by Jess Lourey
The walls were a golden, polished knotty pine, looming around handmade tables and plastic elementary school chairs. The floor had once been high-gloss maple but had since lost its polish, and if you sat in the right spot, you could peek through the floorboards and watch Ruby switching kegs below. The tiny, dimly lit bathrooms in the back had locks that never worked, and those in the know could tell you that Ruby kept the spare toilet paper in the unused wood stove by the foosball table. The majesty of the place was the magnificent bar that ran the length of the left wall. The wood was a soft butter color that the leather bar stools matched.
All in all it was a perfect mix of comfortable and redneck. Tonight the bees on this flower were belly to the bar: Shmitty, Lena, and Ortis. Perfect. They were Bonnie & Clyde’s staples. Seeing them outside of the bar in Clitherall would have been like spotting Oscar outside of his garbage can on Sesame Street.
I knew at least Shmitty owned a car, the old blue Chevy Impala out front with the bumper sticker “Charleton Heston Is My President,” but I had never actually seen him drive it. Shmitty was one of those grumpy old guys for whom life is terminally unfair, who could have been great if only ever given the opportunity. I suppose if there were a place for career pessimists like him, it would be a bar in a town named Clitherall. He was harmless, though, and always kept the conversation lively.
Lena and Ortis, a married couple who lived in Clitherall, likely walked to and from the bar if they left at all. I had doubts. Rumor had it that they had been champion ballroom dancers back in the day,
and they were still in pretty good shape. I would put both of them at around five foot six, 130 pounds, but I hadn’t actually seen them off their bar stools, so I couldn’t be sure. They wore matching green Clitherall Sportsman’s Club jackets and blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up around brown leather work boots. Their short gray hair and round gray eyeglasses made them a matched pair. You could tell them apart because Lena smoked.
I purposely sat five spots down from the three stoolers because I didn’t want to seem nosy. I hung out for about four minutes before Ruby acknowledged me. I was pretty sure she liked me as much as anybody, but she was not one to hurry to help.
“Thirsty?” she said without coming to my end of the bar. Ortis looked my direction when Ruby talked and tipped his head when his eyes landed on me.
“I’ll take a Diet Coke, no ice.” I nodded back at Ortis. He winked.
“How’s Mira doing tonight?” he asked.
“I’m fine, Ortis,” I said, smiling at Lena. “How’re you and Lena doing on this beautiful spring evening?”
“I’d say I can’t complain, but you know that’d be a lie, hon,” Lena said, chuckling huskily as she tapped her Virginia Slim on the corner of an ashtray the shape and color of a liver. One of Ruby’s boys had made it in high school art class a million years ago.
“I hear ya,” I said, trading Ruby a dollar for a pop. Her dyed red hair was pulled back in a poufy bun, as always, and I could see a heart embroidered on the hip of her homemade blue jeans. I slid two quarters over the lip of the bar. I knew from experience that the tip would be gone within minutes, but I could never catch Ruby actually taking it. It was a game we played.
“Yah, but dose damn barnstormers are killin’ all da good walleye wid der spray, ya bet on it,” Shmitty said, apparently picking up the conversation where my entrance had interrupted it.
The more he drank, the more his Norwegian came out. The majority of the older folks in the area had traces of it, left over from their recent Scandinavian ancestors. The accent mostly manifested itself as a sharp, primary “t” where there should be a soft “th,” as in “He caught tree fingers in his combine’s uptake,” or if the “th” was hard or came at the end of a word, it was pronounced as “d,” as in “He hadta dial da phone wid his pinkie.” Throw in a conversational lilt where random words were drawn out, as in “I shuuurrrhuh know what ya mean,” and you had Shmitty after a six-pack. He took a pull on his tap beer and continued.
“Useta be, I put in my boat and get tree, four, five nice fish wid a couple good leeches. Now I sit out der for a day and get nuttin’. It’s dose damn barnstormers sprayin’ dem potatoes.”
“Whaddya think, Mira?” Ortis said, giving me a Lutheran invite
to join them. “You think the barnstormers are killin’ the fish, or you think old Shmitty forgot where the honey spot is over there on Clitrull Lake?”
