The Return

by Margaret Guthrie

Margie stood at the phone on the wall, lifted the receiver but did not dial. “What do you mean he was scared of us and someone on the school board?” She turned toward Lydia and replaced the receiver.

  “Isn’t that why he can’t plow for us anymore? Someone on the school board told him not to. It wasn’t just that the plow shouldn’t be taken off the school grounds. I think he was told to leave us alone.” With an exaggerated motion Lydia dropped the wet paper towels into the waste basket under the sink.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know, Margie.” Lydia shrugged. “Who knows what secrets lie in the hearts of men,” she quipped. “The Shaaaadow knows.” She drew it out in a lowered voice, in imitation of a mysterious authority which compels that false fear that children love. She smiled over at Margie and told her to make her call.

  They walked to Sherrie’s office, just down the street at the corner of Main Street north and south and Main Street east and west that intersected at the business section. Margie wore her hiking boots, Lydia her high-topped snow boots that had regular use in Illinois.

  Sherrie greeted them with ink-stained hands, having just refilled one of the printers. They waited while she cleaned up. In the front of her three-room shop, a counter separated her work space from the customers. In one corner was a copier for the public at 10 cents a page. She also sold the usual items that went with mailings—different sized envelopes, address labels, pens and pencils, note cards, post-it notes, paper, and so forth.

  “Come on back,” Sherrie said as she lifted the half-door and let them through. She showed them her operations—the computer where she designed her lay-outs, and the different printers. Sherrie was tall and slim, with the energy and enthusiasm of a twenty-something taking possession of her place in the world. She talked fast, gestured fast, moved fast. Her hair refused to stay in the pin she held it back with, and fuzzed around her face as if it were attuned to a fast wild nature.

  “This project might especially interest you, Lydia. One of our local women has written a book of poems and essays which I’m helping her put together. We’ll get it print ready and I’ll make a run of about a hundred.” Sherrie showed her the work, then had to leave to attend to a customer. Lydia sat down at the computer and started reading, making sure not to handle anything. The poems were good. “Night takes on the look of ice/my breath steams like smoke messages/stillness abounds/I wait.” Lydia would like to meet this Persia Cartier Gregory. How did she get to New Hope? She sounded so French, or something. She’d have to ask Sherrie when she was free from customers how this woman fit into the community. Were people interested in her poetry? Did she have readings? Was there a book club, or writing club somewhere?

  The man at the counter was being introduced to Margie. “She’s learning the business here, Stanley, so I can go check up on Harry.”

  The man grinned. “Harry behaving himself now?” His eyes shifted to Margie and he nodded. He was a thin man of average height with blonde hair under a cap with an ear of corn pictured on it. He rested long, thin arms on the counter and leaned on them. His face and ears showed the wear of hours in the sun.

  “Yeah, we’re going to give it another try.” Sherrie nervously ran fingers through her hair, readjusted the clips. “But you remember Margie and her sister, Lydia Kinnen, over there, I’m sure. They’re living in the house, now.” Sherrie nodded to the sisters. “This is Stanley Seward.”

  Lydia and Margie looked at each other. He was one of them. They had read his name in the articles saved. Mike Harris, brother to the killer, was the other boy besides Jake. And two girls.

  “I’m Margie Brown, now,” Margie said, giving Mr. Seward a quick smile. Lydia thought she saw her pull herself up

  “Oh, of course,” Sherrie said, flustered. “I forgot.”

  Lydia turned from the computer toward the man who looked startled for a minute just as Jake Jackson had when he first saw her. Did she look that much like her mother? She smiled, waved a greeting but kept sitting.

  The man managed a soft “Heard you were coming back,” that Lydia found hard to interpret. Nervousness, perhaps. A lingering shock. It certainly wasn’t elation. Then he said, “Glad to see something’s being done. Can’t leave a house empty too long before it starts to show its age.” He gave a short-lived smile, widened his lips, let them fall back, as if his mind had raced ahead and hooked onto something more expedient, something long neglected that needed to be said. “Real sorry about what happened to your folks.” He fingered the papers he was holding, squaring them up, first sideways, then lengthwise, over and over again. “Guess you know the whole community’s sorry about what happened. They were good people.” He cleared his throat, his eyes floating from Margie to Lydia and back again.

