by Sue Henry
“Over there,” he spoke quietly, giving a quick nod to the left. “That red building with the British flag on the front. You see?”
“It’s a food booth. So?” said the shorter man, shoving one hand in a pocket of his blue windbreaker and scrubbing at his blond crew cut with the other.
“Ye-ah. One end’s a food booth. But it’s twice as big as they need to sell sausages and stuff, and there’re no windows on that other end—just a heavy steel door with serious locks. Wadda ya think it’s for?”
His companion looked up and frowned. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Don’t be a dope, Curt. What have we been talking about?”
“Oh—the mon—”
“Shut it!” the taller man snapped, glancing around to see if anyone was near enough to overhear. “Here’s the deal. My friend says that once every day, before the fair opens, an armored truck drives in through the south entrance and pulls up behind that place. A few minutes later it drives out again. What does that tell you?”
The shorter man raised the shoulders of his blue windbreaker ear-ward in a shrug. “I guess they pick up—”
“Good boy. You guess right,” his pal interrupted, clapping him on the back with one hand. “Somewhere, locked up in the other end of that building,” he muttered softly, “all night long, the whole day’s receipts are…” He allowed his words to drift into silence, and a sly, self-satisfied grin twisted the corners of his mouth upward. Carefully he assessed the red building one last time, wishing he had X-ray vision and could see through walls. He would have liked to know exactly what kind of a safe was used to secure the huge amount of money the fair must generate each day, but it was a detail best left to the boss of this operation.
“But how’re we gonna—”
Grabbing the shorter man’s elbow in a grip that pinched hard enough to make him yip in protest, the man who seemed to be in charge pulled him across the plaza toward a walkway that ran past the red building in question.
“We can’t stand here discussing this. Walk away, man, and I’ll show you the pictures.”
The taller one practically dragged the other one across the plaza, and they disappeared to the east,” Monroe explained. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t their last appearance. Danny and I were later to more unpleasantly make the acquaintance of at least one of them.”
From his place on the bench, Frank Monroe watched with a speculative expression as they strolled away. The sly grin he had seen made him wish he had been close enough to eavesdrop on the whole conversation. As they passed from sight in the crowded walkway, he turned his attention to the building they seemed to have been discussing. But having missed lunch at the senior center, he soon lost his curiosity about them in favor of satisfying the emptiness of his stomach.
The Union Jack displayed on the outside wall made him wonder if the place might possibly sell real British bangers. Most likely not, he decided with a sigh. But they would be likely to have fish and chips, as the English called french fries, and hopefully, malt vinegar to splash over them. Whatever he decided to have for lunch, it would go better with a pint of stout. In his youth, Monroe had studied at Oxford, and he fondly remembered pints in pubs with fellow students. Well, he could get something to go and take it to The Sluice Box, a fairground pub not far away, where he could buy a Guinness, possibly even on tap.
The appeal of this idea set him scooting forward on the bench. He enjoyed people-watching as the crowd of so many different kinds of folks swirled around him. He remembered the woman with the dog, who had collided with a youngster in pirate paint a few minutes earlier. He had easily identified her as Jessie Arnold, an Iditarod musher often seen in print. He thought she lived somewhere nearby. There had been something in the paper about her being injured in a plane crash that summer, and he frowned, trying to recall the cumstances without success.
But he had rested long enough, and it was time to explore more of the fair and eat lunch. Getting up, he slung his leather knapsack over a shoulder and set out toward the food booth across the plaza. Swinging the cane he seldom needed as he walked, he wondered again what Doris Richards had done when she had been unable to locate him at the market. Undoubtedly she had caused a ruckus and had everyone frantically searching. Then she would have notified his long-suffering nephew, generating resentment and frustration at another situation with which his nephew would be called upon to deal.
Monroe couldn’t help grinning at the idea of a little payback.
A small blond girl in a bright pink jacket smiled in return as she passed, a wad of matching pink cotton candy in one hand, her mother’s hand in the other. Her wide eyes reminded Monroe of the daughter and only child he had lost to pneumonia at about the same age. Though Beth’s hair had been dark and curly, her eyes had been much the same blue.
Squaring his shoulders, he stepped out smartly in the direction of fish and chips, relishing his freedom of choice before a sip of the anticipated Guinness so much as passed his lips.
Were you at the Iditarod booth for the rest of the afternoon, Jessie?” Becker asked.
“Yes—it was pretty busy.” She thought back and went on, “By the time I left it was almost dark. I was tired and ready to go home, but when I passed The Sluice Box, I was sucked right in by Hobo Jim’s music. Then I met Hank Peterson, so I stayed a while longer.” She hesitated and frowned. “I think that was the last thing I really enjoyed at the fair.”
It was late when Jessie headed for the vendors’ parking lot in the middle of the fairground behind The Sluice Box. Between five and seven o’clock, as people left their day jobs, the adult crowd had increased and a lot of people had stopped by the booth to talk to her, but by eight it had thinned considerably. As she approached The Sluice Box, the fair’s largest pub, she realized part of the reason why. Foot-tapping strains of music drifted out through the open double doors, and she recognized the voice and guitar of Alaska’s favorite troubadour, Hobo Jim.
