by Jon Jackson
“Yeah! It was crazy. So now I look a little closer and, by gosh, I see a bird fly out of the ground! It turns out there’s millions of ‘em down there, in the ground! You could put your ear next to the ground and it’s absolutely humming, like a giant dynamo, right under the ground. It’s amazing! You think of these birds as being, you know, aerial things, creatures of the air. Right? And here they are, living in the earth. It doesn’t seem right. It was toward the end of the summer, see? They’re getting ready to hibernate!”
“Birds hibernate? I thought they migrated,” Mulheisen said.
“Well, they do, most of ‘em,” Luck said. “But I looked it up and they say that some swallows hibernate. They must stock up that cave, or their burrows, or whatever they got there. I didn’t excavate, or anything, didn’t want to disturb them, see? And then they spend the winter there, feeding on what they’ve stored up, and in the spring they come out. There must have been . . . well, maybe not a million, but probably a thousand or more. Most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Did you see them come out in the spring?” Mulheisen asked.
“I meant to,” Luck said, “but I’d go out there, once in a while, and then one day they’d all be out, flying around. They evidently don’t use the hive, or whatever you’d call it, during the summer, because I didn’t see them flying in and out. I watched the next fall but I couldn’t find the hive. I figure they must only use the hive one winter, find a new one the next winter. Well, it’d be quite a mess, wouldn’t it? All that bird shit in there. And maybe they don’t want to raise the chicks in there. Or who knows? Maybe a skunk or a weasel got in there, or a coyote. There’s a lot of coyotes around here. They ought to be exterminated, but the government’s against it.”
“Well, that is amazing,” Mulheisen said. “I’ll have to tell my mother about that.”
“You do that,” Luck said. “I’m sure she knows about silver martins hibernating. If she’s a real bird-watcher.”
“Oh, she’s pretty keen on it,” Mulheisen said. “Always has been.”
Luck was standing now. “Well, I wish you’d stay. But you’re right, I’ve got stuff to do. These days, I spend my nights on the Internet. I’ve got my own Web site, www.hillmartin.net. I’ll have a ton of e-mails to answer. I’m one of those guys who has trouble sleeping. The Net has been a comfort, since my wife died.”
“Hillmartin?” Mulheisen said.
Luck smiled shyly and shrugged.
“How long ago did your wife die?”
“It’ll be three years next spring,” Luck said.
“I’m very sorry. You must miss her a lot, especially living out here by yourself. I suppose it gets kind of lonely.”
Luck nodded. “It was a loss,” he said.
“I suppose she was a fairly young woman,” Mulheisen offered.
“She was, she was. But . . . these things happen. You have to buck up and go on. It doesn’t help to mope.”
“Was it an accident, or . . .?” Mulheisen let the question hang.
Luck eyed him quietly, showing no emotion. “An illness,” he said. “Congenital. A little glitch ticking away, waiting to emerge. She didn’t suffer, thank God. Maybe,” he said, brightening, “that’s the best way. You’re healthy and happy and then one day . . . click!" He snapped his fingers. “You’re gone.”
They had moved toward the door and Mulheisen picked up his coat and pulled it on. They went out onto the porch. The night was cool. Luck took a deep breath, then sniffed the air.
“Hint of frost,” he said. “Winter is icumen in. Hey, I’ll have to go out there and unlock that gate. Wait a minute, I’ll be right with you.”
He ran back into the house, leaving the door wide open. Mulheisen wandered over to his car. He could hear the owl hooting again, not distant. He got out another cigar and clipped it, then got into the car and started it. When several minutes passed and Luck didn’t reappear, he lit the cigar and backed out, waiting in the yard.
Finally, Luck came running out, pulling on his coat, his hat on his head. To Mulheisen’s surprise, he came around and got into the passenger seat of the Checker.
“This’ll be more convenient,” he explained. “I can walk back. I enjoy the night air. You got another one of those stogies, Mul?”
