Buried Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

HOMETOWN, USA

  Joseph Dempsey

  1-555-1DEJAVU

  remember?@pcu.com

  “Satisfied?” Dempsey asked, holding up his shot glass for a refill.

  Don, Nellie, Jane, and Tim all studied and passed the cards back and forth. Nellie turned hers over a few times before throwing it back on the bar.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “What is the most universally loved feature of the major theme parks?” asked Dempsey.

  “Where do families gather and meet, where do the ideas of wholesome fun get planted in the brain?” asked Hoover, taking a large gulp of tomato juice and throwing back two aspirin.

  Don, Nellie, Jane, and Tim stared at the two men.

  “Disneyland,” Dempsey practically shouted. “Haven’t you ever heard of Disneyland?”

  The four listeners nodded.

  “What do you picture when you think of it?”

  “Mickey Mouse?” said Don.

  “Those spinning teacups?” asked Jane. “Matterhorn,” said Tim.

  “Goofy,” said Nellie, walking away, making it clear she was commenting on the conversation, not referring to a beloved animated character.

  “No!” shouted Dempsey. “Main Street. You think of Main Street. White-washed buildings and picket fences. Sunshine and blue skies. No litter. Small-town values and Moms and Dads holding hands with kids in pigtails and baseball caps.”

  “Why do I have the feeling he’s going to jump on the table and start singing, “‘trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for …’?” Tim whispered to Jane.

  “Phooey,” said Nellie. “Are you trying to tell us that there’s going to be a Disneyland here? In Kankakee, Illinois? You’re out of your minds.”

  “All fertilizer and no soybeans,” said Don, tapping a finger to his head and nodding toward the two men.

  “Wait,” said Jane. “Who do you work for?”

  Dempsey and Hoover looked at each other, and the older man gestured for Hoover to begin the story.

  “We’re partners,” he said, looking at Dempsey, who had raised his eyebrows at the description. “We represent a group of people who have money to invest. Our idea is to develop a theme park based on a small town. I mean there’d be rides and stuff, but it’d be more like a county fair that’s always going on. After all, Kankakee is located right next to a major population center with its own access to transportation—” said Hoover.

  He was cut off by Dempsey who began to wave his arms as he spoke. “The layout, the look of the place, would be a cross between the movie State Fair and ice cream social in The Music Man …”

  “‘Oh, we got trouble …,’” Tim sang softly.

  “The entertainment would be the real draw,” said Dempsey, leading an imaginary orchestra. “We’d have concert halls, dance ballrooms, old-fashioned entertainment every weekend. There’d be family resorts based on old-time summer hotels on the river. We’d have a fishing pier and maybe a riverboat. A small town through the twentieth century, from the early 1900s through each decade—you know, arts-and-crafts bungalows through fifties ranches, with displays and entertainment.”

  “And a working farm with animals, a permanent county fair set up with not only the rides and midway, but display halls with quilting and needlework and stuff,” said Hoover. “Everything people remember from their small-town childhoods that was good.”

  “But most people remember the things that were bad,” said Jane. She looked at Nellie, who was giving her an icicle stare, and added, “Don’t they? I mean people my age? Dying downtowns, factories that move away, old houses being torn down for ugly, square apartment buildings. And when we were kids? Nothing to do on the weekends. Boredom, teenage drinking, drugs …”

  “Was it that bad?” asked Don.

  “No, not for me, Dad,” Jane said quickly. “But you know, the majority and all …”

  Tim shook his head. “Not for me either, Don. Don’t know where she gets these ideas.”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Dempsey. “It’s from the newspapers and magazines who print all those stories about the least livable towns. Didn’t it make your blood boil when you read that stuff? Then Letterman comes along and gives Kankakee those gazebos. That’s what started it.”

  When no one asked the right prompting question, Dempsey rolled on.

