In the end, Carrie Guttekuenst was found guilty. There were pictures and all.
Convicted, she was sent to hang over at the county jail. Pastor Ingquist from Bluffton Lutheran saved her soul before the hangman broke her neck. She was buried in the churchyard on Eastside Hill in Bluffton.
The front page of the Eagle-Republican from the week she was put to death featured a full-figure picture of Carrie. The picture was surrounded by the other characters in the drama: her judge, the members of the jury, Lars Dengler shown behind the bar at the Queen, looking a lot boxier than his great, great whatevers, Big and Junior Cowl. Pastor Ingquist, who'd saved the woman’s soul and brought her remains to the resting place at the Lutheran cemetery, was a dishwater Swede, all muttonchops and steel-rimmed specs.
Vinnie thought her a handsome woman; tall and strong-looking, thick dark hair flared below her shoulders to mid-waist. Her eyes looked right at the camera and were wide open and alive, even in the half-tone reproduction process of the time. She was handsome. Yes, very.
When bald Ruthie a-hemm'd to tell him the place was closing, he was still staring at that face.
Vinnie handed her the box of reels, they were organized neatly, tucked and folded. “Thank you, Miss Ruth,” he said, and gave her a polite professional nod before putting his hat back on.
It was still sunny and hot as hell. Hell, it was only five p.m.
Vinnie cruised the streets. Nothing. Nothing and more nothing. Too hot for anything. For troubles anyway, he figured.
When he found himself running past Big Cowl's house for the third time, he figured he had something to say to the guy. Hell, maybe it wasn't that Cowl was one of the few people Vinnie would have called a friend; more to the point, maybe, Big Cowl was one of only ones in town would have called him a friend. Can't mess with that kind of stuff, he thought.
He sat in the car for a minute, looking over some papers. Just passing time. Cowl was sitting in his sagging nylon chair out front. He ignored the stopped prowler and Vinnie.
Finally, Vinnie got out, slammed the door, and stomped up the path to the bungalow where he and Cowl had gotten shit-faced, hell, how many times. He wished he'd brought a bottle of Stolli.
“Hey,” he said to big Cowl.
Big Cowl looked but didn't say anything.
That was damned embarrassing. “I was wondering.”
“Yeah,” Cowl said.
“Well, you know, none of this is my fault. I figure none of this is your fault. I just wondered. Wondered if we was still friends?”
Big Cowl squinted into the late daylight behind Vinnie. “Hell no, Vinnie. Hell no, we ain’t friends.”
That was that.
Then there he was, heading up Eastside Hill to the Lutheran Church. Trees shaded most of the old stones and bushes had sprouted over a lot of the topple-downs. Tannin, moss and old lichens upon old lichens had colored the soft limestone a dead green and earthy brown.
It took an hour of looking, but there she was: Carrie Guttekuenst. A few feet off was Olaf Tim. Must be the disreputable part of the burial place, Vinnie thought.
Her stone had birth and death dates. That was it. She came, she went, she was alone.
Nothing shook, here; there was a stone and six feet down were the old bones of a beautiful woman who'd chopped a man to bits one day and thought she'd had the right of it. Despite the chill he wanted to feel, it was sundown and August. Vinnie was sweating. Well, he was a big lug.
Nothing had answered his questions about Junior and the Friedlander killing. This wasn't going to make him a county deputy. But it sure was interesting.
The sun was flat red when it slipped over the far bluff, and damn if Vinnie wasn't still there, hat in hand staring at Carrie's stone. Carrie Guttekuenst. Just a few stones away, off where the sexton kept the graves clean and clear, were the mortal remains of Sally Friedlander. Two rows and a couple families down, were the memorials to the Dengler line.
“God damned,” Vinnie said aloud to the red sun, “just think all they've got to say to each other down there.”
There was a bird chirping. That was it.
Daddy was grumbly when Vinnie got home. It was later than usual, supper was done and the sheriff didn't like to eat alone. Wheel of Fortune was over and there had been nobody to bet with. Vinnie threw a couple of slabs of ham on a roll and washed it down with a Leinie.
Then he told his old man what the story was.
