by Tom Drury
“Jesus, Ed,” said Dan, “get over it.
“I’m not going up that ladder,” said Ed.
“O.K., but I have a baby with me,” said Dan. “I found a baby at the grocery store in Margo.”
“Maybe it belongs to somebody,” said Ed.
“Well, I suppose it does,” said Dan.
The water tower was by the tracks in Pinville. It was the old silver kind with a red bonnet, a ladder, and an encircling walkway that provided a good platform to stand on while writing graffiti. A small crowd had gathered in the grass around the base. Someone had come by with a box of tomatoes, and many of the people were chewing on tomatoes and staring up at the water tower. Ed Aiken came over to the passenger side of the cruiser when Dan pulled up. Ed was a thin man, and the one thing you would say about him day to day was that he rarely seemed to get a decent shave. Right now, for instance, he had a little flag of toilet paper flying under his chin as he opened the cruiser door. The baby started to cry again.
“Aw,” said Ed, “let me hold the little darling.”
He lifted the baby from its box, the blue shirt trailing like a blanket. “Do you like your Uncle Ed?” he said. “Say, sure you do.”
Dan took a turn at the bullhorn without any luck, and then he climbed the water tower. A cage made of hoops protected the ladder, but it seemed that if you slipped and fell the main function of the hoops would be to shear off your head on the way down, and Dan felt a vacuum in his lower parts as he climbed. He watched the people eating tomatoes, and when he could no longer make out the individual tomatoes, he stopped looking down. The culprits were three boys in sleeveless black T-shirts and jeans with the knees torn out. Their setup was professional, with hats, rags, a bucket of red paint, a tray, some turpentine, and a roller screwed onto a stick. In jagged, running letters they had written “Armageddon” and “Tina Rules.”
“Who’s Tina?” said Dan.
“Tina of Talking Heads,” said Errol Thomas.
“What are you thinking of, coming up here in daylight on a Saturday afternoon?” said Dan. “Did you imagine for a second that you wouldn’t get caught?”
“We want people to know,” said Albert Robeshaw.
“We want people to wake up,” said Dane Marquardt. He cupped his hands and yelled “Wake up!” at the people on the ground. “Look at them, they’re so insignificant.”
“We’re in a band,” said Errol Thomas.
“I would’ve guessed that,” said Dan.
The boys packed all their stuff into a gunnysack, and they and Dan headed down the ladder. On the ground, Ed Aiken was holding Quinn over his shoulder, patting him, pivoting slowly.
“How is he?” said Dan.
Ed raised his eyebrows and whispered, “Just dropping off.”
It rained most of the time for the next two weeks. This was the long, gray rain known to every fall, when the people of Grouse County begin to wonder whether their lives will acquire any meaning in time for winter. Water filled ditches, flooded basements, and kept farmers from their fields, but it did not stop anyone from visiting the sheriff’s office in Morrisville with supplies for the baby left at the Hy-Vee. Of course, the baby had never been to the sheriff’s office, but the sheriff had found him, and so the people turned up, craning their necks and looking into the hall behind the desk as if expecting to spy the abandoned Quinn in one of the cells or maybe lying on the floor. The visitors were farm women, for the most part, and they came shaking the water out of their scarves, and carrying bundles of diapers, cases of formula, and bales of bleached-out clothing that in at least one case had not been worn since World War II. Helene Plum even brought a beef-macaroni casserole in Corning Ware, although it was not clear who was supposed to eat it. But then, Helene Plum reacted to almost any kind of stressful news by making casseroles, and had once, in Faribault, Minnesota, attended the scene of a burned-out eighteen-wheeler with a pan of scalloped potatoes and ham. True story, told by her daughter-in-law.
At first Dan and the deputies tried a policy of accepting nothing at the station and directing all supplies over to the Children’s Farm in Stone City. That was where Quinn was. But it seemed you couldn’t tell people they had come to the wrong place—they wouldn’t hear it. This was partly out of dignity and partly because Stone City was a good half hour from Morrisville. So when Dan would say, “The baby is out of our hands,” or Earl Kellogg, Jr., would say, “They got the baby over in Stone City,” the women would leave their offerings on the bench against the wall, or on the floor, and say, “Well, hope he can use this busy box,” or “Well, see that he gets these sleepers worn by our Ted,” and then they would turn and go back out to their El Caminos in the rain. The sheriff and his deputies must have made six or eight trips to the Children’s Farm. There was stuff enough for ten babies, and sometimes the sheriff’s department looked more like a Similac warehouse than an agency of the law.
