Bury the Hatchet in Dead Mule Swamp

by Joan H. Young

  “Gosh, no. I haven’t completely lost my mind. I’m making jelly for my family, and maybe Christmas presents.”

  Janice opened the commercial refrigerator and pulled out a pie, already boxed. “That’s twelve dollars, for you, neighbor.”

  “Janice, that’s not enough,” I protested. I opened my purse and laid a ten and a five on the counter.

  “I’ll get your change,” she said.

  “You’ll do no such thing.” I grabbed the box and scooted for the door. When I reached the Jeep, I looked back at the house. Janice was standing in the open kitchen door, smiling. She waved at me. Bub raised his head, but didn’t waste his breath to bugle at someone who was leaving.

  I soon arrived at my own old farmhouse, but it wasn’t nearly as big or as nicely kept as Janice’s. Seeing hers inspired me to keep working on my renovations. I looked up at the freshly painted white siding, and the new screen porch, mentally counting the number of sheets of plywood I’d need to make storm shutters, then pushed open the kitchen door with a sigh. I set the pie box on the counter, tossed the keys in a basket, and pulled a plate from the cupboard and a fork and knife from a drawer. I cut myself a slice of blueberry heaven and sat at the kitchen table silently blessing people like Janice.

  Of course, pie alone wasn’t quite enough to overcome the disturbing events of the morning. I dialed Chad’s cell number. Chad is my son, soon to begin his junior year at Michigan Tech. However, he was spending the summer studying wolves on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I knew I couldn’t reach him if he was actually on the island, but he was supposed to show up here for a visit, some time this month. His phone rang four times, then went to voicemail. I left a message but had no idea when he’d actually receive it.

  I looked around my kitchen. It was the one room I’d hardly worked on at all. Secondhand appliances and cracked vinyl went well with the old-fashioned wallpaper featuring faded green twining ivy. I wasn’t exactly jealous of Janice’s kitchen. I’d made my choices about which rooms to fix first, but sometimes it was hard to be patient.

  I wandered into the living room and ran a finger along the spines of my CD cases. Jazz? Ragtime? Easy listening? Classical? Nothing fell into the nagging hole inside me. I’d cut all my ties with friends from the Chicago area when Roger and I broke up. Chad was essentially grown. We’d always been close, and I knew he was excited to see the house I’d bought, but his visit was possibly a couple of weeks away and I hadn’t heard his voice since mid-July, when he’d placed a hurried call one night on a mainland trip to do some shopping.

  Although I’d known for months that Cora and Adele did not like each other, I’d never been in the middle of an actual confrontation. Mostly they just avoided one other. Today’s spat made me feel distant from both of them. I hadn’t felt this alone since I’d moved to Forest County.

  I went back to the kitchen, cut another slice of pie, and poured a glass of iced tea. I wouldn’t be rushed through this glass. If I couldn’t have nice friends, at least I could have comfort food.

  After I’d licked the plate, and the second piece of pie and the tea had pleasantly expanded in my stomach, I headed for bed.

  My bladder woke me the next morning; the sun was already up. Inevitably, the phone rang just as I was finishing up in the bathroom. It was the home phone, not my new cell. Thinking it might be Chad, I didn’t want to miss it and rushed downstairs.

  On the fourth ring, I grabbed the handset. “Hello?” I gasped, trying to catch my breath.

  “Ana? Is that you? You sound funny.” It was Adele.

  “It’s me. It’s really early. I had to rush to catch the phone. What’s up?” I wondered if she wanted to talk about the events at the Pine Tree the day before.

  Adele was never one for preliminaries. She launched right into the meat of her news. “I was just opening up the office at the store and I heard something coming over the police scanner. I called my neighbor to verify the news, because I wasn’t sure I caught it all.”

  “All what, Adele?”

  “I’m trying to tell you. Jerry Caulfield’s body was found in the river, downstream at Jalmari. They said he’d been cut up! What am I going to do? Oh, Ana, what am I going to do?”

