The Mysteries of Soldiers Grove (13 page)

So I try to rein Louise in a little bit, too. It is wonderful to see her so excited, she is so beautiful when her cheeks get red—but I try to make her focus a bit more locally, at least at first. Morning excursions would probably be best to start, maybe once in a while extending one of our capers through the lunch hour—so long as we don’t do it so often that staff will start to take notice.

We’ve both signed contracts with the home, agreeing to their rules and restrictions. They have their own responsibilities, and government regulations they must follow. If they discover us breaking rules all the time, we could be expelled like truant school kids. We must take care.

Afternoons probably would not be so good. Old folks get sleepy in the afternoons. We need our naps. So it is mornings probably to slip out, and evenings—once in a while maybe we can dress up and sneak out for a fancy date night.

We begin with something elemental. I still have one of my old fishing rods in my room, and we discover a nice spinning rod and reel that Heath had kept behind the seat of the blue Dodge.

One morning we slip out through the parking lot to the truck, giggling like a couple of kids playing hooky. With tremendous excitement—and just a little guilt and nervousness—we drive slowly out of the lot, stop at a bait shop a short way out of town and buy night crawlers and shiners, then for our lunch I buy cheese curds, peanut butter, crackers, and a quart of orange pop and plastic glasses at the Mobil Quick Stop before we buzz off to a fishing spot I know along the Kickapoo River. The water is slow, and so is the fishing at first, only an occasional nibble. We don’t mind; it’s a sweet day. I find two fold-up chairs in the bed of the Dodge and set them up on the riverbank so we can sit while we’re fishing. Louise baits her own hook.

“Hemingway thought fishing was immortal activity,” I philosophize to Louise as I pull my bobber out of the water and cast it into a more likely place. “Here we are, like two gods. You know—you don’t grow older during the time you’re fishing. And you have to
believe
in the future. That’s what fishing is all about. In a few minutes I’m going to hook into a trout,” I assure Louise. “I’ll cook it over some burning sticks for our lunch.”

I think some more about Hemingway. How he was restless and acted tough. “Ernest thought that if you can bring yourself to hit a man hard in the face, you will win a fight,” I tell Louise. “I’ve never had a fist fight, but I’m going to smack Danderman’s nose if he comes sniffing around you again.”

Louise looks annoyed, but I go on boasting, “I’m going to bust him a good one.” But then I begin to think about my cramped up old hands and how much they would hurt if I hit something hard with them. Then about how my poor nose would probably come completely unglued if someone punched it.

I chatter some more, but change my tune a little, “Maybe I’ll just dazzle Danderman with footwork; he’ll never get a glove on me. I’ll be like Billy Conn the first time he fought Joe Louis.” But then I remember—I’m an old guy walking with two canes. “Well, I’ll give him a whack up the side of his head with one of my sticks. I’ll give him a head butt.” Ouch . . .

I get worked up when I think about Danderman, and it is a very strange feeling. “I’ll smack him so he won’t forget!” I am breathing hard, like Beowulf boasting about what he’s going to do when Grendel comes. I’ve never felt this way before. I want to damage Danderman.

“Silly boy,” Louise says. “Cyril, will you calm yourself, please! Remember, he helped us get the blue Dodge. You’re going to have a heart attack. Watch your bobber.”

But I go on stewing.

“Cyril,” Louise says at last, “you are my dearest and only friend. That man is of absolutely no interest to me. You are not challenged. You don’t have to bash him. I don’t want you to get hurt. It’s a beautiful day. Unwind yourself. If the fish know you’re agitated, they won’t bite.”

We sit quietly again, and eventually catch a few small bream. We are excited when the bobbers go down, but throw the fish back. By the time Louise starts driving us back to the home we are both weary.

Being jealous is hard work. I am finding this out. It just plain peters you out.

We slip back into the home like guilty lovers in the early afternoon, but no one even looks at us. It’s almost disappointing.

We wait a few more days before planning our next adventure. Louise wants to go to the bookstore in Viroqua. One morning we slip out of the parking lot in the blue Dodge shortly after breakfast while the home staff is busy cleaning up after the meal. It is so much fun to be screwing off. The day is overcast, but cool and pleasant as Louise drives the county highway over to Viroqua.

