AHMM, July-August 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  It was a bus ticket. The destination that had been written on it was a city about a hundred miles away.

  And both halves were intact and obviously unused.

  By itself, it could mean Anna's mother had intended to take her stepdaughter along, and perhaps her father had merely interfered with the plan. That would explain why he had wanted this purse. He could probably get a refund of the ticket. More importantly, perhaps he wouldn't want his daughter to have the means to run off as well.

  But Anna fished something else out of the purse: a sheet of paper torn from a small notebook. It was wrinkled, as if it had once been wadded up and then carefully smoothed and folded into a small square. She unfolded it carefully and handed it to Bertha.

  The words were written in pencil.

  * * * *

  Dear Anna,

  Im leavin, cant put up with things here no longer. We was never married anyway I just used his name so people wouldent talk. Your a nice kid but I cant take you with me.

  Thora.

  * * * *

  Bertha noted it was signed “Thora” instead of “Mother.” She looked again at the ticket and then at her stove. Bertha quickly erased any remaining doubt from her mind.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a doorknob turning and a sharp gasp from Anna. She followed Anna's wide-eyed look.

  Tullis was standing in the back doorway. He held a finger of one hand to his lips. In his other hand he held a knife. He spoke earnestly, but not loud enough to be heard by the guards on the front porch.

  "I'll take the kid's things, now, you old biddie! Anna, you'll come with me. We're leavin'."

  He raised the knife and waved it at Bertha. Thomas, still by the stove, backed up. He cast a quick look at the door. He winced as he remembered he had forgotten to lock it when he came back in with the coal. He backed up further, stumbling on the waste can, disturbing not a single fly.

  Bertha stepped forward to shield Anna.

  Tullis stabbed at the air with his knife and made a move toward Bertha, who was still holding the ticket.

  "You meddling old . . . gimme that . . . and me and Anna, we'll be on our way!"

  Anna cringed away from him.

  "I don't think so, Mr. Tullis,” Bertha said with enough ice in her voice to stop a stampeding buffalo. But the invisible brick wall wasn't working. He didn't appear to be drunk, but she could tell the man was too disturbed to notice any kind of challenge she could make.

  Bertha glanced quickly at the poker out of reach by the back door, and the hallway leading to the front of the house. Tullis had cut off escape in both directions. He waved the knife again, a few inches from Bertha's face. She forced herself not to flinch.

  "Outta th’ way! I'll have Anna's things, and right now!"

  Still standing by the stove, Thomas glanced at the back door and judged his own chances of escape to get help. He wavered with his decision too long and Tullis turned quickly and waved his knife at him.

  "You just stay where you are, kid!"

  Thomas drew back until his shoulder touched the fly sprayer sitting on its shelf. He knew what it was without looking back at it. Tullis turned his anger back on Bertha.

  "You got no right to—"

  As Tullis spoke, Thomas reached behind him and grasped the sprayer. As he lifted it, he pulled the plunger back. By the time it was fully back he had the sprayer aimed at Tullis's head.

  "—to mess with other people's—"

  Thomas quickly pushed the plunger all the way home. Tullis's face almost disappeared in a cloud of fly spray.

  "Ah-h-h-h . . ."

  It was a sound the neighbors could have heard.

  Thomas quickly pushed out two more bursts. Tullis dropped the knife and tore at his eyes with his fists as his terrible bellows of pain continued. By the third bellow, and another blast from the sprayer, Thomas's father and the neighbor had dashed in from the porch and their guns were being pressed into Tullis's back.

  "Guess we shoulda’ had one of us on the back door,” Thomas's father said with a sheepish smile.

  Bertha scooped up Anna and began hustling her out of the kitchen, away from her father's cries. On the way, she glanced at Thomas, still clutching the sprayer and standing as still as a stone, shocked at the pain he had just unleashed.

  "Thomas,” Bertha said.

  He glanced at her.

  "The Joneses across the street have a telephone . . ."

  With less than a second's hesitation, Thomas understood what was required. He dropped the sprayer and was out the door before Bertha could finish.