6
Offisa Pup
Here was a night so black that Mulheisen had an irrational feeling that the headlights were piercing it only with difficulty. He drove at a creeping pace through the long wooded stretch. An enormous owl swooped in front of his headlights, startling the owl into a panicky pull-up, wings as white and broad as an angel’s. Mulheisen braked, not realizing at first what it was. Luck laughed. “That’s my hoot owl,” he said. “He hangs out around here. I tried to shoot him a couple of times, but he’s too crafty.”
“Tried to shoot him? Why?”
“Well, these owls, they eat all my pheasants. There aren’t hardly any pheasants around here anymore. I tried to introduce some, had them in pens, till they got big enough to release, and you’ll never guess what happened. I’d find them in the pen with their heads missing!”
Mulheisen was startled. “What happened?”
“They’d roost on this shed I had. I’d put chicken wire over the whole business. But that shed was so high they could stick their heads out through the wire. The owl would swoop down and tear the heads right off!”
Just at that moment they arrived at the gate. Luck hopped out to open it. He held the gate as Mulheisen drove through. “Thanks for coming by, Mulheisen. It was a treat. I don’t get so many visitors, especially not ones who are willing to talk philosophy. Drive safe.”
Mulheisen waved and drove off, but slowly. Twice, between the gate and the county road, he had to stop because deer were standing directly in the track—once a couple of does or yearlings, then a young spikehorn buck that merely glanced back over its shoulder before taking a few steps and disappearing into the brush.
Perhaps it was the pace, but the drive seemed much longer than he’d remembered it. When he finally reached the graveled county road the cool night air seemed a little less densely black. The headlights traveled much farther and he picked up speed. He was no more than a mile along the paved road when he was surprised to see the rotating, oscillating blue-and-red lights of an approaching police vehicle. Mulheisen slowed, although he was going no more than forty-five. The other vehicle, which bore the markings of the county sheriff, slowed as well then immediately swung around behind him. Mulheisen drew the Checker over to the shoulder; the police car hauled up behind him.
Mulheisen could not ignore the impression that the sheriff’s patrol had been waiting for him. This was hardly a highway, but he supposed it wasn’t too unusual for the sheriff to patrol. At this hour—Mulheisen never carried a watch, but there was a clock on the dash that read 11:23—he reckoned the sheriff’s deputy was hoping to nab some yokels careening home from the Queensleap tavern. So he wasn’t surprised when the deputy, after looking over his driver’s license and registration, asked him to step out of the car. Mulheisen stuffed his cigar into the ashtray and got out.
“What’s up, Corporal Dean?” Mulheisen said, purposely citing the officer’s name as engraved on the metal plate under his badge. “I was only going forty-five.”
“Just step over here, Mr. Mulheisen,” the deputy said, indicating the white line that marked the edge of the pavement. There were no farms within view, but Mulheisen could hear a distant dog barking.
He noticed that Corporal Dean was alone. He’d also been drinking, judging by his breath, but then so had Mulheisen, although he’d been careful not to finish his drinks as Luck had. Dean didn’t appear to be drunk, but he seemed a trifle unsure of himself. He kept touching the handle of the gun in his holster. His tie was slightly askew.
Mulheisen didn’t protest. He proceeded to perform the usual field test, touching his nose with a finger, walking along the line. The deputy asked him to lean against the car, with his back to him, his
legs spread and hands outstretched. Mulheisen felt a little nervous about this request but, after looking sharply at the deputy, he complied. The officer made a fumbling attempt at patting him down. It occurred to Mulheisen that he could probably get the best of this officer, who seemed a little clumsy, not quite focused.
When the pat down was finished, the deputy said he wanted Mulheisen to get into the back of the police car. He said this with his hand resting on the holstered gun.
“What for?” Mulheisen asked. “I did the field test.”
“Just get in the car,” the deputy said. His voice showed an edge of anger, or it might have been nervousness.
Mulheisen shrugged and got into the backseat of the squad car. As he’d expected, Dean went to his car and began to search it. While the man was at it, Mulheisen pulled out a piece of paper, wrote his name on it, the name of the officer, the approximate time—by now, he reckoned it at 11:35—and the notation that he’d been stopped on county road H20 (he thought that was the number) for no obvious reason, and that the officer had searched his car without permission. He stuffed the piece of paper down on the edge of the seat, where the backrest met it. He barely finished this before Dean returned.