  “I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Seward,” Margie said, a cautious relief in her voice, one that acknowledged his sympathy but didn’t quite trust it. She squared her shoulders, as if gathering strength to speak of the unspeakable. “We’ve often wondered, you know, what really happened That Night.” Margie looked him straight in the eyes and Lydia held her breath. “We were never told much. Just whisked away into the big city.” Margie lifted her arms like a bird flying, and she ended with a light little laugh. Lydia smiled inwardly. Way to go. Make him feel so guilty he has to break down and tell them something. But it wasn’t to be just then.

  “Don’t we all,” Mr. Seward said, his face looking grieved, lines deepening. “Life’s complicated.” He looked at the counter in his hand as if deciding which way was up, then headed over to the copier. He lifted the lid, hesitated, then asked for help. Sherrie went over. “Can’t even run this machine by myself,” he muttered.

  “I heard Mike’s had some problems again?” Sherrie asked as she helped him at the machine.

  “He went through some tests. Guess it was just ulcers again. Took him off caffeine.”

  At the cash register Sherrie took the counter and Stanley paid her in cash. “That agenda,” she said, pointing to the papers he was taking. “For the school board. You going to talk about closing the school?”

  “Something has to happen. Enrollment’s way down. We’ve got empty rooms. Rooms maybe we could rent out to a business, if we could find the right one.” Sherrie closed the register. “We’ll be having a community meeting soon,” he said, then turned to the sisters. “I hope you’ll be there. You need to know what’s happening here. Actually, I hope a lot of people will be there. We need their input on this thing.” Lydia wondered if he was really asking for some support. “It’ll be in the gym, but we haven’t set a date yet.” He picked up the papers and turned to leave.

  “You going to discuss our house?” Margie asked.

  Stanley looked surprised. “No, that’s a separate subject entirely.”

  “Are you on that committee that wants to tear it down?” she persisted. Nothing like being direct, Lydia thought.

  Stanley made a guttural sound, a tired humph. “Don’t know about that. Sometimes I’m consulted, sometimes I’m not, depending on what mood Jake’s in.”

  “But you are on the school board?” Margie asked before he had a chance to get away.

  “That I am, for sure.” He cracked a smile.

  “Well then, I gather you know why Jake says he can’t use the school plow for our driveway anymore. Not that we asked him to. We assumed it was his.”

  “Ma’am, I’d stay clear of Jake, now that you’re here. Do your own work as much as possible. He tends to get himself...” He fumbled for some appropriate words. “...excited about things, maybe more than he needs to.”

  “Oh,” Margie said.

  “We’ve begun to do that,” Lydia added. “Our own work, that is.”

  “Ladies, I have to go. Glad to have met you.” He stuck out his hand and they took turns shaking it. It was a rough hand, used to outdoor work and weather. Also a firm hand. Lydia felt the vibrations were good, well-gro
unded, strong.

  “He didn’t explain about the plow,” Margie said after he left, disappointed.

  “Maybe he couldn’t,” suggested Lydia.

  “He avoided it. What gives, Sherrie?” Margie looked over at her for an explanation. She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Just sounds like he and Jake don’t get along.” Sherrie moved over to stand behind Lydia still sitting at the computer. She put her hand on Lydia’s shoulder when she started to get up.

  “Don’t move. I just want to check my ‘to do’ list,” Sherrie said.

  “What gives with that committee?” Lydia asked, and felt Sherrie’s hand tense, then deliberately relax.

  “I would suggest there’s disagreement, and let it go at that.” She obviously didn’t want to deal with the topic.

  “So, two different issues, the school situation, and our house,” Margie said. “I guess some people want it kept that way.”