  Chapter 5

  At six-forty-five, Wednesday evening, I sat uncomfortably at a roll-out table in the multi-purpose room at Forest County Central School, several miles north of Cherry Hill. It looked like nearly a hundred other residents had already turned out for the meeting. If only we knew what the meeting was for. I’d gotten a call around two in the afternoon via the Crossroads Fellowship telephone tree. Geraldine Longcore had told me that Sheriff Newt Sullivant and Cherry Hill Police Chief Tracy Jarvi were requesting all county residents to attend a brief informational meeting at seven at the school. Geraldine said she had no idea what it was about. She made sure I remembered the next person on the phone tree list, and hung up.

  Newton Sullivant was practically a stranger to me, but Tracy was our young female Chief, a friend, whom I liked a lot. The law enforcement agencies almost always worked together in this rural area.

  I did my duty and passed the message on to Marie and John Aho, the service station owners. “Maybe it’s about Jerry,” Marie said with a catch in her voice, and then she hung up, just as abruptly as Geraldine had.

  The Cherry Hill Herald comes out every Wednesday; however, my copy comes in the mail on Thursday. I really wanted to see if someone had managed to get anything about Jerry’s death in before it went to press. But driving to town, potentially having to talk to grieving locals, was beyond my courage level. I'd hunkered down in my bedroom for the rest of the afternoon to read a few chapters from East of Eden, with Beethoven’s Eroica symphony mournfully echoing my mood. Cherry Hill wasn’t looking so innocent and friendly to me any more.

  Judging from the folks who had turned out for the meeting, more than one telephone tree had been summoned to action. In addition to those from the Crossroads church, there were plenty of Catholics and Lutherans in attendance, and dozens of people I didn’t know at all. John and Marie Aho approached the table section where I sat alone.

  “Ana, it’s so good of you to show up for this... this, whatever it is.” Marie struggled to speak.

  “She means, because you’re pretty new to Cherry Hill,” John added.

  “Does anyone know why we’re here?” I asked.

  A tall, thin woman wearing a tropical print dress, one of the strangers to me, slipped into the bench on the other side of the table. She held out a narrow hand covered with rings. “Virginia Holiday,” she said in a husky smoker’s voice as we shook. “Holiday Real Estate. I bought that little building on the Caulfield block. Great location.” She twisted on the seat and also shook hands with John and then Marie.

  “I’m Ana Raven,” I said. “It rhymes with ca-bana.” Apparently, the palm trees and flowers on her dress made me think of beaches and small pointed tents.

  “Nice to meet you,” Virginia said. “What’s this all about?”

  “We assume it’s something about Jerry Caulfield’s death,” John said. “You haven’t heard?”

  “Caulfield’s...” she began tentatively, but was cut off by Adele who swept toward us.

  “This is one sad day for our community,” Adele announced loudly, shaking her head.

  From a couple of tables away, a man yelled, “Where’s the Sheriff? It’s six-fifty-eight.”

  “Damn mysterious, if you ask me,” said a woman I identified as a Lutheran, because she had served me a hot dog at the St Johh's lunch tent on the Fourth of July.

  People had continued to drift in, and now the room was packed. I saw Cora and her son Tom, but they took seats on the far side of the room, and didn’t respond when I waved.

  “But, I just spoke to Jerry Caulfield about the...” I heard the woman across from me begin. My attention was distracted as two men entered the room from the school hallway, rather than through the outside doors. Harvard Brown, a Sheriff’s Deputy, and Kyl
e Appledorn for the city, were in full uniform, including hats and holstered guns. Harvey walked through the room and took a formal stance beside the double doors that led to the parking lot, while Kyle remained near the hallway opening. Neither man said a word, but everyone quieted down. Adele motioned for me to slide in along the bench, and she sat down at the end.

  Harvey and Kyle had their eyes focused on a shorter table that was marked “reserved,” on which rested a portable podium and microphone. It was positioned near a windowless door that probably led to the kitchen, since there was a closed, long metal rolldown window in the same wall.

