by M. K. Coker
A voice grated out over the truck engines. “Nancy, you want a paycheck, or what?”
As Nancy rubbed her thigh again, Marek held out his hand. After a second, Nancy accepted it, and he hauled her to her feet. “Any idea where we can find Nadine?”
“You might try your grandma’s place on the old Kubicek farm. Now I’d better get back, or Fred really will dock my paycheck. He don’t make any threats he don’t follow through.” She headed back to work, her shoulders rounded, her steps faltering.
“Nancy?”
She turned with difficulty. “Yeah?”
Marek rubbed his temples. “Your son is a smart kid. I’d listen to him. Get the surgery.”
“Yeah, he’s smart, my boy,” She gave him a real smile that took years off her face, though the smile was quickly suffocated by anxiety. “Fred will fire me if I took that much time off. He works through bad hip pain, you see, and refuses to get it replaced. Says original equipment is always the best, no matter what. Doesn’t trust doctors.”
Karen said, “You’re too good to lose. If he’s got a brain cell left, he’ll know that. He’ll grumble, no doubt, but as far as I’m concerned? He’s the wimp, refusing to go under the knife.”
Her head tilted, then she nodded. She disappeared into the truck stop with her shoulders braced, and Marek guessed she was going to wage war. He hoped she was the victor.
When they got back into the Sub, Karen sat for a moment before turning the ignition. “We take it for granted. Need surgery like Bork did? Take sick leave and do it. Health insurance picks up most of the tab. But for the Nancys and Loris? It’s work hard, don’t get sick, or work sick. Different world with different rules.”
“Survival of the fittest,” Marek murmured and got the fisheye. “Just remembering what Biester said. My take is, if you work, you get benefits. Nancy puts in more hours, I’m sure, than I do. And I’m no smarter, just luckier.”
Karen pulled out, slowing to drive over a series of potholes made worse by the summer rains. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Marek. You’ve got dyslexia, not a low IQ. That’s why your mother...” She pursed her lips. “So, your grandmother’s place, where is it?”
Thankful she’d aborted the subject of his mother, Marek gave her the instructions. They would never see eye to eye on what Janina Marek Okerlund had done one fateful evening that had forever tainted Karen’s view of the woman. He couldn’t really blame Karen—and owed her that it hadn’t been worse.
The Sub hit a pothole, rattling Marek’s gritted teeth. He’d always hated this road, the same one he’d traveled with his mother after she’d lost her job, after his father died, right before high school. He’d always associated Valeska with the Mareks, with the man he’d desperately tried to be the opposite of, despite sharing Lenny Marek’s face. Returning to Valeska had been a desperate move at the last minute, and neither had thought it would be Janina’s last residence.
Her ashes had been buried at the Catholic church, near her mother’s, with a simple headstone she’d ordered ahead of time. Her father’s ashes, also nearby, had not been memorialized. Marek hadn’t gone with his mother to that funeral, which had been short and anything but sweet, according to his mother. But Marek had gone to his grandmother’s service. A worn, gnarl-handed seamstress, she’d gone out as in life, quietly and efficiently, without a peep of complaint.
Don’t expect anything in life, and you won’t be disappointed.
That had been her favorite saying, one she’d lived by—and nearly died by—if the tales were true. In those days, a man’s fist easily weighed down the scales of justice. But Leif Okerlund had been the exception to looking the other way. When the law itself couldn’t help, he’d taken the Marek kids, Jim and Janina, into his own home, at least a few times.
As Marek and Karen bumped off the main road onto a deeply rutted dirt road that led to the Kubicek homestead, Marek felt his shoulders hunch, waiting for the inevitable slide into disaster. Once you were in a rut, it was hard to get out. But Karen kept clear, a neat feat, until right near the house. The Sub’s wheel rims screeched against the rut in protest, before Karen rocked the vehicle and gently accelerated, launching them out and onto the weed-infested lawn.
Pools of stagnant rainwater, filled with leaves and the dead of summer past, reflected nothing but decay and an overcast gray sky. The fair day had turned foul in a hurry. The skeletons of rusted cars, farm implements, and assorted outbuildings stood around like an old-timey set piece.
