Past Imperfect (4 page)

When she spoke, her voice sounded tired and distant. “I just didn't think it would happen so soon.”

“You were expecting this?”

“No, no.” She waved her free hand impatiently. “I mean
us
, people our age. We just buried Nick's mother last fall. She was the last of our parents. It would have been nice to have a little breather before our own generation started dropping off.”

“Nels didn't exactly die of old age, Mia. It could have happened any time. When you think about it, it's probably surprising that it didn't happen sooner.”

Mia stared in the direction of two towering white pines that stood at the edge of the yard and twisted the braid more tightly. “I realize that, and I know that none of us is going to live forever. But if anybody could, I'd have put my money on Nels Bertelsen. He was just too ornery to die. I know he was allergic to bees. Cripes, he was so blasted picky about staying away from them that he could drive you nuts. Well,” she admitted, “he did get really sick from bee stings once. He hit a nest of yellow jackets with a mower, and was stung about a dozen times. He was in a coma for a couple days.”

“A dozen stings? From yellow jackets? Hornets?” Yet he'd survived.

Mia nodded. “How many stings did he get this time?”

“Only one, so far as I know,” McIntire told her, “and that was from an ordinary bee.” And minutes later he was dead. An allergic reaction would get worse with each exposure, but this was still remarkable. “When he was stung by the yellow jackets, how long did it take before he lost consciousness?”

“Why? What difference does it make?” Her fingers froze on the braid and the fogginess passed from her eyes.

“No difference, really.” McIntire searched for an answer. “I was just hoping that Nels didn't suffer too much.”

“Oh. I don't know how long he was conscious. He was alone. He managed to stay upright long enough to drive into Karvonens' store and get help. It was after that happened that he decided to lease the orchards to Wylie and take up fishing. I always thought it was just a convenient excuse to quit farming. I couldn't see that it would keep him away from bees anyway. Papa used to use dead fish to trap wasps.”

She turned to McIntire almost accusingly. “Who would have thought just one bee sting could actually
kill
him? How much poison can there be in one of those dinky little things, anyway?” She gave up persecuting the braid and leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “It seems so unfair. Anybody with the guts to survive being young should be guaranteed the right to grow old.” She gave him a limp smile. “How's Lucy taking it?”

McIntire was relieved to change the subject to more practical matters.

Once they were in the car, Mia's remoteness returned. She sat stiffly at his side, her hands gripping the edge of the seat as if she expected the modest Studebaker to suddenly rocket off over the treetops.

“Lucy might have already heard, you know,” she finally said. “She takes that hike into town every morning to pick up her mail, and once the ambulance showed up the news would be out.”

“I hadn't thought of that.” McIntire slowed down and swerved to avoid a snowshoe hare that bounded erratically ahead of the car before it disappeared into the bushes at the roadside. “Maybe we won't need to be the ones to tell her after all.”

She turned to him in amazement. “Are you actually saying that you prefer that Lucy hears about this through gossip, or maybe sees them packing the body into the ambulance?” She shook her head. “What is it about Lucille Delaney that seems to strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest men?”

“Besides the fact that she's a witch, you mean?”

Mia's whoop of laughter momentarily dissolved the years and transported McIntire back to earlier spring mornings when this road was only a wagon track winding between stump-strewn fields and their travels down it together had been on foot.

“I've heard plenty of Lucy stories,” Mia said, “but witchcraft is news to me. Well, you're a man of the world. I guess you would know.”

McIntire assumed his most superior tone. “Are you actually so gullible that you think it was mere coincidence that Elsie Karvonen slipped and broke her ankle at her own birthday party, to which, incidentally, Lucy had not been invited? And what about the time that Otto Wilke put his car in the ditch right after he passed Lucy on the road without offering her a ride? ‘If you treat people badly, bad things happen to you,' that's what Lucy told Leonie. Naturally she denied wishing Elsie and Otto any bad luck, she said that's just the way things work out. ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.' Of course Lucy didn't use those exact words. I don't suppose witches go around quoting from the Bible.”

