The Nova blocked the whole of Main. A mint-green pickup had slowed to an idle and kept its distance. The driver waited, no doubt unsure what to do. Helen Nelson stared. The look of panic and confusion drained from her face. She waited, like the pickup, keeping her distance. She looked through the windshield like she was trying to read Pam’s eyes.
Pam put the car in drive and pulled forward into the parking space. She cut the engine and got out. Slowly, the pickup behind her coasted by, not picking up to normal speed till after the intersection.
Pam walked to the base of the steps. Without conviction, she said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She rubbed at the top of her forehead. The gesture shaded her eyes.
“Left your billfold at home, I suppose.” The woman kept her face a flat mask, her voice flatter. “Was about to go get it and forgot somebody.” She still gripped Anna’s small hand. Anna stood unmoving. Pam couldn’t look at her, just made out her figure. “Not a mother, probably, till you’ve done it.”
Pam tried to give an embarrassed smile of relief, but she couldn’t muster one. When she finally did meet Helen’s eyes, they looked away, to Anna, who wasn’t staring like Pam was a gathering storm. Anna looked at Pam like she saw the wreckage of a tornado already passed. With a worn-out sadness that didn’t fit a three-year-old, Anna stared like she’d seen some terrible inevitability.
The nerves itched in Pam’s skin. Anna let go of Helen’s hand and slowly, carefully made her way down the steps.
9
AFTER THEY’D MEASURED and cut holes for ducts and pipe, Rick and Paul put up the belly. Each worked along an opposite trailer side with a hammer. Rick had a mean cramp in his shoulder and a crick in his neck, and the work was slow. But the point was to stall Paul anyway, to keep him from going after that cop.
Paul hadn’t said a word about Jensen or the drugs since morning, a good sign he was cooling off. He’d been mostly silent, outside of the occasional limerick, sometimes a jingle. He’d told a story about some kid who’d wanted to show off a snowmobile he’d stolen, show how fast it’d go. Rick had heard about it. He just didn’t know Paul had been there when it happened. Kid ran straight through a barbwire fence, Paul said. Had to get an arm chopped off at the elbow. Lucky he didn’t get decapitated, Paul said.
Now he called out in a girlish high pitch, “Mister Wizard—” He stretched the words so they sounded like they came from a ghost or the bottom of a well. “Mister Wizard,” he said again. “I don’t want to be a mobile home repairman no more.”
For whatever reason, it hit Rick just right. He choked out a winded laugh. Paul had timing like that. Like he could sense Rick was ready to scream and start hacking at shit with the claw end of the hammer. Paul knew when misery was stretched taut as it got and sensed just when to pluck it.
At times like that, Rick thought Paul might turn out all right. Maybe all he needed was to get some shit out of his system. It made sense he’d have some shit to get out of his system. He’d only ever known upside down and aftermath. But maybe at some point he’d find somebody like Rick found Pam, have a kid like Rick had Anna. Maybe all Paul needed was some people who needed him to keep it together. Somebody needing him might put things in perspective. That was what Paul needed. Perspective.
Rick drove in the last couple nails and told Paul they might as well call it a day. They’d run the ductwork and water lines, put in the new floor tomorrow. Paul said that was fine. He was taking off, then.
“Help me load tools,” Rick said. “I’ll give you money for the motel.”
“Much as a night in a motel sounds appealing,” Paul said, “the thought of spending it with my brother doesn’t trip my trigger.”
Rick lay still in the dirt as he heard Paul shimmy. “Dad wants this shit done tomorrow.” Rick’s voice buzzed against the tarp. “You leave now, you won’t be here at dawn. We need to lay new subfloor. Carpet.”
The side of the van slid open. Tools jangled where Paul tossed them in. “Too much on the agenda, brother. Find Mom, seek vengeance, hot date with a little blond number.”
“We ain’t even run pipes.”
“Got other pipe to attend to. Needs a good run,” Paul said. “That entendre didn’t work like I hoped. But suffice it to say I’ll be back. Maybe not at dawn, but this piece of shit’ll be here.”
