Looking for Przybylski

by K. C. Frederick

  “Bye, my Snickers man,” Sharlene says before walking away quickly without looking back.

  When the bus resumes its journey westward, Ziggy sits there vacantly looking out at the dusty landscape. He’s tired, his bones ache, and a savage homesickness has gripped him. Everything’s so bare here, it’s so different from Michigan with all its lakes and woods. On Mort Neff’s Michigan Outdoors TV show, they’re always going to some place like Houghton Lake up north and catching lots of lunkers. Houghton Lake: it was so strange that J.J. went up there to live after he got out of prison, J.J. who always talked about moving to Florida. That was a sad story. Ziggy isn’t sure how their friendship would have fared if it hadn’t been for J.J.’s wife. After his sentencing Ziggy went to visit her in their big place in Indian Village, but she wouldn’t let him in the door, she called him a Judas. They weren’t going to be able to stay there, she told Ziggy, as if everything was his fault. She convinced J.J. to move up north when he got out, and Ziggy’d pretty much accepted that he’d never hear from his old friend again, when out of the blue J.J. called him last year to tell him he was dying of cancer. It was an odd conversation, real short, over too quickly. Ziggy wished he’d had a chance to get ready for it. J.J. said he didn’t really like it up north.

  “They call this God’s country,” he said, “but that’s only if you’re a bear.” It was the old J.J. When Ziggy asked him about prison, he said it wasn’t so bad, as long as you were careful. Ziggy wanted to hear more about it but J.J. just cut him short and said, “Look, all this stuff between us was bullshit. I don’t blame you for what you did, I’d have done the same thing myself.” Why did things happen the way they did? He didn’t know, he said, but when you were dying you saw that it was stupid to hold grudges. Then he said, “We had some times, didn’t we?” He actually sounded happy. “Remember Niagara Falls,” he said, “remember the party on the island after the raid? You and me,” he said, “we did better than our fathers did, you have to say that. We had something, didn’t we?”

  When Ziggy asked J.J. if he could come to see him, though, he said it wouldn’t be such a good idea. “Marie’s taking all this stuff hard,” he said. “I think it’s easier for her if there are good guys and bad guys.”

  “Hey,” he said, “if they’ve got numbers down where I’m going, I’ll try to save a spot for you.” It was amazing, Ziggy thought, that he kept his sense of humor under the circumstances.

  “Oh, my God.” Ziggy’s reverie is interrupted by Lennie’s exclamation.

  “What?” he asks.

  “I just figured it out,” Lennie says. “The Missouri Slasher. It’s Wayne.”

  Ziggy looks at him. Does this guy’s mind ever stop spinning out fantasies?

  “Think of it,” Lennie says, “that house he keeps coming back to. His basement could be filled with bodies.” He’s quiet for a while. “Well,” he says at last, “we’ll never know, will we?”

  That’s right, Ziggy thinks, there’s a lot I’m never going to know.

  Some distance west of Oklahoma City, the bus is moving through a particularly desolate stretch of landscape when the new driver announces that they’re going to make an unscheduled stop in the next town but that nobody will be allowed to leave the bus.

  “What’s going on?” Lennie asks. “Don’t tell me this bus is going to break down too. I don’t think I can take any more of this. Or are we going to change drivers again? And why won’t they let us get off?”

  Speculation mounts among the passengers until the bus reaches the next town and is directed to pull over by a state trooper standing near the flashing lights of his car in the parking lot of a diner. There’s another state police car parked nearby, and when the driver follows the signals and brings the bus to a stop, the doors hiss open and a pair of grim-looking officers step aboard.

  “Will Amelie Lathrop please identify herself?” one of them calls. After a certain amount of nervous shuffling, the woman who’s visiting the graves of presidents brings herself to her feet and calmly answers, “I’m Amelie Lathrop.” The policeman summons her to come forward but when she reaches down, presumably to pick up her bag, the man takes a step forward and shouts, “Keep your hands at your sides, ma’am, keep your hands at your sides.” Ziggy’s squirming to get a view. Even from this distance it’s clear that the cop is nervous, ready to draw his weapon at the slightest suspicious move. “We’ll get your things for you, ma’am,” he adds hastily, keeping a careful eye on her as he indicates with his hand that he wants her to come forward. “Easy now,” he says, “easy now.” When she reaches the front of the bus the cop deftly cuffs her and is about to lead her out the door, when she suddenly resists and turns toward her fellow passengers, shouting something at them before she’s hustled off the bus.

