brad.torgersen
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Credo Man
Carol Kean
Kenny Locke was back in town. On the same Harley that was old when they were all young, Kenny “The Felon” parked across the street. No mistaking that face and physique, no matter how many decades passed. Sally, gripping a massive pumpkin, squinted in the morning light. If only he’d come to return her sister’s heart--but some things could never be retrieved, and people like Connie just never learned.
Kenny nudged the kickstand with a booted toe. As if paying homage to him, the American flag lifted away from the pole and rippled, slow and graceful. The doors of the Falls City Post Office swallowed him whole.
A sudden wind pushed a herd of clouds across the sun. The sly wind toppled Sally’s chrysanthemums off their straw bales and blew her Okoberfest ribbons onto the cobblestone street. Two spry, silver-haired ladies materialized and helped collect the scattered ribbons.
“This wind!” one said. “Your Ice Age is coming sooner than we thought.”
Sally blinked, astonished. “You listen to my podcast?”
The women traded sneaky, bright-eyed smiles. “We love it,” they said in unison.
“How kind of you,” Sally said. “I feel like the wee voice in the wilderness. A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown.”
“Change is coming.” One lady nodded gravely, quoting Sally’s pre-apocalypse podcast. ““Trillions of dollars to reduce Global Warming by one tenth of one percent, but nothing to prepare for solar flares, EMPs, or the next Ice Age. If we don’t prepare and adapt, we’ll die.”
Their accents matched their sweaters, knitted in the colors and pattern of Polish pottery. They looked like sisters, the kind Sally had always wished she and Connie could be.
Working and talking, the way Sally liked, the ladies helped her adorn the entrance to Town Hall. They admired her hand-sewn aprons, kitchen linens, and child-sized Dirndls and Lederhosen. “They sell better online,” Sally said. “Nobody wants to be a German, the way everyone’s an Irishman on St. Patrick’s day. But I have to keep Oktoberfest alive. Even if stein-holding contests, busty blondes, beer, and accordions are the only stereotypes people remember outside of evil Nazis and Hogan’s Heroes.”
“And mad German scientists,” one lady mumbled.
The mysterious visitors paid cash for every item they could tote away. Now that was something to write home about! Not that anyone wrote letters anymore.
A rusty blue Malibu shuddered down Main Street and parked at the old Rexall Drug store with the sign that no longer lit up. Sally watched her sister’s stiff, slow-motion climb from the car. Oh Connie! Trying to pawn off another bogus Rx for painkillers, knowing her.
Across the street, Kenny Locke burst out of the Post Office and crashed into the silver ladies. Oof! They held up like the Alps, though, smiling and patting his broad shoulders, touching the emblems on his leather jacket. The smile he flashed at them zapped Sally like a microwave, though he wasn’t looking at her.
Connie pulled an armload of coats from the front seat and leaned against the car, as if inviting Kenny to come to her rescue. But no, he just narrowed his eyes at the girl he’d jilted years ago. The silver ladies commandeered the coats from Connie while Kenny and his leather jacket and long denim-clad legs disappeared behind the glassy doors of Farmers State Bank.
Sally finished hauling things into Town Hall, then stepped out. On the sidewalk, a cute little old man unstooped from his cane to smile and tip his hat to her. Another stranger! The wind seemed to be blowing them in today.
“Hey, Burl.” Her sister’s gravelly voice jerked Sally’s gaze from the stranger to Connie, who was giving her the ol’ chin lift, the squint, the little smirk. At least Connie didn’t call her Herpy this time, or some other bastardization of herpetologist.
“Hey, Ana-conn-da,” Sally replied. Twiggy was everyone else’s nickname for Connie, but Sally knew what “burl” meant. Rounded. Deformity. Connie got the tall, skinny genes. Sally got the brains.
Kenny was blessed with brains as well as brawn, good looks and charm, only to screw it up. Fighting, drinking, making enemies--getting framed, his mom always said--but that’s what you get for hanging with the wrong crowd.
Connie cleared her throat in that awful way of hers. “I hear you had some good customers--they schlepped away everything but those big-ass pumpkins and gourds. I guess I can’t say you’re out of your gourd.” She cackled at her own joke.
