by Eric
Her head and torso, half wrapped in the rubberized groundsheet they'd carried her in, was lying on a bench in the back of the garage where the sheriff's cars were kept.
"She was snagged around a tree trunk in the flood," George said. "When I first saw her, it looked like she was alive, her arms holding on to the roots and her head turning from side to side as if she was trying to look over her shoulder and cry for help." He cleared his throat. "Then I remembered she had no bottom half."
She had thick black hair that had probably once been her vanity and her pride. I could picture it combed out, haloing around a pretty face. Now, the lights had gone out in it. It was a sodden mass of old crepe paper, fingers of it clinging to her white neck, strangling her even though she was already dead.
Her eyes were half open. Even with the film of death over the pupils, they were as black as coal and glittered as though alive.
"She liked a lot of jewelry, " I said, noting the heavy necklace lying on her bosom, the rings on the one hand that had been exposed when I'd lifted the groundsheet away, and the loop earring that tugged at the lobe of her ear.
"One earring's been torn away," George said.
"God, that river roughed her up," I said.
"It's a wonder she wasn't battered worse the way that water was running."
"Has Howard Freeman had a look at her?"
"I had the office put a call into him as soon as we brought her back. Dixie Hanniford said she'd stop by his farm on her way home and tell him."
"No kind of farm," I said.
"How's that?"
"I was out there today. Freeman has a pretty farm but nobody's working it."
"I've heard he's letting the fields lie fallow because he intends to change over to some experimental crops."
"Like what?"
"Like that plant they're starting to grow commercially for use as insecticide."
"Pyrethrum."
"That's the stuff."
"Meanwhile, isn't he supposed to be keeping some cows?"
"I wouldn't know about that. I hear the farmers talk, but I don't listen to half of what they say. You've got to remember I'm not a local, born and bred. I'm a big-city boy. I know about keeping the peace. I don't know about cows."
"Well, he was supposed to be sitting up with a sick one the morning it took the Denver dispatcher an hour or more to rouse him. Five o'clock in the morning and the man said he was out in the barn with a sick cow."
"Farmers get up at the damnedest hours," George said.
"But I didn't see any cow out there," I said, raising my voice some because George didn't seem to be getting the point. There was a rap on the door. "No damned cows at all!" I repeated for emphasis. . .and the door opened. Freeman was standing there with his toothy grin and his foggy glasses.
"Talking about cows, are you?" he said. "Is that what you were doing prowling around my place, Hatch? Looking for a sick cow?"
I didn't bother to answer and he didn't expect me to. He was just sticking it to me. He looked down at the girl.
"You know her?" I said.
"What's that?" he said, turning his head sharply looking at me as though he'd like to hit me.
"Have you ever seen her anywhere before?"
"What makes you ask me something like that?"
"What's so strange about asking a question like that? Unless you're always at the farm with your sick cows, you might take a trip to Denver or Omaha. Here or there. I just asked you, like I'd ask anybody else, did you ever see her. On the off chance," I said, flaring up.
"Goddammit, don't mind me," he said, backing off fast. "I'm nothing but nerves. There's a lot about this job I could do without."
"Looking at things like this shaves everybody's nerves pretty fine," I said, wanting to ease my bad temper as well as his.
"Find anything on her?"
"No pockets in the blouse or jacket. Just the jewelry she's wearing," George said.
"Anybody ever found her purse?" I said.
They both looked at me as though that were a thought that had never occurred to either of them.
"That won't be easy to find," George said.
"Maybe if we got one of them metal detectors like the beachcombers use," I said, one eye on Freeman. "All kinds of metal things in a woman's purse."
"What good would a detector do with all that steel track and tie spikes?" George said.
Freeman gave me his best grin.
"I don't know a lot about how those things work," I said, "but I'd venture a guess that they can be tuned down pretty narrow. If the purse is there, it won't be caught between the ties because we walked the track miles in each direction and somebody would've seen it. It would have fallen one side or the other, far enough away from the rails so they wouldn't interfere with any signals."
"There'd still be all kinds of scrap. Tin cans. Old bed springs. Who knows what all the way people throw junk along the right of way," George said, thinking all we were talking about was a way to facilitate another damned search, this time for a woman's pocketbook.
"Close to towns and cities, but not out there in the hills," I insisted.
"We'll see about it when you get back, Jake," George said. "I'd hate to ask anybody to go tramping around that treacherous ground again, looking for nothing but a purse."
"Where you off to?" Freeman said.
"Denver. The morgue."
"Aren't they coming to get her?"
"I rented a car in Denver yesterday and I've got to get it back," I said. "I might as well take her with me."
Freeman smiled at me in the way he had that made him look like a nasty little boy and I knew there'd never be any real peace or friendliness between us.
"Make sure you don't get yourself stopped along the highway. Trooper finds her in your trunk, they could throw you in jail and maybe punch you once or twice before George could come get you out."
"I never break the speed limit," I said. "But I never let up on the gas until I get where I'm going, either."
