“Eddie’s pretty harmless, but if you aren’t used to him he might seem threatening.” Jim got to his feet. “I’m going to have a word with his dad. And I’ll let Peter Ropes—he lives in that house behind you—know to keep an eye out for anyone crossing his sorghum field toward you. I’ll also mention it to the sheriff.”
“No, don’t do that,” Gina said. “The sheriff was already here, and he made me feel really uncomfortable, as if I was at fault for living here or something. He checked on Autumn’s car, and when he found out who she was he lectured her about her store: he said he was keeping an eye on it to make sure she wasn’t holding satanic rituals there.” Her eyes turned hot with anger.
Jim remembered Susan and Lara talking about Autumn’s bumper sticker, something to do with witches. “If she’s doing witchcraft or something in the store, he might—”
“Wicca,” Gina corrected him sharply. “And it’s none of his business what we do. Damned narrow-minded busybody. I lived in New York my whole life and never had a cop visit me in my home to check on my religious beliefs—let alone the sheriff. I don’t even know if New York has a sheriff.”
“Hank Drysdale’s a good guy; this must have been a deputy.” Jim refused to say, “Arnie Schapen, busybody, poking his nose into everyone’s business, with or without a badge,” as his children would have done, because while it sounded like Arnie it might have been someone else. “If you want, I’ll let Hank know what’s been going on, your Peeping Tom and your narrow-minded busybody.”
The anger in her eyes died down, and she gave a reluctant grin, showing the crooked teeth, which seemed as charming to Jim as they had to Lara. “When you parrot my words back to me, I’m the one who sounds petty.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Jim said. “I’m sure I’m as narrow-minded as anyone out here when it comes to thinking about witchcraft—I’ve never come in contact with it, you see. We Grelliers, we’re very dull, ordinary Protestants. Not even born-again.”
“Your wife makes your family sound romantic and dramatic.” Gina moved over to her machine and started twirling the knobs again.
Jim opened the back door. “Maybe they were a hundred fifty years ago. But nowadays, I promise you, we are very dull.”
“I don’t know about you, but Susan is not dull or ordinary.” Gina handed him a second foam-filled mug.
“I can’t take that,” he said. “When will I get the cup back to you?”
“I’ll collect it when I return your wife’s pie pan. Thanks for stopping by. I feel better, knowing there’s a friendly person close at hand.” She smiled again.
He felt himself turning red, like a teenager being singled out by a cheerleader. The mug was too big for the pickup’s cup holder, but he found an empty doughnut box behind the seat and rested the cup in that. Even so, a good deal of the foam slopped out as he bounced along the rutted track to the county road. He paused at the crossroads to finish it before it all spilled out.
He stopped at the Ropes place, since it was on the way to Burtons’. Peter Ropes had grown up with Jim’s father and had been one of Jim’s mentors after Grandpa died and Jim was struggling to run the farm on his own. Peter, who’d turned seventy last year, farmed only a section of his acres now, leasing the rest, some to Arnie, who grazed his herd there in the summer.
Jim found Peter in the barn, where he was replacing a blade on the disk head to his tractor. Jim helped him undo some frozen bolts, and explained what had happened over at Fremantles’.
“It sounds like Eddie Burton,” he told Peter. “And I wondered if you’d seen him snooping at Fremantles’ or anything.”
“Eddie’s always wandering around,” Peter Ropes said. “He should be set to some kind of job. Plenty of people with his kind of problem can do a job of work, if it’s simple enough and explained clear enough to them. But Ardis is overstretched as is, and I don’t suppose Clem is up to working like that with the boy.”
“Probably not,” Jim agreed. “My son told me Eddie hangs out with Junior Schapen. Seems kind of funny, when you think how much Clem and Arnie go after each other.”
Peter Ropes grunted, tightening the bolt on the new blade. “Yep, Junior does kind of go lockstep with Arnie on who he should feud with. I reckon he and Eddie have some kind of special relationship, the way boys do sometimes. I often see them riding past on that motorcycle of Junior’s, neither of them wearing helmets of course. Want me to call you if I see either of them crossing over to Fremantles’?”
