Eureka (4 page)

Sally had been crying. “We thought you might be dead,” she said.

“Or kidnapped for ransom, or raped,” said Annabel, who was dry-eyed.

“Raped?” Sally gasped aloud. “We’re talking about your father. Men don’t get raped, for God’s sake. They do the raping.”

“Things have changed out there in the world, Mom,” replied Annabel.

“Not in the world of Kansas, they haven’t!” Sally responded angrily.

Amen! Otis wanted to shout.

“We were also concerned about a possible hostage situation,” said Pete. He had been hired to be the heir apparent of the company, a step Otis had come to regret. He found Pete, who was only forty-two, a dreary man with the soul of a seventy-year-old who seldom risked anything, laughed, or even smiled.

“We were about to notify the FBI,” said the older of the two detectives, who was gray, overweight, and seemed tired and bored with all of this crap among these rich people. “They’d have probably put a tap on the phone in case a ransom—or death—call came in.”

Only Bob Gidney seemed to notice the 1952 Pacemaker on the trailer. “You did it,” he said to Otis. “You did it.”

Otis thought he had planned his trip to Nebraska in a way that he would not be missed until he was back in Eureka with a Cushman. He had told his office that he was going to spend the day at home, getting caught up on some material for a speech he had to make at the company’s annual meeting in two weeks. He
had told Sally he would be away from the office all day, working on some figures for the upcoming annual meeting. He had driven off toward Marion shortly before seven-thirty that morning in the Explorer, feeling pretty good about his arrangements. He had correctly estimated under eight hours for the trip up and back, including viewing and negotiating time. It was now three in the afternoon, and the whole thing might have worked if Annabel hadn’t suddenly decided to come home to spend the day trying to get over a fight she’d had with her latest boyfriend. She had left Lawrence in such a hurry that she’d forgotten her key to the house in Eureka, and when she found Sally not at home, she drove to Otis’s office. His secretary’s search for her missing boss eventually led to a series of phone calls, and before long the word was out that Otis had disappeared. The fear of a crime had been raised.

That fear, Otis knew, was generated by the fact that he had never ever—maybe in his whole life—done anything so irresponsible. Never ever—maybe in his whole life—had he ever simply disappeared for a few hours without telling Sally or his secretary or his mother or his teacher or somebody.

Otis the Responsible, that’s me.

He apologized to everyone for the inconvenience and anxiety his disappearance had caused. Otis had been so certain he would get away with being gone a few hours that he had not worked on any contrite remarks. “I really am sorry, I really am” was all he said.

“How about some help getting this scooter off the trailer?” he said after he tired of saying he was sorry.

The older detective, Jerry Elkhart, and Bob Gidney walked out to the trailer.

“I had a Cushman Road King when I was growing up,” said the detective. He spoke with animation, as if he was alive after all. “Wasn’t it the next one up the line from the Pacemaker?”

“You know your Cushmans. That’s right,” said Otis. He had seen at least five Road Kings in Cushman Heaven and recalled that Atchison had said the main difference was the transmission. The Pacemaker operated in only one gear, while the Road King had two. There were also some cosmetic differences—better lights and more chrome trimming, for example.

“Did you just buy this thing?” the detective asked.

Otis said he had indeed.

“How much did it set you back, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“A couple of thousand or so,” Otis lied. He was not about to tell this policeman or anyone else that he paid $7,500 for the old scooter.

“Mine cost two hundred and fifty-seven dollars in 1954. I remember that exactly because my dad loaned me the money, and it took me three years on a paper route and bagging groceries to pay him back.”

The scooter had been secured to the trailer with large leather straps. Detective Elkhart and Dr. Gidney helped Otis roll and lift the red scooter down and onto the driveway.

Otis immediately sat down on the scooter’s seat, hit the kick starter with his right foot, gunned it with the throttle on the right handlebar, released the brake with his left foot, and smoothly moved off. He did four big U-turns out into the street—there was no traffic—and came back.

“Want to give it a twirl for old times’ sake?” he asked Elkhart.

