Beast of the Field (2 page)

"That's enough, Braun," Mrs. Donnan said.  This time he listened to her.

When Millie and Junior had returned from washing their hands and faces, Mrs. Donnan waited for everyone to be seated, said, "Let's say grace."  Elbows on the table, hands folded at their foreheads, the Donnans mumbled a prayer to the Lord.  There were forks in hands before the last Amen was done sounding off the walls.

Save for the scraping of these forks on plates and teeth, dinner was silent.  Sterno kept his eye on the mother.  He couldn’t help it; there was a dark hole in the corner of his eye he kept seeing as he was trying to eat and each time he looked up it was her.  She was in a black dress still. 
Cooking, cleaning, sleeping, dreaming, living in black.  Sterno had seen a thousand mothers like this since the war, haunting the world with their thousand dead sons.

Directly across from Sterno was the big man, Junior, they call him, like he was still in dresses.  One of the baskets of biscuits was for him.  He ate with two hands, one on the chicken and one on his fork.  He never looked up and he never stopped eating until half the mound of fried chicken had become a pile of clean gray bones on his plate.  There was something in his eyes that bothered Sterno, a vacancy that could be filled in any way.  He was never comfortable around these shell-shocked types, who smiled a stupid smile at you all day then jerked awake from a trench dream that night to snap your neck.  He’d seen it before.

Donnan, the senior, ate well too, but steadily, and quietly, now and again wiping his fingers on the napkin tucked into his shirt.  He flattened his mouth at Sterno a couple times, which seemed to be all the smile he was allowed indoors.  Once he asked his daughter for the buttermilk, once the big man for the salt; other than this he kept his eyes on his plate.

Then there was the girl.  Throughout the dinner, as Sterno had watched the family, a pair of eyes had been watching him in kind.  She didn’t touch her food, didn’t say a word,
did nothing, in fact, except watch Sterno.  Measuring him up.  Despite this, he thought, she’s the exception.  She’s the only one wants you here.

Truth was, none of them wanted him here, and he knew it.  Sterno had seen this before too:  blame, anger, guilt, grief—wounds re-opened and fresh with the arrival of a detective.  Suddenly, the death was alive again, right here in the room, sitting with them in a chair where the living used to sit.  This was what they thought they had wanted all this time; now they got it and they were not so sure anymore if they wanted to re-live this pain again or just let the dead lie.

He’d seen it a thousand times.               

3.

After dinner, Mother made Millie work with her in the kitchen while the men smoked on the front porch.  Her dropping a coffee cup and chipping a plate didn’t make any difference to Mother: she felt there was a time for a woman to do what only a woman could do well and leave the men to their matters.  “Well, horseshit,” said Millie, under her breath; but she waited until Mother was on her way upstairs before she said it.  When she heard her mount the final creaking stair, she hung her apron, grabbed Tommy’s boots from their place by the back door and slid quietly outside.  She went around the back corner of the house, into and through a tunnel she’d made through Grandmother’s old lilac bush until she was at the front corner of the house, peering through dried, wilted little leaves at the conversation on the porch.

Closest to her sat Pa, rocking like he was trying to start a fire with the floorboards and the runners of his chair.  Junior stood on the far end of the porch, looking the other way, out to the fields, thank God, or he’d see her for sure.  In the middle was this Mr. Sterno, this so-called “detective” from Missouri.  Blind as a bat, can’t drive for shit and scared of a twelve-year-old girl and a farm boy who can’t talk, coming out to him just to say hi.  Some detective they sent us, Millie thought.  Little chance of this palooka finding out who killed Tommy, she thought. And here was Pa, running off at the mouth like they were old pals now he finally had a grown man around to talk to.

“…Never did know who gave him that watch,”  he was saying, “some gal I reckon.  Tommy always had a gal or two treatin’ him nice.  I’ll tell ya.  Sure was a nice one they got off with.  A Elgin watch.  A shiny silver watch, nice silver chain.”

