Fear at First Glance

by Dave Balcom

  The birds had had the misfortune of arriving, pretty spent, just minutes before we came upon the little swale they’d held up in.

  Not only were they tired, but there wasn’t much cover for them to use to avoid us. The limit then was five birds apiece, and when I told my dad about our “limits,” a look of understanding came over his face and a sadness came into his voice when he said, “There’ll come a day when you’ll question that kind of good fortune while it’s happening, and I hope when that day comes you’ll pull back, let the birds go on their way rather than trying to kill ’em all.”

  I sat on a log that spanned the little river and watched a pair of brown trout working the eddy behind the roots that held the fallen tree in place. Judy sat with me, her head on my lap and we let autumn in Michigan work its wonders on us.

  We were at peace when we drove back into the resort and found Jan sitting on our little deck near the water, her feet up and the yearbook open on her lap.

  Judy went to inspect her while I took my gear and the cooler with the cleaned birds into the cabin. I found iced tea in the fridge, and took a glass outside with me.

  “How was it?” Jan asked. I could tell it was one of those “What’s up?” questions that required no answer.

  “Nice. Nostalgic, actually.” I told her about our hunt, and then realized she wasn’t paying much attention. “What are you thinking about?”

  This brought her out of her reverie. “Marci Evers.”

  I waited, and then she continued, “She had a real thing for a Dave Boyington when we were in school. I hadn’t thought about it for years, but all of us were certain that they were doing the nasty from the get-go in high school. Marci’s family was well-to-do. I don’t know what Mr. Evers did for a living, but they had a nice home, and Marci was always wearing the latest fashions. Dave, on the other hand, not so much. His dad was a logger working in the pulp, and I know my father didn’t have much use for him. He left Dave and his mother when Dave was in junior high.

  “It was a real gossip fest when they became an item in the ninth grade... Marci was one of the first girls in our class to blossom, you know, physically. She was as pretty as Margie Phillips, but a lot nicer; not so obviously flaunting it, you know?”

  I let her muse without comment, and then she continued. “I found something in this yearbook that makes me wonder, Jim.”

  “Wonder?”

  “You know, wonder in the way we sometimes have had to wonder about things, like a guy supposedly drunk on a day he never would drink? Or what woman would want to kill you so much she’d pay a million bucks for the privilege?”

  I turned my head to give her a look, but she wasn’t looking at me, she had a thousand-yard stare going, and I figured she was looking back on high school years.

  “What did you find?”

  “Marci had printed her name on the inside cover, with her address and the date, June 4, 1980, you know, like you do with a book that you want back if you lost it?”

  “You said it was obviously hers...”

  “Yes, but Angie told me that it came from Dave Boyington’s possessions when the county confiscated his house out by the river for back taxes.”

  “Was this the house he grew up in?”

  “No, he joined the Army immediately after graduation. I remember how excited he was. His mom died while he was in the service, a year later or so, and Angie told me his dad came back long enough to sell the house, drink a bunch, and go back to the Upper Peninsula.”

  “So what house was this that sold for taxes?”

  “I don’t know, but I do know that he shouldn’t have had Marci’s yearbook by then.”

  “By when?”

  “By anytime after graduation. They didn’t part amiably. It was the talk of the school that final week. Marci was going to college and Dave wanted marriage; she told him no in no uncertain terms. He turned around and enlisted the day after graduation. He didn’t leave town until fall, but they weren’t seen together all that summer.”

  CHAPTER 12

  On Monday, we were in Stoney by nine a.m., looking for Angela Ritter, as the bank office opened.

  “Good morning, you two!” She said with a wide smile as we entered.

  “Hi, Angela. Can you let us into the museum this morning?”

  “Of course; what are you looking for today?”

  “I noticed that you had the bound volumes from the Stoney Truth, and I wanted to see what I missed in local history over the years.”

  “We have them from 1912 to 2006, when it finally closed its doors, after Mr. Rader died. He left the building, all the equipment, and all of the files to the museum. We sold the building and the equipment except for some of those old machines that we put into the museum. The whole third floor is dedicated to the Truth,” she said with pride. “It’s perhaps the best collection of the old letter press printing equipment north of Grand Rapids.”

  Jan didn’t waste any time with the linotype machine or the galleys of type or even the beautiful wood cuts that preceded half-tone photos by decades. She went directly to the bound volumes and started with 1980.

  Using a slanted layout table, she opened the huge book to the first page. “Look at the size of these pages,” she said with a shake of her head. “Horse blankets.”

  “Paper wasn’t the first place cut to save profit back then,” I said ruefully. “What do you want me to do to help?”

  She pulled a piece of paper out of the yearbook she’d brought. “Start, say, with the 1981 book and work forward. You’re looking for any of these names in any reference.” She handed the note to me.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s the list of names that were in that clipping that was mailed to the Record; grads the committee couldn’t find.”

  “You think they’ll be in the obits?”

