Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

  “Come on, Delmar!” Mark yelled.

  I turned and faced him. “Are we going to Quick’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I join you there in a few minutes? I just remembered that I need to meet someone.”

  “Meet someone? What are you talking about?”

  “Just go,” I said with a wave. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Whatever.”

  It worked. I knew Mark and Steve couldn’t resist stopping at Mr. Quick’s, where the upper classmen hung out. Located just a few blocks from Armstrong High, Quick’s was a magnet for juniors and seniors, or any kid who had a car for that matter.

  Their departure left me in an awkward spot, just standing by myself in the parking lot, staring at the field house door. I decided to watch from a few cars away. I pulled my stocking cap down to the tops of my eyes and pulled my chin inside my coat collar.

  Ten minutes passed and the lot got quiet with only a half-dozen cars still scattered here and there. I stood behind the bed of a Ford pickup and kept watching. My eyes drifted to the dark patch of woods that bordered the west edge of the Armstrong parking lot. It would be a perfect place for the killer to set up another ambush. Jeez, I thought. Should I run for my life? I decided that if the killer was going to shoot me from the woods, he would have done it already. I stayed put and waited for whoever would be walking up to the black Cadillac.

  When a tall kid with scraggly hair came through the parking lot, he gave me a funny look since I was standing right next to his truck.

  “You got a problem?” he asked.

  “No.” I took a few steps away from the truck. He gunned the engine, spun the tires, and crunched across the frozen slush onto Tullar Road.

  Now I was really alone and completely exposed. What kind of spy stands out in the open of a big, empty parking lot? I shuffled my feet and even took a few steps in the direction of Quick’s before stopping myself. I wished I had a bottle of pop, a book, anything to keep my hands busy, to look like I belonged there. Then I decided to do something really stupid. I moved closer. If I’m going to do this I might as well get a good look, I thought.

  I peeked through the windows of the Caddy but couldn’t see anything. I looked at the yellow Wisconsin license plate. Even in the dim light I could read number M52-928 and repeated it over and over again. In my mind, the M stood for murder.

  My stomach tightened up like a wrung-out towel when I spotted someone emerging from the bluish light of the field house door. Have you ever been so scared you wondered whether or not you were going to pee in your pants? That was me as I stood out in the open waiting to meet the man who may have killed my dad and wanted to kill me next. I lowered my face, pretending to look at the ground and kept my hands in my coat pockets.

  Get out of here, said my quavering gut. Don’t chicken out now, my spine yelled back. Right or wrong, I stood and waited, right alongside that black Cadillac.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch . . . The man in the black pants and black coat approached until he was a snowball’s toss away. My eyes were on him even though I wasn’t facing him directly. He turned and looked at me and the cone of yellow light from overhead reflected off his face. I studied it—fat nose, brick for a chin, forehead that jutted out like a shelf, shading his eyes. It was the same guy all right. The guy who had delivered the yellow envelope to Sheriff Heiselmann at Kimberly Point in September.

  His voice came deep and threatening. “What do you want?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Just waiting for a ride.”

  “From who?”

  “My dad.”

  A thought suddenly popped into my head. Check his coat buttons. My eyes drifted down to the man’s dark coat. Three buttons held it closed at the front. Each one was black with a white streak running through it. I focused in on the neck where the coat hung open. Sure enough—the top button was missing.

  “Do I know you?” The man’s voice was louder now.

  He took a few steps toward me and if ever there was a time to run, this was it. Still, something told me to stand firm. I lifted my chin up out of my coat collar as I turned and faced him directly. My toes curled inside the Eaglewings on my feet. We were eye to eye.

  That’s when two things happened at once. The first was a sound, the thud of the field house door followed by two men talking as they walked together toward the parking lot. The second was a look of recognition in the Cadillac Man’s face. He knew me. He hated me. He wanted me dead. His face went cold and dark. His teeth showed through a narrow slit. He took a step forward and I took a step back. His eyes fired cannonballs. Mine shot back with peas.

