Dead Man's Bones (26 page)

Advertising in the
Enterprise
is actually a good deal, since everybody in town reads it from front to back, if only to verify the gossip they just heard at the Nueces Street Diner or the county courthouse. But I shook my head, pretending not to notice the look of disappointment on her face.

“I stopped in to look for something in the morgue. Okay?”

Ethel put her receipt book back in the drawer and stuck the pencil in her hair, opposite the pencil that was already there. “I reckon,” she said, resigned. “But you’ll have to watch your step. We bin fixin’ the floor up there, and most of the boards’re gone.” She pulled her brows together. “Hank Dixon was doin’ it for us. Now that he’s went and got himself shot, we’re gonna have to find somebody else to finish it, I reckon.” She fixed me with a significant look. “You mind where you put your feet, China. I don’t want you comin’ through my ceilin’ and into my lap.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” I said.

“Guess you know the way.” She tipped her golden beehive in the direction of the stairs.

I did. To get to the
Enterprise
morgue, you have to climb the narrow circular iron staircase at the rear of the building. This takes you to the upstairs loft, which is like a sauna for six or seven months of the year. It might be October outdoors, but up in that loft it was definitely still summer, with some of July’s humidity and August’s heat lurking under the eaves. And Ethel had been right about the floor. To get to the shelves where the old newspaper files are kept, I had to negotiate an eight-inch-wide wooden plankway, with boards laid end to end across the floor joists, like a tightrope walker on a high wire. The air was heavy with the sultry perfume of bat guano, resonant with the soft cooing of the pigeons, who fly in under the eaves and nest in the corners, and thick with dust. I didn’t want to breathe too deeply. There was no telling how many bird or bat viruses were riding through the air, piggybacking on the visible dust motes.

When Hark Hibler took over as editor, he started keeping the
Enterprise
issues on microfiche. If you want to read a back issue, you have to locate the fiche and put it into the fiche reader. The newspaper’s pre-Hark issues, however, are stored in large cardboard porfolios stacked on plywood shelves, systematically arranged by quarters and years, so that you can find what you’re looking for without a great deal of trouble.

But people never put things back the way they’re supposed to. It took me fifteen minutes to find the portfolio containing the back issues for September 1 through December 31, 1976, buried between portfolios for the first and second quarters of 1957. By the time I had pulled it out and carried it to the table under the front window, I was hot and sticky, and sweat was dripping off my nose.

I cleared a litter of papers, empty soda pop cans, and cellophane sandwich wrappers from the table and turned on the light, a single flourescent bar that supplements the dusty light filtering through the window. I began with September, turning the pages slowly. The newspaper has never been big on national or international news, figuring (I suppose) that people could turn on the radio if they wanted to know what was happening outside the city limits. But I learned that the
Viking 2
Lander had successfully reached Mars, that the space shuttle
Enterprise
had been rolled out, and the Montreal Summer Olympics were running way over budget. Most of the coverage, however, was local. Cookie sales and car washes, school lunch menus, a city council dustup over zoning, an article about the positive power of prayer, and the community calendar.

The community calendar. I ran my finger down the list of miscellaneous items. Tickets to the Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner, presented by the Adams County Democratic Women, were $1. The Widowed Fellowship was meeting on Tuesday at the First Baptist Church. Enrollment was open in the Marriage Enrichment Seminar (“Couples’ Therapeutic Spark Plug Change”). Lively doings in Pecan Springs, Texas, circa 1976.

Halfway down the list, I found the announcement that the Republican Club would be meeting in two weeks for a rally, starting with a social hour at six P.M. and including featured entertainment by the Promettes, a girls’ quartet from Pecan Springs High School. Voters of Adams County, regardless of political affiliation, were invited to come out and rally with the local candidates, who exhibited a standard of high moral character and strong family values and would seek to limit the intrusion of big government into citizens’ lives. Nobody had heard of the Patriot Act yet.

Two weeks. I skipped the next week’s paper and leafed unsuccessfully through the following issue. In the issue after that, I found the photo Max Baumeister had mentioned, under a banner headline: “Local Candidates Woo Republican Faithful.” It showed a stern-featured middle-aged Jane, wearing a slightly ironic smile, and a hefty Max Baumeister, his glasses glinting in the glare of the flashbulb. Between them was a tall, stooped young man in a blazer with too-short sleeves, his mouth set in a straight line. He was shaking hands with a man wearing a saucer-sized button emblazoned VOTE FOR TRACY. The photo was captioned “War Hero.” Underneath, I read, “Senator Tracy congratulates Andrew Obermann, nephew of Jane and Florence Obermann, on impressive war record.” A drop of sweat fell off the end of my nose and plopped onto Senator Tracy’s face.

The article told me that Andrew Obermann, a former member of Echo Company of the First Recon Battalion of the U.S. Marines, had been responsible for single-handedly wiping out a machine-gun nest in the jungle near Chu Lai, thereby saving his squad from ambush. He had, however, suffered extensive shrapnel wounds and had spent a couple of years in military hospitals. He was in Pecan Springs to visit his aunts.

There is, of course, no copy machine in the morgue—Hark wasn’t able to haul it up the circular stairs, and I wasn’t about to take the newspaper downstairs, copy it, and bring it back up again. So I made notes of the dates and the military information, then replaced the portfolio—in the right place this time, where it could be found again without difficulty—and headed back to the spiral stairs, treading carefully on the planks.

At her desk, Ethel glanced up at the ceiling, as if to confirm that I had not in fact fallen through. “Find whatcher lookin’ for?” she inquired. There were now three pencils stuck in her hair.

