by Tom Drury
“You know,” said Louise, and she repeated what Kleeborg had said Maren wanted to do.
Maren closed a tripod and slid it into the back of the van. “I never said any such thing. As if I would want to move the enlargers. They’re fine with me right where they are. As if I would want to move the light table. I don’t care where the light table is. Perry’s a nut.”
They drove over to the elementary school in Walleye Lake and spent the morning taking pictures of kids. Maren got them laughing and Louise snapped the shutter. In the van on the way back to Stone City they rolled down the windows and dangled their arms in the sunlight. Maren closed her eyes, smiled, and said, “This is what California is like every day of the year.”
As Mary Montrose had once predicted, Jean Klar came back to the farm. She did not want to reclaim the Klar homestead but to sell it. The farmhouse and two acres went to Louise and Dan, and the rest to Les Larsen.
There had been for some years a problem with water getting in the basement, and once they owned the house, Louise and Dan got Hans Cook to come with a backhoe to lay a line of tile around the foundation. They had called the Tile Doctor, Tim Leventhaler, but he put them off until Dan realized that Tim was not going to mess around with a job this small.
So Hans and Dan were working on it. “Hey,” said Hans, “remember when we moved your trailer?”
“Oh no,” said Dan. “I had no part in that.”
Hans laughed. “You know, I saw that old trailer the other day,” he said.
“It’s at the landfill, right?” said Dan.
“The guys use it for a shed,” said Hans. “And they love it. Because, you know, those harmless bastards were sitting out in the rain.”
“Did they replace the windows?” said Dan.
“They took the broken glass out.”
“How long has it been since that thing rolled?” said Dan.
“Well, what,” said Hans. “Two years anyway.”
“More than that,” said Dan.
“That’s right, because it was snowing,” said Hans.
Louise came out with sandwiches and coffee, and they took a break and sat around the backhoe. “The coffee is really weak because we’re out of coffee,” said Louise.
“I’ve been meaning to invite you guys over for supper,” said Hans. “I don’t know if Mary has told you, but I’m making my own cheese these days. You wouldn’t believe what all goes into the making of cheese.”
“Milk,” said Louise. “What else?”
“I got a compact-disc player, too,” said Hans.
“Let me ask you something,” said Dan. “How much of a difference is there really?”
“I tell you, it’s like night and day.”
The tiling took them late into the afternoon. It was dirty work, but the dull terracotta tiles made a satisfying noise when they clinked together in the trench, ready to carry the water wherever Dan and Louise wanted it to go. Hans drove the backhoe home, fed his cat, and took a bath. He eased himself into the tub. It was difficult, sometimes, being such a big person. He got dressed, took a small tab of LSD, and drove over to Mary’s house, where they grilled hamburgers behind the house with the spring light fading over the fields.
“Put some tile down with Dan and Louise today,” he said.
“Well, that’s what Louise said,” said Mary.
Hans turned the hamburgers and extinguished some flames with the squirt bottle he kept handy for that purpose.
“How did it go?” said Mary.
Hans looked across the yard. “Wonderful,” he said. Darkness was settling. The trunk of a white birch glowed softly against the grass. “One of these days I’m going to make a birch-bark canoe.”
“Why?” said Mary.
“Oh, dream of mine,” said Hans. “When I was young—now this is going way back—I thought it would be a good trick to retrace the journeys of the French fur traders. Come down the Mississippi to Cloquet, La Crosse, Prairie du Chien—all those places.”
“That sounds like something you would do,” said Mary.
“It might be overly ambitious,” said Hans. “What I’d like to do now is make the canoe and go from there.”
After supper they drove up and around Walleye Lake. Hans leaned back in the driver’s seat and drove slowly, with his big hands cradling the bottom of the steering wheel. From the parking lot of the restaurant at the western end of the lake, they could see the lights of houses on the north shore. The lights shone twice, once in the air and once in the water.
“Pretty night,” said Mary.
The restaurant was called the Sea Breeze, although it was a thousand miles from any ocean.
That was also the week that Tiny Darling fell and skinned his knuckles in the grocery store. He was walking along pushing a shopping cart and wearing the blue and gold corduroy jacket of the Future Farmers of America. For reasons unknown even to him he got the sudden notion to throw all his weight on the cart and give it a shove. Instead of carrying him along scooter-fashion, the cart flipped, dragging him down the aisle. People hurried to help him to his feet, as if he had been the victim of something other than his own crazy idea.
