A Cottonwood Stand

by Chuck Redman

  “I’ve never had my name in the newspaper,” he says kinda absent-like after moments of dead silence. “Well, except for Drama Club.” Keith goes inside his house and sits down at his open laptop. Tanya don’t say a word at the other end. Seems like young people got no caution or fear on their computers these days. They’ll do stuff and click and send things without a second thought, to that great mailbox in the sky. Keith, he’s a high school graduate and all, but that don’t mean he ain’t still essentially a kid.

  She made it plain that he was her guest. “My folks are lifetime members.” It ain’t the only civic club in town, but the Grouse Club—FOOG, Fraternal Order of the Grouse—is the swankiest. When it comes to décor and high-class service, their dining room has got the others all beat to you-know-what. Well, I guess Janet’s charmed herself up to match the place, cause she’s carrying on politer and sweeter than I’ve remarked in quite some time. That blue dress she ain’t wore since Florene’s youngest daughter’s wedding don’t look so bad. And her hair ain’t so bad, what she done with it, some kind of wave job.

  Now here’s the sad part. When this fella Steve Cosetti walks into a place, I’d a bet it’s the last thing in the world he wants, but all the other folks become one-eyed too. Because—spite of what they know is bad manners—they can’t help staring at the guy out the corner of one eye whilst they pretend he ain’t there with the other eye. Which is dang close to being one-eyed. Anyways, I guess he’s kinda used to it. But tonight he sorta unfortunately draws attention to hisself when he walks in.

  “Ahhhh!” he lets out, loud and sharp, when he bumps head-on into a fancy post or pillar by the maitre d’ stand (I told you the place was swanky). Yup, the folks is staring. Janet I guess savvies on the spot that havin only one eye to navigate with messes up a feller’s depth perception. She takes his arm. Gets him seated. He don’t seem to mind. They order drinks and dinner. Milt and Estelle Minsky are sittin at a nearby table finishing up their salads and waitin on their steaks, naturally somewhat curious.

  Milt looks over at Janet and Cosetti, then raises his eyebrows at his wife and says “Verrrrrrry in-ter-est-ing. But vee vill see,” like old Arte Johnson on Laugh-In. Estelle gives Milt a warning look but, fact is, just about everybody in the club has their eyebrows raised and is whisperin amongst theirselves.

  Steve Cosetti holds up the bottle of Platte Valley Edelweiss wine that their waitress just poured from and reads the label. “Mmmh. Wednesday,” he announces. “That was a good year.”

  “Don’t be a big city snob, Mr. Cosetti. We’re not so backwards. We have indoor plumbing and everything.” She picks up her wine glass and drinks pretty deep, for his benefit. The background music from the bar is The Girl From Ipanema, and I can’t even begin to recall the last time I mighta saw Janet sway to music and bite her lower lip so fetching. “You know,” she finally speaks kinda soapy and syrupy as the song fades out, “Peg Rossiter says you’re a walking infomercial. So, what does Euphemion Packing Company want with a little town like Cottonwood?” A half-smile flits about her mouth as she slaps margarine on hot sourdough, and that’s half a smile more than you barely ever catch on Janet. But you see how she don’t waste too much time cuttin to the chase, regardless.

  “The question is, what would Cottonwood like to see from us?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Mmmh.” With a slow sip of wine but an eye as perky as boiled coffee, he briefly regards the fireplace mantel where two stuffed grouse with spread wings have been glaring at one another since Janet was sitting here swinging her legs and whining for her Kiddie Plate cause I’m so hungry Daddy. “Fair enough,” says Cosetti. “What we want, Ms. Hinderson, is to be part of a growing progressive community. We want a partnership in which we give back more than we get.”

  Her eyes is more amused than her mouth. “That sounds lovely, but lets look at reality. Your plant in Concord was shut down for two months last year due to immigration violations. Twenty-two percent of the total workforce was found to be undocumented. I wrote the article myself. Since the initial opening of your plant, the town of Concord has seen a forty-six percent increase in DUI’s and similar increase in traffic accidents. Their school district is now facing—Mister Cosetti, why are you shaking your head?”

  It’s just that the way he sees it, new growth, new industries, these things involve some adjustments at first. Fact of life. Is she telling him that her readers don’t want economic expansion, period? “Should New York and Chicago be dismantled?” he says. “Just because everything isn’t perfect and pastoral?” Stuffed grouse can’t roll their eyes and make sarcastic faces. Jever dwell on that?

