Wake Up Little Susie

by Ed Gorman

  impression of the place.”

  “Was she rude and unhelpful?”

  “She wasn’t rude very often. But unhelpful, yes. At least for the last six-seven months she worked here. She was caught up in her affair with Squires. They’d have an argument and she’d come in to work looking teary and worn out. Started calling in sick a lot. You know how it is when you’re in love. Sometimes you have a hard time concentrating. And he’s still married all this time. You’d think they would’ve been a little more discreet.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking of Pamela and her affair with Stu. “Yeah, you would.”

  “I didn’t want to fire her. But I was glad when she finally quit.”

  “Because of the scandal?”

  “Hell, yes. It wasn’t real good for business, believe me. She just couldn’t take it anymore. She went to stay with some relative.

  By that time, I sure as hell didn’t blame her.”

  “Why was she here now?”

  “Oh, hell, we’re still friends. After she and Squires finally got married and everything settled down, she dropped in all the time. Everybody here still liked her.”

  I was writing all this down in my notebook.

  “What’s wrong with Howdy Doody?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Your notebook. Noticed you’ve got a Captain Video. They out of Howdy Doody, were they?”

  I felt my cheeks burn. “I got a deal on these.”

  “Msta been some deal”—he smiled—?make you carry a notebook like that around. Captain Video, I mean.”

  I changed the subject. “Cliffie spend much time here?”

  “They’re having corn on the cob over at the Eagles tonight and then showing two Abbott and Costello pictures. Cliffie’s like a kid about that kind of stuff. You think he’d hang around and do his job when they’ve got corn on the cob boiling in those big pots?”

  The office was small. He had a lot of family photos on the wall and a badly thrumming Pepsi machine in the corner. There were also more plaques, these from the Ford Motor Company, one of them having to do with clean

  rest rooms. Not the kind of thing you’d want on your tombstone: He Kept A Clean

  John.

  “You notice if he did anything with that broken taillight cover?”

  “He didn’t. I asked my boys if they knew anything about it and they didn’t. Gil said it wasn’t there when he left last night at seven but it was here this morning when he came in at six.”

  “So Cliffie didn’t take it?”

  “Far as I know, he didn’t even look at it. Think the cleaning crew finally picked it up and tossed it in one of the cans out back.”

  “Mind if I look?”

  “That’s some job you’ve got, McCain.

  Scrounging around in waste cans.”

  “I didn’t get a law degree for nothing.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, and everybody in this town is proud of you.” Then: “Poor Susie. Just can’t figure out how she got in that Edsel. Why couldn’t it have been the Pontiac dealer down the street? I know that sounds sort of mean, but between the bad publicity with the Edsel and the murder ….

  Sure you don’t want a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got to put that law degree of mine to use.”

  He smiled. “Thanks for making me feel better, McCain. I appreciate it.”

  The sky was darker now, stains of mauve and gold and amber, a few thunderheads brilliantly outlined with the last of the day’s sunlight. There’s a loneliness to Saturday night, at least for me, that no amount of noise and movement can ever assuage.

  There’re a lot of popular songs about Saturday night, about how you live all week for it to roll around so you can go out and have yourself a ball. But deep down you know it’ll never be quite as exciting as you want it to be, need it to be, and the lonesomeness will never quite go away. I think my mom used to feel this when my dad was in Europe during the war.

  She’d kind of fix herself up on Saturday night and then sit in the living room by herself with her one highball in her hand and a Chesterfield in her fingers. Even when she’d laugh at the radio jokes there’d be a lonesomeness in her eyes that made me sad for her and scared for my dad. But we were lucky. Dad came home.

  There were five large trash barrels out back.

  A big lonely mutt hung around watching

  me.

  It took me twenty minutes to find what I was looking for. I couldn’t decide whether to start on the barrels from the left or right. If I’d started from the left I would have been out of there in five minutes. So of course I started from the right. This is the kind of frustration that the nuns always said was good for us. Taught us humility and patience. I never was sure about that. It was like attributing not eating meat on Friday to Jesus. All the things that poor guy had on his mind, did he really have time to worry about cheeseburgers?

  By the time I finished, my shirtsleeves were grimy and my fingernails were black. In the center of the fourth barrel, I found what I was looking for. Whoever had picked it up had been thoughtful enough to put it in a paper bag for me. Even the little pieces.

  “Ok, now, McCain. Close your

  eyes.”

  Mrs. Goldman is a widow who rents out rooms. I’d call her my landlady, but that term always paints a mental picture of a dowdy middle-aged woman with flapping house slippers and pink curlers in her hair. Unless of course you read the occasional Midwood “adult”

  novels they sell under the counter down at Harkin’s News. In those books landladies are invariably twenty years old and cursed with nymphomania and they’re always asking the narrator if he’d “like to earn a little discount on his rent.”

  I figure Lauren Bacall will probably look like Mrs. Goldman when she reaches her mid-fifties: tall, elegant, quietly imposing. Mrs. Goldman’s husband died six years ago. She hasn’t had a single date since. Until tonight. She goes to temple in Iowa City every Saturday. She recently met an optometrist there, a man around sixty and a widower. He was taking her out for steaks and dancing tonight.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready, Mrs. Goldman.”