Then the old man got quiet and strange. Then he got up and left. Half hour later he was back with a bottle of Stolli which he cracked open and set on the coffee table between him and Vinnie.
“Turn that damn thing off,” he said about the television. Vinnie turned off the damn TV.
“Okay. Now here's the rest of the story.” he said. And he told his son.
When Carrie Guttekuenst went up to jail to await her date with the hangman she'd was a spitting vixen. She vowed revenge, revenge on everyone who'd done her wrong. Given her popularity at the Queen, that amounted to about every man in town. So her revenge was not going to be, most folks figured.
Then she got religion. The hoor got the word of God brought to her in person by Bluffton's own Reverend Ingquist who was official jailhouse preacher for all the county.
So far, so good.
Vinnie was feeling proud. He already knew this from his own research.
The old man poured a stiff one over rocks and shoved the bottle into Vinnie's hand.
“Now I guess you know that, huh? You, got it from newspapers and from listening around, yeah?”
Vinnie nodded.
“Okay then. So here.” The old man drank down the booze and drew another. “She got religion all right. That Pastor, now, he was a smart one. He'd been watching the trial; following the ways some do nowadays with them big California murders. Somewhere along the way, he'd fallen crazy for that hoor. I don't know. Maybe he was one of her secret customers, maybe he just naturally loved tall hairy women, maybe it was her scent. Anyway...” The old man was looking right through the television screen and into the back wall, “Anyway, that pastor, by God if he didn't get himself assigned to the jail. Chaplain; started going there ministering to them criminals and all before that Guttekuenst hoor was even found guilty. When she was convicted, and come up there to wait out execution of her sentence, there he was. Her connection to God.”
The Sheriff poured another big draught of vodka and handed it to Vinnie.
“Well then, she's waiting to hang. With appeals, she had herself a good time to wait her rope dance. Not like today, mind you, but a good time. Nearly a year. Something like.
“That Pastor Ingquist...” the Sheriff snorted a kind of bitter little laugh. “That dirty little man, he sort of rammed the word of God right into her if you get my meaning.”
Vinnie joined his daddy, staring at the dark TV. “So he had sex with her,” Vinnie said. “Imagine. Man of God and all taking advantage of a woman locked up! Having his way and all.”
Sheriff daddy snorted again. “One way of looking at it,” he said. “Another way is, she had her way with him. With him.”
Vinnie and his dad stared at the TV. The room got darker.
“I tell you this,” the Sheriff said, “their couplings were famous. Through all the jail, Carrie Guttekuenst and Pastor Ingquist's love shook the walls, the very walls of the place. You seen that place. You know how solid. Shook the walls! Every prisoner in the place knew when the Pastor and the hoor from La Crosse were at it.”
“Damn,” Vinnie said.
“Then her appeals were done. That was it. She was going to hang. One day, at the appointed time, she did. They dressed her; Pastor give her a proper send off. Did it professionally, I've heard. Respectful. She sang “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along.” And they hung her. Then Pastor took her body in a coffin and drove it back to Bluffton, himself, in his own wagon.”
Vinnie was looking at his dad kind of slack-jawed. That was the drink, but he was thinkin
g. Damn, he was thinking, she got out. Somehow. She got away.
“She was still alive,” he said, pretty sure of himself.
“Dead as a doornail,” the Sheriff said. There was a moment's stillness. A moth whacked the screen door and fluttered. “Just outside the jailhouse – and I heard this from good sources, good sources – just outside the jail, the pastor stops. He couldn't keep from thinking about his hoor, maybe I guess. Or maybe it was something they'd planned, the both of them, all along. I don't know, but just round the bend from the jail, the Pastor, he stops the wagon, opens the casket and there's Carrie; dead, but he knows something... something's alive there. And now the reverend takes his knife and he...” the Sheriff made a zipping noise and a ripping gesture with his vodka hand, sloshing a little, “...he rips her open and out comes the baby, see? His baby. The pastor's baby. A girl. Born there on the road; taken alive from her dead mother, the hoor from La Crosse.”
Vinnie was slack jawed again. This time it was more than the booze. “Nobody knew...? I mean...they would have stopped the hanging, if they'd known. They wouldn't hang a baby with the mother. Not even in the old days.”
