He headed toward the Jipp place to see if anything could tell him who did what. Fires were common enough this late in summer. All that kept the whole county from going up were a few spindly arcs of center-pivot irrigation lines. But at the Jipp place last night, there’d been no lightning, no electricity to short, no grain-bin dust to combust. Somebody had to have gone there with fire on hand.
He sped west and rumbled over the narrow, wood-planked bridge spanning the Wakonda. The creek was low, a trickle in its gouge of dirt. Past its straggling trees, pastures rolled out and up, windmills sprouting barely taller than a man. They didn’t need to be higher. There was wind enough close to the earth.
He slowed, made the right on the county oil, then a left on the old Schleswig-Holstein. The road divided the north and south halves of the square-mile section. Ziske’s and the home place were to the south, and to the north all but the Old German Cemetery was now Lonny Logemann’s land. The road was flanked by fences, no right-of-way to speak of. To the left, Ziske had tarnished barbwire and knotty, writhing posts. On the right, Logemann had put in T-posts and electric line, leaving a gap for access to the cemetery and the abandoned Jipp place behind it.
Lonny was the one who’d seen the fire, thanks to his unremitting dedication to closing down the Avark every night. Taking this back road to his place, he’d seen a distant glow, then sped home to call it in. He was lucky he hadn’t taken out his new fence.
Harley slowed and made the right toward the deserted Jipp homestead, what was left of the house and barn and outbuildings. As the Fury passed the graveyard, grass brushed the wheel wells and undercarriage.
Harley walked a lap around the squat, square building whose stucco kept the wood from being sandblasted away. The hipped roof was punctured with holes the fire crew had hacked to vent heat and smoke.
Around back, he watched his step, remembering a storm cellar whose doors had rotted away or been scavenged. He knew the Jipp place. He’d spent time here with the Carberry girl, Marylene, one summer in high school.
The dim recollection reminded him of running across Red’s girl last night. She’d worn a wedding band but didn’t correct him when he called her a Reinhardt. He opted not to dissect what that meant.
In the front room, floral paper peeled from the walls. Collapsed plaster littered the floor. A black scorch ran up the wall behind an old cast-iron stove. He passed it, into a wide, open entryway to the back of the house. The fire left the single room there untouched. Its walls’ only adornment was a negative shadow of off-white where a cross once hung.
In the far back corner was the space he’d shared with Marylene. All he remembered was an image like a blurry snapshot, ruined by a finger over the lens. A patch of blue from a slip or skirt, a haze of skin—his or hers, he didn’t know. The rest, the feeling or anything said, was long gone.
What was there now was a pair of Wonder Bread bags. They were stuffed with crumpled paper napkins and bits of crust. Beside them sat two gallon-sized bottles of Cutty Sark. One was drained and empty. The other held a good carton’s worth of cigarette butts, Salem filters. Judging by the number, whoever left them had either frequented or holed up in the house awhile. Days, at least. And the liquid still pooled at the bottle’s bottom said they’d been here recently. As recently as last night, when the fire broke out.
Harley went to the front room again. With the toe of his boot, he flipped smoke-stained hunks of plaster until a glimpse of bright yellow caught his eye. He squatted and lifted away the layer of ceiling.
There on the floor, melted into the wood, was a triangle of familiar yellow mesh. The plastic was attached to what remained of an adjustable hat brim. A DeKalb hat brim. And though a free hat from a seed company that gave away hundreds wasn’t enough to connect the theft and the fire, the screw-back American Legion lapel pin that pierced the fabric of Jack Christiansen’s was.
Still squatting, Harley spotted an odd dark spot on a strip of fallen wallpaper. Wet newsprint had bled through itself, but what was left of Tuesday’s Pickard Post-Gazette’s masthead was clear enough to read.
He used a strip of lath to sift ashes in the stove’s potbelly and heard a tinny rustling. He reached in, felt against powder that deadened his touch, and pulled out what looked to be a jean rivet or the base of a snap. He sifted. Buttons, zipper teeth, a pair of overall buckles. Remnants of clothing, all of it. All lit up with balled pages of newsprint and, given the stink and pour patterns, more than a splash of gas for good measure. Beneath the broken plaster, more burnt clothes. They’d been arranged in a tidy semicircle pile around the stove.
