by R. R. Irvine
“You can’t be sure someone’s actually buried there,” the sheriff said.
“That’s why we’re calling you.”
“Shit. Stay right where you are. I’ll get back to you.”
Martin was filling the Jeep with gas from the Flying A pump out front when the sheriff called back. “I just got off the phone with Owen Broadbent. I didn’t like bothering him on the day he’s burying a son.”
Traveler said nothing.
“The grave belongs to old Ethan Broadbent. He was killed in the Black Hawk War. The Indians probably ran off with his tombstone.”
“There’s been more than a hundred years to put up another stone.”
“Owen’s not a man to waste money.”
“Do you believe him?” Traveler said.
“Owen Broadbent may not be as rich as he once was, but I don’t want him for an enemy.”
“What would you say if I wanted to pursue the matter?”
“Just keep my name out of it,” the sheriff said and hung up.
******
Martin dropped Traveler in front of the Maw place on Talmage Road. They’d already driven to the Broadbent farm and back, checking the distance on the Jeep’s odometer, 1.2 miles, a fifteen-minute walk.
Martin nodded at the thunderheads spilling over the Fishlake Mountains to the east. “You’ll be on foot until I get back from the county seat.”
“Maybe I can hitch a ride back to the motel after the wake.”
“It might be a good idea if you kept the forty-five with you.”
Traveler shook his head. “It’s too big to hide.”
“You couldn’t hit anything anyway,” Martin said and drove away.
Traveler waited for the dust to settle before starting up the front walk. The house wasn’t more than ten years old, a tan brick cottage with two square picture windows flanking the front door. There was no porch to speak of, only three cement steps covered by an aluminum awning. The storm door had yet to be converted from glass winter panels to summer screens. Traveler rang the bell, heard nothing, and knocked on the glass.
After a moment, the inner door opened, revealing a man who didn’t look old enough to have been a camp guard during World War II. His hair was thin enough, but his face was wrinkle-free except for deep grooves running from the base of each nostril to the curve of his chin. He was wearing a tan flannel shirt with military creases, tucked into tan trousers also sharply creased.
The moment he opened the storm door the smell of baking cookies came flooding out.
“I’m George Maw,” he said, beckoning Traveler inside. “I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to get around to me.”
The living room was no more than twelve by twelve, filled to capacity by an oversize sofa and two chairs. In the center sat a coffee table on which copies of the church magazine, The Ensign, were fanned out like a hand of cards. A bookcase designed for the set of encyclopedias that filled it was crammed behind the sofa.
“Ask our guest to sit down,” a woman said from the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by an open archway.
“Take your pick.”
The sofa’s fabric crinkled under Traveler’s weight.
“I’d offer you one of Melba’s cookies, but she’s baking them for the Broadbents’ funeral feast.”
“Now, Father,” the woman called. “We can spare a few.”
Traveler shook his head. “I’m going to the Broadbents myself. I’ll sample them there.”
“Business first, eh? I like that.” Maw settled into a chair, then reached beneath it and pulled out a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune. The newspaper was already open to the classified ads. “It says here you’re offering a reward for information about a German prisoner named Falke.”
Traveler was surprised. Placing an ad in the paper had been routine, with no expectation of success.
“Just because we live in a small town,” Maw said, “don’t think we’re yokels. I want the reward money up front or I don’t say a word.”
“If you’d called the telephone number in the newspaper,” Traveler told him, “I’d have been here sooner.”
“Why bother when everybody knows you’re in town. How much are you offering?”
“Whatever’s fair.”
Maw tilted his head to one side as if listening for advice.
“You know what we decided on,” the woman said, still out of Traveler’s line of sight. “Stick to your guns, Father.”
“I really shouldn’t be talking to you. They swore us all to secrecy, you know.”
“We could go to a hundred dollars,” Traveler said.
“Do you have that much on you?”
Traveler nodded.
“Two hundred,” Maw said.
Traveler counted that amount onto the coffee table next to the Ensigns.
Maw stared at it, licking his lips. “What the hell.” He scooped up the bills and tucked them into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “The money’s not really important, you understand, but I’ll take it just to seal our bargain.”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Melba’s been after me. You know how it is with women. Otherwise, I wouldn’t ask a cent.”
Maw’s volume returned to normal. “It’s done, Mother. You can bring out those cookies now.”
The woman was tiny, no more than five feet tall, and so thin her bones showed. The cookie plate trembled in her hands.
“I’ll leave you two men to discuss your business.” She set the cookies on the table, then snatched the money from her husband’s shirt pocket on her way back to the kitchen.
To avoid Traveler’s stare, Maw tasted a cookie. “Oatmeal raisin, Melba’s specialty.”
He smacked his lips; his eyes continued to avoid Traveler. “The fact is,” Maw said, “my conscience has been bothering me for years. When I saw your notice in the paper, I knew it was my last chance to get things off my chest.”
He cast a furtive glance at Traveler before continuing. “First off, you ought to know I wasn’t actually an army guard. I was a temporary deputy sheriff, since most everyone else had gone off to war.” He thumped his right thigh. “My bad leg got me classified four-F.