“Actually, I did,” I said, pausing beside her desk. Ethel has worked for the newspaper ever since she got out of high school, and she knows the people in Pecan Springs the way she knows her own family. A lot of them probably are family, come to that. There are a couple of dozen Fritzes in the phone book, and that’s only her father’s kin. Her mother was a Jones, and the Lord only knows how many of them live in town.

“What do you remember about Andrew Obermann?” I asked.

“Andrew Obermann,” Ethel muttered, frowning. She picked a pencil off her desk and began turning it in her fingers. “Andrew Obermann. Lessee, now. He was old Merrill G.’s one and only grandkid, wasn’t he? Harley’s son?” She gave me a triumphant look. “That’s the one. Andrew Obermann. Lived in Houston, spent summers here when he was a kid.”

“I believe that’s right,” I said. “He joined the Marines and went to Vietnam, and—”

“And came back all shot up,” Ethel said. She poked the pencil into her gilt pagoda, which was now studded with pencils. “Florence Obermann, she was a close friend of my sister-in-law’s cousin Charley. She told Charley how bad the boy was hurt—injuries to his stomach and intestines, legs all cut up with shrapnel—and how they thought maybe he might not live, which was a real pity, ’cause his dad had died just the year before, and Andy was the last male Obermann. And him with all that money, too. I heard he went through it pretty fast after he got out of the Marines, though.”

“Did you see him after the war?”

She thought about that. “Maybe a time or two. He wasn’t around long, though. Went off to California, was what I heard.”

“He was here in 1976,” I offered. “There was a piece in the newspaper. He got his picture taken with Senator Tracy.”

“Tracy.” Ethel made a scornful noise in her throat, and the pencils in her towering hair quivered with disgust. “That crook. He went straight from the statehouse to prison, you know. He was taking bribes. We got way too many like that in this state, especially now that—”

“Does your sister-in-law’s cousin know anything about Andrew Obermann, do you think?”

“Charley?” Ethel replied mournfully. “Charley got kilt in a tornado up in Oklahoma a couple of years ago, her and her two kids and their dog. I wouldn’t live in Oklahoma, if somebody gave me a house and a hundred acres of land. Tornadoes rippin’ through all the time, right, left, and center. Hardly a month goes by, they don’t have a tornado up there.”

“Well, since Charley’s not available, maybe you can suggest somebody else who might know.”

“If you’re interested in Andy Obermann, you oughtta talk to his aunts.” Ethel raised her eyebrows inquisitively. “This don’t have anything to do with what happened at their house Friday night, does it? Hank gettin’ shot, I mean.”

“No, nothing to do with that. It’s something else altogether.” I couldn’t tell her about the caveman—if I did, it would be all over town by the time Ethel finished her second helping of meatloaf at the Diner, where Lila (the owner) is the Chief Operator of the Pecan Springs gossip switchboard and Director of Rumor Proliferation.

Ethel made a face. “I can’t figure out what Hank thought he was doin’, breakin’ in like that. With a knife, too. I figure maybe he was drunk, but even so, I don’t blame old Miss Obermann for shootin’ him. Somebody comes into my livin’ room like that, I’ll blow his head off.”

Judge, jury, and executioner. But I didn’t say that. I said, “I don’t want to bother Jane and Florence with questions about their nephew until I’ve done a little more research.”

Ethel sighed heavily. “I heard this morning that Florence isn’t any too good. Broke her hip, I heard. That’s not good, y’know. That’s ostopersus, that’s what it is. Yer bones go bad, you’re done for. Spend the rest of yer life in a nursing home.” She paused. “If it’s research you’re after, you oughtta go over to Bean’s and talk to Bob.”

“Bob Godwin?” I asked, surprised, and then I wasn’t. He was a Vietnam vet. The other night, when Alana and I had eaten at Bean’s, Bob had been wearing a black T-shirt with a skull and crossbones on it. And over the skull were the words “Recon Marines.” I looked down at my notes.

Andrew Obermann had been a member of the First Recon Battalion of the U.S. Marines.

Bob was out back by the railroad tracks, stoking the mesquite fire in his propane-tank barbecue pit, his face as red as the glowing coals under the meat. He stepped back from the fire, pulling off his red bandana headband and using it to wipe the sweat from his face and neck. He hadn’t shaved yet, and his cheeks were covered with a reddish stubble.

“Andy Obermann? Yeah, sure, I knew Andy.” Bob wadded up his headband, picked up a fork, and began turning slabs of brisket. “Who wants to know?”

“I do,” I said. “He was declared dead . . . when?” I knew, but I wondered if Bob did.

“Long time ago,” Bob said. “Middle eighties, mebbe. Around the time I got my trailer.” Bob lives a couple of miles out of town with Budweiser and a bunch of goats, a renewable resource.

“He’d been missing for seven years, I suppose.” That’s the common-law standard for presumption of death.

“Thereabouts, I reckon. The ol’ ladies said he went to California. Leastwise, that’s where he last wrote from.” Bob dropped the cover on his barbecue with a loud clang. “Hot as hell out here. Let’s cool off. Anyway, I got something I want your opinion on.” He headed for the back door of Bean’s, and I followed.

Inside, the place was dark and cool. Somebody was rustling around in the kitchen, and I smelled the rich, spicy odor of simmering beans, layered over the stale smells of booze, tobacco smoke, and yesterday’s barbecue. Bob disappeared into the kitchen and came out with several slices of meat on a plate.