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BOOK NINETEEN: THE FIRE IN THE GROVE

177. After I missed. . . .

            After I missed the second Grand Island exit, I recognized that the courts had a name for the thing I was doing. It was called Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution. I pulled over for a minute to get a grip. If the State Patrol was out looking for me, they’d find me on the Interstate quicker than anywhere. I didn’t even know if the hobo I’d battered was dead. I resumed driving west at a slower speed and turned north at the first available intersection. My turn put me on Highway 11, heading north through the town of Wood River to link up with Highway 2 at Cairo. Because I’d left home at such an early hour, it was only a few minutes past 7 when I crossed Highway 30; I thought I’d get breakfast at a cafe in Cairo and replenish the fuel tank a little with what was in the Jerry can. I carefully drove the speed limit north, arriving in Cairo before 8 a.m.

            The cafe in Cairo is a block west of the intersection with a good view of somebody’s salvage yard across the road, alongside the U. P. tracks that cut the town in half. The only person who looked up as I walked in was the uniformed county mountie, having coffee with a few of the local farmers. He nodded familiarly, gazing at my chest for a moment,  and went back to his chat, while I ordered pancakes and eggs and then stepped back to the mirrorless restroom to wash my hands. My reason told me I had nothing to fear, but my heart had begun clattering like a broken engine and my hands shook beneath the faucet. When I came back out, he was still sitting there, with no apparent intention of leaving anytime soon. At least, I thought, he wouldn’t be listening to his radio.

            After my breakfast arrived, I watched grease congeal across the yolks of the sunnyside eggs the way a film creeps across a dead man’s eyes. Exactly which instant those eggs died I couldn’t say, but I could tell that I wasn’t going to eat them. I put all the jelly for my toast on one corner of the pancakes and cut off a chunk. The texture was like the foam used to seal windows. I swallowed a few dry mouthfuls and washed it down with coffee. The cop, I felt, was watching me, so I took my nerves in hand and ate the rest of the pancakes, shoving the eggs to one side.

            “Something wrong with those eggs, mister?” the waitress asked when she brought the carafe. “Did I get your order right?”

            “You got it right,” I mumbled. “I had myself a big Friday night, that’s all.”

            “You from around here?”

            “Up north,” I said. “Palemon.”

            “Just passing through, then?”

            “Just passing through,” I said.

            I took my time with my second cup, then paid at the cash register on my way out. As I was lifting the Jerry can down from the box, I heard the restaurant door creak. The inevitable footsteps approached, inevitably slow. “Howdy,” the cop said. “Nice truck you got there.”

            “It’s a gas guzzler,” I said. “It’s got a 389 in it. It’s a Pontiac engine, basically.”

            “Got any I. D.?”

            “Sure,” I said. “Why not?” I set the can in the gravel and dug out my billfold and license. “Here you go. That picture was taken last summer, before I grew the whiskers.”

            He looked from the photo to my face. “You mind if I run a check on this?” he asked. I shrugged. He went to his car, parked around the corner between two pickups, while I attached the nozzle and emptied the Jerry can into my tank. I’d replaced the can in the box and bungeed it down by the time he returned. “Nothing out on this,” he said, handing back my driver’s license. “I guess you’re a law-abiding citizen.”

            “That’s good,” I said. “I’d hate to think I’d been molesting livestock in my sleep.”

            “Can’t be too careful,” he said. “Get in and start ‘er up. I want to see if the lights work.” I put the billfold away and got in the cab, trying not to let him see my relief; the cop came up and rested his arm on the door, having a look. “Pretty good shape for the shape it’s in,” he said. “Can I see the registration, please?”

            “You could say the same about me.” I handed him the registration, then started the engine and revved it to show him that the muffler was legal; I turned on the wipers, honked the horn, and pulled out the light switch. He ordered me to turn on the brights, dim them, use the left turn signal, the right turn signal, then walked around to the back. “Your right rear taillight isn’t working,” he called. “Try the brakes.” Hissing between my teeth, I stepped on the brake pedal, then flipped the blinker lever both ways. He came up to my side of the cab and took out his book of warning tickets.

            “Got to write you up for that taillight bulb,” he said. “You know a George Smith, runs trucks out of Palemon?”

            “George is my father,” I said. “I used to drive for him.”

            “Tell George hello from me,” he said as he checked off the proper little square. “We got us a brand new radar. We’d sure like to catch a trucker.”

            “I’ll tell him,” I said. “Maybe I can get him to speed up.”

