At the counter, the man I’m thinking of as Bill Peterson asks me where I’m from and what I’m doing in town. When I say Florida, he looks up. Florida has just made Spanish an official language, and I know this has upset some folks in the heartland. But he doesn’t mention it. I tell him I’m here to see my sister Audrey. He squeezes the grabber to make sure it’s working properly. I say, “Do you know her?”
“Know of her.”
I pay up and compliment him on his store. I say so long. The bell above the door tinkles.
He waves and goes back to his newspaper. He says, “Don’t be a stranger.”
I put my loot in the Quark. Except for the tablet. I carry it with me. Maybe I’ll get a chance to see what the wife is up to in my story. How’s she going to pull off a murder that looks like a suicide? And then what happens to the boyfriend’s wife? (At least now I know the boyfriend looks a lot like Daxson.) It takes me two hours to walk down every street in Livia. Guys drive by in pickups and lift their index fingers hello. I watch the train rattle through town. One hundred and seventeen cars. I write that down. The Livia High School building is for sale. The pickup is still in Audrey’s front yard. I write down the tag number. Back at Dell’s I have the place to myself. Marie’s reading a romance novel called The Lord of Lambeth Manor, and she tells me to help myself. I pour my coffee, more sludge now than wash, and carry it to a table by the window. I say, “How’s the book?”
“It gets me out of Livia. That’s all I ask. All Claire Devereaux’s books are the same, but that’s what I like—dependability.” Marie tells me that Claire Devereaux is also Carole Sheehy and Della Jordan and Janelle Moore. “She’s like a writing machine.”
A woman and a boy who looks about twelve walk in and stamp their cold feet. They say hi to Marie. Marie says, “Two cocoas and two doughnuts coming right up.” She puts down her book, crushes out her cigarette.
The woman helps the boy out of his hood, his cap, and his jacket. He has a long, narrow face and enormous ears. The woman smiles at me. She’s got dimples and blue eyes. When she takes off her hat, her thin blond hair lifts from her head with static electricity. The tip of her nose is red. She keeps her scarf wound around her neck. The boy looks at me. I smile. He has a wandering eye. Marie brings their order, and the woman thanks her. The boy thanks her. Marie says, “Cold one today.” The boy says, “Cold one today.” The woman tells him, “Stop that, now.” He says “Stop that, now.” The woman holds the boy by his shoulders and turns him toward her. She says, “Stop repeating.” He flaps his hand and then bites it. She gives him his powdered doughnut. She sees me watching and smiles. Then she says, “Excuse me, but do I know you?”
“No.”
“You look familiar.”
“I’ve got one of those faces.”
“Minot?”
The boy says, “Why not Minot?”
I tell her I’ve only driven through there once. Yesterday.
She looks at me sideways and smiles. “What brings you to Livia?”
“The climate.”
“It’s a frozen wasteland.”
“I was misinformed.”
And she says, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” and we laugh.
I tell her about Audrey. She knows Audrey. “That’s her table.” She points to a table in the back of the diner. She knows Daxson better. “He keeps a tight leash.”
I refill my coffee and join her at the table. I introduce myself. We shake hands.
“Chloe Melville,” she says. “That’s my boy Bix.” She points out the window at a blue house with white shutters. “Our home.”
“So what brought you to Livia?”
“A husband.”
“He’s gone?”
“How did you know?”
“Just a guess.”
She sips her cocoa. “He was a good man, but fragile.”
“Do you ever think about leaving yourself?”
“You writing a book?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“I’m kidding. Yes, I have. Often. But people here are all so good to Bix. Livia’s like his family. I can’t take him away from that.”
“And they take care of you.”
“They do their best.”
I tell her about Audrey’s phone call and about the confounding visit to her house this morning.
“Sounds like you need a few minutes alone with your sister. That should be easy to arrange.”
“He won’t let her out of his sight. He’s a monster.”
“No one in Livia would say that.”
