The Burgenton Files

by C. Ruth Daly

  “What are they waiting for?” Glynda whispered while we stood watching from our remote spot a hundred yards away.

  I was as baffled as Glynda and wondered why the men in suits were watching Ned Hollis and not handcuffing him for murder. “Don’t know. Maybe they are friends of his and not FBI.”

  LBJ looked at me and spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “If they were friends, they would be waving to him and not standing and watching his every move.” She sighed.

  After awhile the crowd of people who had gathered around the Hollis wagon began to disperse and that just left the two men in suits and a few campaign volunteers. We watched as Ned Hollis dropped the wide smile and resumed his regular disdainful face. He looked around and gazed at the crowd and suddenly diverted his attention downward to see the two men in suits walking toward the wooden steps of the wagon’s platform. Ned Hollis froze in motion. His back was turned to us and we could see the two suits meet him on top of the hay wagon. The men didn’t appear cordial, and flashed what appeared to be wallets or badges at Ned Hollis. I looked around to see a few townspeople notice the verbal exchange on the platform between Hollis and the two suits. The businessmen who volunteered for Hollis stepped back as the two men ushered Hollis down the stairs and into his campaign headquarters, closed the door behind them and signaled politely for the volunteers to remain outside.

  Glynda, LBJ, and I looked at each other, our eyes wide with excitement and fear. I asked, “Do you think we should go over there and see if we can look inside?” I was anxious to find out just exactly who the men were and what they wanted although I had a suspicion. My question was answered when Gil and Irish came walking by. “Gil!” I waved my arms back and forth as I yelled through the noise of the crowd. “Gil! Irish!” The two of them strode over hand-in-hand with Gil clutching Irish’s hand against his side.

  “What’s going on, Donna?” He smiled at me, which was always a source of confusion. It made me wonder if Gil was being friendly or devious, but I was going to have to fully trust him if he was going to be a part of our family.

  “Gil, I need to tell you something.” Irish stared at me. She looked neglected, and remembering her delicate state, I made a point to bring her into the conversation. “Oh, hi Irish,” then turning back to Gil. “There were these two men in suits and they came to Ned Hollis’s house and they knocked on Grandma Becker’s door and we ducked. We didn’t want to answer the door and we didn’t so they left and now they’re with Ned Hollis in his campaign headquarters. They had badges, Gil—or at least it looked like they had badges.” Glynda and LBJ nodded in agreement. We couldn’t tell for sure, but who...who do you think they are and what do they want with Hollis?”

  “Slow down. What? What are you saying?” Gil looked irritated. I never knew if he was usually irritated or if he was just irritated with me. “Back up and tell me everything that’s happened.” Gil said as he let go of Irish’s hand and took my upper arm, directing me to the alley by the shoe hospital. LBJ, Glynda and Irish followed.

  The five of us clustered in the alley by a dumpster and between LBJ, Glynda and me we were able to lay out the whole story to Gil and Irish. Gil just stood there when we finished with his hands on his hips. I could tell he was thinking hard. “This is good,” he said. “This is good. You guys don’t say anything to anyone else about what you saw or what you told me, okay?”

  The three of us nodded in agreement and then Glynda asked about her grandma. “What about Grandma? They did knock on her door. I have to tell her if someone comes to her house ... I could get in trouble.”

  Gil was hesitant for a moment. “All right. But just tell her two men came to the door. We just need to see what comes of this.”

  We nodded again and left to partake in the rest of the festivities until the afternoon when we would head to City Park to see the plays and more importantly, listen to the campaign speech of Ned Hollis.

  Hollis was nervous yet tried to mask his fear with grins as he stood center stage at City Park. His hands gripped the sides of the podium as he gave his speech for a newer and better Burgenton. There were the frequent references to his roots and how his mother was born in Gardenville. He smiled at the crowd and reminded them of his Burgenton kin. He was one of us. And he would work for us. The crowd appeared to be drawn to this charismatic man, who, despite his anxious disposition, lured them toward his beliefs.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The sun beat heavily on my back as I leaned over the side of the corn detasseling machine and remembered the Fourth of July speech. Thelma drove quickly down the rows of corn and my hands had to move with mechanical deliberation as I pulled the tassels off the corn stalks. She had returned to her former nasty disposition. I honestly did not think she even remembered a week earlier on the Fourth of July when Glynda, LBJ, and I came to her aid. Now I could only glance down the corn row to see how far it was to the end where we would turn around again and head back in the other direction. Occasionally I’d look up to see Glynda on another machine with the nice foreman who filled their water jug with ice water. Then I’d look up at Thelma Carson, my foreman, who called me right after the Fourth to announce that I was one of the lucky ones to be on her crew.

