Staggerford

by Jon Hassler

  In the Mustang the four men unwrapped a sandwich apiece and poured themselves coffee.

  “What did you get?” asked Doc.

  “Bologna,” said the mayor.

  “Bologna,” said Wayne.

  “They’re all bologna,” said Miles.

  They ate in silence. The sound of rain on the roof of the car gradually diminished. They heard two rifle shots in the distance. They heard a helicopter pass overhead. It was nearly one o’clock.

  Miles took two sandwiches and a bottle of coffee out to the highway and gave them to the Giant. “How much longer shall we wait?” he said.

  “Till two thirty,” said the Giant. “We’re calling it off at two thirty.”

  “Has anybody gone out to Sandhill to see what’s holding them up?”

  “No, nobody’s gone out there. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Returning to the car, Miles caught Wayne tattling on Superintendent Stevenson.

  “… And I know for a fact that there’s no meeting of the Historical Society today. Nobody has meetings on Saturday.”

  Doc Oppegaard was not giving him a sympathetic ear. “Bologna always gives me gas,” he said, beating his breast.

  “Are you saying Ansel Stevenson is not a truthful man?” asked Mayor Druppers. “Because, my goodness, if you’re saying Ansel Stevenson is not a truthful man, that’s a strong statement. Ansel Stevenson has been a public servant in our community for a good many years. I was on the board when he was hired and I’ve been on the board ever since, and I know he sometimes doesn’t take the bull by the horns the way he should, but to say he is not a truthful man is saying quite a lot. I would want to be very sure of my facts before I said that.” He sat back and folded his arms.

  “Then let me ask you this,” said Wayne. “When is the last time you heard of a meeting on Saturday?”

  “I’m at one right now,” said Doc, pressing his chin to his chest and working up a burp.

  Miles fell asleep.

  At two thirty the rain stopped altogether. The Giant radioed his trooper in the hills and his troopers in the helicopter and he radioed the army in the gulch. Across the river Miles could see the trooper in the hills leave his station and drive down through the pines. The Giant made a U-turn on the highway and returned to Staggerford, followed by several cars of disappointed sightseers. The military convoy of six jeeps and four trucks passed the park in the opposite direction, crossing the bridge, then turning north toward Berrington. They disappeared between the hills on the other side of the river.

  Miles started the Mustang. Doc Oppegaard told him to wait. He had to piss. Once he mentioned it, they all felt the urge, and Miles switched off the engine.

  “Who’s that?” said the mayor as they were getting out of the car. He was pointing across the highway where an old white Buick was emerging from the woods and bouncing along a trail, heading in their direction.

  Miles said it was Alexander Bigmeadow’s car.

  “God, don’t tell me!” said Wayne.

  “Judas Frost,” said the mayor, and he got back in the car.

  The Buick climbed the grade to the highway, crossed it, drove into the park, and pulled up next to the Mustang. The Buick contained three men and a boy. Alexander Bigmeadow was at the wheel, and with him in the front seat was Bennie Bird. To Miles’s great relief the carnival-hatted Indian who had found so much to laugh at on Wednesday was in the back seat. He was already grinning and raising his eyebrows expectantly, as though all that remained of the Pike Park meeting was the punch line. Sticking out of his lime-green hat today was the bent tailfeather of a grouse. Also in the back seat was little Hank Bird. He had scabs on his face and his finger was still in a splint. In his good hand he clutched an empty Pepsi bottle. He jumped out of the Buick and went to the pump to fill the bottle with water.

  “How would you like a brand new motorcycle?” Wayne asked him.

  Little Hank stopped pumping. This man who last week had made him stand for forty minutes on two sheets of paper was now offering him a motorcycle. Hank broke into a great gap-toothed smile.

  Alexander Bigmeadow moved his great bulk out from behind the wheel and carried two six-packs of beer over to a wet picnic table under a wet pine tree. The green-hatted Indian and Bennie Bird followed him.

  “Help yourself,” Bigmeadow said to Doc Oppegaard.

  Doc thanked him but said he never drank beer.

  Green-hat chuckled.

  “Beer gives me asthma,” Doc explained.

  Green-hat let out a deep, joyous roar.