  “So you consider crime, public safety, let’s see, school overcrowding, neighborhood blight, you consider these issues to be nothing but minor adjustments that the people of Cottonwood should just blindly accept. Teresa, what happened to dressing on the side?” Someone in the kitchen’s gonna have to eat that salad.

  Sounding good and righteous, he puts up a eloquent protest and says he’s bein misjudged by her and that he’d never belittle the honest concerns of her readers. And his company’s got strategies, he says. To keep all problems to a minimum. Stuff like housing plans, medical plans, and a new hiring system to make sure only legal residents get put on board.

  Janet don’t seem impressed with this hombre that can dodge questions about as slick as Frank and Jessie James did the noose. Well, fair’s fair and in the limo she was determined to sidestep every which question the poor barrister tried to get out of her: where she’d went to school, how big is her editorial staff, what have you. Can’t say as I blame him for—

  “And what about the landmark cottonwoods? Which you’d be destroying.”

  “We think the city council is in the best position to determine what’s most beneficial to the community,” says he tilting his wine glass like the whole town of Cottonwood sits inside and waits to be rated for clarity and bouquet. “We trust their judgment.”

  “Mister Cosetti: I assume you’re speaking at the council meeting on Monday.”

  “I am.”

  “Good,” and up she stands. “You’ve got your script all ready.” With her notepad and purse she starts to leave him in the dust, then turns. “We’ll run your ad, but that’s not all we’ll run.” As she heads out of the place Janet writes in the air mouthing “tab” to Teresa, who’s just now comin out the kitchen with her salad. Teresa ain’t the only one with dismay written on her face. Except for Cosetti hisself and his bigheaded grin as he watches her go, seems like everybody in the club lets out a little groan. Milt throws down his napkin in disgust, looks at his wife and sputters out “The Fickle Finger of Fate strikes again, Estelle.”

  What do you suppose? Could these good folks have been under the mistooken notion that maybe this here dinner with a stranger was some kind of a date type of thing? Was they all chomping their steaks but prayin under their breath, lost in daydreams of Janet in white at the First Methodist Church with her hair done up fancy? Was they all mentally forecasting a tropical storm downgraded to a sweet summer breeze?

  Steve Cosetti looks around, unawares and undisturbed, then up and orders a round of drinks for every last disappointed soul at the FOOG.

  After sinking all her change (and a swift kick for good measure) into the city room snack machine, Janet settles down to a toothsome dinner of granola bars and Cheeze-bits. Appears like she’s already typin up that interview and ruminatin on the best adverbs to describe that cagey meat mogul. Peg Rossiter’s brung in coffee from the minimart and she’s standing looking over her boss’s shoulder. The green linoleum is humming as the presses start to warm up in the basement. It’s after nine o’clock and Janet takes a break to check her emails and not twenty seconds later she gets the dangdest look. Consternation don’t really describe it so I don’t know why I mention that but she yanks Peg by the collar to within four inches of her laptop screen and Rossiter registers something different and similar both that also ain’t consternatio
n. She just shrugs at her boss and her boss shrugs at her and they both shrug at the screen which I imagine might cause considerable consternation on the part of that computer.

  Then Janet calls all the late editorial staff together, sends em scurrying, pounds her laptop, telephones certain persons and emails others. I don’t know, but she might want to go easy on them granola bars next time.

  In a nice polo shirt, slacks, and some pretty choice cologne, the ex-Husker is out to snare somebody, that’s plain as day. He stops in Cosetti’s room to make sure his services ain’t needed for the balance of the evening. The general counsel has mysterious documents on his laptop that need poring over I guess with his lawyer’s eye. And that eye can’t wink but it can grin, once he cracks the door and catches sight of Laertes. “Who, me?” says he settin back down on his bed, “Stand in the way of young romance? Not a chance, hot shot.”

  “You know it’s nothing like that, boss,” says the big guy. Pert’ner as humble as when he stood up at the All Big Twelve banquet.

  “Hey, Don Juan.” Cosetti don’t let Laertes get out the door quite that quick. “She gonna cuff you first?”

  The big fella grabs the doorway, turns askance at his boss and says “Chhhhe. You’re gettin racy in your old age, man.” Cosetti just waves him out after cracking something about being careful out there and havin the right to remain silent. We can only assume that Laertes appreciates the slick repartee. You know how them motel doors tend to slam if you let em.

