The Mysteries of Soldiers Grove

by Paul Zimmer

  Burkhum wipes off the bar in front of us, but he doesn’t answer.

  “He was the hanging judge for King James; the ‘Bloody Assizer,’ they called him, the keeper of the seal. The king’s muscle. He’d swing anyone from the gallows if they mouthed off about the king. No questions asked—and no defense allowed.”

  “Sure, Cyril,” Burkhum says. “And I’ll be a bloody abettor if I give you another Leinie.” Burkhum might be a prick, but I have to admit, he has some snap. He went to the university in Madison for a year before he started tending bar.

  “But you!” I turn back to Nobleson, “You are a ringer for a young Van Johnson.”

  I have to admit here, I’m in a bit of a panic, scuffling with my gray cells, trying to come up with the goods on Johnson. I’m getting just a little rusty as I get older. I haven’t thought about Van Johnson in years, and the four Leinies have addled me a bit—but there’s some Johnson stuff in there, I know it, and I can feel it beginning to shake loose, the filamentous branching of my neurons is extending. Then—aha! Bingo.

  “The Human Comedy, now wasn’t Van Johnson in that? He played a young guy going off to the Second World War. Wasn’t that his first movie?” Clickety-click-click, I was on my way now. “Mickey Rooney was in it, too. And Frank Morgan. From a William Saroyan novel. Schmaltzy, but pretty good. It was okay to be a little sappy in those days.

  “Let’s see. What was next for Van Johnson? A Guy Named Joe. Then Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. They liked him playing young soldiers. Hell of a story. Pilot gets shot down and loses his B-25. Johnson did a heap of suffering in that movie. That was a big one for him. You’re right, buddy. You do look like him. He was a pretty boy.”

  Nobleson is smiling at me in a sort of wonder. “You are a living Google,” he says, and shakes his head.

  I’m not sure I know what he means, but I don’t think it’s an insult—something about all this electric gibberish floating through the air these days—but I was buttering him up, trying to keep him sitting on his stool. “Van Johnson . . . let’s see. The Last Time I Saw Paris, with Elizabeth Taylor. He was a soldier in that one, too. Wow! Can you imagine? Johnson was 4-F in Hollywood during the war. All the other guys were off fighting. All those lonely actresses. I’ll bet he used to get more ass than a toilet seat when he was making it big. But then some folks claimed he was gay, so maybe he was even working both sides of the pump.”

  Oh-oh! Too much. I’d gotten overly excited. I talked too loud and everyone in the bar heard that scatology. I put that last bit in just to give the story some zing. Sometimes the lives need a little pepping up, you know—but now I’m over the top. I try to hurry on with something else. “Johnson was born in Rhode Island,” I say. I think that’s actually true. I pulled that out of my ratty hat—pretty damned good for an assisted-living guy.

  But too late—Burkhum is standing in front of me, and he is not impressed. He doesn’t allow dirty talk in his bar. “Cyril, there’s ladies in here. You’re getting kind of salty. You need to go outside and breathe some cold air.”

  Nobleson has drained his glass and is gone. I pay the tab, pull on my stocking cap, slip into my coat, and shuffle out the door into the winter.

  Hard snow is flying sideways, but I don’t want to go back to that pissified room in assisted living just yet. I pull my collar up, duck my head, and walk across the parking lot to the Mobil station.

  A guy’s pumping some lead free into his pickup, so I walk over to him and ask, “How you doin’?” The man has his head covered in one of those button-down fur balaclavas, so I can’t see his face.

  “You got any money?” That’s all he says. His voice is sort of croaky, coming out of that big hat. I don’t answer his question, so when the gas pump snaps off, he shoves the nozzle back in the cradle, claps his arms around his sides to warm himself up, and hustles into his truck to get out of the cold. But he cranks his window partway down. “I mean it, brother,” he says. “I could use a little help.”

  His covered face makes him mysterious, but I try to size him up so I can give him a life. I say, “You know, with that hat on, you look like Elisha Kent Kane.” I step up to his window so he can hear me over the wind. “You probably don’t know who Kane was. He was a doctor from Philly and one of the earliest arctic explorers. He got his party lost in the tundra in 1855, but he led them on a hike all the way out to Greenland. It took three months, and they damned near all froze to death, but he kept them plugging along and saved most of them in the end. They put his picture on a postage stamp, and there were parades and national celebrations, but you don’t hear much about Elisha Kent Kane anymore.”