Three very literate, efficient women have run the bookstore for years. They are delighted to see Louise. She’d been one of their very good customers, always stopped in the store to browse and buy books when she was grocery shopping in Viroqua, but she hasn’t been here since the death of her husband.

Louise has recently read a review of a new biography of the Brontë sisters. She wants to buy the book. As we were driving to Viroqua I gave her my brief lives of the Brontës—one at a time—Anne, Emily and Charlotte, their sad, amazing, strange existence on the moors, and I even added a little about crazy Branwell, their brother. I’ve got all the Brontës down pretty good. They are a tricky bunch.

“Now you won’t have to buy the book,” I tease Louise when I finish my recitation, but Louise has purchased books all her life; she has a lot of them, and she reads them. She is ready to put her money down for the book. I used to stop occasionally in the Viroqua bookstore, too, before I met Louise. I’d even buy a book once in a while, too, but mostly I just read stuff off the shelves, trying to keep myself up to date on lives. The bookstore ladies were always very kind about this, but sometimes they would shame me into paying for a book. The three of them seem delighted and very surprised to see Louise and me together.

The biography of the Brontës that Louise wants to buy is a big book, a 450 pager, a hardback that costs forty bucks. “What are you going to do?” I ask Louise. “Sell your farm to buy that?” But Louise peels out two twenties from her purse without even gazing at me.

I must be looking particularly cadaverous this morning because the book ladies are peering strangely at me. Funny thing about getting old: some days you feel okay—and once in a while, just for a few minutes, even a little bit good—but then you catch a look in a mirror and realize that you look like you’ve been going to school with a bunch of piranha. It is best not to reflect on yourself too often.

“Cyril, have you been all right?” one of them finally asks.

“Never better,” I tell her. And I meant it.

I’m sure the Brontës have heard about my ordeal. The newspapers picked up on my story and wire services ran it across the country. People are always fascinated by stories of peril, and they seem particularly to like it when someone is able to trick death. There was coverage on some of the prime time news shows, long stories about my ordeal, some “portraits” and other shortened squibs. The home nurses actually started a scrapbook of them. Not too many old guys walk out of the freezer alive. For about a quarter of an hour I was the most famous citizen of Soldiers Grove.

The Brontës are still looking at me. I say finally, “Well, I’m not feeling too bad. A little kink here and there, but I think I’m good for some more time. Sorry I forgot to comb my hair.”

They don’t laugh. They look serious. I must be looking really hammered this morning.

“He’s doing just fine,” Louise finally assures them, as she thumbs through her big new book. “Don’t pay any attention to how he looks.”

“We were really happy to hear you got the big bravery award,” one of them says. “Now maybe you can pay for a book once in a while.” They all giggle.

These women have always enjoyed giving me nudges, and I always try to give them back as good as I get: “Don’t get carried away,” I warn them. “Reading is hard for me these days. Half an hour of it and my eyeballs feel like two gritty mibs at the end of recess. I can barely read the directions on my corn flakes box. Besides, I cashed in that check and put all the money in an old sock. I only kept out enough for chocolate milk and a few Leinenkugels for Louise. Not a penny for books. Now I can’t even remember where I put the sock. That’s the way it goes with old guys like me.”

I notice that the jacket illustration of the new biography of the Brontë sisters uses the portrait painted by their brother, Branwell. At first Branwell had placed himself in the middle of the picture between Emily and Charlotte, but later someone—probably Branwell himself—decided to paint out his own image so that there seems to be a ghost beween Emily and Charlotte, and then the picture was roughly folded up and put aside somewhere.

As the three bookstore ladies stand together watching us, I gently take the big book from Louise’s hand and hold it up so she can compare the cover illustration to the three women standing in front of us. “See. There they are,” I say to Louise, “Anne, Charlotte, and Emily. It’s uncanny!” The resemblance
is
remarkable.

Louise takes hold of the book, looking back and forth between it and the bookstore women. She nods and giggles. “Yes, it’s perfect.”

