“Lula really approves of all this?”
“She’s a helluva shot. Almost won the little ladies tournament we had last summer,” said Fuzzy.
“You have contests?” asked Nick, standing up with his Coke can, looking for a place to put it. “Recycling bin?”
“Sure we do,” said Fuzzy, taking the can. “We keep these. Some people still like to hear that sound of a can being hit.”
“Does Sullivan know about this? That you rebuilt the shooting range?” asked Jane.
“This is a secret,” Fuzzy whispered.
Jane saw the strange light flash in his eyes again when Fuzzy started whispering. She heard voices and could see flashes of clothes through the rows of corn. People were coming into the clearing.
“It’s not going to be a secret anymore, Fuzzy,” Jane whispered back.
“Holy shit. Go open up those sheds and see if he has any machine guns or cannons or grenade launchers in there,” said Munson to two uniformed police officers who were following him and Charley.
“Hey, Dad,” said Nick, “can I learn to shoot?”
“Not today,” said Charley, putting his arm around Jane.
“Fuzzy, you son of a bitch, I’m arresting you right now,” said Munson.
Fuzzy looked straight ahead, seeming not to hear.
“You don’t really believe he shot Johnny Sullivan, do you?” asked Jane. She wasn’t sure that she didn’t believe it, but what she did or didn’t believe wasn’t going to affect where Fuzzy slept tonight. And he didn’t seem capable of speaking up for himself right now.
“I’m arresting Fuzzy on a weapons charge. He’s in violation of the Firearm Owner’s Identification Card Act for every one of those guns in his arsenal, not to mention all the ammo. And on top of that, looks like he’s been running an unsanctioned rifle range also in violation of the state law. That’ll keep everybody busy long enough for all the tests to come back about the gun that shot Johnny Sullivan.”
“But even if you find out he was shot with one of the guns from out here or the barn,” said Jane, “how are you going to know who fired it? He has a whole club; people who come out here and shoot these guns.”
“You want to know the best reason for me to arrest Fuzzy Neilson right now?” asked Munson. “Because if I don’t arrest him, I’ll probably strangle him with my bare hands.”
Jane looked at Fuzzy, who was staring hard into the cornfields. If he was listening to them discuss his future, he showed no sign.
“Can we do anything? Can he be released into our custody?” asked Jane.
“Let’s start with the custody part before we get to the released into part. First, we get him into mine, then we’ll see where we go next, okay?” Munson said. He called over a young woman officer and Bostick, who seemed to have survived the morning’s harangue.
Charley was reassuring Nick that they were going to help Fuzzy, and the trouble he was now in had nothing to do with Nick being out on the shooting range.
“I don’t think Fuzzy knew how much trouble he could get into with all this,” said Charley.
“He was just trying to make ends meet; he wanted to keep the farm,” said Jane, “for his children.”
“If I hear one more sad-sack story about trying to hold on to the family farm, I’m going to explode,” said Munson. He faced Jane and spoke quickly and quietly, looking over his shoulder to make sure that his people were just out of earshot. “These farmers own more than half the county, and they keep crying about how they’re going to lose it. My folks had to sell their house after my dad retired because my mom got sick and they couldn’t make the payments. My brother lost his job when Roper closed and couldn’t ever find anything that paid him enough to keep the place his family had, and he and his wife split up and you know why? Money. Lack of it. A lot of people have had hard times, and they haven’t started target practice in their basements. Any ideas about what might have happened if a bunch of teenagers ever came out here with a case of beer one night?”
“Nobody can tell me what to do with my land. Nobody can make me sell it,” said Fuzzy.
It was Fuzzy’s voice, but behind his eyes the man was AWOL. He kept repeating that it was his land, and when Bostick took his arm, Fuzzy’s tone became almost conversational.
“My land and you can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. It’s my land and nobody is telling me what I can do with it,” he was saying, as they walked him back to the corn path.
“We have to talk to Lula,” said Jane. “He’s not right.”
“How long have you known Fuzzy?” asked Munson, as they all walked back toward the house.