  The kitchen door opened and Tracy Jarvi, also in full uniform, came out. Behind her was Sheriff Sullivant. A third person was behind the Sheriff, and by virtue of his height we could all see at a glance who it was: Jerry Caulfield. I swear I felt a breeze from the collective gasp.

  Beside me, Adele moaned and laid her head on her arms on the cold Formica. Her body was shaking so hard it tickled my arm. After the sudden quiet, the room erupted in a wave of babble as people reacted to the presence of the not-so-dead newspaper owner. Sheriff Sullivant produced a gavel from somewhere and rapped on the short table. A chair screeched as Tracy pulled it out and sat down. Her eyes roved over the people in the room, searching for information in their reactions. Jerry remained standing in full view of everyone. I thought he was working very hard not to smile.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said the Sheriff. The microphone squealed and everyone flinched. Sullivant began again from a better distance, “Ladies and gentlemen, as you can clearly see, Jerry Caulfield’s alive and well. First off, I’ll give him a chance to speak to you and verify that assumption.”

  Jerry stepped to the podium. He was wearing a light blue dress shirt, open at the neck, and crisply pressed navy slacks. A summer tan contrasted with his wavy white hair, which glowed, even under the unflattering fluorescent school lights. He cleared his throat, adjusted the microphone to his height and spoke in a perfect tone, slightly cynical, but jocular. “Hello, friends. It would be overly trite to quote Mark Twain and say something like ‘the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’ So I won’t say that. Actually, it hasn’t even been reported, and I was quite surprised to hear the news myself when I awoke late this morning after a busy night at the print shop. I’ll let the Sheriff explain. Please note,” he added, “that the Cherry Hill Herald did not carry any false headlines.”

  Jerry pulled out the remaining chair—no grating sound when he did it—and sat down on the other side of the podium. He relaxed and a grin broadened across his face.

  Sullivant stepped forward again, but he was not smiling. “Now that we’re relieved to learn our newspaper’s still in business, let’s discuss how this rumor got started. I believe that any number of private citizens own police scanners.” He paused and glared at several people in the room, including Adele, who had recovered enough to sit up.

  “Lordy, Lordy,” Adele whispered to me as she lowered her eyes.

  “That’s perfectly legal,” Sullivant continued. “However, I have to say that it’d be a good thing for people to be certain of what they think they hear before calling all their friends and neighbors with the latest news.”

  “I know what I heard just fine,” piped a woman in a bright lavender sweat suit.

  “You know what you think you heard, Helen,” the Sheriff said, his voice threatening to make the microphone squeal again. “Just hold your horses for a minute.”

  Everyone squirmed; there were a few coughs, and Sullivant went on. “The partially decomposed body of a man was discovered on Tuesday, down the river at Jalmari. Without doin’ a lot of fancy testing, it’s pretty clear that he’s been whacked on with a hatchet, although we don’t have an official cause of death just yet.”

  I searched for Cora’s eyes across the room and found that she was also looking for mine. She raised her eyebrows.

  “We found a wallet in his pants pocket, making tentative identification gol-darned easy. The man’s name is Jared Canfield.” Sullivant let this information sink in for a few seconds and then asked, “Anyone here think they know this fella?”

  Chapter 6

  I awoke Thursday morning with a pounding headache and scenes from the meeting playing through my head. No one had a clue who Jared Canfield was, but there had been plenty of speculation, none of it meaningful. The Sheriff gave us some facts, but they were meager. Canfield’s laminated driver’s license showed him to be from Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit, five-foot-eight, with brown hair and eyes, and fifty-two years old. In the wallet had also been two credit cards, some damaged pictures, and a few pieces of paper which were soggy and unreadable. These had been taken to the State Police lab. If the Sheriff knew more, he wasn’t sharing.

  We citizens had been sent home with admonitions to keep our ears open, and our tongues more tightly under control.

  Strong coffee and some pain killers were first on my agenda for the day. Before long, I was sitting in my living room, reading and thinking about what I might try to accomplish. My brain was seriously foggy, and I must have dozed off because I jumped at the sound of a knock at the front door. I hadn’t heard anyone drive in.