  “Can’t tell, but be sure to look in there, too. Especially the ‘word received’ notes about people who died after they moved away.”

  I took the ’81 book to a heavy oak table surrounded by captains chairs on rollers and made myself comfortable.

  I found Angela Albertson’s wedding story from August. She’d married Mike Wizocki of Traverse City in that town. Wizocki was heir to the furniture company bearing the family name. The story said they would live on Little Traverse Bay after returning from a honeymoon in Europe.

  I started to tell Jan of my finding, but she shushed me. “Here!” She tossed a notebook at me.

  “Have another pen?”

  “Try the registry down stairs.” And she went back to her reading.

  I came back with a pencil that had been with the Guest Book that visitors were invited to sign, hoping I’d remember to put it back when we were through.

  By noon I was in the 1990s, and on my sixth page in the notebook, when things became interesting in the monthly report of ‘real estate transactions’ as family names from the Class of ’80 started appearing with regularity.

  “Lunch,” Jan announced; “the brain can only absorb what the back and the belly can endure.”

  “Annie’s?”

  “As if there was another choice?”

  There was no piano doodling this time; my girl was all business. We ordered and went to the veranda. The day was another autumn delight, temperature in the 70s with a gentle breeze and bright sun. I carried a bottle of Stroh’s with me; she was drinking iced tea.

  “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,” she said without prelude.

  “Taking what seriously?”

  She gave me that tilted head look again, as if wondering if my head was on straight. “This mysterious connection with Dave Boyington.”

  “There’s a mystery about him?”

  “Jim, come on; give me some consideration here.”

  “Tell me your whole take.”

  “Dave Boyington left Stoney in a huff in August of ’80; in 1999 he came home and bought five acres out on the county line road along the Rapid River. He built a house, moved
in, and joined the Church of God.”

  “How do you know that? I’m only on 1990; how did you find ’99?”

  “I skipped to 2006 and started working backwards; I found the estate sale for back taxes in March. The taxes had been delinquent since ’02, so I went to that next. There was no mention of him, but the property was listed as coming on the tax rolls in ’99, so I’m guessing that he spent 20 years in the service, retired and came home to live quietly. I found many mentions of him in the ’90s and up to ’02 in the sports pages... he was quite a pool player, won a lot of tournaments; and he had his picture taken about every summer with some really big fish he took on a fly. Then in ’02 his name disappears from the paper...”

  “So he pulled up stakes and bailed?”

  “Not really likely if my supposition about how he arrived means anything.”

  “Maybe he met a woman and went away with her.”

  “I think that’s very likely, and I think it was Marci Evers.”

  “Why?”

  “Marci was listed as the seller of her parents’ home in the summer of ’01. Her address was listed just as ‘Battle Creek.’”

  “So you think they met again while she was up here dealing with that house, and they left together?”

  “I do, but I don’t.”

  “How’s that?”

  Our sandwiches and soup arrived. I ordered another beer, and we turned to the meal. When my beer arrived, I told the woman serving us that seeing we were the only diners out on the veranda, we’d bus the table and come up to pay when we were through.

  “That’s okay, really,” she said.

  “Please,” I said politely.

  “Help yourself,” she said, tossing a damp towel on the other end of the table.

  “Where were we?” Jan asked.

  “How is it you think it was and you think it wasn’t.”

  “Oh! Sure. If a guy was organized enough to come home, buy a piece of property, build a house and settle into what projects to be a pretty neat life, why wouldn’t he sell the place if he was leaving with someone?”

  I sat there with scenario after scenario running through my fertile imagination, and each one was more improbable than its predecessor. “It’s a mystery to me why a guy would just walk away like that if he had choices...”

  We had finished our meal, and I tipped up my bottle for the last time. “Let’s go back to work.”

  “You starting to wonder too?”

  I was; I didn’t say it, but it was queer enough to warrant pursuit. I fully expected the answer would either be unknowable or nothing sinister, but what the heck? I’m a sucker for any mystery.

  Back at the museum we found a note from Angela apologizing for being too late to have lunch with us.

  “Oops,” Jan said. “I think we’d better ask her about a drink after work or something.”

  “She gonna feel neglected?”

  “She always did when we were kids.”

  I went back to the 1990s and found Dave Boyington’s property purchase in the April 1999 listings. In the society page of a May edition, I found an item in the weekly “Visitation News” column: “Dave Boyington, after 20 years of honorable service in the United States Army, has retired as a master sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Command, and come home safe and sound. He’s bought a parcel out on the Rapid River, and is building a home.”

  I made a note in my notebook, and found myself underlining “CID.”

  In June of 2001 I found another item in the visitation column: “Marci Evers, a 1980 graduate of SHS, has come home to settle the affairs of her late parents, Wilbur and Ethel Evers, who both passed quietly while living in Florida this past winter. Marci, an elementary school teacher in Battle Creek since graduating from Western Michigan in 1983, expects to be here through the close of the sale on her family home later this summer.”

