Prairie Gothic

by J. M. Hayes

  Tommie Irons had been born here almost seventy years ago. He and Becky grew up on this farm until Tommie started first grade. Then something happened.

  One of the joys of living in a place like Benteen County was that everyone knew everybody else’s business. They shared your joys, and gossiped about your tragedies. That’s what had happened then, a tragedy. A child died. It happened a few years before Mad Dog was born. Tommie and Becky had wandered off from a Sunday school picnic with another boy. The boy drowned, and Tommie and Becky got blamed. Feelings in the community ran so high that the Irons children were shipped off to Oklahoma and raised by family down there. They hadn’t come home again for years. When they did, people remembered. Especially after word of what they’d left behind in Oklahoma filtered into the county. And hard on the heels of that news, their parents and sister died in a car crash. Tommie lived with it. Becky didn’t. She never forgave those she thought had whispered behind her back.

  The Irons children had been sent to live with a well-to-do uncle in Oklahoma, Abel Hornbaker, who had three boys of his own. Abel got himself murdered just before the pair returned to Kansas—killed by his own sons, some hinted maybe with the help of their cousins.

  Strange, Mad Dog thought, that Becky was the one to get upset by the whispers. She’d had an alibi. Tommie had been accused of committing the crime. Only he’d come back to Kansas and, with the help of a former Benteen County sheriff, cleared himself.

  Maybe Becky’s reaction was because of Ezekiel. She and Zeke, Abel’s oldest, were married with a boy of their own at the time. Zeke did fifteen years in prison for the murder before a governor examined the evidence, determined justice hadn’t been served, and granted him a pardon. He’d come up to Kansas then, and reconciled with Becky. That was almost thirty years ago. Time enough, Mad Dog thought, for Becky to come to terms with the county she lived in. But it hadn’t happened.

  Simon Hornbaker and his twins lived here too. Simon was Zeke and Becky’s son, younger than Mad Dog, and, like his own boys, a bit simple. Something in the genes. Maybe that was why Tommie never married.

  It was in the seventies when Zeke Hornbaker, now Benteen County’s most conservative supervisor, reappeared. Mad Dog couldn’t remember ever seeing him on a tractor or otherwise involved in the labor of farming.

  If that was Zeke…Mad Dog recalled the bones and the ID in his pocket.

  Simon and his sons farmed the place these days, though everybody knew Becky was the one making the decisions.

  There was smoke coming from the chimney, but Mad Dog wasn’t sure what that meant. The place was heated with propane. There was a tank on the west side of the house. Someone must have been home to light the fire, but that didn’t mean they were still here. No fresh tracks marred the circular driveway. Again, it was meaningless. Too much wind, too much fresh snow. The landscape was changing even as he watched.

  Mad Dog decided to start with the barn. It was worth checking, and it would be a step removed from the elements, a little warmer than standing in a snow drift, waiting for someone with a rifle to come along and try for his other ear.

  It had been a red barn once. The north face looked salt-and-pepper gray, speckled with fresh patches of snow that had begun catching on the weathered wood. Mad Dog kept the irregular row of evergreens along the north side of the driveway between himself and the house, then closed the last fifty yards with a sprint. Hailey stayed with him all the way. Maybe she was ready to get out of the storm, too.

  The barn door wasn’t latched. That was no surprise. Folks in Benteen County didn’t lock their houses, much less their barns, not unless they planned to be away for a long time. Of course, Tommie had planned to be away forever.

  The door slid smoothly on rollers hanging from a rail above. Mad Dog slipped through and closed it behind Hailey. It was dark inside, heavy with the rich aromas of hay and manure and grain. The wind didn’t howl in the ear he might or might not have anymore. Instead it rattled shuttered windows and tugged at the great sloped roof, eliciting tired groans from the timbers supporting it.

  There was a vehicle just inside the doors. A green Chevy Blazer. Mad Dog recognized it as Tommie’s.