  “How about you two?” said Bigmeadow. Miles and Wayne took the beers he offered them.

  “Who’s that in your car there?” asked Bennie Bird. It was a civil question asked in a civil tone. Bennie appeared not to be angry today.

  Doc said, “That’s Bartholomew Druppers.”

  “Druppers the mayor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe he’d like a beer.”

  Wayne and Miles glanced at each other. Was this the same Bennie Bird they had met on Thursday?

  Doc beckoned to the mayor, but the mayor didn’t budge, except to lower himself a bit deeper into the back seat.

  “How come you brought along the cops and the army?” asked Bigmeadow, looking pained at having to ask.

  “We didn’t,” said Miles. “You might say they brought us.”

  “We’ve been sitting over there in the woods since ten thirty, waiting for the cops and the army to go home. Just drinking beer and waiting. Except Hank, he was drinking Pepsi. I’ll be damned if I’ll drive into a park that’s surrounded by the cops and the army.”

  Bennie Bird nodded. So did Wayne.

  Miles decided it was time they heard the bad news. “Jeff Norquist ran away,” he said.

  The Indians did not look surprised. Bennie nodded.

  Wayne said, “How would you folks like a tar road through Sandhill?” His voice was tight and high.

  “How come the mayor stays in the car?” asked Bigmeadow.

  Doc Oppegaard went over to the Mustang and brought back the mayor, as well as the sandwiches and the coffee.

  “Nice to see you,” Mayor Druppers said to the Indians. “I’m glad to be here. Not the best of weather, but it’s always fair weather when good men get together. Right? You bet.” As the mayor gingerly shook hands with Bigmeadow and Bird and Green-hat, a chilly breeze sprang up and the pine tree they stood under sprinkled everyone with water.

  “Have a beer,” said Bigmeadow.

  “Don’t mind if I do. Yes, sir. You bet.” The mayor was bobbing up and down nervously like a boxer and causing Green-hat to chuckle.

  The Indians were hungry. Bigmeadow and Bennie Bird and Green-hat ate two sandwiches apiece. Little Hank ate three. The Indians switched to coffee. Wayne and Miles had another beer. When little Hank reached for a fourth sandwich, all seven men, like uncles, tried to top each other’s funny remarks about his appetite—until Bennie Bird said, “He must have a hollow leg,” and all the others laughed and gave up. Who could be funnier than that?

  To make sure they understood, Miles said once more, “Jeff Norquist ran away.”

  Wayne interrupted. “I’ve been thinking, this park ought to be called Onji Park. I mean why should we call it Pike Park when Zebulon Pike was only here for part of one day in 1806, and all this land was Chief Onji’s land long before the white man showed up. If you want me to, I’ll see about having the name changed. I’ll call the governor.”

  “We’ve searched every house in Staggerford,” said Miles. “We don’t know where he went.”

  Wayne said, “How would you folks like a brand new Community Center in Sandhill?”

  “So the Norquist kid is gone,” said Bigmeadow. “That doesn’t surprise us, does it, Bennie?”

  Bennie Bird said no, it didn’t surprise him. Green-hat was greatly amused.

  “Annie Bird took off night before last with Bennie’s car,” said Bigmeadow. “She hasn’t been seen since. We figure s
he and Norquist ran away together.”

  Green-hat exploded with laughter. This was the punch line he had been waiting for, and the joke was on all of them, red man and white.

  “Are you serious about the motorcycle?” asked Bennie.

  “Yes, yes,” said Wayne.

  “If you’re serious about that motorcycle, and if you fix Hank’s tooth, we’ll call it square,” said Bennie. He put his hand on little Hank’s shoulder and his weathered face broke into a slight but satisfied smile.

  Little Hank’s smile was wide and full of bread.

  Thus, their business ended, all that remained for them to do was to follow Doc Oppegaard down the path to the riverbank, where they stood in a row under the dripping willows—all eight of them, red man and white—and the Badbattle carried their piss away to Fargo, to Winnipeg, to Hudson Bay.

