Just North of Nowhere (33 page)

“Was a girl?”

The sheriff shook his head and chuckled. “Yeah. Nothing to do. So he gives her to the undertaker. And the undertaker and his Mrs., they raise her as their own. They never tell the girl about her mom, about her birth, yet she grows up and goes a little crazy all on her own. About 1920 something she has a little girl out of wedlock and hangs herself in her garters. The undertaker and his woman take the grandkid and raise her until they get too old. Then she goes to the county home where she...” The sheriff thought about it. “...until she gets herself knocked up. She tried to hide it and died giving birth to her daughter. It was a mess. I was just a...” and the sheriff showed with his hand how high he’d been, “when it all happened and I remember it was a mess.”

The sheriff squinted over the table at his boy.

Vinnie squinted back.

“Now, you know where this here is going, huh?” Sheriff said.

Vinnie felt an idea bouncing his head around, but damned if he could figure how it played. He growled tentatively at the old man, squinting harder than ever. “That girl, the Friedlander girl? She's the great, great, grandsomething...something like that...of Carrie Guttekuenst?”

The old man nodded. “They're boy crazy. All them women. What I've heard, every one of them women goes crazy with boys when it's their time; they get themselves knocked up, have a girl child and die. Damn them.”

“So it all ends here, huh?” Vinnie said.

Sheriff stopped in mid-drink.

“Sally Friedlander's the last of them. Wasn't pregnant. Wasn't a mom. She just got herself killed over sex. Or no sex.”

Sheriff Daddy looked roundmouthed at his boy. “Yep,” he said after a minute.

“And you think about this: She took the last of the Dengler's with her.”

“Huh,” it was the sheriff's turn to squint.

“I mean, there she was, a wild and crazy one. She gets herself a big reputation, goes out with Junior Cowl, known to be a hothead pudknocker, gets him hot then says, ‘no!’”

The Sheriff was growling, now. “Naw, naw, nawrr,” he was saying. “That's crazy. Crazy.”

“She says no to the last Dengler – the only one looks like he's going to amount to a hill of shit, by the way, him going off to school and all – and...” He snapped his fingers, “And that's that.”

“Christ,” the old man said after a full minute and a half. “Christ. Jesus.

Vinnie felt like he glowed; drunk on his old man's vodka, having just put together all the facts of a case – an odd case, but a case nonetheless. He was busting his buttons. “Yep, her great, great whatsit makes a murderer out of the great, great whatever of the man who made her a killer.” Vinnie smiled. “That's justice. Revenge anyhow. Cutting off the last of the Dengler line!”

“Aw, son. Son! Vinnie, goddamn it,” the Sheriff said, “Cowl Junior isn't exactly the last. Denglers is a big family. They’re here and everywhere. Hell, son, you got some Dengler in you through your mom's side.” He took another slug. “My side too, come to think...” Another moth whacked the screen and flopped on the porch. “Hell, son,” the sheriff daddy said, “Revenge ain't that simple. Real revenge just keeps going.”

Vinnie took another drink. He wondered what was going on tonight around town, what Big Cowl was thinking, alone in that house, he wondered what was going on up Eastside Hill where everyone was laying too close together. Vinnie figured there'd be a lot to talk about. Damn!

...then it got quiet.

Before, had been a rush of pain. The pain was called sound. With the sound, came something that in a critter more formed, more completely
in
the world, would have been a big hurt. This critter, though, had just been born so in a moment, the something that would have been full-out agony went away and cool air bathed it. Darkness was all around and the critter saw through the darkness. Moving things screamed in the dark. Moving colors. The colors screamed. One color, the critter loved. That color had just touched it. It had touched it and then the critter had felt the simple pain of sound. The other color didn't matter. The critter knew that it loved the one because it yearned to embrace it, take it in, make it safe.

The critter didn't know how to do that yet.

The two sets of screaming colors splashed, cracked and crashed. Then they were gone. Then a couple roaring, spinning, spattering noises gargled the night air. The noises got smaller and smaller, then the air was quiet and for the first time in its new life an easy stillness surrounded the critter.

The critter let night-sound enfold it.
Night.
The name of the darkness. A bubbling hiss ran under the silence. The wet hiss was
river
. River was behind. Sometime soon, the critter thought it would turn and assess river.

Other small sounds seeped through to it, sounds connected to the cool earth. The place the critter stood:
Earth
. Small hard chatters reached up from beneath earth, from nearby, from all around, breathy hoots and snuffles rippled from the dark whispering things called
trees
a little ways away. From above, the critter heard a long drawn swoop. That was air flowing over...over soft things...feathers and bones...
wings
they were...a howl of air swept over dark wings that arrowed down from the black and speckled night and a sharp shriek ended the wing’s rush.

The critter felt the scream inside itself as the wings rowed long lazy strokes against the night and swam into the high dark branches to feed. The critter tasted the sound and what lay under it.