  * * * *

  Dave knocked on Bertha's back door a couple of hours later. She greeted him with whispers and a finger to her lips.

  "I saw your light was still on,” he replied in the same manner. “Thought I'd see how things were with you and the girl."

  "I made a bed for her in my living room. She finally fell asleep just a few minutes before you knocked."

  Dave nodded. “And yourself?"

  Bertha didn't answer right away. She was looking at the fly sprayer, still sitting on the floor where Thomas had dropped it. She picked it up and placed it back on its shelf.

  "Thank you for your concern. I guess I'll be all right. But I'll admit the last few days have been a little more excitement than I'm used to."

  "Well,” Dave said, “fact is, wasn't for you and that boy, Tullis and the girl would'a been long gone and no one the wiser about Thora."

  She glanced in the direction of her living room and shrugged.

  "It was a terrible thing for them to see. Why didn't he just run when he had the chance?"

  "The sheriff figured he didn't want to leave a witness and a piece of evidence."

  "A witness?"

  "Well, she'd seen the bus ticket. I gather he wasn't thinkin’ too clearly when he showed up at your place."

  "No, he wasn't. And for some time, I think."

  She gave a quick glance in the direction of her living room again.

  "Did he say anything about Thora?"

  "Yeah.” Dave smiled, but there was no mirth in it. “The sheriff said, on the way over to have a doctor look at him, Tullis sort of came apart and laid it out pretty quick. Said he picked her up while she was still waitin’ for the bus. Claimed what happened was accidental. Maybe it was. Things maybe just got out of hand. Still, there it is."

  "What's going to happen to Anna?"

  "Later on, Tullis told them he had a sister who offered to take Anna, back when her mother died. One of the sheriff's people will be trying to look her up tomorrow."

  "It's something to hope for . . . for Anna's sake."

  Dave nodded and took his leave.

  As Bertha closed the door a floorboard creaked. She quickly followed the sound. Anna was standing in the living room doorway.

  "She's really dead, then, isn't she?” Anna said.

  Bertha opened her arms wide. Anna didn't move for an instant, but then took a step, then two, then a few more.

  Sometimes, Bertha knew, a hug and a good listen is as much medicine as anything is.

  * * * *

  There were eight in the picture that was taken on Bertha's front porch a few days later. Besides Bertha and Thomas, there were Mr. and Mrs. Albert Gruman, who had driven down from the capital to take Anna back with them. Sitting in various poses on the steps were the three Gruman children, two girls who bracketed Anna's age, and a younger boy whose hair and shirt collar were slightly disheveled compared to what they had been a half hour before. And of course, Anna, who was standing in the center looking as if a great sorrow had been removed from her life.

  Dave the marshal took the picture with a small Kodak folding camera belonging to Mrs. Gruman and he noted the person with the brightest smile was Mrs. Gruman. She was the sister of Tullis, and over and over she told how she had offered to take in Anna years ago when her natural mother had died. No one in the group had mentioned Tullis himself, and any comment on his current where
abouts had been just as studiously avoided.

  After profuse promises to mail prints of the picture, Mrs. Gruman gathered Anna, her brood, and her husband, into their car and waved as they drove away.

  The car hadn't gotten far when Anna's face appeared in the back window. She waved and offered a brief but small smile, her eyes moving from Thomas to Bertha and back to Thomas, until the car turned the corner and disappeared.

  Thomas stood by the front gate for a long moment. Then, hands in his pockets, he shuffled off toward his home without saying goodbye or looking back. Bertha understood why. The wetness she thought she had seen forming in his eyes a moment ago would have embarrassed him.

  When she was sure Thomas was out of earshot, she turned to the marshal.

  "Any news?"

  "The sheriff called just before I came over here,” Dave said. “They found her just where Tullis said she would be."

  "Thomas told me a couple of days ago he thought Tullis had killed his wife."

  "He offer any proof?"

  "No."

  "Then, how'd he know?"