            He handed me the ticket and vehicle registration and backed away, smiling a stiff cop smile. “Ten days to get ‘er fixed. Turn that in to your local law enforcement. Drive careful, now.” I tucked the ticket in with the registration papers; as I pulled away, I watched him in the mirror to see if he would go to his car, but he returned inside to his coffee.

The cop had checked me out and given me a warning, which meant that I was safe, at least for the time being. Maybe the Lincoln police didn’t get too excited about a dead hobo. There was nothing to connect me with him except for the address from which they’d towed the Falcon. That, and the fact that my cousin Dale knew I’d been seeing Grace. It was a pretty big stretch, though, to think that Dale would remember her car. He couldn’t know every car in Lincoln.

            North through the sandhills, the highway ran straight for five-, ten-, twenty-mile stretches. The cool-season grasses were heading out already, their pale seedheads softening the green; the calves had lost their babyish look. Corn was up and growing in the center-pivots, and ranchers who raised irrigated alfalfa had gotten the first cutting stacked and were watering the second. Things looked good in the sandhills, making me wonder whether I shouldn’t have skipped grad school and spent my first year after the war working on a ranch.

(blank line)

178. I drove the rest of the sandhills. . . .

            I drove the rest of the sandhills stretch in a daze as I replayed my fight with the drunken hobo. In half of these revisits I ran away, saving the gas and my freedom, while in the other half I not merely struck the man but obliterated him, destroying his body in all sorts of imaginative ways. It didn’t help to know that Selva would be awakening and anointing her ivory skin for her wedding day. To my satisfaction, I passed beneath a cold front, and as fine mist struck the windshield, I prayed for it to hurry along and bring misery to Parade—not enough rain to move the wedding indoors, but enough for them to later regret not doing so. Shemansky, I particularly hoped, would be shivering like a wet dog, though when I recalled what happened to Jerome I could not quite bring myself to wish him pneumonia.

            At the Milestone, small puddles had collected in the parking lot. Gravel quished beneath my tires as I wheeled around to face the way I’d come, passing beneath the grille of one of my father’s trucks; the deep purr of the idling diesel, the “Smith & Son” on the front of the trailer, coupled with the aroma of cowshit wafting from the aluminum “pot,” all brought me home as if to another life. I felt a sudden longing to palm the shift lever, to be driving through Iowa with no trouble in mind, nothing ahead of me but the white line of the highway.

            Pop was having his morning coffee. “Just the man I’m lookin’ for,” he said when he saw me come in. “Take a load to Sioux City for me?”

            “Hell, no,” I said. “You know I won’t. Why’d you even ask me?”

            “Just checkin’ your attitude,” he said. “You might as well sit down. That’s a nice hat you got on. Where’d you get it?” My father loathed cowboys and cowboy gear; his compliment was his way of ribbing me about the hat.

            “You’ve seen this hat before,” I said. “It’s my band hat. It’s famous. Gotta wear it.”

            “Marion Saunders got him a hat like that,” he said. “Then he bought a rig and went in business against me. I got a natural prejudice against them hats.”

            “So Marion bought a rig,” I said. “Another good man gone wrong. How are you, you old fart? Hats aside.” A young fellow across from my dad scooted over, and I took a seat.

            “Hats aside, I’m OK,” he said. “Business as usual. You?”

            “I guess I’m all right,” I said. “Mostly.”

            “What happened to that pretty girl you had with you the last time? I thought you might bring her back so I could see her.”

            “She’s getting married today,” I said. “Down in Parade. A big wedding. All my friends will be there.”

            “Not marryin’ you, it appears.”

            “No.” We took a moment to look each other over as the waitress poured me a cup of weak coffee. “Who’s your partner?” I asked, glancing at the young man next to me.

            “This is Ernest Dodge,” he said. “Joe’s boy. He’s learnin’ the ropes so he can go to work for Marion in a couple of years and help him put me out of business.”

            “If you paid a wage a man could live on, you could keep a few regular drivers,” I said.

            “If you was me and lookin’ at the books,” my father said, “you’d see what I can pay, and it ain’t much. You makin’ any progress toward that professor job?”

            “No,” I said. “In fact, I quit. I’m shoveling soybeans now. Starting at the bottom, as they say.”

            “Pay any better than truckin’?”

            “No,” I said, “but I can get promoted. I won’t have to go to work for Marion to get a raise.”

            My father grinned. “Can’t hire you,” he said. “Can’t satisfy you. I guess I’d better just shoot myself and let you run the business.”

            “Don’t shoot yourself on my account,” I said. The waitress returned and offered me a menu; I shook my head. “So. Who died? Who got divorced? Who’s running around with who?”