“Kind of makes you wonder,” Mia remarked, “what poor old Nels did to get that bee sicced on him.”

“What could possibly be worse than providing bed and board to a witch?”

Mia's laughter this time was cut short. “Lord, will you just listen to us? No wonder people used to find us so aggravating. Nels probably isn't even cold yet and already we're making jokes about it.”

They traveled the rest of the way in silence.

Until this morning, McIntire had not really thought about just how much Nels' allergic condition might have affected his daily life, but now he saw the Bertelsen home from a new perspective. The house was set back from the road, a narrow, tidy building covered with the ubiquitous asphalt “brick siding.” No trees shaded its green-shingled roof; no shrubs or flowering plants obscured its stone foundation. The closely-trimmed lawn that spread out around it was interrupted only by a border of evenly spaced spruce stumps along the north side. Several outbuildings occupied the clearing: a garage which dwarfed the residence, a diminutive white painted structure that McIntire remembered as the “summer kitchen,” and the long, low greenhouse and with its attached fruit-packing shed. This cluster of buildings, along with various implements of modern husbandry, of which McIntire was able to identify
tractor
and
wagon
, was enclosed by a low white board fence.

On the other side of the fence, contrasting exuberantly with the bleak homestead, lay the orchards. Hundreds of trees were now in full bloom. Billowing clouds of pink and white sprawled over the hillside and out of sight. The air was filled with their perfume and with the twittering of cedar waxwings as they fluttered from tree to tree in an avian feeding frenzy. A half dozen ewes, looking diminished and vulnerable as a consequence of being freshly denuded of their winter wool, lay under one of the nearer trees, placidly chewing, while their lambs formed a line to take turns trotting up the slanted bed of a two-wheeled cart to leap with abandon off the higher end.

Into this scene of bucolic tranquility suddenly strode Lucy Delaney. Her squat body advanced down the slope with a wobbling gait which, combined with the red and blue stripes of her skirt, gave the effect of a child's top teetering in its rotation just before it comes to a complete stop. Her hair, black and wiry, flared out above her ears like the cap of a mushroom. Sagging beige-colored stockings covered her legs, and on her feet were sturdy men's boots.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory!” McIntire said under his breath. “She looks like a stump all got up for the Fourth of July.”

“Careful!” Mia warned. “You don't want to spend the rest of your life squatting on a lily pad munching flies.”

If Lucy felt any surprise at seeing her two visitors, she gave no indication of it, but greeted them heartily, ushered them with dispatch into her kitchen and strapped on a yellow-flowered apron. She had gotten down the cookie jar and filled the coffee pot with water before McIntire was able to break into her stream of pleasantries. On hearing his news, she stood staring from his face to Mia's for a full minute before she seemed to crumple like the stuffing was being sucked out of her robust body. She dropped into the nearest chair, put her face in her apron, and commenced sobbing, her body shaking with violent spasms.

Mia took over the brewing of the coffee and, after giving Lucy's shoulder an awkward pat, McIntire moved to the window. The lambs had given up their attempts at flying and were expending no less energy in nudging their mothers to their feet to provide a mid-morning meal. As he stood watching, a sudden breeze stirred the trees, creating a shower of petals that swirled like mammoth snowflakes to the ground.

When the sobs had subsided to an occasional hiccup, McIntire turned back to Lucy. Her broad face with its florid complexion was little altered by the extended bout of tears, but her usually strident voice had fallen to barely more than a croak.

“He was always so careful, especially when the trees are blooming. He never went anywhere without his medicine. Why didn't it work? Why were there bees on the boat, anyway?” She looked up at McIntire. “What can I do now? Will I have to find somewhere else to live?”

McIntire had no answer for any of this, and after his feeble attempts at consolation were waved away by Mia, he left the two women and went home to write out a report for the town board.

