Still Waters33

by Tami Hoag

  “I’ve got a business to run,” he said flatly.

  He looked like the kind of man who wouldn’t take time off to bury his own mother. At any rate, it didn’t seem wise to call him on it. She trailed a finger along the side panel of the car and slanted him a sultry smile. “You like selling cars, do you? Better than the road construction business?”

  Shafer must have considered the question rhetorical. He didn’t say a word.

  Elizabeth shrugged and tucked her fingertips into the front pockets of her faded jeans. “Well, you must to have traded one for the other. I mean, selling cars is a feast-or-famine kind of thing, up and down with the economy, which is most always down, if you ask me. Roads, on the other hand, we always need roads. A man can get rich building roads.”

  “Do you have a point to make here, Mrs. Stuart?” he asked quietly. His face was the same blank mask, but anger now simmered in his eyes. He tapped the wrench against the palm of his left hand methodically.

  Elizabeth swallowed. Yes, she had a point to make. That Jarvis knocked up Garth Shafer’s wife, screwed Garth in the buyout of the construction business, and left him with a career that would never make him rich while Jarvis had been rolling in dough like pig in pink mud. That was her point, but she couldn’t see any tactful way of making it. This investigative stuff always seemed easier in the movies.

  She shrugged a little and batted her lashes. “Just making conversation. Is this an automatic?” she asked, sliding a hand along the roof of the Thunderbird.

  “Yes. Power steering, power brakes, power windows, air-conditioning, AM/FM stereo.” This was delivered in his same flat monotone. A dynamic salesman, Garth. It was a wonder the whole town hadn’t converted to horse and buggy.

  “Mmm . . . nice.” She leaned against the car, looking across at Shafer, her gaze drawn inexorably to the wrench. “That was terrible, Jarrold getting himself killed that way. You must have known him a long time. What do you think about it?”

  Shafer didn’t move, but the field of tension around him made Elizabeth feel as if he had yanked her closer with it. He seemed suddenly nearer, larger, angrier. His nostrils flared and he drew in a deep breath through his yellowed teeth. The hair on the back of Elizabeth’s neck bristled.

  “Get out,” he snarled, hands twisting harder on the neck of the wrench as he stalked around the hood of the Thunderbird. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  Elizabeth backed up slowly, her gaze darting between Shafer’s face and the tool in his hands. She thought about the pistol weighing down her purse, but her fingers were clenched on the strap, cold and damp with fear. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she said, “Mr. Shafer, don’t get angry. I was just—”

  “Looking for dirt to put in your paper,” he said bitterly. “What happened between me and Jarrold was buried twenty years ago. I won’t have a tramp like you drag it out again. You’re not welcome here—not in my business, not in this town. You’ve brought nothing but trouble—”

  Elizabeth held up a hand to defend herself from his words if not his wrench. “Wait a minute. I’m not the one who killed—”

  “Get out. Get out,” he chanted, backing her toward the door, the volume of his voice rising with each word as his temper finally broke through his stony facade. “Get out!” he yelled, red-faced, the cords in his neck standing out sharply.

  He hurled the wrench past her and it hit the block wall, ringing like a horseshoe hitting the stake. Elizabeth ditched her dignity, turned, and ran, jerking the door open and bolting for the Caddy. She jumped into the car and gunned the engine, slamming it into reverse with no regard for the transmission as Shafer came out onto the step to glare at her. She was a half mile down the highway before she stopped feeling those cold, dark eyes on the back of her neck and started thinking about the power of a grudge that had been nursed for twenty years on a diet of bitterness and hate.

  TRACE PEDALED TOWARD STILL CREEK, HIS HEAD DOWN, back rounded as he bent over the handlebars of the twelve-speed. The bike had been an expensive toy in Atlanta, a custom-made racer imported from Italy, something for his friends to envy. Here it was his only mode of transportation, which took all the fun out of owning it. For one thing, it wasn’t cool for a man to have nothing to get around on but a bike. And the bike was a failure on gravel roads. It seemed to Trace he spent most of his pocket money replacing tire tubes. And, on the narrow two-lane state highway that took him into Still Creek, it seemed he was forever having to dodge farm equipment or Amish buggies or old geezers in boat-size Buicks who drove only as fast as their eyesight allowed.

