Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  A big star hissed, shattered in a flash. Melting rock, like summer hose-water, scattering light; a whisper, like the Father talked most-times, but now, here, His whisper spoke volumes.

  Oh no! she thought, Oh, no, no. She watched and waited. For now, all He said was in the fall of stars. Oh, the poor Old Man; the world, his people become so wicked! She clutched the Book to her chest and wept for Him. She'd wake the others soon enough. The branches of the tree lifted and fell with soft breath. “Oh,” Gram said tingling all over, swallowing sorrow. “Oh cripes, Lord. You mean You gotta find us another world?”

  “Stars? Bunch, meteors ain't stars, for crineoutloud.” Vinnie's ass dangled, both sides of his usual stool at the American House – Eats.

  Bunch shrugged. “How about some damn service here, Esther!” he yelled. “Thinks one cup and an egg is pay enough for all that work. . .”

  Vinnie sucked coffee, remembering school, remembering what he knew of stars and shit, stuff his mom had told him. Mom had liked the sky and that stuff. “Cops see things, you know? You know, stuff? Out there, alone, nights, I seen... Well I seen meteors. Ones, twos of them, maybe a couple, a dozen, maybe in a night watch. This, now, was, whatdoyoucallit? A meteor shower? A damn downpour’s what it was! Showers, big ones you know, maybe last a couple three days. A week, maybe more. Pieces of dead worlds out there, Bunch.” He pointed to the dusty ceiling fan. “Some world like Earth, maybe, blew up one day, or got left behind from Creation. Along comes us, sweeping through space there, and we suck pieces down.”

  “Y'figure, huh?” Bunch was rocking like he didn’t give a rat’s ass. He looked like a man wanted a couple, three more eggs, not star talk stuff.

  Esther was feeding half the town. Alone! Twenty-three Sons of Norway were still milling before heading to home to their missuses and beds.

  Einar sat talking with himself. He was pissed.

  Vinnie wiped his eyes. “Yeahp. On patrol most of the Goddamned night. Wouldn't have seen them meteors” – he leaned on the word – “but,” he tipped his head a couple inches closer to Bunch, “between you and me, I am speed-trapping Karl Dorbler's ass.”

  “Hunh,” Bunch said. He tap-tap-tapped his cup on the saucer.

  “Best believe,” Vinnie said. “Sumbitch is prowling deer on County H again. Didn't see him last night, but sure as hell I saw that meteor stuff because of him. What you'd call, 'awe-inspiring', huh?”

  Bunch held out his cup. “'Bout time.”

  Esther stepped between Bunch and Vinnie. She topped Vinnie’s cup but didn’t seem to care about either of them at just that moment. At that moment she was looking past both and out her plate window. “You want to see a damn traveling carney show or something, you look out on Commonwealth, Vinnie.”

  Bunch and Vinnie swiveled.

  Something. Not a carnival, a horse and wagon was all. Not a shiny black Amish carriage, navy-bright and lye soap clean, no, no. What had eased down Commonwealth, blocking it both ways, was a beat-up open rig freight wagon, something from the last century. The slow-as-shit swayback plug that drew it crapped every couple clops, letting steamy haystacks dot the public way.

  Hornblows, pissed-off drivers, the town was already stewed!

  “Best see,” Vinnie said and hauled his bulk.

  “Best,” Esther said.

  Bunch snagged the last strip of bacon from Vinnie's plate.

  The wagon had dead-halted in the intersection, Commonwealth and Slaughterhouse, by the time Vinnie hit the porch, cop gear clacking, patent leather squeaking. Without thinking, he went into cop mode: feet spread, hands on hips, toothpick tucked in the corner of his mouth.

  On the wagon seat, an iron-haired old lady stared forward, head erect. A mister and missus – Vinnie figured that’s what they were at any rate – sat either side. Next to the old lady both looked shrunk down. The man might hold the reins, but granny was in charge here, that was clear.

  The mister looked backward, forward, up, and down then repeated the pattern, then did it again.

  Doofuses, Vinnie reckoned. “Definitely not Amish,” he said aloud.

  “Nope,” Bunch said over Vinnie's shoulder, crunching the last of Vinnie's marmalade toast.

