South of Superior (5 page)

Madeline expected her to drive away but instead Gladys got out and set off down the walk at a brisk pace, her feet churning like two small engines.

M
adeline came downstairs the next morning, poured her coffee, sat down across from Gladys, and said, “So. I've been wondering, which house in town was Joe Stone's?”

It was impossible for her to say “my grandfather's.” She really couldn't think about him without a wave of dislike washing over her, but she was here and ought to learn at least a little about him. She assumed Gladys would be a little more forthcoming after yesterday. They'd had that bonding moment in the car. But Gladys gave her an Unreadable look. “None of them.”

“Really.” Madeline was Unable to keep the irritation out of her voice. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“And how would you know what makes sense and what doesn't?”

Just like that, Madeline saw red. It wasn't like her, or rather, wasn't like who she'd always been Until recently, but she gave in to it. “Whose fault do you think that is? Mine, or your old sweetheart, Joe's?” She scraped her chair away from the table and exited through the kitchen door, managing not to slam it behind her.

She went to the water and along the shore for half a mile before the cold seeped into her bones and sent her back to town. She dawdled in front of the old closed-up hotel for a while, gazing at the little peaked-roof attic windows, wishing she could be Up there taking in the view, which would surely be long and wide and comforting, because after all what were these petty human squabbles but so much dust in the wind? Why did she care so much about Joe Stone when she'd had all the love any child could need from Emmy? There was no real answer except that it was simple human nature.

When she returned to 26 Bessel, Gladys had transformed the kitchen into a food factory and Arbutus was sitting at the table in her bathrobe. She beamed at Madeline and Madeline smiled back. She resolved to be pleasant to Gladys for Arbutus's sake.

“You're Up early,” she said, straightening the collar of Arbutus's robe. Arbutus looked rumpled somehow, as if her journey out of bed had been rocky.

“I smelled the cooking. Glad came in and helped me.”

“Okay, but be careful. I don't want any accidents. I'm sorry I wasn't here.”

Arbutus's eyes seemed full of Understanding. Probably Gladys had told her about their little scuffle. “We can manage getting me around on our own now and then.”

Madeline decided not to argue, but she knew she should have been there. “What's all this?” she asked, nodding at the table spread with mixing bowls and cake pans and cookie sheets, eggs and milk and flour, canned tomatoes, onions, a whole chicken and a bag of ground beef that appeared to be frozen solid.

“I'm low on sugar.” Gladys glanced at her, seeming to gauge her mood. “And I need more eggs. Also ketchup. And pimientos.”

“It's a little early in the day for pimientos, don't you think?” Madeline went to get a second cup of coffee, squatted down to scratch Marley's head, then stood near the stove to dry the chill out of her bones.

Arbutus had watched their exchange and her eyes were sparkling. She seemed to find life very amusing. Well, probably it was amusing if you could just look at it from the right angle and maybe Madeline could learn that skill while she was here. It was Arbutus, after all, who had clinched this deal. Madeline tried to think of that word again, the one that meant one of the pillars of the world. She couldn't, but it didn't matter. Arbutus was there, right before her, seeming to hold some vital knowledge about life that Madeline hoped to learn.

“They're for the meat loaf,” Gladys said, bringing her back to the pimientos. “I need you to go to the store.”

“After yesterday?”

“Not that store, don't be foolish. No, you'll have to run down to Crosscut.”

Madeline gave Gladys a look over the rim of her coffee cup. Crosscut was thirty-two miles away! And it was grim: empty storefronts, dilapidated houses, a pall of poverty. “Come on. You can't go to Crosscut every time you want a bottle of ketchup.”

Gladys's eyes snapped Up from her recipe and she surveyed Madeline over the top of her glasses. “Watch me.”