  What he needed was a car. A car would make all the difference in his life. He would be free if he had a car, not at the mercy of Carney or anyone else. Not at the mercy of tire tubes or the weather or eighty-year-old gomers too blind to drive. If he had himself a car, he could whiz by the stupid Amish instead of having their stupid horses breathing down his neck every time he came to a hill. If he had a car, he could be his own man. If he had a car, he might get up the nerve to ask out that girl he’d seen in the courthouse Friday.

  Lord, she was pretty. Big blue eyes and long, wild hair and a smile that could have stopped a clock. She’d smiled at him. He couldn’t quite get over that. She’d looked him right in the eye and smiled at him, as though she didn’t think he was some disgusting piece of southern trash. She had smiled and her little nose crinkled up and the freckles on her cheeks seemed to bounce. Trace still got that funny feathery feeling in his belly just thinking about it.

  He wanted to see her again, but he didn’t know her name so he couldn’t call her. Not that he’d ever get up the gumption to do that anyway. It was hard enough to talk to a girl in person, when you could see their faces and kind of half know what they were thinking. As far as he could see, the phone was just an instrument of torture when it came to dealing with women. With his luck, he’d call her up and she would have found out who he was and what he was doing at the courthouse and she’d sit on the other end of the line, not saying anything while she doodled ugly faces and words of rejection on a little pink notepad. No, he’d need to see her in person to talk to her. And it sure would help to have a car to impress her with.

  He shifted down for a long hill and stood on the pedals, the bike swaying side to side beneath him as he powered it up. The muscles in his shoulders and thighs bunched with the effort. Sweat rolled from his forehead and made his white T-shirt stick to his back.

  He would have had a car by now if they had stayed in Atlanta and his mother had stayed married to Brock. And it wouldn’t have been some crummy old rusted-out Impala with a coat hanger for a radio antenna like Carney Fox drove either. It would have been something sleek and sporty, a Miata, maybe, or one of those new Vipers. Black and shiny as a record album with a Blaupunkt sound system and a Fuzzbuster. Brock would have had it ordered for him—not because Brock gave a shit about what Trace wanted, but because it would have been a matter of pride to him that “his son” have nice wheels.

  But they weren’t in Atlanta and his mom wasn’t married to Brock anymore. Trace had asked her once about getting another car, and she’d told him they could barely afford the one she drove, let alone one for him and the insurance to go with it. He hadn’t asked again. She didn’t think it was any fun being poor either, and it wasn’t her fault old Buttwipe had dumped her. Trace knew the whole story there—who had done what to whom—and he sure knew who had gotten the shit end of the stick.

  He was just going to have to fend for himself, that was all. It wasn’t as though he was some little kid who needed his mother to wipe his nose for him. He was a man. Men fended for themselves, stood up for themselves and their friends, did what had to be done. He would get himself a job and buy himself a car.

  Carney had told him the quickest way to make a buck was dealing dope. He claimed he had a pipeline from Austin through some biker down in Loring and he could get Trace a little if he wanted to sell—just ’cause they were friends. But Trace told him
no. His mother was already afraid he’d started using again. She’d peel the hide off him if he got caught dealing, to say nothing of what the sheriff would do to him. Besides, he didn’t see Carney driving no Viper with a Blaupunkt stereo in it. Nobody was going to get rich selling dope in a stupid little Amish town like Still Creek. Anyway, he was all through with that stuff. It hadn’t been worth the trouble it got him.

  He crested the hill and coasted down, sitting back with his arms dangling at his sides, letting the racing bike fly. Still Creek came into view, looking practically like something out of the last century, with its old brick and stone buildings. The grain elevator rose up on the edge of town, all rusted corrugated metal, stark and ugly, with Amish buggies tied up at the hitching rail, as small as toys beside the towering buildings. Trace bypassed Main Street and stuck to the highway as it curved west to skirt the edge of town.

