by Ed Gorman
Alison had been an income maintenance worker for nearly three years now.
She sincerely wanted to help.
An hour after leaving Peter in the restaurant, Alison pulled her gray Honda Civic up to the small house where earlier this morning she'd snapped photos of the black man. Her father kept trying to buy her a nicer car but she argued that her clients would just resent her nicer car and that she wouldn't blame them.
The name of this particular client was Doreen Hayden. Alison had been trying to do a profile of her but Doreen hadn't exactly cooperated. This was Alison's second appointment with the woman. She hoped it went better than the first.
After getting out of her car, Alison stood for a time in the middle of the cold, slushy street. Snow sometimes had a way of making even rundown things look beautiful. But somehow it only made this block of tiny, aged houses look worse. Brown frozen dog feces covered the sidewalk. Smashed front windows bore masking tape. Rusted-out cars squatted on small front lawns like obscene animals. And factory soot touched everything, everything. It was nineteen days before Christmas—Alison had just heard this on the radio this morning—but this was a neighborhood where Christmas never came.
Doreen answered the door. Through the screen drifted the oppressive odors of breakfast and cigarettes and dirty diapers. In her stained white sweater and tight red skirt, Doreen still showed signs of the attractive woman she'd been a few years ago until bad food and lack of exercise had added thirty pounds to her fine-boned frame.
The infant in her arms was perhaps four months old. She had a sweet little pink face. Her pink blanket was filthy.
"I got all the kids here," Doreen said. "You all comin' in? Gettin' cold with this door open."
All the kids, Alison thought. My God, Doreen was actually going to try that scam.
Inside, the hot odors of food and feces were even more oppressive. Alison sat on the edge of a discount-store couch and looked around the room. Not much had changed since her last visit. The old Zenith color TV set—now blaring Bugs Bunny cartoons—still needed some kind of tube. The floor was still an obstacle course of newspapers and empty Pepsi bottles and dirty baby clothes. There was a crucifix on one wall with a piece of faded, drooping palm stuck behind it. Next to it a photo of Bruce Springsteen had been taped to the soiled wallpaper.
"These kids was off visitin' last time you was here," Doreen said. She referred to the two small boys standing to the right of the armchair where she sat holding her infant.
"Off visiting where?" Alison said, keeping her voice calm.
"Grandmother's."
"I see."
"They was stayin' there for awhile but now they're back with me so I'm goin' to need more money from the agency. You know."
"Maybe the man you have staying here could help you out."
There. She'd said it quickly. With no malice. A plain simple fact. "Ain't no man livin' here."
"I took a picture of him this morning."
"No way."
Alison sighed. "You know you can't get full payments if you have an adult male staying with you, Doreen."
"He musta been the garbage man or somethin'. No adult male stayin' here. None at all."
Alison had her clipboard out. She noted on the proper lines of the form that a man was staying here. She said, "You borrowed those two boys."
"What?"
"These two boys here, Doreen. You borrowed them. They're not yours."
"No way."
Alison looked at one of the ragged little boys and said, "Is Doreen your mother?"
The little boy, nervous, glanced over at Doreen and then put his head down.
Alison didn't want to embarrass or frighten him anymore.
"If I put these two boys down on the claim form and they send out an investigator, it'll be a lot worse for you, Doreen. They'll try and get you for fraud."
"Goddamn you."
"I'll write them down here if you want me to. But if they get you for fraud—"
"Shit," Doreen said. She shook her head and then she looked at the boys. "You two run on home now, all right?"
"Can we take some cookies, Aunt Doreen?"
She grinned at Alison. "They don't let their Aunt Doreen forget no promises, I'll tell you that." She nodded to the kitchen. "You boys go get your cookies and then go out the back door, all right? Oh, but first say good-bye to Alison here."
Both boys, cute and dear to Alison, smiled at her and then grinned at each other and then ran with heavy feet across the faded linoleum to the kitchen.