The temptation was too much. Nodding to the security guard who waved her through the door, she slipped inside. Tank obediently sat down close to her feet as she stood against the wall to listen and watch for a few minutes.
The Sluice Box was housed in a permanent building, unlike many of the vendors’ accommodations, which were built or hauled in temporarily for the run of the fair and removed or dismantled afterward. Vendors registered and were assigned the spaces they occupied and would often find themselves in a different location each year. The Sluice Box, however, remained where it had been constructed of studs and plywood, with a dirt and gravel floor that collected cigarette butts and peanut shells and allowed spilled beer to drain away. Narrow shelves, just wide enough to hold a beer, ran along the walls, which were covered with posters and signs advertising the various kinds of beer for sale at the bar.
Jessie stood in a room the size of a tennis court, so packed with people there was hardly room to breathe, let alone sit down. Lines of thirsty people snaked around to her right, awaiting service at a long counter where several bartenders were dispensing beer into plastic cups and ringing up sales as fast as they could work. To her left were a number of tall, narrow tables for customers who preferred to stand as they drank and enjoyed the music. At the other end of the room were wooden picnic tables with attached benches. These were jammed with folks all paying enthusiastic attention to a stage beyond them where Hobo Jim, with his guitar, was perched on a tall stool. The room rocked to the infectious rhythm of his music, and the crowd clapped and joined in with the song he was singing about the Alaska Railroad. At a nearby table she noticed three men from an ongoing lumberjack show, in red plaid shirts, jeans, and suspenders, all rhythmically waving their beer as they lustily sang along.
“Hey, Jessie,” a voice called out as applause for the song began to die away. “Over here.”
Searching the faces of those in line for beer, she recognized Hank Peterson’s grin of greeting. A good friend, he had helped to build her new cabin earlier that summer, but s
he hadn’t seen him in several weeks.
“Want a beer?” he called over the volume of the crowd.
The sound system cut in before Jessie could reply. She shrugged in defeat. “Yes, please.”
Though the sound of her voice was lost, he caught her meaning and nodded. She watched him make it to the bar, where he greeted the bartender, a casual friend whom Jessie knew only by his first name, Eric. He grinned and raised a hand in her direction—a long-distance hello. She waved back, then saw that Hank had stopped at one of the tall tables where a space had opened up. Keeping Tank close, she threaded her way through the crowd of people to join him and found that from there, it was possible to see over the heads of those sitting at the lower tables.
“Thanks,” she shouted in Hank’s ear, and took a grateful sip of the cool Alaskan Amber he had set down in front of her.
It was too noisy for conversation, for Hobo Jim, as usual, had the crowd’s undivided attention and enthusiasm. Finishing a number, he leaned forward to speak into the microphone.
“Last year,” he told the audience, “when we did wolf howls to this next song, they could hear us at the Borealis Theater. This year I want ’em to hear us all the way to the grandstand behind the big barn. Okay?”
The answer was a roar of applause and practice howls, as Hobo Jim launched into the song, accompanied by clapping and foot stomping. At the appropriate time, everyone, including Jessie and Hank, howled along with him, and in the confined space of The Sluice Box, the sound was all but deafening. Even Tank joined in, making Jessie laugh and adding a note of realism to the mix.
“Who’s got the wolf in here?” Hobo Jim asked when the noise died down enough for him to be heard. “Is that you, Jessie?” he asked, peering under a hand lifted to shade his eyes from the glare of the overhead spotlight. “Hey, folks—we’re in famous company tonight. That’s Jessie Arnold, one of our best Iditarod racers. And she’s evidently brought along a canine singer. Thanks, Jessie.”
Jessie waved him a greeting, and as people turned to look, he launched into what was arguably his most well-known number, “The Iditarod Trail Song,” in her honor. In seconds the room rocked with sound as everyone joined in with the familiar words of the chorus: “I did, I did, I did the Iditarod Trail.”
Singing made her thirsty, and she soon finished the beer Hank had brought her.
“Ready for another?” he asked, draining his as well.
“Here,” she told him, holding out Tank’s leash. “Hold him, and I’ll get this one.”
“Woman after my own heart.” Peterson grinned, taking the leash as Jessie made her way through the crowd and joined the line at the bar where her friend Eric was busily drawing beer, keeping customers cheerful with humorous banter as he worked.
She was next in line at the taps when a scuffle broke out in the line next to her.
“Hey, this is a line, fella. Go to the back of it.”
She saw that a short blond man in a blue windbreaker was ignoring the others waiting and trying to force his way up to the bar.
“Oh, shit,” she heard Eric say in an angry, disgusted tone. “Is he back in here again?”
He came out from behind the bar, and approached the offender, looming over him by fully six inches. “Told you not to come back,” he growled impatiently, made a handful of the back of blond man’s jacket collar, and marched him toward the closest door, in the rear of the pub beyond the bar. With a not-so-gentle shove, he ejected the protesting man, who was trying inefficiently to take a swing at his captor. “Come back and I’ll have you arrested.” All but dusting off his hands, he came scowling back, but as he regained his place at the taps his expression relaxed into a grin.