IV

When McIntire arrived for the funeral the church was already overflowing. A steamy heat rose from the jammed-in bodies, filling the space with a claustrophobic incense, a palpable offering of the community on behalf of its fallen brother. Leonie had spent the morning putting together the week's edition of what she bravely called her newspaper, and had agreed to meet him here. He searched the crowd for her best navy blue hat, praying that she, too, had been late and was seated near the back. Such unworthy supplications were not likely to be acknowledged; he ultimately spotted her waving genteelly to him from the third row. He squeezed in beside her and winced as the St. Adele Zion Lutheran Church choir raised its collective voice in
Children of the Heavenly Father
. It was a sound calculated to speed anyone a wee bit faster on the road to eternity, McIntire reflected.

He used the advantage of his height to quickly and unobtrusively survey the crowd. Although he presumed that most of the mourners were local residents, there was an astonishing number he knew only by sight and some he did not recognize at all, such as the elderly couple seated next to Lucy Delaney in the front pew. As far as he knew, Nels Bertelsen had no living family. Maybe these were friends or relatives of Lucy's. He craned his neck to get a better look, thinking to glean some clue to her arcane background. His optimism was short-lived; Leonie, following his gaze, murmured that the pair were a Mr. and Mrs. Paulson.

“So how do they fit in?” McIntire bent low and whispered back.

“Mr. Paulson was Captain Paulson in the Great War. He was Mr. Bertelsen's commanding officer, and he was the one that saw to it that Mr. Bertelsen was decorated, that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.”

Neither Paulson's hearing nor his appreciation of an attractive woman seemed to have dimmed much with the passage of time. At the mention of his name he turned and, upon spying Leonie, grinned widely, exposing a substantial set of sulphur-hued dentures. Leonie smiled in return and waggled her fingers.

“I interviewed the captain this morning,” she said. “I'm including the complete story in the obituary.”

That could make for interesting reading. Nels himself had been reticent when it came to discussing the incident, and the details were not universally known.

“So what is the whole story?” he asked.

“Well,” Leonie whispered, “in a battle near Teirny-Sorny in September of 1918, Nels made no less than eight trips through open country under heavy fire to carry messages between the front lines and his battalion headquarters. He was decorated for his courage, sense of duty, and coolness under fire.”

“And there he lies in a box, brought down by a bee.”

He hadn't spoke as quietly as he'd intended. An assortment of heads swivelled in his direction, including, at the far end of the pew, that of a shrunken, silver-haired woman.

Even after all the time that had passed, McIntire recognized her immediately. Laurie Post, St. Adele's pre-Lucy scarlet woman. It was difficult to imagine that this wisp of a human being, her body straight-backed but diminished to the size of a child, had ever provoked in her neighbors the kind of animosity that McIntire knew she'd endured. Laurie had radiated strength and vitality when she first entered the community—and the Bertelsen home—all those years ago, as a private duty nurse come to care for Nels' ailing mother, Christina.

Mrs. Bertelsen had eventually succumbed to her illness and Mr. Bertelsen, apparently, to the charms of Laurie herself. She had stayed on for some twenty years, seemingly impervious to the comments of some of her less broad-minded neighbors. Sophie McIntire, in her lengthy letters to her son, had described the cruelties Laurie tolerated without complaint, and how, at the death of the senior Bertelsen, she had fed the mourners, given the house a thorough cleaning, packed the single bag she had brought with her two decades earlier, and left. Now an old woman, she sat with her hands resting in her lap, her fixed look never shifting to left or right, bloody, but unbowed.

Living without benefit of clergy must run in the family, but looking at the heaving of Lucy's black-cloaked shoulders as she snuffled into her handkerchief, McIntire couldn't help thinking that the father had made a better job of it. He chuckled softly to himself and received Leonie's elbow ever so slightly in his ribs.

As the service drew to a close and the pall bearers approached the flag draped casket, McIntire was once again reminded of his status as an outsider.