“Nope. Nobody knew. She was a big woman. She hid it. Nobody knew. Except the hoor. And the pastor, I reckon he knew. She didn't want nobody knowing, I guess. Nobody knew. Crazy, huh?”
Vinnie nodded. “So,” he said, “how do you know?”
Daddy smiled the smile of the drunk.
“Okay, so what happened?”
“The Pastor told the undertaker. That was it. What the hell was a bachelor preacher going to do with a girl kid, a hoor's kid?”
“Was a girl?”
The sheriff shook his head and chuckled. “Yeah. Nothing to do. So he gives her to the undertaker. And the undertaker and his Mrs., they raise her as their own. They never tell the girl about her mom, about her birth, yet she grows up and goes a little crazy all on her own. About 1920 something she has a little girl out of wedlock and hangs herself in her garters. The undertaker and his woman take the grandkid and raise her until they get too old. Then she goes to the county home where she...” The sheriff thought about it. “...until she gets herself knocked up. She tried to hide it and died giving birth to her daughter. It was a mess. I was just a...” and the sheriff showed with his hand how high he’d been, “when it all happened and I remember it was a mess.”
The sheriff squinted over the table at his boy.
Vinnie squinted back.
“Now, you know where this here is going, huh?” Sheriff said.
Vinnie felt an idea bouncing his head around, but damned if he could figure how it played. He growled tentatively at the old man, squinting harder than ever. “That girl, the Friedlander girl? She's the great, great, grandsomething...something like that...of Carrie Guttekuenst?”
The old man nodded. “They're boy crazy. All them women. What I've heard, every one of them women goes crazy with boys when it's their time; they get themselves knocked up, have a girl child and die. Damn them.”
“So it all ends here, huh?” Vinnie said.
Sheriff stopped in mid-drink.
“Sally Friedlander's the last of them. Wasn't pregnant. Wasn't a mom. She just got herself killed over sex. Or no sex.”
Sheriff Daddy looked roundmouthed at his boy. “Yep,” he said after a minute.
“And you think about this: She took the last of the Dengler's with her.”
“Huh,” it was the sheriff's turn to squint.
“I mean, there she was, a wild and crazy one. She gets herself a big reputation, goes out with Junior Cowl, known to be a hothead pudknocker, gets him hot then says, ‘no!’”
The Sheriff was growling, now. “Naw, naw, nawrr,” he was saying. “That's crazy. Crazy.”
“She says no to the last Dengler – the only one looks like he's going to amount to a hill of shit, by the way, him going off to school and all – and...” He snapped his fingers, “And that's that.”
“Christ,” the old man said after a full minute and a half. “Christ. Jesus.
Vinnie felt like he glowed; drunk on his old man's vodka, having just put together all the facts of a case – an odd case, but a case nonetheless. He was busting his buttons. “Yep, her great, great whatsit makes a murderer out of the great, great whatever of the man who made her a killer.” Vinnie smiled. “That's justice. Revenge anyhow. Cutting off the last of the Dengler line!”
“Aw, son. Son! Vinnie, goddamn it,” the Sheriff said, “Cowl Junior isn't exactly the last. Denglers is a big family. They’re here and everywhere. Hell, son, you got some Dengler in you through your mom's side.” He took another slug. “My side too, come to think...” Another moth whacked the screen and flopped on the porch. “Hell, son,” the sheriff daddy said, “Revenge ain't that simple. Real revenge just keeps going.”
Vinnie took another drink. He wondered what was going on tonight around town, what Big Cowl was thinking, alone in that house, he wondered what was going on up Eastside Hill where everyone was laying too close together. Vinnie figured there'd be a lot to talk about. Damn!
Chapter 16
DANNY’S MUD
...then it got quiet.
Before, had been a rush of pain. The pain was called sound. With the sound, came something that in a critter more formed, more completely in the world, would have been a big hurt. This critter, though, had just been born so in a moment, the something that would have been full-out agony went away and cool air bathed it. Darkness was all around and the critter saw through the darkness. Moving things screamed in the dark. Moving colors. The colors screamed. One color, the critter loved. That color had just touched it. It had touched it and then the critter had felt the simple pain of sound. The other color didn't matter. The critter knew that it loved the one because it yearned to embrace it, take it in, make it safe.