  “That gazebo triggered it. Band concerts in the town square, sweet summer nights, and kids running around catching lightning bugs and putting them in peanut butter jars …”

  “Okay,” said Tim. “Let’s cut to the chase here. You think you can use Kankakee as the location and basis for a theme park based on small-town America. A concept, I might add, that never really existed the way it’s been portrayed, even during the time it was allegedly happening. I mean, you’re going to gloss over the elitism, racism, and homogeneity that these nostalgic concepts really represent and just create some money-making venture in a declining town that you think is desperate enough to grasp at any straws you hold out?”

  Dempsey and Hoover nodded.

  “You want to cross a Disney Main Street with Branson with a state fair?”

  The men nodded again.

  “Right here in River City?” said Jane.

  “Have you actually bought anything? Any land?” asked Don.

  “We’ve got feelers out for several vacant factories and warehouses. See, it would be the whole town, and we’d have a transportation system, busses, trolleys, carriages to go from one attraction to the next. Can you picture Roper Stove as a concert hall?”

  Jane and Tim remained quiet when they left to make the garagesale visits Tim had planned for them. Dempsey and Hoover had gotten Don’s full attention when they planted the idea of a building across the street, the former Roper, becoming the new venue for big bands and polka nights and square-dance competitions. Not to mention wooing the national ballroom-dancing championships to use the facility. Jane had watched her father’s face light up and grow brighter with each mention of an entertainment he had thought was gone forever. Nellie had hung back, quiet. Jane knew that when Nellie didn’t have anything bad to say, Nellie didn’t have anything to say. Did her silence mean she liked the idea?

  “Tim?”

  “It’s not as if I don’t come up with ideas to help Kankakee, too …,” he said. “But the city-wide, garage-sale business seems pretty … I don’t know. Tame? Unambitious?”

  “Hey! Wake up. Is this mind control? The people, Tim? What about the residents of Kankakee. Does a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and a John Deere cap suddenly become your costume? Are you a blue-collar man? Do people come and stare at you if you live in a ranch house and refer to you as midcentury modern man? This idea of theirs suggests that the town be vacated, vacuumed, and sanitized then reborn as a stage set. Everybody who lives here now, who owns businesses, has kids in school here, works, goes to church here … they all would become actors?”

  “We do it anyway, don’t we?” said Tim. “Some of us do—you know the whole gay-man-in-a-flower-shop business. I’ve told you that everybody who comes into the shop these days wants a queer makeover …”

  Jane looked at Tim and saw the glazed look on his face. She had her work cut out for her. Keep her parents from investing their life savings with two animated nutcases dressed as businessmen, keep Tim from abandoning the garage sale of his dreams, and donning an ascot for his role as the town’s Noel Coward eccentric, and what was the other thing?

  Oh yeah, “dem bones, dem bones.” Solve Johnny Sullivan’s murder.

  All this before Kankakee becomes the next colonial frigging Williamsburg.

  “I make your life interesting, yes.?” asked Tim, opening her car door with a flourish. It was uncharacteristic politeness, and Jane was immediately suspicious.

  “Yes,” Jane answered, “you make my life interesting, all right. You and everyone else I meet lately. What are we doing here?”

  They stood in front of a brick bungalow in the m
iddle of a block of bungalows. In the front yard, a family of stone geese were dressed in yellow pinafores and bonnets. There was also a bird feeder and a birdbath, three colorful, twirling wind catchers dangling from an oak tree, and a set of wind chimes hanging on the porch.

  “This is the home of Mrs. Olivia Schaefer, retired schoolteacher. She said that she and her neighbors would not be participating unless some of her questions could be answered,” said Tim. “And she is either the busiest woman in the world and never home, or she is not picking up my phone calls.”

  “So this is a pop in? A surprise visit?” asked Jane. “I can’t do this.”

  “Your shyness was an attractive quality for about five minutes when you were fifteen. Time to move on.”

  Tim ran up the steps and rang the bell, smiling back at Jane, then, turning to the door, prepared his sunniest face for Mrs. Schaefer.

  Jane hadn’t time to prepare herself for what Mrs. Schaefer would look like, but she had not expected the stylish young woman who stood at the door.

