Driftless (29 page)

The two of them sped after the tiny red taillights half a mile down Highway 87.

REUNION

R
USTY SMITH LIMPED INTO THE WORDS REPAIR SHOP ON WEDNESDAY afternoon, and Jacob handed him a manila envelope with “Carl Smith” written on the outside.

“I’m afraid it isn’t very good news,” he said.

Rusty stared briefly at the envelope, shoved it underneath his arm, and took out his billfold. “How much I owe you?”

“Nothing,” said Jacob. “It didn’t take long and, well, any friend of July’s is a friend of mine. But don’t tell him that. He’s not sentimental, if you know what I mean.”

Rusty, who as far as sentimentality was concerned made July Montgomery look like a Polish grandmother at Christmas, surveyed the shop. “Is that for sale?” he asked, pointing at a red four-wheeler.

“No, that’s in for repairs.”

Rusty stepped inside the craft shop, walked down the aisles, and bought three small quilts, each marked at twenty-two dollars. “Don’t give me any change,” he told Clarice, handing her four twenty-dollar bills.

At Eli Yoder’s farm he pulled in the driveway, scattering chickens and bringing the dog to full, vocal life. Rusty walked to the house over the lumpy narrow path stamped into the snow and knocked on the door. The large woman opened it.

“Here,” he said, handing her the quilts.

“What’s them for?” she asked.

“Them’s for you,” he said, and walked away.

In the basement of his farmhouse he sat on his milking stool, lit a cigarette, and stared at the name of his brother on the envelope. Then he tossed it on the floor beside him, finished the cigarette, and lit another.

The stair door opened.

“Russell,” called Maxine. “Russell, are you down there?”

“Yup.”

“Are you smoking?”

“Not really.”

“When you come up, bring your work clothes. I’m starting a load of laundry.”

She closed the stair door and Rusty opened the envelope. The obituary inside had been copied from an Appleton newspaper. His brother died several months ago. Preceding him in death were his parents, Nona and Frank, and his two sisters, Nora and Elsie. He was survived by his one daughter, Winifred.

No mention was made of a brother.

There were more papers inside the envelope, but Rusty did not read them. He lit another cigarette and straightened his left leg, hoping to change the focus of pain in his knee and clear his mind of unwanted thoughts. Ten minutes later he gathered an armload of dirty clothes and climbed the stairs. Maxine opened the door and he carried them into the laundry room.

“I’m going out to the barn,” he said.

He stopped at the dog pen, and the giant white terrier crossbreed came slowly out of her house and looked at him. “That’s okay, old girl. You don’t have to get up. Go back to sleep.”

He continued to the barn. A bitter March wind knifed through his jacket and he stood for a while in the snow, listening to the cold. The horizon of trees drew a ragged edge against the milky sky, an uneven zipper. High overhead a pair of crows beat wings in rhythm, then one branched off to the east as the other continued north. Rusty resumed walking, making fresh tracks in the white, crusted surface.

The barn doors were frozen shut. He kicked one free and dragged it through the icy snow until a slot large enough for him opened up.

Inside, he put away several tools that were lying on the bench, hanging them in their proper places along the pegboard.

Don’t make no difference,
he thought. They’re dead. Knowing it didn’t change anything. Not one pale sliver of the real world had changed.

He walked deeper into the building, into the long room where
the cows had been milked. The stale smell of cow hide and manure still lingered here. Stanchions rose out of the concrete in two skeletal rows. Iron sentinels. In the dim light the whitewashed walls turned gray, the massive oak beams in the ceiling outlined by long troughs of shadow.

The empty room magnified the silence, and the shuffling sound of his boots against the concrete dissolved into it. He sat on a plywood box next to a window and stared into the woods in back of the barn. Dark trunks like black marble pillars rose out of the snow.

He looked through the window for a long time, until the light faded from the afternoon and the inside of the barn had become as dark as a tomb. Dead, he thought. All dead and lying in the ground, and I’m the oldest. Doesn’t seem right. A bottomless error.

