by Chuck Redman
You know: gray is probly not Cosetti’s best color, come to think of it. Even though what you can see of his face is not real extensive at the moment, the color just ain’t all that becoming. “I probably shouldn’t have eaten those sausages,” he says, with a brave little grin just before turning back the way he come and taking one large groping step.
Now, he’s right about the sausages. And by the same token would be just as right about the eggs, the fruit cup, and the biscuit with gravy.
The dude woulda had no way of knowing that Janet just had that suit pressed on Friday. $7.50 at Dew-Rite Cleaners.
I guess Kenny Smold don’t care for the aroma nor the commotion. He’s threw Cosetti’s business card with the private cell phone number on the back upon the carpet. When he exits from the swanky first floor rotunda of the Cottonwood City-County Center, he don’t hold the door for nobody. But then, there ain’t nobody to hold it for anyways.
Tuesday
Warren R. Kessler may be a little distracted. Okay, a little more than usual. Spring is unofficially gone and Summer’s not far off, so Florene’s got her veteran shoe salesman trimming the front display windows. But a feller’s got to look out at the world once in a while. So, while he gathers up the white espadrilles that was big at Easter and arranges the swanky pink and peach numbers that will be big sellers for June weddings, it’s understandable he might stop for a minute to look across the street when Deputy Banacek stoutly pulls over a ’96 Dodge Neon with loud mariachi music and expired registration. Likewise, I suppose, when strangers in dark suits happen to walk by the store he might take a short curious break from pulling out the black wingtips for Spring grads and substituting the latest in beach sandals for folks’s July getaways. The First Methodist Church is but a block away, and when the organist who was taught well by old Mrs. Van Druten starts rehearsing one of them sweet melodies, you can’t fault Warren if he ain’t in a huge hurry to take down the various flower and rainbow motif stuff and put up all the trimmings about sun and baseball and road trips. Music tends to seize Warren by the shoulders and enchant him in far and foggy daydreams.
Out on the streets it’s still slippery wet from that pre-dawn rain that come unannounced across the sandhills. Which, besides lookin pretty, means the glare off the pavement can be pert’ner blinding, each time the sun comes out from them bumpy clouds. Unless you’re headed due west it’s dang hard for even local folks to drive, let alone all these folks with outatown license plates or rental cars. Sheriff’s deputies is out full force in dark sunglasses, raking in the revenues and always especially watchful around Todd’s Liquor Store and other such purveyors. The city treasurer might be happy, but these deputies ain’t, particularly today when they wish they could of gotten leave to get over to the church. Sheriff Healy even up and cancelled Tuesday morning briefing. Yup, daily briefings now.
SSI check in hand—left hand since the right hand has vodka—old Sid Haabert waits in line. Lately the lines have growed, but nobody complains, least of all Monique Todd who could of put in another cash register but: why would she? Sid himself don’t really have to worry about gettin pulled over on his way home. As you know, it’s just a hop, skip and jump and he likes to stretch his legs in this direction as often as possible. Plus he ain’t drove in fourteen years when his license got yanked for busting down the stucco arch of the Marble Arch Mobile Home Park.
The ankle, which is a nice ankle by the way, turns this way, and that way. And this way. And that way. “I guess it’s dressy enough. Or not?”
“You could still wear it to work, honey.” Florene, with her face stuck in its dormant phase, which has lasted fifty-three years now, looks over at the front windows where Warren R. Kessler’s Summer display is advancing upon Spring at a snail’s pace. So Florene gets up stiffly and starts to box and shelve all the other black pumps that seem to be the losers of this here footwear free-for-all.
“Sweetie,” says Beverly, “I could wear army boots to work, it wouldn’t make one bit of difference. There’s hardly anyone there. You’ve seen, our advertising barely fills a page now.”
“Subscriptions?”
Beverly’s rolled eyes and shooken head don’t see much to that question. “Nobody wants a weekly newspaper.”
“She won’t go back to daily?”
“Honey, she had to cut her losses.”
“What’s she gonna do?”
“I don’t think she’s in any condition right now to give much thought to what she’s gonna do.”
“She still sleeping on their couch?”
“I doubt if she sleeps. Mr. H. is bad. He blames himself. He keeps saying it’s all his fault. That Steve would never have been in that situation if it hadn’t been for him.”
“He was doing so well, up until.” Florene drops sidesaddle upon the fitting stool to help Beverly back into her wedgies. “The day they came in together for new golf shoes, father-in-law and son-in-law, the one leading the other, was about the best thing I’ve ever seen, Bev.”
