I probably would have forgotten about it, except that Perfect-O-Screw at that very moment was trying to persuade the town council to expand a tax break the company enjoyed on its land and factory. Two nights before Bubba and I had our little chat, Cecil Vidigan, who owned Perfect-O-Screw and pitched for the Screwballs, had appeared at a town council meeting in his black-and-gold Perfect-O-Screw softball jacket. He reminded the council that the company’s original tax break had led to the hiring of six workers, a big deal in Starvation Lake. He said an expanded break would save it enough money to hire four more employees. “You see,” he said, his whiskery scowl spreading into a smile, “it’s a win-win for the company and for the community.” Not to mention the Screwballs.
The day after hearing Bubba’s secret, I visited the Pine County courthouse for a look at the company’s property tax records. Inside the county clerk’s office, eight rows of filing cabinets stood behind a panel of frosted- glass windows set atop a long oak counter. The place was empty except for Deputy Clerk Verna Clark.
She was a pencil-thin woman in her fifties, wearing an ash gray dress on which was pinned a name tag that said, “Deputy Clerk Clark.” Henry had warned me about her. Years before, a county commissioner had raised a stink about Verna and her family because they lived a few miles outside Pine County. The commissioner, who wanted to replace Verna with his daughter-in-law, made an issue of Pine County employees actually living in Pine County. He dropped the matter after his daughter-in-law got a job with the county drain commission. But Verna, mindful of how the powers-that-be could snatch away her livelihood, had become a stickler for rules and procedure. A pain in the ass, in other words. Henry told me he once went to the courthouse for a county map, and Verna told him he’d first have to fill out a public-information request.
“Can I help you?” she asked me.
I told her what I needed. Without a word, she produced the one-page form for requesting public documents.
“Do I really have to go through all this?”
“It’s county policy,” Verna said.
“How long will it take?”
“Most people are able to complete it in two or three minutes.”
“No,” I said, growing annoyed. “How long to actually get the records?”
“The statute requires us to respond within ten business days.”
“So I’ll have it in ten days?”
“If the county attorney was to determine that the documents could be released, sir, we would then have a reasonable period of time to process and produce them.”
“And how long could that take?”
“I’m afraid the statute doesn’t specify.”
“Could you at least guess?” Saying “at least” was a mistake. Her thin lips got thinner. She may have been a bona fide bitch, but it didn’t help that I was young and stupid.
“Guessing isn’t part of my job, but if I had to hazard an estimate, I’d say that, assuming the county attorney approves, you could have the materials by Labor Day.”
“That’s three weeks from now.”
She picked up the reading glasses dangling from a nylon cord around her neck and peered through them at a Chet’s Sunoco and Party Store calendar taped on the counter.
“Two weeks and four days,” she said.
I had to be back at college a week before that. “Look, Miss Clark, I’m-”
“Mrs. Clark,” she corrected me.
“Mrs. Clark. I’m sorry, I just need a few names and numbers. It wouldn’t take me more than an hour. Couldn’t I just do this today?”
She tapped a finger on the form. “You’ll need to fill this out.”
I looked haplessly around the room, hoping to see someone who might be able to help me. There was only Verna. “This is not right,” I said. “These are public records. The public has a right to see them.”
Verna gave me a tight smile. “Then, sir,” she said, “I suggest that you have the public fill out the required form.”
After filling out the form, I stepped out into the hallway. The men’s room at the end of the hall was closed for repairs. A plumber there told me I could use an employees’ restroom around the corner.
I stood at the urinal fuming. I wondered if Verna Clark knew Cecil Vidigan or had friends or family working at Perfect-O-Screw. Goddamn Starvation Lake, I thought. Maybe there was a story, maybe not, but I couldn’t let this small-town bullshit keep me from finding out. I had to see those records.
I washed my hands and stood at the sink, trying to figure out what to do. In the mirror I noticed a second door in the restroom. An idea popped into my head, so preposterous that I laughed. But I stood there thinking about it a little more and, after a while, it didn’t seem so crazy.
That other door opened on a dimly lit corridor that led past a janitor’s closet to yet another door, this one fitted with a frosted-glass window. I walked as quietly as I could to the frosted-glass door and put my hand on the knob. I turned it and gently tugged the door open. Through the half-inch crack I peered across a bank of filing cabinets to the counter where Verna Clark stood with her back to me, waiting on someone. I eased the door closed.
The inside of the janitor’s closet smelled of soggy mops and Comet. I found a thermos, which I filled with cold water from the restroom sink, and a rolled-up bag of stale pretzels. I locked the door from the inside and sat down on a box of toilet paper. I’d written a story that summer about county budget cutbacks. One cut meant janitors didn’t work Tuesdays and Thursdays. This was a Thursday.
I waited until after nine to slip into the clerk’s office. The records took me a little while to find, but once I had the right drawer, I worked fast, jotting names and numbers on my legal pad in the light of a half moon slivering in through the blinds. I wanted to get out of the courthouse as soon as I finished, but I feared someone might see me. So I refilled the thermos, cleaned off a big sponge to use as a pillow, and prepared to spend the night. I figured I’d sneak out as soon as the building opened in the morning.
The floor was hard and sticky, but sleep came. In a dream I slept on the edge of a cliff out West. I could hear water rushing by in a canyon below and invisible birds made of metal rattling around me in the darkness. Then I felt the cliff’s edge slipping out from under me, felt myself rolling off. Jerking in my sleep, I bolted awake to the clatter of a tin bucket I’d kicked over. “Shit,” I whispered. I lay still and listened over my thumping heart. At first there was only the quiet hum of the old building at rest. Then I heard a knob turn-the door on the restroom-and then a footstep, then another, as a spray of light flashed beneath the door to my hiding place. Did the county budget include a line item for security guards? I couldn’t remember. I sat up as quietly as I could and made sure I’d locked the door.
The light passed twice before finally stopping at the door. I heard a key being inserted into the lock. I looked desperately around the closet for some cranny into which I could disappear. Of course there was none. I squatted on one knee, thinking I could spring past whoever was about to find me. Then the door squeaked open and the flashlight beam blinded me and I froze.
“Gus?”
The voice was familiar. And the laugh that followed. “What the hell are you doing?” Darlene said.
She was wearing a dark blue cop’s uniform with a patch stitched in gold and shaped like a badge over her left breast. “Vigilant Security,” it read. Her hair was tucked up into a policelike hat sewn with an identical patch.
“Darlene,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? I’m working. What are you doing here? Did your mom kick you out? Or do you like sleeping with cockroaches?”
“It’s a long story. I came in this afternoon to look at some files. The bitch clerk wouldn’t let me.”
“So you broke into the county courthouse.”
“No. I was already in.”
“Do you think the sheriff would look at it that way?”
“Come on, Darl,” I said. I was beginning to worry that she might actually take me in. “I never told your mom about Jitters.”
We were nine years old. Darlene and I liked to careen down the dirt two-track of Jitters Trail on our bicycles and catapult over the bank into Jitters Creek. Of course our parents forbade this. One afternoon we were ski-biking, as we called it, when Darlene lost control and crashed into a small poplar along the path. Her bike kept rolling into