  Mad Dog opened the driver’s door and the dome light came on. The keys were in the ignition. That was the Benteen County norm. Hailey jumped aboard, bounced in and out of the back seat, then placed herself in her favorite position by the passenger’s window. She seemed to think they would borrow it. Mad Dog decided he was willing to argue a little grand-theft-auto with his brother, considering what was in his pockets and what had happened to his cell phone.

  He got in and tried the key. The Blazer started right up. Mad Dog ran back to the doors, pushed them wide, backed the Blazer into the storm, then closed the doors to make it less obvious in case no one had seen him in the act. The doors to the house stayed closed. No one ran into the yard to protest. He couldn’t even see anyone peering out a window. Mad Dog engaged the four-wheel drive and pulled out of the yard and onto the road.

  When he got to the blacktop it was clear. The highway ran almost as purely north/south as the wind and snow blew, so it wasn’t collecting drifts. He didn’t see any white pickups. He didn’t see any traffic whatsoever, not that that was unusual. As he passed the first mile line he considered driving back to get his Saab. The wind tried to tear the Blazer off the road and set it in a ditch and he decided this wasn’t the time. Buffalo Springs was straight ahead. Just a few miles and he was home free.

  “Hey, Mister!” The little-girl voice came from the back seat. “When we get where we’re goin’, can I have some candy?”

  ***

  Three steps out the front door of the Sunshine Towers, the wind snatched the sheriff’s Stetson and launched it toward Oklahoma. He hardly noticed. He was feeling distinctly rocky, having trouble keeping the world lined up the way it was supposed to be. Besides, the hat didn’t fit that well anymore. Its new shape failed to conform to the new shape of his head. He tucked his chin into his wool collar and concentrated on putting one foot ahead of the other, and staying off the ice. The sidewalk tended to tilt occasionally. By the time he made the parking lot, things were stabilizing again. His pickup only shifted when the wind buffeted it.

  He aimed himself back toward Klausen’s, concentrating on keeping track of the edge of the streets. They were beginning to disappear under drifting snow and diminishing visibility. He didn’t notice Judy’s Taurus doing a one-eighty at the corner of Main and Adams as he crossed the latter a block south on Pear. He thought the ringing in his ears got worse once, then wondered if it might be his cell phone. It was buried so deep under his jacket he didn’t bother digging for it. He remembered turning it on before he left Alice Burton’s room. He’d started to make a call, then couldn’t recall who he was dialing, or why. His radio crackled at him too, but it was only static, at least to his ears. He couldn’t hear that well over the roar of the blower that was keeping his windshield from frosting up and letting him see just enough to navigate into Klausen’s parking lot.

  He was relieved to find Doc’s Buick still there and realized it would have been smart to call ahead to be sure. Maybe that was what he’d planned for the cell phone.

  He parked alongside Doc’s station wagon and made his way to Klausen’s back door with the same sure and certain steps of the final customer to heed last call at the nearby Bisonte Bar. The door was on the south side, out of the wind, collecting snow. The sheriff leaned against it for a moment, briefly confused about what he was doing here. He needed to get Doc to look at his head, but there was something else. Something about a baby doll. Maybe Doc would know.

  He let himself in and the long white corridor corkscrewed toward the front of the building in a totally unfamiliar manner. By leaning against the wall, the sheriff made it to Doc’s door. He didn’t bother to knock.

  “Where’s the doll?” he demanded. It would have been more impressive if he’d managed to stay on his feet. Better yet, if Doc had been in the
room.

  ***

  “We can’t make it,” Wynn shouted. “We’ll have to go back to the cruiser.” The wind snatched his voice and muffled it in a garment woven of snowflakes. The Heathers managed to hear him anyway.

  “Sure we can.” Heather English grabbed his shoulder and pointed with the other hand at the intersecting dirt roads just ahead. “That’s Uncle Mad Dog’s place right there. His driveway’s only another quarter mile, just the other side of the pasture. It must be farther than that back to the patrol car. We’d just have to sit and wait there, hope somebody finds us before it runs out of gas and we freeze to death.”

  “We should go back. That radio will start to work again pretty soon. You wait and see.”