And I think Florene’s face suddenly turning emotional is about the hardest thing I’ve ever seen. She probly should have sprayed rain guard on Beverly’s new shoes. It might be too late.
“Thirty minutes, tops,” says Ray dabbing his eyes from the last flurry of yawns. “I did four chairs, two armoires and a coffee table.”
“Couldn’t you have taken something,” says Milt, biting into his bearclaw like today for some reason Nickano decided to fry em in castor oil, “just this one time?”
“I don’t wanna get hooked.”
“You’re weird, Goldie. Go to your room.”
“Anyway, to get back to your original question,” says Ray, very pale in his good black suit, “I think the family is the one that offers the reward. I don’t think the sheriff can use taxpayer money for that.”
“But twenty-five grand. That’s small potatoes. Any leads in there, Bill?”
The spiffy and snazzy Cottonwood Collaborator is open on the table and Bill shakes his head. “Sheriff states that they’ve set up a toll free number for anyone that saw or knows anything concerning the incident or the description of the vehicle or identity of the driver. They know it was a large vehicle from the distance his body was thrown. But no skid marks, which indicates it did not slow down or attempt to avoid the victim.” There’s a light brown stain where Ray’s unrested hand spilled coffee upon the small print that says “The Cottonwood Collaborator is a daily newspaper owned and operated by Beef Belt Consolidated News Corporation, a division of Euphemion Packing Company.”
“But somebody had to have stopped and picked up his white cane. It was nowhere to be found.”
“Why would anybody do that, Milt?” Milt gets that look a lot, with the comments he makes. It ain’t just Ray. “That idea is sick, man. He didn’t have the cane with him, maybe that’s why he—”
“Well that makes even less sense,” says Milt. “He always had the cane. Tap tap. Tap tap.”
“I’m really not looking forward to this service,” says Ray into his cold coffee cup.
“There’s no burial, huh?” says Milt. “Just a service?”
Ray nods and Bill says it’s like a memorial service with the family, and the three of them talk a little about what they probly did with the ashes and about Steve’s folks and his son being here from Chicago and about Janet.
From the kitchen no whistling, humming, nor music whatsoever drifts abroad. Even the pots and pans is half-hearted in their pings and dings, with just a slow endless stirring in the background. Bill folds up the Collaborator and flings it into the corner of the booth where Kenny ain’t sitting, or sneering, and where Kenny ain’t sit or sneered for pert’ner going on ten months now.
Rookie sheriff’s deputy Laertes Norris has stopped on the way to the church to scout around the taped-off area where one week ago he found his friend face-up on the gravel shoulder and can’t recount too much about what happened after that cause he claims it’s a blur and the few things that ain�
�t blurred don’t make no sense. He takes a slow walk down the unfinished roadside row of cottonwood seedlings that his friend had planted. He trails his hand lightly over each silver-green top. He looks over the planting tools, the bags of topsoil, the watering can and the unplanted seedlings in their plastic tubs. White chalk don’t work on gravel so they used white spray paint instead and he tries not to look at that part of the scene.
And now as he rubs his jaw and appears to contemplate the riddles of life, Deputy Norris may also be mulling one of the pestering little riddles of this here dreadful death. But I can tell you: he ain’t gonna find that white tapping cane.
See, I doubt very seriously that the law will ever catch up with the one who done this thing. That vehicle got clean away. Well, was it hit and run? Maybe it was, but then again: when you’re driving a big rig semi tractor-trailer and you’re turning sharp off East Highway 30 onto a side road southward bound, maybe you wouldn’t even see a young feller crouched on the right shoulder feeling around with his hands for a spot to dig in. Maybe you wouldn’t feel no impact. Maybe you drove on south none the wiser. But in one respect the reports is all wrong. There was other witnesses. A bunch in fact. The passengers: some of the passengers saw the whole thing. Sure, their eyes was big and froze with alarm and had nothing more than steel slats to see through, but they saw. And the final thing they saw was that white cane twirling through the air and landing smack on the roof of that there unheeding cattle truck.
Yet I don’t guess none of them witnesses will give much testimony since they was enroute to a shiny new facility that promised to employ them on a short-term basis for nominal wages. And they was guaranteed by the management not to have to worry a bit about punching the clock on their way out.
I’ll tell you someone else who needn’t worry about punching that time clock. Or searching for convenient parking. Or paying his mortgage. That someone’s new SUV has a reserved spot in the rear where the door says Euphemion Management Only and the sign above the SUV says Reserved for Kendall Smold, Chief of Sales. Who can smile any way he wants. Come and go as early or late as he wants, since sales has took off like a bunch of well-fed sandhill cranes. Not that you’d see any such noble wingspreads around here these days. There’s dang few fish in this stretch of river since the gray foamy runoff begun in January.