The critter didn't know how to do that yet.
The two sets of screaming colors splashed, cracked and crashed. Then they were gone. Then a couple roaring, spinning, spattering noises gargled the night air. The noises got smaller and smaller, then the air was quiet and for the first time in its new life an easy stillness surrounded the critter.
The critter let night-sound enfold it. Night. The name of the darkness. A bubbling hiss ran under the silence. The wet hiss was river. River was behind. Sometime soon, the critter thought it would turn and assess river.
Other small sounds seeped through to it, sounds connected to the cool earth. The place the critter stood: Earth. Small hard chatters reached up from beneath earth, from nearby, from all around, breathy hoots and snuffles rippled from the dark whispering things called trees a little ways away. From above, the critter heard a long drawn swoop. That was air flowing over...over soft things...feathers and bones...wings they were...a howl of air swept over dark wings that arrowed down from the black and speckled night and a sharp shriek ended the wing’s rush.
The critter felt the scream inside itself as the wings rowed long lazy strokes against the night and swam into the high dark branches to feed. The critter tasted the sound and what lay under it.
What lay under it was blood, muscle, fur, bone and it felt good, that scream, and the critter grew full from it, from the center out. Good to be full. Ah. When the wings fed, they could fly. Life was simple. The critter thought to flap its wings. Didn't have wings. It had sticks and something else the sticks were becoming: maybe wings, maybe not. It didn't matter. It would know itself soon.
Then the critter stood dead, watching the dark, the night. That one set of colors that had run screaming away: that one would be back. It would have to. It would have to because the critter loved it, so.
A river mile from Bluffton, beyond the bridge and Engine Warm, is a narrow strip of nasty land: the Kiddorf Banks. Flopped like a dead dog, the Banks lie between County H and the river. It is mud and trash and hollow, rotted trees. Breathe there, certain times of year, the stink stays in the head for a week. Those times are when the long rains or thawed snows infect
the Rolling River, bloat it to a moody, wiggling thing for a month or so. That happens and all manner of stuff gets flushed from places up deep in the Driftless. Then, the Kiddorf Banks fill: dead fish, sure sure, but turtles, snakes, birds, other critters, too, parts of wolves, coyote, cats, deer, and bear, maybe, maybe other things, floppy dead things, end there in the mud, cow eyes and lamb’s guts, babies that never got fully made or old folks buried too shallow to stay down in flood time.
And stuff – stuff it's hard to imagine anyone ever needing: old machines and furniture, boxes and carts and steamer trunks of stuff, cans and barrels, old trophies, circus tents and tools to do things that nobody’s done in a century, chunks of stuff that must have been important to someone, some one time or another long, long ago; strange knots of vegetation trailing impossible roots, stems looking like they died in agony past measure, chains and ropes tied to parts of houses, trailing bits of drowned clothing, hanging to limbs and corpses, it all tumbles along the river, certain times of year.
Here it comes from up a ways; it rams, catches the lip of the dam, hangs a second – just to let you see – then rolls over and scoots through town. It might stand upright for a second where the river goes deep and fast in the narrows behind the Wagon Wheel, but then it flows under and is gone.
Down by the stock yards, the river sucks a little blood, takes on some piss, some clots of shit, and gathers a commanding stink, then off it goes again.
At Engine Warm the Rolling River turns a corner then goes wide. At Papoose Creek the current drops to next to nothing and all that traveling stuff leeches onto the banks and flops. The banks there have a bootsucking chunky ooze, both sides: the Kiddorf Banks.
Sometimes the ground at the Banks bubbles on its own, half dead, half alive. Maybe that’s not true, but except for Bunch, no one goes barefoot along those Banks.
The Kiddorf family owned the strip going back to the last century. The only Jews in town, the Kiddorfs. People who mind such things, say the family made a fortune, pulling stuff from their stinking Banks. “Them Jews,” those people would say shaking their heads.
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