  “Hell no. That's clear as branch-water piss they ain’t!” Einar stood tiptoes on the threshold, white paper napkin still tucked between his grease-blacked wattles and his grease-black coveralls. He peered over the heads of the morning crowd. “Ass-pains them Amish are, but they ‘least know better'n to gridlock a main thoroughfare.”

  The man with the reins was small and prickly, his face whiskered in double-aught emery.

  “He’s tougher’n he looks,” said one of the Sons of Norway. “An hour walking in them wool pants and shirt’d take a man's flesh to the meat.”

  “Ya, you got that right” someone said.

  “Uh-dah” someone else said.

  Vinnie pegged the little guy’s age at about 40. The wife, he figured younger. Younger because she looked so frail, dressed so thin, a sundress suited more to summer's sweat than the fall morning’s chill. Her long crooked nose added something. Horsy looked good on her, but she was so beat down, you had to stare a little to see the pretty of her. In the quarter-minute it took Vinnie to assess the picture, Bluffton had frozen, blocked or gaping.

  Granny swung her arm over the man's head and pointed to the Wurst Haus. Without word or look the man gave the reins a snap and tug. The old horse heaved against the dead-stopped weight.

  Vehicles that had started to pass, came to shock-rocking stops. Drivers – known Lutherans – cussed, laid blue smoke and rubber streaks and swerved long arcs around the crawling wood and horsehair disaster that was easing a wide, slow one-eighty through their midst.

  Vinnie body-Englished the wagon through the turn.

  The horse left a three-pound dump where it had stood.

  “He’s took what? Seven, no eight, spaces there, Vinnie!” Einar yelled.

  “What’d you expect, Einar?” Vinnie called back, “Can’t diagonal park a wagon for crineoutloud!”

  “So what’re you going to do about it?”

  What the hell, Vinnie figured. Plenty room. Summer crowds gone; winter folks not set in yet. “Hell, just us chickens,” he said aloud, agreeing with himself. He shifted his weight to unlock his knees.

  “What?” Esther said. She stood next to Vinnie, the register drawer cradled in her arms.

  “I said, he got the thing out of the Goddamn way and now he’s parked! Am I wrong?”

  Vinnie was ready to declare the event over, then the wagon people did something else interesting: they got off the wagon. Once started, they kept coming. The mister and missus were first, either side. From the back, a girl, a boy, then another kid and another – Vinnie couldn't tell what they were – scrambled over the tailgate. They orbited mom and dad. They gawked the four-story wonder of Limpitt's Hardware, they gaped pick-up trucks, station wagons, bikes and scooters. Hell, telephone wires and sidewalks seemed a wonder; they staggered small circles, open-mouthed, bumping into each other, squinting.

  From her seat, the old woman reached behind her into the wagon bed. She hoisted up and handed down, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, then an eighth kid – little more than babes – one each to the girl, the boy and the matched pair of whatever-they-weres.

  Grounded, surrounded, the man and woman looked even more doofus.

  Einar still crackled like a rat. He edged forward. His nose twitched as though something bad had lodged on his upper lip. “Seen nothing like 'em ever. Plain whacked-dull, slack- jawed, cold-cocked, sagged down, bare-assed, un-wiped stupid; the passel. Cripes, this is Bluffton, not LaCrosse!” He damn near shouted the last. “Kids too,” he said to the porch. His greasy face worked like he was worrying a plug of snus.

  “Einar! You hock a chaw on my porch, I’ll whack you so hard you’ll get smart!” Esther meant it. “S'matter,” she said, “you mistrust folks don't use the internal combustion?”

  “Them Amish. Now
these!” Einar flicked his chin in the direction. “Want to know what I say? I say it’s against the law, running them things on the public way,” he snapped. “Except your Amish.” he added, leaning past Esther, looking at Vinnie the Cop. “What do you say, Vin?”

  Truth be known, Vinnie was not on top of the law. Not as written. His rule was if it made sense not to, then you shouldn't do something! Whatever! Murder, say, or theft, vehicular deer poaching (Goddamn Karl Dorbler, anyway)! Catch that stuff going on, he'd kick ass and take names! The rest he made up, going.

  Cop or not, Vinnie let folks be – unless some third party bit his ass about a thing. So here, this thing was almost over, then comes Einar, squinting in that way of his, like “don’t we all wonder what Vinnie’s gonna do about that?!”

