Buried Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “Baby, have Charley drop you off at the store. I got a job for you right away.”

  Tim had left Jane’s home in Evanston immediately after the sale and was already back at his store in Kankakee.

  It took Jane a moment to switch gears from Nellie’s bossiness to Tim’s.

  “I can’t, Tim. We’re setting up camp at Fuzzy’s. I told you—” Jane said, but was interrupted.

  “Honey, let Charley and Nick do it. I didn’t get a chance to let you in on the big deal at your place. I need you. And, besides, you don’t know a tent pole from a ski pole.”

  It was true. Jane was a dreadful camper. She could pack a vintage hamper with a great lunch, fill it with Bakelite picnic ware, and fill an old plaid picnic thermos with homemade lemonade, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of the pop-up tent. It never popped up for Jane, it turned inside out as quickly as an umbrella on a windy day. She could accessorize the campsite with the best of them, make it look all jolly and gingham and photogenic, but the construction of it was not her forte.

  “I promised Charley and Nick that I’d help them—” Jane began, but was cut off quickly, too quickly, by Charley and Nick.

  “No, honey, we’ll drop you at Tim’s, no problem,” Charley was saying at the same time Nick said, “Dad and I will take care of the campsite, Mom.”

  How desperate were they to keep her from standing proudly on uneven rocky ground and declaring it the best place for a tent? Jane turned to look Nick in the eye.

  “Please,” he said, “Dad and I like to do it. Male bonding and all.”

  Nick was getting smarter every day. How would she ever keep up?

  * * *

  THE WORLD’S LARGEST GARAGE SALE

  Hosted by

  KANKAKEE, ILLINOIS

  FORMERLY THE LEAST LIVABLE CITY IN

  NORTH AMERICA,

  NOW THE HOME OF THE TWIN GAZEBOS

  September 14–16 and 21–23 throughout the town of Kankakee

  Discover the treasure next door!

  Questions? Tim Lowry, T & T Sales

  “Ta da,” said Tim, holding the poster up as Jane came in the front door of his flower shop.

  “What gazebos?” Jane asked.

  “The ones Letterman gave the town,” said Tim. “But that’s not the important part of the poster, dear.” “David Letterman gave you gazebos?”

  “Remember when Kankakee was named the least livable city?” Tim asked, not looking up from the poster he had placed on the counter and was admiring. “Letterman made it into a bit and talked to the mayor and presented the town with gazebos, which he guaranteed would make the town a better—”

  “No,” Jane said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make any difference, I—”

  “What was the criteria for this? Who decided?” Jane asked.

  Tim sighed. Jane wasn’t going to listen to the plan for turning the town around until she heard about the latest detour on the road to Kankakee’s recovery in detail. He told her about the organization that rated cities on livability.

  “They assign points based on unemployment rate, cost of living, cultural opportunities … I don’t know, a bunch of quality-of-life questions,” said Tim. “Seems like Kankakee came up a few points short.”

  “Did they go sit by the river and watch the sun on the water?” asked Jane.

  “Uh-oh,” said Tim, “ladies and gentlemen, the prodigal daughter is now working up a head of steam.”

  “Did they feed the ducks at Bird Park? Get a peanut buster parfait at Dairy Queen or a sauce bun at the Root Beer Stand?”

  Jane paced the length of Tim’s store.

  “Did they go collect buckeyes at Cobb Park? Did they walk the vita-course and do chin-ups in full view of St. Martin’s? Go to the gladiolus festival in Momence? Try to win a pie at the rhubarb festival at the Civic Auditorium?”

  “Janie, dear, your outrage is endearing, but you know the sad state of affairs here. Business ain’t so great, pal, and there’s a lot of debate over what might improve the town. A lot of folks believed a new airport was the answer, but …,” Tim said.

  “New airport? To solve the overcrowding at O’Hare?” asked Jane.

  “So you do read a paper now and then?” said Tim. “Kankakee and Peotone were all over the place being floated as airport sites.”

  “How do you feel about that?” asked Jane.