“He’s been coming to the EZ Way Inn forever. I can’t remember not knowing him.”
“Fuzzy Neilson ever been right?”
Jane didn’t answer Munson. She didn’t want to debate Fuzzy’s mental acumen with Munson or anyone else. She was actually trying to remember the first time she ever saw the man. Sitting at one of the tables at the EZ Way Inn had been such a constant of her childhood, she realized there were no “firsts” associated with the customers. Like parents or cousins or grandparents, they were always there, entwined with memories of songs that played, favorite teachers, books, and best friends.
Jane could trace her picker instincts back to the tavern and the people there. She spotted the Buffalo China that she remembered from Nellie’s lunches at the rummage sales, snapped it up and set a table with it, picked the right colorful tablecloths, and mismatched the right Depression Glasses to make people smile, to make them feel that they were in familiar territory. Jane associated the restaurant pots and pans, the clunky glassware, the advertising clocks, the Bakelite perpetual desk calendars that the beer salesmen dropped by with the tavern and its people.
Fuzzy had not only shown up every day, flashing her a smile and tossing her a quarter for the jukebox, he always sat down and talked to her. He asked her what her favorite vegetables and flowers were; and if he had them growing at home, he remembered to bring them to her. When she had told him she liked pretty rocks—a long childhood before she met Charley and had shifted her collecting allegiances away from his—Fuzzy picked up rocks he found that he thought she might like. When he and Lula went on vacation, he always brought her back a rock. She set them on the windowsill in her bedroom, rose quartz from South Dakota and an agate from where? Arizona? A fossil from a stream in Wisconsin. He always remembered. What had he told her? He liked rocks, too, and shells, and foreign coins that looked prettier than plain old American nickels and dimes.
“Pick something up to remember a place by,” he told her almost every time he saw her; “that’s why God made pockets.”
Back at the house, Lula paced back and forth. She had refused to call their son or their daughter. They both lived with spouses and children in California—William in Oakland and Mary Lee in San Diego.
“They’ve got jobs and kids. I can’t be asking them to come here. I don’t even know what to tell them,” Lula said. She looked at Munson. “What do I tell them, Franklin? You played basketball with William; you were his good friend. You tell me what to tell him.”
“Lula, I don’t want any harm to come to Fuzzy or anyone else, but I’ve got to get to the bottom of this,” said Munson. “We’ve already lost Johnny Sullivan, and we’ve got to piece together what happened.” He asked Jane to call Don and Nellie. “Maybe they can help Lula figure out what to do here. Call a lawyer and all. I can’t get anymore involved in this with her,” he said to Jane in a low voice. “I’ve got to put on another hat now”—he sighed—“and keep it on.”
Jane left Nick and Charley with Lula. Bostick was explaining to Fuzzy that he might want to bring some things for overnight in case he had to stay at the police station.
Fuzzy had that faraway look in his eyes, but he nodded.
“Lula?” he said. “Are there cinnamon rolls left? Can you pack me up some for my dinner?” He smiled his old smile. “And, I guess, for my breakfast?”
Jane called her parents’ home. Don answered, and although she could hear Nellie asking questions in the background, Don held the receiver firmly enough so that Jane was spared the inquisition—for the moment. Better Nellie should come and see it all for herself. After she hung up, Jane realized that she didn’t know if Don knew about the shooting range. Soon enough. They were on their way.
Jane walked outside, and Oh fell into step beside her.
“Mrs. Wheel, I owe you an explanation.”
Jane tried to think of a statement, any statement, that Oh could make that would surprise her more than that simple declaration. It might have been because she was worn out, but she couldn’t think of a thing.
“I discouraged you from thinking of this as your case when you first phoned me about Mr. Johnny Sullivan. I was wrong.”
Jane realized her mouth was slightly open, and she closed it.
“I was worried you would feel drawn in because it was Kankakee. I worried that it would turn out to be a domestic violence case, something uncomplicated that could be handled by Detective Munson, and that you would lose your …” Oh stopped and searched for a word. “Zest.”