            “Well,” he said, “I guess you came up for the funeral? They was trying to get hold of you.”

            “No,” I said. “What funeral?”

            “They shipped Ed Keogh home,” he said. “Anyway they say it’s him; they got a 24-hour guard on him down at the funeral home. Nobody gets to look inside the bag, not even the undertaker.”

            “You mean there’s someone from the government with the body?” My father nodded. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I never heard of such a thing.”

            “Whether you heard of it or not,” he said, “there’s four big sergeants wearin’ dress uniforms, takin’ turns around the clock to see that nothing happens to that bag. Poor Jack’s about to have a tizzy over it. I guess he’s called up every politician he can think of.”

            “Who told you this?” It wasn’t routine procedure, I was sure of that. Too many getting killed over there. There wouldn’t be enough sergeants to guard the bags.

            “I got it from Jimmy Carlsen, who got it from the funeral director. Others have been out; you can go and look for yourself. It’s a closed casket, and a sergeant standin’ by to guard it. The director says the bag don’t weigh seventy pounds.”

            “Sounds completely bogus to me,” I said. “I will go out there, once I get cleaned up. Who’s been trying to call me?”

            “The V. F. W. is puttin’ together an honor guard,” he said. “They thought they could get some Vietnam veterans to march. So far, they ain’t havin’ any luck.”

            “No kidding,” I said. “Who wants to march with those bastards?”

            “What’ve you fellows got against the Legion and the V. F. W.?” my father asked. “Seems like none of you wants to join.”

            “Well, to begin with,” I said, “if it wasn’t for all you World War Two pups supporting the war, most of us wouldn’t be veterans.”

            “You would, though,” my father said. “You and Ed always wanted to be pilots, ever since you was kids.”

            This truth made me lower my eyes. I glanced at Ernest Dodge, the eighteen-year-old sitting next to me. “What about you?” I asked him. “Got your draft notice yet?”

            “Nope,” he said. “I’m expecting it, though. Some of my class got theirs.”

            “Don’t go,” I said to him. “It’s a pile of crap.”

            The young trucker blushed. Evidently he had thoughts that he wasn’t willing to reveal. A silence extended itself until my father cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said, “the funeral’s Tuesday. If you’re interested.”

            “Is Jack still picking up loose paper off the street?” Since his son had gone missing, Palemon’s banker had formed the habit of patrolling the sidewalks and gutters for loose scraps of paper.

            My father took a swallow of coffee. “Jack ain’t what he used to be.”

            “Tch,” I said. “What a shame. I wonder if it’s changed his politics any.”

            “Not likely,” my father said. His gaze strayed to my shirt front. “Did you come all the way from Lincoln this morning?”

            “Yeah,” I said. “I drove that old low-geared pickup, too. Can’t hardly go the speed limit in that thing. It sounds like the engine wants to fly out.”

            “Why not use some of that good bonus money and get yourself a new pickup? If you’re not pullin’ my leg about quitting college.”

            I blushed, unable to tell him that my savings had gone to Kroger. “I don’t know. Tight, I guess.”

            My father sighed. “You’re not saving for a rig, I hope. I got enough competition from that damn Marion.”

            “No rig,” I said. “I told you, I’m a soybean man.” I finished the watery coffee and put down my cup. “I think I’ll go grab a shower,” I said. “Maybe I’ll lie down. I didn’t sleep worth diddly last night, for some reason.”

            “Help yourself,” my father said. He glanced at my chest again. “See if you can find a clean shirt,” he said. “That one’s got a spot on it.” I looked down to see that my denim shirt had a huge brown bloodstain right across the belly. “You been in a fight?”

            My mind raced. Luckily, I’d had some experience lying to my father. “No,” I said, “I haven’t. I must’ve got that on me when I moved that deer carcass off the road.”

            My father leaned forward and reached across the table. He pulled something off my shirt and held it up to the light. It was a human hair about eight inches long, coarse, black fading into gray, heavy and stiffened with blood.

            “You didn’t say nothin’ about hittin’ a deer.” He studied the hair before coiling it into the ash tray.

            “I didn’t hit him. Someone ahead of me did.”

Suddenly it seemed that everyone in the Milestone was looking at me. I got up awkwardly. “Well, I’ll go,” I said. “See you this evening when you get back.”

            “Soak that shirt in cold water,” my father said. “Then rub salt on it. After raisin’ you all those years, I guess I know how to take bloodstains out of a shirt.”