  “We need to find out who wants what,” Lydia suggested. “Does anyone besides Jake Jackson care whether our house is torn down or preserved?” She meant this as a question for Sherrie, but Sherrie didn’t respond. She had taken her list and started setting one of the printing machines for a project she said she had to get out, leaving Lydia and Margie looking at each other.

  That done Sherrie suggested she show Margie the paper stock. She had a variety of colors, weights and sizes in the cupboard. Then she picked what she needed and took it over to the copier.

  Sherrie started the machine and let it run. “Stanley Seward’s an OK guy, one of the most decent and responsible people you’ll ever find. He sacrificed a teaching career to come back to the farm and pull together the families most effected by what Dale Harris did.” She suddenly stopped and brushed hair out of her eyes and took a moment to focus her thoughts. “I mean, your family wasn’t the only one that suffered,” she said in a soft voice, giving the sisters a careful smile. “The Harrises, Reeds and Sewards all had their own pain.” Sherrie turned away, looked vaguely out of the front window of the shop.

  “It hasn’t been easy for Stanley and Shirley. They were sweethearts in high school.” She turned and smiled again at the sisters. “Bet you didn’t know that. I know because I was in that graduating class with Stanley. 1969. There were twelve of us in that class. Yeah, we were small even back then. Anyway, Stanley’s mother died that winter from her breast cancer and that left his father pretty desolate. He wanted to get down to Arizona and retire from farming. So Stanley came home after that first college year and ran his dad’s farm. Then he and Shirley were married right after she graduated high school. It wasn’t much of a move for Shirley. She virtually lived there anyway. Shirley and Charlette, you see lived at an adjoining farm.”

  “Shirley and Charlette were Reeds?” Lydia asked. She was trying to get the picture of these three interrelated families.

  “That’s right. A year or two later Charlette married Mike Harris, brother to Dale Harris, whose parents were Alice and Fred.” Sherry shook her head, put her hands on her hips. “Sad story there, too. But I’m not going to get into that. Anyway, now we’ve got Stanley and Shirley on the Seward farm and Charlette and Mike on the Harris farm. Understand? Mr. and Mrs. Reed continued on their own farm until they, too, finally moved to Arizona and left their farm in the hands of their children.”

  “Ah, a triumvirate,” Lydia exclaimed with a smile.

  “You’re thinking of power, but it was anything but that. It was a coming together in a time of need. That’s what people do around here.” Sherrie laughed. “Gosh, I didn’t mean to sound defensive. But, now you’ve both spent time in big cities, you must find it a bit different here.” Sherrie started playing with her hair, all the time keeping an ear out for the printer working away in the background.

  “I’d never really considered much about the others,” Lydia admitted. “But you’re right. Dale’s mother must have had some real problems with what happened.”

  “Well, Alice was very disturbed. She concentrated on Dale’s death in Vietnam, not on what he’d done here in New Hope. I guess when something is too intolerable one can think up all kinds of excuses to justify some action or other. She was perfectly willing to believe that some stranger was there in that gym and Dale had nothing to do with your parents deaths.” Sherry looked at the sisters to gauge their reaction. What she saw was bewilderment.

  “You mean, our parents deaths meant nothing to her?” It was Margie this time, her voice showing hurt and annoyance.

  “I can see what you’re saying,” Lydia said. “But it’s kind of disap-pointing.”

  Sherrie shrugged her shoulders. “Mike was the one who felt the burden. He took on the whole responsibility for his brother’s evil action and his mother’s total denial. That’s why he kept having accidents and ulcers. You heard Stanley say Mike just went through tests? Ulcers again.” Sherrie shook her head. “It hasn’t gone away, you see, the pain.”

  “And his father?” Margie asked. How did he handle it?

  “I don’t really know. I was gone right after graduation, had a summer job in Omaha, wasn’t here while the investigation was going on. But my mother kept me informed on some of it. She was such a gossip.” Sherrie chuckled. “But what I was getting at, current situation, is that the Seward farm, then the Harris farm, then the Reed farm became one big operation. And that’s why they’ve succeeded in farming.” She raised her eyebrows. “You can’t make it here anymore with less than a thousand acres. Some say it takes 3,000,” Sherrie said.