“My ‘zest’ is important?”
“Zest is vital. As is compassion. Everyone will tell you that compassion can blind you to the truth. It can also be the driving force behind finding the truth.”
“The Fuzzy I know didn’t kill anyone,” said Jane. “But I saw him out there in the yard that night … and there is a Fuzzy that I don’t know. He’s …”
“Mrs. Neilson may not know if they have a lawyer,” said Oh, “but ask her if they have a doctor.”
When Don and Nellie arrived, they split up and circled the people there. Don went over to Lula, handed her the card of his lawyer, and told her that he had already called him, and he would be waiting at the police station to help get Fuzzy home as soon as possible. Nellie made a beeline for Fuzzy and looked him in the eye. “What have you done now?”
“Nothing much, Nellie,” he said.
“You tell everybody the truth, you’ll be okay. Understand?”
Fuzzy nodded. Bostick came over to tell him it was time to go, and Fuzzy got up with no protest, no fight.
Jane followed him to the door. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the pennies she had been carrying since she had picked them out of the rose garden. “Why do you bury stuff, Fuzzy?”
Fuzzy smiled and put a hand on her head. “So you’ll find it and remember me,” he said. “That’s why God made pockets.”
Nellie went upstairs with Lula. Jane left Don, Charley, and Oh drinking a cup of tea at the dining room table and went into the kitchen. Although Nick knew his way around a stove, liked to cook, and even had a repertoire of breakfast specialties and sandwich combinations larger than Jane’s own, she hadn’t thought of him as a scrubber and cleaner, a Nellifier of the kitchen. But here he was, her son who lived the life of a middle-school jock except when he was spirited away to a digging site by Charley and his inner geology geek could secretly and safely emerge, washing dishes. His arms were in soapy water up to his elbows, and he was using steel wool in a brownie pan. Jane feared for the pan.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have called you when I heard Dad talking. Should have left it alone and listened to the end of the story. Then I followed Fuzzy. If you hadn’t seen me there with that gun, you wouldn’t have let them take him away.”
“Nick, no one could have stopped this. Fuzzy has a shooting range. He keeps guns out there, he …”
“Just because you think there shouldn’t be guns doesn’t make them wrong for everybody. You say people should make up their own minds about stuff, but there’s stuff you don’t even listen to other opinions on. You decided guns were bad a long time ago, and instead of just letting Fuzzy have a different opinion, you’re letting the police take him away.”
Jane took a deep breath. For twelve years or so you can watch them and feed them and fool yourself that you’re molding them into the shape you’ve chosen, then one day you look at your child and you don’t recognize something. Maybe it’s a new expression, or a dismissive gesture, or maybe, like now with Nick, it’s the challenge in their eyes.
“I’ve never liked guns. It’s true. I didn’t grow up around them. Your grandfather never hunted or took Uncle Michael and me out to shoot at targets. I never went to a camp that had a rifle range. It’s all foreign territory for me, Nick,” said Jane, “but I swear that has nothing to do with what’s going on with Fuzzy. Munson took him in because he was out there when Johnny Sullivan got shot. I saw him.” Jane added, “And he hasn’t been himself lately.”
“He’s out there all the time,” said Nick. “He told me he can hardly sleep anymore, and he likes to garden in the moonlight. He told me that if he plants certain flowers at night, they grow taller because they learn to grow by the light of the moon as well as the sun.”
Jane looked at her son who, at last, smiled at his mother’s wide eyes.
“No, I know that’s not true, but it’s a great story. Fuzzy is a storyteller, Mom. You think if he shot that guy, if he thought he’d caught a trespasser or something, he would keep it a secret?” asked Nick. “Fuzzy talks all the time about everything. If he really did something or had some kind of adventure, you don’t think he’d talk about it?”
Nellie had packed a suitcase for Lula and wrapped up food to take to the police station since Lula insisted that Fuzzy would be hungry. Even though Don and Detective Oh and Charley and Jane all assured the two women that Fuzzy would be ready to come home in a few hours—that they all should just go to the police station and be ready to take him home—Nellie insisted that Lula was coming home with her and that they would wait for the call there.