Claude Robeshaw and his son Albert came in on the ninth or tenth day of rain, but they didn’t have anything for Quinn. Claude’s concern was his son’s share—about seven hundred and fifty dollars—of what it would cost to restore the paint job on the Pinville water tower. Claude Robeshaw was tall, with plowlike features. He was seventy-one years old to Albert’s fifteen. When Dan himself was a teenager he had baled straw for Claude Robeshaw, and he remembered one August Sunday when Claude was driving the tractor and Dan, Willard Schlurholtz, and the Reverend Walt Carr were working the hayrack. The temperature was ninety-seven degrees, and Claude decided that after every round they’d better have a beer so nobody would get dehydrated, and after five rounds young Dan fell off the rack.
“I’ll climb that tower and paint it myself,” said Claude. “That kind of money, I’ll silver-plate the bastard. I’m serious. I’m dead serious. Why, Jesus Christ, some outfit comes down from out of state and they are playing this county like a piano.”
“Claude,” said Dan, “your quarrel really is with the board of supervisors. But as it was told to me, they’ve got to have somebody who is bonded. Now, what is bonded? Well, you go to the state and the state bonds you, and to find out any more about it, I guess you’d have to go to the state. But this is what it costs, apparently, to get somebody who is bonded.”
Claude turned grimly to his son, who was almost as tall, with short brown hair, jean jacket, eyeglasses. “Do you understand what the sheriff is saying?” he said.
“No,” said Albert.
“It’s bullshit, that’s why,” said Claude.
“They went out and got three bids,” said Dan. “I’ll grant you this was not the lowest. There was one bid that was lower, but that was by a company, their crew got drunk over in De Witt and ran their truck into the river, and it was a big production to get it out. Yes, it’s a lot of money. But those words went up, and they have to come down. People are mad in Pinville, Claude. They had a fine water tower, and now you drive into town, you think the place is called Armageddon.”
Albert laughed, and this angered Claude. “So help me God,” he said, “I will knock you through the wall of this station.”
“Then I’d be dead,” said Albert. “That’s like saying, ‘So help me God, I’ll cut your throat.’ Or, ‘So help me God, I’ll poison your food.’“
Claude made room on the bench by moving aside a yellow quilt that had come in that day for Quinn. He sat down, removed a cigar from its glass tube, pared the end away with a jackknife, and lit up. “I believe I had you too late in life,” said Claude. “I already had two daughters and three sons, and maybe I should have stopped right there. I know it’s been one sorry situation after another. Maybe I should tell the sheriff about when you decided to run away and live in a tree.”
“Do,” said Albert. “I want you to.”
So then he didn’t. But it was not a long story, and he had told it so many times, to prove so many different points about Albert’s character, that most anyone around Grafton knew the gist of it. When Albert was five or six years old, he got mad at
Claude and Marietta and decided to move out to the woods behind the Robeshaw farm. He took a can of beans, a can opener, a fork, and The Five Chinese Brothers. Well, he sat down under an evergreen to read, and he wondered if he hadn’t brought the wrong book, because it always gave him a chill to see the picture of the first brother’s huge face as he held in the sea. But he read the whole thing and then he was hungry, and he managed to open the can and begin eating the beans. But when he came upon the little cube of pork in the beans, he didn’t know what it was, and it scared him, and he ran crying for home.
Dan waited for Earl Kellogg to come on shift, and when he did Dan left the office for the day. But it was cold, raining, and getting dark, and this made Dan think that winter was coming, so he decided to go over to the Children’s Farm with the yellow quilt, which had been brought in that day by Marian Hamilton and wouldn’t do anyone any good folded up there on the bench.