  At two o’clock Miss McGee and Thanatopsis arrived at the Hub and sat at the table in the front window. When Beverly served their coffee, they asked her to sit down. She joined them with a bowl of stew. The last of the lunch-hour crowd, enlarged today by deer hunters, was thinning out and it was time for her to eat. She ate with her right hand and smoked with her left and said, with her mouth full, that when she was ten her mother shot a kettle salesman. In case these two women were undecided, she must convince them how badly she needed a new home—any home, even the Workmans’.

  “We’ve heard the story,” said Miss McGee.

  “We’re here to plan your future,” said Thanatopsis.

  “My sister was engaged to Harlan Prentiss and it wasn’t long after her engagement was announced in the paper that this kettle salesman turned up at the farm. He had pots and pans and knives.”

  “You needn’t tell us,” said Miss McGee, cleaning the silver with her paper napkin. “Mr. Pruitt told us all about it.”

  But she was determined not to spend one more night in the gulch. She told the entire story as she had told it yesterday in school: the salesman’s spiel, the bride’s duty to provide kitchenware, her mother’s threats from the front room, the sample frying pan in the salesman’s suitcase, the shot, her sister screaming and jumping off the porch, the body tipping backward down the porch steps, the sheriff-it was easier to tell today, the second time.

  “You’ll come to live in town,” said Miss McGee.

  “You’ll come to live with Mr. Workman and me said Thanatopsis. “Would you like that?”

  Beverly nodded, wiping up the last of her stew with a biscuit.

  It was nearly three when the Giant and his patrolmen crowded, famished, into the Hub and announced that the dreaded clash of races had been averted. The Indians had failed to show up in Pike Park.

  “Miles will be here soon,” Miss McGee told Beverly. “He’s taking a hot bath.”

  “Let’s not wait for him,” said Beverly. “Let’s go right out to my place and get my things.”

  “You mean now, today?” said Thanatopsis. “What about your mother?”

  “I’ll make up some story. She’ll be all right. The National Guard is gone and she’ll be settled down.”

  “Well, if you think …”

  Beverly ran to the kitchen for her tattered, buttonless jacket. The wave she had set in motion yesterday in English class was rolling high and fast. She was riding the crest.

  “I’ll wait here for Miles,” Miss McGee told Thanatopsis. She went to the kitchen to chat with the cook, a sixth grader of 1940.

  * * *

  On the highway returning from Pike Park, Miles saw his Plymouth coming toward him. He saw it turn into the Bingham driveway. He turned in after it.

  “What the hell are you doing?” said Wayne.

  “What’s the idea?” said Bartholomew Druppers.

  “That’s my Plymouth,” said Miles, “and that’s your wife driving it.”

  The driveway into the gulch was deeply rutted by rain and trucks and jeeps. The farmyard was a sea of mud and dead chickens. It was surrounded by rusting cars and un-painted sheds leaning downhill. The Plymouth was empty, facing the front porch. Miles parked beside it.

  “What a God-forsaken dump,” said Doc Oppegaard.

  “In town we have laws against places like this,” said the mayor.

  Wayne said, “I don’t know what we’re doing here, Pruitt, but whatever it is, get it over with fast and get us back to town.”

  Miles said, “I don’t understand what Thanatopsis is doing here in my car.”

  “Damn it, Pruitt, will you stop calling my wife that crazy name?”

  Miles opened his door and got out of the car. The Bone-woman, insane with fear, and resting her rat gun on the sill of the upstairs window, took aim and fired a .22 bullet that entered his skull an inch above the left eye. She had vowed to herself as she watched the singing, chicken-killing soldiers drive away in their jeeps and trucks that she would murder the next man who set foot in her yard. Into the mud beside the yellow Mustang, Miles fell backward, dying.

  “Holy Christ,” shouted Wayne. He saw the Bone-woman with the rifle in the upstairs window. He saw his wife and Beverly, at the sound of the shot, come out onto the front porch. “Holy Christ!” He clambered over the gear box between the bucket seats and backed the car away from the house, skidding in a circle. He shifted into low and spun his tires up the sloping yard and up the driveway and was back on the highway before the two men in the back seat knew what happened. From where they sat, neither Doc nor the mayor had seen the upstairs window. They had assumed the shot they heard was a deer hunter’s. “What is it? What happened?” they said, but Wayne didn’t hear them. He tore into Staggerford and skidded to a stop at the Big Chief Motel where he expected to find the Giant.