The Pinkerton wrote in a pad. 
Smoked.  “So that was all that was missing, far as you know.  The watch and the billfold.”

“Well, far as we know.  These thing’s might-
a been fount on the road and carried off.  Or, if it was bandits, they might-a known Tommy carried cash on him most of the time and took these things from him right there when they did it.”

“Cash.”

“Well, he worked at the stables, in town.  But what I’m talking about is his winnings, mostly.  From racin’.” 

"Right.
  Your letter said he raced buggies," said the detective.

"Mother’s letter.
  Yessir.  He never took to motor-cars.  Ever-now and then he would get into a saddle.  He was just as good in a saddle as he was in a buggy.  He was just plain great with horses, breaking 'em, training 'em, running 'em, you name it, best I ever seen—some folks are born that-a way.  But I'd say Tommy's favorite kind of racing was right out here on these dirt roads, where he could get that horse a his up to a full cut.  His buggy’s out in the barn, we haven’t touched it since it happened.  Tomorrow we can pull it out for you, if you like—too dark now.  Hell, it aint nothing but a courting rig, four wheels and a seat.  Then he got this new race horse of his—Sonnet, a filly—and damned near gave up on trotting.  He was using it that night though, the buggy that is, I reckon to take some gal to the dance—there was the Mayfair dance that night."

The men smoked, rocked.  The last time she saw Tommy alive he was on that buggy, snapping the reins against Sonnet’s flanks, that black thunderhead high in the sky to the southwest, the wind kicking up dirt all around him until he vanished in it.

"Hard to imagine a buggy racer, so good with horses, falling off his rig like he did,” said the detective finally.

Millie perked up her ears. 

“…I’ve heard of these guys letting go of the lines, doing backflips and landing ass-on-seat and reins-in-hand." 

Millie frowned.  Maybe there’s a tiny little chance you aint as dumb as you look, she thought.  She had seen Tommy do a handstand while holding the reins, seen him jump from the buggy to the horse and back.  Probably this so-called detective had heard this about Tommy, and said it to sound smart. 
Sneaky St. Louis sonbitch.

“That was Tommy,” Pa said.  “That was sure’nough Tommy.”

“So then…how did he fall?”             

Pa thought some.  "Pitched forward, I reckon, got hung up underneath.  They say in town the horse spooked—that big old twister come through that night, ruined the dance, you can bet, carried away some houses.  Maybe you heard about it.  No?  Well, any rate, come morning we got that filly out at the gate, still in the harness.  Abner—that's Mayor Greentree, there in town—he'll tell you all about it.  Go find him tomorrow, an old friend of ours. 
Practically family.  Been with us the whole way. Was there that very afternoon, with the whole town blown to smithereens by a twister, and he come out to look in on Mother.”

“So where did you find him? 
Your son.”

“Under the buggy.
  Dead.  Got hung up when he fell.  Hell, that horse probably dragged him all over half of creation on that bumpy, good-for-shit road yonder,” Pa said, then paused.  Millie heard the tinny slosh of a flask, looked to see him handing it back to the detective.  Pa didn’t carry a flask, so that meant this blind, can’t-drive-for-shit-all Pinkerton detective from Missouri was a drunk too.  Pa started up again.  “I guest I knew right away, right there on the porch I knew.  But Mother w
as panicked—rushed me out there to look.    Welp, there's one sight I wisht I could forget, tell you that.  We never did let Mother get a good look, thank God for that.  Junior wouldn’t look either.  But there was no stopping the girl—she came right on out with me."

From the house she had only been able to see the horse at first, lifting its head from the hard grass outside the gate to look to the house, chewing, ears flicking.  Pa thumbed his suspenders onto his shoulders, told everyone else to stay inside,
started out there in a fast jerky hobble without his walking stick.  He slowed down when he saw the buggy behind the horse, stopped when he saw there was no driver in it, bent with his hands on his knees when he saw what was under the buggy.  Millie walked right up next to Pa, staring down like he was; all he did was rest a hand on her shoulder.  She had thought at first he was resting a hand on her shoulder anyway, but actually it had been her shoulder holding him up.