The Children’s Farm was a dark brick castle on a hill. It had narrow windows and lightning rods and stone figures that lined the roof, representing the virtues of Hygiene, Obedience, Courtesy, Restraint, and Silence. The structure was built in 1899, and rebuilt after a fire nine years later, and seemed specially designed to remind the children passing through that their circumstances were tragic. There was a farm—seventy acres and two barns, one big, one small, which were slowly falling down—and it used to be, going way back, that the hands and the children would raise their own food and even make their own shoes. Now the fields were leased to other farmers, the kids wore navy tennis shoes from Kresge’s, and the barns had not held animals for twenty-five, thirty years. Still, cows had been there once, and it was raining, so the place smelled like wet cows as Dan stepped from his cruiser, tucked the quilt under his coat, and headed across the gravel to the front door. There was a white Ford Torino in the driveway with the parking lights on and the motor running, and Dan looked in, as was his habit, and sitting behind the steering wheel was the woman, Joan Gower, who had thrown his trowel off the roof of the trailer.
She rolled down the window. A lime paisley scarf covered her hair. “Is something wrong?” she said. “Oh, Sheriff, how are you?”
“I’m fine,” said Dan. “Do work here?”
“I volunteer,” said Joan. “Well, I’m volunteering to read to Quinn. I know the community has really poured its heart out, but it occurred to me that the one thing he probably doesn’t have is someone to read him stories. That’s why I brought these books. See this? Jesus is riding a burro on Palm Sunday. Isn’t that a beautiful illustration? And here he is, making fish for the multitude. Isn’t that the greatest?”
Rain dripped from the visor of Dan’s hat. “I have to tell you something, Joan,” he said. “This is an infant. Bible stories might be a little bit over his head.”
“Well, that’s what they said, but the age doesn’t matter. I saw a story in a magazine about a child whose parents read him the multiplication tables every night before he was born, and now Princeton University is running tests on him. But these people say Quinn doesn’t have time to hear a story. Does that make any sense to you? What is it that he’s supposed to be doing? I don’t see what would occupy a baby’s time to the point where he couldn’t listen to a Bible story. This evades me completely. Plus, somebody has to provide him with a religious instinct—otherwise, when he’s christened it won’t take, and he runs the risk of going to Hell. And I told them this. Well, they have to run it by their supervisor.”
“You talked to them just now?” said Dan.
“Well, no,” said Joan. “It’s been a while, but they said they couldn’t predict when the supervisor would be in. It seemed like they were giving me a song and a dance, but then I thought, Why don’t I wait and see if he shows up. But I suppose it’s getting late now.”
Dan coughed. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “Maybe you ought to go on home and call them tomorrow. Where do you live?”
“I don’t mind waiting,” said Joan. “But I guess you have a point. Maybe I’m a little keyed up about this baby. I don’t know why. It’s been raining so hard. I think I need to see him with my own eyes. I would feel better if I could just see him. I mean, look at this place. It’s like the Munsters’ house.”
“Joan, that baby is fine,” said Dan. “He’s strong, he’s healthy, he’s got more blankets than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“Maybe you could put in a good word for me,” said Joan. “Maybe if you suggested it, they would let me read to him. Tell them my church might do a benefit for him. Which is true, we might.”
“I’ll talk to them,” said Dan, “see what I can do.” He watched Joan Gower drive up to the highway, and then he went into the lobby, which was heavy with the smell of musty furniture. He gave the quilt to Nancy McLaughlin, the night administrator. She had her arm in a cast and explained that she had been knocked down by a rainy gust while trying to get from her car to her house. She took him to see Quinn. They had him on the second floor, which was painted yellow and gray. In a low room with bright lights, Dan’s second cousin, the nurse Leslie Hartke, was giving Quinn a bottle.
“Hi, Dan,” she said. “Want to feed him?”
Dan shook his head. “Just brought another quilt over,” he said.
“This has been a bonanza for us,” said Nancy McLaughlin, rubbing her cast with her hand.
“Oh, come on,” said Leslie Hartke. “Feed the baby.” So Dan washed his hands and sat down, and Leslie gave him the baby, and the baby’s blankets, and the bottle. The baby took the bottle for a moment, looked at Dan with wide eyes, and began to cry.
“I remind him of Hy-Vee,” said Dan.
On his way out, Dan paused with Nancy McLaughlin to watch some boys playing checkers in the common room. The boys wore pajamas and sat at a card table in the corner by the stairs. The common room had high plaster walls, and the only sound was the melancholy click of the checkers.
“King me,” said one of the boys.
The other stared at the board. “Fuck,” he said.
