by Tom Drury
“I’ve never been to Florida,” she said. “I didn’t mean to lie to you. But when you get into your act, sometimes it’s hard to keep straight who you are.”
Dan carried some things down for her. After several trips he dropped a box of dishes at the base of the fire escape. He and Marnie stood on either side of the box, looking to see what was broken.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
They leaned toward one another but stopped just short of kissing.
Dan went back to the office. The shift ended. He turned the office over to Ed Aiken, gathered his signs, and put them in the back of the cruiser.
He drove around the county, pulling over every so often to pound in a sign. He liked to put them near points of interest—corncribs, bridges, trees, things you might glance at anyway. The temperature had fallen steadily all day. The ground was freezing and the wind had come up. The cruiser shuddered on the high ground north of Mixerton.
Dan left a trail of signs in Lunenberg, Romyla, Chesley. He came to the crossroads from which he could either go west toward his house or south into Boris. The sun was nearly down. He had signs left, but wondered if they would last in Boris and Pringmar, which were not Dan Norman towns.
As he sat by the side of the road considering this question, he looked off across a field and saw a windmill, known as Melvin Heileman’s windmill, although Melvin Heileman himself was dead. The windmill no longer pumped water, but the dark blades still turned in the wind.
Dan got out of the cruiser. He crossed the steep ditch and climbed over the barb-wire fence with a sledgehammer and sign saying DAN NORMAN DEMOCRAT. As he walked up toward the windmill, a gust of wind took the sign from his hands. He dropped the sledge and ran, but the sign sailed like a bird over the prairie. It went a long way and finally settled into a marsh, where Dan had to stop chasing it. He stood, out of breath, hands on his knees. Blue stars glittered in the sky, and he thought of his daughter in the cold ground. He spoke her name—Iris, Iris—but heard only the sound of wind.
SEVENTEEN
SIXTEEN THOUSAND people voted in the sheriff’s race—a good turnout. The Republican candidate, Miles Hagen, who had run for sheriff in every election for twenty-eight years, took nine percent of the vote. In his concession speech he argued, as always, that the county tax levy was illegal under Articles I and VI of the United States Constitution.
The remaining votes were closely divided between Dan and the Independent, Johnny White. Dan beat Johnny by three hundred and thirty-seven votes in the machine totals. Johnny called for a recount, which took two days and reduced Dan’s margin by a handful of votes. Still to be considered were the absentee ballots, which as a rule help the incumbent. Then there was a flurry of panic—the absentee ballots could not be found. They turned up eventually, in a shoebox in the recorder’s office. They were counted, Johnny conceded, and Dan was declared the winner of a third term as county sheriff.
Tiny went to a hayride put on by the White family at Walleye Lake. It was a Friday night and cold as hell with the wind coming off the lake. This had been planned as a victory hayride and then changed to a farewell hayride. Walleye Lake always had its share of hayrides. One fall they were tried without hay, but there were many complaints.
The rides were to begin and end at the park across from Town Beach. When Tiny arrived there was already a small crowd, mostly people who relied on Johnny’s father, Jack, in one way or another for financial help. Johnny stood by the bandshell stairs.
“I don’t feel like going up,” he said.
“Skip it, then,” said Tiny.
“You don’t think it’s necessary?”
“If you don’t want to go, why go?”
“Won’t people expect it?”
“Who cares what they expect?” said Tiny. “You don’t owe them anything. I’ll say this, though—the longer you stand here, the more they will expect it.”
“I really thought I was going to win. That’s what bothers me. I thought I would be making another speech entirely. I even have it prepared. Here it is—three pages, single-spaced. I might as well make paper airplanes.”
“That would be funny.”
“Do you think I would have been a good sheriff?”
“Sure.”
“I think I would have been a real good sheriff. And obviously, a lot of people agreed.”
“Speak from the heart,” said Tiny. “That’s what you always told me.”
Jack White walked across the park from the place by the road where his draft horses were hitched up and ready. “Let’s go,” he said.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Johnny.
“Get the hell up there.”
“And say what?”
“Tell them about your back.”
“Oh, Dad. I don’t want to overstate the back business.”
“There’s got to be a reason,” said Jack.
“What about your back?” said Tiny.
“See?” Johnny said. “Tiny didn’t even notice.”
“He hurt it the last week of the election,” said Jack.
At that moment Lenore Wells approached the three men and said, “Can we get started? My feet are very cold. I have a circulation problem I’ve had all my life. My mother used to call me Little Whitefingers, and I don’t know how much longer I can stand here. If Johnny is going to speak, then it seems to me he ought to get up there.”
“He’s having trouble with the stairs on account of his back,” said Jack.
“What about his back?” said Lenore.
“Nothing about it,” said Johnny.
“I don’t know about Johnny’s back, but I can tell you that my feet are turning into blocks of ice.”