Madeline couldn't help feeling that stab of admiration for Gladys again. She slid Gladys's shopping list around in front of her and perused it:
1 doz. large brown eggs, 5 lb. sugar, lg. bott. ketchup, 3 jars pimientos, 10 lb. flour (Gold Medal, no off-brands!), 5 lb. hamburger, 2 gall. whole milk, 4 lbs. butter, half doz. green peppers (if decent, not soft), 2 hds. cabbage, 2 bags carrots and celery, whole cardamom
—it went on and on. “This is a lot of food. What are you Up to, anyway?”

“Cooking.”

“You expect the three of Us to eat all this?

“It's not for Us.”

“No?”

“We'll take a pan of meat loaf and some molasses cookies to Mary Feather, she loves those I know, and something for Randi Hopkins, she's got that child to think of, and Emil of course. Although the only thing he'd really want is a pint of Old Grand-Dad and I'm not getting that.” Gladys flashed a rare sunny smile, and Madeline could see that she was truly happy. Because she had a plan, maybe. Because she was
doing
something. “If you leave right now, you could be back in time for me to get done by afternoon.”

So, a journey of more than sixty miles round-trip for some flour and ketchup. It might have been more sensible to say no, but Madeline didn't.

Gladys went to the parlor and stood beside her desk, holding her wallet, fingering slowly through the bills, and suddenly Madeline Understood something she hadn't considered before. Gladys maybe couldn't afford this feeding of the needy. Maybe she couldn't even afford to feed Madeline.

In a moment Gladys came back. “I think this will be enough. If not—”

“I've got a little cash on me.”

Gladys nodded stiffly and cleared her throat. “You asked about your grandfather. Where he lived. He didn't live Up here Until later. He was from Crosscut, really.”

Madeline's birth certificate said she'd been born in McAllaster, Michigan, on the fourth of November, 1974, to Jackie Lee Stone, father Unknown. “But then how was I born here, why was Jackie—”

“He lived at 512 Pine Street,” Gladys went on doggedly. “Since you're going down there I thought you might want to know.”

Madeline studied Gladys. She'd said all she meant to for now, that was clear. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”

“I'll reimburse you if I'm short of cash on the groceries. And hurry, I don't want to wait all day.”

The miles themselves
defeated the idea of hurry. The sun had come out, the sky was blue, the swamps were watery and mossy, ringed with pines. Endless, endless miles of that. How long would it take to find anyone who wandered off and got lost? Days? Weeks? Never? The road wound its lonesome, resolute way south, and it seemed as if the rest of the world might not exist. Between McAllaster and Crosscut there were only a few settlements and crossroads. Madeline passed Wolf and Halfway, both of them hardly more than a handful of shacks, though at Halfway there was a bar and a general store with one gas pump out front. Here and there a dirt track wound off into the woods to who knew where.

The swampy forests, the bright, sharp air, the smell and feeling of it all—it smelled like freedom, like something wild and elemental that she'd never known before. Then she passed a decrepit cabin with a yard strewn with garbage and it was impossible to imagine the life lived there as anything but hopeless.

It's was all mixed Up, beautiful and bleak, both. Finally she emerged from the swamp and came Up on the town. The first thing she saw was a sign that said “Prison Area—Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.” Next she passed a glass case with a smashed-Up snowmobile in it. A banner over the top said, “Ojibwa County Snowtrails Wants You to Drink Responsibly!” Across the road from that was the Crosscut State Correctional Facility, where double wire-mesh fences twenty feet high and topped with cyclones of barbed wire surrounded a swampy meadow. She crossed a railroad track where a train sat with its cars loaded with timber, and then passed an enormous, listing hulk of a building with boarded-up windows that had “Crazy L Saloon” painted in faded letters across one wall.

She found the grocery store (there was only one), and spent all of Gladys's money plus a little of her own. Then she went in search of her grandfather's house.

