by G M Eppers
“Thank you,” I said, my own stomach growling despite not being particularly fond of beans.
Just then, Ban came out of the women’s room and Roxy went in. Fergie came out of the men’s room and Butte went in. Fergie went right up to Jimmy and called him by name. “Jimmy, hey there. How’s the old man?”
“Still old,” Jimmy said, slapping Fergie on the shoulder. “You with these nice folks? I was just telling them I had another one of those tourists looking for Fargo.”
“Again?” Evidently, Fergie had heard of this phenomenon before. I suspected it myself. There were too many misleading references floating around. Aside from the film and the TV series, there was now a theme park in Bemidji which included a roller coaster named the Wood Chipper. When they say keep your arms inside, they mean it. Then there’s the Broadway musical and the show-stopper toe-tapper called “Yah, Geez, You Know.” Even people who had never seen the play knew that song.
“Two in one day!” Jimmy responded. “Blue sedan and that yellow pickup a few hours ago.”
There was a moment of silence in which I noticed the sound of crickets.
“Yellow pickup?” Fergie asked Jimmy.
“Yah, Dad told me about it. He had the shop at the time. I was picking up Junior from hockey practice.”
“Jimmy, I’d like to talk to your father.”
The restroom line was moving ahead of me, but I didn’t want to leave. I willed my bladder to dry up.
The two of them started moving toward the station proper, and I followed. “Oh, you girls get on the bus,” said Fergie. “I want to leave as soon as I get the details.”
It was only his use of the plural that caused me to notice that Ban and Sylvia had joined us. “Oh, we’re not missing this,” said Ban. “Lead on, McDuff.”
I declined to correct her misquotation. It had been misquoted for so long it was a quotation in its own right. My bladder had refused to listen to my will, though, and I implored them to wait for me, promising to be the fastest urinater this side of the Mississippi. By then, Knobby had finished fueling the bus. He closed up the pump and hurried into the men’s room, coming out shortly after me still wiping his hands on a paper towel, which he tossed into the bin near the door as we followed Jimmy into the station. There was the usual collection of conveniences for slightly inflated prices and a small checkout counter with a cash register. Jimmy got us all into the place, then turned the lock on the door and flipped the sign so “open” was on the inside. I just had time to see that outside now read “Credit Only. Please Pay at the Pump.” He leaned over the counter to reach something. “Just turning off the Cash Only pump. Gundergard’s is all about options, but we’re going to want no interruptions.” He wiggled a finger for us to follow and led us to the back and then up a staircase to the second floor where their living quarters were. Before we even got there, we could hear a television set. The Minnesota Vikings were playing someone or other.
“Dad’s hard of hearing since his stroke last year and won’t let us forget it. Stubborn old coot,” he said as we rounded a landing and came upon a well-kept family room. The quarters were small, but included a sizeable kitchen through an open doorway. Closed doors hid other rooms. Jimmy spoke up to be heard above the TV. “How many for green bean casserole?” Jimmy asked. Everyone raised their hands, some to be polite, some out of hunger, and some, like me, a bit of both, I was sure. “I’ll get those going while you talk to Dad. Speak loud and clear and you should be okay. He’s picking up lip reading pretty good, so it helps to stand where he can see you, too. He’s over here in his recliner.” Jimmy stepped in front of the burgundy Laz-E-Boy. “Dad!” He shouted. “Dad, we got some visitors. They’re interested in that yellow pickup you told me about.”
“Eh?” His father, who looked old enough to have seen the turn of two centuries, tried to wave his son away. “You’re blocking the TV, Jimmy!”
“Dad!” Jimmy waved Fergie forward to join him. “Fergie is here! He wants to ask you about a yellow pickup.”
“Well, ain’t that nice! Eggs.”
All of us looked at each other as if we’d had strokes of our own.
The old man noticed and got irritated. “You heard me. Eggs. We need eggs. Fergie wants to pick up something for us, we need eggs. Now watch it, the game is on!” He tilted one way and another in the chair to try to see the television around Jimmy and Fergie.