  The copier stopped its job and Sherrie gathered up the papers, put them into a bag, attached the invoice and put it in the customer pick-up pile.

  “No small farmers anymore?” Lydia asked.

  “With less than a thousand, or three thousand acres, somebody has to have an outside job. Sometimes a wife will work somewhere, or the husband will have a side job. Farming can’t be the total focus as far as income’s concerned.”

  “That’s so sad,” Lydia exclaimed.

  “Someday you’ll have to go out and see their operation,

  Sherrie continued. “You’ll be amazed at what they do these days with their big machines that cost a hundred thousand dollars and more and what they have to do to keep in good with the big corporations who buy what they raise. Can’t be easy.”

  Lydia felt uncomfortable, almost chastised. There was always more than one side to a story. She was being persuaded that what happened thirty years ago did need to be explained, not just buried and forgotten. These were the details her mother wanted. Her scalp tingled, as if ants were walking through her hair.

  “You think Jake Jackson’s jealous of those thousand acres?” Margie asked mildly. She could imagine that he saw those he was with that night thirty years ago coalesce and leave him outside the circle. “You think he was an outsider thirty years ago?” she asked of no one in particular. In her own mind she wondered how these people, who were of course teenagers at the time, acted that night when Dale Harris erupted and killed. Did they just let this Dale Harris do what he did?

  “Do they speak very often of That Night, Sherrie?”

  Sherrie shook her head. “No. I’m surprised he said what he did. I guess it’s still on his mind.”

  “Unfinished business,” Lydia commented, softly.

  “Yeah,” Sherrie replied. She bent down to retrieve a crumpled paper that had missed the waste basket.

  “So, does Stanley Seward have a family?” Lydia asked.

  “Three kids, only one still at home. Tanya’s about eleven, I guess, looks more like 15. Tall and slim. Bright, lively, talkative. She likes to tell tales.” Sherrie had moved off and was looking at the next print job that needed to be done.

  “How about the other family? Mike and Charlette, is it?” Margie asked.

  “Also three. A son in a boarding high school. The oldest girl in the east somewhere. And Jennifer, at home. Sa
me age as Tanya.” She was about to say something else, but stopped. “You’ll meet them all, I’m sure, one way or another. If you go to church here in town, you’ll meet them. Or one of those PTA meetings. Hey, do you want to help me with this, or not?”

  Margie rushed to her side and let her explain what the steps were for this particular job. Lydia sat at the computer reading more of the poetry of Persia Cartier Gregory, and thinking about Sherrie’s summary of the three families that seemed so entwined in the event that had changed her and Margie’s lives. She wondered vaguely if Sherrie had heard stories of her dead mother’s hauntings. She wondered if Stanley Seward, just as startled as Jake at seeing her looking so much like her mother, kept reliving that night. Were others doing so too? If thoughts were energy, no wonder her mother was around. Her energy felt their thought energy and kept her here. Lydia shoved that to the back of her mind for consideration later.

  It took some time for Sherrie to show the two of them how to operate the printers. As they neared the end of the instructions, Sherrie suddenly said, “They’re not going to tear down your house. They’re going to find some way to make money out of it. You can get grant money to preserve historical structures. I bet if nothing else they’ll find a way to get it. And they’ll do the same with the school property and its buildings.”

  Margie looked at her. “You think? Maybe Peter can help us get our own best deal.”

  Sherrie smiled “Peter your attorney?”

  Lydia smiled too, wondering when she was going to meet Peter, and how much more than attorney he was to Margie. “We’ll go to that meeting, Margie, and we’re going to figure out what this community wants.”

  “Hey, I need to show you how to run the cash register. After all, that’s the bottom line of this business, keep the money coming in.” Sherrie motioned them to come over and watch as she explained how it worked, explained a bit about the bookkeeping, and then about the daily routine of things that had to be done, how things got prioritized, how many hours it took to do certain jobs, the kind of calls they would need to make, and finally the art of dealing with custome

  Chapter 5