“The army was shorthanded when it came to guards, what with the prisoners being spread all over heck and gone. Every farmer in the neighborhood was screaming for help. So I did my duty and volunteered to work overtime when I wasn’t needed as a deputy. The extra pay was welcome, not that I wasn’t entitled to it since everyone else was making money out of the war.”
Sighing, Maw closed his eyes and touched his empty shirt pocket. “I was there when your man Falke tried to escape. I wasn’t the one doing the shooting, though. I swear it.”
Traveler leaned toward the old man, staring at him, willing him to open his eyes. When he did, he caught his breath and leaned back as far as the chair would allow.
He tried to answer Traveler’s gaze but ended up staring at the table. “It happened right after those six men up and died. A bird colonel showed up and the shit really hit the fan. I remember him saying no one was going to believe Falke had been shot trying to escape, not when the war was already over. He practically accused the guards of murder. I guess that’s why they hushed it up.”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of a second shooting,” Traveler said.
“The official word was that your boy Falke escaped. They made everybody sign papers swearing that’s what happened.”
Traveler didn’t believe him, but could think of no reason the man would be lying.
“If you swore an oath once before,” Traveler said, “how do I know you’re telling the truth now?”
“What can they do to me at my age?”
“Where is Falke buried?” Traveler asked.
“I heard they sent his body back home.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you calling me a liar in my own house?”
Not me, Traveler thought. But Major Lewis Stiles was and so was Falke’s
widow.
“You came to me,” Maw said. “I didn’t seek you out.”
“I’m not going to stop looking just because you tell me he’s dead.”
“That’s up to you.”
“I ought to take the money back.”
Maw grinned and shook his head. “You don’t look like the kind of man who’d take money away from a woman.”
Traveler stood up to leave.
“As long as you’re on foot, you might as well ride over to the wake with us.” Maw winked broadly. “No extra charge.”
32
TRAVELER FELT the sound before he heard it. It echoed in the chambers of his skull as swarms of vibrations teased the bones in the inner chamber of his ear. It set his teeth on edge and made him nervous to the bone. He hated the rolling drum of thunder. It always came too late to let him know that lightning had already struck.
He ducked his shoulders against the sudden rain. The dust raised by George Maw’s passing car began settling onto Talmage Road. Mud caked to the soles of his shoes.
He took a deep breath. The singed air sent him to the south side of the road, well away from the northern line of box elders planted as a windbreak.
A quarter of a mile down the road Maw honked as if to remind Traveler that he still had a long way to walk. Traveler was heading east, almost directly into the squall line. The rainfall increased.
He put his head down and began jogging. By the time he reached the Broadbent house, he was soaking wet.
At the door, Hubert Broadbent handed him a towel before introducing him to the fifteen or so men who were gathered in the parlor. Almost double that number of women were in the kitchen and on the back porch.
A long trestle table divided the dining room, separating the sexes, and was covered with casseroles, salads, Jell-O molds, and platters of fried chicken and sliced ham. A card table had been set up alongside to hold a large crystal punch bowl and glasses. There was also a metal tub filled with crushed ice and canned soft drinks, but no colas containing caffeine, which would have violated the Word of Wisdom.
The smaller children were assembled in front of the sideboard eyeing homemade cakes, pies, and cookies. Half a dozen older boys were taking turns cranking an ice-cream churn next to the refrigerator on the mud porch.
Traveler resisted the urge to join them, poured himself a cup of punch, and began circulating among the men. All were cordial, no doubt forewarned of his coming; they spoke to him of crops and cows and the weather. All the while, Traveler watched for an opportunity to speak alone with the family patriarch, Owen Broadbent. But the man never budged from his place in front of the massive rock fireplace that took up one end of the parlor.
The punch made Traveler so thirsty he lined up for a second cup. By the time his turn came at the punch bowl, the noise level in the house had risen considerably. He tasted the punch more carefully, suspecting that it had been spiked, but detected nothing stronger than fruit juice.
Even so, the drink warmed his stomach as he returned to the fireplace to stay within striking distance of Broadbent. Each time someone broke ranks to make a trip to the punch bowl, Traveler edged a little closer. Finally, he was leaning against the rocky shelf that served as a mantel, with only one man separating him from Broadbent. He was about to set his cup in a niche when he noticed two framed photographs. They were old and faded; they showed dead children. One of them, a girl laid out in her coffin, had half-open eyes and long, blackened fingernails.
“We remember our dead,” Broadbent said as he drew Traveler toward him. “Even from the last century.”
Rather than reply, Traveler finished his punch.
“It’s made with homemade elderberry wine,” Broadbent said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“My mother used it for medicinal purposes. She said it’s a lesser sin than some of the medicines that doctors prescribe,” Traveler replied.
“I consider elderberry wine to be a sacrament at a raising feast like this. The prophet Joseph Smith agreed in his Doctrine and Covenants. ‘It is expedient that the church meet together often to partake of bread and wine in the remembrance of the Lord Jesus.’ ”
Broadbent raised a hand to indicate the men around him. “We are the church, Mr. Traveler. We are gathered here to remember my son, Mahlon, who’s with Jesus now.”
Broadbent’s gesture attracted his sons.