  "I don't know, but once in a while kids have a way of knowing things. I think sometimes they see things more pure."

  "Hmm.” Dave shrugged, perhaps agreeing that they did. “I stopped at the post office on the way here. Happened to mention I was goin’ by your place. Floyd said to tell you he just had a big package come in, somethin’ you might've been expectin’ for some time now."

  "Thank you, David,” she said with a heavy sigh of relief. “It's my pressure cooker. Just in time too. I've been planning on doing a lot of canning this year."

  Dave shook his head.

  "Bertha, you're sure takin’ on a lot o’ work for yourself."

  Bertha paused for a quick upward glance before she answered.

  "Compared to the last couple of days,” she smiled, “it'll seem like a breeze!"

  Dave chuckled, walked a few steps toward his truck, then turned.

  "I hope things work out for Anna."

  "The Gruman girls can't seem to get enough of her."

  "That little Gruman boy, though, didn't seem too happy."

  "He'll be okay,” Bertha said. “I happened to see him with Thomas in the backyard just before we lined up for the picture. Thomas was . . . negotiating what I suppose was Thomas's expectations of his conduct toward Anna."

  Dave raised his eyebrows as if waiting to hear more.

  "Negotiating?"

  "Explaining, perhaps,” Bertha shrugged. “The Gruman boy was on the bottom. They seemed to be coming to an agreement and it didn't seem necessary to offer any further suggestions."

  Dave smiled, this time with genuine amusement.

  "Put a little weight on her, doll her up a little better, she'd not be a bad looking kid."

  "I think there's a lot more there than what most people have been able to see."

  "An’ that Thomas . . . seems like he's been mighty protective of her,” Dave said.

  "Of course he has! He's a very serious young man. He's older and a lot smarter than his years. You probably couldn't get him to admit it, but I think he's in love with her!"

  "At his age? Huh . . . prob'ly they'll never see each other again."

  "Don't count on it,” Bertha said, fixing him with her most effective schoolteacher look. “Don't count on it for a minute!"

  Dave thought for a moment and decided, well, maybe he wouldn't count on it.

  Copyright © 2010 Douglas Grant Johnson

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  Fiction: CERTIFIED by Eve Fisher

  "Maybe she was ashamed that she abandoned a baby. I never understood it myself."

  Marriage is an honorable estate, and God knows needs all the support it can get these days. So when a double-digit anniversary is celebrated in Laskin, pretty much everyone shows up. Jim and Mary Olson's fortieth was held in the basement of Calvary Lutheran Church, which had been covered in gold and white streamers. The church ladies served barbecue, chips, pickles, peanuts, and a huge sheet cake with “Happy 40th Anniversary” in yellow icing on it. Gold balloons bobbed above gold and white centerpieces.

  "Looks more like a fiftieth than a fortieth,” I muttered to Linda Thompson as I piled a second barbecue on my plate.

  "Yes, but,” she lowered her voice, “Uncle Jim's been diagnosed with early Alzheimer's, and no one's entirely sure he'll be here in ten years.” She made a face. “Mentally, I mean. I don't know how Aunt Mary's going to cope. Those two are just everything to each other."

  I piled on the chips and glanced over at the anniversary couple, sitting beside each other. They looked like any other couple in their late sixties, grayed and wrinkled and worn. The pastor leaned over Jim's right shoulder and made some remark, and the old guy laughed. Mary smiled. At their age, I thought, taking a cup of coffee, of course they're everything to each other. What else can they do? Who else would have them? Then I noticed their shoulders touching, leaning into each other, and as I walked behind them, I glanced down and saw that they were holding hands under the table.

  Some couples really do make it.

  So it was with a double nausea that I found myself, a month later, standing in Mary Olson's bedroom, looking down at her body. Jim Olson was lying on the bed beside her, weeping. The gun—their neighbor had heard a shot and called us—was on the floor beside the bed.