“Checker time’s over,” said Nancy McLaughlin. “Good night now.” After the boys had disappeared up the stairs, Dan asked Nancy about Joan Gower.
“Not a happy woman,” said Nancy. “She read me a verse, what was it, something about being shut up in the hands of my enemies.”
Dan tried all the way home to decide whether Joan Gower was trouble or just overly dedicated to whatever it was she believed in. When you got down to it, Dan did not know what anyone believed in. He had told her he was comfortable with his own beliefs, but that was just to keep her moving. He didn’t have any beliefs to speak of. A world that would deposit a child in a beer carton in the middle of nowhere seemed capable of you-name-it, but Dan did not think that you-name-it qualified as a belief. The trailer was dark in the rain. Dan had left a Folgers can under the drip in the corner of the bedroom, and he emptied the can in the sink and put it back in place.
In order to see the records of the Mixerton Clinic, Dan had to talk to Beth Pickett. She was a spindly older doctor who stamped around with her chin in the air. She had begun her career in 1944, as an intern with Tom Lansford, a famous general practitioner in Chesley. Dr. Pickett had seen Grouse County medicine through its youth and would not let go. She was insufferable, and the public loved her dearly.
Dan waited in Dr. Pickett’s office, where the walls were crowded with homemade images of Dr. Pickett. She had been needlepointed, watercolored, and macraméd, although the last made her look like the trunk of a tree. She had been sketched and caricatured many, many times. Soon the doctor marched into the room and sat down behind the desk.
“We don’t think the baby was born in a hospital,” said Dan. “We thought we’d take a list of the people who came in pregnant, and a list of the people who gave birth in the hospitals, and compare the two lists. It’s a pretty simple idea.”
“Well, it’s not as simple as you think,” said Dr. Pickett, “because when a woman comes into this clinic, nobody sees the records. The
y’re protected by legislation I went to Des Moines and got passed in the summer of 1966. A man named Clay drove me down. He was a big drinker. All the time I was talking to the legislature, he was down at the Hotel Leroi. Drank and drank and never got drunk.”
“All I need is the names,” said Dan. “Maybe I could just look at the names.”
“No,” said Dr. Pickett. “The names are in the records, and the records cannot be seen.”
They went back and forth like this for a while, but however Dan could think to phrase it, Dr. Pickett said no, and finally Dan said he could come back with a warrant if that’s what it took.
Dr. Pickett pretended not to hear. “That’s right,” she said, “you come back anytime.”
“Help me find this woman,” said Dan. “Come on.”
Dr. Pickett brought out some brandy and poured it into jam glasses. “I don’t see what good that would do,” she said, pushing a glass across the desk, steering it around a plaster bust of herself. “When I went to medical school, I lived in Grand Forks, North Dakota, with Aunt Marilyn Beloit. This was many years ago. Every house on her street was a bungalow, and they were all small and nicely taken care of. Aunt Marilyn was a singer who went by the name of Bonnie Boone, and she must have done all right, because she had all her suits tailored in Fargo. Anyway, also living in this neighborhood was a young woman, not married, who had given birth to a child and left it on the doorstep of a family named Price. The Prices lived up the hill, and they didn’t lack for money. Well, this was the way it was done in those days. Babies were left on doorsteps all the time, and it was not unusual to open your door in the morning and find that three or four had been deposited overnight. I’m exaggerating, of course, but it worked very smoothly, as I recall, and you didn’t talk about it, but you didn’t throw up your hands in horror, either. Anyway, one evening I took the bus home, and as I was walking by this woman’s place—her name was Nora, and she rented the back of a house—she asked me to come over and visit after supper. She was older than I was, but we were not that far apart in age, so I said yes. Well, it turned out that Nora was a bohemian. She had a piano and a pregnant cat and a big bottle of red wine, and her bed was a mat in the middle of the living room floor, which I thought was an unusual arrangement. We had two or three glasses of wine, and the next thing we knew that big black and white cat had crawled onto the bed and broke her water. Nora dragged out a suitcase, opened it, and lined it with towels. She put the cat in the suitcase, and that cat began to purr so loudly it sounded like singing. I was spellbound, but with the wine I could not keep my eyes open past three kittens. When I awoke there were five, suckling in the suitcase, and Nora was playing the piano.”