  “I’m on the fence,” said Tim, shoving a carved walnut chair away from a display and toward Jane. “Sit down, for god’s sake, you’re making me dizzy.” He poured coffee from a thermal carafe for Jane and himself and spoke deliberately and more seriously than Jane was used to.

  “There is a part of me that wants to shake everyone in town by the shoulders and tell them to accept the gift of business and jobs and tax revenue and all the rest. Would there be a downside? Absolutely, but what’s the upside to unemployment and boarded-up stores downtown? I hate that. Remember Saturdays when we were kids? You’d go downtown, and it was classy and busy and Kankakee people spent their money in Kankakee. Three movie theaters. A bookstore. Two candy stores. Remember the caramel apples at Carolyn’s next to the Paramount? There was stuff to buy and places to go and a lot of pride,” Tim said, sighing. “I know it’s the same in all the midsized industrial towns—factories leave for cheaper labor and the slide down begins—I know the drill. But I can’t help but think that if people had just held on, shopped local, tried harder to keep downtown alive … oh hell, I don’t know …”Tim let himself drift off, then recovered. “I’m sounding like you with your river watching and buckeye picking. Maybe we’re nostalgic for stuff that was never really as wonderful as we think we remember. Anyway, maybe a dose of prosperity might bring something back.”

  “So why the fence? Why not an unequivocal yes to the airport? Or whatever else is offered?” asked Jane.

  “I’m realistic enough to know that what I’m longing for is some kind of 1950s idea of what small-town life was, and getting the airport or any other big business to move in here would not enable us to time travel,” said Tim. “We might as easily become some crappy Chicago suburb, dirtier and with a bunch of cheap-ass housing: sans charm, sans movie theaters, and sans candy stores. Sans everything, to paraphrase Shakespeare.”

  “Hell of a stretch to call that a paraphrase, Timmy boy,” said Jane, “but I see what you mean.”

  “Hence, my plan,” said Tim, once again waving his poster. She read the poster again, trying not to fixate on the gazebo reference, and held up her hands. “I give. What’s the plan?”

  Tim picked up a thick, paperback book and held it out to her. “Herein,” he said, “lies the key.”

  “You have got to stop trying to paraphrase W.S. You’re knee-deep in hences and hereins now,” said Jane, taking the book from him. “The Guinness Book of World Records?”

  “Kankakee is going to make it in as the home of the largest garage sale. I’m going for 100 percent participation,” he said.

  Tim explained that he had almost every family within the city limits of Kankakee and plenty in the adjoining communities of Bradley and Bourbonnais on board. He had asked that all households put out at least one tableful of stuff, and people were really getting excited about it. Block parties were being planned, and local farmers were planning a giant market in the downtown area.

  “If everyone is selling,” Jane began, “who will …”

  “Buy?” asked Tim. “We’re advertising in every local paper from Chicago to here and south of us, too. Plus, you know how it is. People will watch each other’s place and take turns checking out other blocks. Some neighborhoods are trying to specialize—one subdivision is calling itself the toy department and doing tons of kids’ stuff, there’s a book and vinyl record block, oh, and the public library is going to have a sale of books on one of the weekends. Some schools are even selling old desks and chairs …”

  “St. Pat’s?” Jane asked. “I would love to have an old teacher’s desk a
nd chair. Oh, and maybe some bookcases,” Jane said, feeling the want creeping up from her toes, taking over her whole body. “Is the library selling anything besides books? I want an old wooden card catalogue from the Kankakee library so badly I …”

  Jane stopped herself. She was trying to want less. Jane Wheel was a detective now, a partner of Bruce Oh, as well as a picker for dealers Tim Lowry, Claire Oh, and her old friend Miriam in Ohio. Jane Wheel was a professional. She didn’t have business cards yet, but it was only a matter of remembering to go down to the copy shop and have them made up. JANE WHEEL/PPI/PICKER and PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. She was supposed to be coming to grips with her undisciplined style of not only buying everything she knew was valuable, but also buying everything she knew was being neglected by all the other pickers. The chipped pottery, the cracked plates, the foxed books, the flea-bitten crystal, the boxes of mildewed photos were what Claire and Tim were trying to cull from her houseful of stuff. That was what the garage sale was supposed to do. And despite the fact that Claire and Tim declared it an unqualified $1,487 success before the day was over, Jane knew it had only been a drop in the vintage leather fire bucket. She hadn’t the heart to tell Claire that there was still a whole storeroom full of boxes bursting at the seams in her basement that she had conveniently forgotten to mention.