  The knocking was repeated, more insistently, and I hurried to the door. Whoever was out there was standing to the side, out of sight. I couldn’t see anyone through the old wavy glass panels, and no vehicle was within view.

  “Who’s there?” I called.

  There was no answer, but a squarish shoulder eased into sight and the person knocked again. I pulled open the door and blinked in the morning sun at the sight of a thin but muscular young man, about six feet tall, with light brown wavy hair, a little wild. He wore jeans and a brown t-shirt with a white silhouette of a moose on the front. His blue eyes were twinkling.

  “Hey, Ma! I thought I’d surprise you.”

  “Chad Allen Raven, you are impossible! Get in here.” I swiped at his arm as he entered, but he sidestepped and instead encircled me in a bear hug and swung me around the room. When he put me down we were both laughing and a little dizzy.

  “So this is your ‘new’ place,” he said, looking around.

  “What are you doing here now?” I asked at the exact same time.

  We laughed again.

  “My project finished a few days early.”

  “I’ve still got a lot of work to do.” Once more our sentences collided.

  “Me first, I’m the mom,” I said, retrieving my shoulder length hair and tucking it behind my ears. “I thought you’d call first. How’d you know how to get here?”

  Chad rolled his eyes. “Ever hear of GPS? I just keyed in the address and followed the directions.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Out there around the curve. I didn’t want you to see me drive in.”

  “You scallywag. Have you had breakfast? Did you drive all night? How long can you stay?” My mind flooded with mother questions.

  “Slow down, Ma!” Chad said. “I camped with some friends last night in the National Forest, and we split up early. It was only about two more hours to get here.” He rubbed his stomach.

  “OK, I get the hint,” I said, leading him toward the kitchen. “I think I’ve got eggs, and maybe some ham.”

  While I fixed omelets and divided up the rest of the blueberry pie—the smaller piece for me—Chad pulled his battered Toyota up to the house and brought in his backpack and guitar case.

  As I beat the eggs and poured them into a hot pan, I realized my headache had disappeared. I was delighted to see Chad. He and I had always been close, but one never knows what might happen when a son begins to discover his adult self, especially when his parents have recently split up. Chad looked a lot like a young Roger, with his blue eyes and wavy hair. My mind drifted as I waited for the eggs to cook; I buried my nose against a small warm head of blond curls while the other young man squeezed my shoulders and smiled down at us. Wasn’t that just a few months ago?

&nbs
p; “Ma! This old place only has one bathroom? Upstairs? Where should I sleep?”

  Reality always cuts to the immediate, rather than the important questions. “How about one of the little rooms off the living room? I don’t have an extra bed yet, but it would be more private for you.”

  “That’s perfect. I’ll use my camping pad and sleeping bag. No big deal.”

  For the rest of the morning, Chad and I brought each other up to date on the events of the summer. We’d talked by phone a few times, but the connection was never good enough to really visit. Of course, I wanted to hear what he’d been doing on Isle Royale, but I was surprised and pleased that he was interested in my summer, too. I gave him a tour of the house, and he liked what I’d accomplished, but he mentioned the lack of a television and an internet connection.

  When I got to telling him about the recent confusion over a body washing up at Jalmari, he held up a hand. I stopped talking.

  “I think you’ve found a new hobby, solving mysteries,” he said.

  “Oh, no, I don’t have anything to do with this one,” I said, bugging out my eyes and shaking my head. I changed the subject. “How long can you stay?”

  “’Til Saturday, I think. I need to go see Dad, too, before I have to be back on campus.”

  I knew this was the outline for my future, having to share Chad with a man who made my stomach contract into a hard knot. I wanted to protest that two days was too little time, but I knew my desires couldn’t make Chad stop caring about his dad. I didn’t want him to hate Roger. Well, maybe just a little bit.

  “How about if I help you get those shutters for the screen porch started tomorrow?” Chad said, pulling me back to the conversation.

  “That would be great,” I said, “But why not start today?”

  “I have something I’d like to do, if you don’t think it’s too stupid.” The impish grin I love broke across his tanned face.