  There wasn’t much to do on the machine’s platform besides pull tassels off the stalks and wait for lunch, then afterwards, evening, when I could go home. Thelma would not allow us to talk. We worked as if we were a monastic order striving for grace. The empty space in the day only allowed my mind to run free and think about the peculiar woman hovering over my head. The drunken woman we helped out of the Opera House, and whose name was scribbled on that heart on the stage’s back wall? If only we had taken the time to look. Why was Thelma sobbing that day, and why’d she seem to have it out for me even though I’d never really done anything mean to her? Now the city had really locked up the Opera House and placed a sign on the door: “No Trespassing: Enforced by the City of Burgenton Police.” I wondered what would happen to Ned Hollis. Would he become mayor of Burgenton, or would those guys from the FBI haul him away? Were they really from the FBI? Too many thoughts ran through my head, and then the one close to home: the wedding of Irish and Gil. And Stewart Rolf and I were going to be an uncle and aunt to the same baby! I pulled harder at the tassels and threw them to the ground.

  I had glanced again at Glynda who looked relaxed as she leaned against the basket of the machine while it slowly turned to make its way back down the field toward us. Glynda free from her brothers for awhile.

  The detasseling season was short, and we finished our work within the next month. Before we knew it, we were back in school, our faces brown and freckled from the sun and our savings full of money for a month of hard work.

  I once again found myself in Mr. Robert’s science class. He had moved on with us to eighth grade and this time we were across the hall from the seventh grade class and in the long room with the black lab tables. The windows were open to the east and the morning sun poured in bringing a warm breeze along with it.

  Funny how I have Mr. Roberts for first period again, I thought, as I glanced around the room to see who was in my class, because most likely I would be sharing most of my classes with them. Mr. Roberts talked about the course for the year and gave us a synopsis of what we were to expect and how he would prepare us for high school. There was the distribution of the list for class supplies and expectations for the year. I yawned and stretched my arms before me, noting my brown skin and blonde arm hair.

  “Funny how my hair turns red in the sun and my arm hairs yellow ...” My thoughts returned to my last month of summer and Thelma Carson at the helm. Thelma never sat with us during lunch like Glynda’s foreman. Lunch became one big party as all of us girls sat underneath the trees at the farms where we were working. Glynda’s foreman came over and talked to us while Thelma sat and watched ... Mrs. Randall and Grandma Becker had said she was a loner in high school ... Who’s her friends in Burgenton, anyway? Thelma still lived in the old brick house out
in the country where she had spent all of her life. Her mother had died years ago and left the house to Thelma. Of course, Thelma was driving the bus today... She was her usual ill-tempered self... I can’t believe Evan was back on that bus. He seems better this year, though. I looked around the room.

  “Miss McNally!” Mr. Robert’s voice awakened me from my slumberous thoughts of summer. “Miss McNally, summer is over and we’re back at school.” He gave me a slight smile as if he could read my mind.

  I pinched the skin on my arm and kept it that way until the end of the period. It was my painful reminder that school had once again begun and the drowsy days of summer had ended.

  FALL

  TWENTY-THREE

  Here it was the end of September and we already had a huge report due for English class. Glynda and I both had Mrs. Weaver but were in separate classes so we agreed to choose the same project and share the workload for the Youth in Asia report. LBJ had Mr. Bennington for English and was writing a report on famous film stars of the 1930s and 1940s. She chose Rita Hayworth, while Glynda and I both chose to do what we thought was the report on Youth in Asia. The thought of examining the life of Chinese kids our own age sounded appealing until Mrs. Weaver commended me in class on choosing such a controversial topic such as Youth in Asia. I sat at my desk and smiled and wondered if the controversy was because of the fact that China was a communist country. Then she wrote E U T H A N A S I A in huge letters across the board.

  “U than asia!” Mrs. Weaver exclaimed and she turned in my direction and smiled. “Euthanasia! Such a deep topic ... and isn’t it something we may all have to deal with at some point in our lives? The right to die and for one to die with dignity!” Mrs. Weaver turned her head in my direction again. “Donna what made you select this topic out of all the rest?”

  I wanted my own E U T H A N A S I A at the moment. I stammered, “Um, uh. I like animals.” It was all I could come up with as I realized I would be studying about the right to end a person’s life for the next month-and-a-half.

  Mrs. Weaver scrunched up her forehead at me. “Donna, this is not just about animals. You do realize we are talking about the human life?”

  “Oh sure I do. Um, uh, I just think animals should be ... um—in the report too.” I smiled weakly.

  Mrs. Weaver clasped her hands together and muttered, “But of course,” Then moved on in adulation to the next unsuspecting student. “And Mr. Martinez, you chose Small Pox. Did you think they were a baseball team like the White Sox?” She let loose a deep chuckle.

  I looked over at Randy Martinez to see he had the same look of surprise on his face that I just had.

  “Oh, Mr. Martinez!” Mrs. Weaver chuckled again. “You will enjoy writing about the disease which blanketed our early American settlers!”

  And that was it. Glynda made the same mistake and there we were on Tuesday afternoon, sitting in Rita Brennan’s old apartment, looking through literature I had picked up at church on euthanasia and the right to die.

