The Fall of Alice K. (16 page)

The sheriff 's manner was more refined and his speech more acceptable to Alice's ears, but then there was the deputy: “With all them thar aliens now-days, ya cain't tell what's soybean and what's a milkweed.”

“They do stick together like weeds,” said Sheriff Bloemsma. “They stick together and multiply until you've got a whole patch of them.”

“You wouldn' believe the stink of them meth labs,” said the deputy. “Man, oh man, I tell you!”

Of course, he didn't tell her. Thank goodness.

These criminals were loyal to each other, the sheriff said, because they didn't dare not to be. The sheriff figured the attack on Nickson was a mistake. The thugs probably mistook him for a bad Mexican who was moving in on the turf of their bosses.

“They's got themselves their own rule book,” said the deputy, “an it ain't the Bible.”

“What we're saying,” said the sheriff, “is that you better be real careful. You better call us right away if something don't look right. If some strangers are following or watching you or one of them Vangs. We can't guess what those three are telling their friends.”

“Wouldn' want to neither, tell you that,” said the deputy.

Alice thought of the car that seemed to follow her after the Perfect Pizza scene. Was she now a marked person? Was her whole farm in danger? Could they hurt Aldah?

No sooner had the sheriff and his deputy left when Alice countered her fears with the proposition that she had just listened to some small-town cops who needed to imagine big-time criminals to make their lives more exciting and to make themselves feel more important. Big crime in Dutch Center? At least a third of the residents were retired farmers with their wives, and most of the town was peacefully asleep by nine o'clock. Sheriff Bloemsma and his deputy had been watching too many episodes of
Cops
and were concocting a dangerous world that couldn't exist anyplace but between their ears. Not in Dutch Center with its culture of peonies and doilies, not here in macramé and bake-sale heaven.

There had to be worse things to worry about than a few losers who probably wouldn't dare show their faces again anyhow. Most folks were worried about the economy, what with farm sales and foreclosures all over Groningen County—and especially last year when hog and cattle prices dropped through the cellar and put dozens of farmers out of business. With few exceptions, they were putting their hope in the election
of George W. Bush because, they believed, he would be a defender of individual liberty. And he was a Christian.

At school Nickson favored his scraped-up right arm, holding it at an angle as if he had it in an invisible sling. In his other arm, he carried his books. Whatever Lia had done for his swollen eye had worked. Except for a dark ring on the lower eyelid, it looked normal. He had been working on the debate topic and had talked to the coach who told him that if Alice wanted him as a debate partner, it was fine with him.

“That's it, then,” said Alice. “You're my debate partner.” They shook on it, and Alice's long fingers enveloped his whole hand. Just the touch of his hand had a warm and strange feeling to it, as if she had just extended her life into an unexplored world.

Nothing that the police had said changed how Alice thought of the Vangs. They fascinated her for reasons she did not try to understand. She tried to question her desire to know all of them better and wondered if they had to put up with this kind of attraction all the time from white people, a friendliness that was really no more than curiosity. Curiosity that probably harbored suspicion and disrespect. She worried that they might see her as the stereotypical white person whose interest wasn't that different from their interest in animals in the zoo. She rejected her own suspicions of herself: her desire to help Nickson at Midwest could not be bad. It could not be suspect. It simply couldn't be. It was such a pure urge and filled her chest with a joy she could only think of as Christian: “Let us love one another.”

She asked Miss Den Harmsel if they could use her room during the noon hour to work on debate. Miss Den Harmsel not only agreed but had a table cleared for them where they could lay out their materials.

Nickson looked uncomfortable, sitting across from her, his hands clasped on the table. When his eyes met hers, she sensed that his discomfort was not about seeing her.

“The sheriff talked to you, didn't he?”

“Oh yeah. And that deputy. He's a trip.” Now Nickson was smiling.

The sheriff and his deputy's visit with the Vangs had been quite different from their visit with Alice.

“They thought I was dealing,” said Nickson. “They thought I got beat up for not delivering.”

“You're kidding,” said Alice. “They told me they were worried about what might happen to you if those three wanted revenge—or if their friends would take revenge on you for them.”

“Sounded more like they were worried about what I would do, not what somebody else might do to me. They didn't like me much.”

“And Mai was right there?”

“Oh yeah. They had some questions for her too, like why would she come all the way over here to go to college. Mai let them have it on that one.”

“I can't believe they talked to you like that. Get beat up and then get accused?”

“Don't worry,” said Nickson. “We're used to that sort of thing. It wasn't so bad in Saint Paul anymore. Too many of us and they can't get away with it anymore. And a lot of the Hmong up there are lawyers! Well, over a dozen at last count.”

“Your mother heard the way they were talking to you?”

“We didn't translate any of it for Mom, but she understands more than she lets on. She gets almost everything. She just doesn't like to talk.”

Nickson knew more than Alice did about the three thugs. They were high school dropouts from a town just outside Gronigen County, not far from Sioux City, which had its own history of crime and once had the distinction as the one city in the United States that had more people on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list than any other city in the nation: two! The three small-time thugs had never been arrested for anything worse than stealing car parts from a junkyard, but they were already working as a brainless unit. When the sheriff had finished questioning Nickson, he warned him that these three were connected to bigger trouble and more dangerous people.

“I think they thought I was mixed up with these guys,” said Nickson, “and they were warning me to stay away from them if I knew what was good for me. I think they thought they were warning a small-time criminal—me—against big-time criminals.”

Nickson said that the whole ordeal hadn't frightened any of his family—especially not his mother—but that she'd move them all back to Saint Paul if necessary.