Scraps of hat in hand, Harley returned to the station. Glenn asked how the night went. Harley listed the calls: Tvrdy’s cow, Doris Luschen’s fall, the Jipp fire. He dropped what was left of Jack’s hat on the corner of Glenn’s desk. “From the fire.”
Glenn’s short fingers reached toward the brim but didn’t touch it. He folded his forearms on the desk. “Anything else?”
Harley told him about the bread wrappers, the drained bottles, the cigarette butts. As he did, he tried to recall if he’d seen Paul smoke Salems. Or any cigarettes at all. Paul no doubt smoked. No doubt smoked more than cigarettes.
Glenn swept a hand over his shining scalp like he was pushing back phantom strands. “Don’t go jumping straight to Reddick.”
Harley wondered if he had a tell, like a bad poker player. “I get you want to tread light, but should we rule it out? He lives three doors down from the Christiansens’, recently known to frequent empty houses—mother’s history of burning trash naked?” Harley went to his desk and pulled out a blank patrol activity report. “Hell, I don’t know—some fixation on clothes, setting fires. You know what they say about apples falling from trees.” He said it aloud without thinking, without considering his own trees.
The phone rang. Harley steeled himself for Ziske’s bark, but it was Carol signing off. She wasn’t so abrasive when she wasn’t sputtering from a radio speaker, though she still had an unfortunate pinched, nasal quality. She said Doris Luschen had a stroke in the ambulance, which meant a stroke was likely what’d landed her in the cellar to begin with. They’d got her to the hospital, but it was touch-and-go. Carol thought Harley would want to know. He thanked her before hanging up.
“You got enough notes to do the patrol report next shift?” Glenn said.
Harley told him he did.
“Then clock out.” Glenn took his focus off the hat and put it distractedly on Harley. “Go do whatever it is you do.”
The same line ended all Harley’s work weeks. In better spirits, Glenn took wild stabs at Harley’s off-duty existence. Moonshining, taxidermy, running guns for the IRA. Harley never burst the bubble by mentioning groceries or yard work, though that was a fair chunk of it. He usually let himself sleep a little past nightfall, ate dinner for breakfast, and after the TV stations signed off he’d put on a record or read a book. Drink more Jim Beam than he needed to. Soberer mornings, he’d pop down to the Avark when Frank was still the only one there. The two of them threw darts.
“Just don’t let me hear about it,” Glenn said, as usual, but without the guesswork.
Harley paper clipped his notes to the blank report. “There’s a reason he’s the usual suspect, Glenn. Vern Sawyer’s flipped Che- velle? Ferguson girl at the quarry? Wagner kid with the stolen snowmobile—”
“Six years, Harley. That game of chicken was six years back. Ferguson girl’s been dead four. The Wagner thing—only kids we even know were there was Wagner and the brother who called it in.”
“Because the rest scattered. It was eight degrees. We know more were there. We saw the tracks.”
“Reddick might have a knack for giving people just enough rope. I’ll grant you that.” Glenn used a pen to poke the burnt DeKalb hat like it might’ve been a dead squirrel. “But getting people to do thickheaded, senseless things don’t explain whatever the hell this is.”
Harley supposed it didn’t. Which wasn’t a
comfort.
When he left, he resolved to clear his head. Get his mind off everything. He mowed the narrow strip of fescue between the house and its chain-link fence. The grass hadn’t grown since last week, but he did it anyway, to wear himself out. It was quick work, since what there was of a yard he kept unadorned, though Sherry had planted a patch of peonies the last spring she’d been around. Harley would let them go till fall, then mow over them. He’d done that the first year, thinking it would be the end of the patch. Apparently it was just an effective way to keep peonies.
He showered, poured himself a drink, and lay on the couch. Hollywood Squares flipped on the thirteen-inch screen. When he’d finished the bourbon with a rushed gulp that burned metallic, he shut his eyes. All he saw behind his lids was the lapel pin. Its blue enamel and brass were charred, but the ridged points and the stamped US were still plenty clear.
At the Christiansens’ place, Glenn said he couldn’t begin to guess why, much less who. Harley had a good notion about the who. The why was what had him concerned. But he didn’t suspect a little sleep would make it any clearer.