The dilapidated two-story clapboard farmhouse that rose from the muck, once a proud marker of survival on a harsh prairie, had been abandoned well before his grandmother had moved there. Later, it had been her prison, a “gift” from her father, a hard-nosed farmer who’d warned her not to marry her chosen mate. She’d made her bed, and he’d made her lie in it. She’d almost died in it.
Even knowing that Lenny Marek most likely had the same severe dyslexia that Marek did, he didn’t feel any closer to the man, even if he could feel sorry for the young man Lenny must have been. By all accounts, he’d tried hard to make a go of it, moved from town to town for a new start, tried taking classes to try new trades, but eventually, his frustration had led to his drinking, which made him unreliable.
The jobs dried up—and his fists came up. He’d been forced to accept the charity of his in-laws, and that just fueled more rage, more brawls, more assaults—until it’d ended in death.
Thinking of his own life, Marek wondered, not for the first time, how he would have responded in his grandfather’s gargantuan shoes. He’d never know. Courtesy of his mother’s promise—and his half-brother’s forceful kick in the rear to make sure it happened—he’d left Eda County. He’d started over with a clean slate in a city that had never heard the Marek name.
“Looks abandoned.” Karen didn’t move to get out. “I should have saved myself that excuse for a road. I may not be as lucky on the way back out. Talk about getting in a rut.”
He didn’t move, either. “You got out.”
“Only because my dad made me do a lot of driving on the worst roads in the county. He wanted me able to take care of myself. I took it as a challenge—but, boy, did I have to learn the hard way. More often than not, I gunned the engine and ended up in the ditch or axle deep in mud. The trick is a light hand on the wheel, slow and steady.” She nodded at the house. “Is this really where your grandparents lived? Looks like it wouldn’t stand up to a Dakota winter—certainly its inhabitants wouldn’t.”
“Wood stove,” he said shortly. “And lots of blankets.”
“When was the last time you were here?”
“After my grandmother’s funeral. Mom and Uncle Jim came out to see if there was anything worth keeping. I got dragged along for the ride.”
Karen pursed her lips. “Did they find anything?”
Marek remembered the shuttered expressions of his mother and uncle as they’d walked into the small, cramped parlor and kitchen, and the way their gaze had scanned over the worn plank floors, the ancient potbelly stove, then each other. Weighted. That was what he’d felt from them both, that they could barely keep their heads up against the bad memories. His uncle had simply walked out without a word. His mother had taken a little longer, fingering a few tattered quilts and embroidered pillowcases then going up to the second floor, where she’d slept in a tiny room not much bigger than a walk-in closet, but ultimately, she’d walked out, as well. “Nothing. Mom said later that the only warm thing in that house was the stove. It was the only thing she would’ve taken, if she could’ve.”
With obvious reluctance, Karen reached for the door latch. “Well, somebody made those ruts. Just because it looks abandoned doesn’t mean—”
On cue, the door of the house banged open, nearly falling off its hinges.
CHAPTER 12
Other than Nancy Kubicek Bridges, the only Kubicek relation Marek had met since returning to Eda County had been his mother’s first cousin, Blaise, who’d been dis
owned by his father for cultivating the life of the mind, not the soil. Unlike the rest of the family, Blaise hadn’t looked down on his poor Marek relations and had, in fact, blazed Janina Marek’s path out.
Marek hadn’t seen Blaise for several months, though they’d sent texts. Blaise wanted him to come down to Vermillion and talk to one of the professor’s master’s degree classes about how Marek’s undiagnosed dyslexia had affected him growing up. Marek was of two minds. He owed Blaise. But he also didn’t want to dredge too deep into his own past, or that of his mother or grandfather.
Fact was, though, the Kubiceks and Mareks had never been close, and if anything, it had been worse when Janina returned to Valeska. Marek didn’t think they’d ever really forgiven her for going from a dirt-poor relation living on their grudging charity to a South Dakota teacher of the year and wife of arguably the most respected man in the county.
