Martin, Crook, & Bill

by Donna Nitz Muller

  “On Saturday, we need to get Crook,” Martin told him. “Crook is on the list right after electricity and water.” Bill knew Martin was aware of his pending explosion. He could see it in Martin’s eyes. Martin was aware and pretending not to be. Bill felt conflicted about this. On one hand he was pleased that Martin had already gained understanding. On the other hand it was not a good thing that Martin was manipulating him.

  He could not let it matter right now. Even Tillie knew to back off once Bill reached his limit. His jaw hurt from clenching his teeth. “You are a stubborn man, Martin. I think you will be all right. I have only one rule and that is that you never again pretend not to know when I have reached my limit.”

  Martin nodded and smiled. He had enough sense to look sheepish. Bill felt the power of Martin’s intellect and Martin’s relentless pursuit of a goal. It was power few recognized. Bill’s anger vanished, and he laughed his silent, farmer laugh.

  “We’ll get your friend. Is he coming to Sioux Falls?”

  “Nope,” Martin answered. “We have to go to Lincoln. You’ll need to drive your car. Crook wouldn’t like to be crunched up in the pick-up.”

  Without asking if there was anything else, Bill drove off.

  After dinner, when the table sat in Martin’s kitchen, Bill noted with satisfaction the clean cupboards and sink, and the scrubbed floor. Martin apparently had not slept last night, and that’s why he looked the way he did.

  Martin ran his fingers down the grooves on the table legs which turned into bird claws with rounded bottoms. It would be a lot of work to refinish, fix the table legs and fix the chairs. The six-inch side pieces on the table had the same groove lines. Not as nice as the claw footed round table missing from Martin’s dining room, but a lovely piece all the same. Martin talked while writing in his notebook. “Stain and varnish, wood filler for the torn nail holes and glue.”

  Bill watched the younger man finish writing and then stand silent, waiting. Now Martin wanted him to leave. Sorely tempted to pull up a chair and sit down, Bill resisted. He was too tired.

  Bill said, “Good night.” Only at the last minute did he think to look about for signs of a teenage runaway girl in the house. Of course there was nothing. Why did he even give it a glance?

  Then as Bill drove home in the deep darkness of a cloudy night, he comprehended what Martin had earlier asked him to do. Maureen had mentioned that Martin pointed out a man named Crook when she visited, but she thought Martin was confused. The man named Crook never spoke to Martin or introduced himself to her. Crook did not appear to know Martin.

  A knot tightened in his stomach. What had he agreed to? If Crook was real that meant he would be living down the road less than a quarter mile. If he was a fantasy, what would Martin do once they reached the hospital? Will I have to open the car door for an imaginary friend?

  Bill was not at ease with bringing Crook to Martin’s house. His joints hurt and that always meant trouble was on the horizon.

  Chapter Five

  Martin listened as Bill’s footsteps squished across the porch floor. He heard the sound of the porch door being pushed shut and the sound of the pick-up engine. Then he sighed, slumped his shoulders and leaned on the back of a chair. His wired energy had burned all available fuel and was shutting down for the night.

  He could not allow himself to stop, not yet. As the scratching in the bottom row of kitchen cupboards reminded him, he had one more task that had to be done before he could rest. He dreaded it as much as anything he ever had to do. Could the task wait one more night? Would it be cheating to ask Bill to go to the barn for him? With regret, Martin accepted that the job had to be done now, and only he could do it.

  He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, grabbed the big red flashlight, and stepped outside into the night. He faced the barn with an almost military turn. In one of the rooms intended for calving, his father stored rat poison. He planned his route as he walked: the side door, run a few steps to his right, avoid the milking stanchions and the ladder to the hayloft. Martin inhaled the cooler night air, eyes cast toward dark night sky, treading the path to the well. Once at the well, he inhaled another deep breath like a swimmer going underwater.

  Joe, his features consumed with unabashed joy danced backwards along the hay mound-floor. Martin’s heart pounded. The tension in his body about to burst.

