by April Smith
Jolene and her husband, Allen, owned the A&J market on Route 24. They had no children and were each other’s rock—married seventeen years, working in the store together twelve hours a day, steadfast as Mount Rushmore. Allen was easygoing and took care of the customers out front, while Jolene, nervous and shy, kept to the back office and hid inside her accounting books.
When she came home from the hospital, Jolene started acting strange, even for her. She shouted at the customers using curse words, or she’d look blank and ask, “Where am I?” She refused to eat because she believed Allen was poisoning her. By the time Doc Avery was called to their living quarters above the store, Jolene had gone delirious and was running a fever of 105. Deadly sepsis had invaded the abdominal cavity as well as the brain. Jolene was rushed to the hospital and a second surgery was performed to repair the unhealed wound, which would need constant care in order to mend properly.
Allen couldn’t do it. He was under emotional strain from running the store and worrying about his wife. Besides, he had his own health problems and suffered from diabetes. Doc Avery wanted Betsy Kusek to visit the couple twice a day, morning and night, to check on them both. They went together the first time so he could give her the treatment plan, which was fine with Betsy, who enjoyed home visits when Doc Avery came along.
His buoyant personality matched his royal-blue 1948 Chevy truck with grillework that shone like grandma’s silver. In town he drove slowly enough so kids could jump on the running boards for a ride, but out on the road he let the souped-up engine roar. He claimed to need a fast car for zipping back and forth to the state capital of Pierre, where he had twice been elected to the legislature, but at heart he was still the teenager with a rebel streak, who once threw a tire over the post office flagpole.
Folks liked the fact that he’d come back home after medical school to marry his high school sweetheart, Maryanne Welch, a former drum majorette, of whom he affectionately boasted, “She can still toss those hips.” While Betsy cared for his patients, Cal served alongside the doctor on local committees, eager to soak up his wisdom.
“Cal knows how to stand his ground,” Doc Avery told Betsy as they headed out to Route 24. “Someone takes a shot at him, he doesn’t flinch. He’s not a screamer, but he won’t back down, and I say good for him. He’s a smart cookie and he’ll go far, as long as—hold on, what’s this?”
Inspirational organ music was swelling out of the radio, announcing the start of Thaddeus Haynes’s The Hour of Truth. Doc Avery turned it up in time to hear Haynes crowing over the fact that Joseph McCarthy had been able to get an army dentist named Irving Peress discharged from the military for refusing to answer loyalty questions, calling his commandant, General Ralph Zwicker, “unfit to wear a uniform.”
“Barbarians,” Doc Avery muttered. He was so angry his hands trembled on the wheel.
“Can’t they see McCarthy is a menace?” Betsy said, exasperated.
“They think he’s standing up for something.”
“All he’s standing for is fear and intimidation.”
“But he’s our only hope against Russia, don’t you see? Spies are everywhere! Root ’em out! He’s not stupid—he knows the more outrageous his behavior, the bigger the headline. He takes a swing at a newsman, and everybody cheers! He’s protecting America from the liberal press! They like his bluster and he puts on a good show.”
“I hate to say it, but McCarthy’s not stirring up anything that isn’t already there,” Betsy said, watching unplowed fields pass and registering that they were awfully dry.
Doc Avery was shaking his head, wisps of long white hair flying on the window breeze. “I didn’t think the country could get any more right wing. I thought I’d seen it all when the Rosenbergs were convicted. I always thought that Julius was a spy for Russia and that he did steal atomic secrets, but the wife, Ethel, she’s innocent. She didn’t know anything about it, but—you watch—she’ll be executed along with her husband. That’s how they do it,” he went on with a contemptuous shrug. “Guilt by association. If you ever had a radical thought or cohabited with someone who did—God have mercy if you married one—they label you a ‘fellow traveler’ with the Communist Party. ‘Fellow traveler.’ What in hell does that mean? You put on a rucksack and march along the forest green, whistling the Russian national anthem?”