  “What did she say?” Lennie asks while the other passengers all ask their own version of that question. “Do you think she could be the Missouri Slasher after all?”

  While they watch Miss Lathrop, no longer resisting arrest, being led into one of the police cars, word bubbles back that the woman’s parting comment was, “You’re all a bunch of suckers.” As the car with the captive speeds off, another trooper gives the bus driver permission to resume the trip. Once on the road, the driver informs his passengers that their former traveling companion is charged with allegedly running off with the funds from the bank in Illinois where she works.

  “That lady was quite an actress,” Lennie says after a while. “Think of all the trouble she had to go through to create that whole librarian persona and learn all that stuff about the graves of presidents as a cover story, because, you know what? I’ll bet my last dollar that all those little facts she mentioned about the presidents’ graves are true. Think of the discipline. I should have paid more attention to her. I’ll bet I could have learned a thing or two from her about show business.”

  Clearly he’s still thinking about the unlikely thief for a while afterwards, smiling to himself. At last he says, “In a way, though, I think it would have been a better story if she’d really been a librarian and robbed all that money, because then we’d all be asking ourselves why she’d have needed so much dough, and the logical conclusion would have to be that she had to have it to feed her habit of visiting presidential graves. Pretty soon people would be nodding their heads sagely and saying, it starts out innocently enough with a sneaky visit to Grant’s Tomb, and before you know it you’re knocking over a gas station to bankroll a trip to Herbert Hoover’s grave.”

  Ziggy smiles. “I think I’m beginning to get a better idea of the way your mind works.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Staring through the dirty window at some flat, dusty stretch of Oklahoma (unless they’ve already passed into Texas and he hadn’t noticed), Ziggy’s awash with exhaustion. Jesus, he thinks, I couldn’t move a muscle right now, even if there was a rattlesnake down on the floor next to my shoe. He feels as if he weighs a ton, like one of those TV astronauts climbing into space at the top of a shuddering metal cylinder, his face gone rubbery under the punishing force of the thrusting rocket, blood, bones and organs turned to stone. The image is scary, and Ziggy has a brief flash of his uncle Stanley, a white-faced mummy with a crooked, lipless mouth, slumped in his wheelchair, a plaid blanket over his legs even in the stifling heat of a Detroit summer. His mother wouldn’t listen to any of Ziggy’s pleas or excuses. “He’s your uncle, he always used to give you a nickel when he came over. It’ll make him feel good to see you.” You sure couldn’t tell that from the slack face and empty eyes, though. What those eyes were seeing Ziggy, who couldn’t wait to get back outside, didn’t want to think about.

  That’s not me, he insists as the southwestern landscape rolls by, I’m not that old. He jerks up suddenly in his seat, pushing through the bleary stupor with a grunt.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Lennie asks.

  “Nothing,” Ziggy says. “A cramp, that’s all.”

  Lennie nods. “It’s been a long trip. A lot of sitting.
”

  “Yeah.” Ziggy takes a deep breath. If it were only something as simple as that. Of course there was no cramp, it was something else entirely that’s been bothering him and he can’t help wondering what could have sent him into this funk. Is it that, after all that adventure in the town where they were celebrating Frontier Days, there’s been an inevitable letdown? Or does this feeling have anything to do with Roy’s leaving? He was a nice guy but you could hardly say he and Ziggy were best friends. Whatever, this bus ride, which has seemed full of adventure up until now, seems suddenly stale, dry and endless, like the landscape around him; and once more he’s struck by the way time changes shape so quickly: it seems ages ago that he and Roy were walking through the cowboy-filled streets on the way to freeing Lennie from the hoosegow.