  Martin, recognizing the flashback for what it was, stood quiet. He gathered the quiet about him and put his hand firmly on the cold steel of the pump. He gave a moment’s thought to pursuing this memory of Joe. This memory was important, but it was gone.

  Holding his breath, he left the pump and ran. His coat flapped loud on his jeans. Once at the side door, he stopped and turned his back to the door. He looked again at the cloudy-black night sky, gathered himself, and turned to face the barn. Using his flash light to focus on the steps he had to take, he ran to the calving room.

  The ten-pound cloth sacks, marked with a large X, were covered with dirt, but exactly where they belonged inside a steel bin. Martin grabbed one and ran. He did not stop running until he reached the door. He paused only to kick the door shut behind him. His heart pounded and his hand shook the flashlight so much that the light bounced around in front of him. He dropped both bag and flashlight. Putting both hands on the pump nozzle he said, “I’m on base, no touch backs.”

  He gulped air. He waited for his heartbeat to slow and his breath to come easier before picking up the flashlight and bag of poison. Slowly he treaded the dark line of the path to the house.

  He thought about the weeds, and borrowing Bill’s tractor and mower. But with Sandra and her baby squeezed into the picture, that pushed lawn and yard work into late fall. When he entered the kitchen it felt good to see the white lacquered cupboards clean, and the worn butcher block countertop shinning. Sandra had a busy day.

  He would not replace the cupboards, but he would need to remove and repair them in order to redo the plaster wall. “In its time,” he said as he carefully put his bundle down by the door.

  Sandra walked in from the foyer as he filled a glass of water.

  “Hello,” she said, tentative and almost shy. She startled him.

  “May I touch your arm?” he asked.

  “Why?” she said, squinting her eyes with suspicion.

  “My friend thinks you are a hallucination,” Martin said. His eyes fixed on her until he saw her cheeks turn crimson. He did not move toward her, so she walked to him and put out her forearm. He gingerly touched the firm muscle. It certainly felt real enough.

  “Tell me something about you that I wouldn’t know,” he said, his face inches from hers. He read fear and desperation in her eyes, but controlled for right now, at bay.

  “My father’s name is Jarvis,” she told him.

  He shook his head. “I might have known that.”

  “We went fifteen and six last year.” She was obviously trying to cooperate.

  Martin bunched his face in concentration. He said, “I probably read that somewhere. We get the local paper. Think of something I could not possibly know if I were making you up.” His eyes never wavered. She had a summer tan and newly washed hair. He thought she must have heated water on the old stove.

  “How would you know what I looked like?” she asked.

  “I saw your picture in the paper,” he answered.

  “Close your eyes and see if you can make my eyes blue,” Sandra suggested. Martin shut his eyes and visualized Sandra with blue eyes. When he looked at her, she looked back with large, clear brown eyes. He sighed with relief.

  “My middle name is Jean,” she added. “I have a music box on a table in my bedroom. Does that help?”

  “How did you keep anyone from knowing you were pregnant?” He sounded more forceful and demanding than he intended. He was not an inquisitor, nor judge or jury. He needed to find some understanding of how Sandra had reached this place.

  “First and foremost I did not have a boyfriend, no one obvious t
o be the responsible party. Secondly, I didn’t show hardly at all for a long time. I ran every day to stay strong. I wore jogging pants and sweatshirts no matter how hot it was.” She stated the facts like reciting a school assignment.

  “I never went swimming. My friends all asked me about that because I’m big on swimming, but I told them I had a babysitting job every afternoon. That worked.” Her face, her voice, and her words all seemed real enough. “I had to volunteer to baby sit my niece just to make it real. Yuk, what a brat.”

  Martin said, “Don’t call your niece a brat.”

  He looked carefully at her stomach. He could believe she wasn’t pregnant if she were wearing big clothes instead of his lean cut shirt. She sat down on one of the newly arrived maple wood ladder chairs. She put her hands under her belly and rocked slowly back and forth. “It won’t be long,” she told Martin. “My due date as I figured it was two days ago. And I know when I got pregnant to the second.”

