by April Smith
“Are you cross-examining me?” she said lightly.
“Answer the question, miss.”
“My friend Elaine came out of an orphanage at age sixteen in the middle of the Depression to a very sad world, Cal. You have the rich on one side and desperately poor working people on the other, and you’re never going to bridge that gap, not with capitalism the way it is.”
“You’re talking about utopia.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Yes, but utopia is impossible. It goes against human nature. Everyone acts in their own self-interest—”
“Why am I enamored?” Betsy interrupted brusquely. “Because people who believe in Communism are also stronger in character and more committed than anyone else. They sacrifice personal satisfaction to get things done. And I do believe there can be equality and a fairer way to live.”
Cal snorted derisively. “The dyed-in-the-wool Communists I’ve come across are a bunch of egomaniacs, just like their power-hungry pals in Moscow. Dictatorships never hold. We’ll beat Hitler, and democracy will spread through Europe. Don’t put your money on the wrong horse.”
They stood apart, she with arms folded against the midnight chill, Cal with his back turned, facing the river.
“It’s okay,” he said after a moment. “You made a mistake, but you’ll grow out of it.”
“Says who?” she fired back.
His condescension took her breath away. She’d gone to jail for her ideals and all he did was talk. At that moment she hated Calvin Kusek. He was as coldhearted, arrogant, and egotistical as the so-called party thugs he was describing, and she kicked herself for ever imagining otherwise.
“You’ve done so much for me,” she managed stiffly. “It’s late. Let’s just say good night.”
They were at a stalemate. Cal didn’t answer. But he didn’t walk away. He sat down on a block of concrete and looked up at the tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. It seemed very close, just over the oyster houses squatting beneath it.
“The marvelous thing about New York City,” he said dreamily, “is that it agrees to let everybody in. There’s a kid in my office, came east from Kansas. He’s got a light in his eyes. He goes around amazed. ‘I ate a blintze! Say, did you know you can see the Queen Mary!’ We can laugh at a hick like that, but he’s no sap.”
“He’s in love,” Betsy said matter-of-factly, joining him on the concrete block, not because she wanted to, but her feet hurt from all that walking and there was nowhere else to sit.
Cal said, “This is the city we’re supposed to inherit.”
“I guess.”
“I could see it,” he decided. “A big apartment on the West Side, close to the park. Raising a family. Knowing all the ins and outs, and in a decade or so, we’d be on top. I could make big money if I wanted to, in corporate law, or some other form of legal robbery. Forget working at Gimbels, you could buy out Tiffany, but so what? We’re supposed to be the blood and bone of the city,” he said, gazing up at the struts of the bridge. “But what do we stand for?”
It had taken a few moments for Betsy to realize what this perplexing Calvin Kusek meant. He was talking about a future for them, together. It hit her like the hot wind of an onrushing train, as if they had been on separate sides of that subway station, as she’d imagined, but instead of burying himself in a newspaper, he’d looked at her across the tracks with the most beautiful and inviting smile.
The world fell away until there were only their eyes, fastened on each other, first bright, then sleepy with desire. They moved closer, and in the next breath he took her in his arms and their lips met in a first sweet kiss, asking a thousand questions, then closer, harder, hungrier, to ask a thousand more.
—
The cabin door slammed open and there was her husband, back from the Roys’ and smiling.
“Everything’s fine with Doris!” Cal announced loudly.
“Shh! The baby’s sleeping!”
He cringed comically. “Sorry! Whatever you thought she was thinking about unions, there was no mention. Not a ripple. So put it out of your mind.”
Betsy noticed he was alone. “So—where is our daughter?”
“She’s with Doris and she’s having a ball.”
“You were supposed to bring her home.”
“She didn’t want to leave.”
“Since when does a four-year-old decide?”
With an effort, she kept her voice low. Cal opened a beer and sat down heavily.
“You had to see it, it was just so cute. Jo is sitting on the kitchen floor with Doris, and they’re both washing walnuts. They each have a bucket and Jo is wearing a little apron and she’s scrubbing away.”
