I’m sure the great Mr. K is rolling over in his box. But time does march on, Maddy my love.”
“That it does.”
“We’ve sure missed you over the years,” she said.
“After Lawrence and I divorced I guess I got busy with other things,” I said. I could see that Effie was itching to ask me what went wrong between Lawrence and me. She’d once warned me not to marry a man that handsome and I did not want to reward her with the details of his infidelity. So I changed the subject. “You said you saw Gordon at the Kerouac Thing just three days before his body was found—did it seem to you that he was bothered by anything?”
Her eyes shifted back and forth inside her big yellow glasses. “No.”
“It’s just so hard to believe somebody would want him dead,” I said.
“Yes, it is.”
“And why that old landfill? Not that any place is a good place to be murdered.”
“Maybe he was digging where he shouldn’t have been digging,” Effie said.
Chapter 3
Thursday, March 15
I was a wreck all morning. That afternoon I’d be having lunch with Detective Scotty Grant. For better or worse Dale Marabout had let it slip to his sources at the police department that I knew Gordon Sweet. And now Grant wanted to see me. For what he called a friendly chat.
“I’d be happy to,” I said when he called me Monday morning. “I’m in the morgue all day. Come by whenever you want.”
He laughed so loud I had to pull the receiver away from my ear. “With a hundred reporters hovering around? I thought maybe you’d come to see me.”
I’d never been to a real police station, of course, but I’d seen plenty of them on TV. I wanted no part of that testosterone-soaked lunacy. “Couldn’t we meet on neutral ground?” I asked.
His laugh was kinder now. “I suppose.”
We settled on Speckley’s, that wonderful little mom and pop diner in Meriwether Square famous for its meatloaf sandwiches, glob of au gratin potatoes on the side. We’d meet there at two, after the lunch rush, when we’d be surrounded by empty tables.
So all morning Tuesday I made Eric’s life a living hell—even more than usual—and then drove to Meriwether Square for my friendly chat with Scotty Grant. We both ordered the meatloaf sandwiches.
Scotty Grant looked more like a junior high school principal than a homicide detective. He was tall and doughy, comfortable in a suit that didn’t fit very well. He had a high forehead and massive blond eyebrows that swooped across his brow like the McDonald’s arches. He was closer to fifty than forty.
Grant and I had first met during our paper’s investigation into the Reverend Buddy Wing murder the year before. The famous evangelist was poisoned on live television. As the weeks went by, and my suspicions began to bear fruit, Grant came to trust my instincts. I figured that was why he was having lunch with me now.
“So, you knew Gordon Sweet pretty well?” he asked.
“Years ago I did. When we were in college. We were all part of this little group called the Meri—”
<
br /> He held up his hand like a stop sign. “I know about the little group.”
I felt a flash of heat, from my ears to my toes. But it wasn’t menopause—that bubbling cauldron of misery was long behind me. It was embarrassment. The Meriwether Square Baked Bean Existentialist Society was suddenly becoming a big thing in my life again. As if I’d once been a member of the Communist Party or something. “It wasn’t a real organization or anything,” I said. “It was just a bunch of—”
He stopped me again. “Have you stayed close to any of those people?”
I shook my head.
“So you weren’t at that Kerouac Thingy-dingy the other night?”
“Good gravy, no. I haven’t gone for years.”
“So your relationship with Sweet and his friends is pretty much ancient history then?”
“Well, yes. I suppose so.”
I could tell from the way Grant was nibbling on the ice in his water glass that he was disappointed. “Exactly when was the last time you talked to Gordon Sweet?” he asked.
“It could have been six months ago—or maybe a year.”
“That memorable, was it?”
“It was just the usual small talk when you bump into someone. ‘How you doing?’ ‘You’re looking good.’ That kind of thing.”
“And was he looking good, Mrs. Sprowls? He didn’t look troubled or frightened? Preoccupied with something?”
“Well, Gordon was always preoccupied with something,” I said. “He was a very smart man and there was always a lot going on upstairs. But I don’t have any memory of thinking something was wrong.”
He put another spoonful of ice in his mouth. “You went to the memorial service, right?”
I nodded, wondering how he knew.
“You have a chance to talk to anybody?”
I told him who’d I talked to, Effie, Chick, Gwen and Rollie.
“Any of them say anything interesting?”
“Just the stuff everybody says. What a great guy Gordon was. How they’re going to miss him.”