Instantly, Marek could tell the woman whose wide body brushed the doorframe was not someone he would ever connect with, no matter the blood tie. But he did recognize her. He’d seen that face looking out at him in endless mug shots over the years: the sagging, sallow skin of old age no matter the actual number on the driver’s license, the lank hair greased with neglect, the bloodshot eyes of abuse, and the permanent sneer turned toward a world that didn’t go their way.
“Get the hell off my land, or I’ll call the cops,” Nadine yelled from the doorway, her voice slurred but more than loud enough to carry through Karen’s cracked-open side window.
Predictably, Karen pushed open the door and got out, her hand hovering above her open holster. Marek followed.
“Are you blind, Ms. Early?” Karen challenged. “I am the law. We want to talk to you.”
“I ain’t talking to no pigs...” Her head tilted back as she looked up at Marek, and the whiskey bottle in her hand slipped and sloshed onto the warped steps. The nauseating smell rose in the dead air. “You’re dead. Long way dead. Did a header into the courthouse steps. I was there. What’s in this shit?” She looked down at her hand, swore, then rescued what was left in the bottle, holding it against her sagging but ample bosom like a child. “I ain’t that drunk. You ain’t Lenny Marek.”
“No, I’m Marek Okerlund.”
For a long moment, she just looked blank. Then her sneer deepened into a yawning chasm. “Sissy-ass teacher’s son. Halfwit. Even the hoity-toity Okerlunds said so.”
Karen flinched beside him and not, he guessed, at the elitist jab. Her father had been the one to cultivate the “halfwit” tag—along with the oft-repeated “Mareks are trouble.” But Arne had been at least half right. Marek had been short of wit and in trouble—with his teachers and his mother—because of his bad grades. But he’d taken Nadine Early’s measure. “You afraid to talk to a halfwit?”
Her chin came up, just as he’d predicted. “Hell, no. Even half-pissed, I can outwit a Marek.”
Nadine stumbled back into the house, leaving the door open. He took that as an invitation and walked in, Karen on his heels, simmering but quiet. The two of them had found their rhythm, more or less, and she’d silently acceded the floor—a plank floor with several missing nails and upended boards here and there—to him. He didn’t relish the job, but he didn’t see another option.
All Nadine Early had given Karen was lip and the finger, but to him, she’d want to play the dominance game. A stand-in for the hard-nosed father who’d disowned her, he guessed. He only vaguely recalled the overalled man and his mouse of a wife who’d brought boatloads of stroganoff to the few family gatherings, mostly funerals.
What Marek did happen to know, his trump card, was that the Kubiceks, if duly informed by the law of a trespasser on their property, would no longer turn a blind eye to their wayward relation. The land and house belonged to Blaise’s younger brother, Don, who planted corn and soybeans up to the fence line to the east and grazed a small herd of cattle to the west. That Don hadn’t razed the place to the ground was the only surprise. But it was, after all, the family homestead, so perhaps he hadn’t wanted to hear the hue and cry from sundry relations who revered such things as a testament to their hardscrabble roots.
Personally, Marek hoped the place would fall down, crushed by its own weight, even if some of the carpentry work inside was his. He’d worked his first jobs here under his Uncle Jim’s eye, helping to patch up the worst as his grandmother had aged in place, refusing to leave for better, as if staying was a penance only death could sever.
As Marek walked into the kitchen, where the potbelly stove appeared to be the only thing that was indestructible, he could feel the tackiness of a long-unwashed floor, smell the alcohol that seeped into the very structure, and see the litter of bottles outnumbering the food cartoons. With an arm that dangled flesh like a milked udder, Nadine swept them all off the table.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” she said with vast insincerity, sitting down heavily into the only decent chair. Though Marek preferred to stand, he knew that wouldn’t help his cause, so he gingerly sat down on a metal folding chair that creaked dangerously, making him grip the table, which didn’t go unnoticed. Nadine was already taking points.
Karen moved out of the line of sight to lean against a far wall, but Nadine seemed to have wiped the sheriff from her world anyway. All her focus was on her target.