After getting the groceries, Tiny had to pick Joan Gower up and bring her home. They were still living in the basement of the church in Margo, and Joan served three nights a week as a volunteer at the Saint Francis House animal shelter in Wylie. It was a bit of a jaunt from Margo to Wylie, and Tiny wished that she had found an animal shelter or some other volunteer outlet closer to home. On the other hand, if his car had not broken down, he would not be driving her car, and therefore would not have to pick her up no matter where she went. So it was his fault, and yet he was angry with her. It was with an oppressive sense of his own unfairness that he drove down to Wylie. The dogs barked and pressed against the bars when he came in. “Down, Spotty,” said Tiny. “Down, Spike.”
Joan got to wear a white coat as a volunteer for Saint Francis House, and with the large glasses she had taken to wearing, she looked professional. Tiny thought but had not proved that the glasses had regular glass in them. Her hair was pinned on top of her head, and she carried an empty clipboard under her arm.
“This is Tuffy,” she told Tiny. “This is Rebel. This is Eleanor Rigby.”
Joan opened Tuffy’s cage and knelt at the door. “Tuffy is six weeks old. She’s half Lab and half Belgian Tuveren, and the last of her littermates just found a home. So if she is acting kind of downhearted today—and I think she is—that is why. Here, Tuffy. Are you feeling lost this evening? Say ‘I’m kind of lost.’ Say ‘I’m kind of lost and wondering where everybody went.’”
“Let me pet it,” said Tiny.
A few minutes later, Joan locked the building and they walked across the dark driveway. The stars were out in the cold black sky. Tiny backed Joan’s Torino out while Joan folded her white coat neatly in her lap.
“Remind me to wash this when we get home,” she said.
“You put a lot of effort into Saint Francis for something that’s volunteer,” said Tiny.
“Yeah,” said Joan. “But think about this. When payday rolls around, those dogs have no idea who’s getting a check and who isn’t. I mean, they don’t even know what a check is. And that’s the way you have to look at it.”
“I suppose,” said Tiny.
They went back to Margo via Grafton, and as they passed through town they saw Louise’s car parked at Hans Cook’s place on the main drag. Hans lived in an old cement house opposite the grain elevator. Many years ago the house had been a gas station, and there were still cylindrical red and green pumps with cracked faces and weeds growing around them.
Tiny slowed down. “Guess whose car that is,” he said.
Joan touched the frame of her glasses. “I don’t know.”
“Louise,” said Tiny.
“I thought she was gone.”
“I thought so too, but I saw her the other day at the bank, so evidently she’s back.”
“Did yo
u go up to her and say hi?” said Joan.
“I’m sure.”
“You should,” said Joan. “Show her you’re over that time. The divorced couples I admire are the ones who still talk on the phone. Who exchange birthday cards.”
Tiny snorted mildly and eased the car onto the highway. The farmland rolled away from them, vast and dark and empty. “Whoever told you that is lying,” he said.
“You can’t speak for all couples everywhere,” said Joan.
“Ninety-nine percent,” said Tiny.
The right back tire blew out on the highway to Margo, and the car whumped to a stop. Tiny opened the trunk, in which there were three plastic lambs. “Those are mine,” said Joan. They were the standard lambs, in a resting position, suitable for religious purposes or yard decoration. Tiny took the lambs from the trunk and put them on the shoulder. He dug out the jack and the spare tire. Joan brought him the manual—and her having the manual twenty years after the car was built and a good ten years after it had begun falling apart seemed as much a demonstration of faith as anything she had ever done during a church service. Tiny went about changing the tire, and Joan rummaged in the trunk.
“I don’t want you doing that while I’m jacking the car up,” warned Tiny. In his voice was the righteousness of having caught her doing something procedurally wrong and possibly dangerous.
“I’m not,” said Joan.
“Yes you are.”
“You’re not even touching the jack.”
“I’m about to.”
“When you start, I’ll stop.”
“Just cut it out, Joan,” said Tiny.
“I’m getting the flares out.”
“Don’t.”
“Yes.” She gathered the flares like sticks of dynamite in her hands and went around pushing their metal anchors one by one into the sandy shoulder. Then she removed the caps and scraped the elements to life. The flares hissed and burned with a hollow red light. Joan rested on her knees. Tiny knelt by the car, the lambs around him, and the hollow light touched them all. Joan knew that no matter how long she lived or how soon she and Tiny went separate ways, she would remember this.