“She lives in fear.”
“Sometimes men behave one way at home and another way in public. This way with this woman, that way with that woman.”
“So I’ve heard.”
She raises an eyebrow and smiles. “Daxson helps people out. Does plumbing, repairs, yard work—all free. You have to listen to a little God talk, but that’s not so bad. Some folks even like it.”
“So what do we do and when do we do it?”
She checks her watch. “Does now work for you?”
“Perfect.”
“I’ll hike over to his house and let him know my pipes are frozen. You wait till you see us go in my house. And then go talk to Audrey.”
“That sounds too easy.”
“Should we have something go wrong?”
“No.”
“Make a better story that way.”
She asks Marie to keep an eye on Bix. Marie puts her face on Bix’s arm. “I’ve got my eye on him.” Bix laughs like crazy.
Chloe puts on her coat and hat. I thank her. She tells me she likes an adventure in her day.
I say, “What happens when he finds out you betrayed him?”
“You trying to talk me out of this?”
“No.”
“My pipes are frozen. I could fix them myself with a hair dryer and some blankets, of course. I just think a man should be able to see his sister.”
Ten minutes later Chloe’s back, and she’s out of breath. “They’re gone, and they left in a hurry, it looks like.” She says the side door was wide open and a kettle of water was boiling away on the stove. “The kettle was full, so they can’t be far.”
Bix stops staring at the fluorescent light and says he wants to go home now. Marie says would he like some pancakes. He sure would. Chloe says you can only leave Livia going east or west, toward Kenmare or toward the wildlife refuge. Marie says in Kenmare they could pick up Audrey’s paycheck at Bob’s Super Valu. Bix drapes himself over the counter and sings the word pancakes over and over. I wonder what the future holds for him. I see him in a green apron and glasses. He’s rubbing his hands together. He’s in a restaurant, it looks like. I realize I won’t probably see him again in the flesh. I say so long to him and he covers his eyes with his hands so that I can’t see him.
We haven’t driven a mile on 2A when we see the beige pickup off the road and Audrey behind the wheel. I run to the truck. Audrey gets out and we hug. She’s got an angry bruise on her cheekbone and blood soaked through her Marauders hat.
I say, “Were you in an accident?”
“Daxson was.”
“Where is he?”
“Under the truck.”
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t know.”
Chloe gets on her hands and knees and looks under the truck. “He’s moving.” She gets on her stomach. “Daxson, you lie still, now. We’ll have an ambulance here in no time.”
I say, “Should we pull him out?”
“Might be something broke.”
“Move the truck?”
“His jacket’s caught up on the manifold.” She turns to Daxson. “Where does it hurt?”
“Where’s Audrey?” Daxson says.
“Who?”
“My wife.”
“You must have hit your head pretty hard. You don’t have a wife.” She looks up at us and smiles, tells Daxson to stop mumbling; she’s th
e answer to his prayers. “God sent me to save you.”
I ask Audrey how she got the bruise. She tells me she resisted being kidnapped, so Daxson hit her with a cross.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did.”
“No one would believe it.”
“He had it in his hand—the only thing in the house that he cared about.”
I lift her hat. Her hair is matted with blood, but the cut is not very deep. We’ll get a butterfly bandage in Kenmare.
Chloe stands up and says, “What happened here, Audrey?”
“The piece-of-shit truck stalled out. Daxson got out to wiggle the wires like he always does. I slid over and backed her up a few feet, put it in first, and ran him down.”
I say, “You hit him?”
“And then I backed over him.”
Chloe tells us to hit the road. She’ll take care of everything.
I say, “How?”
She says, “Don’t you think I can come up with a convincing story? I was out for my walk, and I saw everything, saw my neighbor, Mr. DeNeil, get out of his truck and walk around to the front. I don’t know why. Forgot to set the hand brake, I figure. The truck rolled over him. These things happen.” She tells us there’s a Cenex station about three miles down 2A. “Stop there and call 911.”