  The wind boots up through the gas pumps and a tin “Self Service” sign is swinging and squawking just over my head. “She’s fixing to snow good,” I say. I’d forgotten my big scarf in Burkhum’s and was starting to feel the cold.

  “How about it, grandpa, you going to give me a hand with my gas?” the guy asks again. The gas pump is ringing and buzzing now. The guy’s tone is tetchy and uneven. “I’m running short. Got to make it all the way to Peoria tonight.”

  “They’re talking more than a foot of snow on the radio,” I say. I’m beginning to feel a little uneasy. The guy seems weird. But I still can’t help myself: “That reminds me. There was this guy named Snow—C.P. Snow—in the fifties and sixties, a scientist who started writing novels as a hobby, and got deep into it. One of those real smart Brits. They made him a peer, and he was always trying to mix literary stuff with scientific in his novels. It started out as a good shtick for a while and he cleaned up with some best sellers. Lord Snow. Not many folks read him these days.”

  I can’t see the balaclava guy’s eyes, but I feel his mean look from deep in the fur. I know he’s wondering which wall I’d bounced off of. That’s the way it is with me.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he growls from deep in his cold throat.

  “Well, good luck on Peoria,” I say, and make to head off. “I better get back to my room.”

  “Hold it, pops!” His voice snaps off and shatters on me like icicles from a spouting. “Get in.” He’s lowered his window all the way and has something pointed at me. It is one hell of a gun he is holding, more like some sort of monstrous pipe fitting.

  “I’m just an old man,” I say. “I don’t have anything that would help you.”

  “Get your creaky ass into the truck!”

  I make another move to walk away, but he shouts, “Now, geezer—or you die!”

  I know he means it. I hobble around to the other side of his truck, pull the door handle, and struggle in. “I don’t know what you want, but folks are going to be looking for me,” I say.

  He turns on his ignition and hits the gas pedal all in one motion, and his truck jumps forward. Somebody in the station flashes lights, but he doesn’t stop; he’s down the drive, spinning fast without looking onto the highway. Snow is really flying now and beginning to mount. There must be four inches down already. He hasn’t paid for his gas, and he’s making fast on the icy road out of Soldiers Grove with me in his passenger seat. He’s a mean guy, and I’m thinking that all the lives in the world aren’t going to save my ass now.

  Heavy snowflakes twist down into the windshield. We are barreling toward Readstown through windblown drifts. “You can have all the money in my wallet,” I say. “There must be about twenty-five in there.” He doesn’t answer.

  “You know, Clifford Brown was killed in snow like this,” I tell him. “He was a great jazz trumpeter, made all kinds of innovations. He was helping some motorist who got stuck in a drift, and another car going too fast started sliding and wasted him.”

  Jazz. That was the music I listened to when I was young—even now. I have stacks of 78s, 45s, tapes and CDs going way back. I always favored the music, felt like it saved my life sometimes because it was great enough to blow my blues away.

  But I don’t think it’s going to save my life now. Nothing is. This guy doesn’t listen to any
jazz. I can tell. He doesn’t listen to anything. He unloosens his balaclava and folds the flaps back from over his mouth. He’s got a greasy black beard, and a mouth like an open cut. “Why don’t you shut your fuckin’ trap?” he says. I can tell he’s a man who doesn’t care where he goes or what he does, so long as he’s getting away. He’s not even going to Peoria. But he’s got me in his truck now.

  There are no other cars on the road. Decent, sensible folks stay home on nights like this. You can’t even see the lights of Readstown through the blizzard. For a moment the truck starts wavering and sliding almost sideways, but he takes his foot off the gas, manages to straighten the vehicle out of its slide, and slows down only a little. You can tell he’s driven desperately in snow before. He doesn’t care.

  I’ve got to do something—so I start talking again, “One time Jesse James and his brother, Frank, were up north raising hell in Minnesota.” The guy twists in his seat and I don’t know if he’s going to hit me or shoot me. To make things worse, now my groin is aching. I forgot to use the men’s room in Burkhum’s before I left. I have to pee. I mean I really have to pee.