  “And you’ll be honest?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Mrs. Goldman keeps the downstairs for herself. There are three apartments upstairs. She’d bought herself some new duds and wanted my

  opinion of them. I’d never seen her this nervous before. It was cute.

  “Here I come, ready or not!”

  She came down the hall from the bedroom into the living room and she was gorgeous. Really. She’d bought a black shift and black hose and black pumps and one of those little French-style hats that Audrey Hepburn wears whenever she wants to get William Holden all hot and bothered.

  “Holy moly.”

  “You think he’ll like it?”

  “Are you kidding? He’ll break down in tears.”

  She smiled. “You never overstate things, McCain. That’s one of your finest qualities.”

  She leaned over and gave me a motherly kiss on the cheek. “I appreciate the compliment. I need it. I keep running to the bathroom every five minutes, just the way I used to when I started dating my husband. I have a bladder that’s very sensitive to romantic feelings.”

  She smelled great too.

  Then: “Oh. David Squires stopped

  by to see you.”

  “David Squires? Are you sure it was him?”

  She laughed. “Are you saying that I should have Dr. Kostik check my eyes tonight? I know David from the Fine Arts committee at the library.”

  “God,” I said, stunned. “Why would he want to see me? He and the Judge despise each other.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. But his wife was murdered, so maybe he needs to talk to you. The poor man.”

  Five

  Dillon’s Stables had a huge red barn for dances and three big hayracks for rides. I wore a T-shirt, a denim jacket, jeans, and desert boots. To get in the Western mood I wore a red k
erchief around my neck.

  Mary was dressed in a similar outfit. Her mahogany-colored hair was pulled back into a ponytail. A hundred male eyes did

  terrible things to her. She was a beauty. No doubt about that.

  From inside the barn came music:

  Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly. This was a young crowd tonight. If Dillon had his way he’d still be playing songs from the ‘dj’s. Fortunately, his twenty-year-old daughter chose the music. Just because you dressed Western didn’t mean you had to listen Western.

  Especially when you had your hair swept back into a duck’s ass.

  The hayracks filled up pretty fast.

  Mary and I got on the third one. We sat high on the stack, about four feet up. A friendly old mare pulled the wagon, following an ancient Indian trail along a creek painted silver by moonlight. The night was chilly, the hay smelled fresh and clean, and the mare was sweetly scented of field dust and road apples.

  “Did you ever try and count the stars?” Mary asked.

  “Not after they let me out of the mental hospital.”

  She nudged me. She had a cute way of doing that. She’d done it since grade school.

  For some reason I’ve always taken great pleasure in being nudged by her.

  “They made me do that at Girl Scout camp. Sit up all night and count the stars.”

  “Nice girls.”

  “Yeah, but I was dumb enough to do it.”

  There were six other couples. One of the guys had a guitar. He played some Gene Autry and Roy Rogers songs, and then he played Vaughn Monroe’s “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” I still like to lie on my stomach and look out the window to see if I can spot any of the ghost riders he sings in that song. It isn’t hard to spot them. Not if you had an imagination like mine. Big silver ghost horses and cowpokes trailing across the midnight sky.

  “She was a nice woman.”

  “Susan Squires?”

  “Ummm.”

  “Why’d she marry him?”

  “She was in love with him.”

  “Poor girl.”

  Some of the other couples were already making out. A Tribute to Gonads seemed to be the theme of the evening. I had my arm around Mary but that was it.

  “She stopped in for lunch at Rexall,”

  Mary said.

  “About a week ago.”

  “She say anything?”

  “She just kept toying with an envelope. She was so nervous, she left it behind.”

  “Anything on the outside?”

  “Just the return address for a county courthouse. I’ve got it at home. She called later that afternoon. Sounded scared. Wanted to meet me for a Coke downtown. But Dad got very sick. They’re trying this new medication on him. I had to help Mom.”

  “That was the last you heard from her?”

  “Yes. Now I feel guilty. I mean,

  I had to help Dad and Mom. But I feel as if I let Susan down.”

  “You sure she sounded scared?”

  “Positive. I knew her well enough to know that.”

  “Know much about her marriage?”

  Before she could answer, the wagon gave a sudden jerk and stopped. We had crested a hill. Below us spread the town of Black River Falls.

  This should have been the makeout point of choice for all the town’s teenagers, but the mud-ribbed roads and brambled roadsides made it too hard to get to.

  The sight was gorgeous. If you grew up in a city, a town of 25eajjj probably doesn’t look like much. But spread out this way, the lights vivid against the prairie night, it was a lovely spectacle. For all its flaws and

  shortcomings, I loved the old town. Back in the stables, they had a wall posted with photos of various generations who had gone on hayrack rides, all the way back to the 1880’s, when the men wore bowlers and the women wore huge picture hats. There were doughboys from World War One and dogfaces from World War Two. There were flappers and Frank Sinatra’s bobby-soxers and Johnnie Ray’s teary teens. And somehow I was a part of it, just like Mom and Dad and Sis and Grandad and Grandma were part of it, and that made at least a little sense of life for me, being part of a town and a tradition, and if that was all I ever got, it was enough.

