The Nail Knot

by John Galligan

  “Poor Jake,” she whispered, shivering into my shoulder.

  Inside, at the back of the receiving line, we turned heads. A good share of the attention was for the sight of Shelly, who was the only one there in cut-off jeans and a halter top, exuding the hung-over version her now-now-now look. And then there was the Dog, looking sexed-up and guilty. And it didn’t help that Shelly, in her sparkly strawberry lip balm, clung to me like the two of us had been screwing all night. We smelled like a few kinds of booze, too. In the eyes of Jake Jacobs’ friends and family, I’m sure, we had wiggled straight out of the wormy local woodwork.

  The natives, the Black Earthlings, stared at us differently. “Hello, Dad,” said Shelly coldly as her father turned inside a musty tweed sport coat and raised his moustache in a woebegone smile. White Milkerson gave me a nod. “You can turn around now,” she told him. When he did, she rose with a snap-snap of her flip-flops and whispered in my ear, “See? He doesn’t even care about me. I hate him.”

  I whispered back, “What did you want him to do?”

  “Punch you,” she replied. “Like he used to punch me. Anyway, you’re old enough to be my father.”

  I put my voice back into the faintly musty curls around her ear: “Maybe he’s trying not to be an asshole.”

  “No,” she hissed. “Everybody’s an asshole. Especially him.”

  I looked up to catch a smirking glance from Bud Lite, who was in uniform and engaged in a murmuring little clutch with Bud Heavy and another large, middle-aged man in a suit. Standing by was that man’s pasty, small-eyed wife. The wife was looking at us too. Shelly jabbed me. “That’s Ronnie,” she whispered. The woman looked away. Then the man turned to us—and away quickly. But not before I figured out he was the guy who pissed on my tree last night. The guy who was getting my tires today. The county supervisor who had invited us all to the Jet Ski Jamboree. Ronnie Hellenbrand. Now there, I felt fairly sure, was an asshole. He glanced at me again, as if to say, Takes one to know one.

  The line moved slowly. Every mourner stopped to console the small and broken mother of Jake Jacobs. They were then received in a double hand clasp by the father of Jacobs, who appeared to talk a lot in his grief. Then the mourners moved on to Ingrid Jacobs, who looked stunning in black. I watched the widow. Her lips fought to stay closed in a tragic grimace over her braces. Her eyes were liquid and unsteady. She embraced each mourner slowly and silently, with a kind of old European formality, then released them to the horror of three steps across empty floor to the casket, which stood open before an arrangement of wildflowers from the banks of Black Earth Creek.

  The murdered man seemed to captivate people, even in death. Mourners lingered—fondly, or in shock, I couldn’t tell—before moving on. Then I was surprised to realize I had been watching Junior perform the ritual. I hadn’t recognized her. She was dressed in a grey pantsuit and heels. She had worked the hat dent out of her hair. She looked good, even with the dead watch hanging from her neck. She crossed herself over the body of Jake Jacobs.

  “I gotta pee,” whispered Shelly, and she wiggled away toward the lobby of the funeral home.

  When I turned from watching her, Junior was beside me.

  “Thanks,” she whispered. “For taking me fishing last night. I’m sorry about the little incident. Just forget it. Okay? I was so cold my brain stopped working.” She had put on eyeliner and lip gloss, and she looked a little raw up close. “And it’s so nice of you,” she said, “to be with Shelly.”

  “I’m not—” I stammered. “I mean, I wasn’t … really with her. She asked me.”

  Junior gave me her crinkly grin. He sunburned nose was peeling beneath foundation cream. “Relax,” she said. “I know you’re okay.”

  Her eyes darted away. I followed them and saw Dickie Pee wheeling himself out of the line to try to join us—but with the chairs and the long, slow-footed line of mourners, he was trapped.

  Junior put her hand on my arm.

  “You know how I know you’re okay?” she said. “I drove into town last night because I realized I was out of diapers for Daddy. I bumped into Willis Schultz from the co-op. He told me I got top dollar for my bull. Gareth Kaltenburg gave me two hundred above the index. And the next day the price collapsed.” She looked at me earnestly. “That’s a sign,” she said. “Things happen for a reason.” She smiled. “Forget last night. Mostly, good things just keep happening with you and me.”