Jim made a face. “You know how I feel about that, Peter, the way we all look out the corner of our eyes to see what the neighbors are up to, but I suppose in this case—if it’s Eddie, I don’t think he ever hurt anyone, but if he got startled or excited—I don’t know that Gina, the lady who’s renting Fremantles’, you know, knows the country. She’s from New York, probably knows what to do if she’s bothered by a big-city punk, but she might overreact to someone like Eddie.”
Peter leaned against the tractor and turned the spanner around in his oil-covered hands. “Eddie’s not just an overgrown boy, Jim. He’s got a man’s body and a man’s urges, but he doesn’t have the brains or moral sense to know when or what to do with them. The lady ought to get a dog, if she’s set on staying out here.”
Jim’s face brightened. “Good idea. I’ll stop on my way back and suggest it to her. I guess I’d better try to have a word with Clem, before I lose my nerve.”
Twelve
NOT RICHARD BURTON
FARMERS AREN’T HOUSEKEEPERS. Most farms have rusted-out harrows and trucks, used tractors that never found their way to a scrap-metal broker, somewhere on the property, but they’re usually not right in front of the house, where you trip on them coming and going. Clem’s place looked like he’d sown bolts and axles in the night, and the yard had sprouted broken-down cars and equipment.
Five cars rested on cement blocks, all missing some piece of the body. The engines lay strewn in front of them, like entrails from a deer that had been savaged by dogs. Pride of place went to a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible. If Clem ever did restore it, he could probably name his price and move out of debt. It needed a rear passenger door, a hood, wheels, and quite a bit of engine. Every now and then, you might see Clem or his uncle Turk working on it, but most of the time it lay under a swaddling of plastic, protecting what was left of the interior.
Jim parked his pickup on the edge of the road. He moved slowly, not wanting to deal with Clem or his uncle, hoping Eddie wouldn’t be around. Why did they have that old wringer washer out here? Maybe Clem had finally let Ardis get an automatic machine. He sidestepped a rusted coulter but crunched down on the head of a doll and shattered it; the eyeballs rolled around, blinking at him.
Clem didn’t answer his knock, so he let himself into the kitchen. Clem’s father was sitting at a table, stirring his fingers through a bowl of cereal. A cat was trying to get its head in under the old man’s fingers. The table was covered with newspapers, magazines, and plates of crusted food. The sink was stacked with pots and dishes, an elaborate tower that looked as though hours of labor went into keeping it from overbalancing. Maybe the first person to drop a plate had to wash everything underneath.
The house was even colder than the Fremantle place. Jim zipped up his parka and kept his gloves on.
Mr. Burton didn’t notice Jim or respond to his feeble “Good morning.” Beyond the kitchen, Jim heard voices. He followed the sound to a front room, where Clem’s uncle Turk was watching television—a big set, maybe thirty-six inches, that dominated the shabby space. No lights were on, but the television was pulsing with color and noise, cars whipping around a track, NASCAR in the living room.
Turk was a big, shambling man, about fifteen years older than Jim. He’d come to live with Clem and Ardis sometime back, maybe eight or nine years ago. No one knew what he’d been doing before he arrived, and no one ever heard of him working. He tinkered around the cars with Clem, and drove over to the track at Woodlands to wa
tch the greyhound races. When he won, which wasn’t often, he was generous, splashing money around both his family and Lawrence’s bars.
Although it wasn’t noon yet, Jim saw Turk had finished most of a quart of Colt 45. Jim cleared his throat and called out.
“Who’s that?” Turk squinted across the dark room in Jim’s direction. “That you, Grellier? What you want?”
“I was looking for Clem.”
“Clem? He’s right here. Clem!” Turk shouted, and then shook his nephew, who was dozing on the floor at his feet. “Clem, Jim Grellier’s here looking for you.”
Clem sat up. Jim had been afraid he was drunk, passed out, but he was just dozing. He grinned foolishly, and said he’d had too late a night. “I’m too old to keep up with Turk.”
Turk grinned, and swallowed the last of the malt liquor. “You’re out of practice, Clem. It’s been too long since I won anything. Picked up a bundle on the dogs yesterday. Clem and me went out to celebrate.”