  Jane snapped out of her card catalogue–induced reverie. “What about parking? Won’t the whole town turn into a parking lot?” she asked.

  Tim handed her another brochure. This one had a Kankakee street map with a dozen or more red stars printed on street corners. “Those are the shuttle bus stops. The buses are already hired from an Indiana company. They’ll run all weekend; people will buy an all-day pass. They’ll pick up visitors at all the parking lots—churches, schools, motels on the outskirts of town—and do a continuous loop. Locals can just pick up a bus on a corner near where they live and visit every neighborhood in town,” Tim said. “You’ll see, Janie, people will be talking to each other and getting to know each other and the whole town will be better for it.”

  Jane saw the glow in his eyes.

  “I’ve never seen you so excited … this is bigger than the MacFlea for you, isn’t it?” she asked, referring to the fund-raiser Tim had invented for their old high school Bishop MacNamara.

  Da da da, da da da, da da da da da. The William Tell Overture played, and Jane was quick to recognize the sound this time. Nick hadn’t had a chance to change her signal since the last time it rang. It was disappointing. She realized that it was a bit ordinary to actually know it was her own. This call had to be Nick and Charley telling her the tent was up, the cabin was swept, and it was safe for her to make an appearance. She pushed the talk button without even glancing at the screen.

  “Charley,” she said, at the same time she heard her other most frequent caller growl a yeah? into the phone.

  “Hi, Mom,” Jane said. Couldn’t Nellie ever begin a conversation with hello or even an acknowledgment that she was the one calling? It would be up to Jane to determine what the call was about using a kind of give-and-take, no, make that a take-and-take dialogue that would drive most adults to hair pulling and gnashing of teeth.

  “Yeah?” Nellie repeated.

  “Your dime, Mom,” said Jane.

  “A damn cellular phone costs a hell of a lot more than a dime a call. I don’t know how you can afford something like that,” Nellie said.

  “It’s tough, especially when people phone during the day and use up a lot of minutes not getting to the point of the call,” said Jane.

  “Yeah?” said Nellie. “Yeah,” said Jane.

  Jane could hear her mother breathing, and then she heard her dad ask in the background if Jane liked the cabin.

  “Tell Dad I haven’t seen it yet. The boys are setting up camp, and I’m at Tim’s. He’s driving me …”

  “What the hell you want to be over there at that Tim’s for?” asked Nellie. “You’re going to be late for your own cookout, for god’s sake.”

  “What cookout?”

  “Fuzzy’s roasting a pig and invited the whole town, people who drove out to see the junk he dug up. He said he’s invited scientists and newspaper reporters. That means Charley and the kid who delivers the Daily Journal. Lot of work for a bunch of freeloaders if you ask me.”

  “Are you and Dad going?” Jane asked.

  “I made potato salad, for god’s sake.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Lula’s going to make too much damn Jell-O and all the damn politicians are going to show up and yap about the airport or a new factory or some damned idea to make money and I …”

  Jane heard Don interrupt Nellie, telling her to save it for later, that cell phone calls cost money.

  “Hell’s bells, I know that,” said Nellie. “That’s what I’m always calling her about. I’m the one who tells her not to use the damn thing so much.”

  Jane held out the phone to Tim who did a flawless static sound, and Jane said haltingly into the phone over the sound effects that the connection was breaking up. “See you….” Jane pushed the END button decisively.

  “Teach me how to do that,” Jane said.

  “Got to be born with it,” Tim said, shaking his head. “What was Nellie’s gripe?”