8
THAT AFTERNOON, Pam sat at the kitchen table, the night before and trying to leave lingering like a dream. All day she’d had a sensation like the one she’d heard came before a lightning strike. She waited for it: a bolt of the kind of holy retribution she didn’t even believe in.
Singer machine ready to go in front of her, she was pinning an iron-on denim patch that’d come loose in the crotch of Rick’s work jeans. Work jeans. Like he owned a pair of jeans that wasn’t all covered in tar and paint and chew and snot. She tried to pay attention but kept pricking herself with the pushpins. Between winces, she caught glimpses of Anna in the living room. She was uncharacteristically hyper, rolling back and forth on the shag carpet in front of the TV. Whenever a tan limb whipped past the periphery, Pam reminded herself: she had not tried to kill Anna.
Every time she sat down and tried to sew, every time since Anna was two, it was this same thing. Pam telling herself: she had not tried to kill Anna. And she’d replay what she’d seen. She’d seen Anna sitting on the diamond-patterned linoleum. She’d seen Anna’s chubby little fingers pinched around that sharp, shining needle. And she’d seen Anna sitting right next to the wall socket. That was what Pam had seen. That was what she’d known. Then she’d looked down at a tangle of red thread tumbling up from the bobbin, and she’d untangled it. In the background, the deep electric thump-hum, the silence, the catching of Anna’s breath, the yowl.
But that’d been it. Anna was fine, and now she knew better than to mess with the outlets. Even Babe always said there was nothing wrong with letting kids make mistakes. It was how they learned.
Pam didn’t know if Anna remembered. But each time Pam snapped about the least little thing and saw that stare, she couldn’t help wondering.
Pam pinched three pins between her lips and kept an eye on Anna rolling in and out of view. She’d lost her baby fat, like her legs and arms had grown into the extra bulk that used to dimple at the knees and ankles, the elbows and wrists. Her dark brown hair, nearly black last winter, was still downy and thin, but it spilled to her shoulders.
With the patch pinned in place, Pam pulled the waist of Rick’s jeans over the machine’s base and pressed the treadle. The needle made a hiccup of a stitch and pulled the bobbin thread up through the fabric, loose and tangled.
A skit played on Sesame Street. A song that was the numbers one through twelve. In the corner of Pam’s eye, Anna rolled and jerked back and forth, singing it over and over.
Pam wound back the hand wheel and pulled away the fabric to find the bobbin thread a tangle.
Anna rolled and jerked, and the numbers started over: One-two-three-four—
“Anna.” The pins dropped from Pam’s lips and bounced when they hit the fabric in her lap. She maneuvered the denim slowly, tried to spot them before they fell beneath her bare feet. She ducked her head below the table and scanned the linoleum.
A brush at her elbow made her jump so she knocked her skull against the table edge. Anna stood at her side. She held out a pin that had dropped to the floor. She stared, concerned, with those gigantic brown eyes. Eyes like those paintings of the girls with huge heads and Twiggy hairdos and tiny, rail-thin bodies. Not Pam’s eyes, which were hazel. And normal-sized.
Pam took the pin.
Anna looked down, eyebrows knit, scanning the linoleum for the others.
“I’ll get them,” Pam told her. “Go watch TV.”
She went back to the space in front of the TV and sat cross-legged, no longer a flurry of limbs. Ernie and Bert, Anna’s favorites, rattled back and forth at each other. Bert had a purple hand, for some reason.
Pam sifted through the denim for the pins and found them. At the edge of her vision, Anna sat too still. She wasn’t pouting. She didn’t pout. Of course she didn’t. That would’ve been like Pam was when she was a kid. No, Anna was biding her time, Pam thought. Anna was biding her time until she was old enough she no longer had to live with the gathering wall cloud that was Pam.
A tear of sweat ran down the back of Pam’s knee with a tingle. The tingle froze her for a second, and she waited for that bolt of lightning. It didn’t come. She scratched.
“Put on your shoes,” she said. “It’s too hot. I need some air.”
Anna disappeared down the hall. Pam grabbed her purse from the chair beside her. The bills were still there in wads, though she’d pushed them to the bottom in case Rick walked by the bag. He never dug around in there. Even if she told him to grab something from it, he’d hand the straps over and let her dig. But then, he’d never walked past it and seen wads of cash sitting there, either.