            “Aw, hell,” I said. “Was I that bad?”

            “You wasn’t no picnic,” my father said. “Especially after you took up boxin’ with Jack Keogh’s kid. I think it wouldn’t be too hard for you to put on a uniform and carry a flag at his funeral.”

            “I hate to say this,” I said, “but by the end of it all, Ed Keogh was no great friend of mine.”

            “That don’t matter,” my father said. “I expect he would’ve done as much for you.”

            “He would’ve,” I agreed. “But I’m not carrying any damn flag.” I walked out past the men of the Milestone with a stranger’s blood on my clothes. A quarter of them were World War II or Korea vets. Their eyes as they watched me leave were thoughtful and empty of expression.

(blank line)

179. Safe in the cab of my pickup, I buried. . . .

            Safe in the cab of my pickup, I buried my face in my shaking and road-weary hands. I’d been wearing that stain in the cafe in Cairo; before that, I’d worn it into the gas-station side of Lederer’s, when it was fresh and red. The odds that no one would’ve noticed it were zero. Why hadn’t the Cairo mountie picked me up, then? He’d been suspicious; he’d even used his radio to call me in. It didn’t make sense, unless— Unless the hobo had got up and walked away? I was sure I’d hit him harder than that. Maybe they’d gotten to him quickly, taken him to the hospital; maybe they were waiting for him to wake up and tell them what had happened. I could call Lincoln General and find out whether a bum had been brought in that day. With luck, they’d even tell me if he was still breathing.

            I drove straight to my father’s house and hurried inside to use the telephone. But as I reached to pick up the receiver, I lost courage. Suppose the hospital had been alerted? They could easily give me the runaround, putting me through to the wrong floor while the telephone company made call-tracing connections. It would be far better if I could get someone else to make the call, someone from Lincoln who wouldn’t be implicated. I didn’t want Julia to make it, but Julia might know somebody. I dialed my own number in Lincoln, but no one answered. Then I remembered that Julia would be busy with the nerd brothers, loading band equipment into her station wagon for the trip out to Parade.

            I tried to think who else I could trust in Lincoln. Toni McFerrin was out of the question, as was Mattie Halliday. I would not have known where to reach Mattie in any case. L. D. Langdon was gone back to Pittsburgh, and probably would’ve done nothing for me anyway. Al Foonts was too sensible and remembered everything. Barbara Justman no, Lewis Rey no. My former cellmate the ambulance driver was a candidate, but I could not foresee what qualms might arise in such a man; once he figured out what I was up to, he’d likely tell me to go fuck myself and might even notify the police. I needed someone amoral by profession, a politician or a lawyer or a journalist.

            The newspaperwoman I’d met at Selva and Adrian’s Thanksgiving party came to mind. She disliked me, but maybe I could arrange things so that she wouldn’t need to know for certain who I was. I’d seen her byline in the Lincoln Star often enough that I knew her name; I’d supplied my father with a Lincoln phone book, and it only took a moment to look her up. When a man’s voice answered, I almost lost my nerve, but I asked for her and in half a minute she came to the phone. “Hello?” she said in a sleepy, guarded voice. “Who’s calling, please?”

            “If I told you, you’d know me,” I said. “I was hoping I could persuade you not to try to trace me, for reasons having to do with a violation of the law.”

            “I can’t promise that,” she said. “What do you want?”

            “An old homeless jackass got whopped over the head last night,” I said. “I need to find out if he’s dead or injured, or what.”

            “Give me more specifics.”

            “Between 4 and 4:30 a.m., in the city’s impounded-car lot down by the trainyard. He would’ve been left lying in a blue Ford Falcon. The police were called.”

            “Anything else you want to tell me?”

            “No.”

            A silence. “I tell you what,” she said. “Checking this out should take two or three minutes; give me ten and call me back. That way I won’t have to write down your number. Do I get a story out of it?”

            “Maybe,” I said. “Depends what you find out.” I hung up with no formalities and waited an impossibly long ten minutes; when I called again the line was busy. I tried again after twenty minutes, thirty, forty. I put my shirt to soak, showered, and tried one last time.

            “Hello?” Her voice was alert.

            “What’d you find out?”

            “It’s you,” she said. “Sorry, my sis got on the line. The police would tell me nothing; none of the hospitals checked anyone in with head trauma. A quiet Friday night, no motorcycle wrecks. One thing’s odd, though; the cops got nervous and pissy when I told them who I was. What’s going on?”

            “I wish I knew,” I said. “Unless he’s still in the car. You could check it out. Blue Falcon at the impound lot.”