“If I leave her here, she’ll be up all night cooking and roaming the house. She needs to sleep. We’re closer to the police station,” Nellie told Jane, “and I’m sending your dad there to make sure everything gets ironed out.”
“Good,” said Jane. “Fuzzy couldn’t have killed anybody.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” said Nellie.
“Right,” said Jane.
“No,” said Nellie. “It’s ridiculous what you said. Of course he could kill somebody.”
“What do …”
“Why the hell not? Who doesn’t want to kill somebody half the time? Shoot, if I had a gun at that tavern, I’d probably kill somebody every day.” Nellie dropped her voice to a rough whisper. “Now as soon as I get Lula out of here, you go check in her medicine cabinet. She’s giving Fuzzy medicine for something. Made me pack it, but I left another bottle in there. Made me promise not to talk about it, but you can go in there and see it for yourself.”
Jane surveyed the 110 pounds of contradictions and contrariness that was her mother. On the one hand she could kill somebody every day, and on the other, she was scrupulous about keeping a promise to a friend—and sneaky enough to find a way to tell without telling.
“And if those Sullivans call, don’t tell them anything. They’re strange birds,” said Nellie.
If Nellie called you a “strange bird,” was it the same as a double negative? Did it mean you were really a sensible human being?
As soon as Don and Nellie left with Lula, the telephone rang. Alan Bishop, the lawyer Don had asked to meet Fuzzy at the police station, had arrived and was having some trouble communicating to Fuzzy that he was there to help him, that he was on Fuzzy’s side. Jane asked Charley and Oh to go down there right away.
“You can stop at Don and Nellie’s and pick up Lula and one or both of my parents, but then get right over to the station. If Fuzzy gets disoriented, he acts fierce and I don’t want Munson to start imagining any … you know. I’ll stay here,” said Jane, who didn’t want to mention the medicine cabinet yet. She supposed that made her fairly scrupulous about secrets,
too. She figured she might as well see what, if anything, was significant, before sounding an alarm. Besides, what if she found out that Fuzzy was on some kind of antipsychotic medicine? Wouldn’t that make it more likely people would think Fuzzy had done the shooting? Start the lawyer strategizing about the deal he could make? An insanity defense might get Fuzzy off; but if Fuzzy didn’t do it, it would only distract and delay them from finding the real killer.
“I don’t like leaving you and Nick here alone,” said Charley.
“I can see five police out the kitchen window. And there are probably more down at the cornfield and along the corn path. Munson’s got them swarming the place. If another gun shows up, he’ll shoot the one who brings it to him,” said Jane. “We’ll be fine.”
Nick asked Jane if he could go out to the shed and keep going through Fuzzy’s collection boxes, the ones shelved and sealed that Munson had said were okay to catalog. Jane walked over there with him and was assured by Bostick that someone would be at the shed door at all times. If Nick finished and wanted to return to the house, someone would walk him the thirty feet to the house.
“He won’t be alone or out of sight for a minute,” said Bostick.
“You’re a better parent than I am,” said Jane.
Returning to Fuzzy and Lula’s house, escorted by a young woman police officer, Jane decided to work her way up to the bathroom. She walked through the kitchen and admired Lula’s pantry, as neatly and efficiently organized as any Jane had ever seen. Lula’s own canned tomatoes, green beans, pickles, jams, fruit butters, and chutneys. Jane had seen templates for making canning jar labels on her computer … retro, gingham trimmed, and folksy, but next to the real thing—masking tape and Lula’s careful penmanship with a Sharpie marker, EARLY WONDER BEANS—those labels would be precious and out of place. So many people Jane’s age and younger played at being farmwives, buying country antiques on a fall weekend and purposely mismatching dishes and silverplate at the dinner table. Jane would have to admit to a bit of Lulafying activity of her own—all those vintage linens, hand-smocked aprons, crocheted potholders, and Lu-Ray dinnerware on her shelves.
Buried Stuff Page 18