“That’s nice,” Jim said. “Clem, I just want a quick word. Can we step in the next room.”
Clem followed him into what was once a dining room, guessing from the furniture beneath the jumble of rusted appliances and papers that covered most of the surfaces.
Jim couldn’t figure out how to approach his subject, so he asked first about the Lincoln. “Making any progress on her?”
“Nah. Too hard to track down the parts. I had a lead on a cylinder block, but it turned out to be from a ’seventy-three, wouldn’t fit in this engine head. You heard something?”
“Nope. Just admired the lines as I was walking up the drive,” Jim lied. “Eddie helping you out?”
“Eddie?” Clem repeated as if he didn’t know anyone by that name. “Oh, Eddie. He kind of wanders around, does his own thing. Can’t drive, but he gets pretty far on his feet. Got a call from someone over by Stull last week. Boy is good with numbers, memorizes hundreds of phone numbers, can add a blue streak. He ain’t as dumb as some folks think, just never could learn anything out of a book. But then, we Burtons aren’t readers, anyway.” Clem laughed heartily.
“You ever think about getting him some kind of training so he could work?”
“What are you, Grellier, the county social worker? Since when do you care so much about my boy?”
“Sorry, Clem. I was thinking out loud, thinking if Eddie had a job it would give him something to do with his time. Someone climbed up a tree and was looking into the bathroom at the old Fremantle house, spying on the lady who’s living there. From the description, it sounds like Eddie.”
Clem took a step toward Jim. “You calling my boy a pervert, Grellier?”
Jim held up his hands. “Easy, Clem. Take it easy. Eddie doesn’t have enough to do, that’s all. And he hangs out with Junior Schapen, who might take advantage of him. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You saying my own boy hangs out at the Schapens’? What you do, spy on him for Deputy Arnie?” Clem was shouting—the loud, blustery shout of someone who knows he’s wrong.
“Clem, am I that kind of guy, spying on people? I’m just saying, Eddie doesn’t always know if he’s doing the right thing or not, and if Junior wanted him to spook that city lady at Fremantles’ Eddie’d do it to make Junior happy.” Jim was sweating in the cold room.
Clem’s mouth dropped as he thought this over. “Yeah, you’re right. Arnie Schapen would be happier than a pig in mud if Eddie did something he could be arrested for. I showed Schapen up good in court, made everyone see him for the asshole he is, and he can’t forgive me that. He probably sicced Junior onto Eddie, trying to get Eddie to break the law so he can arrest him.”
“Could be,” Jim agreed. Not that he believed it, but if Clem did it would make him more willing to keep tabs on his son.
Clem clapped him on the arm, breathing stale beer on Jim. “Sorry to lose my cool there, man, but every time I hear that Schapen name I see red, white, and blue. Turk give me twenty bucks yesterday, out of his winnings, and I have to put it on that damned fine. Schapen goes around spreading lies about my family—about my own daughter!—and I’m the one who has to pay a thousand-dollar fine, not him. If I could afford me a lawyer, I’d sue him for false witness. But everything costs money—I’m surprised they don’t fine us for breathing.”
Jim again agreed, wondering how the Burtons afforded that big television, or even their electric bill. He turned down an offer of a drink and made his way past Turk and the television back to the kitchen. The old man at the table had fallen asleep. The cat was eating the cereal.
Thirteen
THAT OLD HOUSE
JIM HAD THOUGHT OF stopping again at Fremantles’ to suggest Gina find a dog, but as he was pulling out of Clem’s yard Gina passed him, heading toward Highway 10. Just as well: he’d spent over two hours on social calls—if that’s how you’d classify a visit to Burtons’.
When he got home, he paused a moment in his truck, shaking the last cold drops of the cappuccino into his mouth, carefully thinking about nothing. Inside, the house still smelled like Christmas: pine needles and cinnamon. Susan had moved on to her next project: figuring out a design for her organic-sunflower packages and logo. Jim found her in the dining room, where she’d covered the table with her work.
Susan and Lara had spent weeks arguing over the best name. Lara had wanted “SuLa,” for Susan and Lara. She said it sounded Indian, and would make people think of the prairie and Native Americans, but Susan insisted on “Abigail’s Organics.” Lara finally gave in, and created a dozen or so designs, some from old photographs she’d found in books at flea markets, some her own drawings.