  Do I believe the Sioux people’s number one Lookout over the Platte Valley is haunted? Well, can you prove it ain’t? Anyway, to them they don’t see haunted as necessarily a bad thing. Depending on the particular circumstances that brung them to the top of that chalky rockpile.

  See I don’t know what invisible forces might be hovering about on this windswept promontory, but I guess the Plains Indian has a sixth sense. They believe pretty intense in the sacredness of nature, since that’s what they live and die by. Rocks, clouds, birds—all are alive and holy. I’m kinda partial to nature myself, spose I may of hinted at that once’t or twice. So the Indian puts herself in nature’s hands, prayin for whatever blessings nature decides is meant to be. And they come up to this here Lookout to meditate cause it’s closer to the Stars, which holds up the heavens. It’s dark and it’s silent, and silence is the dimension for extraordinary things to occur.

  Anyhoo—the Sun has sank hours ago behind rolling storm clouds. And the moon has now took his place, splashin pale moonlight on the blanketed statuette that is Lark Laying Eggs. The Sioux maiden lies just as cold and still as the slab of stone she’s made her bed. You know, it’s times like these I wisht I had the Indian’s understanding of things. For oftentimes things just don’t make no sense. I wisht I could find a way to fathom all these things that ought not to happen in this world but do happen and by golly did one of her little eyes just twitch or am I seein things myself? Cause I was pretty well given up on—yes siree, them dark eyes is open. And they’re tryin to figure out where the heck she is and is it a good place to wake up in or should she start to panic. I kinda get the feeling the gal is hearing stuff—sighs, moans, who knows, things that I cannot distinguish for the life of me—in that chill wind. Lark looks to me like her poor red ears is cocked and she’s listening, real keen, to some species of voices in the night. I hope they’re friendly voices, that’s all.

  Scraping, scratching, crunching. Like footsteps on loose pebbles. Hold on a minute. I can hear those sounds myself. And they’re emanatin from right over there and I mean right over there. If I ain’t seeing somethin real and alive creeping over them rocks towards the young gal, then I’ll just shut my mouth from here on. Somethin big. Somethin hairy and four-legged. Somethin with its top half just silhouetted against the eastern Moon.

  The closer the sounds the bigger the shadow of that silhouette, and the wider and wilder her eyes. Until that shadow is everywhere. Breathing and bending over her and her long-benumbed throat, them eyes the only thing she can move. Suddenly the thing is on her. I can’t look. It’s, it’s too horrible. The licking, the whining! The whining, the, the licking. More licking. More whining. Some panting. Some panting licks. Some whining pants. A little drool. Well. Well now. Hmmmh. If that don’t—

  Lark seizes the thing’s head. She thrusts that head into a beam of moonlight. “Scout!” Lark’s big sweet dog? Trailed her all the way from the village? Why, weak as she is she smiles and throws her arms around the panting whining drooling pooch and cries as she ain’t supposed to never do.

  Well, atop this lonely outcrop the wolf part of Scout arches his powerful neck and yowls a mournful tune for his beloved human. The woman part of Lark laughs and cries pitiful tears at the same time. And the haunted part of the Wind, well—who knows what prophecies she whispers in the vast invisible night.

  Wednesday

  “TEEN PHOTOGRAPHER DISCOVERS RARE PAWNEE TREE CARVING?”

  Framed perfectly by Bill McCarmady’s big stubby thumbs, the Caterwauler’s front page headline—above a shadowy photo—rattles before the banker’s ruddy face as he does a pretty good job looking and sounding like Harry Reasoner reading the ABC nightly news and tryin to ignore Barbara Walters sittin to his left. Ray ain’t arrived yet, but Milt and Kenny is each washing down their first yum-yum with their first cup of Nickano’s fresh brewed. Bill’s oratory is plenty loud enough to be heard over the slurps and gulps.