  Vinnie gave the greasy monkey his next-to-best slow-burn stare. “I don’t think a horse and a wagon represent what you call a trend, Einar.” As Einar and Vinnie stared each other down on the porch of the Eats, something else grabbed folk’s attention. One more kid, a boy, 13, maybe 14, taller than everyone except Granny, hopped the tailgate. The kid landed, hands deep in deeper pockets. He slouched, but his eyes hopped like an old hare. He looked at his family; he looked at the street. He looked at the town. He looked at the porch of the American House. When the look landed on Vinnie it stayed there.

  Leading, the old lady duck-marched the family into Karl Dorbler’s Wurst Haus Market. The ninth kid stayed put; sat his butt on the wagon's rear wheel and turned his attention to the sky. Vinnie looked too: a cool blue day.

  Three seconds later a sharp call came from inside the store.

  The kid waited a too-long moment, waited another, then pushed off with a jerk, scuffed his way to the Wurst Haus door and banged inside. The door whacked shut.

  The horse dropped a big one.

  “That one's trouble,” Esther said.

  Vinnie turned. The restaurant porch was jammed with the Eats' breakfast feed. Twenty-some-odd Sons of Norway clutched forks and knives and gave the empty street the same attention the trip-twenty got during darts' finals.

  “Go on,” Vinnie said, “go tend your businesses 'stead of other folks's.”

  The crowd began to chew again, then it moved.

  Vinnie looked back to the street.

  With traffic nominal, he'd have sworn there was nothing unusual about the morning. Except the wagon. Thing sat in front of the Wurst Haus like a hammer-swacked thumb. The horse crapped.

  Esther yelled from the doorway. “Vinnie, you look like you're sitting on a wind turd! You gonna eat this piece of free pie, or am I gonna give it to Bunch and put it on your tab?”

  “I'm coming,” Vinnie grumbled.

  He gave Commonwealth a warning look before going to rescue his pie.

  That ninth Goddamned kid popped up a couple, three mornings later, Esther dragging the boy by his ear to the open window of the prowler. She leaned over and yelled at Vinnie's snoozing face, “I want you to jail this Goddamn child, Goddamn it, Vinnie!”

  Vinnie hated business before coffee. He really hated people yelling at him when his newspaper was laying across his gut.

  The dirty kid bounced on toes, straining to get enough altitude to keep his left ear from being peeled off. Waving and wiggling, he raised a stink of sweat and lived-in clothes. Close up, the kid showed older, 15, 16 maybe.

  Esther wasn't the screaming sort. She talked plain, was sometimes blunt and frequently rude, but that was usually enough. She cussed, but almost never because she had to. In particular, she wasn't one to demand people be put away. In real particular, Esther was smarter than most folks younger than she was, so she didn’t fuss over the things they got up to. Vinnie had never seen her so red-faced over a Goddamned kid.

  “What...?” Vinnie started.

  “Caught this individual burglaring a pie out my back door, four-thirty this a.m. Okay. I give him a talking. I feed him. I tell him he can work off the meal doing a few dishes, cleaning the kitchen, finishing what Bunch didn't. Even told him his parents wouldn't have to know about it...and he could keep the pie – French apple with the sugar-icing top everyone likes so much!

  “Screw you, lady,” the kid squealed. Nasty voice!

  Esther gave his ear a quarter-twist, hoisted another inch. Kid shut up, dancing on two toes. She didn't miss a beat. “Next I know, he's not only running, he's scooping my cash drawer...”

  “...Lousy twenty bucks...” The kid toe-danced again.

  “Scoops my cash! Then, when I snag him...” Esther shoved the kid's face through Vinnie's rolled down window till their noses nearly touched, “...he gives me such a line of crap, I tell him he’s going to share it with you so you can laugh your ass off and throw him to jail...”

  Vinnie and the kid were eye-to-eye.

  “...then he starts crying tears, so I let up some and THEN he kicks my shin, grabs my money – AGAIN – knocks over the magazine rack by the door and hauls ass.”

  She let the kid down onto the flats of his feet. “I’m faster'n the little punk. So here he is.” Esther nudged him. “Go on. Tell th’ officer.”

  Kid's breath smelled of breakfast grease and yesterday. Vinnie didn't flinch. Neither did the kid. Their eyes narrowed.

  Esther's face shoved alongside the kid's in the car window. “This some cop and crook silent-thing, or can anybody join in? Fer cripes’ sake, Vinnie!”