"I need more money," Doreen said. "This little one's breakin' me."
"I'm afraid I got you all I could, Doreen."
"You gonna tell them about Ernie?"
"Ernie's the man staying here?"
"Yeah."
"No. Not since you told me the truth."
"He's the father."
"Of your little girl?"
"Yeah."
"You think he'll actually marry you?"
She laughed her cigarette laugh. "Yeah, in about fifty or sixty years."
The house began to become even smaller to Alison then. This sometimes happened when she was interviewing people. She felt entombed in the anger and despair of the place.
She stared at Doreen and Doreen's beautiful little girl.
"Could I hold her?" Alison said.
"You serious?"
"Yes."
"She maybe needs a change. She poops a lot."
"I don't mind."
Doreen shrugged. "Be my guest."
She got up and brought the infant across to Alison.
Alison perched carefully on the very edge of the couch and received the infant like some sort of divine gift. After a moment the smells of the little girl drifted away and Alison was left holding a very beautiful little child.
Doreen went back and sat in the chair and looked at Alison.
"You got any kids?"
"No."
"Wish you did though, huh?"
"Yes."
"You married?"
"Not so far."
"Hell, bet you got guys fallin' all over themselves for you. You're beautiful."
But Alison rarely listened to flattery. Instead she was watching the infant's sweet white face. "Have you ever looked at her eyes, Doreen?"
"'Course I looked at her eyes. She's my daughter, ain't she?"
"No. I mean looked really deeply."
"'Course I have."
"She's so sad."
Doreen sighed. "She's got a reason to be sad. Wouldn't you be sad growin' up in a place like this?"
Alison leaned down to the little girl's face and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. They were like sisters, the little girl and Alison. They knew how sad the world was. They knew how sad their hearts were.
When the time came, when the opportunity appeared, Alison would do the same favor for this little girl she'd done for the two other little girls.
Not even the handsome Doctor Connery had suspected anything. He'd just assumed that the other two girls had died from crib death.
On another visit, someday soon, Alison would make sure that she was alone with the little girl for a few minutes. Then it would be done and the little girl would not have to grow up and know the even greater sadness that awaited her.
"You really ain't gonna tell them about Ernie livin' here?"
"I've got a picture of him that I can turn in anytime as evidence. But I'll tell you what, Doreen; you start taking better care of your daughter—changing her diapers more often and feeding her the menu I gave you—and I'll keep Ernie our secret."
"Can't afford to have no more money taken from me," Doreen said.
"Then you take better care of your daughter," Alison said, holding the infant out for Doreen to take now. "Because she's very sad, Doreen. Very very sad."
Alison kissed the little girl on the forehead once more and then gave her up to her mother.
Soon, little one, Alison thought; soon you won't be so sad. I pr
omise.
THE BEAST IN THE WOODS
By the time I get to the barn tonight, there's already a quarter moon in the September sky, and the barn owl who always sits in the old elm along the creek, he's already hooting into the Iowa darkness.
For the first twenty minutes, I rake out the stalls and scatter hay around the floor. Dairy cows take a lot of work. After that I spread sawdust to eat up some of the dampness and the odors.
Not that I'm paying a whole hell of a lot of attention. All I can think of really is his old army .45. Ordinarily it hangs from a dusty holster on a peg in the spare room upstairs where he moved after Mom died two years ago of the heart disease that's run in her family for years. Dad says he moved in there because whenever he was in their room, lying in their bed, he'd start to cry, and he's a proud man and doesn't think tears are proper. Also, when he was drunk one night, he told me that a few times when he was in her room, he talked to her ghost and that scared him. So now he keeps their bedroom door shut and sleeps in the room down the hall.
I wonder where he is now. I wonder what he's doing.
Three hours ago, he left, saying he'd be back for dinner but he wasn't.
And then when I went in to wash up and heat up some spaghetti, I passed by the spare room and noticed that his .45 was gone from its holster.