Now Mother opened the screen door, stepped past Pa, Junior and the detective.  She stood on the porch looking around the front yard.

Pa said, “We aint seen her, Mother.”

Mother ignored him.  She looked out the fields, then at the barn,
then gave it up.  Sighing, she turned to the detective and said, “I’ve prepared Tommy’s room for you, Mr. Sterno.  I suppose after that long drive, you’re ready for a good rest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the detective said, standing.

Well I’ll be a
—Millie quickly thought, then she was gone.  Backwards through the lilac tunnel, up the trunk of the old elm next to the house, along the stump of the bough Pa and Junior had sawed off last summer and across the roof to Tommy’s window.  She used a twig to unlatch the screen, stepped through.  The lamp was on and the bed turned down.

Well well well, you too, huh Mother? 

Mother had known good and goddamn well there was no way Millie would’ve ever let this near-sighted sad-sack of a detective from Missouri stink up Tommy’s sheets with his whisky breath, if she had known that was what Mother had planned, so she had  never even told her that this was her intention.

“A bunch of shit-blasted sneaks,” Millie muttered.  Then, she said, still to herself, “The letters.” 

In Tommy’s trunk in the closet, under a few folded shirts and his big Shakespeare book, was a neat stack of envelopes, wrapped in a dainty pearl-colored handkerchief and bound with a dark green ribbon.  Millie closed the trunk, stood with the letters—but not for long, for there were footsteps coming in the hallway.  She was stepping through the window back out onto the roof when she heard Mother’s voice behind her.  “Stop right there, young lady!  What have you got in your hand?  Milicent Margaret Donnan!  Get back here! 
Millie
!”

But Millie was gone.   

*

She spent the night in the mow.  Sometime after the house had gone dark, Mother came out with a lantern.  Hollering at Millie in a raspy whisper to get down out of there, get her behind in that house right now, start acting like a young lady instead of a spoiled child, for once; but all Mother could do was holler.  Millie knew she would never come up to try to get her down, not after last time.  So she stayed quiet until Mother ran her voice dry.  “I’ll be waiting with the
spatula when you come in for breakfast, young lady.  You’re lucky we have company.  What would your brother say?” was the last thing she said before sliding the bay door closed. 

Millie waited, listened, at last put a match to a candle.  For several minutes she stared ahead without moving.  She had no idea how long she was there with those letters in her lap. 
A long time.  When the flame began to bounce on a stump of wax, Millie blinked back to the barn.  She was surrounded by square bales.  Below her were the heavy breaths and scuffing hooves of the livestock.  A barn squirrel chattered from the darkness above her, then skittered away, leaving just the night noises from outside.  Millie re-tied the ribbon around the stack of letters.  Hidden on a cornice rafter above the top bale of the highest stack was a battered trilby hat; underneath the trilby was a wooden cigar box from a store in Wichita.  In the box, among other personal knick-knacks, were Junior’s letters from the war.  Millie opened the box, placed the bound letters inside, put the box back under the hat, climbed down.

She put an eye to a crack between slats of the barn.  The house was not completely dark, as she had thought.  There was lamplight coming from Tommy’s room.  She watched, but could see no movement against the curtains.  Cursing weakly, she laid down on a horse blanket spread across two bales.  She wanted to stay up to keep an eye on this detective, make sure he stayed out of Tommy’s trunk, and his other things; but if he was going into town in the morning, then so was she, and she would have to get up early.

4.

It seemed like half the farmers in Hope County were in town to see the Pinkerton man.  Harvest time and wheat-drilling time and market day and these no-good loafers had nothing better to do than to
come gawk at an out-of-towner.