“Hey, sorry about that. Some people shouldn’t drink, and he’s been a problem all night. Eighty-sixed him when he got shit-faced and tried to start a fight with me earlier. What can I do you for?”
It was a side of Eric that Jessie had never seen, but she told herself that it was a demanding job, even without problem customers. Eric was usually as easygoing as anyone she knew, so she excused his behavior as frustration and forgot it as she carried the two beers back to join Hank.
I didn’t stay long after that,” Jessie told them. “It had been a tiring day, and I was coming back the next morning, so I went home. I started out the front door of The Sluice Box, but there was some kind of commotion—the security guard and another guy yelling at a kid who was riding a bicycle on the walkway. Rather than get involved, I worked my way through the crowd inside and slipped out the back door.”
“Did you see anyone in back of the bar?” Phil Becker asked. Jessie thought for a moment before answering.
“I don’t remember anyone except a guy in that small stand of trees—the one with the picnic table. It looked like the one Eric had thrown out a little while earlier. He was sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree. I assumed he was drunk, so I avoided him, found my truck, and went on home.”
CHAPTER 6
Becker frowned in thought. “But you didn’t go home, did you, Frank?” he asked, turning to Frank Monroe. “Why not?”
The old man shook his head. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.” He shifted position in the overstuffed chair. “I thought it over and found I had no inclination to return to that unlockable room at the center,” he said with a shrug of discomfiture. It was quiet for a moment as he considered how to justify his subsequent actions. “I had a debate with myself, you see. We learn guilt early, at our mother’s knee, so doing what is expected of us is how we tend to fit into society with the least amount of conflict. But I thought of all the things in my life that I’d done because they were expected of me, and the mental pile of shoulds and ought-tos grew until it was a mountain compared to my want-tos. Should and ought-to was what got me pigeonholed in that unlockable room in the first place, wasn’t it? All at once it seemed insufferable. I’d escaped successfully and made it to the fair. So I decided, for once, to do what I wanted. Therefore I didn’t go back.”
A grin spread itself across his face as he remembered that small but significant personal rebellion. “And it felt great—better than great. It felt grand!”
As several of those in the room smiled, nodded agreement, and began to break in with questions, he reached into a pocket, extracted a much used and favored pipe, and began to pat his pockets in search of tobacco.
“Here. Try some of this,” the other pipe smoker in the group suggested, tossing his own pouch across to land in Monroe’s lap.
“Gratefully, thanks.” The old man filled his pipe, puffed it alight, and settled back into his chair. “Good stuff.”
“What did you do?”
“Where did you sleep?”
“Did you hide?”
Becker overrode the rest. “That was the night you met Danny, wasn’t it?”
The man and boy gave each other gleeful, conspiratorial glances that erased the years between them in the enjoyment of being the only two who knew the answers to the flood of questions and more.
“Shall we tell them?”
“I guess.”
“First,” Monroe began, “I spent the better part of the evening where you were, Jessie—in the pub, listening to Hobo Jim.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“But I saw you and heard that dog of yours howl.” He nodded at Tank, whose head still rested on Danny’s knee. “I was sitting at a table on the east side of the room, but it was pretty crowded.”
“Where were you, Danny? Why didn’t you go home?” Jessie asked the boy who was petting the dog. “You must have known that your folks would be worried about you.”
“Yeah, but I knew my dad would be home by then, and he’d be really steamed at me. I’d locked my bike to a tree in that little park across from the place where fair people camp out in tents.”
“Where I saw the guy against the tree.”
“Uh-huh, I guess so. After Glen and Tommy left, I went back for the bike, but I sat at the picnic table for a
long time, listening to the music in the dark and not wanting to go home and be in trouble. But then…”
The fair was bright with thousands of colored lights along the walkways and beckoning from the booths. The midway rides spun bright patterns in the air as they carried shrieking passengers up and around. Most of the younger children had been taken home, and the evening crowd that wandered the grounds was mostly teenagers and adults. Besides Hobo Jim at The Sluice Box, other performers were taking their turns on several outdoor stages, and the centrally located Orion Dome was full to capacity for a group of Chinese acrobats. In a ring at the grandstand, an equestrian show was going on.
Danny Tabor sat in the shadows at a picnic table behind The Sluice Box pub in a small stand of perhaps a dozen trees, feeling less than ten years old, contemplating a long ride home on his bicycle and wondering just how long he would be grounded for this escapade. The pirate makeup he had worn all afternoon was mostly gone or smeared, leaving what looked vaguely like a black eye and the remains of a painted scar on his left cheek. Slowly he pulled the skull and crossbones bandana from his head and untied the knot in it. His backpack lay beside him on the table, and he started to put the bandana inside but changed his mind and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans instead. Having his friends gone made him feel guilty and out of sorts, unable to forget that he had disobeyed his parents.
Finally he got up slowly and unlocked the chain that held his bicycle to the tree, reluctant but resigned to starting toward home. As he was about to put the chain in his backpack, the rear door of The Sluice Box opened with a crash and a man in a blue jacket came stumbling through it, ejected by someone inside.