“Who are they?” Leonie asked.

“Who?”

“The casket bearers. What are their names?”

McIntire was forced to admit that of the six men who were honored by being selected to escort Bertelsen on his final earthly journey, McIntire could name only four. The three generations of Lindstroms were there, hair slicked back and faces flushed above starched white collars, flanked by two others whom McIntire couldn't remember having seen before.

The sixth he had grown up with, Wylie Petworth, the neighbor who had taken over the management of the apple business from Nels. Wylie's empty left sleeve testified that Nels' courage under fire—literally—hadn't begun with World War I. A blaze started by an exploding kerosene heater had long ago cost Wylie his arm, but, thanks to quick action by Nels Bertelsen, not his life.

Today Wylie's black double-breasted suit camouflaged the underdeveloped shoulder and minimized his usual slightly off-balance appearance. He grasped the folded American flag and ceremoniously presented it to Lucy.

Pastor Ahlgren spoke the final goodbye in the language of Bertelsen's fathers, “
vi lyser fred over ditt minne
, Nels Bertelsen,” and the casket was moved out of the church to the waiting hearse.

McIntire extended his arm to Leonie and joined the sluggish procession toward the open doors. He heard a muffled “Good afternoon,” and looked down to see what appeared to be an oversized tuft of cotton bobbing around the vicinity of his left elbow. It was the snowy locks of Laurie Post.

“So Johnny's come marching home, at last. You were just a squirt when you left, but I'd have recognized you anywhere. I don't suppose you know who I am?”

McIntire assured her that he did, indeed, remember her, and proceeded to introduce his wife. “Miss Post took care of Nels after he lost both his sister and his mother,” he explained to Leonie. “Nels was almost a grown man by then, but he'd have been helpless without her.”

Laurie smiled and patted his arm. “Thank you for saying so, John. Not everyone felt that way.”

“You were always my favorite adult,” he added, “because up until today, you were the only one that
didn't
call me Johnny.”

Laurie tittered politely, and after extracting a promise that McIntire give her regards to his mother and come to visit her at her house in Painesdale so that she might hear all about his life in Europe, she made a swift dash for the side exit.

Small groups were clustered in the back of the church and on the steps and grass outside, having the customary discussions concerning transportation to the cemetery and back to the town hall for the luncheon. As the McIntires were carried by the tide out onto the lawn, they were approached by Dr. Guibard, natty in kid gloves and bow tie, his generously oiled hair gleaming in the sunlight. He greeted them cordially, holding Leonie's hand and remarking on the beauty of her English complexion.

“Lovely day for a funeral,” he went on, “as long as it's not our own, eh? Ah, before you know it I won't have any patients left. Then I suppose it'll be time for me to shuffle off, too. By the way, John, I found your culprit. Too bad he's already dead; you could give him the chair. Left his stinger right in the poor man's armpit.” He produced a small match box from his pocket and extended it to McIntire with a flourish. “Just for old times sake.”

McIntire opened the box to disclose a bedraggled looking bee resting on a bed of gauze. He smiled at the doctor. “I'm afraid I already performed this particular execution, Mark. How'd you end up with it?”

“It was in Nels' shirt. The one you so thoughtfully put under his head. Not that it made any difference to him. He must have left the shirt on the boat or in the fishhouse, and the bee got into it. I suppose it was in the shirt when he put it on. What are the odds of that?” He shook his head.

McIntire experienced a moment of confusion. If this bee was entangled in the shirt under Nels' head, then it was not the same one he had discovered trapped in the clothing that hung on the wall. He settled his glasses higher up on his nose and inspected the insect more closely. It was a honey bee, about half the size of the one that he had slain, but so like it in appearance that it might have been its baby sister—and probably was.

“What are the odds of two of them finding their way into Nels' clothing without a little help?” he responded. “And coincidentally, just at the time his adrenaline decides not to work? Doctor,” he said, lowering his voice, “you just might want to catch that hearse!”