Millie had come out early in the morning on the old bicycle.  She had had to be fast—gather the eggs, bring two pails of water in from the well, grab a hunk of bread and leftover coffee from the night before and get out of there before Mother came after her with the spatula.  It had been a successful escape, a quick cut through the dusty field roads, directly south into town.  She had had plenty of time to wait before everyone showed up.

Pa led the Pinkerton man into town in his pick-up, with Mother in the passenger seat, her hair in a bun and one of Grandma’s silver clips clasped to the side of her head and wearing her white dress with the faded red flowers she hadn’t put on since the night of the Mayfair dance.  Millie had forgotten how pretty she could look.  She watched them from the filling station, careful not to be seen.  She didn’t see Junior anywhere yet but knew he’d be out looking for her, same as she was sure half the reason Mother had come was to drag her back to the farm. 

Pa waved to a window of the hotel and after a few seconds Mayor Greentree stepped out of the hotel’s main entrance, followed by some other men.  He gave Mother a big hug, talked down to her from his height while he kept his arm around her.  Everyone was smiling, even Mother, and Millie had forgotten what that looked like too.  Pa got a handshake from the mayor and the other men, then a can of snuff to pinch into.  When the Pinkerton’s car finally braked to a
stop next to Pa’s pick-up, Millie dared herself a little closer.  She heard Pa introduce them.  They talked for a few minutes while Mother looked around the streets.  Finally, Pa opened the pick-up door for Mother, gave the engine a few cranks, got in himself.  He stopped at the general store while mother went in for coffee, sugar and flour, most likely; with a sack in one arm, she shaded her eyes with her other hand to search the streets one more time before getting in, but when Millie didn’t want to be found, there was no one on earth—save Junior sometimes—that could find her.  When the pick-up was moving out of town again Millie stepped out into the open, joined the crowd gathering around the mayor.

Junior followed her out from the stand of trees where he had been this whole time.

“Damnit-all, Junior!  How long you been snooping around back there?” she said.  He chuckled a little at her.  She spat in the dirt.  “Just so you know, I aint going one step toward home till I’m good and ready, not one second sooner.”  But by the look on his face, Millie knew he was curious about the blind drunkard from the Pinkerton Agency too.  So they followed along with the crowd, Millie elbowing and shouldering in closer to hear what the men said.

“Sure a pleasure to have a big-city detective right here in Price, Kansas.  Welcome, welcome,” said the mayor as he nearly jerked the Pinkerton’s arm out of its shoulder socket.  Mayor Greentree looked like a rock formation next to the Pinkerton. 
Two hands taller and as many wider.  His Irish Setter hair was parted just over his left ear and combed down to his head in shining corduroy lines, but his eyebrows sprouted from his forehead like prairie scrub.  He had muscles heaped across his chest and shoulders and big round belly to hold them up.

             
The mayor opened his hand to present the town.  “And this here’s our Price, take it or leave it!” the mayor said.  “Haw!  Just a little joke around here, ketch’m?   Follow me, I’ll show you around.”

Millie moved closer, right behind them where the Pinkerton man couldn’t see her—she wanted to measure him up without his know-so.

“Just before the war between the states, two fellows by the name of Price, Hiram and Hubert Price—
preeze
, or something like that, in German, p-r-e-i-s, or something—they bought up the land on either side of the Big Silky—it was running then.  Brought their families here to get away from all that violence and rancorance along the border.  Only a few of the real old-timers can still remember those free-soiler days.  Bad times, all right, but you know what, they were good for the country.  No offense, Mr. Sterno, hailing yourself from Saint Louis, but I pro-guess that it was all that blood spilled all over this Kansas soil that made America what it is today.”  The mayor nodded and did something with his face to add respect and—what was it?—
dignity,
maybe, or maybe just
assertion
to the last comment.

The Pinkerton said, “Can’t argue with that.”

“These were hard times,” the Mayor said started up again.  “Kansas wasn’t exactly an easy locale for homesteading after the war was over, nor to mention growing a community.  Indians, drought, tornadoes, snakes, mosquitoes, black death, the ague, all those Missouri musket-humpers still bitter about losing the war, ketch’m?"

