Staggerford (34 page)

“We didn’t,” said Miles. “You might say they brought us.”

“We’ve been sitting over there in the woods since ten thirty, waiting for the cops and the army to go home. Just drinking beer and waiting. Except Hank, he was drinking Pepsi. I’ll be damned if I’ll drive into a park that’s surrounded by the cops and the army.”

Bennie Bird nodded. So did Wayne.

Miles decided it was time they heard the bad news. “Jeff Norquist ran away,” he said.

The Indians did not look surprised. Bennie nodded.

Wayne said, “How would you folks like a tar road through Sandhill?” His voice was tight and high.

“How come the mayor stays in the car?” asked Bigmeadow.

Doc Oppegaard went over to the Mustang and brought back the mayor, as well as the sandwiches and the coffee.

“Nice to see you,” Mayor Druppers said to the Indians. “I’m glad to be here. Not the best of weather, but it’s always fair weather when good men get together. Right? You bet.” As the mayor gingerly shook hands with Bigmeadow and Bird and Green-hat, a chilly breeze sprang up and the pine tree they stood under sprinkled everyone with water.

“Have a beer,” said Bigmeadow.

“Don’t mind if I do. Yes, sir. You bet.” The mayor was bobbing up and down nervously like a boxer and causing Green-hat to chuckle.

The Indians were hungry. Bigmeadow and Bennie Bird and Green-hat ate two sandwiches apiece. Little Hank ate three. The Indians switched to coffee. Wayne and Miles had another beer. When little Hank reached for a fourth sandwich, all seven men, like uncles, tried to top each other’s funny remarks about his appetite—until Bennie Bird said, “He must have a hollow leg,” and all the others laughed and gave up. Who could be funnier than that?

To make sure they understood, Miles said once more, “Jeff Norquist ran away.”

Wayne interrupted. “I’ve been thinking, this park ought to be called Onji Park. I mean why should we call it Pike Park when Zebulon Pike was only here for part of one day in 1806, and all this land was Chief Onji’s land long before the white man showed up. If you want me to, I’ll see about having the name changed. I’ll call the governor.”

“We’ve searched every house in Staggerford,” said Miles. “We don’t know where he went.”

Wayne said, “How would you folks like a brand new Community Center in Sandhill?”

“So the Norquist kid is gone,” said Bigmeadow. “That doesn’t surprise us, does it, Bennie?”

Bennie Bird said no, it didn’t surprise him. Green-hat was greatly amused.

“Annie Bird took off night before last with Bennie’s car,” said Bigmeadow. “She hasn’t been seen since. We figure she and Norquist ran away together.”

Green-hat exploded with laughter. This was the punch line he had been waiting for, and the joke was on all of them, red man and white.

“Are you serious about the motorcycle?” asked Bennie.

“Yes, yes,” said Wayne.

“If you’re serious about that motorcycle, and if you fix Hank’s tooth, we’ll call it square,” said Bennie. He put his hand on little Hank’s shoulder and his weathered face broke into a slight but satisfied smile.

Little Hank’s smile was wide and full of bread.

Thus, their business ended, all that remained for them to do was to follow Doc Oppegaard down the path to the riverbank, where they stood in a row under the dripping willows—all eight of them, red man and white—and the Badbattle carried their piss away to Fargo, to Winnipeg, to Hudson Bay.

At two o’clock Miss McGee and Thanatopsis arrived at the Hub and sat at the table in the front window. When Beverly served their coffee, they asked her to sit down. She joined them with a bowl of stew. The last of the lunch-hour crowd, enlarged today by deer hunters, was thinning out and it was time for her to eat. She ate with her right hand and smoked with her left and said, with her mouth full, that when she was ten her mother shot a kettle salesman. In case these two women were undecided, she must convince them how badly she needed a new home—any home, even the Workmans’.

“We’ve heard the story,” said Miss McGee.

“We’re here to plan your future,” said Thanatopsis.

“My sister was engaged to Harlan Prentiss and it wasn’t long after her engagement was announced in the paper that
this kettle salesman turned up at the farm. He had pots and pans and knives.”

“You needn’t tell us,” said Miss McGee, cleaning the silver with her paper napkin. “Mr. Pruitt told us all about it.”