When they got to Gordon’s, the air was arctic-cold. The store was Madson’s nineteenth-century mercantile equivalent to a department store. The building was narrow but two stories, with brick walls that stretched high to a pressed-tin ceiling. Upstairs, in the clothing section, Pam picked through a pile of men’s sale jeans for a thirty-two waist, thirty-four inseam. They were out. She went to women’s.
Pam sorted through a rack of plaid blouses with mother-of-pearl snaps. She held a hanger to her shoulders and the fabric to her waist. Anna played her usual game, crawling beneath the hanging clothes and huddling at the middle of the carousel displays.
The tag on the blouse read $4.99. She looked over the lines and circles of racks for a red clearance sign. She spotted a 40% OFF across the way.
Scraping hangers against the rack, Pam flipped through halter tops and spaghetti straps. She looked through the smalls and mediums before she realized Anna was still at the other end of the department, tucked away somewhere between men’s blazers and coveralls. Pam lifted her chin and opened her mouth to call Anna’s name, but nothing came out.
Instead, Pam’s legs moved even and slow down the stairs to housewares. She picked through a stack of thick white bath towels. She pulled them out, whipped them loose, and inspected them. She gathered up a stack of four and hugged them to her chest. She passed the pots and pans, passed the small appliances, and listened to the creak of wood beneath her footsteps toward the register.
There, she put the towels on the counter and eyed the pear-shaped saleswoman whose perm was like an unshorn sheep. She was back in the office, paging through a stack of papers. Pam tried to remember her name. Not Gordon. Nelson. Helen Nelson.
“Mrs. Nelson?” Pam’s palms were slicked with sweat.
The woman glanced above a pair of bifocals. She made her way over, using the long counter for balance. The way she moved was slow, listing back and forth. By the time she made it to the register, it was all Pam could do to keep from thrusting the terry-cloth stack at her.
“Hot out there, ain’t it?” The woman didn’t look at Pam. She said it to the price tag she squinted at. She nudged her bifocals up then let them slide down the bridge of her nose. She punched numbers into the register and read the total.
Pam did
n’t hear it. She opened her bag and rifled for what seemed like a convincing stretch of time.
“They still calling for rain this weekend?” Helen Nelson readied a bag for the towels.
“Shoot,” Pam said. “I think I forgot my billfold in the car.”
“Probably won’t cool it down anyway. Probably make it muggy.”
“Let me run out and get it.” She listened for footsteps behind her or taps from the level above.
Helen said that was fine. She’d leave the towels right here on the counter. She toddled back toward the office.
Pam turned, breath held, ready to see Anna standing there. But there was no sign of her.
Pam walked. She walked the short distance to the blinding sun of the double doors and took a breath. She squeezed the handle and pushed through. Beneath her sandals’ soles, she felt the unforgiving iron of the top step and the groaning boards of every step that followed. As she crossed the concrete sidewalk, the heavy heat pressed into her skin, a sudden relief from the indoor cold. The tingling sensation that lightning was about to strike was gone. The Nova sat waiting at the curb.
She got in. She watched the front windows of Gordon’s. Nothing moved. No one watched. She pulled the keys from her purse and started the car. She calculated what the ninety wadded-up dollars in her purse could do. Two tanks could get her six, seven hours away, and she’d still have about seventy to spare. Foot on the brake, she slipped the gearshift into reverse.
Helen Nelson knew Babe, but she might not make the connection. Pam could call from some gas station pay phone, tell Babe or Dad where Anna was, then hang up.
A snatch of white flashed in the store window, then disappeared. Pam’s foot was still on the brake. She let off slowly, releasing it. She rolled straight back into the street without checking to see if it was clear. She watched the front stoop of Gordon’s recede like she was pulled away by a tide.
The car drifted to a stop on the slight rise of pavement behind her. Helen Nelson came waddling out to the top step. She threw up an arm whose underside flapped like a fitted sheet on a clothesline. Her other arm trailed down at an angle. Pam didn’t trace the line to see where it ended. She knew what she’d see.
Pickard County Atlas Page 7