  Martin heard this with his usual acceptance of things that happen. Nothing seemed real enough to cause alarm. She did not look anywhere near to that time. He recalled Nancy’s large body when it was her time. How Nancy hated being big!

  “Did you see a doctor?” Martin reached to rub his chin and felt whiskers.

  Sandra rolled her eyes. “I don’t dare see a doctor. I’m fine. I’m ready for natural childbirth. Like I said before, I ran every day. I did all of the exercises in my sister’s pregnancy book. I made my plan. He is not going to change my life.”

  Martin said, “Really. You can stop your life from changing?”

  Sandra looked up at him. Her clear, brown eyes looked hard and unafraid. Martin saw her hands twist on her lap. He noted the hard lines of her face and understood that hardness. That was how Crook looked sometimes. She was forced to deny fear even existed.

  Martin, standing three feet from where Sandra sat, looked down at her. “You were going to have a baby all by yourself? Out here, without lights or water.” He almost added, “Are you crazy?” but he did not.

  “My plan has some flaws,” she said. “But it’s all I have. If I give in, then he wins.” Martin could see that whoever she referred to was not going to win. Her body was taut. Martin recognized petrifying fear.

  Running toward the house, clutching his chest, his plaid shirt tearing in his fingers.

  Martin’s hands waved at his side. His hands moving at his wrist waved the vision away. He pulled out a chair and set it beside Sandra. He did not look at her. He did not want to see her face. She knew to be still. They sat side by side, legs out in front of them. A rat scurried under the counterledge. The rat didn’t like the clean and scuttled quickly into the laundry room.

  Martin’s shoes reached several inches past Sandra’s. She wore Nike tennis shoes and no socks. Her gray sweat pants stopped at her knees. From the sweat pants to the shoes stretched long, well shaped legs that had not been shaved for quite some time.

  “I’ll tell you my plan,” she whispered. “I was going to kill it and bury it out here where no one would ever know. Then I was going to go back home with a story about camping by myself in the State Park by Lake Vermillion. That was my plan.”

  Martin had to strain to hear her, but he did hear her.

  Neither of them spoke again for a long time.

  At last Martin said, “Could you do that?”

  Sandra said, “No.”

  “So what was plan B?” Martin said.

  “Now you are plan B.”

  For the first time, Martin believed that Sandra was real. He would never in a million years create the words that just came out of her mouth. He thought he knew desperation, but now he understood he did not know desperation like this girl. He remembered the blind grip on his legs like steel clamps. He could not remember what caused it.

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

  Martin wiped his face and realized he had tears on his cheeks. Sandra stared straight ahead. Her eyes were dry. She would not allow herself to feel anything. Martin understood that as he understood many things. Mostly he understood imperfection.

  He put his arm around her stiff and unyielding shoulders. “Who did this to you?” he asked, thinking there had to be one other person who knew the possibility, who carried some responsibility. Why was she here alone?

  “I had a flat tire one night last winter, before Christmas. A man stopped to help me. I didn’t even know what was going on until it was too late. He was so strong. I fought and screamed and cried. That is until I realized it was the screaming that turned him on. So, I quit fighting.” She shrugged. “I was only two miles from town. I took my friend home after a basketball game. The same as I have done a lot of times.” She sounded puzzled as though she was still trying to understand what happened to her.

  Martin realized she felt safe in telling him what she had never spoken. He was too crazy to judge her. What could he do? A rush of sympathy for this child beside him simply filled him like raging flood water. Sandra was raped and pregnant and refusing to allow it to make a difference. Basketball practice started in three weeks.

  “It will hurt to cry,” Martin said. “But you should do it anyway.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want this baby. I want to play basketball.” Her voice sounded squeezed through a closed throat. “This is the first time I’ve been able to call it a baby.” Her face lost all color. She looked like a ghost in the pale kitchen light. Her hands were fists at her sides.