  Vinnie shook the door handle. “Gimme room,” he growled. “Lemme out!”

  An hour later Vinnie and the boy stared at each other across the cribbage table at Township Hall.

  Esther had finally gone back to the restaurant. She'd watched Vinnie pat-down the kid; watched him remove the cuffs; watched him print and mug the boy; stood around as though she didn't trust that Vinnie had learned police procedure at Sheriff Daddy’s side when he was the Goddamn kid's age – younger!

  All for show, anyway. The Goddamn kid was a juvenile offender, a squiggly zone of law, Vinnie felt. He went through the motions anyway; figured it’d put the kid off balance.

  First word out of the kid’s mouth after they'd gotten to the statement-taking part of the show, and Esther shouted she'd heard enough happy horseshit from this punk for one lifetime and stomped out, slamming. First word!

  Vern Dobbins – the boy – sat across from Vinnie. “'Kay, Vern, where you from there?”

  “Earth,” the kid said.

  That was it. Esther was gone!

  Things didn’t improve with time and further questions, not even a little. Nothing the kid said made sense. Happy horseshit it was, but Vinnie wrote it down, each comment, on a four-by-five card, numbered, like Sheriff Daddy taught him, day-one.

  After he’d run his questions, Vinnie shuffled to the beginning of the deck in silence. He flipped from one implausible Vern Dobbins statement to the next. He looked at the crummy kid, then back to the cards. Time to time, Vinnie snorted, shook his head, or arranged his eyes as though something made sense, another thing might be questionable, or something else was so stupid only a doofus'd believe it, and what’d the kid think Vinnie was anyway, a doofus?

  The kid didn't blink, sweat, or whimper. He sat like a preacher waiting for a green light. It’s about a pie, for cripes’s sake, Vinnie thought. And Esther’s shin. And, okay, the money drawer, too! Hell, maybe he’s so used to bullshit juvie procedure he knows all he has to do is wait till dad or mom shows up.

  Vinnie tossed the notes on the table. The cards splayed out between them.

  “Earth, huh? Okay. Now, this is Earth, right? That's what you said, right?”

  Kid nodded.

  First time the little snot had said it, Vinnie figured he was smart-assing, but, nope, the Kid meant it. He was from Earth. This Earth. As though that was something special.

  “But your dad, now...”

  “He ain't my goddamned...” the Kid squirmed.

  “Right, right...your dad ain't your dad – and watch your damn mouth – and he's from where again?”

 
Kid sucked a snot running down his upper lip. “Earth,” he said. “This one!” he added like Vinnie was an idiot.

  “Oh! Now, Vern, I thought you said he was from the other....”

  “That's Gram Kingsolver! Jesus Christ...”

  “I ain't telling you again, there. Language...”

  “It's Gram Kingsolver that’s from the Old Place, Original Earth. We're spawn of the Saved, New-Earth born.”

  Vinnie clicked the pen against his big front tooth. “So your grandmother? She's the only one of you, there, from...” Vinnie scraped up the cards, made like he was looking for the right one. “Yeah...” He pretended to quote from the statement, 'subject alleges Grandmother comes from place subject describes as, quote, old original earth, unquote, destroyed... destroyed... before he was born...'“

  “She ain't my grandma,” the kid said. “I never said that. She's Gram Kingsolver, not my Goddamn grandma.”

  Vinnie gave him the hairy eyeball.

  “...not my grandma.”

  “...not your grandmother, but she's from...”

  “The Earth as was destroyed back in the olden times. 19...”

  “Yeah, 1930...” Vinnie said.

  “’32! Exactly 1932! Damn.” the kid said.

  “Was destroyed in 1932! And your grand – Gram – and a few others were “spared” and came here and settled this...” He gestured in a wide sweep that took in the room, the building, the town...the works! “Settled the world. This Earth.”

  “Yeah. Like the Book says. We're spawn. You, me, the family, all the rest.” The kid sulked.

  Vinnie tapped his pen against his teeth.

  “Youse all been raised to forget how we was saved before.” The kid blinked then ran his line by the numbers. “We hold to that truth and are persecuted for our belief.”

  “Kid,” he leaned forward, “This town's been here...cripes,” Vinnie tried to remember. “Since 1842!” He made up a year.

  “They want you to think that...”

  “'They!' Who's 'they'? Look at the graves up in the Lutheran church...”