  Of course, something dramatic like that can’t be happening all the time, can it? But he remembers the feel of the heat on his skin, the buzz of the crowd, the smell of cotton candy and sawdust, the sense that something was about to happen. Moved by the memory, he suddenly wishes he could tell Maggie the story. He knows she’d get a kick out of it. What’s she doing now, he wonders—reading one of those romance novels—and what’s the weather like back in Detroit? Gray, probably, maybe drizzling, but she’d be in the kitchen where it’s warm and cozy. Out here in Okie country, he feels a strong need to connect with the place he’s left behind, if only to reassure himself that he still belongs there, that he’ll be welcomed back when he returns.

  Wouldn’t it be a surprise to Maggie if he called her? The agreement was that he wasn’t going to get in touch with her until he was out in California but, given everything that’s already happened on this trip, he’s going to be late getting there, which means that he’s dealing with a special situation. It would be a good idea to give her an update on what’s happened so far, wouldn’t it? And calling her would go a long way toward getting him out of the dumps.

  By the time they reach the next rest stop, he’s decided that’s just what he’s going to do. His fist full of change, he closes the folding door of the outdoor phone booth attached to a diner, and in the stale air he listens to the musical sounds of the dropped quarters. An invisible insect buzzes somewhere near him as his eyes run across the initials and phone numbers a dozen previous occupants have scribbled and scratched onto all available spaces in the booth. There’s even a number for “Trish W.” on the ceiling. Ziggy’s trying to figure out how the writer managed to keep the numbers aligned so neatly at that height as he listens to the phone ringing in Detroit. As the ringing continues, he wonders: Maggie couldn’t be out, could she? Is she visiting one of the kids? Is something wrong? The uncertainty stirs an obscure agitation. It could be anger, it could be fear—whatever it is, it increases until, just as he’s about to decide that he’s picked the wrong time to call, he hears her answer at last.

  “Maggie?” His relieved greeting comes out like a vaguely accusatory shout as he leans over the receiver, a man trying to light a cigarette in a windstorm with a single match.

  “I was in the basement putting things in the dryer,” she explains, sounding a little out of breath. Disappointingly, the voice that comes to Ziggy over the phone is tinny and distant, the voice of a stranger, and this puts him off for a moment. “Is something wrong?” that voice asks.

  “No,” he says abruptly. “There’s nothing wrong.” For some reason her question has irritated him.

  “Where are you?” she asks after a moment.

  This isn’t starting out the way he’d wanted it to. “I’m somewhere on the border between Oklahoma and Texas,” he says. When he pulls back momentarily, the phone, tethered to its coiled metal cord, resists. That bugs him but he sighs, trying to calm himself. What is it he wants to tell her? Certainly this geographical information can’t mean much to her. What difference does it make to Maggie where on the map he might be? “I’ll tell you one thing,” he says. “I’ve come a long way.”

  “I’ll bet,” she says. All at once she sounds more like the Maggie he knows. “How is the trip going so far?” she asks.

  He laughs to himself, pleased that he’s no longer talking to a stranger. “You wouldn’t believe half the stuff that’s happened,” he says. “We’re running late. We’ve had weather problems and . . .” His voice trails off.

  “By the way, what time is it there?” she asks. He tells her. “Hmm,” she says, “think of that,” and he realizes with a pang that Maggie’s never been outside the eastern time zone.

  He looks at his watch, the second hand making its relentless, jerking way around the circle. “Maggie,” he suddenly blurts out, trying to convey to her what he’s seeing around him, “from where I’m standing I’m looking at an empty highway. I mean, there are no cars, no trucks, nothing. I can hear a train somewhere, though, pretty far away. It’s really dusty and sandy here, very dry, and the wind keeps making little tornados. And there are hardly any trees. What I’m looking at, I could believe nobody lived around here, or maybe nobody but the Indians. There’s a couple of them in this diner but they sure don’t look like the Indians in movies. There are lots of cowboy hats too, and boots, but you wouldn’t mistake anyone there for John Wayne. At the gas station next door there’s a pit with a bunch of live rattlesnakes. They’re all packed together and they’re hardly moving but they’re real rattlesnakes. Boy, do they stink.” He can’t think of any more to say.