The wind rattled the frame of the window.

Cold in here, he thought, lighting a cigarette and struggling to his feet.

Then he heard a sound and his heart stopped momentarily, sharpening his attention to a fine point. He dropped the glowing cigarette and squashed it. In the haymow above him something moved.

Walking in the loose hay.

Heavy.

Human heavy.

In his barn.

Hiding.

A faint sound, a groan.

Silence again.

Utter silence.

Rusty eased back onto the plywood box. He sat very still, looking from time to time at the ladder leading to the mow, which could hardly be seen in the darkness. Twenty minutes later as he rose again to leave, a loud clamoring, scrabbling sound came from the far end of the building.

More movement above in the hay.

Heavy walking.

Then nothing.

Rusty crept out of the barn, leaving the slot in the door open and
following his own trail in the snow to the house. In the basement he loaded his rifle and shoved a flashlight into his jacket pocket. He ignored Maxine, who opened the stair door and announced that dinner would be ready in a short time.

Halfway to the barn, he stopped.

People desperate enough to be hiding in privately owned, unheated barns would probably be capable of some violence if they were threatened. Just what did he intend to do?—carry the rifle up the ladder, shine the flashlight around, and take aim? His knees would give out before he reached the top.

He went to the garage and drove away in the pickup.

Five miles later July Montgomery opened his front door and invited Rusty inside his small kitchen. Rusty refused.

“I need your help. Someone is in my barn. I heard ’em. I need you to climb up there and find out who it is.”

“Sure, Rusty,” said July, buttoning a long- sleeved cotton shirt around his undershirt. “Step in here while I get ready. I just finished milking and took a shower. Want a cup of coffee?”

“I’m in a hurry.”

Rusty stepped just far enough into the kitchen to close the door behind him.

July sat at the oak table and pulled a pair of white socks and brown boots over his feet and a short time later followed Rusty home in his own pickup.

Maxine came out to greet them when they pulled in the drive, and Rusty told her to go back inside. “I’ve got something in the barn to show July.”

Rusty took his rifle from behind the front seat and they walked together across the snow.

“You got any lights in there?” whispered July.

“Not in the mow.”

“Maybe whoever you heard is gone now.”

“Not likely. I don’t think they know I heard ’em.”

“Maybe we should turn on all the lights that work, make a lot of noise, and come back in an hour.”

“I need to know who this is,” said Rusty.

“Maybe it’s someone you don’t know.”

“Then I want an introduction.”

“Have they been taking things?”

“Maybe, I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you were mistaken about what you heard.”

“I wasn’t.”

When they reached the barn their whispering grew even more guarded. They went to the ladder leading to the haymow and Rusty handed his rifle and flashlight to July. “Take these,” he said.

“I’m not carrying a gun up there,” said July, looking at the square hole in the ceiling with apprehension.

“Why not?”

“Probably shoot myself.”

“I’d take the gun if I were you.”

“Well, you’re not,” said July, accepting the flashlight.

He climbed up. Nearing the top, he announced in a loud voice, “Okay, I’m coming.”

Rusty leaned against the wall, bolted a cartridge into the rifle’s chamber, and watched as July crawled through the hole above him. He saw the flashlight turn on, pan out, and disappear. He heard July walking through the loose hay.

A short time later, July returned and climbed down, quickly.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

“We should leave.”

“Why are you still whispering? What did you find?”

“You’ve got a cougar in your haymow, Rusty—a big one.”

“What’s he doing up there?”

“How do I know what it’s doing there? But it wasn’t too happy about having a light shined in its face.”

“Here, take the rifle up and shoot it.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

Then they heard a sound above them, moving heavily in the hay toward the hole in the ceiling.

Rusty shouldered the rifle, aiming up the ladder.