Betsy had fallen silent. She hadn’t felt unease creeping up like this since the House Un-American Activities Committee tried to force screenwriters to testify about their supposed ties with the Communist Party, to name those very “fellow travelers.” When many refused, on the grounds it would violate their right to privacy, the heads of the studios got together at the Waldorf Astoria hotel and came out with a statement declaring they would not hire any writer, actor, or director “associated” with Communism, or who refused to testify before the committee. Many stood behind the Fifth Amendment for protection from self-incrimination, which only infuriated the interrogators, who simply threw them in jail.
Betsy’s friend, Elaine O’Grady, had been present at the Waldorf Astoria that bleak November day in 1947. She’d stood outside in pouring rain along with a crowd of activists, waiting for news of whom the studio bosses had decided to sacrifice to the anti-Communist fever gripping the nation so they could go on making films with the blessing of the government. Elaine had a personal connection to one of the accused. At a party for the left-wing magazine New Masses, she’d met a successful screenwriter named Alvah Bessie, who refused to answer McCarthy’s inquisitors. As a result, he was about to be labeled a “Red Fascist,” sentenced to prison, and blacklisted in the movie business, his career over.
When Alvah Bessie’s name was read that windswept New York day as one of the convicted Hollywood Ten, Elaine went to a phone booth and called Betsy in tears. Betsy listened, dumbstruck and terrified that such a hateful witch hunt could take place openly in America—broadcast live on television!—and that she, or anyone who’d signed up with the party, even on a whim, even to pass out soup to the poor, might be next. The icy rain cut sideways as Elaine left the phone booth, huddled beneath an umbrella that was doing nothing to protect her, while at home in the Bronx, Betsy hung up with the unsettling knowledge that even ordinary people were not safe.
The windshield of the Chevy truck was divided by a metal strut, and Betsy shrank even farther on her side, as if to escape the stomach-churning foreboding that arose from the doctor’s outburst. She’d quit the party so long ago the fact of her membership rarely came to mind, but when it did, she was haunted by the possibility of discovery, still: a refugee in her own country.
She shook herself. But no. Not now, not here. As a precaution, nobody in Rapid City knew her past—not even her maiden name. She and Cal agreed to not say a word about her former association to anyone, not even Stell and Nelson Fletcher, their closest friends. As they pulled up at the A&J, Betsy had to remind herself there was no better place on earth to keep a buried secret than the open plains of South Dakota.
The A&J market took up the bottom half of a two-story white clapboard building with a peaked roof. There was a gas pump out front and a post office inside. The porch was deserted except for a lady from the Lakota Sioux tribe, who was sitting on a pile of bags of flour and holding a baby. Her hair was cropped short, western-style, and she wore a faded cotton dress with bows on the sleeves, thick woolen stockings, and lace-up shoes. The moment she saw Doc Avery, she smiled, climbed down, came over, and shyly held out her hand. In her dusty brown palm was a small black circle.
The baby grabbed his finger while Doc Avery spoke to the mother in the Sioux language. Her name was Makawee. She was insisting on something, and he was arguing, and Betsy listened with fascination. At last he bowed his head and accepted the offering, a small open hoop wrapped in porcupine quills that had been flattened and dyed black. It was divided into quarters—the four directions—by two crossbars that met in the middle like intersecting roads.
“What is that?” Betsy asked curio
usly.
“A medicine wheel,” Doc Avery replied.
“Because you’re a doctor?”
He chuckled. “No, just a humble being compared to this. The Lakota Sioux call it the Sun Dance Circle. It means the furthest limits of the world that man can know.”
“And why would you deserve such a thing?”
He shrugged. “Her baby was sick and then he got better, but it had nothing to do with me. Yup!” he said, pocketing the charm. “Today is a good day to die.”
“What do you mean?” Betsy said, alarmed. “Is Jolene Johnston going to die?”
Doc Avery laughed. “No, no, that’s something the Sioux warriors say when they ride into battle. Hoka hey!”
“Marvelous. So we’re going to have a battle?”
“Jolene can be difficult,” Doc Avery admitted. “I might call on your feminine wiles.”