            “I know who you are,” she said. “You were at Selva and Adrian’s party. Will you be at their wedding?”

I hung up quickly. The cops were nervous? What about me? The assholes were putting me through some kind of psych torture, that much was clear. Of course, they couldn’t know—could they?—that the bum bopper was someone they already didn’t like. And why would the hospitals lie to a reporter? Unless the ambulance had taken him straight to the morgue. Frantic to know, I put caution aside, searched out the number for the Lancaster County Coroner, and dialed. Of course it was Saturday; most county offices were closed.

            I let the phone ring thirteen times. No answer. Hide-and-seek: Where are you, hobo? I chanted it aloud: “All-ie all-ie out’s in free.”

(blank line)

180. The bloodstain on my shirt. . . .

            The bloodstain on my shirt came clean as far as I could tell, but I was not satisfied with it. I thought I’d better burn the shirt, and my undershirt too. There was a burning barrel out at the truck barn, but I didn’t want to use anything that obvious; the cops might find snap buttons in the ashes. I decided to take the shirts and some gasoline out to Baxter’s Pond.

            By this time it was afternoon; I’d managed to eat a bologna sandwich, had a thorough shower, and refreshed myself with a drink from the old man’s refrigerator, a little Mogen David Blackberry left over from Christmas. (Since my father lacked a taste for insobriety, his refrigerator always had liquor in it, unlike mine in Lincoln.) I put on old clothes from my teen years—threadbare jeans, a flannel shirt, a hooded sweatshirt—and went out to lose the implicating fabric. I could see the FBI crime lab finding serum in it. The weather was satisfyingly chilly, with the sky misting just enough that I had to use the wipers, turning them on to clear the windshield and then off again to stop them squeaking against the glass. I took along a bow saw in case I had to cut firewood, and matches and a pack of cigarettes from the kitchen.

            One turnoff led beside the rails to the trestle, while a second wound through giant cottonwoods to the head of the pond. I followed this second trail beneath the trees to where a ring of stones, stolen from the trestle’s ballast, enclosed a mound of ashes and broken glass. Under the trees, rare drops the size of quarters whacked the windshield. I felt grateful to see no lovers’ cars ahead of me. Baxter’s Pond, looking smaller than I remembered it, lay like lead beneath the leaden sky, a stray gust irritating the surface into crosswise ripples. As I glanced about me, I couldn’t help wondering under which tree Selva had fucked the cowboy. If indeed that had happened.

            That the small rain down can rain— It had been unwise to let myself think of Selva, though in truth I’d been thinking of nothing but Selva all day long. Selva-sickness had lent strength to my tire-wrench-wielding arm; it was her wedding in Parade that had made my trip to Palemon necessary, hence the gasoline theft, hence— If not for Selva Andersen, I’d have stayed snug in my warm bed that morning, content to rub my erection against a comatose Julia.

            I’d have been miserable, maybe, but I wouldn’t have ruined my life.

            Whether the hobo lived or died, I had committed a crime and I would have to hide it. That meant burning the shirt, even though the weather was damp and ugly. Instead of lighting a fire, I started my truck and drove back into town to get some whiskey.

(blank line)

181. I showed up drunk. . . .

            I showed up drunk at my father’s house late that afternoon, to watch the news. Channel 10 out of Lincoln—Channel 11 out of Grand Island—carried the CBS News with Walter Cronkite. I did not let Walter’s honest babble distract me with idle stories about world events; it was the Nebraska program I wanted. When my father got up and went into the kitchen, I leaned forward into the blue light of the screen, forcing my fingers into the corners of my eyes to keep myself from missing a crucial moment. Mel Mains, the announcer, rattled his sheaf of papers. “A car crash near Waverly. . . .” There was nothing about a murder down by the trainyards. The only thing I could think of was that the hobo had lived, that it wasn’t technically a murder yet and therefore less than newsworthy. Either that or else the Lincoln Police Department was playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game, hoping the perpetrator would reveal himself. Well—I may have spoken this aloud—self-exposure was never one of my vices.

            When the news program was over and I’d watched the sports, weather, and church report without hearing of any murders, I got to my feet and followed my father to the back of the house, stopping to rest when I reached the kitchen doorway. My father glanced up from his solitaire layout and scowled. “Why not go to bed?” he suggested. “You’re not in shape to do much else that I can see.”

            “Not sleepy,” I replied. “D’you want to go get supper?”

            “Not with you,” he said pointedly. “You might puke.”

            I made it to the table and pulled out a chair. “Red four on the black five,” I said to demonstrate my alertness.