  “That sounds pretty interesting,” Maggie says. Which is generous of her, he thinks.

  “Yeah,” he answers with a feeling of futility, “it is. Real interesting.”

  “Well, I’m glad you called,” she says a minute later. “I’m glad you’re safe and having a good trip.”

  “Take care of yourself,” he says, then adds, “I know you will.”

  Though he’s warmed by the momentary contact with Maggie, the deflation sets in almost at once. Why did he spend his time giving her a report of what things looked like from the phone booth? Why would she care who’s in the diner and what could possibly interest her about a bunch of half-dead rattlesnakes in front of a beat-up gas station on the Oklahoma-Texas border? He should have told her about the storms and floods they passed through, the bus’s breakdown, Frontier Days and what happened to Lennie, and the bank embezzler who was traveling with them. Why didn’t he tell her about some of the people he’s met along the way? He left everything important out and just gave her a description of some Godforsaken stretch of highway. And he didn’t even bother to ask her about how things were going back home. How dumb can you get?

  Ziggy steps into the harsh, dry heat and shuffles his way back into the diner, a bad taste in his mouth from that unsatisfactory phone call. He’d really wanted to talk to Maggie and it had been great, actually, even for a couple of minutes, hearing her voice; but still, what he’d told her could have given her no idea of what he wanted to say about this trip. He looks around the diner, where he glimpses Sharlene, by herself in a booth, which is unusual. Remembering Roy’s injunction to look after her, he starts walking in her direction.

  When she sees him, she gives him a wave of her hand. “Hi, come on and join me.”

  He takes the seat opposite her and sinks back against the warm plastic, taking in the bright, shiny spaces around him. As he’d said to Maggie, there are a couple of fat Indians here and a quartet of old white guys wearing cowboy hats. Well, he hadn’t been lying about that, anyway. A steel guitar twangs from the jukebox.

  “What’s the matter?” Sharlene drawls. “You look kind of down.”

  Ziggy pulls himself straight and flashes a quick smile. “Nothing,” he fires back. “A little tired, maybe.” He gives her a wink.

  She shakes a finger at him. “You’re a man of mystery, for sure.” Then she returns to the Moon Pie she’s eating with obvious delight. She’s a little heavy, as Roy said, but she’s pretty and there’s something about her: she’s almost always smiling, as if she knows there’s a pleasant surprise waiting for her just around the corner. Just n
ow she chews on her Moon Pie and nods to Ziggy as if to say, OK, I’ll pretend to believe your story if that’s what you want. Her blue eyes go big as she takes another bite and when Ziggy realizes he’s watching her slowly lick a piece of marshmallow off her lip, he feels the need to turn away, toward the stretch of highway outside their window that seems to run through the middle of a whole lot of nothing.

  “I just love these little critters,” Sharlene says, wiping away some crumbs of chocolate, her big silver earrings catching the light as she leans back. “I don’t know if I could ever get tired of traveling like this.” She flashes him a smile. “I mean, this is just like one big vacation, isn’t it? Like being on one of those cruise ships.”

  Ziggy laughs. “I’d hardly call it that.”

  She cocks her head. “Aww,” she says, “all you have to do is use a little imagination.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I’m just not the cruise ship type.” He’s still thinking about how he messed up that call to Maggie.

  “You’ve got to admit,” she says, “all this stuff we’re seeing is interesting.” She looks out the window. “Those rocks and things.”

  The truth is, all he can see out there is emptiness. To be polite, though, he says, “I guess. Where you from originally?” he asks, not sure whether she’s already told him.

  “I was born in Florida,” she says, “but we left there when I was only three. My mom moved around quite a bit, so I guess I got used to that long ago.”

  “Didn’t you say you’re going to California to see your mother?” he asks.

  She makes a face. “Me and my mom don’t really get along so great.” She sticks out her lower lip. “I’m not looking forward to it especially.” She falls silent for a few seconds, then, suddenly looking directly into his eyes, she says with great seriousness, “I bet you have cancer.”