But she was determined not to spend one more night in the gulch. She told the entire story as she had told it yesterday in school: the salesman’s spiel, the bride’s duty to provide kitchenware, her mother’s threats from the front room, the sample frying pan in the salesman’s suitcase, the shot, her sister screaming and jumping off the porch, the body tipping backward down the porch steps, the sheriff-it was easier to tell today, the second time.

“You’ll come to live in town,” said Miss McGee.

“You’ll come to live with Mr. Workman and me said Thanatopsis. “Would you like that?”

Beverly nodded, wiping up the last of her stew with a biscuit.

It was nearly three when the Giant and his patrolmen crowded, famished, into the Hub and announced that the dreaded clash of races had been averted. The Indians had failed to show up in Pike Park.

“Miles will be here soon,” Miss McGee told Beverly. “He’s taking a hot bath.”

“Let’s not wait for him,” said Beverly. “Let’s go right out to my place and get my things.”

“You mean now, today?” said Thanatopsis. “What about your mother?”

“I’ll make up some story. She’ll be all right. The National Guard is gone and she’ll be settled down.”

“Well, if you think …”

Beverly ran to the kitchen for her tattered, buttonless jacket. The wave she had set in motion yesterday in English class was rolling high and fast. She was riding the crest.

“I’ll wait here for Miles,” Miss McGee told Thanatopsis. She went to the kitchen to chat with the cook, a sixth grader of 1940.

* * *

On the highway returning from Pike Park, Miles saw his Plymouth coming toward him. He saw it turn into the Bingham driveway. He turned in after it.

“What the hell are you doing?” said Wayne.

“What’s the idea?” said Bartholomew Druppers.

“That’s my Plymouth,” said Miles, “and that’s your wife driving it.”

The driveway into the gulch was deeply rutted by rain and trucks and jeeps. The farmyard was a sea of mud and dead chickens. It was surrounded by rusting cars and un-painted sheds leaning downhill. The Plymouth was empty, facing the front porch. Miles parked beside it.

“What a God-forsaken dump,” said Doc Oppegaard.

“In town we have laws against places like this,” said the mayor.

Wayne said, “I don’t know what we’re doing here, Pruitt, but whatever it is, get it over with fast and get us back to town.”

Miles said, “I don’t understand what Thanatopsis is doing here in my car.”

“Damn it, Pruitt, will you stop calling my wife that crazy name?”

Miles opened his door and got out of the car. The Bone-woman, insane with fear, and resting her rat gun on the sill of the upstairs window, took aim and fired a .22 bullet that entered his skull an inch above the left eye. She had vowed to herself as she watched the singing, chicken-killing soldiers drive away in their jeeps and trucks that she would murder the next man who set foot in her yard. Into the mud beside the yellow Mustang, Miles fell backward, dying.

“Holy Christ,” shouted Wayne. He saw the Bone-woman with the rifle in the upstairs window. He saw his wife and Beverly, at the sound of the shot, come out onto the front porch. “Holy Christ!” He clambered over the gear box between the bucket seats and backed the car away from the house, skidding in a circle. He shifted into low and spun his tires up the sloping yard and up the driveway and was back on the highway before the
two men in the back seat knew what happened. From where they sat, neither Doc nor the mayor had seen the upstairs window. They had assumed the shot they heard was a deer hunter’s. “What is it? What happened?” they said, but Wayne didn’t hear them. He tore into Staggerford and skidded to a stop at the Big Chief Motel where he expected to find the Giant.

The manager said the Giant was lunching at the Hub.

Wayne picked up the manager’s phone, dialed the operator, and told her to get the governor on the line. It took her a minute to learn that the governor was beyond reach today. He told her to call the sheriff in Berrington. It took her another minute to learn that the sheriff was not in Berrington. He was in Staggerford. Wayne told her to call the Hub. She put him through to the Hub. He asked for the Giant. He told the Giant that Pruitt had been shot in the Bonewoman’s barnyard. He hung up. He went back to the car and dropped off the bewildered dentist and mayor at their houses. He went home and took a pill. Two pills. Three. He phoned Superintendent Stevenson and told him what he hoped would be heart-stopping news. He put on his pajamas and got into bed and pulled the covers up to his eyes.