What lay under it was blood, muscle, fur, bone and it felt good, that scream, and the critter grew full from it, from the center out. Good to be full. Ah. When the wings fed, they could fly. Life was simple. The critter thought to flap its wings. Didn't have wings. It had sticks and something else the sticks were becoming: maybe wings, maybe not. It didn't matter. It would know itself soon.

Then the critter stood dead, watching the dark, the night. That one set of colors that had run screaming away: that one would be back. It would have to. It would have to because the critter loved it, so.

A river mile from Bluffton, beyond the bridge and Engine Warm, is a narrow strip of nasty land: the Kiddorf Banks. Flopped like a dead dog, the Banks lie between County H and the river. It is mud and trash and hollow, rotted trees. Breathe there, certain times of year, the stink stays in the head for a week. Those times are when the long rains or thawed snows infect the Rolling River, bloat it to a moody, wiggling thing for a month or so. That happens and all manner of stuff gets flushed from places up deep in the Driftless. Then, the Kiddorf Banks fill: dead fish, sure sure, but turtles, snakes, birds, other critters, too, parts of wolves, coyote, cats, deer, and bear, maybe, maybe other things, floppy dead things, end there in the mud, cow eyes and lamb’s guts, babies that never got fully made or old folks buried too shallow to stay down in flood time.

And stuff – stuff it's hard to imagine anyone ever needing: old machines and furniture, boxes and carts and steamer trunks of stuff, cans and barrels, old trophies, circus tents and tools to do things that nobody’s done in a century, chunks of stuff that must have been important to someone, some one time or another long, long ago; strange knots of vegetation trailing impossible roots, stems looking like they died in agony past measure, chains and ropes tied to parts of houses, trailing bits of drowned clothing, hanging to limbs and corpses, it all tumbles along the river, certain times of year.

Here it comes from up a ways; it rams, catches the lip of the dam, hangs a second – just to let you see – then rolls over and scoots through town. It might stand upright for a second where the river goes deep and fast in the narrows behind the Wagon Wheel, but then it flows under and is gone.

Down by the stock yards, the river sucks a little blood, takes on some piss, some clots of shit, and gathers a commanding stink, then off it goes again.

At Engine Warm the Rolling River turns a corner then goes wide. At Papoose Creek the current drops to next to nothing and all that traveling stuff leeches onto the banks and flops. The banks there have a bootsucking chunky ooze, both sides: the Kiddorf Banks.

Sometimes the ground at the Banks bubbles on its own, half dead, half alive. Maybe that’s not true, but except for Bunch, no one goes barefoot along those Banks.

The Kiddorf family owned the strip going back to the last century. The only Jews in town, the Kiddorfs. People who mind such things, say the family made a fortune, pulling stuff from their stinking Banks. “Them Jews,” those people would say shaking their heads.

Feeling was, the Kiddorfs just gathered stuff and sold it back upriver.

“Uf-dah! Imagine selling stuff to poor folks who lost it firstwise!”

“Them Jews,” some said, a little chuckle gathering in their throats.

Or they said, “Them Jews kept that all that crap 'til it got valuable again then sold it dear downstream where people are rich. Imagine?”

“Inland beachcombers,” someone called the Kiddorfs. “Smart Jews,” most said.

In the 1920s, Soam Kiddorf stuck an outdoor movie picture place at the wide spot on the Banks. He built a little levy to keep the worst of the floods from swamping the place in shit, junk and dead things. He built a big wooden screen he painted white every couple years, set out some benches on the grass that never did come in right. He built a little shack to sell candy and ice cream cups. That was it.

Folks walked hand-in-hand from town or bicycled side-by-side. One or two drove. They paid their nickel, sat butt to butt on the benches under the stars and watched the screen flicker with Hollywood stars and mayflies till daybreak. Trees all around, the river hushed the night. Nights like that, even the high water stink went pretty.

Late 1930s, Soam burned the benches. He covered the place in asphalt and painted lines for cars to park, noses pointed at the screen. Folks liked that; felt up-to-date. A family drove in, parked, watched and if they didn't have to go pee or have themselves some candy or a cool drink, they never left the comfort of their vehicle from home curb to back again.

Here’s a funny thing: Coming or leaving, when folks left their headlamps on and whited out the moving picture for a few seconds, people got hot. They hooted and honked and made such a fuss, even those who didn't much mind a quick smear of light playing across the screen would get pissy over the racket everyone else was making and start yelling their own damn selves.

Soam Kiddorf hated that.

His son, Abe, a poet and student of human nature, hung a sign at the entrance: “Look On the Screen! Such Magical Sights. But Please Remember your Neighbors and Turn Off Them Gol Durned Lights!”

Worked. People chuckled, when they handed young Abe their ten-cent admission, he was a better business guy than a poet. But they remembered that silly verse. And when folks forgot and turned on their lights during the cartoon or shorts or when flailing arms or knees accidentally hit the switch during the feature, the crowd shouted: “Remember the Magic!” Or “The Gol Durned Lights!” Everyone laughed, the lights went out and everyone was happy.

“Remember the Magic!” Where had that come from?