            “I’m savin’ that four,” he said crossly. “I’d rather play it up on the ace, if I can draw a trey.” He put down his cards and lit a cigarette. “Son, is there anything you can tell me about what’s eating you?”

            “What makes you think something’s eating me?”

            “Oh,” he said, “I haven’t known you twenty-five years for nothing. Although,” he added, “there’s times like today when it feels like it might’ve been for nothing.”

            “No,” I said finally, in response to his question. Then, “Whatever happened to Maybelle Salmon?”

            “Who?”

            “That red-haired music teacher who was here for a year. You know, the one that Baldwin McDonough was screwing.”

            “I don’t keep track of Baldwin McDonough’s women,” my father said. “What year was this? Were you in high school?”

            “No, grade school,” I said. “I was in fifth grade. I burned down her doghouse.”

            “Oh,” my father said. “That music teacher.” He smoked for a bit. “You know, I don’t remember things as good as you do,” he said. “I think she must’ve got another job. She drank, didn’t she?”

            “Yep.” I nodded. “She sure did.”

            “I’ll tell you who would know,” he said, “is Ellen McDonough. What made you think of her, after all these years?”

            “She was good to me, is all,” I said. “You heard from Mom lately?”

            “Not a word,” my father said. “I don’t expect to, either. You?”

            “I heard she got married,” I said. “The Dale McFerrins told me that last winter.”

            “More power to her,” my father said. “More power to him, whoever he is. He’ll need it.”

            “Did you feel bad when she left?” I asked.

            “Sure.”

            “How bad?”

            My father looked at me hard for the first time that evening. “I don’t think I can explain it to you, how bad I felt,” he said finally. “I’m not sure there’s words for it. If there are I don’t know ‘em. I guess I haven’t read enough poetry.” He paused. “How bad did you feel?”

            “Pretty bad, I suppose,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

            “You know,” he said, “my mother, your grandmother, she was no good either. She took off when Bert and I were little shavers. In fact, I lost my mother and father both when we went to live with the Smiths. It wasn’t too pleasant, let me tell you.”

            “But the Smiths treated you all right, didn’t they?”

            “Yeah, but it ain’t the same,” he said. “Nothing against Mother and Dad Smith.”

            “Grandpa Stevens is still alive?”

            “Far as I know, he’s living in South Dakota. You want to drive up there and try to locate him?”

            “No,” I said. “I’d feel funny.”

            “I never wanted to either,” my father said. “One alcoholic in the family is enough.”

            “I suppose you mean me,” I said. “Hey, I’m not like this all the time.”

            “Which brings us back to—?” My father waited.

            I shuddered as the hobo’s angry face superimposed itself on the dark-skinned man across from me. “No,” I said, squeezing my eyelids closed and rubbing my forehead. “No, I don’t want to talk about it.”

            “I see you changed your shirt.” My father’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Did you soak it like I told you?”

            “Yeah,” I said. I opened my eyes; the hobo’s face had faded. My dad was gazing down at me—he had risen to go out—with warm curiosity in his gentle look. “I already washed it.” I blinked, and my head wobbled. “How long does it take?” I asked him.

            “How long does what take? Getting blood out of a shirt?”

            “Getting over a woman.”

            My father sighed. “They say it takes about eight years,” he said. “I suppose it depends on the woman. For that matter, I wouldn’t say I’m over it yet.”

            “Eight years,” I said. “That’s a big hunk out of a person’s life.”

            “You’ll do other things,” my father said. “It won’t be like you died. Hell, you couldn’t have known her very long.”

            “That’s just it,” I said. “I never knew her at all.”

(blank line)

182. Dad was still at the Milestone. . . .

            Dad was still at the Milestone when I woke up. I raised my head and looked around the kitchen, noting the yellowed curtains, the grease spots on the wall above the stove. My old man vacuumed occasionally, but other than that— I thought if I ever got rich, I would hire him a housekeeper. It was after seven-thirty, but I had no appetite. I did feel more sober, though I had no illusions on that score. I had drunk enough that afternoon to paralyze a horse.

            Still, there was always room for more. I got up and looked at the Mogen David in the refrigerator. Then I stumbled out into the back yard and threw up the meager contents of my stomach, an act which cost me some dignity since it was still broad daylight and the neighbors’ kitchen window faced our yard. I stood up and went back in the house to change my clothes for the second time that day.