I’ve always tried to figure out those bookstore women. Now I know they are the Brontë sisters come from the moors of northern England to the driftless hills of Wisconsin to sell books. How lucky we are they came to Viroqua!

I tell them, “We will never refer to you as anyone else. Just look at them, Louise! The Brontë sisters. I can’t even remember your real names anymore. From this moment on you are Anne, Emily, and Charlotte,” I tell them.

Balaclava

B
alaclava is sitting on a toilet in a locked filthy stall in the men’s room of a convenience store just off an Indiana highway. As he strains, he skims his eyeballs over a dusty copy of an area newspaper called the
Terre Haute Clarion
that he’d found in a waste stack in the hallway just outside the restroom. Now he notices that the issue is months old, and he is ready to wad the stupid, goddamned thing up and pitch it over into the next stall.

Two nights before, Balaclava had almost been fried by the Hoosiers and he’s still shaky about it. He’d been working his way across the state, zigzagging around, sometimes sleeping in the truck, hiding it out of sight when he robbed stores on the edges of little towns. Quick, easy stick-ups—mostly terrified teenage clerks who put their hands up fast and shoveled out the cash when he showed them his big cannon.

If the clerk was a guy, when he had the money he’d give him a rap on his noggin, just enough to stun him, then hustle out and drive the Dodge away before they could come to their senses to see what he was driving. If it was a woman, he’d shove her hard in the face and push her down, warning her not to look before he ran away. He was adding assault to his robbery when he conked the clerks—but to hell with it! His hole was already plenty deep.

But he was growing bored with this penny-ante stuff. What he scored was barely enough to pay for his gas, beef jerky, beer and chips. He needed something big.

A couple of nights before he’d been poking around in a Kwik ’n’ Ezy near Wabash, waiting for some Mars bars grade schoolers to clear out so he could make his heist and get on down the road. Finally, after a lot of petering around, the baby yokels departed. Balaclava was just getting ready to bring out his artillery, when a local police car pulled right up outside the door and two paunchy cops walked in.

He was breathing hard, thought he was going to bite it right then, but the cops walked past him and helped themselves to bags of peanuts from the counter, and started talking with the clerk—a big kid with one hell of a build, probably an ex-local football star.

Everything was very yakkety yak and local. Balaclava has never been easy in the same room with authorities, and he doesn’t like small talk. It was time to move his ass out of there—so he was heading for the door when the big ex-jock boy clerk looked up over the cops’ shoulders and said loudly, “Hey, buddy! You want something?”

The cops turned to look at Balaclava. The fucking kid was just showing off for the bulls—but now all eyes were on him.

And yes, Balaclava is something to see—huge in his ugliness, fierce in his black mackinaw and strange hat snapped up on its sides. “Naw, I’m fine,” he said, “just lookin’ around.” He kept on moving toward the door.

“Hold on a minute, friend,” one of the cops said, and came over to stand in front of him. “You from around here?”

“Just passing through.”

The patrolman was looking him over carefully. Balaclava doesn’t hold up well when the fuzz are close up on him. He doesn’t like the smell of them. He’s had his bellyful of blue boys. He tried to look steady at the guy, but couldn’t mask his distaste. Were they thinking about putting a move on him? He couldn’t quick draw the big gun on his ankle, but he had his hand on the cook’s small pistol in his coat pocket, and it was cocked and loaded. He figured he could probably drop both of them before they got to their holsters.

The cop looked him up and down. “You planning to stick around here for a while?” he asked Balaclava.

“Naw, like I say, I’m just passing through. I’ve got to get to Peoria tonight.”

“That’s a haul,” the cop said. “You better get going.” He didn’t ask to see Balaclava’s driver’s license, but he eyeballed him carefully and Balaclava held the man’s gaze. The cop decided that Balaclava was probably going to be more trouble than he was worth.

“Better roll, mister!” the cop said. “It’s a long way to Peoria.” And Balaclava did it. It bugged his ass to just trot out of that place like some teenie weenie, but he got the hell out of there.

God, he hates it when he’s got to skedaddle like that with his tail between his legs! He thought about coming back later and getting a piece of that show-off kid. He could have made him look like chopped beets. But he kept on going. He didn’t need to invite more trouble.