Staggerford (32 page)

“Man, you people sure live in the sticks up here,” said the Giant. “When my radio sounds like that, you know you’re really in the sticks.”

“Goodnight,” said Miles.

In the kitchen he found Thanatopsis buttering bread and Miss McGee slicing a large tube of bologna.

“We’re making sandwiches and coffee for you to take to Pike Park tomorrow,” said Miss McGee. “Differences are always settled quicker over coffee and sandwiches.”

“Any word from Beverly?” asked Miles.

“No, but she’ll turn up by morning. I prayed that she would.”

“How many sandwiches shall we make?” said Thanatopsis.

Miles said, “I look for three or four Indians, but I don’t expect the meeting will last long. I really don’t think sandwiches will be necessary.”

“Plus you and Wayne and the Norquist boy,” said Miss McGee. “That’s seven. That’s fourteen sandwiches if we make two apiece. We’d better make twenty to be on the safe side.” She was slapping slices of bologna onto the bread, snapping her wrist like a blackjack dealer.

“Twenty will be fine,” said Miles.

“Isn’t this crazy?” Thanatopsis laughed with delight.

SATURDAY
 
 
N
OVEMBER
7

M
ILES A WOKE AT FIRST
light. In his bathrobe he went down to the kitchen and set the coffeepot to perking. He looked out the window at the damp, gray dawn. He went up to his room and brought down his briefcase and set it beside the wing chair. He pulled out a paper at random.

There was a rumbling knock on the back door. Miles went out through the cold back porch and found one of the
Giant’s troopers standing on the step. He was making his way up the block, searching houses and garages. His face was gray and weary. His twenty-four-hour whiskers were white. A cold mist was falling on him. The wide brim of his hat was warped. He unfolded a sheet of moist paper which he said was a search warrant.

“But I’m one of the delegation,” said Miles, meaning to save him the trouble.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, coming in. “Where’s your basement door?”

After searching the basement he went through the upstairs bedrooms, peeking quickly into each closet. On the ground floor Miles told him he needn’t check the room with the closed door. It was his landlady’s bedroom and she was sleeping.

“I’ve got my orders,” said the trooper. He opened the door.

Miss McGee sat up in bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. The man touched the visor of his hat, got down on his knees, looked under the bed, stood up, touched his visor again, and was gone.

“Am I dreaming?” said Miss McGee.

“No, Agatha. The police are looking for Jeff Norquist and they thought he was under your bed.”

“The poor man, he looked hungry. I should have thought to offer him a sandwich.”

The phone rang. It was the Giant. The search was proving fruitless, and he wanted Miles to talk once again to Mrs. Norquist. He was convinced that Mrs. Norquist knew where her son was hiding.

“I can’t believe you’re sending your men through houses at seven thirty in the morning,” said Miles. “Do you realize how awkward it is having a stranger walk in on you at dawn? Staggerford will be up in arms.”

“Nobody’s up in arms. It happens so fast they don’t know what hit them. Now, will you go see Mrs. Norquist, or won’t you?” There was an edge in the Giant’s voice that Miles hadn’t heard before, the sharpness of fatigue.

“What would she tell me that she hasn’t told you?”

“She hasn’t told me anything. She won’t speak to me.”

“Did you search her house?”

“Yeah, I got in there about midnight. Ho, boy, you never saw such a mess. Her and the house both.”

“You searched her house at midnight and you’re wondering why she won’t speak to you?”

“Who said I was wondering?”

“You’ll never find Jeff Norquist. You know it’s hopeless, don’t you?”

“We’ll find him. He’s somewhere in town. Now, I wish you’d go over and talk to his mother and save us all this work of searching houses.”

“All right, if I must. But not for an hour or so. Give the poor woman a chance to get out of bed.”

“She’s been up all night. I’ve been watching from the street.”

Miles hung up and waited an hour anyhow. He drank coffee. He took his time shaving and dressing. It was nearly nine when he put on his rubber poncho and walked out into a slanting mist thick as fog and wetter than rain. He apologized to Mrs. Norquist for making a pest of himself.

She was wearing her bathrobe and look: ig a mess. She said that Jeff was probably gone for good. He had stolen all the money in her purse—over three hundred dollars—and she had no idea where he might be. But she knew where
she
would be, and pretty damn soon. She was going to pack up and sell the house and she never wanted to see Staggerford again. She was going to New Jersey and live near her daughter Maureen and her son-in-law, who was a truck driver and one of the nicest men you’d ever want to meet. He was of Italian descent. She would come back to Staggerford only one more time, and that would be on her way to the grave (she pointed in the direction of Evergreen Cemetery) because she owned a plot out there where George was buried and there was no use letting it go to waste. She didn’t know what arrangements her daughter and son-in-law would have to make to get her body back
to Staggerford, but she wasn’t going to worry about it. That was the least of her worries, she said, and she closed the door.

Miles walked down Main Street to the Hub. He stepped inside, shaking the rain off his poncho, and there was Beverly. His heart lifted—it was like the surge of excitement he had felt when he was eighteen and wearing his new double-breasted suit and in love with Carla Carpenter.

Beverly was not in uniform.

“Coffee,” he said. He sat on a stool.

Beverly was shaking. Coffee spilled into the saucer as she served it. She came around and sat next to him. “Christ,” she said, and lit a Marlboro. “I spent last night in Sandhill. I stayed at my dad’s cousins’. They live in a shack and I slept on the floor. My life is coming apart at the seams.”

“Waitress,” someone called from a table.

“I went home after school to change into my uniform and there was a guy with a gun standing in the driveway, and I never even stopped. I figured they were having some kind of a shoot-out in there with my mother because of what I said in class. I never even stopped to find out. I just kept going.” She looked at Miles through the part in her hair. She drew deeply on her cigarette. “I never came to work at all last night.”