Where had the old man disappeared to?
“Of course,” Connie persisted, “you’re still fully loaded with those pumpkins.” Her eyes made an obvious, disapproving pass over Sally’s well-rounded figure.
Eh. If Connie’s ego needed that boost, let her have it. Past age fifty, mother of three, Sally was comfortable in her size-12 jeans. Connie was childless. For all her fame and fortune, a paperback writer with a rock-star husband, she and Don were ruined, back in Falls City, in the tiny house she and Sally had grown up in. Rehab hadn’t helped.
A desperate thought hit her. Kenny had never married. He had a history of liking too many women too much, not of abusing them.
What if Kenny the Felon was the one thing that could get Connie to leave that abusive, rotten, good-for-nothing has-been, Don Viggers?
“No. No. A thousand times no,” cousin Nancy the Tongue said from behind the pharmacy counter. “Did you see the patch on his jacket?”
Sally had not.
A light blinked on Nancy’s cash register. That one was new. Lights had come to signify cameras in every store, at stoplights, and along highways. It creeped Sally out even though she had nothing to hide.
“O.P.,” Nancy said. “You know what that means.”
No, Sally did not.
“Hello? One Percent.”
“Oh! Yes. Kenny always was too smart for anyone’s own good. I’m surprised he’d join Mensa, though. Even Tom and I would never--”
“Mensa? Jeez, Sally! One Percenters are part of the S.O.S.”
Sally blinked.
“Sons of Silence.” Nancy just had to use that snotty tone on her. “The outlaw motorcycle gang.”
“Oh. Well, I’d rather see Connie run off with a motorcycle gang than watch Don kill her slowly, year by year. He should have died in that car wreck instead of coming away without a scratch, the way drunks always do.”
“Twiggy got the raw end of the stick,” Nancy said in that voice she used on Sally but never Connie.
Sally swallowed her annoyance. “Don is a cancer. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me? That’s ack-bassward. That’s--”
“ASS-backward.” Nancy snorted. “Go on, Sally. Drop an A-bomb once in a while--or even an F-bomb. You’ll feel better.”
Sally gritted her teeth. “I feel fine.”
“Looks to me like you’re having a hot flash.”
They were too old for this. Sally squared her shoulders and sidestepped to the Coats for Kids bin. She held up a little white pea coat. “Look how the lining is coming apart at the seams. I can re-sew this, bring it back by--”
“The old ladies,” Nancy’s interrupted. “The ones who bought up all your stuff. Did you notice something funny about them?”
“Uh… they know what a podcast is.” Wrong. Sally tried again. “They didn’t even flinch when Kenny crashed into them.” No, not that. “They--”
“No! Sally!” The stone-cold Nancy stare flared into exasperation. “They have tongue studs.” She waited. Sally stared back. “Oh, come on. Grannies with tongue piercings! You didn’t notice?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think it was funny.” Sally turned, marched to the door, then caught a glimpse of Kenny getting back on his Harley.
“I wonder if Kenny is here for Oktoberfest.” She turned back, laughing. “Can’t you just see him in Lederhosen?”
“No, but you obviously can.”
Sally wanted to slam the door behind her but it wa
s one of those pneumatic things that whispered, slow and heavy, back into place.
Kenny’s jacket with the One Percent logo: how would Nancy have seen that without binoculars? Dang. If they could turn back time, Sally would score an occasional comeback.
Go on, Sally. Drop an A-bomb once in a while. You’ll feel better.
Screw you, Nancy.
Tom had the body for Lederhosen, but her own husband wouldn’t be caught dead listening to polka, much less dressing for it. Never mind that his Grandpa Burger and hers were cousins, and German blood was not the “foul stream of hereditary evil” that Frank Norris said it was.
She kept her St. Pauli girl dress, her Dirndl, in a box under the bed. Once a year she’d get it out and dance with a few old men who know how to polka. Screw you, Tom! If their marriage was a two-way street, he could humble himself to celebrate Oktoberfest with her.