The moment the screen door of the market banged shut behind her, the fresh produce in damp wood boxes and the sugary smell of home-baked pies triggered the grocery list always ticking in Betsy’s mind. What do we need? She scanned the immaculate shelves of Campbell’s soup, Brillo, Rinso, Duz, Wheaties, Kix, Raisin Bran, and Quaker Oats. On the hardware side, there were lanterns, matches, tin plates, dishes, brooms, and heavy canvas gloves—but her eyes slid back to the pies on the counter, only one apple crumble left, the family favorite. I should grab that for the kids, Betsy thought, like a panther protecting her young, but chided herself. You’re not here to shop!
Allen Johnston was weighing out a string of hot dogs on the scale for Makawee’s husband, a middle-aged Lakota man named Tatonga. The A&J also served as a free bank for members of the local tribe, and Tatonga, attired in a cowboy hat, button-down shirt, and a tie with a tie clip, covered head to toe with prairie dust, was withdrawing money from his account. His savings were kept in a cigar box with his name on it, stored inside the Johnstons’ safe.
“I hope Mrs. Johnston gets better soon,” Tatonga said, taking out a few bills before closing the box and handing it back.
“Appreciate the thought,” Allen replied.
All the world needs is a little more trust, Betsy decided, as the Indian left with a tip of the hat and the hot dogs wrapped in paper under his arm.
“How are you, Allen?” Doc Avery asked.
The storekeeper replied with a shrug and a sigh. “I’m all right, but she’s still got pain.”
Allen had large ears, fleshy cheeks, a bulbous nose, and thin lips in a tired smirk that said, What can I do? He wore hand-knit pullover vests that never seemed to have come out right—stretched at the armholes and hanging loose. The skin lay in thick folds on his neck. Without his wife around, he looked even more like an abandoned hound.
“You got to cure her,” he pleaded.
“That’s why Nurse Betsy’s here,” the doctor replied cheerfully.
“I’ll take very good care of her,” Betsy assured him, but following Doc Avery through the back of the store and up the stairs to the living quarters, she had a feeling this would not be an easy case. When she watched Doc Avery examine the patient, what he’d told her outside was confirmed.
The incision looked healthy, but Jolene Johnston had a morbid fear of being touched. Doc Avery seemed spooked already. He reached out slowly with soft words and quivering fingertips, but she flinched away, begging him to stop torturing her. Upset with his failure to calm the patient, he stuck his hands in his pockets.
“You try,” he told Betsy.
“Hoka hey!” she murmured.
Jolene was ordinary looking, except for the way she could braid her thick black hair into a wondrous crown that circled twice around her head. All she needed was a wreath to look like a woodland fairy creature. Betsy wondered what Jolene had endured that had created her misery and strange obsessions, or if she simply was possessed, the way she screamed bloody murder at Betsy with eyes rolled back.
But the wound had to be cleaned. At night Betsy would apply a gauze pad soaked in hydrogen peroxide and iodine, and in the morning she would peel it away, tearing off a layer of dead skin along with the dry bandage. It was painful, and Betsy took to giving her patient a stiff shot of cough syrup with codeine so they could both get through it. The real treatment, though, was patience.
Inspired by Doc Avery’s commitment to his clients, Betsy Kusek drove out to the A&J twice a day, no matter how much she needed to be home at the Lucky Clover Ranch, telling the family they would have to pitch in. When she finished with Jolene, Betsy would go downstairs to help Allen with the store. She swept the floor and stocked the shelves, chatted with customers. Keeping things going was part of the treatment. His hangdog look grew brighter, and little by little, layer by layer, new pink skin had begun to grow, healing Jolene’s wound as it should, from the inside out.
Their bedroom was barren except for a handmade dulcimer hanging on the wall. When Betsy asked Jolene to teach her to play, the woman looked down and shook her head. So the nurse went about her business, but singing now, whenever she would give Jolene a bath or gently brush her hair. Betsy’s guess was right. Music soothed her wild and unsettled soul.
“You’re bringing her back to life,” said the grateful husband.
A month passed before Jolene Johnston was strong enough to go back to the accounting books. Betsy knew the time was coming when she trudged upstairs one morning to hear the crystal sound of dulcimer strings. Jolene was sitting in a rocking chair and playing the old folk song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” She’d given up the phantasmal braided crown and let her waist-length hair fall loose like her Appalachian forbears’, and sang in a coarse and reedy voice that came by way of rutted axle marks and hoofprints along the trails that brought those women west. Betsy sat on the floor at her feet. Looking up, she noticed for the first time that the sound holes in the walnut instrument, from which the clear-struck notes rang out, were shaped like hearts.