  "Jesus,” Jonasson rasped. “Get the ambulance,” he told Bob. Then he went over to the bed. “Jim.” The old man shuddered, wrapping his arms tighter around his dead wife. “Jim, you need to get up now. I need to take a look at Mary.” Jim stirred, turned his head toward us, and I felt a cold chill as I saw his bloody face. She'd been shot in the head. “Jim . . .” Jonasson waved a hand at me. “Help me get him up, Grant."

  "Shouldn't we get photos first?” Bob Johnson asked. Jonasson growled, and Bob added, hastily, “Before we move him?"

  Jonasson nodded and waved him ahead. A few minutes later, Jonasson and I got Olson up out of the bed. He kept moaning, “Mary,” and Jonasson kept assuring him that we'd take care of her. We walked Olson into the kitchen, and Jonasson sat him in a chair.

  "There you go, Jim.” He went over to the sink and soaked a washcloth. “Here you go,” he said, washing Olson's face as if it had been a baby's. “It's okay, Jim,” he kept saying in a strangled voice. At one point he glanced up and saw me. “What the hell are you staring at? Get back in there and get to work."

  * * * *

  The next morning Jonasson called me into his office. He looked like he hadn't slept much the night before. “I'm taking Olson to Yankton today for evaluation.” I nodded. “Hell, he can't make a statement about what he had for lunch yesterday, much less anything else. He keeps asking for Mary. Of course it was an accident.” I waited. “GSR test come back?"

  I nodded. “Positive on both of them, actually. But of course, she might have been trying to get the gun out of his hand, or him out of hers, or—"

  Jonasson interrupted me. “There was a doctor's appointment on the calendar."

  "I called. The doctor's in surgery, and they'll have the nurse call me back."

  "Call you back?” He sat up. “Get back on the phone and tell them we need that information right away."

  "Yes, sir."

  But you can't get information right away from anybody anymore, even in South Dakota. They didn't get back with me until the afternoon, and by that time Jonasson was long gone to Yankton with poor Jim. And then Jonasson stuck around down there for a day or two, and when he got back there was that whole ruckus with that Davison kid, so it was three days later, and the day of the visitation, that I was sitting in his office and telling him what I'd found out. Mary Olson had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

  "At her age?” Jonasson held up a hand. “No, I know better."

  "She'd had a needle biopsy. Surgery was indicated. So it might have been suicide."

  "Breast cancer's survivable."

  "Maybe she couldn't face surge
ry,” I suggested. “Or it was just the last straw, what with Jim's condition. Of course, she could have been having an affair with the assistant pastor and a mastectomy would have put an end to it."

  Jonasson was dead silent, which wasn't his usual response to my sarcasm. Instead, he tossed an envelope across the desk.

  I opened it up. Inside was a letter and a newspaper clipping: the obituary of an Anthony F. Montelli, aged seventy-two, died in Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, of heart failure.

  "Who's he?"

  "Mary's ex-husband.” I blinked. “Forty-five years ago. It was short, sweet, sour. Over in a year, maybe two."

  "Doesn't say anything about survivors, next of kin . . .” The date of death was May 6, barely a month ago.

  "Big city obits are short. No time for career highlights and the rest. Read the letter."

  * * * *

  Dear Mom,

  I know you once told me that you had nothing more to say to me or Dad, but I felt you should know that he passed away Friday night. I know there's been a lot of hard things said on both sides, but I just wanted you to know, and to know that I do love you, and I want to see you again. I never meant to side with Dad over you, it just worked out that way. When you left, I was just a baby, how else could it have worked out? But I'm not saying that to make you feel guilty. I just want you to know that you're the only blood I've got left, and I want us to get along. I'm going to come visit. You can close the door in my face, but at least I'll have seen you before you do. That's all I want. Love, Carson

  * * * *

  If I hadn't already been sitting down, I'd have fallen into the chair. I picked the envelope back up and looked at the postmark. It was too smudged to read anything more than May.

  Jonasson had leaned forward, his face in his hands, as I read. When I set the envelope down, he raised his head and said, “You were talking about last straws. Not a word about this to anyone."

  I nodded. “Where was it?"