  I looked away again. Dickie Pee was still trapped. Ingrid Jacobs was embracing President Bud. Her face looked sick. I knew how she felt: rubbernecks. Death walks into your life, and suddenly everybody cares. We shuffled a few feet forward. After a moment Junior said, “But listen. I hope you’re making progress. I think they’re going to come after Daddy any minute.”

  I waited. Junior chewed her glossy lip. She took my arm and gripped it like a shovel. She leaned closer and I could smell her shampoo, mingled with maple syrup and a slightly gamey, barnlike smell. She lowered her voice.

  “B.L. came to the house last night with a warrant. Middle of the night.”

  I snuck a glance ahead. White Milkerson rocked sedately on his heels. It was B.L.’s turn to embrace the lovely Ingrid. She grimaced. He got her pretty good.

  “And?”

  Junior leaned so close our shoulders brushed. “He was looking for Jake’s ponytail,” she whispered. “He’s figured out I took it. Not that it was too hard. But President Bud was giving him hell all the way. It sounded like B.L. couldn’t talk the judge into giving him a warrant for your RV. But he was looking for Jake’s fly rod, too. I guess he went into the Pêche Tôt earlier, because Ingrid said the yellow sally was on it, but when he went to pick it up yesterday, the rod was missing. Ingrid said she didn’t know what had happened to it.”

  We shuffled a few more feet.

  Junior whispered, “So then … guess where B.L. found the rod.” I looked forward. Black Earth’s police chief had taken up an official pose a few yards beyond the coffin. His arms were folded across his gut. His mirrored shades where up on his shaved head. I knew where he had “found” the rod: in Junior’s barn.

  “Clever, huh?” she whispered. “So they can claim I took it from the start.”

  Now B.L. looked our way.

  “When this is over,” Junior said, “I’m going to kick that boy’s fat little ass. But listen,” she went on, “this morning Dad told me something that I think we need to check out.”

  The receiving line gave the illusion of movement. I stepped and bumped into White Milkerson, who seemed in a daze. The woman behind B.L. snuffled loudly as she embraced Jacobs’ mother. I caught Milkerson nipping at a flask from his breast pocket. Meanwhile, Dickie Pee had worked his way around the far side of the floor, moving chairs with one hand and wheeling with the other.

  “Dad is lucid about two or three times a week,” Junior told me. “It’s like he wakes up out of a dream. This morning he told me his friend Einar from the cheese factory has been seeing Jesus.”

  I slid a questioning look at her.

  “Regularly,” she whispered adamantly. “From the window in the back room, looking out on the lake.” I wondered about the term: lucid.

  “I know,” said Junior. “It sounds nuts. But sometimes Daddy is just like old times. He comes in and out. He said his friend Einar had dropped by yesterday while I was cutting hay. Einar works nights at the cheese factory. He’s been watching someone walk on water, out on Lake Bud, and Dad’s real religious, so he thinks it must be Jesus.”

  I bit my tongue. I wondered how deep this belief thing went with her.

  “But what I think,” she said, “is it’s something related to Jake’s murder. Something Jake might have known about.”

  Imagine my relief. She wasn’t going to ask me to confirm the second coming of Christ on Lake Bud.

  “It’s over on the Bud’s side of the lake,” she said, “where he’s got everything all fenced off. But I guess from the window of the cheese factory, the stor
eroom in back, Einar got a pretty good view.”

  “Can we talk to Einar?”

  “Done,” she said. “He’ll be waiting for us at the cheese factory tonight at eight.” She squeezed my arm again. “I’ll pick you up.”

  The snap of flip-flops announced the return of Shelly. She smelled of pot smoke. Junior gave her a quick smile, me a somber nod—“Gotta get my calves in before the next storm,” she told me—and she moved away toward the lobby.

  Shelly gripped my arm. A gust of dirty curls passed beneath my nose as she turned her head to watch Dickie Pee circumnavigate the back of the room. He was nearly to us when suddenly it became clear he never meant to join our party. All along, he had been trying to reach the two men in suits behind us.

  The men greeted Dickie with a grave and familiar heartiness, like they had known him all their lives. Then they introduced themselves.

  “Mark Martin, Jake’s attorney,” said one, bumping me as he made space for Dickie.

  “Blake Langdale,” said the other, “Sierra Club. Regional Director. Remember us? The new guys on the Friends of Black Earth Creek board.”