“She’s supposed to be at home, in bed.”
“Well, they had to finish so they could make walnut bread.”
“Walnut bread,” Betsy echoed flatly.
“Jo asked if she could sleep over so she could be there first thing in the morning to feed the hens.”
“Jo did? She’s never slept over anywhere by herself.”
“Sure she has. At your dad’s apartment.”
“When she was six months old! This had to be Doris’s idea.”
“Doris means well.”
“I hope they at least have a proper bed for her,” Betsy said begrudgingly.
“She’ll sleep in Flora Mae’s room,” Cal said.
“Who is Flora Mae?”
“They lost a child when she was ten. That was years ago.”
Betsy stared at her husband. “I’m sorry to hear that. But…”
“Honey, you have to adapt.”
Betsy was silent. People here are nice, she reminded herself, but couldn’t get over the ache in her chest where Jo should have been hugging her good night.
“We’re part of a community now,” Cal insisted.
“Which means we’re the lending library of children?”
“Honey, I wouldn’t let Jo stay there if I thought anything was screwy.”
Never mind good intentions. She wanted to leave Cal to his noble ideals. She wanted to go to the station with Jo and the baby and get on the next train for New York City.
Instead, she would open the can of Vienna sausage and serve supper.
MERCY MEDICAL CENTER
DECEMBER 26, 1985
11:45 A.M.
Jo looked up, expecting the neurosurgeon, but the young man who strode into the waiting area of the intensive care unit was not a doctor. He was wearing a dark gray suit with a parka over it and a badge holder on a lanyard with a police ID.
“Miss Kusek? I’m Special Agent Robert Dolan, South Dakota DCI. May I join you?”
She motioned for him to sit. “What is DCI?”
“The division of criminal investigation. We’re part of the attorney general’s office in Pierre,” Agent Dolan explained. “They call us in when local law enforcement needs assistance with major crimes and homicides—”
Major crimes and homicides. Those were words that belonged on a TV show, not in the real world.
“—kind of like the FBI on the state level,” he finished as they sat across from each other on the burgundy chairs.
Agent Dolan leaned forward and gazed at her with dull brown eyes. “Condolences for what you’re going through,” he said.
Jo wanted to trust everything to Agent Dolan, but he looked like he should be pumping gas. He had close-shaved hair and the smooth-brawny face of a high school football player. He shifted uncomfortably in his suit and nervously pulled at the knot of his tie.
“We’ll do everything we can to catch the suspect or suspects,” he said, as if repeating the words of a training manual. “Typically, the trail goes cold fast, so we need your cooperation in providing information.” He took a notebook from his pocket. “I understand you just got in from Portland. What do you do in Portland?”
“I’m a landscape designer,” said Jo impatiently. “Just tell me what happened.”
Agent Dolan considered, and then gave in to
her unflinching stare.
“It looks like a household burglary that turned violent, which in actuality is pretty rare. Your professional burglars are swift. They take the cash and whatever they can sell and leave things tidy. But in this case there were signs that robbery was not the primary motive.”
“What kind of signs?”
“The main thing is there was no forcible entry, which could mean Mr. and Mrs. Kusek knew the suspect. Or some random criminal wanted to get in and thought, yeah, it’s Christmas Eve. They were expecting dinner guests. It was natural they would open the door.” He looked at his notes. “Your brother is an attorney. Does he have any enemies?”
The question snagged her. They’d had plenty of enemies when they were kids, but that was more than twenty years ago.
“Everybody loves Lance,” Jo replied. “He’s a super dad. I just can’t imagine it.”
“Did Lance mention a client, maybe, who might have a grudge?”
“Not to me,” she answered flatly.
“And his wife, Wendy? Was she the popular type?”
“Yes. They’re a great couple.”
Jo shut down. Exhaustion settled over her shoulders like a too-big overcoat. All she wanted was to disappear inside. All she cared about was what was happening to Lance and Willie behind the security doors of the ICU, and apparently nobody was going to tell her. Meanwhile, they’d sent a rookie cop and that made her mad.