  As I made another note I found myself imagining her going through decades of family stuff – books, recipe tins, winter clothes... the dusty and mildewed stuff in the basement and attic. I could see her, perhaps, coming across her old yearbook and paging through it, remembering times past...

  I shook myself and went back to the project.

  At just before five, Jan straightened up from where she had sprawled on the floor with her pile of bound volumes. “You know what’s really something?”

  “I can’t imagine...”

  “I’ve looked at my share of 27 years, something like 1,404 editions, and I haven’t found one typo, not one!”

  “But there’s only on average six pages in these papers, and half the time, there’s a blank page that they didn’t have copy to fill,” I said expressing my disbelief at this insight into the tiniest of small town newspaper existences. “I’ve heard of a five-page newspaper before, but really, I’m sure they had to pay for that sixth page...”

  She was straightening up the bound volume rack as she talked, “At six pages that’s just a tad over 1,032 column inches on their eight-column format; if you figure half the space was advertising, that leaves like 516 column inches of editorial and in their column widths and point size, that’s about seven words to a line, eight lines to an inch, or about 28,000 words per edition – think of it, no spell check, 28,000 words without a typo?”

  “I suspect there was a retired English teacher in the workforce, probably a proof reader.”

  “Do you remember proof readers?”

  “I’m not that old, sister; I missed them by a year.”

  Her laugh was nasty, and then we heard someone coming up the stairs.

  Angela Ritter came into the room all smiles. “How is your research going?” I could see her approval as her eyes roamed around the room and saw that everything had been put back in its place. “Did you catch up?”

  “Oh, Angela, I did. The copies of the Truth are such a valuable asset to this museum and the community; have you looked at the possibility of digitizing it all into a searchable data base?”

  “We have, yes. But it’s so frightfully expensive...”

  “I have a friend at the Michigan Newspaper Association; would you mind if I give her a call to see if there might not be some grant money available for such a project?”

  “I wouldn’t mind at all; do you think there’s any possible way?”

  “I really don’t know, but if there is some way, I’m sure my friend would be aware of it. I’ll call her tomorrow and see what I can learn.”

  “That’s terrific, thank you. Will you be back here again tomorrow?”

  “We’ll be around, but in any event, I’ll give you a call with what I learn. Now, how do you feel about an after-work drink with us?”

  “Oh, no. Thanks. I don’t drink at all; never even been in Annie’s... I hear you were back in rare form Friday night; it was the talk of the town this weekend and again this morning. You’re a celebrity.” She turned to me, “And you, sir, are an even bigger cause of wagging tongues.” I smiled shyly at her, but I could see Jan behind her just glowing. She wiped it off her face before Angela could catch her.

  “Well, we’ve earned ourselves something,” Jan said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” With that she handed Angela the key to the building. “Thank you so much. We’ll see you soon.”

  When we were back in the Suburban, I headed for Annie’s, but she corrected me, “Let’s go to the inn; I need to talk with Fran.”

  CHAPTER 13

  At home, I mixed drinks for us, but Jan just handed me her yearbook and headed for the lodge. I put her drink in the freezer, took mine and the book out to the deck where Judy was standing hip deep in the lake, fishing the minnows that swarmed the area around the dock.

  I watched her a few minutes, then idly started looking through the book.

  The seniors were all pictured in their formal graduation shots. I remembered what a big deal it was to have those professional photos taken. For most of us, back in my day, the idea of sitting for a formal photo was on “picture day” at the beginning of each sc
hool year when you sat in front of a white screen, and a bored-out-of-his-or-her-skull piece-rate photographer insisted you smile and look at the prop.

  Most of the pictures in the ’80 book were much different than that. There were scenes that may have been screens in a studio, but most were live shots in the family’s garden, at the river, or the lake.

  If there was a common appearance in these photos, it was the youth and optimism that each of the subjects exuded. I couldn’t help but remember my book. The graduates in 1970, especially the males, didn’t look so relaxed and optimistic as they wondered about their draft status while a shooting war raged on the other side of the globe.

  I started reading the notes that had been written into Marci Evers’ book. Most of them were banal, along the lines of “All the best for one of the best! – Sallie,” with little hearts dotting the ‘i’ in Sallie.

  Over her photo, a grad named Sue Deal had left this message: “The tragedy that brought us here was balanced by the friends we found here – Thanks, Marci!”

  Next to her photo was the shot of her twin, “You’ve been a great part of my life here – Duane.”

  I went into the cottage and found Jan’s notebook, and retrieved the list of names from the newspaper article on unfound grads. I rescued Jan’s drink from the freezer and took it outside with me.

  I let it thaw a bit and started searching the book for entries by any of the missing grads.

  Colin Curry had not signed the book on his picture, and I went looking through all the comments in the back of the book, and found one “Good luck – Colin.”

  Dave Boyington had not signed the book as far as I could tell. Mark Decker had signed it, “Marci, I know you’ll be a great teacher – Paul.”