Kiddorf’s Magic Light Drive-In—that was the name of the place – was a seasonal business. Every year when the leaves got red and spun into little whirlwinds at the corners of the lot, when the nights went crisp and a whiff of log smoke and burning leaf sifted down the air, Soam and Abe closed the drive-in’s big car gate for the year. On the marquee Abe Kiddorf spelled out: “Closed For The Season. Reason? Freezin!”

Folks chuckled all winter whenever they drove past the empty place and saw that.

By 1960-something people pretty much didn’t come. TV. The Kiddorf closed one fall and that was that. Sign still says: Close For The son. Rea ? Free in’!

By then, there were only three Kiddorfs. Abe, the old man by then, his wife, Ruth, and their baby boy, Danny.

Bunch stood ankle-deep in cool night mist. Across the road, the big door in the shaggy cedar fence was open. He could see in. The drive-in screen, sagged, leaned hard toward the trees.
It'll fall flat down
, Bunch reckoned,
pretty soon and good riddance, too.
Forget that, though. Something was in there. In there now. Something was standing still in the dark. Bunch couldn't see it, but he felt it. Damned thing was making his guts go squirmy. Bunch had smart guts, you betcha.

Bunch also didn't like cars screaming the roads, late night. Pretty soon somebody goes smash on a deer or some other critter, and boom – like that – there'd be a catterwhompus: a red-wet road mess, Vinnie Erickson, out on the blacktop, flares and bull horn, a bossy pain in everyone's ass till dawn! No sir, Bunch did not like crazy drivers. They made him want to start in talking and talking and talking.

He'd been sound to sleep. A misty rain had swept the valley earlier. It was a night just to lie there under his bridge. The rain was done now and Bunch was half awake, half not. The river ran, talking to itself. Maybe Bunch was half-way thinking Cristobel Chiaravino, long black hair drippy wet from her shoulders, that white streak...

That was one minute.

The next, he was tingling, not from Cristobel’s rain-wet hair, no. A set of voices was whispering up the water from the Banks, from the old moving picture place. A couple of slashlight beams wiggled around the sky. Guys laughing, singing; guys who didn't know about being out after dark. After a bit, there was quiet. Then, out of the quiet, a dark stillness rose. Worse than whispers, the silence made Bunch go all ready. A minute later, a sudden explosion of shouts and hollers comes rattling upstream. Then more, screams and crashing bushes, cracking branches. Flashlight beams panic-slashed the sky.

Bunch shot out of his bag and waded into the river. The cold stream woke his ankles and privates and he stared down the dark. From down there, two car engines burst to life.

That was that. He padded ashore, climbed the slippery bank to the road. His toes clenched the asphalt when the two vehicles that had roared to life moments before came screaming at him, machine panic, running down the night.

Bunch dove for life into the bush.

Stinking steel and smoky tires burned road past his nose. Spalls sprayed over him as the two cars gripped the curve and were gone, chattering red light and booming hollow metal, sparks dragging along the blacktop toward town.

By the time Bunch pulled himself back onto County H, everything for miles around was just too damn still.

Bunch stood like a jerk and gave a good dirty look at the place those two idiots weren't anymore. By now, he reckoned, they were in town or through it.

Fuss over.

Maybe.

Nope. Not quite. Something hung in the air. Something didn't make a noise, didn't shake branches or go flashing lights. That something was down where the cars had been, an empty place Bunch couldn't figure. He didn't know for a truthful fact, but he'd bet them two crazy driver's had left this...this something...behind, something for someone else to reckon with.

For Bunch to reckon with. He couldn't see it, but it was tickling his hairs, this something down by the old drive-in.

Now, Bunch was used to weird. He didn't scare like folk, certainly not like the terrorists who got jitters every time the wind whistled off the bluffs or when a tree wiggled in the night or some critter made a noise around a bend in the trail.

Still, Bunch hated the drive-in. Day or night, he went a little gut-goofy passing it. Maybe it was all those faces had flickered across that big white board all those years. Maybe it was the noises had come from there. Maybe it was the people who'd sat and stared at that place in the night, all the attention paid that one white hole in the night, all the passion spent on the flickers that crossed it.

Since the show closed, the screen had drooped more every year. Last year a couple panels had warped right off, dangling. Now the whole thing looked near ready to go.

From under his bridge the screen was just an eyesore over his shoulder, days and dreaming memories, nights. Every now and then, he'd wake at three, four in the silence and there it would be, a memory of when the pictures had been in season. Images danced behind him in the dark. Grabbed his jewels, that memory. Bloody corpses, chain saws slashing. Those things could be. That stuff he'd seen out in the world.

Bunch padded barefoot the hundred yards down the night-cold asphalt toward where the screaming fuss had been and that new stillness now stood. Around the corner, the screen rose out of the trees.

A night of hard stars: tiny ones, big ones, all kinds and colors, fuzzy stretches where they crowded, close as a puff of winter breath. The whole thing turned, locked together, rolling slow against the dark. Starlight glazed the road. The road already ran white with mist that had crawled up from the river. It flowed like a sister to the Rolling.