“Don’t go after the fucking cop, Paul.”
“Won’t have to, I suspect. He generally comes to me. You got the pipe was a metaphor? For my penis?”
Paul’s pickup door squealed open. Rick slid from beneath the trailer and yelled Paul’s name, told him to hold up. He did, though the door slammed shut.
“Listen,” Rick told him when he reached the open window. He wasn’t sure what he planned to say.
Paul waited, head back and jaw clenched, eyes halfway lidded like he was barely tolerating the delay.
Rick weighed his options. He could tell Paul about the speed. He could go get the pills from the van and chuck them at the dumbass.
“You got something to say, then?” Paul said.
But the problem with telling Paul about the speed was this: Paul trusted him. And that said something. Paul trusted nobody. He never had any grounds to. Trust was something that came from knowing you could depend on people besides yourself.
Rick searched for something. Anything. He caught a whiff of aluminum sealant and saw the bucket from yesterday in the pickup bed. “What’s the roof coat for?”
“Favor.”
“It’s near empty.”
“Small job. You got something to say, say it.”
“I was thinking,” Rick said. “Maybe the cop did you a favor. Got rid of the speed without pressing charges like he did the ludes.”
“What?”
“Maybe he keeps tabs so you’ll stay out of trouble.”
“You mean he’s looking out for me?” One of his eyebrows cocked a bit. “Kind of like a father figure?”
“Sure. I don’t know. Sure. Something like that.”
Paul looked about as somber as Rick had seen him. Like it’d really struck him. Then he said, “That’s touching, Rick. That touches my heart.”
Sometimes Rick wanted to grab that head of long, stringy hair and slam it straight into whatever was hardest and closest by.
“Didn’t say you had to clock out, you know,” Paul said. “Work all night if you want. Hell, I’d give you that speed if I still had it. That’d keep you up.” He gave a wink and started the pickup. Over the rumble of the motor, the tape deck restarted and Robert Plant screamed the first Hey, hey, Mama of “Black Dog.” Paul threw the gear in reverse and shot backward. He gave a short wave before peeling out in a cloud of dust.
Rick stood and watched the tailgate draw down to a pinpoint.
He went to the van for his dip. He’d taken it out of his back pocket so he could spend the day lying on his back. His shoulder ached from hammering at a bad angle, and the tingle from the wad in his gum would take his mind off the cramp. It’d take his mind off wanting to knock some sense into that little son of a bitch.
So much for keeping an eye on Paul. And now Rick was committed to taking two, three days on this thing, which meant Pam would spend the night alone back home, getting all worked up about nothing. Rick pulled himself into the driver’s seat and reached over to the passenger-side floor. He grabbed a Falstaff from the Styrofoam cooler and pulled the tab.
Then again, if he spent the money for the motel on gas instead, he’d still have receipts. Hell, he might even save Dad a couple bucks. Rick could run back home, not leave Pam there alone overnight. He wouldn’t get as early a start tomorrow, but Paul was always late anyway.
Dad said to get it done in two days. Rick could do it. He needed daylight and Paul to get the carpet done, but the pipe was cut. The only thing left was to run the lines, solder the couplings. That and put in new ductwork. He could do all that himself. And it didn’t matter a whole hell of a lot whether it was light out or dark. It was night beneath
the trailer as it was.
With the speed, Paul said, Rick could work all night if he had to.
Rick set the beer in the console and held the steering wheel for balance. He reached below the seat and stretched with the arm whose shoulder cramped. He felt the grooves of the metal floorboard till he heard the crinkle of cellophane.
10
HARLEY WOKE TO THE KITCHEN PHONE clanging on the wall. The thirteen-inch set glowed from the end table past his socks, static slowly flipping with a black bar border. The glow defeated the purpose of the front-room curtains, but he still managed to knock his shin on the coffee table. It was dark out, he realized. No light bled in around the drapes.
It was Glenn on the phone. Harley tried to make out the oven clock, see how much he’d overslept. Then he remembered he couldn’t have. Tonight was off. He alternated shifts with Ray Ecklund. Each worked four on, three off one week, then three on, four off the next. This was the next. Wednesday night was supposed to be off.