  Suzanne Blum introduced herself as Mrs. Schaefer’s niece. She was packing her aunt’s things up for a move to an assisted-living apartment complex. Although she would be delighted to participate in the garage sale, neither she nor her aunt could be there personally for the weekends of the sale.

  “Aunt Liv told me about it. She was in charge of the holdouts on the block and proud of it. She told me that if she agreed, they would all agree; but I can’t be here for those sale dates and …”

  “We have volunteers from the high school. A whole service club that has made the sale their project. Good kids who will either assist or run the tables for people who can’t or don’t want to do it. I can send someone by to meet you and your aunt,” said Tim.

  They all shook hands and Suzanne Blum assured them that she’d leave a note for the neighbors and that this block would be on board.

  Back in the car, Tim was writing himself a long note, jotting down the addresses on the block.

  “Did you see those lamps with the green shades? Hope those make it into the garage,” said Jane. “That was easy, Timmy, what’s next?”

  “Got to get back to the store and take care of something,” said Tim.

  Jane smiled and said it with him. “Got to go sign up that crew of high school volunteers.”

  Before Tim dropped her back at Fuzzy’s, Jane had run into the Jewel to pick up a few items for their cabin, although she was sure Lula had prepared some kind of a feast. In addition to food she picked up a few newspapers and as many kinds of batteries as they had lights to use them. If Fuzzy and Lula cut the generator tonight, she wanted light. Munson had suggested they stay elsewhere but said he wouldn’t insist. Jane and Charley had already discussed the fact that they would all stay in the cabin and that there was a dead bolt on their door. The police would still be on-site as well.

  Jane had been somewhat flattered when Munson said he thought there would be no harm in them staying on the land. For a moment she had fantasized that he wanted her there in case something else happened, as a kind of adjunct to his own people. She had felt that way until she heard him say to one of his uniformed people, “At least if she’s here, we won’t be finding any bodies anywhere else.”

  It took the shine off the compliment.

  As Jane had predicted, Lula had, Charley told her, come over and said she expected them to have dinner at the house. As much as Jane did not want to have a farmhouse feast with Lula’s wide world of Jell-O assortment laid before her tonight, she did welcome the opportunity to talk to Lula and Fuzzy under what might pass for more normal circumstances. She hadn’t been able to ask any questions without interruptions or an audience since they had arrived. First, there was the picnic/pig roast with half of Kankakee there; and then, well today, they had had the crime scene unfold before them. Jane needed to talk to Fuzzy about what he had found in his topsoil and when and how this all connected up. The more Jane had thought about Otto’s bones, the more she wondered who would have thought they had to call in the state to inspect. She was sure that animal bones … cats and dogs and squirrels and raccoons and so forth, were turned up all the time. Who would have called the state about a pet cat’s skeleton?

  “Damn good question, Janie, damn good,” said Fuzzy, helping himself to more of the pot roast Lula had set before them.

  Charley sat back in his chair, his hands in his lap. Jane watched him watch Fuzzy cut his meat and vegetables, everything all at once rather than one bite at a time, and Charley waited until Fuzzy had eaten a bite before adding another damn good question.

  “Have you found things before, Fuzzy? Bones and such things?”

  Fuzzy chewed more slowly and appeared thoughtful as he shook his head. The head shaking, however, didn’t exactly match his verbal answer.

  “I’ve found stuff before. Lots of neat little … bottles and such.” Fuzzy looked at Lula. “What else? What’s some other stuff I found?”

  “Rocks. He’s found some pretty rocks out there,” said Lula. She was on her way to the stove to refill the gravy pitcher, and she paused at the windowsill where an aloe plant rose out of a pale green flowerpot.

  “See?” Lula pointed to the plant.

  “McCoy?” asked Jane, smiling.

  Lula picked something out of the plant and held it up. “You call this rock, what? McCoy?”

  “No,” said Jane. “The flowerpot is McCoy Pottery.”

  “Oh, this old stuff. I got a basement full of that. I told Tim Lowry he could have it to sell at that big wingding he’s having in town.”