I slid over to the empty stool next to Shmitty, smiling at the thick drawl. Even in Ortis’s watered-down version, “Clitherall” lost its soft “th” and a syllable. I also smiled at Ortis calling Shmitty “old.” None of the people at the bar were under seventy on a good day, Ruby
included.
“I think I know just enough about fishing and Shmitty not to get involved in this conversation,” I said, enjoying my pop. There were questionable things about Bonnie & Clyde’s, but the temperature of the beverages wasn’t one of them. They always tasted ice cold and clean.
“What do ya know ’bout?” Shmitty asked, obviously not ready to have the subject changed.
“I know there’s talk of sacred Indian monuments and burial grounds around here,” I said, stabbing into the thick. My heartbeat picked up, and I hoped my question sounded casual.
“Ach. You and da rest of da world know dat,” Shmitty said. “I can’t hardly turn da plow widout pullin’ up a leg bone here, an arm bone der. No herbicide’ll take care of dat. You don’t farm round here and not know dat.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Lena said, dragging on her white light. “That curse has hung on this town ever since the battle it was named after.”
“You wanna find out about the Indians, you go ask Curtis at the old folks’ home in town,” Ortis said. “He’ll help you.”
Ruby, Lena, and Shmitty laughed heartily at that. I smiled, confused. “Curtis?”
“Curtis Poling,” Ruby said, not looking at me as she took a draw off her dark drink. “Crazy as a loon, but he’s the town memory. He’s lived in Battle Lake nearly since it was named, and he knows everyone who’s worth knowing. If they don’t keep an eye on him at the Sunset, he’ll sneak up on the roof with his fishing pole and fish into the sky all livelong day. You want to talk to Curtis, you bring him a fish.”
There was another round of laughter at this, and I joined in. I didn’t know if they were serious or not, and I didn’t want to let on.
Sometime over the course of our conversation, Hal had dismounted the jukebox and sidled up next to me, eyeing the base of my neck with pure blue concentration. “Wanna dance?” he asked, all eighty-plus years of him meaning it.
“No thanks,” I said, turning back to Ortis. I wanted to ask what they knew about Jeff, but I had a hard time bringing it up. I couldn’t imagine that everyone in the county hadn’t heard, but I didn’t want their sympathy or questions. “What do you all think of the development on the Jorgensen land?”
Ruby rolled her eyes, and Shmitty set his drink down hard. “I tink dat land was meant to lie fallow, and fallow it should lie!” He picked his drink up again quickly.
Everyone but moon-eyed Hal seemed suddenly off, much like Kennie had at the Turtle Stew last night. Something about my newspaper article or Jeff’s return had set this town on its ear. I was starting to wonder what was really under the grass at the Jorgensen land. Maybe it was some sort of mass burial site for a town of serial killers and I was minutes away from being body-snatched for asking too many questions. I quietly clucked my tongue and wiggled my two little toes, my personal defense against evil.
Before I could follow the train any further, the door opened. In walked a group of Battle Lake High graduates from a few years earlier, their acne clearing but their cheeks still pink and tight. They looked around shiftily, too young to be used to getting into bars legally. Ruby shook her head but walked over to the corner of the bar.
“What do you kids want?” she barked. I wasn’t sure if she was taking their order or kick
ing them out. It’s hard to tell with Ruby.
“A Coke,” one said. Two more nodded in agreement, but the fourth asked for a beer. Ruby got them their order and set it on the corner of the bar. The four paid and set up on the back pool table. Soon the neat click of pool balls meeting created a backbeat, and the jukebox slid out some Kid Rock. The mood in the bar markedly changed, and the older crowd was not going to talk anymore. I slid my empty glass toward Ruby and stood up. Dirt on Kennie and the Chief would have to wait.