Beverly leaped off the porch and ran to Miles and dropped to her knees beside him in the mud. She thought there was movement in his face. She put her arms behind his head and shoulders and struggled to draw him up to a sitting position. But there was no life in him. She dropped him back into the mud. Then she stood up and gripped her hair with both hands and made a noise she herself had never heard before, a faint, high warble from the bottom of her soul, from somewhere further back than her birth—the anthem of the crushed spirit, the keen of the widow.

Thantopsis on the porch turned away. She put her forehead against a porch pillar for a moment, then she went into the house to find the Bonewoman. What she would have done had she found her she didn’t know. She might
have tried to reason with her. She might have tried to kill her. But the door leading upstairs was locked.

Over the gulch a sudden wind from the north blew a flock of snow geese off course, and they called out as they passed blindly through swift, ragged clouds.

Beverly, still clinging to her hair, ran into the woods behind the henhouse. Thanatopsis came outside and ran after her.

There were hiding in the woods several chickens that had not made a peep since the arrival of the National Guard—six or eight leghorns that grew curious now about the man lying in the mud, and as they approached the body they made soft, throaty sounds like the purring of cats.

Word went out from the Hub. The Giant, assuming the Indians were responsible, called the National Guard and ordered the six jeeps and four trucks to turn around. The waitress who had just come on duty called Nadine Oppegaard, then put her head through the serving window and told the cook and Miss McGee.

The National Guard, nearing Berrington, turned around and headed back to the farm. Nadine Oppegaard got into her father’s Lincoln, picked up Peter Gibbon, Roxie Booth, and Lee Fremling, and drove out to the gulch.

Miss McGee called Father Finn and told him that he must go to the farm and give Miles the Last Sacraments.

“He’s a Catholic?” said Father Finn, whose time in Staggerford did not go back very far.

“Of course he’s a Catholic. He was born and raised a Catholic, and he was at mass last Sunday. Pick me up at the Hub Cafe. Hurry, Father.”

Father Finn was slow. Miss McGee sat waiting for him in the front window. Interlaced between the fingers of her right hand was the crystal rosary given to her by the class of 1951. She clenched her fist so tightly as she waited that she snapped the rosary into several pieces.

It was twilight when Father Finn and Miss McGee arrived at the gulch and found themselves last in a line of vehicles stretching down the Bingham driveway. Miss
McGee couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. She was breathing in gulps. She got out of the car and told the priest to follow her. They walked along through the mud of the sloping driveway, passing the Oppegaard car, the sheriffs car, Dr. Maitland’s car, eleven highway patrol cars, four army trucks and six jeeps. All the vehicles were empty. The troopers and the army and everyone else were hiding in the woods, puzzling how they might capture the Bonewoman.

As Miss McGee and Father Finn walked out into the wide clearing that was the yard, a voice from behind a tree said, “Psst.”

They stopped.

The voice said, “Don’t go no farther.” An arm pointed from behind the tree toward the house. “The Bonewoman’s up there in the front window with a gun.”

Father Finn joined the voice behind the tree. The watery mud made sucking noises as Miss McGee walked forward into the yard. When she reached Miles’s body, she knelt in the mud. The hole above his left eye was tiny. It might have been a mole. With her thumb she made the sign of the cross on his lips.

She stood and lifted her face to the upstairs window and said in a strong voice that echoed through the woods, “Corinne Kaiser, you remember me. I am Miss McGee. In 1935 you were in my classroom for two weeks when the public school didn’t know what to do with you. When you left my classroom, you left school for good, do you remember, Corinne? Now I have come out here to see you. I wish to talk to you. I am coming into your house, Corinne, and I want you to come downstairs and meet me in the front room. When you were in my classroom, you always did what I asked, and you must do so now. You must come downstairs this minute and meet me in the front room.”

The Bonewoman drew back from the window.

“I am coming into your house, Corinne. I am going to meet you in the front room.”

Gulping for air, Miss McGee stepped up onto the porch
and went into the house. It was very dark in the front room. She groped along a wall. She stumbled over a stool and she knocked over a lamp. Standing still, she heard the creak of the stairs. She heard a door open. She could not see the door but she turned in the direction of the squeaking hinges. She put her hand out in front of her and felt a tube of steel. The Bonewoman was handing her the rat gun.

“My daughter did it,” the Bonewoman said in a thin, dull voice.

Miss McGee stood the gun against the wall and took the Bonewoman by the hand and led her out onto the porch. The yard light, which came on automatically at dusk, was flickering to life.