“Mom's not afraid of trouble and she'll stand up to anything if she
has to,” said Nickson. “But she'll try to step out of the way if she sees trouble coming. Sort of a Hmong thing.”

“And you and Mai? Does all this talk scare you?”

“I'll be ready next time,” he said, “and if they ever lay a hand on Mai I'll call family in Saint Paul to come down here. We know how to defend ourselves, and we would.”

Nickson's tough talk made Alice uneasy. She couldn't even imagine thinking about personal retaliation and revenge, but Nickson's people had known death and bloodshed beyond Alice's small range of experience, and what she really heard Nickson saying was how important family was to him and that he loved his sister. She'd known this in theory before, but now it was real. What he was really saying was that he would look out for Mai the way Mai looked out for him. At that moment, Alice realized she would do the same for Aldah.

Nickson handed Alice an article on school vouchers.

“Personally, I don't think school vouchers are a good idea,” he said.

“But that's beside the point,” said Alice.

“You got it,” he said. “This is debate.”

They read and took notes for a half hour, shuffling articles to each other and highlighting main points. He had the discipline to get ready for debate. How he would perform in an actual debate was another question. But that was not what mattered. What mattered was that she was helping him.

“Should we get together tonight to work on this some more?” Alice asked.

“At my house?”

“At your house,” she said. “Any particular time?”

“Any time.”

While he was finishing the last article, she watched him. He didn't read as fast as she did, but that didn't matter so long as he understood what he read. And he did. When he finished and looked up, Alice was struck again by the mild intensity of his eyes. She noticed his lips again too. Their color was different from the lips of other boys at Midwest, a deep but subtle purple. His lips were the color of a steer's nose but had the curving edge of an iris. She always noticed little things, whether a
painting hanging in someone's room or the length of someone's fingernails. An eye for detail. So noticing Nickson's lips was not such a strange thing for her. What was strange was that she couldn't keep from rubbing her own lips together when she looked at his. There was something so different about him—and so wonderful.

17

Alice came home that afternoon to a house that looked ransacked—papers strewn around the kitchen, dirt on the floor, dishes on the table, unfolded clothes stacked on chairs—but nobody was there. A messy silence. The groaning refrigerator and humming electric clock were discussing the situation.

Her father had left a note on the kitchen table: “We had to take Aldah to the doctor. Nothing serious. Hogs are fed. Do your regular chores. Check silage mounds. Mother has hotdish in oven. We'll be home for supper. Dad.”

Alice knew Aldah's little acts. She probably wanted attention and faked an earache. Stomachaches worked too. Aldah didn't try her attention-getters on Alice, but why did she need more attention now that she had a boyfriend?

Instead of hurrying out to do her chores, Alice decided to check her parents' bedroom. On Saturdays, Alice cleaned the house—except for their bedroom, which her mother would never let her clean. For some reason, she wanted their bedroom to be her space and no one else's. Before going into their bedroom, Alice tidied things up in the kitchen. This way, if she got caught in their bedroom, she could say that the house was such a mess that she couldn't stop herself from cleaning their bedroom too. She cleared off the kitchen counter and folded some towels. Then she headed for her parents' bedroom. If her father's basement office was his little chamber of secrets, her parents' bedroom was her mother's. Alice knew how deceptive her mother could be about almost everything, including information about the farm's money problems. Going into their bedroom felt like an investigation in pursuit of the truth. She checked her mother's big box of greeting cards. She put her hand in every pocket
of the dresses and coats and sorted through the makeup drawer. This was promising. There was more than makeup here; there were assorted medications. Aspirin and Motrin, of course. She had allergy medicine for her allergies—but Alice expected these. Then she picked up a surprise, a dark prescription bottle: Valium. Ten milligram Valium.

As she started to put everything away, she noticed a rectangular bulge in a blanket that was folded on top of the clothes hamper. When she unfolded the blanket, she found several books:

When Alice left the bedroom, she saw Aldah's pink purse lying on the living room couch. The purse had a clean handkerchief. Alice had taught her that: always have a clean handkerchief to wipe your nose or lips. The purse contained Aldah's glasses case and her tiny coin pouch, but in the side pocket was a three-by-five-inch picture of a young man. If his hair had been longer and his lips a bit thinner, he would have looked like Aldah's twin. This had to be her Roger. Alice was certain of this: she could learn more about her family when they weren't around than when they were.

The kitchen clock told Alice that she had been on her mission for a half hour. She would have to move quickly to finish her farm chores before her family got home from the doctor's office.

The cattle feedlot calmed her. The wind was in her favor and blew the smell of the hogyards in the opposite direction, but it was also the comforting rhythm of the process: the measuring of the minerals, the throwing of switches, the eager response of the steers as they came galumphing toward the sound of the augers. She liked the subtle, almost muted aroma of corn dust and the wafting sweeter smells of alfalfa hay. She liked the buffed, dusty smell of the steers and the busy sounds of sparrows everywhere. Just as she was tiring of considering the steers' well-being, she heard the Taurus drive onto the yard.

Aldah hopped out of the backseat and walked away from the car in her proud, swaying swagger. Alice was right: Aldah gave no indication of being sick.

“So what was wrong with you, my special person?” she asked Aldah at the supper table. “Were you sick?”

“She needs to drink more water,” said her mother.

“You need to drink more water?”

“I need to drink more water,” said Aldah. She gave Alice her
proud
smile.

“Constipation,” said her mother.

That was the last word of the conversation before closing prayer. Oh God, Alice prayed as her father mouthed one of his habitual prayers, let it be constipation. Don't let it be more than constipation.