When I'm finished with the sawdust, I go outside and stand in the Indian summer dusk, all rolling Iowa hills and bright early stars and the clean fast smell of the nearby creek, and the distant smoky smells of autumn in the piney hills to the east.
All the outbuildings stand in silhouette now against the dusk, the corn wagon parked by the silo reminding me of tomorrow's chores.
There's only one reason he'd take that goddamned gun of his to town. I'm sure glad Mom isn't here. She tended to get real emotional about things. She would've had a real hard time with the past year, Dad's loan going bad at the bank when the flood wiped us out, and the bank being forced to give Dad until three weeks ago to settle up his account or lose the farm. They gave him a little extra time but this morning he got a phone call telling him that the bank'd have to file papers to get the farm back and auction it off. ("It isn't the same anymore, Verne," I heard the banker Ken Ohlers tell him on the porch one afternoon, "we don't own the friggin' bank now—the boys in Minneapolis do, big goddamned banking conglomerate, and frankly they could give a shit about a bunch of Iowa farmers, you know, whether the farmers go out of business or not. They just don't make enough on this kind of farm loan to hassle with it.")
Then he went into town with his gun.
To the north now I see plumes of road dust, inside of which is a gray car that I recognize immediately.
As I expect, he turns right into our long gravel drive and shoots right up to the edge of the outbuildings. He has one of those long whip antennas on the back of his car, Sheriff Mike Rhodes does, giving his car a very official and menacing look.
He jumps out of the car almost before the motor stops running. In his left hand is a shotgun. He's a beefy man of Dad's age, fifty or so. In fact, they served in Nam together, and were the first two Nam vets to be allowed in the local VFW, some of the other vets from WWII and Korea feeling that Vietnam wasn't an actual war. Fifty-nine thousand fucking Americans die there and it isn't actually a war, as my dad used to say all the time.
One more thing about Sheriff Mike. He's my godfather. "Bobby, is your dad around here?" he says, coming at me like he's going to hit me or something.
"He went into town. How come you got the shotgun, Mike?"
But he doesn't answer my question. He just gets closer. He smells of sweat and aftershave. And he scares me. The same way my dad scares me sometimes when I sense how mad he is and how terrible it's going to be when he lets go of it.
"Bobby, I need to know where your dad is."
"He ain't here. Honest, Mike."
He takes my arm. His fingers hurt me. "Bobby, you listen to me." He is still catching his breath, big man in khaki uniform, wide sweat rings under his arms. "Bobby, you got to think. Think like a normal person. You understand me?"
Sometimes people talk to me like that. They remember when I fell off the tractor when I was seven and how I was never the same. That's what my mom always said. That poor Bobby, he was never the same. In school I didn't read so good and sometimes people would tell me stuff but I couldn't understand them no matter how hard I tried. And that's when I'd always start crying. I guess I must have cried a lot before I quit school in the tenth grade because the kids, they called me "Buckets" and they always made fun of the way I cried.
"I'll listen good, Mike. I promise."
"You know Ken Ohlers down to the bank?"
"Uh-huh."
"Your dad killed him about an hour ago. Shot him with that forty-five of his he used in Song Be that time."
"Oh shit, Mike, I wish you wouldn't've said that."
"I'm sorry, Bobby, I had to tell you."
"It makes me scared. You're gonna hurt my dad now, aren't you?"
"I don't want to, Bobby. That's why I need your help. You see him, you got to convince him to give himself up. There's just you now, Bobby, your ma bein' dead and all. You're the only one he'll listen to."
"I'm scared, Mike. I'm real scared."
And I start crying. Don't want to. But can't stop.
And Mike, he just looks kind of embarrassed for me, the way folks do when I start crying like this.
And then he comes up and slides his arm around me and gives me a little hug. Dad, he'll never do that, not even when I cry. Says it doesn't look right, two grown men hugging each other that way.