“I could try my cell right now.” No signal. I say, “What happens to you when Daxson starts babbling about how his wife ran him over?”
“I’ll shake my head, look knowingly at the deputy, and tap my head with my index finger. And I’ll look sad and concerned.”
“But eventually they’ll find out he has a wife.”
“And you’ll be long gone. And anyway, before he decides to make a federal case out of it, I’ll explain to him about assault and battery, about how the heathen sheriff’s department would like nothing better than to see him suffer, about how his landlord, my good friend Bill Peterson, might be forced to evict him. I’ll think of something.”
We all hug goodbye. I tell Chloe that for some reason I see her living in Saskatchewan in a few years.
She says, “Have we had this conversation before?”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s just weird. I feel like I’m remembering the future.”
“That is weird.”
“You’d better get going.”
At the Cenex station I make the 911 call while Audrey cleans up in the restroom. The attendant, a kid about sixteen, sits at a metal desk and plays solitaire and watches the last black-and-white TV on earth. The picture keeps rolling and fluttering. He whacks the oil-stained TV cabinet. He adjusts the rabbit ears. He moves a piece of aluminum foil up one of the antennas. He’s wearing fingerless knit gloves and a hooded sweatshirt with a picture of Uncle Sam on front. Uncle Sam is saying, ZIP IT, HIPPIE! I ask the kid what he’s watching. He puts a black jack on a red queen.
“Guiding Light.”
“How are things in Springfield?”
“Tammy’s dead.”
“Accident?”
“So they say.”
“You don’t sound like you believe them.”
“Alan had the motive and the opportunity. What’s the third thing you need?”
“Wherewithal?”
“Huh?”
“The means.”
“That’s it. He had all three.”
I hear a siren and look up to see a sheriff’s cruiser heading west on 2A.
The kid looks out the window and sees my car. “Never seen one of those before.”
“It’s a Quark.”
He peeks at the next card in his deck. “You mean quark like a duck?”
“You don’t notice them, but they’re everywhere.”
Audrey comes back and hands the kid the little key on the significant ring. She asks him if they sell coffee.
“No, ma’am, we’re a gas station.”
On the road to Kenmare, I say, “You’ll stay with us, Audrey. No arguments. End of story.”
“Till you’re sick of me.”
“I got you back at last.”
She stares out the window at the fallow wheat fields and the lowering sky.
I say, “What made you call me finally?”
“I couldn’t see ahead of me. I couldn’t imagine anything but what dreary little I already had. I got scared.” She touches my shoulder. “The charm of distance was wearing thin.”
I think of how three years ago while I was writing about this very rescue and escape, I had imagined the two of us driving the Quark all the way to Chief Yellowhorse’s Trading Post and exchanging our blue hats for a goldfish, but when I looked out back behind the trading post, I saw this dusty and dispirited bison tethered to a post, tramping along a circular rut bringing him back to where he’d been, so I reimagined us heading southeast, a beeline to Monroe and then Mobile and then home. Sweet home! We’ve got the radio blasting, and we’re singing along to Bob Wills for all we’re worth. Every mile it gets warmer and brighter. And then we see Dad thundering toward us in his big rig, and we wave out the window and throw him kisses, and he blasts his air horn hello! When I think of that drive, I see the chromium Quark as if from above, see it picking up speed as I shift the engine into quiescent mode, and we drive on deep, deep into our shiny futures.
We drive into Kenmare. Audrey says, “Don’t stop, Johnny Boy. Let’s put the miles behind us.”
At the edge of town we turn south on 52. She says, “The meaning of life is that it stops.”
“Bondurant?”
“Kafka.” Then she says, “Can we just drive all the way?”
“That can be arranged.”
“So, I hear you write books.”
“I do.”
She leans her head against the window and closes her eyes. “So tell me a story.”
Requiem, Mass. Page 28