(blank line)

183. I tossed a spade. . . .

            I tossed a spade in the back of the truck and drove to the store to get cheese and crackers and a six-pack of Seven-Up, before heading out to Baxter’s Pond again to check on what I’d done that afternoon. A wisp of smoke rose from the fire ring, seeping from a punky ant-riddled piece of cottonwood, but the rest was ashes. I spaded aside the ashes and broken beer bottles from a year’s worth of boys’ outings and beer parties, then dug a pit in the center of the ring and filled it with the debris. I met with no traces of burned fabric; the snap buttons must have gone into the hole with the rest of the junk.  I closed the pit and covered it, flinging the excess sand into the underbrush, and made a flat, packed surface for the fire. Then I collected sticks—there was no shortage of deadfall—and built a fresh campfire. Meanwhile the evening sun broke through the clouds, so that the treetops above me were redly lit from the west. The minute it quit raining, the mosquitoes came out; I dodged them by keeping one shoulder or the other in the smoke.

            After a time I got back in my truck and rolled up the windows. I killed the dozen or so mosquitoes that had followed me and then made my drunkard’s supper of crackers and cheese. Burying the ashes had made me feel better, so that I was able to appreciate the changes in the light as the sun went down. At some point, the glow on the leaves from the fire below overtook the afterglow of the fading sunset; shortly the first stars came out. I began to think I would be all right. So what if the hobo was dead? He wasn’t likely to have lived forever. There had been no witnesses, I was sure of that. Even if I’d left fingerprints and they were identified, I could remind the cops that I’d touched that particular Ford Falcon many times. In short, they had no proof, so I couldn’t be convicted, which might feel almost the same as never having done the deed once I got my fractious conscience under control. In a decade or two I’d have forgotten the whole thing.

            Forgetting Selva Andersen was another matter; her image stung like a needle in my thigh. What galled me most was that Adrian seemed such a nonentity. He was a leader of The Movement—whatever that was—but I felt I’d known ten dozen better men. Well, Adrian Fisher was her husband and I’d have to live with it. He wasn’t one to put his head under a tire wrench.

            The wrench! There might be blood on it. I jumped from the pickup and leaned back in to search under the seat. The tire wrench was there; I couldn’t see any blood in the fading light, but I took it to the little creek that fed the pond and scrubbed it with sand. I decided that to be safe I’d exchange it for another. The car I remembered from my boyhood, my father’s ancient Buick, still sat in weeds behind the truck barn; if the lugs were the same size, I’d take the wrench from that.

            I spent the night at the pond. Sometime in the early hours, I was awakened by the sound of a shovel scraping gravel. A man I didn’t know was working by the yellow light of a lantern, loosening dirt from the creek bank and directing it to fall into a sluice box. He worked steadily, pausing from time to time to drink from a whiskey bottle he kept nearby. In the faint moonlight shining through the trees, he looked to be in his early thirties, too young a man to be working all night alone. I thought to get out of the pickup—I’d been sleeping in the cab, propped behind the wheel—but when I tried to move, my muscles wouldn’t respond. Even my tongue lay heavy, threatening to block my throat. I concentrated on breathing, on closing my jaw and moving my tongue to swallow, and in the intensity of the effort I made a loud grunting sound. I moaned, swallowed, and with a mighty struggle shook myself back to life. When I looked, the man was gone, along with his sluice box, lantern, and whiskey.

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184. Marilyn Keogh phoned. . . .

            Marilyn Keogh phoned on Sunday to ask me to help carry the coffin at Ed’s funeral. So, on Monday morning, I called up my boss at the soybean factory to let him know I’d be missing a couple of days. It was Augie Stables who informed me that the cops were looking for me. “In fact, they’re here right now,” he said. “Do you want to talk to them?”

            “Sure,” I said breezily. “Put ‘em on.”

            The voice that came on the phone next was one I feared: the barrel-chested, curly-headed detective. “Smith,” he said bluntly. “Where are you?”

            “I’m up in Palemon visiting my father,” I said. “What do you want?”

            “We’d like to interview you,” he replied. “It’s about a disappearance. We counted our winos yesterday. There’s one missing.”

            I already told you stupid bastards where to look. “I haven’t removed a wino,” I said aloud. “I wouldn’t know what to do with one. They’ve already got plenty of winos here in Palemon. One too many, in fact, if I want to include myself.”

            “We’d still like to talk to you,” he said. “When are you coming back to Lincoln?”

            “Tomorrow after the funeral. They’re burying a friend of mine; maybe you read about him in the paper. That pilot that got shot down a few months back.”

            “Can you come in on Wednesday?”

            “All right,” I said. “It means that I’ll miss more work.”