  The walking men kept coming. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch . . . Their feet were now on the parking lot itself, headed toward one of the few remaining cars in the distance.

  “Hey, you still here?” The friendly voice came from one of the walking men.

  The Cadillac Man drilled me with a final glare from his granite face that carried a message—I will kill you.

  Just as quickly, he turned and gave a friendly wave. “Hey, fellas.”

  “See you next Tuesday,” said one of the men.

  The Cadillac Man pulled his car keys out of his pants pocket and something shiny fell to the ground at his feet. He quickly tossed his gym bag onto the passenger side seat, got in, and drove away, turning north on Tullar. My heart hammered like it was going to bust right out of my ribcage. My knees went weak. I watched the other two men as they walked past me. Both of them also carried gym bags.

  Who are these guys, and why are they here later than everybody else? How do they know the Cadillac Man?

  As soon as they disappeared in their cars, I reached down to see what had fallen out of the man’s pocket. The overhead light reflected brightly off the shiny object. I picked it up. A metal whistle. The clues all clicked together—a gym bag, a whistle, another meeting with the men on Tuesday. Suddenly I remembered the doodle of a basketball player on the yellow envelope.

  Holy catfish—the Cadillac Man is a basketball ref.

  I pocketed the whistle and took off running, but not toward Quick’s. I ran behind Armstrong and straight into the woods. By moonlight, I followed the trail for a few minutes, then charged into the brush, bushwhacking to the south and west. Somehow I had to find my way to Quick’s without being seen. The Cadillac Man was hunting me. Of that I had little doubt. Did he want me dead? Of that I was certain. Somewhere, he lay in ambush and I refused to make myself an easy target. I finally emerged from the woods into somebody’s backyard. I had been running on fumes and fell to my knees for a breath. I looked back to where I came from and saw the shadows of my footprints, clear as day in the moonlight.

  Criminy . . . is he tracking me?

  That was it for the woods. I bombed through the neighborhood side streets where I wouldn’t leave footprints. At last, there it was—the Mr. Quick’s sign in the distance. I made a dash down Gillingham, waiting for the sound of a rifle and the impact of a bullet. I flung open the door and charged inside.

  “How did you get so sweaty, Delmar?” asked Mark through a mouthful of fries.

  “I ran,” I said.

  I ordered a 7 Up and slumped into my chair. As much as I wanted to tell Steve and Mark, I couldn’t. No telling friends. No telling cops. Not even agent Culper at the FBI. I know it sounds crazy, but for the safety of my family, that was my plan.

  47

  For the second night in a row, I barely slept. Visions of the Cadillac Man with a knife in his hand kept running through my mind. About a hundred times I heard doors thump and stairs creak. I imagined him with a ladder climbing up to my window. A few times, I even peeked outside to check. Jeez! I was driving myself crazy. At last, my tiredness grew bigger than my fear and I dozed off.

  After I got up, it was more of the same. I checked to see that the curtains were all pulled shut. I worried about the sound of every car on the street. Heck, even the thought of bringing in the mail had me skittish. Dog
gone it! I was scared of everything.

  Enough was enough. Right or wrong, I had to get out of the house, so I picked up the phone and called Rhonda. No—she wasn’t doing anything. Yes—she would meet me at the bowling alley to practice my lines for Romeo and Juliet.

  Third hour on Monday found me alone at a back table in the Science Resource Center with a pencil and blank sheet of paper. Step one was to find the creep’s name. Somewhere in the universe, there had to be a list of Wisconsin high school basketball refs. Should I talk to the basketball coach? Should I ask my gym teacher? Since my plan was to keep things to myself, I did neither. Instead, I made a dash to the Neenah Library after school and picked up the Sunday Post-Crescent from the newspaper rack. Just as I had expected, the sports page listed all the upcoming games and it showed a full slate for Tuesday night. Neenah played at Kaukauna, Hortonville was at Appleton East, Kimberly was at Oshkosh North, and Appleton West traveled to Fond du Lac. I would start north, at Kaukauna, and work my way south.