  “We tried it,” the other Heather said. “I wish you hadn’t forgotten to bring your cell phone today, Deputy.”

  It was a wish he shared, but it reminded him of another “Lose Some” moment and made him feel contrary. “I vote we go back.”

  “Don’t be scared. Uncle Mad Dog’s only got a couple of wolves left, and they’re penned up in the barn. They can’t get out…except maybe Hailey, but she’s just a big sweet puppy. She wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “What about that buffalo?”

  “Bob? That’s his pasture, right there,” Heather One said. “But with weather like this, he’ll probably be holed up in his shed near the house. Uncle Mad Dog has done a lot of work on that fence. He can’t get out, and he’d just stay away from us even if he did. He’s shy, not dangerous.”

  Wynn peered toward the pasture. Sometimes Buffalo Bob liked to wait behind the evergreens near the road and watch for Mad Dog when he was away from home.

  “There was more than a quarter tank of gas in that cruiser.”

  “And it burns gas faster than any other car in the county. Go back if you want to,” Two said. “I’m going to Mad Dog’s.”

  As she trudged into the intersection, One made another plea to the Deputy. “This storm is getting worse. There might not be anybody driving this road again till it’s over. Even if Uncle Mad Dog’s power and phone should go down and we end up stuck there, he’s got a fireplace and a big woodpile. He keeps a lot of canned goods in his larder in case of days like this. I’m going with Heather. You don’t want to go back to the black and white alone, do you?”

  Wynn didn’t, but he didn’t have to admit it, or even agree to accompany them. Two had turned around and was shouting something at them. The wind whipped her hair into her eyes and her voice toward the gulf coast. She pointed. He tried to see at what. The snow slackened for just a moment and he noticed an unlikely patch of color in Mad Dog’s pasture. Near the evergreens there seemed to be a splash of red, then it was gone and Heather was shouting in his ear again. “Look! A truck.”

  He forced himself to face the wind and there it was, just before his eyes began to tear up enough to temporarily blind him. An old white Dodge stood just beyond the intersection. He stumbled toward it.

  “Hot damn! Girls, we’re saved.”

  ***

  An apoplectic Stan Deffenbach stormed into the lobby of the Sunshine Towers. “Mrs. Kraus just hung up on me,” he complained to Judy English. “She can’t do that. She’s a public servant and I’m the public. We need an armed guard over here and she says there’s no one to send. How can that be? Where’s your husband? He should be here. He shouldn’t have left without even a word to me.”

  Judy wasn’t as concerned about Stan Deffenbach’s security problems as she was that Englishman had gone.

  “Englishman left?”

  “At least he chased off those Hornbakers, but then he just marched out of here. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on or where he was headed or when he was going to get a deputy over here in case they come back.”

  “Might he have told someone else?”

  Deffenbach continued punching numbers on the phone at the front desk. He ignored her and said to the phone, “Now don’t you hang up on me again, Mrs. Kraus,” and then: “Oh damn! She did.”

  Judy looked around for someone else to ask. Lucille Martin ducked her head into the lobby. “Mr. Deffenbach,” she said. “You need to speak to a couple of the ladies. They’re packing clothes and threatening to call their families and move out of here this very afternoon.”

  “Mrs. Martin,” Judy interrupted. “Do you know where Englishman’s gone?”

  Lucille Martin shrugged shoulders that slumped more deeply than Judy remembered. “No, I’m sorry, Judy.” She aimed Stan back into the building and fell in step behind him. Judy found herself alone in the lobby with a giant cage of songbirds, several of them chirping almost as wildly as Deffenbach before he disappeared.

  “You’re Mrs. English?” The voice came from the direction of the birds. A tiny woman with short white hair rose from a high-backed chair that had hidden her. She was wearing sweats that looked more appropriate for the gym than the lobby of the Sunshine Towers Retirement Home. She had on bright red tennies, too, so bright Judy thought they might glow in the dark.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not sure where your husband went, but you should know the sheriff got clonked on the head.”

  “What?” Judy was too focused on her daughters to take it in at first.