“It’s been nice talking,” I said to no one in particular. Ruby had gone back to studying the muted television mounted on the far wall, and Shmitty was on a new tirade. On my way out the door, I could hear him setting forth on the problems with the metric system as it related to the sizing of Wrangler jeans. Once outside, the cool spring air washed over me but wasn’t enough to kick out the bar smell. I could hear laughter and emphatic, off-key singing wafting from the karaoke bar across the street, and I made my lonely way back to my car. I heard the door to Bonnie & Clyde’s open and close behind me, and I wondered dimly if Hal was about to officially join my fan club.
“Hey,” one of the kids from the bar called over.
I turned and eyed the guy. He was twenty if he was a day, dark hair curling under his Nike cap, brown eyes looking me over foot to head and back again in an involuntary glance, hands shoved into his baggy jeans. I recognized him as Scott Benson, the son of the owner of the local bait shop, Ben’s Bait. That made him the closest thing to royalty in this land of fish worship. He was cute, in a little dude sort of way, and he had always been polite when I saw him around.
“Aren’t you, um, aren’t you the lady who works in the library, the one who wrote the article about that guy that was killed this morning?” he asked.
“I suppose,” I said. He called me “lady.” That’s the kiss of death to any chick nearing thirty. I sucked in my stomach and pushed my shoulders back, trying to look relaxed.
“They know who did it?” he asked.
“Not that I know of,” I said brusquely. Since I wasn’t really getting any information tonight, I didn’t feel like giving any.
He pushed his baseball cap back on his head and then returned it to its starting point. “Me and some guys were partying out at the pit Saturday night,” he said. “You know, over on the edge of old lady Jorgensen’s land.”
I nodded. I didn’t know the spot, but I knew the pastime. “Drinking in a Field,” one of the favorite sports of high school juniors and seniors and the recently graduated. And creepy older guys looking for young blood.
“We saw that Jeff guy there. He came over and had a beer with us. I recognized him because his picture’s all over the football wall at school.” He tweaked his cap again. “I got a partial football scholarship to the CC. I pay attention to all the football stuff.”
I raised my eyebrows, trying to appear suitably impressed while filing this information. “You sure it was him?”
“Sure. He introduced himself. He was a real nice guy. Said he was meeting somebody and then left when her car pulled up.”
“Her car?” I spat out before I could catch myself. I could feel my brow wrinkling with tension.
Scott was little more than a boy, but he had grown up in farm country and knew what piles to avoid. “I suppose. Coulda been a sister or something.” He shrugged. “It was dark and our tunes were loud. I couldn’t hear much of what they were yelling.”
I shook my head. “Did he say anything else?” My heart was tripping. Jeff was supposed to be in the Cities Saturday night, and instead he was drinking in a field with boys outside of Battle Lake. And then he was arguing with a woman. I guess there was no question any longer that he was from around here. “What time did all this happen?”
Too late. The smell of my estrogen singeing had turned Scott off this conversation a couple beats back. “Dark, I think. He didn’t talk too much. I better go play pool. I bet it’s my turn.”
Well. Nothing like jealousy to warp the grieving process into something much more manageable.
I almost had no choice now but to sneak into Jeff’s motel room. I had decided to take the long way home from Bonnie & Clyde’s, driving past big, strong Chief Wenonga. I was starting to get a thing for him. He was cute, he wouldn’t cheat on me, and he couldn’t die. I actually considered pulling over to hang out by his feet to clear my head like some sort of groupie for tall, dark, and unattainable men, when I caught the faux-log-cabin Battle Lake Motel out of the corner of my eye. The owners had redone the front in a blonde, Lincoln Log–style siding along all seven rooms. People driving by could see the original green siding on the back and sides of the building, but I wasn’t driving by just yet. I knew fate had led me here. The police may already have checked the room, but then again, maybe I was the only one who knew exactly where Jeff had been staying.
I parked my car in the lot for the lake’s public access boat landing, just up the road from the motel, and walked back over the crunching gravel. Another car in the motel parking lot probably would not have aroused suspicion, but I knew what I was about to do was illegal, and I wanted as little evidence of my visit as possible. Some friends and I had snuck into a local church and stole pickles from the basement refrigerator one night once when I was in my early teens, but otherwise I was no criminal.