“Why would they do this?” Upset was rising and it couldn’t be stopped. “I mean…why so…vicious?” she cried. “Why couldn’t they just take the damn credit cards?”
Agent Dolan hedged his words. The crime scene investigation was still in progress, but he did owe something to the victims’ relative.
“This burglar did not have a style you would call professional,” Agent Dolan said.
“Not just neat and tidy?”
Dolan looked somber and shook his head.
“You mean he’s a cold-blooded murderer?” Jo suggested with red-enflamed eyes.
“It seems that he—or they—did arrive with some kind of plan in mind. Yes, ma’am. As to why that house and why that family, I couldn’t speculate until we have more evidence,” Agent Dolan said finally. “Are you married?”
The upset turned to outrage. “What?” said Jo.
Was this guy making a move on her?
“Children?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Do you have people you can stay with?” asked Agent Dolan.
“Yes. Sure. I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far.”
“Give me a name and I’ll contact them.”
“Nelson and Stella Fletcher,” Jo spurted instantly. “They’re my parents’ best friends. Their son is Robbie. I don’t even know if they still live here.”
“Good,” said Agent Dolan, making a note. “I want you to know that you and your brother and nephew are safe here, okay? There are sheriff’s deputies posted all over the hospital.”
“Great,” said Jo. “Do you mind getting a neurosurgeon in here? Nobody’s talking to me!”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll get someone.”
Agent Dolan left the waiting room. Completely frustrated, Jo turned to the window. The dense white streaming blizzard filled her vision. She put her forehead on the icy glass. Her breath made a circle. Her finger traced two eyes and a nose. The view was limited to a brick wall jutting from the entrance to the hospital. Beside a pathway leading from the portico, a huge black dog, easily over a hundred pounds, was lying on its belly in the snow, possibly a Newfoundland, the kind that rescues people in the Alps. You wanted to kneel down beside him and rest your head in his fur. He had a thick, heavy coat and smallish hanging-down ears. His strong front legs were crossed, his dignified muzzle pointed up, unperturbed by snowflakes falling on his nose. Jo felt she knew that dog and a feeling of deep sadness came over her.
The way she’d heard it from her dad, there was a Lakota Sioux legend about an old woman and a huge black dog. The old woman sits in a cave hidden in the Badlands that nobody has ever found. She’s sewing a blanket strip for her buffalo robe using dyed porcupine quills. She’s chewed them flat to make them soft and her teeth are worn to stumps. She’s been doing this for a thousand years. The black dog is by her side, watching carefully. An earthen pot containing red berry soup hangs over a fire. The soup has been boiling ever since the fire was lit. Since the beginning of time. Whenever the frail old woman gets up and hobbles slowly over to stir the soup, the huge black dog pulls all the porcupine quills out from her blanket strip, so that her work is never finished. They say when the old woman in the cave sews the very last quill and finishes the design, the world will come to an end.
Jo remembered standing near a bookshelf in her father’s study when he told her this, and that he’d held in the palm of his hand a Lakota artifact that he’d collected, a sacred medicine circle made of dyed black porcupine quills. He was smoking a pipe. The scent of it now seemed very dear. A man in a red hunting jacket came out of the hospital and the big black dog got to its feet. Why had she not realized that her father loved her very much?
5
“This lamb has to be bottle-fed,” Doris was explaining. “Because the mom’s an old lady who don’t got enough milk.”
Over the past few weeks Betsy had been acquiring the skills of a cowman’s wife. She learned how to crank out homemade ice cream and to spot a sick calf and give it an injection, when to feed the barnyard animals their crumbly cakes of hay.
“It’ll be in your pockets,” Doris had warned. “Just so you know.”