  I threw a brochure to the side and looked over at Glynda, deeply studying another pamphlet. “Glynda, I don’t think this is the right stuff for our report. All of these brochures give a single opinion. Mrs. Weaver isn’t going to want just this one view.”

  “I wish we had Mr. Bennington and we were writing about something more exciting.” Glynda sighed.

  And when she sighed, a car door slammed. Then another door slammed and the two of us jumped to the window to catch a view of Ned Hollis’s house. They were here again. The two men in suits and another man was with them this time. Glynda and I crouched to the floor and peered above the windowsill to see them ring the doorbell, knock, and wait for a minute before they rang the bell again.

  We sat and watched the men at the door. I couldn’t help but notice Ned Hollis was directly across from us, peering through the drapes of a second story room. He was frozen in place staring at the men who were now moving around to the side of the house.

  “Do you think they’ll break his door down?” Glynda asked.

  I shook my head. “Dunno. I think they need a search warrant. Wait, Glynda, they’re coming over here.”

  And two of the suited men crossed the street toward Grandma Becker’s house. We heard the knock on the door and Grandma Becker’s welcoming footsteps clomping across the floor. There was a faint, “Hello, can I help you?” Then from Grandma Becker silence as the men spoke. And Mrs. Becker spoke again, “I think it would be all right, I’ll call them down.”

  Glynda and I looked at each other. A sense of relief came over me, accompanied by a jolting fear of the maniacal Ned Hollis.

  “Girls! I need for you to come down here for awhile.” Grandma Becker yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

  I whispered. “What should we do?”

  Glynda shrugged. “We have to go down because Grandma knows we’re up here.”

  So we trotted downstairs to meet the men in suits who did not have foreboding expressions on their faces, but open ones. The taller one removed his dark glasses to reveal deep brown eyes, which smiled at the corners.

  “Glynda, Donna ... these men here are from the Indiana Bureau of Investigation.” Grandma Becker nodded at us to affirm that it was okay to go ahead and talk.

  I waved my hand at them and tried to smile while Glynda said, “We’re just working on dying upstairs, that’s all.”

  The men looked at us and the smiles disappeared from their faces until Grandma Becker explained we were doing an assignment for school on euthanasia. With a motion of her arm, she invited the men into the kitchen where they stayed for the next half-hour.

  “Mrs. Becker, how long have you lived here?” the shorter one asked.

  “Why close to forty years now.”

  “Do you girls live here, too?”

  I answered, “No. I live around the block and Glynda’s my friend.”

  “Glynda, do you live here?”

  Mrs. Becker spoke for Glynda and told the men Glynda was her only granddaughter and she spent a lot of time at her house.

  “So you’ve lived here for quite some time. Were you here when your neighbor across the street moved in?”

  “Why yes I was.” Mrs. Becker confirmed.

  “Anything you’ve noticed about him?”

  The three of us looked at each other.

  Mrs. Becker answered. “I don’t know for sure.”

  “What about you girls? Did any of you ever see anything strange going on over at the Hollis house? Maybe on New Year’s Eve or any other time?”

  Glynda and I looked at each other. “Yes.” I answered. Hoping they would not require more of me. My fingers were crossed under the table to ward off any bad luck that honesty might befall upon me.

  The shorter agent gave me a nod, which singled me to proceed.

  “I saw and heard some things on New Year’s Eve. All of us did ...” And I described the events of the night including all that happened after LBJ and Glynda went to sleep.

  Mrs. Becker gave me a sharp look after I was done talking. “You girls weren’t suppose to leave the house.” She said as she raised her left eyebrow at me.

  “So you heard a car door slam and then the engine start?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Reynolds slept in the car? Did you see anyone else at the house that night?”

  Thelma’s hardened face behind the wheel of the detasseling machine popped into my head. Thelma who had made little kids cry on the bus and who had humiliated older kids. “...Thelma. Thelma Carson.” I said. And the conversation ended. The men shook our hands and left a business card with Grandma Becker.

  “Thank you girls,” they said as they walked out the door and headed back to the sedan where they met the third suit, who apparently had been questioning other neighbors.

  Exhausted from our ordeal and fearing what was to come, I gathered my things and headed home. I came through the front door to see Irish sitting at the dining room table. She was showing now and her extended belly p
ushed her farther away from the table. A bridal magazine was open before her and I could tell by Irish’s face that she knew she would never be like the brides in the magazines with their barren bellies and cheeks glowing with virginity.

  I wanted to talk to someone and knew the only confidant I had now was Gil Rolf. “Irish? Is Gil coming over tonight?” He was over every night these days.

  “He said he’d be over in about twenty minutes.” Irish didn’t look up from the magazine.

  I stepped to the front porch to wait for him, so I could catch him before Irish got a hold of him.

  Like clockwork, Gil arrived in twenty minutes pulling up in his pickup and jumping out of the cab.

  “How’s it going Donna?”

  This time I was the one to grab Gil by the arm and spill my story about the state detectives at Grandma Becker’s house.