Good one, Mayor.  Hah!

“Yeah, I’ll tell you, for a good long hunk or two of time, ol’ Hiram and Hubert Price didn’t know if they were going to make it.  Then someone found oil up near Wichita, a little outcrop coal right here in Hope County—albeit-all south of here, down New Bremen way—and an underground lake in the limestone right underneath our feet.  Then the railroads come through.  Before you know it, the Price brothers look around them and see little sod houses popping up all over.”

“Might as well make a town out of it,” Mr. Neuwald said.

“That’s right, Jone, might as well.  Mr. Sterno, meet Jonas Neuwald—Elks, Eagles, Lions and Rotary.”   The Pinkerton man shook hands with the skinny, hawk-nosed, mustached man.  The mayor went on:  “And make a town out of it is precisely what they did, Mr. Sterno.  They incorporated the next year, had a promotive plat made up, sent it around the state, into Missouri and Arkansas.  Heck, back then? every six months there was another town out here closing down.  Well, I’ll tell you, all those ghosts from all those ghost towns had to go somewhere.  So pretty soon, before you know it, storefronts and hotels are going up, teams, wagons everywhere, kids running around Main Street—you got yourself a town.” 

“Price, Kansas,” added Mr. 
Neuwald.

“That’s right, Jone,” the mayor said, looking around him, “our Price.”

The mayor stopped walking, hiked up his pants, let the crowd of men and boys surround them.  This was the final stop on the nickel tour.  Sheriff Jake’s jail.  Over the door on one side of the one-story, brown-bricked building was a sign that said "JAIL."  On the other half of the building's front side were bay doors, one of which was open to show an old Chevrolet up on stumps, pieces of its engine out on the cement floor around it.  A few other cars and some engine parts littered the ground in front of the bay doors.

Sheriff Jake stepped out from the garage wiping his hands.  Sheriff Jake looked like Jonas Neuwald’s bigger, stronger, meaner older brother—which was exactly what he was.

"Mr. Sterno, meet Sheriff Jacob Neuwald, brother to Jonas.  Elks, Eagles, Rotary, and our town constable.  'Sheriff' is what we call him round here.”

"Follow me, mister," said Sheriff Jake, and spat.  Mr. Sterno was led into the jail’s front door.

The crowd stopped in front of the jail, not sure what to do anymore, so they started passing a plug around and cracking jokes about the Pinkerton.  Millie was surrounded by men’s pants and men’s shirts.  She could barely move, much less see.  This was her Pinkerton.  This was her investigation.  She had told Mother what to write when they were seeking help.  Tommy was
her
brother, goddamnit-all.  She had to think of something if she wanted to get in on this meeting they were having with her Pinkerton in there.

"I can't see jack-shit.  Come on, Junior.  I got an idea."

"H-y.”

She moved around to be behind Junior, who tried to turn his body with her.  "Hold still, will you?  Stop fussing.  Face forward, like this."  She aimed his front side toward the jail, placed the palms of her hands flat on each of his buttocks.  After peering around one side of him to get her bearings, she dug in her heel, said to Junior, "Come on, now, stop fighting it,” and started pushing. 
Junior resisted, but not for long, and soon they were plowing steadily through the crowd toward the jail.  "Beg your pardons, gentlemen!" she said as they moved through the shirts.  Men moved aside, some chuckling.  Millie grunted and cursed until Junior finally stopped fighting her.  When she had cleared the crowd, she gave Junior a final push, causing him to stumble forward, then sprinted away from him in a direction that made it impossible for him to follow.  She ducked in and out of men and went around the hotel to throw him off her scent, then back to the jail—this time around the back, to the single, high-up slat of a window.  She placed a wooden crate upside down, stood on it.  Not high enough.  She placed a rusty old spiked wheel on the crate and leaned it against the wall.  Carefully, she climbed the spokes of the wheel to stand on the highest part of the rim, until she had to crouch below the bottom sill of the window to not be seen.