Betsy mixed up the powdered milk and Doris followed her out of the shed with Whiskey, a red heeler, who lay down and waited calmly outside the pen. Betsy couldn’t help but wish that Doris Roy would do the same. She’d softened toward the woman and was grateful for the advice, but was itching to be out from under her control. To have her own garden. And a real working kitchen. She couldn’t wait to run their own cattle, make it a business like she’d observed at the Roys’. She and Cal had a lot to learn, but they were ready.
“You have better things to do. I can handle this,” Betsy offered. “After all, I did bottle-feed my kids.”
Doris laughed. “Truly, but you ain’t no mother sheep, far as I can tell,” she said, and followed Betsy into the pen.
The animal bottle was big as a football and just as slippery. The nipple was enormous. The baby charged and latched on, almost ripping it out of Betsy’s hands. He was named Tiny, a black-and-white little thing with teeny horns, but whoa that hungry grip was strong. He tugged so hard that Betsy stumbled and almost lost her grip. Blinded by the dust, and with Doris hollering about this and that and colic and deadly air bubbles, Betsy felt like instead of a feeding session, she and Tiny were combatants in a stadium fighting for their lives.
She was vastly relieved when the men came back in the truck from the grange. Cal was holding Jo’s hand and Scotty carried Lance in his arms, which made Betsy smile.
She teased the young cowboy: “Watch out! You might get used to that.”
“Lance and me, we’re buddies,” Scotty said.
“Lance liked the bull!” Jo announced.
Betsy played along. “He did?”
“There was one bull in a field of cows,” Cal reported. “And Lance kept pointing at it. Didn’t care about the cows, only the bull. I swear he knew the difference.”
Scotty held the toddler above his head and shook him so that the boy broke into pink-faced giggles. “He’s gonna be a bull rider and Uncle Scotty’s gonna teach him.”
“Scotty’s a professional rodeo rider,” Cal told his skeptical wife.
“I’m sure he’s very good at it,” Betsy said, taking back her son.
By and large the families were getting along. Dutch had taken a liking to Cal because he caught on easily. They worked side by side, ten or eleven hours a day, and it became a habit for them to sit down together after supper with a cup of coffee and a pie
ce of pie, going over the ranch bookwork. Cal showed Dutch how he could manage his accounts better, and after a while he was doing legal work for the Crazy Eights, a fair trade for use of the cabin.
The first Monday of the month rolled around, which meant auction day at the stockyard. Dutch had his eye on some yearlings, and since the town with the sale barn was an hour away, he’d been hell-bent on taking off no later than eight a.m. But when Cal drove down from the cabin, the truck was gone and the empty cow trailer was still parked by the corrals.
It was a dark gray morning with a dusting of frost on the ground, but still warm enough to melt the prints of his boots. Betsy had teased Cal about how sexy he looked in his new western wear, but couldn’t stop laughing every time he put on his “John Wayne hat.” He took her point. No matter how he angled it or turned the brim this way and that, it just never felt like an honest hat, so he ended up wearing his good old fedora. Better to look like the city slicker he truly was than a pretender. He still missed The New York Times and WQXR, and looked forward to the day when they could afford a stereo setup for his collection of classical records. Crossing the chicken yard, he saw the reason for the delay. Scotty was still out there, working on the tractor, which had refused to start since the day before. They’d worked by flashlight into the night checking every possible glitch, but there it was, just the same, a useless green hulk going nowhere in crisscrossing flakes of snow.
“Any luck?” Cal asked.
Scotty shook his head. “How’s that tractor book?” he asked. “Keep you up all night?”
Cal heard the sarcasm but let it go. “Oh, it’s a page-turner,” he agreed.
He’d taken a ribbing last night when he asked Dutch to pull the manual for the 1947 Ford out from under the junk-heaped desk that served as an office in a corner of the barn. Above it, where some men might have hung a girlie calendar, was the 1950 South Dakota professional bull riding tour, where Scotty had circled a dozen events in which he planned to compete.
“I’ve been starting tractors all my life,” Dutch had grumbled. “I think I know how to start a tractor.” He tossed Cal the unopened packet that contained the manual. “Knock yourself out.”