“That man with the gun was a soldier, Beverly. The National Guard spent the night on your farm because of today’s meeting in Pike Park.”

“I know that now. They told me in Sandhill.”

“The Indians know?”

“Everybody knows. God, what do you suppose my mother is doing out there all this time? She’ll be wild.”

“Waitress, more coffee.”

“Don’t worry about your mother, Beverly. We’re going to step in and take care of things for you. Mrs. Workman is going to talk to Dr. Maitland first thing Monday morning. If what you said in class is true—”

“What do you mean, if it’s true!” She bumped the ash tray off the counter.

“Waitress.”

The cook put her head out through the serving window and said, “Get busy, girl. There’s people waiting to pay.”

Beverly stepped on her cigarette and went to the cash register.

A man dressed all in red rose from a table and went behind the counter to fill his cup with coffee. He looked at Miles and said, “I guess you have to serve yourself in this place.” He set his cup down and spread out his hands for Miles to see.

“Blood!” he said. His hands were caked with a mixture of dirt and dried blood. “Didn’t you see my deer out there? It’s in the back end of my truck. The season opened at eight o’clock, and I had her wounded and tracked down and shot dead and gutted out by eight thirty. A big doe. She’ll go close to two hundred pounds. You ever seen a doe that big?”

“Here’s your two orders of cakes, girl,” called the cook. “Hurry up before they get cold.”

“You can bet I ain’t washing my hands all day today,” said the deer hunter. “I live for this day every year.” Again he spread his hands before Miles. “There’s nothing like it. I’ll have myself this cup of coffee, then I’ll go home and hang the doe in the bam and let her cool down and dry out, and tonight I’ll come back to town and go on a toot. The town will be full of deer hunters and we’ll have a rip-roarin’ time. And tomorrow if it clears up and gets colder like it’s supposed to, I’ll take her out of the barn and hang her in a tree. There’s nothing like a good cold wind to dry out your meat and age it nice. Then on Monday I’ll have her butchered and wrapped and froze, and by Monday night we’ll be eatin’ fresh deer liver.” He turned his hands over once more, back, front. Miles nodded, indicating he had seen enough. The hunter took his coffee back to his table.

“What’s this about Dr. Maitland,” asked Beverly, back at his side. “Is he going to have her put away?”

“The commitment process is going to begin on Monday. I don’t know how long it will take. We’ll start with Dr.
Maitland at the clinic, then she’ll have to be taken somewhere for examination—”

“By force?”

“By whatever means are necessary. When people are committed to a hospital, I guess the sheriff sometimes has to be called in to pick up the person. I mean if the person doesn’t want to go and can’t be talked into it, there’s no choice but force.”

“It will be force. And it will be Monday, you think?”

“I should think some time Monday. And you’ll move out of the house between now and Monday.”

“Where to? I’m not sleeping on any floor on any reservation again, I tell you that.” She was facing away from Miles and speaking from behind her hair.

“The Workmans have a room for you. Thana—Mrs. Workman wants you to move in with them.”

She turned quickly to see if he was serious. “The Workmans? Live with that grouch Mr. Workman?”

“What’s your alternative, Beverly? Living in the gulch alone? The Workmans’ landlord is gone for the winter and they have plenty of room. It’s like Miss McGee’s house-big and old and well kept. Mrs. Workman and you will become great friends. You’ll like it fine.”

“So we leave the chickens out there to die.”

“Don’t worry about the chickens.”

To attract Beverly’s attention, a woman at the table in the front window put her hand in the air and snapped her fingers several times.

“I’ll be back this afternoon,” said Miles. “We’ll plan your move into town.”

“All right, I’m off at three.” Though she wasn’t eager to live with the Workmans, she
was
eager to move to town.

“I’ll be back before that. I should be back from Pike Park by one.”

“You’re
going to Pike Park?”

“I’m one of the Staggerford delegation. There’s three of us. Mr. Workman and Jeff Norquist and I.”

“There’s two of you. Jeff Norquist is gone.”

“Where?”

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Who told you?”

“They told me about it in Sandhill.”

The woman snapped her fingers five quick times. From the kitchen the cook looked out the serving window and said, “For the last time, girl, will you get up off that stool and go to work?”

“I’ll be in this afternoon.” Miles put a quarter by his cup and left.

Beverly handed the woman at the table a menu and watched Miles walk down the street. She wished she could move into Miss McGee’s house. At least Miss McGee had a garden. And Mr. Pruitt.

In Room 8 of the Big Chief Motel, Wayne Workman was smoking, pacing, and chewing his mustache. The Giant was bent over the dresser studying a map of Berrington County.

“Jeff Norquist has stolen three hundred dollars from his mother and run away,” Miles announced.

At this, the Giant put on his holster and hat and sunglasses and went out into the rain. Wayne followed him. Miles closed the door and watched them through the window. They got into the patrol car and the Giant spoke into his radio. The heavy rain was falling at a slant and splattering the patrol car and the Mustang and the pebbles of the parking lot. Miles took off his poncho, sat down, and picked up the only reading material in the room, the
Staggerford Weekly
. He looked again at the photograph of Lee Fremling backing into Peter Gibbon’s kick. Lee was unidentifiable. His face was turned away from the camera and the number on his jersey was obliterated by a careful retouching of the photograph.

The caption said, “Owls Block Stag Kick.”

Miles read the want ads. He read a pound-cake recipe. He read a column of astrological prophecies. For Pisces like himself this day, Saturday, was good for “disposing, once and for all, of disquieting perturbations.”