  “It’s a fake—one of those mocked up photos that all the kids do nowadays on their computers,” says Milt over his cup, dunking and rescuing at the perfect millisecond only to gobble what he just rescued.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Kenny answers back. “The kid isn’t that dumb. He knows the tree is sitting right there next to Old Grateful, Milt, and can be checked out in five seconds.” Yup, the right corner of Kenny’s mustache is sticking up like a black hairy worm poking out of a pale pink apple. “What’s fake is the idiotic carving itself. I can tell with one look that the kid carved it himself. It’s too, it’s too—”

  “Yeah but,” says Bill, “article says they’ve already had old E.M. Tinker from the local historical society confirm that the design is consistent with Pawnee artifacts. And the Pawnee Nation has been contacted and their lawyers are expected to be heard from today.”

  In walks a hangdog Ray Stidwell with his left eye closed, his head tilted right and rubbing the kinks from his neck with a varnishy hand.

  “Smile, Ray,” says Kenny. “Your precious cottonwoods might be tied up in litigation for years.”

  “Whatja say?” says Ray like he don’t know where he is or how he got there. He sets down and, while they quick fill his cup, they fill him in on the local drama being played out.

  Meanwhile Milt’s tugged the paper from Bill’s grip and he’s got it open to the big ad put in by that fella Cosetti. “Say,” says Milt, who don’t outright drool, normally, but he salivates pretty regular. What kind of dessert, he wonders aloud, might they serve at that barbeque, and is it all-you-can-eat?

  Kenny don’t even hear Milt behind the newsprint. He’s leaning across the table and studyin with calculating eyes that front-page stonewall interview with Cosetti and the honcho’s picture next to it grinning wide at the Cat’s photographer. You know, Kenny’s right mustache might get permanently stuck in the upright position if he ain’t careful.

  About ten in the morning Janet lays the beef baron’s card on her desk and calls. “Mr. Cosetti, you may want to get a hold of someone who knows about Indian art.”

  “Mmmh. I’ve read your article and my staff is already on it. You shouldn’t have published it, you know. It’s an obvious hoax.”

  “We said it’s under investigation. That’s the truth.”

  “Ah, freedom of the press.” And it’s good there’s a bunch of cellular airspace between her glare and his grin. “You gotta love the founding fathers.”

  “Oh I do, Mr. Cosetti. With all my heart.”

  “I’ll tell you who I admire,
Ms. Hinderson. There’s a wise person who once wrote ‘With freedom comes obligation. With freedom of the press comes the obligation to never print what conscience and integrity deplore’.”

  As sudden as a summer cloudburst, her face and his eyepatch is almost the same red and her breathin gets awful quick. It ain’t like Janet to stammer. “Mr. Co—Where did you—”

  “I’ve got to hang up now, Ms. Hinderson. Thanks for the advice.” He grins and continues to walk away from a brick building on Avenue A, one block east of Platte Avenue, that says Peters and Brockley, Attorneys at Law. He gets in the limo, Laertes Norris puts down the sports page and drives off. Then the Euphemion general counsel sets back in his Scottish leather interior, monkeys with his phone for a second and opens a little memo. He puts an X next to the very first name, Gus Peters. The memo’s got four other names on it.

  She’s got me all to herself, in a way. I got grasses and greeneries rising up in splendor, I got birds nesting, coyotes half-dozing, ants doubletime marching. But what I ain’t got is another human being in sight, and we’re talking miles on miles. Lark don’t seem to mind the infinite solitude, and in fact she’s humming a sweet little tune and bounding eastward cross the plains with Scout rambling at her side. As if bein feverish, snakebit and sleepin on a high cold slab is things that happened to some gal in a near-forgot whimsical fable of long ago.

  Now if she’s lookin to find the Pawnee people anywheres, Lark’s course is right on the nail. Pawnee country’s due east and no surer way to find it than simply follow that river and keep it right there in sight over your left shoulder. That’s what she’s did so far. But so far ain’t far enough.

  Somethin’s amiss, and what’s amiss is that Scout has raised his twitching snout to the air, wheeled around, and cocked his ears like antenna. By the time Lark catches on, Scout’s got a good mournful howl echoing southwestward toward the low hills and plateau country that they’d already put between them and Sioux Lookout itself. Lark Laying Eggs ain’t one to panic, as you know, but dogs don’t howl for no reason. Oh there’s a little thunder back southwest, but that’s about it. One thing wrong with that observation, though: there ain’t a cloud anywheres near that part of the sky. Um—well that ain’t quite true. Now there is a cloud, but not the kind you look up at and think it looks like Aunt Frieda with two noses and her hair in curlers. This is the kind of cloud that billows straight at you and hits you in the face at thirty, forty miles an hour.