One day she’d break free of the kitchen and garden, pack her Dirndl and go, somewhere, anywhere, except she’d waited too long. Nowadays, everything was computer chipped, bar-coded, bleeping and traceable. She wouldn’t get as far as the airport. Not that she wanted to run away, not for real, but she needed to believe it was an option.
Connie should have run years ago. Too many smart women ended up under the thumb of assholes (there!) like Don. Screw him.
Screw Kenny, for having broken Connie’s heart. Screw him. Screw him.
Go on, Sally. Drop an F-bomb. You’ll feel better.
Fuck him, she whispered, in her garden, where no one but the pumpkins would hear. Fuck you, Kenny. Fuck fuck fuck Kenny.
“Better to walk alone than to walk with a crowd going in the wrong direction,” Frederick Locke always said. Kenny walked alone now, but still seemed to be heading the wrong way.
His widowed mother, her rubber barn boots, and her shabby old coat had fallen off the face of the earth--and nobody in Falls City had noticed.
Kenny pulled a wrinkled envelope from his shirt pocket, then put it back. He knew his mom’s words by heart. He just didn’t know what they meant. Don’t tear that OP patch off your jacket. Credo Man will find you. Frantic red ink--DESTROY THIS--spilled into the margins.
Get the tongue stud.
This, from the mother who’d disown him for a tattoo, if he ever got one.
Do not under any circumstance go to the police. As if, Mom.
If you don’t have a stupid-phone with GPS, count footsteps.
What did a technophobe like her know about GPS?
FIND SALLY.
God, not that guilt-trip again. If mothers still arranged marriages, he’d be stuck with a girl so dull, she married a guy with the same last name. That altar boy, Tom Burger.
BURN THIS!
He couldn’t burn the letter until he located his mom and had her committed.
He found the house silent, windows covered in tin foil, every appliance unplugged, even the old pink Frigidaire in the kitchen. Kenny made a second pass through kitchen, living room, bedrooms, the god-awful pink ceramic bathroom. The woman kept everything in good shape, “too good” to replace.
Up the steps to the two attic bedrooms with slanted ceilings. The painted wood floor creaked. He heard footsteps behind him.
“Mom?”
Nope. Nobody.
But on the dresser, an envelope he’d swear wasn’t there before. Inside, a photocopy of a girl’s neat handwriting on lined paper: The sounds an old house makes are usually just the wind, but sometimes they’re the footsteps of secret travelers who come from the future.
What the hell. Copy machines didn’t exist when Sally Burger wrote that story, the one her bitch of a sister burned after it won a contest.
Time travelers. How had Sally’s story turn up in this house?
And where was his mother?
Remember the credo. You have nothing to gain by talking to the police and everything to lose. That sounded like him, not his mother. What the hell had she gotten herself into?
He headed out the back door, counted to ten and ended up at the compost heap. She could’ve spelled out what he was looking for.
Halfway up the old maple tree, a wren house stared at him with a dark, accusing eye. He stared back. Goose bumps popped up on his arms, and not just from the north wind that sneaked up and pummeled him.
Whatever his mom had done, or hidden, he knew where to find the next clue.
Lesson #1: The Wish is Father of the Deed
There is no such thing as a ‘friendly chat’ to sort things out with police. Even seemingly casual small talk can come back to haunt you. Anything you say can, and probably will, be used against you.
Sally’s kitchen attracted more visitors than a church bake sale. The warm, welcoming aroma of cinnamon and fresh-brewed custom roast beckoned like a siren to Chief Lawrence Wickham. No surprise, seeing him at her screen door with Officer Cal Corwin, the young and athletic one, a favorite among school kids as Police Pal Cal.
“Door’s open,” Sally called, stashing a sheet of ginger snaps on the stovetop. “Pull up a chair.” Quick as a flash, she had coffee and cookies set out. Before she could ask about Kenny Locke and the One Percent, Cal commented on the crazy weather. Wickham gave him a “don’t get her started” shake of the head, then popped an entire cookie into his mouth and gulped it with coffee.
“So.” Cal aimed a thin smile at Sally. “When did you last see Verna Locke?”