Jimmy, loving, patient son that he was, squatted down in front of his father. “No, Dad, listen.” He pointed to his father with two fingers then to his own eyes. “A yellow pick up. They’re looking for someone.”
“Nope, don’t want any gum. Can’t chew that stuff anymore. Tobaccy would be nice. Haven’t had good chewing tobaccy in a coon’s age.”
There was a collective intake of breath at the metaphor.
Fergie put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “Let me. You work on the casseroles. You got some to-go containers?”
Jimmy rose. “Sure do. Good luck, Fergie. He’s had better days. I’m sorry.” He retired to the kitchen.
Now Fergie squatted in front of the chair, clearing the man’s view of the television. He saw the remote on the arm of the chair and grabbed it, lowering the volume in one swift move. “You don’t need it loud to watch football, Mr. Gundergard.” He still shouted as if the volume was high, though it was now at a normal listening level.
“Gramps?” The sudden relative quiet had apparently wakened a young boy who was sleeping on the couch. Living here, I thought, the kid would be legally deaf before high school. He appeared to be about eight years old, dressed in Minnesota Wild NHL flannel pajamas, which were revealed when he threw the blankets off to see what had interrupted the noise. His eyes turned into saucers as he saw the crowd of people in his living room. “Holy –,” he cut himself off before he could get in trouble for cursing. “Dad!” He threw himself off the couch, stuck his bare feet into a pair of slippers that resembled hockey pucks, and ran bravely past us, realizing quickly that his father was in the kitchen. “Dad, what are all these people doing here?”
“Now, Junior, you didn’t recognize me?” Fergie asked, feigning hurt feelings.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Ferguson.” He took a couple of steps toward us again, checking us all out with his eight-year-old sensibilities. “Whoa, a lady pirate! This is evil, Dad!” I was thankful that Roxy’s red velvet outfit was covered by the ranger parka. It was possible this kid still believed in Santa Claus and seeing someone like Roxy dressed up in red velvet could really scar the poor kid. I caught Sylvia shooting me a look that could have melted a circuit board, but she didn’t object out loud to the pirate label.
Jimmy turned from the stove where he was stirring a big pot of green bean mixture over a high flame to heat it quickly. “Jimmy, go sleep in the bedroom. We have adult business to take care of.”
“But, Dad!” For one thing, the boy was now fully awake. For another thing, I didn’t blame him for being upset about being excluded.
“Wait,” I said. “Junior, do you spend a lot of time with your grandfather?”
“When I’m not in school or at hockey practice. Dad’s downstairs, and I’m up here with Gramps.”
I didn’t crouch down. I almost didn’t have to. But I put one hand on his shoulder. “Listen, we need to ask Gramps some questions and maybe you can help us.” The boy was looking us over again. I slipped off the ranger parka and showed him the back of my vest. “We’re CURDS agents. Do you know what CURDS is?”
“The Uber police,” he said. “Is this about Clara?”
“You know about Clara?”
“Saw … Whoa, that’s Banana Harris!” He pointed at Ban excitedly. “I saw you on TV!” His face saddened. “You haven’t found Clara, have you?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. Listen, the people who took her were driving a yellow pickup truck. Jimmy told us your grandfather saw one here earlier today, while you were at hockey practice, and we need to find out if it was them.”
Junior’s
face showed immediate understanding and excitement. “Wait till I tell the kids at school that Banana Harris was in my house! Jeez, they are gonna freak out.” I smiled, remembering my own excitement about meeting her, which seemed like it was many years ago. “Yah, I can do this.” He hurried to the TV and turned it off, thrilled with being able to help the grown-ups.
“Junior!” Gramps said angrily. “What did you do that for?”
Junior climbed into his grandfather’s lap and sat sideways, making one ear accessible. “Tell me about the yellow pickup!” he shouted.
Gramps looked confused. “You got hiccups? You know the drill. Hold your breath, or you want me to tickle them out of you?” He started to wiggle his fingers into his grandson’s stomach.
Junior stopped his grandfather’s hand, then repeated slowly, with highly exaggerated mouth movements, “Yellow pickup.”