            “We’d appreciate it,” the detective purred in his musclebound chest-tone. “What time would be convenient for you?”

            “What about eight a.m.?”

            “Fine. Eight o’clock Wednesday at the new building. Think you can find your way?”

            “No problem,” I said. I slapped down the receiver. “Son of a bitch!” Disappearance, he’d said. What the devil was going on? They should’ve been able to smell the old bum by now.

            In any case, I hadn’t gotten off as clear as I’d thought. Something or someone had pointed them to me. I tried to recall the phone call I’d made, hoping to save the hobo’s life. Either the desk cop had recognized my voice, or someone in Lederer’s had reported me. But why were they calling it a disappearance? Was it a trick to get me back to Lincoln? They could telephone the Dune County sheriff’s office and have me in handcuffs in five minutes if they wanted. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Are they doing it this way to save money?”

            “What’s that you say?” my father asked, coming out of the bathroom.

            “Oh, nothing,” I said. “The cops in Lincoln want to talk to me. It’ll wait till I get back.”

            “Them Lincoln police seem to like you quite a lot,” my father observed, hitching up his coveralls.

            “It’s my pleasing personality,” I replied. “Aren’t you late for work, or something?”

            “Only got one haul today,” he said. “Fat steers to Sioux City. We’re supposed to load out of Prang’s at ten; I’ll be gone till seven or eight this evening, if it goes the way it usually does. Don’t wait supper on me, I’ll get a bite in Greeley.”

            “All right if I overhaul the brakes on that aluminum grain box?”

            “Suit yourself,” he said. “If you need something else to do, you can clean the shop.”

            “I believe I can get that brake job done in a day,” I said. “It’d take Snow White and the Seven Dwarves a year to clean that shop.”

            “Somebody’s got to do it one of these days,” he said, grinning. “I just thought I’d ask.”

            “Nice try.”

            I spent the day on Monday working on one of my father’s trailers. It passed the time, but I was so upset that I made a mistake and had to take apart the whole right side again, just to find out where I’d misplaced a cotter pin. It made me so disgusted that I forgot about Selva Andersen for a while. I could hear my father’s voice at my shoulder: You never want to let yourself get distracted when you’re doing brake work, son. You might kill somebody.

            I did not neglect to replace the tire iron in my pickup truck with a different tire iron. There was a variety of them around the shop. Not one of them had blood on it.

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185. The parking lot of the mortuary. . . .

            The parking lot of the mortuary was full when I arrived, half an hour early, along with Ed’s relatives and the other five pallbearers. We had taken our noon meal in the Fellowship Hall of the Methodist Church. All six of us came from Ed’s high-school class. I happened to be the only veteran. I wore pressed Air Force fatigues without insignia, the uniform I’d left at my father’s house to mow the yard in.

            Once the indoor part was over and we’d hauled Ed’s casket to the cemetery, a squad of grim-faced coots fired their bolt-action Springfield rifles over his grave. After they fired off their third volley and presented Marilyn Keogh with a flag, I exchanged glances with Jack’s sister Elizabeth, who I’d heard had left her private college and joined a hippie commune. Her eyes were red and she looked furious as a tortured rat. The breeze knocked petals off two dozen baskets of flowers.

            Jack Keogh sat through the ceremony stone-faced. When I passed by to shake hands afterward, he drew me close. “It’s not him,” he said significantly. “This puppet show is a hoax on the American public.”

            “Anyway it’s over,” I said. “I’m sorry, Jack. Sorry you had to go through with it.” As I waited for Jack Keogh to release my hand, I kept glancing at Elizabeth. Her porous nose was red as a Christmas candle, and her brown hair had gone to brambles. She hovered near her father, looking like a fugitive from a home for the criminally insane, while Marilyn held the flag as if she’d never put it down. I felt I should say something to Elizabeth, something that would let her know that I, too, thought the war was a crock, that she wasn’t entirely alone in her outrage and grief and pain. On the other hand, I didn’t want to stay around and risk another spiel from Jack.

            As I was leaving, I saw my former music teacher being helped into a bronze Cadillac with Missouri plates. There were others in the crowd I knew, a whole community willing to support the family, and a number of them glanced at me in a sympathetic way. But to my mind, with Selva Andersen and the head-smashed hobo standing in the middle of my thoughts, it was as if they all were pod people from another galaxy. Rather than open a conversation with anyone who might know me as something other than a murderer, I left town without a word to my father and drove to Lincoln. When I stopped for gas in Norfolk, I caught a man staring at me. That’s when I realized that I was still in uniform.