  I flew out the door and rode Ike through downtown Neenah like I had a Russian MiG on my tail. Once past the curving red bricks of the Bergstrom mill, I crossed the tracks and slowed to a walk at Emerald Gardens.

  “I might be late,” I said to Grandpa Asa as we clanked spoons into dishes of Rocky Road.

  “Where did you say you were going?”

  “Kaukauna,” I said. “The Rockets play the Ghosts at 6:30. I might make a couple other stops along the way.”

  It was the truth. I didn’t tell him that I would be driving a hundred miles and covering three counties. Asa flicked his eyebrows and tossed the truck keys on the table. I scooped them up.

  The last thing I needed was for Mom to thwart my plans, so I parked the truck three blocks from our house. I would drive it to school and take off for Kaukauna from there. With luck, nobody would recognize me.

  Breakfast for my mom was a cigarette and coffee as she sat at the kitchen table. God. She was getting so skinny that her pajama top practically slid off her bony shoulders. Even the skin on her face seemed to droop and around her cheeks and forehead, her skull showed right through. I placed my empty Froot Loops bowl in the sink and finished off a glass of Tang before washing both dishes right away. It had become a habit to keep dishes from piling up since I still had two months left on my sentence as the kitchen slave.

  I grabbed my coat and walked toward the side door. “I won’t be home for supper because I’m going to the basketball game tonight,” I said.

  “Okay, honey.” Mom gave me a quick wave as she turned to the next page of TV Guide.

  Sally glared at me with one of her patented, hands-on-hips, looks. “The Rockets are at Kaukauna tonight. How are you planning to get to an away game?”

  “Steve just got his license,” I said.

  That shut her up, and it wasn’t even a lie. I was out the door.

  Somehow, I made it through all my classes, but when the final bell rang, my nerves started twitching. Fretting about driving all over the Fox Valley without a license had something to do with it. But the scariest part was knowing I was heading off, by myself, in pursuit of the Cadillac Man. A bowling ball rose up from my gut and I swallowed it back down. He knew what I looked like. Worse than that, he knew that I knew what he looked like. I figured out that there was a special kind of fear reserved for certain situations, and I was heading into a doozy. Both me and the Cadillac Man wanted to see each other, only he wanted to see me in a very special way. Dead!

  Getting through Neenah was adventure enough. I was still about as coordinated as a three-legged dog when it came to working the clutch and managed to stall out twice at stop signs. Finally, I cranked the wheel toward the Highway 41 northbound ramp and worked through the gears. The traffic was “a dog’s breakfast,” as Grandpa Asa used to say. About a hundred people honked at me while I tried to merge into the mess of cars and trucks. Cripes, I must have driven on the shoulder for a quarter mile before somebody finally let me in. A guy who looked like a bear passed me and flipped the middle finger. Holy mackerel! I hunkered down in that right hand lane with my nose straight ahead and the speedometer at 55. Once I got past Appleton, Highway 41 took a big sweeping turn to the east. A green sign popped up that directed me to the Kaukauna exit. Whew!

  The road into town took me over a bridge, crossing the Fox. I saw the big paper mill churning out steam. I saw the dairy where they made the cheese spread that we always ate at Christmastime. A couple of trucks rolled by carrying big green Badger farm wagons that were common all over the countryside. Grandpa Asa had told me that Kaukauna made farm machinery and, sure enough, there was the proof.

  As I rolled into the small downtown, I realized that I had no clue where to find Kaukauna High School. I checked my watch—only five o’clock. I was way early. Worse yet, I was way hungry. In my pocket I had six bucks of Hoot Owl money. I spotted a pizza joint, parked the truck, and walked inside. The menu had every kind of pizza, from onion to anchovy. A waitress, not much older than me, walked over. To say that she was good looking would be like calling Pete Rose a decent hitter. Gawd! She was a knockout, with her sparkly blue eyes, perfect smile, and short, blonde hair that curled up on the ends.

  “What can I get you?” she asked.

  I stammered and pushed my nose into the menu. “Umm—what’s good?” I finally asked.