Now, signwise, they’ve got a real classy one out front. Framed in actual cottonwood with a fine photo of Old Grateful and some nice words of tribute to her life and how she guided and inspired for pert’ner four hundred years. Euphemion themselves footed the bill for that beautiful sign. Not more than eighty, ninety feet from the exact spot where the old gal stood and reigned over this valley. The exact spot where now parades the marvel of modern advancement as animal after animal is hung by the hooves, whisked through a dizzy maze and before they know it they’re a chewy succulent roast in clear plastic.
Don’t think that one swanky sign is all the memory of Old Grateful that’s left. For one thing, Keith come back from photography school in Kearney to do a study in black and white of O.G. and her shapely entourage. Before they was chainsawed. He give the photos to the high school to hang in their auditorium. And another set to the probation department, maybe in the hopes of being let off early. Most important of all he emailed a set to Tanya at the university as she sat the lone freshman in her Friday morning class, Demographic History of the Central Asian Steppe, since Tanya didn’t have a lick of trouble testing out of all the interductory history classes.
The other thing is Professor Tinker made em cut a cross-section out of O.G.’s middle and Ray polished and varnished it to perfection one night and now it’s on display at the County Historical Society. Along with the skeleton of a big wolf-like dog that was dug up when they was puttin in the drainage ducts by the river.
“We can put you in Room one ten,” says Lyle to the nice folks who just come from the memorial service and don’t especially feel like driving all the way back to Omaha tonight. “That’s the last room I’ve got. In fact, that was his room when he first arrived in town.” You know, come to think, it’s always kinda cool in this motel lobby. Folks can’t help but shiver. Even Lyle sometimes.
I’ll tell ya, never has Lyle Griff looked so sad turning on his No Vacancy sign.
The wind she’s a busy gal this evening, out and about and sweeping through alleys and parks. Whistling whenever she can. Something kinda dire: one of them Russian overtures, I think. She’s a classy gal, you know, travels quite extensively. Unlike yours truly. Old stick in the—nevermind.
Swarms of new-flung cottonwood seeds is swirling downwind by the river. Sure, it ain’t quite what it was, absent them half dozen regal beauties. But here west of town it’s a mild intermittent flurry. The river’s high and cold, given the season. The blankets is green. Treetops full and bright. Whenever the Wind comes they give her a standing ovation. But for that and the river’s rush, it’s as quiet as you’d want. Still, folks was here, not so very long ago. Five, maybe six, sets of muddy footprints is freshly huddled here upon the riverbank. One set of prints: a women’s size 8B running shoe. Last year’s model that Florene would recognize right off, and them’s the ones that clumb down and back to the very water’s edge. Leaving a trail of fine white ash in their wake.
Well, they drift and hover in curious flighty capers and by and by a gang of them cottony seedlets decide to light in some of these here mudprints. Tickles a bit when they stick. Not too very awful. Them seeds love ash, you know, that’s nourishment to them.
Can’t promise nothing. I’ll do what I can.
Readers Guide
1. Who is the narrator of the two stories (the Native American story and the modern story)? What clues helped you figure out his identity?
2. Why do you think he was chosen to tell the stories?
3. Did you like the way the two stories were interwoven, so to speak? Why or why not?
4. How were the two stories connected historically, if at all? What ideas was the author trying to illustrate by such connections, if any?
5. Besides historical connections, did you see any parallels or contrasts between the Native American story and the modern day story? What social or political opinions do you think the author was attempting to express? How do you feel about these issues?
6. When Lark ran away from her village, was she acting selflessly, selfishly, or do you think it may have been a mixture of the two?
7. What were Steve’s reasons for coming to Cottonwood? What do you think his initial impression of Janet was? And her initial impression of him?
8. What does Janet mean when she storms out of the Grouse Club, telling Steve he has his script all ready for the City Council meeting? Why does she react with anger? What deeper issues underlie all this anger?
9. Why did Tanya ask Keith to take a contest photo of the cottonwoods? What was her motive? Why didn’t she take the photo herself?
10. Why did Steve try to cover up the attempted robbery and shooting outside the supermarket? Was the cover-up the only reason Janet was upset when she found out?
11. How do animals figure into the stories? Are they important?
12. Do you think there was any mutual attraction between Lark and Red Moon before circumstances literally threw them together at the climax on the scaffold? Do you think there is any chance they will ever be able to make a life together?
13. If there were a sequel to this book, how do you imagine the story would continue?