He digs in his pocket and takes out his handkerchief. Smells of mint. Mike always carries mints in his right khaki pocket.
"I have a mint, Mike?"
"You bet."
I blow my nose in his handkerchief and try to hand it back to him but he nods for me to keep it and then he digs a mint out and drops it into the palm of my hand.
"You remember what I told you, Bobby?"
"Uh-huh."
"You tell your dad to give himself up."
"Uh-huh."
"'Cause the mayor, he won't mess around. He never liked your dad, anyway."
"They gonna get the dogs out after him the way they did that time with that black guy?"
"Dogs're already out."
"And the helicopter?"
"Already out, too."
"Scares me, that helicopter."
"Don't like it much myself. Hate ridin' in the friggin' thing." He wipes sweat from his face. "He shows up around here, you give him that message, all right?"
"I will, Mike. I promise."
I'm scared I'm going to start crying again.
He looks at me a long time and then gives me another quick hug. "I'm sorry this happened, Bobby."
"I'll bet he's scared, too. I'm gonna say a prayer for him. Hail Mary. Just like Mom taught me."
"I'll check back later, Bobby."
Then he's trotting back to the big gray car that smells of road dust and oil and gasoline and heat. Inside, he kind of gives me a little wave and then he whips the car around so he can go back out headfirst, and then he's lost again inside heavy rolling dust that's silver now in the moonlight.
I go in the house. Upstairs, I go into their bedroom. Mom always kept a framed picture of Blessed Mother on her nightstand. She always said that Blessed Mother listens to boys like me, you know, boys that don't seem just like other boys. I try not to cry as I pray. Hail Mary full of. Sometimes I get confused. Mom wrote it down for me a lot of times but I have a habit of losing things. Hail Mary full of grace. This time it goes all right. Or mostly all right. And when I'm done praying I light this little votive candle the priest gave her one time he came out here. The match smells of sulphur. The candle smells of wax. Red glow plays across the picture of the Blessed Mother. Hail Mary full of grace. I say a whole nother one. In case she didn't hear it or something.
Then I'm outside, pretty sure where I'
ll find Dad. There's a line shack up in the hills. Dad and his brother used to play up there. His brother died in Nam. Poor goddamned bastard Dad always says whenever he gets drunk. Poor goddamned bastard. Uncle Win and Mom are buried up to Harrison Cemetery and a couple times a month in the warm season, Dad goes up there and puts flowers on their graves. In the winter months he just stands graveside and stares down at their grave markers, leaning over and brushing away the snow so that their names can be read real clear. He even went up there one night when it was ten below and nobody found him till dawn and Doc Hardy said it was a miracle him being exposed like that—should've died for Christ's sake (how old Doc Hardy always talks)—and probably would have if he hadn't been so drunk.
And now I'm running through the long prairie grasses and it feels good. The grasses are up to my waist and it's like running through water, the way the grasses slap at you and tickle you. My mom always read me books about the Iowa Indians and about nature stuff. I liked the names of the flowers especially and always made her read them to me over and over again sort of like singing a song. Rattlesnake master and goldenrod and gay-feather and black-eyed Susans and silverleaf scurf pea and ragwort and shooting star. Some nights I lie in my bed when I can't sleep and just say those names over and over and over again and imagine Mom reading them to me the way she used to, and making me learn new words, too, three "five-dollar words" (as she always called them) each and every week.
A couple times I fall down. I try not to cry. But the second time I fall down I cut my knee on the edge of a rock and I can't help but cry. But then I'm running along the moonsilver creek, ducking below the weeping willows and jumping over a lost little mud frog, and then I'm starting up into the red cedar glade where the cabin lies.
Halfway there I have to stop and pee. Dad always says be proud I don't pee my pants no more. And I am proud. But sometimes I can barely hold it. Like now. And I have to go. The pee is hot and rattles the fallen red leaves. I should wash my hands the way Mom always said but I can't so I run on.