and patience. I never was sure about that. It was like attributing not eating meat on Friday to Jesus. All the things that poor guy had on his mind, did he really have time to worry about cheeseburgers?
By the time I finished, my shirtsleeves were grimy and my fingernails were black. In the center of the fourth barrel, I found what I was looking for. Whoever had picked it up had been thoughtful enough to put it in a paper bag for me. Even the little pieces.
“Ok, now, McCain. Close your eyes.”
Mrs. Goldman is a widow who rents out rooms. I’d call her my landlady, but that term always paints a mental picture of a dowdy middle-aged woman with flapping house slippers and pink curlers in her hair. Unless of course you read the occasional Midwood “adult” novels they sell under the counter down at Harkin’s News. In those books landladies are invariably twenty years old and cursed with nymphomania and they’re always asking the narrator if he’d “like to earn a little discount on his rent.”
I figure Lauren Bacall will probably look like Mrs. Goldman when she reaches her mid-fifties: tall, elegant, quietly imposing. Mrs. Goldman’s husband died six years ago. She hasn’t had a single date since. Until tonight. She goes to temple in Iowa City every Saturday. She recently met an optometrist there, a man around sixty and a widower. He was taking her out for steaks and dancing tonight.
“Ready?”
“Ready, Mrs. Goldman.”
“And you’ll be honest?”
“Absolutely.”
Mrs. Goldman keeps the downstairs for herself. There are three apartments upstairs. She’d bought herself some new duds and wanted my opinion of them. I’d never seen her this nervous before. It was cute.
“Here I come, ready or not!”
She came down the hall from the bedroom into the living room and she was gorgeous. Really. She’d bought a black shift and black hose and black pumps and one of those little French-style hats that Audrey Hepburn wears whenever she wants to get William Holden all hot and bothered.
“Holy moly.”
“You think he’ll like it?”
“Are you kidding? He’ll break down in tears.”
She smiled. “You never overstate things, McCain. That’s one of your finest qualities.”
She leaned over and gave me a motherly kiss on the cheek. “I appreciate the compliment. I need it. I keep running to the bathroom every five minutes, just the way I used to when I started dating my husband. I have a bladder that’s very sensitive to romantic feelings.”
She smelled great too.
Then: “Oh. David Squires stopped by to see you.”
“David Squires? Are you sure it was him?”
She laughed. “Are you saying that I should have Dr. Kostik check my eyes tonight? I know David from the Fine Arts committee at the library.”
“God,” I said, stunned. “Why would he want to see me? He and the Judge despise each other.”
“That’s what I was thinking. But his wife was murdered, so maybe he needs to talk to you. The poor man.”
Five
Dillon’s Stables had a huge red barn for dances and three big hayracks for rides. I wore a T-shirt, a denim jacket, jeans, and desert boots. To get in the Western mood I wore a red kerchief around my neck.
Mary was dressed in a similar outfit. Her mahogany-colored hair was pulled back into a ponytail. A hundred male eyes did terrible things to her. She was a beauty. No doubt about that.
From inside the barn came music:
Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly. This was a young crowd tonight. If Dillon had his way he’d still be playing songs from the ‘dj’s. Fortunately, his twenty-year-old daughter chose the music. Just because you dressed Western didn’t mean you had to listen Western.
Especially when you had your hair swept back into a duck’s ass.
The hayracks filled up pretty fast.
Mary and I got on the third one. We sat high on the stack, about four feet up. A friendly old mare pulled the wagon, following an ancient Indian trail along a creek painted silver by moonlight. The night was chilly, the hay smelled fresh and clean, and the mare was sweetly scented of field dust and road apples.
“Did you ever try and count the stars?” Mary asked.
“Not after they let me out of the mental hospital.”
She nudged me. She had a cute way of doing that. She’d done it since grade school.
For some reason I’ve always taken great pleasure in being nudged by her.
“They made me do that at Girl Scout camp. Sit up all night and count the stars.”
“Nice girls.”
“Yeah, but I was dumb enough to do it.”
There were six other couples. One of the guys had a guitar. He played some Gene Autry and Roy Rogers songs, and then he played Vaughn Monroe’s “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” I still like to lie on my stomach and look out the window to see if I can spot any of the ghost riders he sings in that song. It isn’t hard to spot them. Not if you had an imagination like mine. Big silver ghost horses and cowpokes trailing across the midnight sky.
“She was a nice woman.”
“Susan Squires?”
“Ummm.”
“Why’d she marry him?”
“She was in love with him.”
“Poor girl.”
Some of the other couples were already making out. A Tribute to Gonads seemed to be the theme of the evening. I had my arm around Mary but that was it.
“She stopped in for lunch at Rexall,”
Mary said.
“About a week ago.”
“She say anything?”
“She just kept toying with an envelope. She was so nervous, she left it behind.”
“Anything on the outside?”
“Just the return address for a county courthouse. I’ve got it at home. She called later that afternoon. Sounded scared. Wanted to meet me for a Coke downtown. But Dad got very sick. They’re trying this new medication on him. I had to help Mom.”
“That was the last you heard from her?”
“Yes. Now I feel guilty. I mean,
I had to help Dad and Mom. But I feel as if I let Susan down.”
“You sure she sounded scared?”
“Positive. I knew her well enough to know that.”
“Know much about her marriage?”
Before she could answer, the wagon gave a sudden jerk and stopped. We had crested a hill. Below us spread the town of Black River Falls.
This should have been the makeout point of choice for all the town’s teenagers, but the mud-ribbed roads and brambled roadsides made it too hard to get to.
The sight was gorgeous. If you grew up in a city, a town of 25eajjj probably doesn’t look like much. But spread out this way, the lights vivid against the prairie night, it was a lovely spectacle. For all its flaws and shortcomings, I loved the old town. Back in the stables, they had a wall posted with photos of various generations