  Jane shrugged. What was Nellie’s gripe most days?

  For a man who had recently passed out cold, from stress or pressure or the heat or Nellie’s scrutiny, Fuzzy was proving an able party giver, picnic master, and pig roaster extraordinaire.

  Dressed in denim overalls and a plaid shirt, the required John Deere cap, and steel-toed work boots, Fuzzy presided over the sizzling pig like the farmer king. He used a long-handled brush both for basting and pointing out to the carloads of arriving friends and neighbors the various locations around the farm, shaking his head and laughing at the idiocy of somebody not even owning the dirt they dug in. Jane watched him, all friendly handshakes one minute, then, in a lull in the arrivals, she saw him stare out into the cornfields, stock-still, his weathered face all cracked into puzzle pieces. Why me? he seemed to be asking. Why is this happening to me?

  Jane had not been out to the farm in years and had forgotten what a storybook spot the Neilson place really was. The white clapboard farmhouse was set back from the road, a long drive weaving between giant oaks leading to it, and a barn that Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney could have tap-danced in for two hours and indeed saved the school. Or the show. Or the college. Or whatever it was they saved in those old musicals when putting on a play in Dad’s barn was all it took.

  “How about we put on a show and save the town?” asked Jane, staring at the weathered wood, thinking about how the scenery would fly down from the hayloft.

  “That is so twentieth century,” said Tim, waving at a knot of people surrounding the fire pit back behind the house. “If Judy were alive and Mickey could still tap, they’d be having a city-wide garage sale.”

  Jane spotted the cabin about half a city block behind the barn. Nick and Charley had parked the car next to it, and they had set up the tent twenty feet from the porch. Jane walked toward them, marveling at how much Nick looked like Charley. They were both watching her approach, hands on their hips, tossing the hair out of their eyes. Just like that, Jane had switched movie fantasy genres and, instead of a musical playing in her head, she was watching one of those epic frontier movies. Gary Cooper or James Stewart, one man—and boy—taming the Midwest, one farm at a time.

  The movie stopped when Jane saw the taped-off area on the other side of the cabin. A chill ran over her, a wave of ice when she saw the yellow tape. Crime scene. She hadn’t found another body yet, had she? She’d just arrived. Surely she’d remember a murder.

  “It’s the site, honey,” said Charley, coming over to her. “It’s where they found the bones.”

  Jane nodded, but the warm relief that should have replaced the ice bath did not come. She wasn’t sure she wanted to camp out next to this taped-off area that was a de
ad ringer for an open grave. She tried to console herself by reflecting positively on the fact that none of them were sleepwalkers.

  “How’s the cabin?” she asked.

  “Great, Mom,” said Nick, “you’re going to love it. The furniture looks like it was built from the same logs as the cabin and there’re a lot of cool hooks for the pots and pans and clothes even and built-in shelves. It’s kind of like a camper or something, except, you know, it doesn’t move.”

  Jane stepped over the threshold. The light was still decent because of the high windows that lined the perimeter; but with no electricity, Jane could already feel how dark it would be in a few hours when the sun had disappeared. The back door stood open and Jane saw the outhouse. Oops. Why hadn’t the if and where of working plumbing crossed her mind until now?

  When Jane and Charley had taken Nick on a driving vacation to the South, they had stopped in Tupelo, Mississippi, to visit the birthplace of Elvis. Who could resist? The Birthplace was touted in every tourist brochure like the must-see spot of hallowed ground where you might find a splinter of the true cross, or at least a Bakelite guitar pick. The guide there explained that Elvis’s home was called a shotgun cabin because you could fire through the open front door and the shot would fly right out the open back door. Jane followed that trajectory now as she walked through the one-room living space of the cabin and turned back to look at it from the back door.

  A wood-burning stove defined a kitchen area on her right, and two large handmade beds with a low bookshelf between them designated sleeping. A large, square table sat just off center in the room, big log chairs pulled around it. A shelf had been cleverly built under the table, and a few old board games were stacked on it.