“Verna? I saw her at the court house a few weeks ago.” Wearing those rubber boots in public, Nancy would add with a sneer. “She was up in arms about paying a fine-- for telling some school kids what to do with the chocolate they were pushing.” Sally smiled, but they did not. “Poor woman. She gives up her phone to get shed of solicitors, but those pesky kids get a free pass when they ignore her No Trespassing sign.”
“We got laws against hate speech,” Wickham said gravely. “Shame on her, scaring little kids raising money for their school. She’s so tight, she ...”
No use arguing Verna’s case with these two. Sally had blogged about it, but there was no changing minds already made up. Can’t fight city hall.
“From what little we got out of Kenny,” Cal said, “Verna’s been outta commission for two weeks. Her own son don’t know where she is.”
“Wow.” Sally took her place at the table. “Verna’s missing?”
“She’s gone without a trace,” Cal said. “You’re the only person she was still speaking to. Quite the fan of your Master Naturalist pod-shit.”
Sally sat up straight. “Long before green meant ecologically correct, our grandmas and neighbors, people like Verna Locke, lived resourcefully and --”
Palms up, Wickham blocked her monologue. “Going off the grid is, of course, illegal now.”
“Yeah, that’s crazier than Verna Locke supposedly is. We’re numbered and accounted for and under surveillance. I don’t know how anyone today could slip away unseen.”
“Sounds like you got it all thought out,” Cal said. “You been wanting to slip away?”
Bastard. Sally couldn’t say it, but she thought it loud and clear.
Wickham snarfed another cookie, then cocked an eyebrow at Sally. “Say, do you happen to know where your sister is right now?”
“Connie!” She snagged a breath. “He didn’t hurt her, I hope…?”
The officers exchanged glances. “He, who?” Cal said.
“Her loser of a husband. Who else?”
Wickman made air quotes with his fingers. “Her loser of a husband… ”
“… is dead,” Cal finished. As if they’re rehearsed it.
“Oh!” Sally gasped. The oven timer dinged. She shook her head, then jumped up and pulled out the second batch. Hit the cancel button on the oven. Stash the remaining batter in the fridge. “Oh, my. How did he die?”
Wickham cleared his throat. “We thought you might want to tell us that.”
Sally plunked back into her chair. Solid walnut, this table, these chairs, salvaged from a garage sale, scrape
d and sanded by her and Tom. Solid. The floor, however, shifted beneath her feet like sand through an hourglass.
“Me?”
“You’re a fix-it kind of gal.” Wickham smiled in that fatherly way she tried not to think of as patronizing. “Always the first to tell anyone what went wrong and how it shoulda been done. I’d like to hear your take on it.”
“Hmm.” It was a dubious compliment. She frowned as Cal waltzed around, mug in hand, and sniffed her potted herbs, touched her calendar on the countertop, noted the books shelved in a cupboard without doors.
“Toxins in the Kitchen.” Cal pointed out her books to Wickham. “Safe Canning Practices. All Garden Spiders Are Good. Poisonous Snakes.”
“You still one of those Raptor Re-biller-ators?” Wickham said.
“Raptor and Reptile Rehabilitator? Yes.”
Sally wanted to slap him and demand to know what exactly had happened to Don and Connie.
“This your sewing room?” Cal called from the adjacent sun room. “You still collect old coats and make kids coats out of ‘em?”
The little white pea coat. Sally hadn’t gotten to it yet, but Cal had. He held it up, staring at Sally as if it were a smoking gun.
Wickham leaned in, using his nice-father voice on Sally. “I guess you’d know better than to have a go at a timber rattler.”
“What?” Sally rose in her chair. “I wouldn’t dream of killing a snake.”
“But you dreamed of killing Don, didn’t you?”
Lesson #2: Keep Private Items Out of View
This is common sense: Keep any private items that you don't want others to see out of sight. Legally speaking, police do not need a search warrant in order to confiscate any illegal items that are in plain view.
A trip to the police station was not on Sally’s agenda. Oktoberfest didn’t organize itself any more than a garden pulled its own weeds. Sally was an amateur herpetologist, not a snake charmer.
Freedom's Light: Short Stories Page 18