  The manager said the Giant was lunching at the Hub.

  Wayne picked up the manager’s phone, dialed the operator, and told her to get the governor on the line. It took her a minute to learn that the governor was beyond reach today. He told her to call the sheriff in Berrington. It took her another minute to learn that the sheriff was not in Berrington. He was in Staggerford. Wayne told her to call the Hub. She put him through to the Hub. He asked for the Giant. He told the Giant that Pruitt had been shot in the Bonewoman’s barnyard. He hung up. He went back to the car and dropped off the bewildered dentist and mayor at their houses. He went home and took a pill. Two pills. Three. He phoned Superintendent Stevenson and told him what he hoped would be heart-stopping news. He put on his pajamas and got into bed and pulled the covers up to his eyes.

  Beverly leaped off the porch and ran to Miles and dropped to her knees beside him in the mud. She thought there was movement in his face. She put her arms behind his head and shoulders and struggled to draw him up to a sitting position. But there was no life in him. She dropped him back into the mud. Then she stood up and gripped her hair with both hands and made a noise she herself had never heard before, a faint, high warble from the bottom of her soul, from somewhere further back than her birth—the anthem of the crushed spirit, the keen of the widow.

  Thantopsis on the porch turned away. She put her forehead against a porch pillar for a moment, then she went into the house to find the Bonewoman. What she would have done had she found her she didn’t know. She might have tried to reason with her. She might have tried to kill her. But the door leading upstairs was locked.

  Over the gulch a sudden wind from the north blew a flock of snow geese off course, and they called out as they passed blindly through swift, ragged clouds.

  Beverly, still clinging to her hair, ran into the woods behind the henhouse. Thanatopsis came outside and ran after her.

  There were hiding in the woods several chickens that had not made a peep since the arrival of the National Guard—six or eight leghorns that grew curious now about the man lying in the mud, and as they approached the body they made soft, throaty sounds like the purring of cats.

  Word went out from the Hub. The Giant, assuming the Indians were responsible, called the National Guard and ordered the six jeeps and four trucks to tur
n around. The waitress who had just come on duty called Nadine Oppegaard, then put her head through the serving window and told the cook and Miss McGee.

  The National Guard, nearing Berrington, turned around and headed back to the farm. Nadine Oppegaard got into her father’s Lincoln, picked up Peter Gibbon, Roxie Booth, and Lee Fremling, and drove out to the gulch.

  Miss McGee called Father Finn and told him that he must go to the farm and give Miles the Last Sacraments.

  “He’s a Catholic?” said Father Finn, whose time in Staggerford did not go back very far.

  “Of course he’s a Catholic. He was born and raised a Catholic, and he was at mass last Sunday. Pick me up at the Hub Cafe. Hurry, Father.”

  Father Finn was slow. Miss McGee sat waiting for him in the front window. Interlaced between the fingers of her right hand was the crystal rosary given to her by the class of 1951. She clenched her fist so tightly as she waited that she snapped the rosary into several pieces.

  It was twilight when Father Finn and Miss McGee arrived at the gulch and found themselves last in a line of vehicles stretching down the Bingham driveway. Miss McGee couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. She was breathing in gulps. She got out of the car and told the priest to follow her. They walked along through the mud of the sloping driveway, passing the Oppegaard car, the sheriffs car, Dr. Maitland’s car, eleven highway patrol cars, four army trucks and six jeeps. All the vehicles were empty. The troopers and the army and everyone else were hiding in the woods, puzzling how they might capture the Bonewoman.

  As Miss McGee and Father Finn walked out into the wide clearing that was the yard, a voice from behind a tree said, “Psst.”

  They stopped.

  The voice said, “Don’t go no farther.” An arm pointed from behind the tree toward the house. “The Bonewoman’s up there in the front window with a gun.”

  Father Finn joined the voice behind the tree. The watery mud made sucking noises as Miss McGee walked forward into the yard. When she reached Miles’s body, she knelt in the mud. The hole above his left eye was tiny. It might have been a mole. With her thumb she made the sign of the cross on his lips.