Inside Sheriff Jake's office there were a desk and three wooden chairs.  There was no cell.  A framed map of Kansas hung on the wall across from his desk, alongside an older map of the Kansas Territory, stretching to the Rockies one way and northward into Nebraska.  A big, open-mouthed bass with eyes that looked like spit wads was mounted on the wall over a pair of file cabinets.  Hanging between the two framed maps was a picture of the Neuwald brothers, as boys, on either side of the long legs of Buffalo Bill Cody.  In the picture, the boys are holding sticks like pistols and are shooting the photographer. 

Her Pinkerton set his hat on the desk and took his chair.  Millie watched him as he looked around at the faces of the men of Price.  Millie began to understand there was something happening in this silence; but there was always something happening in the secret world of adults, even when it was quiet.  Sheriff Jake never had a nice face, what you could see of it from behind his thick black moustache and long black eyelashes, but now his face was downright mean.  Jonas Neuwald had the same features but the shape of his face was oftentimes so different, softer, pointier, like a lizard's face.

"I'll get right to it, Mr. St—Sterno? 
Sterno….That a Jew name?  Polack?"

"I'm an American, Sheriff."

"From Missouri…" the sheriff said under his breath.  His brother's shoulders bounced in a silent chuckle.  Millie suddenly felt sorry for her Pinkerton, near-sighted sot that he was.  She didn't know why, but she felt like she ought to go back around front and get Junior to stand over there behind him.

"It doesn't matter if he's a Polack.  Now come on, Jake, it's nearly nine o'clock and I'm ravishing," said Mayor Greentree, rubbing his stomach with both hands.

"Keep your belt on, Abner.  Looky, Mr. Pinkerton man, I'm sorry that you had to waste your time coming all the way here for nothing, but there aint no crime here for you to be investigating in the first place.  This whole thing is a bunch of silliness and wastefulness."

Her Pinkerton pulled out a readyroll cigarette, lit it.  "This isn't a criminal investigation, Sheriff.  I'm not here to step on anybody's toes.  I was hired out privately, simply to check into the death of Thomas Donnan.  Even if I did find something I would call suspicious, chances of any charges getting filed are slim.  However, if I do discover foul play in this case, and I discover who is responsible, then you're the man who's going to bring the culprit to justice, not me."  He tipped some ash onto the floor.

There were still silent things happening between the men.  At last, Sheriff Jake put his feet up on his desk.  He removed his derby.  He gave it a flick so that it landed on the upraised point of one of his boots. 

A truck went by behind her, loud and slow
under its load of grain; she edged her head upward until she could hear.

"...simple as that, Mr. Sterno.
  This isn't St. Louie, where all the horses are half deaf from the noise and half stupid from being from Missouri.  That horse of his was one tight-sprung animal.  A backfire as loud as that one--"

"Plus the storm," the mayor put in.

"—And she spooked," Sheriff Jake kept going.  "She spooked good."

Millie, listening intently to the conversation, didn't hear the little squeaks behind her until they were right behind her.  She then felt a finger tapping her shoulder.

"H-y."

She sighed.  Junior stood there balancing her bicycle. 
"Just a minute, Junior.  Can you wait one shit-blasted minute?"

"What model was this man Aaronson's horseless carriage?"

"Hell if I know, a Knox?  What difference does it make?"

"Where can I find Aaronson?"

"Not around here.  He moved out of these parts some time ago.  Somewhere down in Oklahoma.  Some Injun-named town."

"Owasso.
  Owaska."

"Nah, something like Nowata."

"...Osage."

"Some Injun name, anyway.  God knows why he'd want to move to Oklahoma."

"You can still hunt a cat down there, in some of those hills," the sheriff's brother said.

"Yeah, well you can still hunt a nigger in Mississippi, that doesn't mean I'm ever going to set a foot in that patch of shit again either," said the mayor.