“Ecklund’s hurt,” Glenn said, voice thick from waking. “Broke his ankle, they think.” Lonny Logemann had called dispatch, said somebody was driving around the Jipp place. Lonny thought it could be the arsonist. A criminal returning to the scene of the crime like in some detective show. When Ecklund got there, he’d walked around back and swore up and down somebody’d tripped him. He landed in the open storm cellar. Tripped on an animal, Glenn guessed. “Possum?” he said. Whatever it was scurried away in the grass. Any rate, he needed somebody to cover patrol.
Harley’s eyes groggily fixed on the TV screen’s black border as it rose, hesitated, and disappeared to reappear at the bottom. The sound of his own voice woke him. “Lonny get a look at the vehicle?”
Too dark, Glenn said. All he caught was headlamps and taillights.
“Yeah, I’ll head out.”
Glenn didn’t answer but stayed on the line. “Carol called again this morning,” he finally said. “After you left. About Doris Luschen.”
“Not looking good?”
“She passed.”
Harley remembered the pale foot at the bottom of the cellar steps. The breakfast dishes she didn’t want anyone to see. For a second, he was tempted to go over and wash them.
“Yeah, I’ll head out,” he said again and hung up.
Anybody could’ve been driving around the Jipp place, gawking because of the fire. This time of night, it was likely a carful of bored kids, probably from town, since there weren’t many in the country anymore. Still, as Harley pulled a fresh undershirt from the dryer, he pictured the red tailgate of an F-250, partly hidden by tall grass and saplings.
He drove out to the Jipps’ and did a quick walk-through to see if anything looked changed since morning. Nothing he could see.
On his way back to the cruiser, something rustled. He scanned the grass with his flashlight and listened. It stopped. Probably Ecklund’s possum.
Since the firebug had holed up in the Jipp place awhile, Harley checked other abandoned homesteads, ones off the beaten path on county roads. He checked the Schneider place, then the Rasmussen house. Both had stood empty since the fifties, the land snatched up by neighbors with shiny new combines no good for anything but wheat. The houses were boarded up and locked.
At the Carberry farm, when he got out and walked the perimeter, he heard a low hum like a distant engine. The house sat a ways off the gravel on a level spread. He aimed the flashlight gleam toward the road. It dissipated in a mist, short of anything there to see.
Harley’s nerves were just shot, either from chronic lack of sleep or waking in a panic. Every rustle of brush, every snapping twig sent a little jolt down his neck and shoulders. He headed back to the Fury.
The home place wasn’t off the beaten path, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt to head over there, take a cursory glance. He made his way to County Road K and headed north to the highway.
As he drove past, in the sliver of dark between the house and barn, a red glow of flame pulsated in a jagged, off-kilter rhythm.
He pulled off the highway’s edge. Where they held the wheel, his palms throbbed, steady. He made the wide turn into the drive, slipped the cruiser into the grass between the house and windbreak, and got out. Each snap of the dry wild rye beneath his boots shot another twinge down his neck. He made a pass around the back bumper, ensured the car was shielded from highway view, and grabbed the thick wool blanket he kept in the trunk. He’d use it to put out the brush fire, if that was what he’d even seen.
He listened above his breath and footsteps as he crossed the yard and passed between the house and barn to the back.
The glow came from the burn barrel near the root cellar door. The flames were low, the fire small or dying out. An acrid stink, stinging and sharp, rose from the smoke.
He swiped his flashlight across the property. He swept the beam over the back stoop, the windbreak, the pile of splintered wagon wood. Nobody.
The flames came from a smaller barrel inside the barrel, like an odd set of nesting dolls. The fire ran low along the bottom and licked up the sides. He wadded the blanket in a loose ball, held his breath against the fumes, and pushed the dense fabric in to smother the flame. He used the wool to pull out the bucket. It was a five-gallon metal can of roof coating. Harley didn’t know how easy the stuff combusted or how long it burned. For all he knew, the bucket itself could’ve been here already the other day.