Number 512 Pine was two stories of Unpainted clapboard with no porch or shutters to soften it, not even a step Up to the front door. An Upstairs window had a long crack in the glass and the curtains looked like old bedsheets. There were half a dozen kids'bikes in the yard, a dented pickup in the drive, a big, skinny dog chained to a stake beneath a tree. It leapt Up and barked at her furiously when she made a tentative move to get out of the car. The front door opened and a lumpy woman with an aura of rage leaned out and screamed at the dog to shut Up.

After an Uneasy moment Madeline put the car in drive and headed back to McAllaster.

 

 

Gladys helped pack up
Madeline's car with casserole dishes and plates of cookies and loaves of bread wrapped in tinfoil late that afternoon, and then gave her directions.

“You'd better hurry, it looks like rain, those clouds came out of nowhere. Go to Randi Hopkins's place first, she's right in town, I made you a map.” Gladys produced a sheet of paper she'd worked on while Madeline was gone and laid it out on the hood of the Buick. She pointed at an
x
that marked the first place she wanted Madeline to stop. “Then after that, go to Emil's, you can't miss his place. See?” Madeline nodded, Uncertainly it seemed to Gladys, but nothing could be simpler than this, there were only so many roads to choose from, surely she could figure it out. “Mary's place is a little trickier but you'll be all right. The road'll get bad in a downpour, though.”

“Wait a minute, you're not sending me off on my own to do this.”

“Piffle. You'll be fine. Just remember, for Mary's, you've got to look for a big boulder and then the old Studebaker sitting in the woods—that was Jim Dollar's truck, it quit out there one day back in 1962 and he just left it. I put it all on the map. Take the first left after that and go about two more miles.”

“No way. I don't know these people, I've never even met them. I'll
drive
but I'm not going to deliver.”

“Nonsense.”

“Gladys—”

“I can't go. It'd seem like charity and that's not what this is. This is just a case of I made too much meat loaf and we can't eat it all, so you're dropping some by and they're helping me out, taking it off my hands. If I'm there it'll be awkward. Plus it'll take forever. Introductions, chitchat, gossip. Coffee. Or in Emil's case, whiskey.” Gladys grinned as Madeline frowned even more stubbornly.

“I'm really not comfortable with this,” she said in such a stodgy way that Gladys wanted to pinch her.

“Oh, fiddle. You waited on tables at a busy place in Chicago for how many years, and you can't drop off a few casseroles in McAllaster? Get going, you'll be fine.”

Just then Arbutus called, “Glad,” from the kitchen door, her voice a little feeble, and Gladys seized Upon this. “Arbutus needs me. Don't get lost.” With that, she strode Up the walk. She knew that Madeline was glaring, but she didn't hesitate. She was counting on having known Joe well enough to know what his granddaughter would do. Blood would tell. Maybe. Pretty soon she heard the car start Up and pull away and Gladys smiled, pleased for reasons she didn't articulate to herself.

 

 

No one was home
at Randi Hopkins's house, and Madeline was certain she had the right place. It was a shabby house painted mustard yellow, with colorful plastic toys strewn around the yard, and Gladys had said Randi had a child. Plus she had written “Ugly yellow house” on the map. Madeline left the box of food inside the front door after she found it Unlocked and hurried back down the walk feeling guilty, of what she didn't know. Emil Sainio's trailer seemed empty too. She knocked several times without getting an answer, but she couldn't work Up the nerve to try the door—it would open so instantly into the man's entire life—so she left his box on the step, hoping for the best. She got back in the car feeling more carefree. Maybe no one would be home at all and she'd be back at 26 Bessel drinking coffee with Arbutus within the half hour.

 

 

Mary Feather opened
her door when she heard a car pull Up. She leaned in the doorway, bracing herself with her hands, her body angled forward by a hump in her back but her feet planted solid on the threshold. She wore denim overalls, rubber galoshes, a woolly cardigan over a long-sleeved Undershirt. Her white hair fell in braids along an angular face, and her eyes were bright, snapping blue. A black-and-white terrier squeezed past her and raced down the steps.