“I already told Jimmy about the pickup. Same old idiots looking for Fargo, I figured. Well, one of them was, anyway. The smarter one, he filled up with premium while the dumb one kept asking about Fargo. The other guy just looked annoyed.”
Billings said, “Ask him if either of them had a bandage on one hand. And if they had an animal carrier in the truck.”
As adults, we would have felt it to be rude to scream into an old man’s ear, hard-of-hearing or not. Junior had no such compunctions. He pointed to one of his hands and yelled, “Was he hurt?”
Gramps was starting to understand that this questioning was more than just casual conversation. He realized that Junior was not showing him an injury to his own hand, but asking about the men in the pickup. Gramps looked up and twisted his head around to see all of us standing attentively around the living room. “He sure did. The dumb one. Big old white bandage on his left hand. I guess it was itchy, because he kept scratching at it. He was mumbling something, but I didn’t catch it. Stupid stroke. I’m telling you, getting old is nasty business. Everything that was easy before is hard now, and everything that was hard before ain’t!” He didn’t seem to even realize at first he had an eight-year-old boy on his lap as he raised one knee and slapped it, cackling at his own joke. I could hear a little snickering behind me as well. “Boy, you didn’t hear that,” he added suddenly. Junior looked at us and shrugged as if to say, “Hear what?”
The bandage was pretty clear evidence that it was the Nonegan brothers, but it would be nice to verify that they still had Clara. “Gramps,” Junior screamed, “did they have an animal carrier?”
I felt someone edge up next to me. It was Ban, focused on the old man’s coming reply. Gramps had been watching his grandson’s mouth intently. “Yah, they did. Blue, hard plastic. Lots of air holes. I couldn’t see what was inside. It thought it was probably a cat. It’s probably what bit him. Maybe they were going to get rid of it.” He thought a moment. “No, they wouldn’t bring it all this way for nothing. I wonder what they were doing?” He twisted his torso in the chair to look at us. “He left going north, though, I can tell you that.”
At that point, Jimmy appeared with a large brown paper bag, the top curled down to keep things warm. “Here’s your food. It’s lined with tin foil to help keep it all hot. On the house.”
“I’m afraid we can’t…” Billings and I started saying at once.
“I insist.”
“Roxy?” I asked. “Would this count as a gratuity?”
She didn’t hesitate. “We didn’t perform a service here, technically speaking. They helped us, not the other way around.”
Billings took the bag. “Thank you, Mr. Gundergard. You’ve been very helpful. Is there some way we can repay you?”
Jimmy winked. “If you did, you’d have to pay for the grub.”
“Can’t argue with that,” said Sylvia. She noticed Junior unabashedly watching her. “I’m not a pirate, by the way. My name is Sylvia.”
Junior climbed off his grandfather’s lap and approached her. “Why do you have the eye patch?”
“Junior, that’s not polite,” said his father.
“It’s all right, Mr. Gundergard. I don’t mind.” And even though I’d seen her self-conscious of the injury for weeks, I could tell that in this instance, for possibly the first time, she truly didn’t mind. “My eye was injured in the line of duty. It doesn’t look very nice, so I cover it up.”
Junior shyly took her hand, looking up at her uncondescending face. “Can’t they fix it?” I thought he might ask to see it. Eight-year-olds have a notorious sense of the morbid. But he held back, having already been admonished as impolite once this evening. “Charlie Swanson’s uncle Malcolm lost an eye in the war and they put in a fake one. It looks just like his other one only it doesn’t move as much.”
“I might do that someday. I’ve been kind of busy.” It’s hard to explain to a child how difficult it can be to consent to have part of your own body removed, even if it is damaged, and especially something as visible as a facial feature. I remembered that my mother had also mentioned it to Sylvia, so the idea had already spent some time floating around in her brain.
Junior blinked up at her, unfazed. “I wish I could fix it.”
Always ready to encourage interest in the medical field, Ban told him, “Maybe someday, you will.”
Suddenly, against his will, Junior yawned.
Jimmy noticed. “Okay, Junior. Time for bed.”