He knew he should check the house. For an instant, he pictured Paul peering from one of the windows, watching him come here again. He remembered Glenn saying Harley was jumping to conclusions. Maybe so. But burn barrels, fires, clothes and nakedness, each seemed like a pinprick of light in a constellation whose figure Harley couldn’t make out.
He went around front. In the starlight, the porch roof sagged, slowly detaching itself. The pull shades in both upstairs windows were split into curls. He mounted the steps, skipping the third, which creaked, to the entry reserved for strangers. The door yawned open with a sigh that filled his head. His memory filled in the sound that’d always followed, the pats of her feet, the dry scratch of the straw broom. That was the only time this door opened, when his mother swatted a cloud of dust and lint.
He took a breath of outside air like he could bring it inside with him. He scanned the front room with the flashlight. The space was smaller than he remembered. The ceiling too high. The night’s light was dampened by the trees outside, though the kitchen entryway to the right glowed bluish. He didn’t look there.
A high-pitched scrape behind the door froze him where he stood. He waited. When it scraped again, he pulled the door back to see a branch drag against the front window. Below it, on the floor, two cigarette butts and three empty cans. Two Buds and a Coors.
He squatted. The cans were warm. Empty. There was no telling how long they’d been here. And the butts weren’t Salems. A Marlboro and a Camel. The Marlboro was bent, flattened into the hardwood. He pried it loose. An oval scorch melted through the layers of wax she’d worked into the boards. She’d used one of Dad’s old shirts that’d passed the point of mending.
Harley always told himself the house was safe from intruders, set right by the highway as it was. When he’d done the walk-through in ’60, when they’d searched for the boy’s body, the place had been undisturbed. He’d reminded himself of that this morning, when he’d picked up the receiver to call Loren Braasch about getting the house locked up. Harley had hung up before dialing a single digit.
Because there’d been no way to broach the subject. Harley had spent the bulk of his life keeping his distance from this place, assuring people he was as cut off from what happened here as they were. He had to. Otherwise every third interaction was June Christiansen in her bedroom, looking at him like he was a drowned puppy. People evidently needed that. They needed to know you could overcome a thing like what happened here and keep going. That or you were just broken—more broken than they’d ever be. That worked fine, too. The one thing they couldn’t abide was that
you just lived with it. You drank and slept and did laundry with it. You waited at the DMV and clocked in and out with it.
He picked the char. When he looked away and took a breath, it was no good. Stagnant air filled his chest, and the black spot clung to his vision. The glow of the kitchen entryway pressed at his back. Who knew what he’d find in there? What trash kids left piled in corners. What words they’d scrawled or carved into the paint and plaster. He pictured the door to her bedroom directly above. Dad hadn’t ever cleared it out. He’d locked the door and slept here, where the davenport had been, the same shotgun she’d used tucked between the wood claw legs.
Harley wasn’t sure what would be worse, seeing the place wrecked or his reaction if it was. Like his dad, Harley knew some doors were best left shut.
He debated. He needed to do a walk-through. Take mental inventory. But he also knew no chain-smoking firebug was here. He could tell that much from the air. Not just the lack of smoke. The staleness and weight of it.
Outside, an engine hummed on the highway. The sound was distant but nearing. He gathered the cans and butts and walked out on the porch. He dropped the debris and kicked a can that landed underfoot. He made his way down the steps to the cruiser’s back bumper as the hum grew steadily louder, the roll of tires more distinct. He leaned back against the trunk and pulled a cigarette from the soft pack in his pocket. The lighter clanked. He stood, obscured by the brush, and watched the highway. After his cigarette lit, the car slowed and passed.
11
PAM CREPT FROM THE BEDROOM into the hall, purse and sandals in hand. All afternoon and evening, the image of Helen Nelson’s averted eyes, of Anna’s desolate stare from the store stoop had her tingling again, waiting for that lightning bolt. It hadn’t struck. What had was that she’d stopped at the Mobil station on the way home from Gordon’s and filled the tank.
Pickard County Atlas Page 8