  “He was still pretty wobbly when he went out to his truck.”

  “Englishman’s hurt?”

  “Not too bad, I think, but I doubt if he should be driving.” She paused for a moment while Judy absorbed this fresh catastrophe and tried to prioritize it. A brilliant orange and black bird at the end of the room broke into a song that hinted at tropical rain forests as a blinding gyre of snow briefly hid the parking lot from view.

  “Mrs. English. Maybe I do know where he’s gone. I’ll tell you. Only, first, there’s something else I found out that he needs to know. Promise you’ll tell him?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know about Tommie Irons?”

  “I do.”

  “He had a big clubby silver ring. Didn’t look like it could be worth that much, but he said they’d come pry it off his dead hand. He didn’t want that. Said he had a plan to take it with him. He’s been swallowing it. I saw him gagging on it once. I think it must have passed through him several times. Then, finally, at the end, he just couldn’t force it down. He gave it to one of the ladies to hide. Then I think he forgot, what with all the morphine. I didn’t know until just after your Englishman left. It was Alice Burton he asked to hide that ring. She did. She hid it under the diaper of that dolly she carried, the one she traded for the dead baby last night. Sheriff needs to know that. If he finds what the Hornbakers want, maybe he can work out how to stop these troubles.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Gone to be with the dead, I think. Alice told him she found the dead baby on the back porch at Klausen’s.”

  ***

  “Follow my finger, not the light.”

  The sheriff was having trouble with complex instructions like that. Especially since Doc had him holding a cold pack against the sore spot on the back of his head at the same time.

  “Umm hmm,” Doc said, switching off the pen light and stepping back to sit on the edge of his desk.

  “You know I don’t understand technical medical jargon like that, Doc. Just tell me if I’ll live.”

  “Not long, if you continue letting folks strike you on the head with blunt objects.”

  “I wasn’t planning on the first time.”

  The sheriff experimentally pulled the cold pack away and explored the bump with his other hand. It didn’t seem quite as big as a baseball anymore, but it still hurt like sin.

  “Are you going to prescribe anything?”

  Doc put the little flashlight back in his shirt pocket beside a collection of ballpoints. “Bed rest and observation. You should go spend a night in a hospital where someone who’s qualified can keep an eye on you.”

  “Nearest hospital’s in the next county.”

  “You didn’t ask me what I
expected you to do. That’s just what you should do. You’ve got a mild concussion. The bump will go down. You aren’t cut badly and the bleeding’s pretty much stopped. People who’ve suffered a blow to the head shouldn’t lie down and sleep it off unmonitored. Somebody should check on them regularly to be sure their cognitive functions are still within a normal range. You shouldn’t drive, drink alcoholic beverages, or go chasing Hornbakers. I assume you’re not going to take my advice about any of that, except maybe the booze, so I’ll offer an alternative therapy. Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.”

  The sheriff pushed himself up off the couch onto which Doc had helped him after coming to investigate the noise in his office. The effort made the sheriff’s head pound, but the room stayed steady and the pain went back to bearable quick enough.

  “You’re a very funny man, Doc.”

  “Actually, I’m serious. That’s the best I can do for you, Sheriff. I’d offer you a stronger painkiller, but not if you’re going to be out there driving in this storm. Your coordination is going to be off a little anyway. You’ll get steadily better, unless you form a blood clot on the brain and collapse with a stroke. Or, if I give you too many blood thinners, maybe it could be an aneurysm instead.”

  “But neither, I gather, is likely.”

  “No, not likely. But don’t get hit over the head anymore for a few days.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate the advice. Now I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Doc stepped over and opened the door for him. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  The sheriff approached Doc instead of the door. “OK, then. Tell me about the baby, Doc. Alice Burton got it from here.”

  ***

  Mad Dog somehow managed to keep the Blazer out of a ditch. He was coming up on a mile line, so he pulled off at the crossroads to turn around and see who was in the back seat. This wasn’t going the way he’d planned. Grand theft auto was one thing. Kidnapping, quite another.