  But I keep talking. “Jesse and Frank are taking what they can get. They go into the bank in a little town, pull guns, and line all the people up against a wall. Some women have fainted and little kids are crying. The bank clerk is moving too slow and Jesse knows he is stalling, so he tells Frank to shoot the guy in the foot just to show they mean business. Frank blows off the guy’s big toe right through his shoe. He’s howling on the floor, but Jessie and Frank haul him up bleeding and make him open the safe.”

  I can tell in the darkness that the balaclava guy is listening. It’s his kind of story. So I start to give it a little twist.

  “There’s an old man amongst the hostages, and he’s not in good shape. He’s gasping and clutching his chest like he’s going to drop from a heart attack. Jesse sees this and he feels bad. He’s partial to old guys because his father’d been good to him when he was a boy.”

  This is whole cloth, I admit—but I am out here zipping through cold darkness with this balaclava guy and his monster gun, and I’m spinning a story as fast as I can think it up. Maybe it will help me.

  “Jesse has some mercy,” I go on. “He takes the old guy by his arm and helps him to the door and—to the amazement of the people in the bank—he lets him go. Then the James boys make about finishing their business, scooping up bloody bundles of cash and running for their horses. But some of those town folks in the bank were cheering Jesse and Frank as they rode away.”

  This last is too much of a spin. “Get off it, you old shithead!” Balaclava snarls.

  “I’ve got to pee,” I say.

  “What are you sayin’ to me? Tough shit!”

  “I’m going to do it in my pants!” I warn urgently.

  “Not my problem.”

  “It’ll get all over your upholstery.”

  We haven’t passed another car yet, and Balaclava is whizzing down the middle of the road. “We’re the only two people in the whole county crazy enough to be out on a night like tonight,” I say. “Except the sheriff. I know him. He’ll be out watching for anyone speeding in this weather. By now he knows somebody’s skipped paying at the Mobil.”

  Balaclava thinks about this for a minute, and looks into his rearview mirror. Then he says, “Bite it off, old man!” He still has his huge gun on his lap.

  “I’ve got to pee!” I try to keep quiet, but I feel it beginning to seep into my long johns.

  “What is this? Grade school?” Balaclava is really irritated.

  “If you shoot me, I’ll just bleed all over your upholstery, too.”

  Balaclava abruptly starts pumping his brakes and the car is slowing down, wavering and slipping as he eases it toward the side of the highway almost sliding off into the berm.

  Cyril, I say to myself, this is it. Now you’ve done it. You’ve recited your last brief life. But I give it one last best shot—I say to Balaclava as the storm batters around us, “You remember Neil Armstrong, the first moon walker? He was born in a little town in Ohio, and they made him commander of the first moon mission, even though he was a civilian. It was 1969. When he stepped out of the Apollo onto the moon he said some famous stuff about taking one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind, but when he wrote a book about it later, he claimed he was really thinking—just at that very moment when he first put his foot down in the white moon dust—about his old father in a care home back in Ohio. He was recalling how the old man was always gentle to everyone and everything. He wanted to remember this so that if he came across any moon creatures, he’d know to be kind to them.”

  This was the most whole cloth I’d ever spun. It didn’t matter. “Jesus Christ, old man!” Balaclava snaps. “You are from the moon.” I thought he was going to laugh, but he says, “How do you shovel anything that deep?” He picks up his considerable gun and points it at me.

  I’m thinking that I’m done.

  “Give me your fucking wallet and get out of my truck before you start pissing on my seat.”

  I fall to my hands and knees in the snow when I get out of his truck. Balaclava doesn’t shoot me. I struggle up and watch his taillights disappear in the swirl. The snow is driving hard and horizontal, and the wind is slicing. I pull my stocking cap way down to my eyes and over my ears. The frigid whiteness is up to my calves and over my boot tops. It is coming into my wrists between my sleeves and gloves. It’s ten miles between Soldiers Grove and Readstown and I figure I’m about halfway. Out here the farms are so far in off the road you can’t even see their lights.