  He hadn’t had any luck finding a job yet. Jarvis had turned him down at Still Waters, and Arnie at the Red Rooster said he couldn’t hire anybody who wasn’t old enough to drink. The manager at the Piggly Wiggly claimed they had enough bag boys, though Trace knew for a fact he’d hired on two new guys since then. His options were narrowing down in a hurry. One of the many drawbacks of living in this jerkwater town was that there wasn’t a whole lot to pick from jobwise. But he’d heard just last night about a new opening, and he meant to get it.

  He turned in at the Texaco station, propped his bike against the side of the building, and ducked into the bathroom to check himself for presentability. He had showered at home and he took a quick sniff of his left armpit to see if any of the Ban roll-on had survived the trek into town. He smelled a little bit, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. Even if he stripped off his shirt and washed up in the tiny sink, he would still have to put the same sweaty shirt back on. Didn’t seem worth the effort, but then he reminded himself that a man needed to put his best foot forward in a situation like this.

  The faucet wouldn’t run hot water. Trace gave up on it after a minute and soaked paper towels in the grungy little sink. Cold would probably help him stop sweating anyway. He took off his glasses and laid them carefully on the little ledge beneath the cheap wall mirror, then proceeded to give himself a sponging off. When he finished, he put his shirt back on and tucked it neatly into the waist of his jeans. He fished his comb out of his hip pocket and gave his hair a going-over. Hair was important to employers. They didn’t want to see it long or greasy or like it hadn’t been combed in two years. Finally he cleaned his glasses and settled them back in place.

  He reckoned he looked as good as he was going to under the circumstances. He probably looked as good as anyone who had done odd jobs at Shafer Motors. He sure looked better than the guy he’d seen last night in the Rooster parking lot, who had quit to go to work at a big hog outfit down on the Iowa border. That guy had definitely looked more suited to hogs than cars. Trace figured he could present himself about a hundred times better, and he really wanted this job. To buy himself a car. That would have to count for something with a car dealer.

  Working up his confidence, he stepped outside into the warm afternoon sun, climbed back on his bike, and headed down the road toward Shafer’s.

  AS HE CLEANED AND PACKED HIS TOOLS, AARON LISTENED to Elizabeth’s tale about the vandalism of the Clarion office and her encounter with Garth Shafer. He had fixed the barn door as his last job of the day, and they stood beside the weathered old building, Aaron intent on his task, his face its usual grim mask. Elizabeth leaned back against the building and watched him idly as she spoke. She wouldn’t have thought of the Amish as obsessive-compulsive, but that described Aaron to a T. A place for everything and everything in its place. His tools were immaculate and arranged meticulously according to their purpose—screwdrivers, pliers, planes, carving tools. He was as bad as Dane with his pens.

  She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled a stream of exhaust. She didn’t want to think about Dane Jantzen just now. Mere mention of him brought all her nerve endings to aching awareness and stirred old fears she would sooner have left dormant. All she wanted now was a little time to wind down. She dropped the cigarette butt in the long grass and crushed it with the toe of her boot.

  “I tell you, Aaron, for a state where everyone is supposed to be so calm and stoic, I’ve sure run into my share of nut cases.”

  He hummed a note of disapproval as he cleaned his hands on a rag he carried for the purpose. “Better to leave things alone, I say.” He gave her a stern look over the rims of his spectacles. “You only are going to get yourself hurt. This will nothing change.”

  “I want to find the truth. Doesn’t it say in the Bible—the truth will set you free?”

  “The truth of God and Christ, not the truth of Still Creek. I’m thinking all that will get you is trouble.” He picked his carpenter’s box off the bed of the old hay wagon he had been using as a workbench. “Now I go. Services are tomorrow. There is much that yet needs doing at home.”