It had been a while since Otis had seen such a wide and glorious smile on another man’s face. Elkhart, proving that you never forget how to ride a motor scooter as well as a bicycle, took possession and control and rode off as if he did it every day.

When he returned after two long spins down the street and back, Otis asked Bob Gidney if he’d like a turn.

Bob smiled, mounted the Pacemaker, and rode off down the street.

It was only then that Otis thought to look back at the front of the house to see what the rest of his welcoming committee might be doing. Dreary Pete Wetmore was still standing there, looking stunned. The other detective, who appeared to be about twenty-five, was talking on his cellphone.

Sally was no longer there. But Annabel was. Her face was frozen in a look of absolute amazement.

IT WAS
A lovely, quiet, dreamy Sunday afternoon on the soft grassy bank of Farnsworth Creek. The daffodils, petunias, and sunflowers smelled sweet and shone brightly under the April Kansas sun. The temperature was in the comfortable low eighties, the breezes were gentle and fluffy.

Under a majestic cottonwood tree lay an exquisitely tanned beautiful young woman on a flowery quilt, reading a book,
Taking Charge
by Michael Beschloss. She was dressed in pleated yellow shorts and a pastel blue short-sleeved blouse. Her long blond hair lay above her head on a small pillow.

Into this tranquil scene came the soft putt-putt of a small gasoline motor. From down a narrow gravel path emerged a red 1952 Cushman Pacemaker ridden by a man wearing a red Kansas City Chiefs football helmet, with a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun strapped to the right side.

The woman, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, sat up at the intrusion and watched in clear fear as the armed man and the scooter came to a halt under ten yards away.

Otis Halstead waved to her and turned off the motor. “Sorry to bother you,” he said as he leaned forward from his seat and put both feet on the ground.

The woman said nothing, did nothing.

“You should listen to the tapes, too,” said Otis after noticing her book, which she had set down on the quilt beside her. “Hearing Lyndon Johnson’s voice saying all of that is truly a most special experience.”

The Beschloss book and accompanying tapes from Lyndon Johnson’s first months as president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy had been one of Sally’s Christmas presents to Otis last year. He enjoyed reading contemporary American history.

Otis stepped off the scooter on the left side and whacked down the kickstand with his right foot.

The young woman, sitting with her arms across her bent legs, remained perfectly still and silent.

Otis removed the BB gun from the scooter and held it sideways toward the woman. “It’s a Daisy Red Ryder air rifle,” he said. “It’s a kid’s toy, bought it out of a catalog.”

The muscles in her face seemed to loosen a bit. The expression of fear and concern was replaced by one of interest and curiosity. But she said nothing. The only sounds were the water flowing in the creek and the rustle of leaves in the cottonwood tree.

Otis leaned the gun against the side of the scooter and walked toward the water, away from the woman. Without looking at her, he said, “On days like this, it makes you wonder why Dorothy or Judy Garland ever wanted to leave Kansas, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve never wanted to leave Kansas,” the young woman said. Her voice was as soft and gentle as the breezes. Or that’s the way it sounded to Otis, who turned back to face her. She was smiling.

“You must be, as the old song said, a real ‘sunflower from the Sunflower State,’” he said.

“What song is that?” she said. “I know about ‘Home on the Range.’ Is there another one about Kansas?”

He wanted to say: Yes, yes. “Sunflower” by Mack David. Russ Morgan’s recording of it had made the 1949
Hit Parade
on the radio. And he wanted to sing it for her. He knew the words to all four verses and the refrain. There had been a time long ago when Otis knew the words to hundreds of popular songs.

But he did not sing “Sunflower” for this young woman. Instead, he said, “Have you come to the part in the book where LBJ talks about Bobby Kennedy?”

“No, not yet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scooter like that before.”

“It’s an antique.”

“Why not just buy a new one?”

Otis decided there was no answer to that question that he wanted to give the young woman. He turned back toward the creek, which was clear and about fifty yards wide at this particular spot in the Cimarron Regional Park. Otis had been coming here for years to fish and to walk.