  Martin held her, his arms around her shoulders. He thought of his own daughters. Would they tell him if something like this happened to them? He wondered if he would be open to hear it. He said, “I will hold you. You are allowed to cry.”

  Someone once said that to him. It had not worked. To this day he had not cried for his lost loved ones. So he was surprised when Sandra lowered her head of auburn tangles and rested it on his shoulder. Her body heaved with the depth of her tears.

  When the tears subsided, Sandra hunched with exhaustion. Martin told her, “On Sunday you can have the baby. On Saturday we are going after Crook. You can’t have the baby on Saturday. On Sunday, after church, would be fine. I bought new sheets, but you really need a new mattress and springs. I bought some Pampers and t-shirts for the baby. It isn’t the baby’s fault. Try not to blame him or her.”

  He could not stop talking. He saw himself and felt this to be an extraordinary reaction, but he could not stop. “Maybe we should walk over to Bill’s in the morning. He would give you a ride home. Your parents are worried.” Words and more words filled the space around them. He struggled to fill a void in their hearts, and to fill the sudden, thick loneliness in the room.

  “The baby knows that he is not loved,” Martin said. He felt bad about that.

  At last his voice stopped and the silence settled about them.

  “I can’t go home.” Her voice was almost gone. “I want to go home, but I can’t. It’s not how angry they will be. I could probably face that. My dad will make me tell him who the father is. I can never tell that.”

  “Who is the father?” Martin asked again.

  “Sheriff Hauk.” Her voice was a bare sound. Martin felt the answer in his chest more than he heard it in his ears.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Hauk will kill me if I tell, and don’t think for a minute that he wouldn’t. He would kill me without so much as a thought if he knew I was pregnant, and if I told.” Sandra was very matter of fact about this, and Martin believed her.

  “We have to presume that he has an idea since you disappeared at this time, and he was present nine months ago.” Martin had to fight to stay calm and objective. He remembered the rule of thumb for shrinks: the more emotional the topic, the calmer and objective the shrink.

  This unjust, horrible thing happened to her, and now she had to deal with it. He felt angry for her. He would not make a good shrink.

  “He won’t care as long as I don’t come back with a baby, and I never tell.” She sounded sure about this
.

  “Why not just tell. Tell everything. The pig should go to jail.” Martin felt hot with emotion. He didn’t want his feelings mixing in with hers. For the most part he didn’t know his own feelings. He cautioned himself to be objective even as he smelled a sweet scent in her hair. She had used his shampoo.

  “He would never go to jail, and he would kill me.”

  Martin nodded. “Thank you for cleaning the kitchen today.” Martin said.

  “Your welcome,” Sandra answered.

  Martin got up slowly. He was so very tired. He exhaled a long breath as he reached for the bag of rat poison. “I’m going to put this around the house, inside and outside. It is very toxic, so don’t touch it and don’t breathe it. Make sure you stay away from it and keep your clothes away from it. Don’t even smell it. I want you to wait outside while I do this. The smell will make you sick.” He worked at opening the bag.

  “You shouldn’t open it in the kitchen then,” Sandra said as she backed toward the porch door.

  “Okay,” he said. “I have a fold-out tent in my trunk. We will sleep outside tonight.” It took another hour to set up the tent in the tall grass behind the house where passersby could not see it from the road. Sandra opened the new bedding amongst the sacks and sacks of stuff Martin bought that day. Then she carried out bottles of water and a box of donuts along with the peanut butter and remaining bread.

  “Okay,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

  Martin returned to the kitchen. He found the box of containers he had earlier filled. He put on gloves and tied a new towel around his face. With flashlight in hand he did the outside of the house first, placing a small container in sheltered spots about every three or four yards along the foundation. He had already carefully examined the foundation of the house, so he knew where the rats entered. By the narrow basement windows, he carefully placed the containers in the casement corners.

  Entering the porch, Martin paused. The entire south end was filled with his purchases from the day. He saw the empty packaging where Sandra had rummaged and found the blankets. He would have to leave that area alone for now.