“I’ve heard a cat is a hard thing to kill and a wounded one is
extremely dangerous,” whispered July. “I think we should come back in the daytime.”

“What’s that damn cat doing up there?”

When they left the barn, Rusty closed the front door, scraping it across the snow. Walking back to the house, he said, “I never heard of a cougar in a haymow.”

“You don’t use your barn much. It’s a long way from the house with timber right behind it. I guess if there was a first time for a cougar in a haymow, it might as well be yours.”

“Still don’t make sense.”

“Some things don’t. You want me to come over in the morning?”

“No. I’ll take care of this. You want some supper?”

“I’d better get home. I had some things I needed to do tonight. Thanks anyway.”

“What color was it?”

“Black. Why?”

“I just wondered. Look, let’s say you don’t tell anyone about this. I mean, hell, don’t tell anyone. There’s been a lot of talk about a cat and I don’t want a bunch of people coming over here.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“How much do I owe you for your time?”

“Forget it, Rusty,” said July and drove home.

He put the rifle away in the basement and went upstairs. Maxine waited for him. The manila envelope rested on the table before her, its contents scattered on top.

“You want to talk about this, Russell?”

“No. I’m hungry.”

“Where’s July?”

“He went home.”

“What were you doing in the barn?”

“Nothing important. What’s for supper?”

At night, lying in bed, Rusty could tell that Maxine was not asleep, her breathing short, quiet, and controlled. As though to confirm this, she spoke:

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m very sorry about your brother and sisters, Russell.”

“Yup.”

“Winifred Smith is your niece. There’s no mistake about it. You’ve got to talk to her. She has a right to know.”

“Yup.”

“You know who she is, don’t you? She’s the tall woman who—”

“I know who she is.”

“You want to tell me now what is in the barn?”

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Then I’m going out there first thing in the morning.”

“No you’re not.”

DON’T GO THAT WAY

O
LIVIA’S HEAD HURT AND HER MIND SPUN DIZZILY FROM HER defeated struggle to retain possession of her purse in the parking lot. The countryside came and went with such unconscionable rapidity that it was better not to look out the window. She stared wide-eyed at the stubble-headed young man who had grabbed her wide-eyed at the stubble-headed young man who had grabbed her and crudely shoved her into his car. He sat behind the wheel staring madly into the windshield in front of him while she held onto the door and dashboard and was absolutely certain she would die. The sounds of the motor and radio alone were enough to kill a person. And what had the lunatic said before he’d abducted her?—something about not worrying? “Don’t worry, Ma’am . . .” She assumed this was a bit of black humor, perhaps something tattooed kidnappers with blood and jewelry all over their faces often said to their hapless victims before they smashed their cars into steel girders going one hundred and seventy miles an hour in the middle of the night. Since she had so recently lost all of her and her sister’s money in a casino and joined the world of the damned, she had not expected it to be inhabited. But apparently it was.

The little red taillights of the car ahead turned onto another road, and her driver tromped on the brakes—an action that almost planted Olivia inside the glove compartment.

“Better put on your seat belt, Ma’am.”

More black humor, she assumed, and she gripped even tighter to the door and dashboard as the car skidded through the corner and resumed its bellowing, wrenching acceleration. The idea of strapping yourself inside seemed like closing the lid on your own coffin. At these speeds, when the end came there would be nothing left of the car or anything inside it but several wagons of rust dust. She considered praying, screaming, weeping, and pleading all at once,
but instead felt a more instinctive expression taking place as urine flowed out of her as freely as freedom itself, through her dress and onto the soft, clammy seats.

Everything inside the car seemed appropriately designed to resemble hell—black, red, and chrome—with some kind of jewelry in the shape of a skull hanging from the rearview mirror. A little demon with a red beard and oversized revolvers was mounted on the gearshift.

The car ahead of them—much closer now—turned another corner, and once again her kidnapper went into a braking skid that required all her strength to keep from being thrown out of the seat.