  Then we were moving again, the wagon jostling left and right, bouncing up and down, the kid with the guitar singing a Frankie Laine song called “Moonlight Gambler.” He did a

  pretty good job of it too.

  “She ever talk about her marriage?”

  “Just kind of hinted about it from time to time.”

  “Anything specific?”

  “Well, that he spent a lot of time away from home. His legal practice and everything.”

  “Ever mention divorce?”

  “No.”

  “His ex-wife ever get over it?”

  “You think she might have killed him?”

  “It’s a thought.”

  “Gee, I hadn’t even considered her.”

  “Susan ever mention the woman’s confronting her or anything?”

  “Say,” she said, “you’re right! One day at Nicole’s.” Nicole’s On Main was the high-fashion emporium of the town. They have indoor plumbing and everything. “She came right up to Susan and slapped her.”

  “See? There you go. You could be a

  detective.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Well, you just told me something very important.”

  Right there we were headed into the white birches where the creek widens out. The Mesquakie Indians used to call the birches ghost trees, and that’s what they looked like, too, with their spectral moonlit glow.

  Then I surprised both of us by leaning over and kissing her.

  As I’ve told you, a couple of times we almost went all the way, Mary and I. One was the night of our high school graduation and the second time was just a regular night at the drive-in watching a couple of really bad Japanese science-fiction movies. Both times both of us pulled back. Our relationship was complicated enough. I’d wanted to sleep with her for many long years but I was worried that it would hurt her.

  But within five minutes tonight I was on first base and rounding toward second. And in her sweet, somewhat tentative way I sensed she was as up for it as I was.

  We sank into the hay and did some serious making out. A hoot owl and a coyote crooned to the moon to lend everything a note of prairie romance.

  I always carried my emergency red Trojan, and I had reason to believe that my

  erection would soon start making overtures in that direction. Bad enough I wasn’t in love with Mary. But to make love to her and still not be in love with her would be awful.

  “We’d better stop,” I whispered.

  “Oh, God, why?”

  “You know.”

  “Oh, McCain, c’mon. I’m twenty-two

  years old. You want to see my driver’s license?”

  “It’ll just make things worse.”

  “For whom?”

  “For you. And me.”

  “For you, you mean. The guilt.”

  But by then the point was moot. A private plane was buzzing the wagon and everybody on the loft was waving. Mary got embarrassed suddenly and eased me away.

  By the time we got back to the barn, I was so charged up with lust I had lost the use of my eyes, ears, and nose. I was virtually insensate.

  I went into the men’s room—a stall; standing at a trough with a hard-on was apt to get you some funny looks—and commanded my penis to cease and desist.

  I threatened lawsuits; I hinted at solitary confinement. And it finally complied.

  Mary had used the time to freshen up. We’d both had to de-hay ourselves the way you have to de-tick yourself after a walk in the woods.

  She looked even better than before. And she loved me. And she was tender and smart and faithful and would make a great wife and great mother and—why had God saddled me with Pamela? Why? Oral Robbers could heal people, supposedly. Maybe he could cure me of Pamela. It was something to
think about anyway.

  The dance pavilion was built right onto the east side of the barn.

  We danced fast to a Rick Nelson song and then slow to a Patti Page song and then we went over to the bar and ordered two Falstaffs in the bottle. A bartender with a big ragged straw hat and a piece of hay sticking out of his mouth served us.

  From what I could hear around us, the conversation this evening was Susan Squires’s death.

  “I hope this doesn’t make me sick.”

  Mary wasn’t much of a drinker.

  “Then don’t drink it.”

  “Well, I like to feel like an adult every once in a while.” She slid her hand in mine. “That was a lot of fun. On the hayrack.”

  “It sure was.”

  “I just wish you didn’t worry about stuff so much.”

  “So do I.”

  “If you’re worried about breaking my heart, McCain, I’m the only one responsible. I could’ve walked away a long time ago.”

  A Little Richard song came on. Most of the people were on the dance floor and I mean they were wailing and flailing. I wonder what our ancestors would have thought—y know, the ones who always look so prim in those 1880 photographs—if they could have seen my generation cavort. Probably put the lot of us in the public stocks.

  I slid my arm around her. Pushed my face into her lustrous and sweet-smelling hair.

  “I’m very seriously in like with you,” I said.

  “Well.” She smiled. “That’s a start anyway.”

  “Hi, Mary.”

  The words came over my shoulder. I saw Mary’s face as they were spoken. She seemed less than happy to see the speaker.

  “Hi, Todd.”

  He walked around me where I could see him.

  Our town was getting just big enough that it was impossible to know everybody’s name. I’d seen him around, a big towheaded guy who could’ve doubled for the hearty lumberjack on a cereal box. He even dressed that way. Plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, big studded belt, jeans. I was just happy he wasn’t carrying an ax. He looked to be about my age. He also looked to be drunk.

  “You goin’ to the funeral?” he said to Mary.