He turned away. "Say hello to Bosley for me." Then he stopped in the doorway and turned back to grin at me again. "About the cow. You were looking in the wrong barn. Farmer who put that cow barn down by the cottonwoods was a damn fool. There's a shallow there collects cold air like a pond. He must have had his troubles with cows going down with slow fever and seized knee joints. I built me a cow shed, big enough for six, the other side of the house where it's sunny and sheltered. Ask around, Hatch. You'll find out I'm experimenting with special cows just like I am with special crops." He walked out and shut the door.
"Well, I guess you just got told," George said.
TWENTY-FOUR
It's nearly two hundred road miles to McCook, and when you get there you wonder why you made the trip. There's nothing much to see there except the train station, a commercial street sixteen blocks long and one block wide that serves the farmers and ranchers round about, a John Deere showroom that tries to make tractors and cultivators look like Cadillacs and Lincolns, a water tank, a movie house, and the steeples of half a dozen churches, including a Baptist church which, for some reason nobody can explain, is the only steeple that has a belfry full of crows.
There were three automobiles and a pickup truck parked in the hard-packed red dirt that passed for a parking lot alongside the station. I put my car around the corner where the station cast some shade. Cold as it was, I knew the trunk of a car could heat up pretty fast and I feared what that would do to what I was carrying in it.
Dearborn Simmons, the station agent, was inside, plowing through a pile of paperwork at his desk. He was wearing paper cuffs he'd clipped to his sleeves and a green celluloid visor, the likes of which I hadn't seen, except on him, in twenty years. Green roller shades covered the windows and filled the place with cool, watery gloom.
"Help you?" he said.
"Your eyes going back on you, Simmons?"
"There's a glare in here," be said.
I leaned over the counter, sticking my f
ace halfway between here and there.
"Jake Hatch," he said. "What the devil you doing in McCook? Don't tell me. Come to see Charlotte Shumway."
"Come to see you."
"What about?"
"You heard about the tragedies along the road just outside of Akron?"
"It's in the city papers and on the television. Bodies cut in half. My god. That's not going to do the reputation of the railroads any good, under attack by the Congress for not paying its way like they are. You got anything new to tell me?"
"Not a thing. What I wanted to know is, have you had any trouble with gypsies around here lately?"
"You mean like with earrings and red bandannas around their beads?"
"Well, I don't know about that. Gypsies dress just like everybody else these days, I suppose."
"Well, I see the men wearing belts made out of coins and the women in those long skirts, don't I?"
"So, you have seen some around here lately."
"Not that I noticed."
"No complaints about pockets being picked?"
"None that's been complained to me."
"The day before the accident along the right of way, you see a young woman wearing trousers get off the eastbound Zephyr?"
"That time of the morning I'm asleep on the cot unless somebody comes in and rings the bell at the counter."
"You mean there's nobody up and awake?"
"How many tickets do you think I sell at four in the morning?"
"Somebody must ride the trains out of McCook."
"Not so's you notice. Besides, they'd probably already have their tickets bought in advance."
"Well, all right. This young woman, though, would've got off the eastbound at two o'clock and hung around the waiting rooms until the westbound pulled in at three fifty-five."
"Now, why the hell would she do a thing like that? Get off one train and get on another going back the other way at that hour of the morning?"
"Because she was making a connection with somebody maybe?"
He looked up at the ceiling. "I wonder. Did I see a young woman like that?"
"You mean you weren't asleep all that time?"
"Well, I don't know that, do I? I mean who remembers on this day or that day, in the middle of the night, did you get up to get a drink of water or take a pee. I can tell you I don't remember anybody ringing the bell and asking for any service. But . . ."
"But what?"
"I'm trying to remember did I get up, shuffling around half asleep, you know, and did I see anybody in the waiting room or on the platform."
"Not on the platform. It was storming."
"I did get up once to water my horse," Simmons said, putting up a finger, finally sure of it.
"And you saw somebody?"
"Not here in the station. I looked out the window in the front door as I passed it on the way to the toilet just at the second there was a lightning flash. I think I remember seeing somebody, I don't know was it a man or a girl, walking across the street toward the diner. Whoever it was had their head down with something over it to keep from getting wet. That's what I think I saw."
"Is that diner all-night?"
"No. But they're open until around four. Back when Amtrak was making a special effort with public relations, they made a deal with Cooley Gaines to stay open as a convenience for any passengers might be taking the trains. I don't have to tell you they gave up pretty quick but Cooley stays open anyway."
"Thank you," I said, starting for the door.
"Might not be open now. I tried half an hour ago and Cooley's brother-in-law, Wylie Pope—lazy son of a buck, wouldn't have the job except Cooley figures he'd have to support his sister and her kids anyway hadn't opened up yet. Cooley'll strip his hide when he finds out but he won't fire him, even though Wylie's usually late opening maybe twice a week and sometimes don't open up at all. You see Cooley's trying to work it out how he can—"
"I think I understand," I said, putting my hand on the latch and opening the front door. "Cooley's trying to figure out how he can cut his losses since he can't turn a profit on the work he gets out of Wylie."
"That's about the size of it. By the way. You'd better come back here before you leave town and call the front office. There's people looking for you from one end of the line to the other."