  I glanced back to catch Dickie Pee flicking hair from his eyes like a high school kid. He had on a brown suit that might have served for his graduation. His left pant leg bulged over the electronic-arrest bracelet. He held an unlit cigarette in one hand, a lighter in the other.

  “Dickie,” said the attorney, “Jake was really getting somewhere on this dam lawsuit. You know he had Hellenbrand—”

  Jake Jacobs’ attorney stopped and looked toward the casket. Ronnie Hellenbrand was getting his moment with the new widow, so it was safe to talk about him. The Sierra Club guy jumped in. “He had Hellenbrand by the balls. I don’t know how he did it exactly, but Hellenbrand was talking. Jake found out that the village president had been bribing him to keep Lake Bud in the county historical site program. Plus Jake had the studies—”

  “He had that shit cold,” joined the lawyer as we all shuffled forward. “That dam has been messing up the stream big time. Hellenbrand’s been working with the state to keep it under the radar for years. There’s bigger fish, but a lot less of them. And the brookies are almost gone. Christ, someone caught a pike in the headwaters this spring. So Dickie—Friends of Black Earth Creek—the organization has gotta survive. Somebody’s gotta carry on Jake’s work.”

  The Sierra Club guy stepped on my foot—I glanced at him: shirtsleeves and a neat red beard—then he lowered his voice said, “Dickie, you could be the man. You know the creek, you know the village. What do you say?”

  We shuffled forward, nearly there.

  “Friends of Black Earth Creek President,” urged the lawyer. “Ingrid’s not going to do it,” he added. “She’s got her daddy’s place in Wyoming. She’s going to blow this town.” Dickie glanced from one to the other. He looked pleased.

  “Or maybe,” said the Sierra Club guy, suddenly reconsidering, “maybe Brad Hughes from Saint Paul could come down here and take the top spot. FOBEC president. You know, logistics-wise, maybe that would be easier.”

  “Hmm,” said the lawyer. “And Dickie helps out. Kind of a community liaison-type thing. Fund-raising, web site. Interesting thought.”

  I saw Dickie’s face darken before Shelly squeezed my arm. She wanted me to go before her. I heard the clattering of a wheelchair through the maze of chairs as I stepped unprepared into the weepy purview of Jake Jacobs’ mother, who grabbed my hand and said, “And you must be …?”

  “Just passing through,” I said. When that didn’t register, I said, “I was the one who found Jake.”

  But the old woman had lost interest and passed me along. “And sweetheart,” she was saying to Shelly, “you must be …?”

  Before I was ready, Jacobs’ father had me down low, by the belt. He pulled me in—all hairy ears and shining head, a soft old man empowered by rage—and he growled, “You sure you didn’t find my boy’s ponytail stuffed in his mouth—like that old bastard said he would?”

  Once more I lied for Junior—this time in the burning gaze of the dead man’s wife, who took me next in her fierce hands and said “Thank you” before I could get a word out.

  I drifted away from Ingrid toward the casket, aware of the stillness behind me as Shelly moved into the sights of her former employer. I stared down at Jacobs and saw a handsome man. He seemed to be smiling faintly, calmly, sure of himself even in death. Then Shelly, unscathed, bumped up against me. I watched her raise her little macramé purse and dip a hand into it. She brought something out, and as she reached into the casket to lay the object on Jake, Ingrid shrieked, “No!”

  Shelly jumped. “You little witch!” shrieked the widow, flying to her. “Don’t you touch him! Get your hands off! Get out! Oh, god, why is she here?” Ingrid’s mouth was ripped open, teeth and braces bared. She gasped about, looking for some explanation. “Why is this girl here?” she howled. Her mother had come to her elbow. “She said she’s a friend of yours, dear. She said you let her stay upstairs of the coffee shop….”

  Ingrid threw off her mother’s hand. “She was fucking him!”

  Stoned Shelly, beside me again, holding my arm, said bravely, “No, Ingrid. Jake and I were friends.” Then she stepped up again and tried to lay her object in the casket.

  Ingrid burst forward and slammed her palms against Shelly’s chest. Chairs flew as Shelly collapsed backward. Ingrid dove on her in a fury, punching and clawing. But Shelly had been in that spot before, it seemed. The girl could fight. She squirmed powerfully away and with a practiced hand caught Ingrid by the hair and slung the sobbing woman to her knees. Then she glared at me.

