buying it completely.
After that, there was nothing to do but head back to Crandon and Lily.
That was the plan anyway, but then Tommy said, “Mitch? You mind if we take a quick stop by Bonnie’s place?”
Bonnie Kohler was Tommy’s only family in the world. His parents were long dead and his brother had gotten killed in a head-on collision out on Highway 8 six years before. Bonnie was his step-sister. Tommy saw her maybe once or twice a year, but with what was going on, you started thinking more about family. Those slim threads that held you together suddenly started feeling very weighty and necessary.
“Okay with me,” Mitch said.
Bonnie had a store at the very outskirts of Elmwood as it sloped down towards Bethany and the river. Tommy got them there in about five minutes and the further they went, the deeper the water became. Those last few blocks were marked by cars stalled at curbsides and lots of empty-looking storefronts. Even the bars that never closed looked deserted. By the time they got to Bonnie’s One-Stop-package liquor, cold beer, and broasted chicken- the water was over a foot deep in the street. They could see Bethany hugging the river in the distance, water sluicing right up to windowsills.
But at least they found all the people.
They were gathered outside Bonnie’s little neighborhood store which sat between a couple little shops, Antiques of Yesteryear and Fern’s Fancy Gifts-Discount Moccasins and Ojibwa Bead Supplies. The sort of places that Mitch’s father had always called “bucket shops” with some derision.
“What the hell is that all about?” Tommy said, maybe louder than he intended, eyeing the crowd outside Bonnie’s.
Mitch wasn’t sure, but it didn’t look good, though, not good at all.
People generally didn’t gather like that unless there was an accident, a fire, or some guy was handing out money. You could have just won ten million in the lottery or cured cancer, but that wouldn’t have brought them out like something particularly bad. Something involving blood and bodies or hardship. Then you couldn’t get rid of them. They flocked like seagulls when somebody dropped a French fry.
Tommy and Mitch hopped out of the cab into the chill standing water which looked gray and filthy like seepage from a cesspool. Mitch could just about imagine what might be floating in it. When the rainwater gravity drains backed up for any length of time, they also flooded out the sewer systems and the result was sewage in the streets.
Mitch raced behind Tommy to the store. There were maybe twenty or thirty people standing out there in raincoats and rubber boots as the rain continued to fall and the water continued to rise. There was something terribly ludicrous about it all. And Mitch knew that whatever was going on had to be good.
“What’s going on here?” Tommy asked an old guy who had a baseball bat in his hands, of all things.
“We’re waiting for the cops and they’re about as quick as fucking molasses like usual,” the guy said. He pointed towards the store entrance with his bat. “Something’s going on in there. Something bad. You better stay out here with us, mister.”
There were cords standing out in Tommy’s neck now. “That’s not what I asked you.”
“Cool your jets, hotshot,” the old guy said.
Which was about as much mouth as Tommy had patience for. He grabbed the old guy by the coat and nearly hoisted him right off his feet. “That’s my sister’s fucking store…you hear me? Now tell me what’s going on in there.”
The others were all watching now. Maybe they would have come to the old guy’s aid, but not after what Tommy had said. He had just made it personal.
“Take it easy,” a woman said. “There’s some crazy woman hiding in there.”
Tommy released the old man. “Is it…is it Bonnie?”
The woman shook her head. “No, Bonnie’s in Chicago. But she ain’t gonna like it much when she gets back, I’ll tell you that much.”
At this point, Mitch interceded before Tommy started getting really pissed off. It came from about six or seven people, but he finally got the basics. Some crazy bitch came out of the cellar trapdoor and attacked the girl behind the counter. When somebody went in to help, the crazy lady attacked them, too. Both of them managed to get out and now they were on their way over to St. Mary’s Hospital.
“But don’t go in there,” a teenage kid said. “I saw her…she was outta her head.”
“How did she look?” Mitch asked.
The kid looked like he didn’t want to say. Finally, he shrugged. “Just sort of funny…like she’d been in an accident or something. She’s got a gray veil covering her face. Weird, you know? Like she came from a funeral or something.”
Mitch swallowed. I’m willing to bet she did, son. Her own.
There were several others who’d apparently seen her and they just nodded. Together, they were brave enough to stand guard-at a healthy distance from the entrance-but that didn’t mean they were brave enough to actually go in there.
Tommy left and came right back with his four-ten.
“I’m telling you,” the guy said again, “you don’t want to go in there.”
Tommy breezed right past him and Mitch followed. The old guy handed over his baseball bat to him, so at least he had something. They went up the short flight of steps and in. Inside, it smelled like a distillery. A series of tight aisles ran through the store, shelves packed high with everything from canned soup to toilet paper to potato chips. Anywhere there was some free space, cases of beer were stacked in displays. Or at least, that’s how the store had appeared before the crazy lady went on her binge. Now everything was spilled all over the place. Snacks and candy carpeting the floors were dusted down by burst bags of flour and sugar. Racks of hard liquor had been tipped over and there was shattered glass everywhere, the stink of gin and whiskey enough to curl your nostril hairs. A lifesize cardboard stand-up of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. was splattered with what might have been catsup or taco sauce.
It was dim and shadowy in there and with the wreckage, there were dozens of places to hide.
“Guess we better take a look-see,” Tommy muttered.
He kicked aside a few cans of beer that went rolling on the old warped hardwood floor and then rolled right back. Behind the counter, the shelves had been cleared of cartons of cigarettes and tins of cigars. There was an avalanche of them back there. Tommy waded through, popping the drawer on the cash register. The money in there was untouched.
Maybe if it had been taken, this all would have been a little easier to take.
They moved down the aisles, stepping over loafs of bread and boxes of donuts, checked out the beer coolers and the glass cases of deli items. All untouched for the most part. The store itself had not flooded as the floor was above the water level, but that wouldn’t last.
In the storeroom in the back, there was muddy water all over the floor right in front of a trapdoor with a pull ring.
“Cellar?” Mitch said.
“That’s it. Just storage mostly. But the kegs of beer are down there, too. I remember our graduation party,” he said. “Me and my old man wrestled a couple of half-barrels up those steps. We got half way up and-”
There was a splashing sound below and Tommy closed his mouth.
Mitch stood there, feeling somehow ineffectual with that Louisville Slugger in his hands. The trapdoor was somehow just too reminiscent of the one Grandpa always disappeared down in The Munsters. In his mind he could see it creaking open and plumes of stage fog rolling out…except it wasn’t fuddy-duddy old Grandpa coming out of there, it was something else.
“She’s down there,” Tommy whispered.
Mitch nodded.
Of course she was down there. The cellar had to be flooded. Mitch could just about imagine it down there… webby and dark and filled with rank water. You would have had to have been really stupid to be thinking about going down there. Question was: How stupid was Tommy?
“Help me,” he said.
Tommy maybe wasn’t so stupid after all. With Mitch’s help, he slid a floor freezer full of ice over the trapdoor.