“Go back to your car,” the deputy said.
“Am I free to go? No ticket?”
“Just go back to your car,” Dean said. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Mulheisen went to his car and immediately began to search it himself, leaning into the backseat, as he’d seen the deputy do, and then look in the trunk.
“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dean yelled, coming toward him. “Get in that car!”
Mulheisen looked at him calmly and finished looking through his bags in the trunk, lifting the rubber mat, and then, satisfied, slammed the lid shut. He walked around the car with the deputy following and opened the other side of the backseat, again as he’d noticed the deputy had done.
The deputy grabbed Mulheisen’s shoulder and wrenched him away from the door, against the side of the car. Mulheisen offered no resistance. He looked down at the gun that the deputy had drawn. “You sure you want to do that, Dean?” he asked.
“What the hell do you think you’re up to?” Dean demanded.
“Just checking,” Mulheisen said.
“Checking?” Dean sounded stupid.
“Just making sure everything is there that should be there . . . and nothing more.”
“Get in the car and sit still,” Dean said. His voice was hoarse.
Mulheisen got in the car and immediately opened the glove compartment. He took out the cell phone.
“Give me that,” Dean said, reaching through the window.
Mulheisen did not resist. But he continued to look through the papers in the glove compartment and feel about in the interstices of the seat cushion beside him. He kept a sidelong view of Dean, who watched him for a minute then stalked away toward his vehicle.
Mulheisen sat patiently, then slipped a Coleman Hawkins CD into the player. He fished out a fresh cigar and lit it up. He puffed it, calmly.
The deputy took a little longer than Mulheisen expected. Eventually, he returned with a packet in his hand, which Mulheisen recognized as an alcohol testing device, the balloon test. When the deputy asked him to inflate the balloon, Mulheisen, who knew how erratic these devices were, declined.
Corporal Dean almost smiled. “You refuse?” the deputy asked.
“I’d prefer a blood test,” Mulheisen said. He figured that he’d had half a glass of wine and about an ounce and a half of George Dickel in the past four hours. That wouldn’t register as intoxication in a blood test, but he wasn’t confident of what the balloon test might show. “I’ll pay for it, of course,” Mulheisen said. “You can drive me, or follow me to the nearest hospital or clinic.” That would surely be another half hour, further diminishing the alcohol in his system.
“Just inflate the balloon,” the deputy insisted.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mulheisen suggested. “I’ll take it if you also take it. We’ll turn them both in for analysis.”
Dean flushed. “I’m the officer here!” he snapped. “You just do what I say!”
“I’d rather not, Corporal Dean. I’m happy to take the blood test, though.”
The deputy stared down at him for a long moment, then he said, “You wait here.” He returned to his car. A few moments later he came back and tossed Mulheisen’s phone and his license and registration onto his lap without a word, then returned to the car, flicked off the overhead lights, and departed.
Mulheisen watched him go, then drove after him. The sheriff’s vehicle sped away. Mulheisen followed until the speed began to creep over sixty-five, then dropped back. The car was soon lost to sight, down a hill and over another one. Mulheisen didn’t see him again.
In the town, he was relieved to see that the Queensleap Inn Motel had not turned off its VACANCY light. He stopped and checked in. The room was clean and pleasant enough. He drank a glass of water and watched NHL Tonight on cable. The Red Wings had won, he was glad to see, and he regretted not having been there in time to catch the game. Zetterberg had scored two goals against Montreal. Mulheisen switched off the television and went outside to light up a cigar. He could see that the Queensleap tavern was still open. It was just a short walk.
Hardly anyone was there, just four sodden men sitting at the bar, regulars he supposed. The only one of them who bothered to look up when he entered was the old guy from the Sinclair station. Charlie, now in a gray uniform shirt that also had his name embroidered on the breast pocket flap, greeted him. “Hi, Mul. You find ol’ Imp all right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Mulheisen said. “He was real friendly, even gave me dinner. Pretty tasty, too. But I got stopped by that deputy, Dean, on my way back.”