This was the first time he had come on a Cushman and the first time he had come across a beautiful young woman reading a book.

“Why haven’t you taken off the football helmet?” she asked.

“My head will come off with it if I do,” Otis replied, turning back to face her.

She laughed. “What’s your name?” she asked.

Without a second’s hesitation, Otis said, “Buck.”

Buck? Buck. There had been a guy from Sedgwicktown who played starting halfback for K-State when Otis was a freshman in high school. His name was Buck—Buck Kingman. He came back to town occasionally and walked the streets surrounded by squads of admiring boys and girls. Otis had always thought it would be terrific to be named Buck. Now he was.

“What’s your name?” Otis asked the girl.

“Sharon.”

“What brings you here?”

“Well, it’s so lovely and peaceful. I just moved to Eureka from Wichita—I’m a nurse. And you?”

“I’m not allowed to talk about myself,” he said. “Would you like to take a ride on my scooter? I’m a good driver—and safe in every respect.”

Without a word, she stood up.

He hung the air rifle by its lanyard on the handlebars, kick-started the motor, and she climbed up behind him.

And then he felt the thrill, the glory, the incredible turn-on of her hands lightly on his waist and the warmth of her body against his back as they rode away together down the gravel path.

What if Annabel is right? And this young thing decides to rape me?

THEY RODE DOWN
the path a hundred yards or so onto a little-used connecting blacktop road and then circled back to the creek bank. They neither passed nor saw nor heard any other vehicles or people.

For Otis, it was twenty minutes of being in a high, unrelenting state of exquisite sexual arousal unlike anything he had experienced in a long time—so long that he couldn’t even recall the last time he had felt anything quite like it.

He could feel her young breath on his neck, her young fingers in his belt loops, and on a few delicious occasions when the scooter turned or lurched, he felt some of the most intimate parts of her young body pressed against his back.

She must be about half his own age, younger even than Annabel. Otis, a Dole-Kassebaum Republican, thought of Bill
Clinton, the Arkansas fool, fouling his presidency and place in history over a girl like this.

Otis the Responsible wasn’t about to lose anything over sex, but thoughts of Clinton’s fate did not, at that moment, lower the level of Otis’s excitement over what in the hell was happening to him with a young woman named Sharon.

The thoughts were coming like split-second rocket shots. The stockholders, policyholders, and employees of Kansas Central Fire and Casualty would most likely not stand by him the way the American people had stood by Clinton. Annabel was no Chelsea, and he knew for certain that Sally Winfield was no Hillary Rodham Clinton. What was it that Republican congressman from Texas had said when asked how his wife would react to his having an affair with a young intern type? He had said he’d be lying in a pool of blood while she asked how in the hell you reloaded this damned thing. Well, Sally would probably handle it about the same.

Why was he thinking things like that, anyhow? For chrissake, here we are, taking a little ride on a Cushman Pacemaker, not having sex—under either the Bill Clinton or the Kenneth Starr definition.

Maybe I do need some world-renowned Ashland Clink help
, thought Otis.

He stopped the scooter back near the quilt. Sharon the nurse slid off and stepped up beside him.

“All right now, Buck, take off your helmet so I can really see you,” she said. “All I can tell through that face guard is that your eyes are dark and you have a mustache.”

The potential for a moment of awful truth had arrived. He said nothing.

She said, “Your voice sounds very mature, Buck.”

Otis raised his right hand to his helmet and gave what he considered a good imitation of a cowboy salute, something along the lines of what Red Ryder might have done. He couldn’t think of anything Red Ryder ever said, so he went with what he did know: “‘From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver—the Lone Ranger rides again! Hiii-yo, Silver, away!’”

He gunned the handlebar throttle, released the brake, and disappeared on his Cushman Pacemaker down the path, accompanied by a small amount of dust and the sounds of putt-putt-putt.

He was also moving his mouth ever so slightly while whispering—not singing—the words to the fourth verse of “Sunflower.”