I said I would and walked across the street toward the diner. Halfway there I saw that the sign in the door said CLOSED. Cooley's brother-in-law, Wylie, was still dogging it.
I could wait, or I could go over and visit Charlotte Shumway and then come back.
I drove over to Charlotte's house to see if I was too late for lunch and too early for tea.
When I pulled up in front, Charlotte was already at the front door. She put her hand palm out at me about the time my right foot hit the top step of the stairs leading to the porch.
"Is that an Indian welcome, Charlotte, dear?" I said.
"That's a message that maybe you shouldn't come any farther."
"Is something wrong?"
"You've not been around in six months, Jake."
"Five months, two weeks and two days," I said, using a trick of calculation and memory that never fails to impress the ladies.
"I'm flattered you should know to the day when you saw me last, Jake, but that's not what I mean."
"What's not what you mean?"
"I'm not disturbed because it's been such a time since you came visiting. I knew you were a traveling man when we met. I'm just pointing out the fact that it's been a long time and a lot can happen in a long time."
"Like what?"
"Like I've taken up with another gentleman, Jake. A local gentleman who's not a traveling man."
"It's serious?"
"We're engaged."
"I don't see a ring."
"Well, pre-engaged."
"You mean you have an understanding?"
"Sort of an understanding."
"I expect an understanding should make a fella feel very secure, especially when the understanding he has is with a woman as good and true as he must know Charlotte Shumway to be."
"Butter melts in the sun, Jake."
"Under the crust," I said almost dreamily.
"What's that?"
"All your undeniable charms notwithstanding, Charlotte, it's a wonder how I can never get within nose distance of your front door without thinking about apple pie, warm from the oven, with a slab of butter under the crust."
Charlotte was no fool. She knew I was flattering her shamelessly. But I'd long since learned that such outrageous flattery carries a certain power. It's daring. Like going up to a strange woman in a bar and kissing her as though the pull had been so strong that even a slap from her or a punch in the mouth from a boyfriend would be worth it. I've done that once or twice, in my youth, but I haven't tried such shenanigans in years. Age takes its toll. I just use flattery now, assuming that the flatteree knows that the flatterer wouldn't take the bother over someone they didn't care about a lot.
"I don't think Wilbur would—"
"Wilbur?" I couldn't help blurting out.
A little ice formed on her eyes and mouth. "Yes, Wilbur. Something?"
"Just startled me. That was my favorite cousin's name," I lied.
The ice melted but I could see the temperature only had to drop by one degree for it to come back again. "I don't suppose Wilbur would have any call to mind if I invited an old friend into the kitchen for a piece of homemade pie," she said.
"With butter under the crust," I said, stepping onto the porch.
It wasn't long after I'd finished two pieces of her pie and praised it to the skies that we were holding hands across the kitchen table with me saying that I'd been thinking lately of settling down. The view I had in mind was cuddling with Charlotte just one more time before her engagement became official and she was lost to me forever.
If I'm giving the impression that I'm a jackrabbit, pouncing on every stray doe that passes by, it would be a wrong one. Believe
it or not, I'm much alone in my nearly empty flat in Omaha and it's only on occasion that I'm out among other people. Especially females. Charlotte's going and getting almost engaged without my even knowing is proof enough of that.
I sometimes believe that any charm I may have with the ladies lies in the fact that they know I'm a traveling man, more or less, and can be depended upon not to linger too long after we've had our moment.
In any case, things were progressing. My finger was making circles in the crook of her elbow, and I had her trying to read the truth in my melancholy eyes, when her phone rang.
It was Dearborn Simmons, the station agent. "I hope I didn't interrupt nothing," he said.
"Only a little gossip between old, dear friends," I replied, throwing Charlotte a little bonbon while telling Simmons to speculate no further.
"You were asking about gypsies?"
"I was."
"Three of them just stopped by. Two men and a woman."
"How did you know they were gypsies?"
"The older man was wearing a fedora and a bandanna around his neck. The younger one had an earring in his ear. The woman wore one of those big skirts and a blouse cut so low I could easy tell her fortune." He laughed like steam escaping from a radiator.
"Half the men in Nebraska wear fedoras," I said. "Farmers wear bandannas to catch the sweat. Nowadays, plenty of youngsters wear one earring. And some of these girls and women on the farm communes—"
I was looking for an excuse not to leave Charlotte.
"Don't tell me I don't know what gypsies look like," Simmons said. "The men had belts made out of hammered silver coins."
"Did they say anything I'd be interested in?"
"They asked me about that night and about a young woman just like you did."
"What did you tell them?"
"The same thing I told you."
"Did they buy tickets for the train?"
"One man and one woman did. Then they left. The other, the young one, stayed behind. He sat around for a while. Bought himself a cup of coffee out of the machine, then didn't drink it. Finally he asked me was the food in the diner across the street any good and I said it was when it wasn't closed. He went to the door and looked. It was open. He walked across the street and I went to the door to see, and sure enough Wiley, or maybe Cooley—because sometimes, you understand, Cooley gets so annoyed at Wiley that he fires him for a day or two and tries to work both shifts—"