“Heard tell you was back. Didn’t think you was that dumb. Guess I was wrong. Then again, your mother always had a swelled head. Got her comeuppance once her baby daddy got himself dead, though. Served her right. What goes up, must come down.” She laughed, an entirely humorless and faintly chilling cackle that might have come out of a B-grade horror flick.
Marek didn’t blink at the whiskey-soaked wave of insults, even if the urban slang was jarring—she must’ve picked it up from the idiot box that sat on the peeling counter, where an antenna cable snaked between discarded gin, whiskey, and vodka bottles. Though the setting was far different from his digs in Albuquerque, he’d met her like, and much worse, in the interview room. That didn’t mean he thought this interview would be easy, as it was a delicate balance between letting her think she had the upper hand and actually giving it to her. But she’d expect pushback.
“You’ve certainly come down in the world,” he told her. “Living on Marek castoffs.”
Nadine pushed a lank gray lock out of her eyes so she could give him the beady—and bloody—eye. “Living on the Kubicek homestead that the Mareks trashed.”
“He’s an Okerlund,” Karen pointed out before she compressed her lips.
But Nadine either didn’t hear or didn’t take note. “Far as I’m concerned, you Mareks owe me. Heard you ain’t good enough to get hired on full-time, so you do odd jobs on the side, just like Lenny. Might as well put that to good use, paying off his debt.”
Almost admiring the woman’s unmitigated gall in suggesting a master carpenter give away his valuable time for some imagined debt, he refused to be baited. “Did you treat Bob Bunting like this after he lost the election last night?”
She scowled at him. “You won’t get out of your debt that easy. You play, you pay.” She rubbed her fingers together in the classic give-me-money gesture. To her, the debt was now set in stone, a marker to be pulled.
“And if I did some work here to pay that debt, you’d answer my questions?” Ignoring the fierce glare from Karen, hotter than the potbelly stove, he kept eye contact with Nadine.
She took his capitulation with a hint of disappointment, but more satisfaction, and a gloating smile temporarily disabled the sneer. “That’s the deal.”
“You were with Bunting last night.”
Nadine pouched out her chapped lips as she pondered that, looking for a trap. “Yeah, at the so-called recount. What of it? He’s my ex, and while we ain’t looking to get hitched again, I supported him. I was a good wife to him while it lasted. He’s the one who catted around on me. Broke my heart. Drove me to drink. Not that I can’t hold my liquor.”
As if to prove it, s
he tipped back the broken whiskey bottle and downed the remains in a swallow. Marek himself had to swallow back bile. Was this what it had been like for his grandmother, living with Lenny Marek all those years? Yet even Lenny, despite his violence, hadn’t had any illusions about himself. When he’d come up dry, he’d often been sorry. Too little, too late. With hands the size of platters, he’d never known his own strength.
With effort, Marek unfisted hands of the same size. “I meant when you saw Bunting after the recount, at Grove Park.”
Nadine slammed down the empty bottle. “What the hell are you talking about? Why would I go to some piss-poor excuse of a park?”
Marek heard truth there, but if it was truth in wine, in vino veritas, or actual truth, he wasn’t sure. “We have a witness who said you slapped him and called him a piece of shit.”
Her bloodshot eyes narrowed until they disappeared into folds. “You’re trying to frame me, that’s what you’re doing. Talk about a piece of work. So much for the high and mighty. ‘Okerlunds don’t lie.”’ Nadine mimicked the informal campaign motto. “Always knew that was a crock. But you ain’t gonna pin nothing on me. I can prove it. I went to drown my sorrows at The Shaft—and old Martin let me stay after hours. Slept it off on one of the tables until he rolled me this morning, to tell me Bob was dead.”
Although Marek had no illusions about the owner of the off-color bar beyond town limits, he had the sinking feeling that her alibi would hold up. Sensing the win, Nadine grinned at him, showing only one front tooth.
Time to stop playing nice. “Bunting gave you the finger after the recount. And you just stood there in the street and took it. All but crushed, our witness said.”
“Nothing of the sort.” That raised color in Nadine’s face. “Bunting had nothing. Was nothing.”
“So why were you pulling for him to win?”