  “The pizzas are all good,” she said. “The Supreme is the best.”

  A ten-inch Supreme was listed on the menu at $1.60. Along with a pop it would be right around two bucks.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “I’ll take the ten-inch Supreme and a root beer.”

  She smiled brightly as she wrote it down. Does she like me?

  “Can you tell me how to get to Kaukauna High?” I asked.

  She smiled again. “Sure.” She grabbed a napkin and drew me a map with a little house symbol representing the school. “Are you going to the game?”

  “Yeah, I drove up from Neenah.”

  Her eyes snapped wide. “You’ve got your driver’s license?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “I turn sixteen in a few months, but my grandpa still lets me drive his truck.”

  She looked out the window.

  “It’s the turquoise Chevy,” I said.

  Her face lit up in disbelief as she walked away to place my order and returned with my root beer.

  “Is Neenah good in basketball this year?” the waitress asked.

  “Pretty good.”

  She nodded. “Well, you’re sure to beat the Ghosts tonight. What else do you do for fun?”

  My mind rattled through a long list of tenth-grade answers that included fishing for bullheads and dancing with my mom.

  “I’m playing the lead role in Romeo and Juliet,” I said.

  It was the golden ticket.

  “You are?!” She looked back to make sure the boss wasn’t looking, then sat down across the table from me and leaned in close. “I’m playing the lead in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she said.

  For five minutes we talked. She told me about her dream to be an actress in Hollywood and that she hoped to study theater in college, if she could afford to go. She hoped to visit Broadway and loved everything by some guy I had never even heard of named Arthur Miller. But she also liked Shakespeare and was envious that I got to be in the famous love scene on the balcony. I tried to be cool about it and didn’t tell her that the balcony scene was the part I feared most.

  “When is your performance?” she asked.

  “April.”

  “Mine’s not until the end of May.”

  “Are your parents excited?”

  “Not really. How about yours?”

  “Nope.”

  A man and woman came into the restaurant and the girl glanced in their direction.

  “I better get back to work,” she said. “My name’s Jan, what’s yours?”

  “I’m Del.”

  She smiled again and walked away.

  Wow! She liked me al
l right. Too bad she didn’t go to Shattuck. I watched her move from table to table, filling water glasses and delivering pizza. She smiled at me every time she walked by.

  The pizza came way too soon and my conversation with the pretty girl from Kaukauna washed away with a flood of hungry customers demanding her attention. She only stopped at my table one more time and it was to drop off the bill.

  The total for my pizza and pop added up to $1.90. Then I saw the message underneath.

  Good Luck, Romeo! Come and see me again sometime!

  I paid at the cash register and then returned to place a dollar bill under my root beer glass. Just like James Dean I kept my cool and strutted out the door to the turquoise Chevy Apache pickup. I propped myself up high on a pillow and looked up at the window of the pizza place, giving a casual wave on the off chance that she was looking. I started the engine with a roar and worked the clutch pedal. The truck lurched forward and stalled out.

  Jeez!

  When I got to Kaukauna High School, the first thing I did was drive around the parking lot looking for the black Cadillac. I saw two yellow school buses with black letters that said Neenah School District on the side. I even saw a couple of seniors who I recognized as friends of my sister, but no black Cadillac.

  I was just about to leave when I decided to spend the fifty cents to go inside and see for myself who was refereeing the game. The Rocket and Ghost players were all doing layup drills on opposite sides of the court. Kaukauna had a pretty good crowd, and their orange-and-black colors were everywhere, on banners, signs, and pompoms. Even their cheerleaders were dressed in Halloween colors. On the other side, several dozen Neenah fans all sat in a bunch waiting for the game to start.

  A pair of refs in their black-and-white striped shirts walked to the scorer’s table at courtside. One guy had a bald head and a beer belly. The other was a twenty-something dude with blond hair. No sign of the Cadillac Man. The first stop on my list had flamed out and there was no sense staying longer. As the Kaukauna band played the first notes of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” I walked out the door. Appleton East was my next stop—if I could find it.