“Frog?” Charlie said. “What the hell’s he out and about for? Frog’d be drunk by now. By damn, I bet ol’ Imp sicced him onta you.”
“You think?”
“Be just like him,” Charlie said. “Bet he was pouring that George Dickel, wa’n’t he? Tha’s our Imp. Pour the Dickel’n call the law.” He laughed, a low, damp chortle. Charlie was far from sober himself.
Mulheisen bought them both a shot of Dickel with beer chasers. “Luck told me some interesting stories,” he said. “He ever tell you about the silver martins, the ones he saw nesting in the ground?”
“Why that sumbitch,” Charlie said. “He wouldn’t know a silver martin from a hoot owl.”
“He told me a story about a hoot owl, too,” Mulheisen said.
Charlie snorted. “I tol’ him ‘bout silver martins, only they wasn’t nesting in the ground. Say, thanks for the drink.” He hoisted the shot glass, in a toast, then downed it. “It was a lard bucket they was nestin’ in. Only, the lard bucket had been knocked down. Them martins was swoopin’ around the pole where I useta had the lard bucket up—one a them ol’ Farmer Peet’s buckets? I been away and when I come home one a the neighbor boys, I guess, had blasted that bucket with a shotgun—blew it right off’n the pole. I just let it lay. But when the martins came back, in the spring? Why they just circled roun’ and roun’ that pole, like they knew there was s’posed to be a bucket there, like before. Damnedest thing I ever saw. I tol’ Imp that story. Now he’s fucked it up.”
“Maybe he was just trying to improve it,” Mulheisen said. “But you know, he’s a pretty good cook. Wonder where he learned that. Was his wife a good cook?”
“Connie? Oh, she was a great cook,” Charlie said. “Great loss, Connie.”
“What did she die of? Some kind of stroke or something?”
“Where’d you hear that? I never heard that. We didn’t see much of her there, for a while. And then she was just gone.” Charlie sighed and shook his head. He sipped at his beer.
Mulheisen looked at him, waiting for some further explication, but when none came he said, “She was ‘just gone’?”
Charlie merely nodded his head, over and over,
staring at his beer. Mulheisen couldn’t tell if he was drunk or thinking. After a moment, he said, again, “’Just gone’?”
Charlie looked up. “Yeah. One day you’re here”—he held his hand out, palm upward—“next thing you know . . . you’re gone.” He turned his palm down abruptly, then performed the hand gesture again for effect.
Mulheisen smiled slightly, baring his teeth just a bit. “Is that right? Well, somebody must know how she died. People die, and if the doctor isn’t present, the coroner has to come in.”
Charlie looked at him. “Is that right? I didn’t know that.”
“It’s the law,” Mulheisen said. “When was it?”
“Two, maybe two and a half years ago. In the spring.”
“Big funeral?” Mulheisen said. “It sounds like she was well liked.”
“Connie? Naw. She wa’n’t from ‘round here. Oh, I knew her. I all’s liked Connie. Good-lookin’ woman. Hell of a cook.”
“Really?” Mulheisen said. He signaled for another drink for himself and Charlie. “What did she cook that you liked so much?”
“Sweetbreads,” Charlie said.
“Sweetbreads?” Mulheisen was surprised. It seemed a bit up-scale for a country cook. His mother used to make sweetbreads, perhaps once a year. It was a favorite dish.
“When did you have sweetbreads at Luck’s?” Mulheisen asked.
“I was out there working on Imp’s tractor. To tell the truth, me and Imp don’t get along all that good, but he ditten’t have much choice—timin’ belt went out. Imp must of been feeling grateful, he invited me to stay for dinner. Man, she could cook.”
“I love sweetbreads,” Mulheisen said. “How did she prepare them?”
“Some kinda cream sauce. I ain’t had a lotta sweetbreads in my life, but now if I go to a restrunt in Traverse and they got sweetbreads on the board, I order ‘em. I never had any better’n Connie’s.”
“So when was this?”
“Why, it was a couple of weeks before Christmas, the winter before she died. Imp’d been using that tractor to push snow.” He went on to explain at length the cold, the amount of snow, the long driveway to be plowed.