  A smile pulled at Elizabeth’s mouth. She found it kind of sweet the way he translated his thoughts from German to English, not always getting the words in the right order. It made him sound naïve. But he was a man who had lost his family, she reminded herself, thinking of the markers down by the creek. She didn’t know if experiences like that could leave a man with much naïveté.

  “Monday I put your locks on the house doors,” he said, walking toward his buggy.

  Elizabeth fell into step beside him, her fingers tucked into the pockets of her jeans. “Thanks, I’ll sleep better.”

  He gave her one of his wry looks as he stowed his gear in the buggy. “Locks don’t help nothing if you go out looking for trouble.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  He sniffed in disbelief and disgust. She imagined he didn’t know quite what to make of such a willful creature as herself. Amish women were probably much more subtle in how they went about getting their own way.

  He muttered something in German, shaking his head, and put his foot on the buggy’s step. On impulse, Elizabeth reached out and stopped him with a hand on his arm. He looked down at her, eyes round with astonishment.

  “Aaron,” she started to say, feeling awkward, not knowing what his customs allowed. “Thanks for caring. It’s sweet, really.” She raised up on her tiptoes and brushed a quick kiss on his cheek above his beard. “You’re a good friend.”

  She stepped back from him, shrugging a little as she tucked her fingers back into her pockets. He stared at her for a few moments, his face betraying nothing of what he was feeling. Then he turned without a word and hauled himself into his buggy. She watched him drive away, listened to the sounds of his departure—the clomp of hooves, the jangle of harness—and thought they blended in with the natural sounds of the birds and the breeze in the trees. Harmonious, peaceful. Nothing like the roar of Buddy Broan’s 4x4 as he came tearing past on his way home from town, kicking up clouds of gravel dust that puffed up high and rolled after him as the wind pushed them east.

  It might be kind of nice being Amish, Elizabeth thought. Except for not having indoor plumbing. That was more of a sacrifice than she cared to make for any god. She turned and walked back along the side of the barn, toward the woods, wondering what the odds were of Aaron going English for her. She liked talking to him. Unlike most of the men she’d known, he actually listened—or seemed to. Of course, he probably didn’t agree with anything she said. He looked at her sideways most of the time, as if he weren’t quite sure she wouldn’t bite him if she got the chance.

  No, they’d be a disaster together, she thought, bending to pluck a dandelion. That he was any kind of a friend at all was probably a miracle. She wasn’t attracted to him anyway, even if he did favor Nick Nolte. She shook her head as she walked along the edge of the woods. Dane was the man she was attracted to—strongly and against her will.

  What kind of sense did that make for a liberated woman? None. She had to draw the conclusion
that her hormones were hopelessly unliberated. Good thing she was too smart to leave them in charge all the time.

  She stopped and drew a long breath. The air here, at the edge of the woods, was clean and rich. She could pick out the scent of the damp earth, the trees, the subtle perfume of the wildflowers, and she thought about growing up in West Texas, where the spicy smell of sage and dust had overpowered everything else.

  People associated certain smells with home, but Elizabeth didn’t feel as if she’d ever had a home, not in the truest sense of the word. She’d grown up in Texas, but “home” had been wherever J.C. hung his hat. There had been no sense of security or comfort. She had tagged after him, wondering half the time if he would miss her if she weren’t around. More than once she had thought about running away, but had never carried through on it because of the genuine fear that he wouldn’t bother to come after her.

  During her marriage to Bobby Lee, she had felt isolated, not by physical bounds but by her youth and motherhood and by the shame of her husband’s innumerable infidelities. The house they had shared had never given a sense of home, partly because of its sad state and partly because Bobby Lee had had no compunction about bringing his girlfriends there. It had been more like a nightmare version of a home—close to what she had always longed for, but hopelessly, cruelly twisted. Grim and empty when Bobby was gone to a rodeo, leaving her alone with a baby and no real friends. Full of despair and shattered dreams when he was there, reminding her with every look, every snide remark, that he resented her for tying him down.