“I will introduce him,” said Tiny. He went up the stairs and into the bandshell, through a forest of music stands and fallen leaves. “I remember when Johnny White first told me of his desire to run for sheriff,” Tiny said to the crowd. “To be honest, my response was one of skepticism. I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And he lost. He did lose. But not by that much. And don’t forget, we were trying to replace an incumbent sheriff with someone who had good ideas but, let’s be honest, not a lot of law enforcement experience. This is no reason to hang our heads. Sure, we’d all rather be at a victory celebration, but for every winner there is a loser. So let’s cheer up and give a warm hand on a cold night to John White.”
Tiny stepped back, yielding the stage to Johnny. People clapped but in a hesitant or halfhearted way that underscored the common perception that Johnny had his chance and would never run a serious campaign again. Watching Johnny’s narrow back in a green windbreaker, Tiny was seized by the perverse notion to push him off the edge of the stage.
Johnny told a story about hurting his back while playing with his children. He said the injury was a bit more serious than run-of-the-mill back injuries, and the chiropractor had warned him to go to bed for two weeks, but he had finished the campaign even though his back hurt every morning when he got up and every night when he went to bed. He said that nonetheless the campaign had been the best and most alive time of his life. Johnny thanked them all and said he loved them all.
Then he waved and everyone clapped again and jogged across the grass to where Jack had the draft horses Molly and Polly hitched to the haywagon. People had to wait in line, and wondered aloud why Jack had not brought two or three wagons so they could have their rides faster and get home to their warm houses. But there was only one wagon, and the horses would only go so fast. Tiny curled his fingers in his gloves and shifted from foot to foot. Steam rose from the broad backs of the horses, and through the steam Tiny could see the blue lights of the Lake House tavern up the street. He wished he were in there playing cards and drinking a big glass of brandy. Then he climbed aboard the wagon and sat down among a group of strangely festive people who sang Christmas carols, although Christmas was almost two months away and it was hard to see the connection between the little town of
Bethlehem and Johnny’s all but fraudulent campaign for the office of sheriff. Tiny glared at the happy carolers and lit a cigarette.
“Put that out,” said a stocking-hatted man who had been leading the singing. “This is hay, for God’s sake.”
After the hayride was done, a few people went back to the Jack White farm northeast of Grafton. Tiny tagged along—it was a case of no one saying he couldn’t. He had always wanted to be part of a small group that went somewhere following a larger event. There seemed to be a vague suggestion of sex in that. Tiny had never been in Jack’s house. The layout was odd and not very handy. Appliances didn’t seem situated for human use, and the kitchen, dining room, and living room met in an open space where everyone kept bumping into each other.
Tiny stood in a corner drinking and minding his own business but getting a general feeling of not being wanted. Johnny’s exwife, Lisa, who was at the house with Megan and Stefan, kept scowling at him. Tiny was dressed nicely, but something was definitely bothering the woman. While talking to Johnny, she had pointed across the room at Tiny and then at the door and then made shoving motions with her hands, so it was pretty clear to Tiny what was going on.
Later, he made a margarita and brought it to her as a peace offering. “Have a drink,” he said. “And by the way, that’s a very nice dress you’re wearing.”
“I don’t want a drink.”
“It goes very well with your shoes.”
“What?”
“The dress and the shoes.”
“Who asked you?”
“It’s a spontaneous comment.”
“Johnny and I used to have a restaurant,” Lisa said. “We had a restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio. And there would be people like you hanging around all the time.”
“And they were your friends?”
“Oh, no. Far from it. They wanted us to close our restaurant. They were supposed to do whatever they could to get us out of the food business. They broke our windows. They bent our utensils. They set fire to our dumpster.”
“I wouldn’t break your windows,” said Tiny.
“You might not break my windows. You might leave my windows alone because you get money from my ex-husband’s father. But I heard one of your jobs in the campaign was to destroy Dan Norman’s signs. Don’t deny it. And I let Johnny know in no uncertain terms what I thought of that kind of thing. I asked him how he could ever, ever, ever put my kids in campaign events when at the same time he had hired people to go around destroying personal property like they did to us in Cleveland.”
“And what did he say?”
“Oh, some excuse.”
“A campaign sign is not the same thing as a window,” Tiny said.
“I never should have come back here. I sure never should have let the kids come back. It was all a mistake. Give me that drink after all, you Cleveland son of a bitch.”
Tiny gave her the drink and walked away. Jack White then asked him to come out to the stable. This was a warm and softly lit barn with shining bits and halters. Molly and Polly were blocking the corridor between the two rows of stalls. Their eyes were big as plates, their winter coats a shaggy white. Jack now went around tapping on their shins and cleaning their hooves with a metal pick. The horses breathed placidly.
“Would you please go up and throw down some straw?” said Jack quietly.
Tiny did so. When he came down he said, “I don’t think Lisa cares for me.”
“Ah, she’s nuts,” said Jack. “I wouldn’t worry about her. Being married to Johnny was more than she could handle.”
Tiny opened a jackknife and cut the twine on one of the bales. “Did you want to talk to me?”
“If you have a rock that is part of the pavement, and it keeps the road from wearing away, that rock is providing a use. But once it works loose from the pavement and wedges in a horse’s hoof, it has to be pried out and discarded.”
“The campaign is over,” said Tiny.