The motel’s seven units were all set out in a strip like a really long trailer. I could hear the lapping of Battle Lake behind me as I neared door number six, and I glanced over at the tall chief, who stood shadowed in the streetlights about a block from the motel. He surveyed the lake impassively. “Watch my back, OK?” I whispered in his direction. I looked back at the door and peered in the window. The cheap canvas shades were drawn, but I could see in the cracks around the edge. The room was dark, of course. I tried the knob. Locked. What had I thought was going to happen? I considered some elaborate lie to get a key from the clerk, but I doubted she would believe that I had left my inhaler under the bed when I stayed in the room last week.
I put my hand on the cool glass and listened to the soft whomping of moths flying into the streetlight. On the right side of my peripheral vision, I thought I saw a hint of a shadow move against the glass of Jeff’s room. I jumped back, visions of his zombie body waiting for me pillaging my brain. Why deer stare at the headlights of approaching death was no longer a mystery to me. I couldn’t move. I forced myself to take deep breaths and count the passing cars. Safety was close.
A shadow flickered against the glass again, the same time as a soft wind lifted the hair at my neck. It had just been a breeze, and if it had moved the curtains inside, there must be an opening. I slid my fingers across the shiny surface and dug them into the lip of the window, into the hairline crack where it had been left unlocked. The window slid open. Jeff may have moved to the big city, but inside he had still been the boy who grew up in a small town where people left their windows open at night and didn’t lock their doors when they went out. I stared at the curtain in front of me, able now to make out the print of flying ducks.
My heart was hammering so loudly it sounded like it was skipping beats. I pushed the curtain aside, the material rough against my fingers, and hauled one leg over the waist-high sill. When no icy hand grabbed my ankle, I did the same with the other leg. I closed the window behind me and made sure the shade was completely shut before I turned on the flashlight I had nabbed from the emergency winter kit in the back of my car.
It didn’t look like the police had been here. It didn’t look like anyone had been here, actually, including Jeff. The bed was made and the coffee cups on the TV counter were still wrapped in plastic. My heartbeat dropped as I considered the possibility that I had snuck into the wrong room. I flashed my light to the telephone and made out the “Room 6” typed on the calling directions. I was in the right room, but where were Jeff’s belongings? I swung my light toward the corner and caught a lumpy shape. I felt the characteristic icy rush of fear. I had found another body. It happened o
nce, it could happen again.
I forced my fear-stiffened legs over and made out a bundle of extra bedding sealed in a plastic bag. The blood moved in my toes again. I unzipped the bag and looked inside, holding the flashlight between my teeth. The television in the room next door came on with a muffle of canned laughter and I squeaked, then felt a wash of relief to be back in the human world. Part of me had expected to find monsters in this room, and nothing dispels monsters more quickly than safe, reassuring television.
I found nothing in the bag of bedding, and nothing in the bathroom, and nothing in the drawers or the cabinets. The room had been completely emptied out, and I wondered again if the police had already visited the room. From my limited knowledge of police business in the case of murders, it seemed to me that if they had been here, they would have put up police tape. Either the police had already been here and found nothing, Jeff had checked out before he died, or whoever killed him had also cleaned out his room. Suddenly, the air felt crackly and I wanted to be anywhere else. I used my shirt to open the door handle, which was foolish considering the amount of time I had already spent in this room with Jeff, and shuffled quickly to my car.
I could hear Jeff’s voice, and I was so happy! He really was alive. I went into the next room to tell him about my terrible nightmare, but when I reached the voice, I saw it was my father pretending to be Jeff. As I turned to go, a hand grabbed me. I looked down and saw a bony claw, and I screamed and pulled away. I ran, too afraid to look behind me and see if I was being chased. I ran so fast that I didn’t see the dropoff open in front of me, and I slipped over the edge of a cliff and fell, the ground racing to embrace me.
I sat straight up in bed, early morning sun streaming down on me. It had been a while since I had had the chasing dream. Right after the tumult caused by my dad, I had run in my dreams every night. Sometimes I would wake up only to fall asleep and run again. After a while, it didn’t happen as much, maybe once a week. The last time I could remember being chased in my sleep was right before I moved to Battle Lake.