11
“Can I borrow your husband?” Verna Bismark asked.
Betsy Kusek could hardly say no. The woman standing on her porch was president of the state Democratic Party. She was big and well proportioned all around, dressed in a seersucker suit and heels, an unapologetic bosom thrust into your face. She spoke with the deep, husky voice of a lifelong smoker and carried a cigarette like a gun, always ready, always smoldering, even at rest between two fingers at her side. The way she looked at you, it was a challenge.
“If you can find him, you can keep him,” Betsy joked.
Verna Bismark looked at her watch. It was getting dark. She’d driven from her home in Cottonwood, an hour away.
“Cal knows we’re on a tight schedule, right?”
Betsy nodded. “He said you two have to be somewhere, but it’s all very mysterious. Should I be worried, Verna?”
Betsy was teasing, sort of. As fired up as he’d been about Stevenson when he lost to Eisenhower and Nixon by a landslide, Cal had stepped back, deciding to concentrate on the law practice with Fletch, building up the ranch, and learning the political ropes by volunteering to take on the day-to-day business of community affairs. Over the past two years he’d joined the Young Democrats and served with Doc Avery at the County Board of Education, the Cattlemen’s Association, and the Rural Electric Association, where he’d been introduced to the outspoken Mrs. Bismark. She and her husband owned the Cottonwood National Bank, one of the biggest lenders in the county, which meant even Republicans had to listen to her.
Although she was in her forties, Verna Bismark had the smooth skin of a country girl, whose squared cheekbones flowed pleasingly toward a wide, flawless chin. Her narrow lips were painted coral pink and sensual, despite their determined expression. Her eyes were delicately hooded beneath light brows, as unruly as when she had been a teenager. She considered plucked eyebrows to be trashy. She wore her thick blond hair poufed up with two spit curls shellacked to her cheeks—armed for battle in a man’s world.
While Betsy stood in the doorway, barefoot, wearing mud-stained w
ork overalls.
“Sorry for the way I look,” she said. “I’m trying to get everything done before See It Now.”
“I love that show. What’s on tonight?”
“Edward R. Murrow is going to go after McCarthy for accusing the Signal Corps of subversive activity.”
“Good for them.”
“They’ve been showing clips of the dirty things McCarthy’s said. When you put them all together, he is truly out of his mind. He calls the Fifth Amendment ‘a shield for the guilty’? What a switch-up! And that officer in the air force who was falsely accused and wrongly discharged? They proved him innocent, but McCarthy ruined his life.”
Verna clicked her tongue in disgust. “Going after the armed services is a big mistake on his part.”
Betsy nodded. “You bet. They say the Senate’s finally investigating him.”
“I always knew he’d get his comeuppance.”
Cal joined them on the porch with his hair still wet from the shower. Whatever this was about, he seemed to think it was important enough to put on a fresh shirt and the reliable tweed jacket.
“Let’s go, mister,” Verna said in a familiar way, taking a sharp pull off the cigarette and turning to spit smoke into the wind.
“Where is she taking you?” Betsy murmured.
Cal gave a shrug. The sun was setting and she couldn’t read his eyes.
“No idea,” he said, and hurried up behind Verna Bismark, who was halfway to her car, a white Cadillac that had been standing in the driveway, door open, motor running.
—
At the same time, Thaddeus Haynes was sitting down at the audio console to begin the evening broadcast of The Hour of Truth. Two years ago, with the help of sprinkled doughnuts, Dino the elephant, and a nationwide Republican landslide, he had won his seat in the state legislature, which had given him ground to lead the charge against the Red Threat. Following the example of Joe McCarthy, Haynes set up a fact-finding “committee” with himself as chairman, using the power of the legislature to investigate citizens whom he, personally, suspected of un-American activities, such as history professors and homosexuals. That his tactics were identical to the tyranny employed by the KGB in the USSR was a dark irony that flew as high over his head as a turkey vulture.