Chapter Four
We came out of the gas station to full darkness. The glow from the fluorescent lighting reflected off the falling snow, now coming down at a respectable rate and beginning to accumulate. We climbed aboard and Knobby settled into the driver seat, starting the engine, the heat, and the windshield wipers in rapid order. Billings opened the bag and distributed food containers, propping one on the dashboard near Knobby and sticking a plastic fork in it for him. “Thank you, Billings,” said Knobby as he dug into it while the rest of us were still finding our seats. I took my usual seat, staring at the graffiti of the heart with “G. N. + A. W.” in it and musing on childhood romance. I took the Styrofoam container, feeling the warmth in my hand, and started eating. For beans, they were very good. There were bits of bacon mixed in and they’d been cooked with salted butter and white wine.
Billings stood at the front of the bus. “I’m going to make a suggestion that might not be very popular.”
“What?” I asked, swallowing my forkful of beans.
“I think we should find a motel for the night.”
Ban looked worried, but said nothing.
He looked right at her as he explained, “Knobby’s been driving a long time, it’s dark and it’s snowing. We’re all tired and need to recharge. Odds are the Nonegans are stopping for the night, too. Ross doesn’t drive and Gary can’t keep going either. We’ll catch up to them tomorrow for sure and get this whole thing taken care of. We try to do it tonight and we could end up in a ditch, and if we do catch up to them there’s bound to be a fight. We’re good, but we’re not at our best. I want us at our best. The FBI might think a raccoon isn’t worth much, but we know better. Don’t we?” There were nods all around.
Shyly, Ban asked, “They snuck into the Clinic in the middle of the night. What if they sneak into the Preserve in the middle of the night, too? They could release her and…and…” She pressed her lips together.
Fergie said, “That won’t happen. The Preserve is surrounded by 150 miles of 10 foot high electrified fencing. The public access gate is chained overnight and there’s a night security guard with a K-9 agent. In fact, they’ll have to find some way to smuggle Clara in if they want to release her. They won’t be able to just waltz in with an animal carrier.”
“And even if they do,” put in Knobby from the driver’s seat, “I can track her. Don’t you worry, Miss Harris. I’ve been tracking raccoons since I was eight. That’s one of the reasons they brought me along, you see. I’m not just a chauffeur.” He winked.
Ban smiled appreciatively at Knobby. “Bless you.”
“Didn’t sneeze,” said Knobb
y, returning his full attention to his driving.
Everyone agreed, after that, that Billings’ suggestion of a motel made sense. Fergie knew of a motel not too far away and we all ate our green bean casserole as we rode along. It was slower going because of the weather, but Knobby didn’t complain. He grabbed forkfuls of the casserole whenever he could, but he was the last one finished. Sylvia gathered all the containers and plastic, put them back in the brown paper bag, rolled the top down again, and tucked it in the seat next to her to be disposed of later.
Not long after we’d finished eating, we rolled into the parking lot of The Blue Box , a motel that consisted of one large rectangular, single-story building. From the name, I was guessing it was painted some shade of blue, but in the darkness it simply looked gray. The main office was at the front, with a line of rooms extending back-to-back, singles with one double bed on one side and doubles with two double beds on the other. There was free WiFi and free cable and a discount on pizza delivery. Amenities are amenities. Conveniently, our party was four men and four women so we booked two double rooms next to each other. Knobby locked up the bus while Billings checked us in. Billings gave me the key to one room and kept the other.
It was not a fancy motel. The bedspreads were faded, but clean, the carpet was speckled with several colors, masking any stains, and the draperies were a bit too short in both directions, but after so many hours on the bus it was the most beautiful room I’d ever seen. I was now long overdue on anything resembling pain medication and the tight wrapping that Nitro had done at HQ was now so loose I could feel it sliding around. I can do this, I told myself. It’s just pain. It’s not as bad as it was and a lot of that is just fatigue. I’ll feel better in the morning. We let Ban go first in the shower. We had no luggage, so there was no change of soft clothes to sleep in. But we piled Parkas, outerwear, and HEP belts in a corner, making our street clothes feel light as a feather.