“There’s a line-up for the lavatory,” Hubert said, “and my back teeth are floating.”
“I could feed the dog myself,” Lowell added.
“We’ll go out back,” their father said. “We can talk better there anyway.”
Lowell shook his head. “The women are out there now that it’s stopped raining.”
“It’ll have to be the front yard, then,” Broadbent said, “if that’s all right with you, Mr. Traveler.”
Once outside, Hubert and Lowell ran for the field across the street, charging through wildflowers and overgrown weeds until they disappeared from sight. The squall line had passed, leaving behind scattered clouds and shafts of sunlight.
Broadbent clicked his tongue. “To think they say us old men can’t hold our water. Course elderberry wine is strong stuff to my boys. I was more than forty when the last of our boys came along. That’s why they’re still young enough to make fools of themselves.
The screen door opened and a woman joined them on the porch.
“This is my daughter, Laverla,” Broadbent said. “Her married name’s McKay.”
She was a sturdy woman, in her fifties and nearly as tall as her brothers.
“Mahlon was my big brother,” she said, shading her eyes to stare at the field across the road, where Hubert and Lowell were just now emerging from cover.
No one spoke again until the pair had returned to the porch and were perched on the railing. Then Broadbent said, “Mr. Traveler is looking for a German prisoner who disappeared, a man named Falke.”
Laverla turned away from the sunlight. “I was only eight at the time, but I can still remember those prisoners working across the street, cleaning the cow shed and putting out hay. I used to watch them from right here on this porch. I didn’t dare go any closer. If I had, Mom would have skinned me alive.”
“You and your stories,” Hubert said. “They don’t change the fact that me and Lowell just peed in prime acreage.”
“It’s a damn shame to let those twenty acres stand idle any longer,” Lowell added.
“You two clean up your language,” their father said, “otherwise, you’ll leave this house.”
“Now, Dad,” Laverla said, taking her father’s arm. “This is Mahlon’s day. Besides, we all know how you feel about Morag’s field.”
Broadbent broke free of his daughter and steered Traveler across the porch where they faced the smaller house next door. “I wanted to keep the Broadbent family together on Broadbent land. That’s why I built these two houses side by side. One for me, one for my oldest son, Mahlon. His widow, Fern, locked herself inside right after the funeral. I built three more houses on my south boundary. That’s where Lowell, Hubert, and Laverla live.”
The screen door banged open and out shuffled an old man pushing an aluminum walker ahead of him. A teenage boy hovered behind as if waiting for the man to fall.
“This is my neighbor, Lamar Richards,” Broadbent said for Traveler’s benefit.
“I can speak for myself,” the old man said. His right hand let go of the walker long enough to point at Traveler. “I own the largest farm in this part of the state. That gives me the right to ask what you’re doing here.”
“I’m looking for a missing person.”
“They tell me you’re named for our angel.”
Traveler nodded.
“Did you change it, or is that the way you were baptized?”
“I’m a second-generation Moroni Traveler.”
“Who’s missing?”
“A World War Two prisoner named Karl Falke.”
“Not even a Saint, then.
” Richards shuffled forward until he reached one of the porch chairs. With the teenager’s help, he backed up far enough to sit down.
“You run along,” Richards said to the boy. “Get yourself something to eat.”
His helper looked glad to go.
“Does anybody remember Karl Falke?” Traveler asked.
Heads shook, all but Richards, who stared at Traveler in open appraisal.
“We were talking about Morag’s field,” Laverla said. “You remember her, don’t you, Brother Richards? She was a prize cow, a huge black-and-white Holstein. When she got sick and died, Dad stopped raising dairy cattle and left her field fallow as a kind of monument.”
Broadbent moved to the porch railing and stared out at Morag’s field as if searching for his lost Holstein.
“It’s a shame to see a field like that go to waste,” Richards said.
“We’ve been saying the same thing,” Lowell put in.
Broadbent shook his head. “I’ve told you before. It’s not for sale.”
“You haven’t heard my latest price,” Richards said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The way I hear it, you could use the money.”
“I’ll sell off everything else first.”
Traveler took another look at the field. Twenty acres was a lot of ground to cover, but Cowdery Junction’s cemetery might not be the only place worth looking for an unmarked grave.
“I could use a ride into town,” he said.
Laverla turned to face him, squinting against the sun so hard a tear trickled down her powdered cheek. “I have an errand to run anyway.”
33
LAVERLA DROVE a heavy-duty Ford pickup truck indistinguishable from those of her brothers. She ran through the gears forcefully, as if to discharge anger. Traveler fastened his safety belt as soon as she turned onto Broadbent Street and headed north. They were halfway to town, running parallel to freshly plowed fields, when she put the truck into a controlled skid that ended in a right turn onto Temple Road, a narrow unpaved track running east that looked unworthy of its street sign.
A few seconds later, the truck slid to a halt where the road ran out at the base of a small hill. Laverla switched off the engine and got out, leaving the truck door open, and began climbing along an overgrown path leading uphill. Traveler followed. The storm had passed to the west, leaving the ground damp and slippery. The only clouds visible were strung along the horizon where the sun was about to set.