  Jane shivered a little. She wasn’t sure if she felt excitement over what might be in Lula’s basement or horror at the thought of Tim having such total and complete access to the attics and cellars of their hometown. She wanted to believe her friend was thinking of Kankakee’s best interest, but, she supposed, Tim might think Kankakee’s best interest was not incompatible with the best interest of Lowry’s company, T & T Sales.

  “I’ll take a look at your stuff for you, Lula,” said Jane. “I’m working with Tim on this project.”

  “Can I see that?” asked Charley, holding his hand out for the rock that Lula had taken out of the plant and rubbed clean on her apron.

  Charley held the stone up. Minute, elongated blades of crystal fanned out from its pale, yellowish center. “Pretty,” said Jane. “What’s it called?”

  “Nick?” called Charley. After eating his dinner, Nick had asked if he could watch television before they headed out to the cabin. Lack of even basic cable though had driven him to the stack of record albums that had belonged to Bill Neilson and the old stereo system that was still well used in the living room. Jane could hear a familiar voice coming out of the speakers, but not well enough to place it. She heard Nick laughing and called in to him again.

  “Nick, did you hear Dad?” Jane said. When he didn’t come, and they could all hear him laughing, Jane stood up. “Apparently not. I’ll go get him.”

  If Nick hadn’t been wearing saggy jeans, new Jordan shoes, and a baseball playoff T-shirt dated from last summer, Jane might have believed she was seeing her son transported to a different time.

  Sitting on the floor, holding the album cover of The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, he was listening intently to Newhart ask, “Is your mother home?”

  “You ever heard of this guy? Newhart?” asked Nick.

  Jane nodded and smiled. “Finish the record later, okay? Dad wants you.”

  The four adults, Charley, Jane, Fuzzy, and Lula, all seated at the table, watched Nick examine the stone that Lula had fished out of her plant.

  “Where did this come from?” he asked, balancing the rock in his hand, turning it over and holding it up to the light over the kitchen table.

  “From my aloe plant,” said Lula.

  “From the rose garden,” said Fuzzy.

  Nick shook his head, smiling at his hosts. He looks so adult, Jane thought. Indulgent and kind, but firm in his disagreement with t
heir answers.

  “No, I mean, where did it come from originally?”

  “Well, I suppose when I turned up the dirt in the vegetable patch, I could have shifted it over near the roses,” said Fuzzy.

  “If I’m right,” said Nick, looking at his dad for confirmation and noting that Charley gave him the slightest of nods, “this mineral isn’t found in Illinois. I think it’s called Austinite, right, Dad? Not very common. Maybe Mexico?”

  “Yes,” said Charley. “Crystals are orthorhombic, color’s right for Austinite, although I’ve seen samples that are white or a bright green, too.”

  “Definitely not from Illinois,” said Nick. “Can I go finish the record?”

  Jane held out her hand for the mineral specimen. She turned it over in her hand, held it up, just the way she’d seen Nick do it.

  “How did that rock get here from Mexico?” asked Fuzzy, his voice thick with suspicion.

  Lula shook her head and stood, picking up plates to bring to the sink.

  The crunch of tires on gravel made them all look toward the window in the living room. A truck drove slowly up the driveway that adjoined the house. Jane thought it might be another policeman, one of Munson’s people coming to work for another. Shift change, that was all.

  But after two car doors slammed, there was a soft knock at the back door. Jane knew there had been no barricade across the driveway when she had returned, but there had been a uniformed policeman standing guard. Who would he have let approach the house tonight?

  Lula opened the door immediately, as if they had company after dinner every night and no one should hesitate just because someone had been murdered on the property the night before. Fuzzy stood up and said he’d get more coffee started to go with the pie that he had spied cooling on the counter.

  Lula stepped away from the open door and allowed Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan to walk into the kitchen. No one said hello. No one embraced. They took seats at the table and accepted the cups and dessert plates that were set before them as calmly as if this were any other night when they might drop in for coffee and a piece of pie.