  “Asshole,” she said. “You were supposed to protect me.”

  In the next instant B.L. had Shelly by the wrist. But that didn’t last long either. She kneed him in the balls, broke his grip and ran. She hit the lobby doors and vanished.

  “Jesus Christ, Dwighty,” came Bud Heavy’s voice wearily into the silence. “You can’t even hold onto a girl?”

  In the shocked aftermath, the storm had cut loose outside. Rain hammered the roof and windows. Thunder moved through the bones of every mourner. Ingrid picked herself up and disappeared into a rear room with a funeral home employee, pursued by her fractured parents-in-law.

  So eager was everyone else to leave that the rain didn’t stop them. In a moment I was nearly alone. I stooped to pick up the object Shelly had tried to lay on the chest of Jake Jacobs. It was a small grass wreath, supple stems from the streamside, tied with elaborate knots so that they formed one thick, exquisite circle. Half dried, almost heavy, it was beautiful. The knots were perfect.

  I looked around for Shelly’s dirty little purse. I found it beneath a collapsed folding chair. I pushed my hand inside. Her hair brush. Her tampons. Her phone. Her dope bag.

  Then I had them: her keys.

  A man who could take you down

  Not a minute later I was splashing down the alley behind the Pêche Tôt with a glossy Guide to Bereavement Services spread futilely over my head. This storm had twice the power of yesterday’s, and I could sense the rushing of cooler, more violent air. I had braved a hundred tempests in the last thirty months, but always in waders and a rain jacket, impervious, sheltered as a bug on some streamside rock, watching the majesty of storms. But this time I was exposed, soaked to the skin, and a little intimidated. I rushed through Shelly’s wad of keys and finally found one to match the lock.

  I’m guessing that to step soaking wet into a warm and fragrant coffee shop would be one of life’s finer pleasures. But under other circumstances. The big orange cat circled my ankles, mewing as I locked the door behind me. I stood and listened for a moment. The radio was on, but the place was empty.

  I found my way upstairs. The first door I tried apparently was the room Shelly had crashed in: storage boxes, a mattress, a cluttered ashtray on the floor. The second door opened into Jacobs’ Friends of Black Earth Creek office.

  The man was alarmingly
neat. I had already figured out that Jake Jacobs had been a powerful personality. Now he was officially one of those people who made me wonder exactly how much was wrong with me. The walls were perfectly balanced with framed piscatorial artwork. His furniture was arranged in such a way that the square room had a shape and flow that made you experience the space as you entered it, even when you were soaking wet and trespassing. His desk faced the door, which led you to understand that he expected an audience for his conclusions in regard to the handsome piles of documents arrayed across it. I knew the faces in the photo-portraits behind the desk: John Muir, Papa Hemingway, and Chief Seattle. A Mac computer blinked at standby on one corner of the desk. Suddenly I understood a bit of President Bud Bjorgstad’s reaction—and of Dad O’Malley’s—and Lumen Bostock’s—and maybe of a lot of other people in Black Earth. The ponytail was a tease, a coy vanity, an irritant. Beneath it, Jake Jacobs looked exactly like a man who could take you down.

  Ingrid had piled his fishing gear indecorously in a corner behind the desk. As Junior said, the beautiful bamboo rod was gone. Jacobs’ waders were humped against the wall, his hat tossed on top. I went straight to his vest for his fly boxes. His mayfly box had eleven standard yellow sallies—none of the special upside-down Jake’s Sallies that Dickie Pee claimed to have tied for him.

  My fingers scrambled through the other vest pockets: floatant, split shot, leader butts, tippet spools, flashlight, sunscreen, insect repellent, a package of braided leader loops, a pack of matches—and then, inside a baggie, inside a breast pocket with his license, a small spiral notebook. As I paged through it, a vehicle stopped in the alley below. When I rose, keeping my eyes on the obscure notations in the little book, I bumped Jacobs’ desk chair. Something heavy thumped to the oak floor beneath the desk. I slid out a long, rectangular UPS carton, taped shut and addressed to Jacobs from a taxidermy firm in Poynette.

  A humming sound carried faintly beneath the rumble of the storm. A sliding door slammed shut.

  I put the box back the way it had been, barely fitting it lengthwise beneath the desk. I dropped the notebook back into the baggie, crammed it all into my hip pocket and rose to the window.