Susan was bent over the designs, her unruly hair caught up in a clip to keep it out of her eyes, exposing the line of her neck. Her skin was brown, the skin of a woman who spent most of her time outside, not like Gina’s soft white face and hands. Jim bent over and kissed the nape of his wife’s neck.
“What do you think?” She leaned back and looked at him. “I like this one that Lara drew of a girl in a sunbonnet, but the picture is too crude.”
“Crude is going to reproduce better. Why don’t you take a break before Lara gets back from basketball practice?” He lifted his eyes suggestively toward the second floor.
“I don’t need a break—this is really—Oh, you mean—!” The tanned skin darkened under her freckles.
Since leaving college and moving into the farmhouse, they’d rarely made love in the daytime. First there was Gram and Grandpa, then Chip and Lulu and Curly and Blitz—everyone knowing what it meant if two people went upstairs in the middle of the day. Once, early in their marriage, they’d climbed into the hayloft. When they emerged, they’d found Grandpa in the yard on the tractor politely waiting for them to leave before he drove inside. With the house finally to themselves in the winter, they never thought of sex: too much to do, machinery to be fixed, germination trays to prepare, meals, errands, accounts.
Susan looked at the pictures in her hand, then laid them out on the table and got up to put her arms around him. “Hard time at Burtons’?”
“Yes. Let’s not talk about it. I want to think about you right now.” Really, of course, he meant himself, his own complicated desires to be made simple in her body. He held her tighter, then, risking his back and knees, swept her off her feet and carried her up the stairs.
Later, as they were pulling on their clothes, Jim asked where Chip was. Chip had driven Lara in for her practice. Although at fourteen she could legally drive herself to school and back, Jim didn’t like her on the county roads when they were icy. Chip hadn’t said anything about his own plans for the day.
“School starts again day after tomorrow. I asked him yesterday if he was ready and he bit my head off,” Jim added. “What’s eating him? Until this fall, he was such a happy kid, none of the moodiness boys his age often fall into.”
Susan shrugged. “Maybe it’s the thought of going off to college.”
“But he’s dragging his feet on his ap
plications,” Jim said. “When I asked him about that, he said if I was so hot on a college degree I could go in his place. You don’t think—could Janice be pregnant?”
“Ask him.” Susan ran her fingers through her tangled hair.
“You do it. I did safe sex and drugs, although that wasn’t such a success. Maybe he’s smoking more dope than he let on—that would sure make him moody.” He paused at the bedroom door, unsettled by the thought that suddenly ran through his head: he’d rather find out Chip was doing drugs than that Janice was pregnant.
Jim heard the kitchen door bang shut. Lulu had brought Kimberly Ropes home from practice. While Kimberly’s folks spent the afternoon with Peter Ropes. Jim and Susan went downstairs to offer the two girls Susan’s homemade mince pies and the ubiquitous overboiled country coffee.
Jim and Susan were asleep before Chip drove into the yard. In the morning, he refused to get up for church. When the family returned home following the ritual stop at the pancake house on Twenty-third Street after church, they found him in the family room with a bowl of cereal, watching the Chiefs.
Jim looked significantly at Susan, but she shook her head and went into the kitchen to check on a batch of baked beans she was preparing for supper.
“You are such a slob.” Lara didn’t have her parents’ inhibitions. “What are you doing, lying around in your pj’s at noon? Were you out drinking with Janice last night?”
“I was minding my own business, HullabaLulu,” Chip said.
Using the old nickname meant he was prepared to be conciliatory, but Susan stuck her head in the family room. “Etienne, you know how destructive it is to get drunk. And I hope you aren’t so upset by your private worries that you would drink and drive.”
“Mom, I know what I’m doing. I’m eighteen, I don’t need a baby-sitter. Sheesh!”
He flung the cereal bowl onto the coffee table and stomped up the stairs. Before Jim could steel himself to follow, he heard a tentative knock on the kitchen door. Susan turned around and called for the visitor to come on in. A moment later, Jim heard Gina Haring’s deeper, softer voice. He went into the kitchen.
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