Meanwhile, Hans brought the food to the table. He had roasted a chicken with dressing and potatoes and onions and carrots. Mary and Dan and Louise sat around a card table in the living room. Candles burned as the four friends ate the delicious food.
Dan told about a program adopted by the county to promote calmness and civility among public employees.
Mary had read in Reader’s Digest about an Indian man who could slow his heart to a standstill by thinking about it.
Louise said she sometimes wondered if she or Dan didn’t have powers of mind over matter, because so much of their silverware was bent.
Hans said he had dreamed recently that he was standing in the parking lot at the Burger King in Morrisville and all of a sudden he just took off flying.
After supper Hans insisted that they all take turns lying on the davenport with eyes closed and listening to his compact-disc player through earphones. He said this was the only way you could fully appreciate the quality of the sound. When it was Dan’s turn, he lay down and Hans fitted the earphones into his ears. The music was that of a single flute whose notes broke and reverberated in open space.
“That’s R. Carlos Nakai,” said Hans afterward.
Dan and Louise said good night to Mary and Hans and drove home. They watched part of a movie on television about a band of mountain climbers who because of an avalanche were forced to choose between taking a daring route to the top of the mountain or just forgetting it and returning to base camp.
“Are you snow-blind? It is madness,” said the scientist.
“If it is madness, then I am mad,” said the handsome leader.
“It is a madness that I share,” said the bold woman, who wore a furry white collar.
“Were it shared by the world, it would still be madness,” said the scientist.
Louise lay on the bed, working her shoes off with her toes. “Gee, I wonder what they’ll do,” she said.
“The scientist dies.”
CHARACTERS
(In order of appearance)
Dan Norman county sheriff
Louise Darling photographer’s assistant
Charles (Tiny) Darling thief
Earl Kellogg, Jr. senior deputy sheriff
Ed Aiken junior deputy sheriff
Rollie Wilson ambulance driver
Henry Hamilton notary public
Jerry Tate postal worker
Paul Francis crop duster
Mrs. Thorsen science teacher
Mary Montrose Louise’s mother
Hans Cook Mary’s beau
Heinz and Ranae Miller Mary’s neighbors
Tim Thompson barrel racer
Pete martial artist
Perry Kleeborg photographer
Maren Staley apprentice
Johnny White Independent candidate
Lisa White divorcée
Megan and Stefan White children
Howard LaMott fire chief
Alvin Getty grocer
Nan Jewell matriarch
Mrs. Spees pet dealer
Joan Gower proselyte
Lenore Wells sad woman
Quinn abandoned infant
Albert Robeshaw lead guitar, vocals
Claude and Marietta Robeshaw Democrat farmers
Nancy McLaughlin night administrator
Beth Pickett ob-gyn doctor
Lu Chiang student from Taiwan
Ron and Delia Kesslers host family
Jocelyn Jewell equestrian
Cheryl Jewell heiress
June Montrose Green Louise’s sister
Roman Baker veterinarian
Jack White horseman
Russell Ford county supervisor
Pansy Gansevoort airbrusher
Dianne Scheviss airbrusher
Shannon Key television reporter
Ronnie Lapoint stock car driver
Beverly Leventhaler county extension woman
Colette Sandover tax evader
Bettina Sullivan public defender
Father Zene Hebert radio preacher
Marie Person woman in pickup
Lindsey Coale hairdresser
Larry Longhair gambler
Dave Green Colorado realtor
Frank Ray billboard salesman
Grace Ray passenger
Lee P. Rasmussen county attorney
Tim Leventhaler the Tile Doctor
Lydia Kleeborg Perry’s late sister
Sheila Geer police sergeant
Robin Otis marriage couselor
Mrs. England palm reader
Vince Hartwell murder victim
Joseph Norman Dan’s father
Ken Hemphill Wildlife Court judge
Miles Hagen token GOP candidate
Paula Kellogg quilter
Carol and Kenneth Kennedy camp owners
Alice Mattie papergirl
Margaret Lynn Kane mother of Quinn
Marnie Rainville stripper
Copyright
Published in paperback in 2015 in the UK by Old Street Publishing Ltd
8 Hurlingham Business Park, Sulivan Road, London SW6 3DU
This ebook edition first published in 2015
by Old Street Publishing Ltd
8 Hurlingham Business Park, Sulivan Road, London SW6 3DU
All rights reserved
© Tom Drury
Copyright in the introduction © Jon McGregor
The right of Tom Drury to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly
permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–910400–06–7