  My wet underpants and long johns start freezing to my groin, my scarf is back on a stool in Burkhum’s Tap, so the wind runs its cold fingers down my neck. Cyril, I say to myself, get your butt moving. It’s only five miles. I start shuffling back in the direction of Soldiers Grove, toward my warm, little room in the home.

  Who do I start with? George Mikan? Heinrich Kühn? The Empress Marie Louise? Bingo Binks? Catherine of Valois? Ji Chang? Siegfried Sassoon? Dodo Marmarosa, General Alexis Kaledin? Nelly Sachs? Gorgeous George? Ségolène Royal? Thomas à Kempis? Colley Cibber? Suetonius? Édouard Vuillard? Heinrich Heine? Barbara Jordan?

  Elisha Kent Kane! The guy who walked out of the snow. That’s it. That’s the guy. Cyril, you’re on your way to Greenland. It’s going to take awhile.

  CHAPTER 2

  Louise

  This late-autumn chill—what happened to summer? I remember only shuffling through dog-day heat in a stupor, through hallways from one clinic to another, sitting by a window in my house sweating with a lap rug over my aching knees in August, watching a neighbor take hay from our fields. I recall ingesting many medicines, falling down on several occasions, and after a spell on the floor alone, struggling up alone to tend my bruises. That was summer.

  When neighbors express concern I say, “Oh, I’m all right, I’m just taking my turn,” and put on a plucky smile. I’ve worn many masks in my life, absorbed many blows and finally, losing Heath, my husband, knocked me permanently askew. Now growing old is a final cudgeling. At times I feel resentful about this last tussle, but then I suppose everyone feels a bit cheated when the end comes into sight.

  Just awake from a nap and feeling chilled from the snowy weather outside, I snug my shawl around my shoulders. Firewood is stacked outside the door in the hutch Heath made for us, but I am not yet sufficiently confident of my strength to struggle up and make it to the door to bring in an armful.

  HEATH. I think of the first time I saw him in his American army uniform more than sixty years ago, bright as a yearling deer, believing he could do everything. He’d won my attention, then my heart—and that was not an easy thing to do. Many had tried to turn my head, but I’d been the star student at the académie and had my mind set on other things besides men.

  The world war fighting had swept back and forth through our village three times and, in its course, destroyed half my family—I’d lost my
father and a sister. It didn’t seem that grief would ever end. But France was recovering now, things were going uphill again, and I had things to do. I was young, ambitious, and poised to rise above my losses—like young Heath, I assumed I was deathless and that all things were possible. I wanted to paint, write poems, play the piano, study in Paris, meet artists and interesting people, find my own essence, and try new things. I was ready to live my life.

  But Heath, the stunning liberator, the wholehearted, blond American, surprised me—he would become so buoyant when he described the beauty of his Wisconsin farm to me, making it sound like a verdant park. “How couldn’t we be happy together in those driftless hills? The two of us,” he would ask as he held me close. “We must marry and you will come with me. We’ll be like Adam and Eve in the garden,” he said.

  My mother, who called Heath le garçon d’or, the golden boy, was torn—not certain at all that she wanted to have her only remaining daughter marry and go away to America. But Heath was quite a prix. My mother had been permanently shaken by the war and loss of her husband and a daughter. There was little left of what we owned and loved. She wanted good things for her remaining child. America was good. The war had not touched there. Money and power were there.

  My mother had many brothers and an unmarried sister she could live with in France to help stave off her loneliness. We talked and talked; some days she urged me to go with Heath, other days she threatened to lock me in my room. But travel was cheap after the war. We decided that, if I went with Heath, I could come home to France often for visits. Perhaps my mother could even come to America for stays. We would write often to each other. Heath was a “man of property,” he was engaging, he was strong and beautiful, he had a clear mind, he was in love with me, wanted to marry me, he seemed a gentle person—and he was an American.

  With young Heath holding me in his strong arms, I began to believe that perhaps I could do the things I wanted to do in the beautiful countryside of Wisconsin. I became so confused and overwhelmed by his enthusiasm and declarations of love that sometimes I would suddenly turn and flee from him. Heath had the good sense not to pursue me when I did this. He knew enough to give me some space and time.