“Right.”
“Johnny said that no matter what happened in the campaign, I would still have a job in the Room.”
“‘Johnny said,’” said Jack. “If Johnny jumped off the Sears Tower, I suppose you would be the next in line.”
“I have things I want to do.”
“We all have things. What we’re looking for now is people with training.”
“I could get training.”
“I mean people with training now, who can hit the ground running with training.”
“What kind of training?”
“The kind they have in college.”
“Johnny doesn’t have training.”
“Yes he does.”
“Not from college.”
“Johnny has some college.”
Tiny distributed straw in the horses’ stalls. “You owe me a check,” he said.
“You didn’t get that yet? Well, don’t worry. Thanks for helping me with the bales. I think it’s time for you to go home.”
“I’m thinking.”
“There’s nothing to think about. It’s not a situation that requires thought. I’m going in the house. You have to leave.”
“Tell me something,” Tiny said. “You like horses. Given the size of a draft horse, why don’t they just stomp everything?”
“Man controls the oats.”
“If I got training, could I get back in the Room?”
“If you got training, you would have the same chance as anyone else who had also got training.”
“So fuck off is really what you’re saying.”
Jack put Molly in her stall and closed the door. “Yeah.”
Tiny shook Jack’s hand. Then he went out to the Parisienne and drove home. He was living these days with Joan Gower in a basement apartment at the Little Church of the Redeemer. At first Tiny and Joan had kept this arrangement a secret from Father Christiansen, but then Tiny climbed up on the roof of the church and patched the leak, and after that Father Christiansen agreed to look the other way. It’s true that the patch would not last. In Tiny’s uncertain life, one of the things he knew for sure was that the only true way to fix a roof is to reshingle the whole thing. There were already drips forming over the choir sometimes when it rained. But Tiny did not have much expectation of being around when the thing gave way for good.
It was late when Tiny got home, and not only was Joan awake but she was hard at work stripping the green paint from a chair. After reading an article on adoption, she had decided to adopt a child. Tiny was not sure of the details; if he understood right, a person from the state would be coming at some point to interview Joan about her intentions. But this visit had been postponed several times, and Joan seemed to be in a perpetual state of fixing up the apartment for this mythical state person who never arrived. She was scouring the chair with steel wool in the kitchen. A garbage can was in the center of the floor, filled with paint-sodden pads of steel wool. The smell of paint stripper was strong in the apartment. Tiny opened the refrigerator and took out a can of Old Milwaukee and sat down. “They have kicked me out of the Room,” he said.
“What will you do?” said Joan.
“I don’t know.”
“In the past you would turn to stealing.”
“Something to fall back on.”
“Au contraire. I mean, just the opposite. You used to, but I don’t think you will anymore.”
“You go right on believing that.”
“You seemed to be doing so well.”
“They want somebody with training.”
“You’ve been to the college of hard knocks.”
“I tell you what, I think I’m still enrolled in that fucker,” said Tiny. “I wonder if we should crack a window while you’re doing this.”
“Please watch your language.”
“You may not be able to smell the paint stripper, but when you come in from outside it’s very strong.”
“I did have the door open awhile but it was too cold. I was going to make some supper but I got started doin
g this, and you know what? I’m not the least bit hungry.”
“You’re high as a bird. That’s why.”
Joan laughed and lifted a blond curl from her forehead. “I might be a little tuney.”
“‘Tuney’? What does that mean?”
“You know. Feeling it.”
“You made that up.”
“You never heard ‘tuney’ before? Where did you come from, the Outer Limits?”
Tiny drank some beer. “I hate to be the one to say this, Joan, but those adoption people are going to take one look around the church and they’re going to say, ‘This woman is in a cult.’ “
She scrubbed the arm of the chair with steel wool. “You can’t see the future.”
“I mean, you are in a cult.”
“Why are we tax exempt? If we’re a cult, as you say we are. Hmm? Answer me that.”
“I’m not an accountant. I don’t know why you’re tax exempt. I don’t know that you are tax exempt. I don’t have the training to know such things.”
“This chair is going to look excellent.”
“Oh, yeah, Joan,” said Tiny. “They’re going to love that chair so much they’ll put a little kid right in it.”
Joan looked under the sink until she found her white Bible. “Behold ye among the heathen,” she read, “and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.”
Tiny took the Bible from Joan.
“Hey,” she said. “That’s Habakkuk.”
“You use this thing as a crutch,” he said. “Any point of view can be found in here somewhere. Listen: ‘The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.’”
“That’s beautiful,” said Joan.
“But what does it prove?” said Tiny.
“It doesn’t have anything to prove. It’s the word of God.”
“And you are drunk on paint stripper.”
“Oh no, it’s beautiful, Tiny. Please read it again.”
Tiny took Jack White’s remarks about training to heart. He went to the community college outside Stone City to sign up for a night course on drugs and how they work. The campus had been built in the sixties, under the egalitarian architectural theory that no building should be any better than any other building. Tiny had to wait in line behind two young women—a tall one in embroidered denim and another one with straight black hair—who were looking at the course catalogue.
