Page 28 of The River We Remember

“She says you don’t eat right.” The boy looked down at the old concrete under his sneakers, and Brody understood that he was embarrassed to be saying such a thing to a grown man.

“Well, come on in,” Brody said. “Let’s see what’s on the menu.”

Brody had left Hector at the jailhouse. As soon as they entered, the dog came bounding to greet them. He and Scott were old friends, and their mutual affection was obvious.

Brody looked inside the paper bag. “Turkey sandwich, potato salad, and an apple. How’d your mom know I’d be hungry?”

“Deputy Graff told her your refrigerator never has anything in it that’s less than a month old.”

“What do you say we put this food in my refrigerator—I promise it won’t be there a month—and head over to your mom’s café. I’d like to thank her in person, and maybe get a hot meal for lunch. Would that be all right?”

Before the boy could answer, Gordon Landis threw open the jailhouse door and swept in with an air of outrage. “I heard somebody shotgunned Jimmy Quinn.”

Brody’s gut clenched, not only because of Landis’s abruptness, but also because someone Brody trusted must have divulged this important piece of information.

“What do you want, Gordy?”

“You and I both know who did it.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort.”

“Everybody knows who did it. Bluestone, that Indian son of a bitch.”

“I’m warning you, Gordy. You go around spreading that kind of rumor, I’ll lock you up so fast your head’ll spin.”

“Maybe so, but it won’t keep folks around here from doing what needs to be done.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If I was you, I’d lock that Indian up right now. Otherwise, he might never make it before a judge.”

Brody tried to breathe out his anger, and he spoke carefully. “Just last month, I heard you call Quinn the biggest son of a bitch in southern Minnesota because he got you kicked off the town council. If somebody killed Quinn, maybe I ought to be looking at you. Or any of the other folks in this county with hatred toward Jimmy Quinn in their hearts.”

“Big difference between us and Bluestone, and you know exactly what that is.”

“I want you out of here, Gordy. And if anything happens to Noah Bluestone, I’ll come looking for you first, understand?”

“I’ll be watching you, Dern. We’ll all be watching you.”

Landis turned and left as abruptly as he’d entered. Scott Madison stood by, apparently not surprised by what he’d just heard.

“You knew?” Brody asked.

The boy nodded. “Tyler Creasy told my friend Del Wolfe, and Del told me.”

“Can I trust you not to spread that rumor any further? It’s important.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy promised.

Brody took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s go get some lunch.”

THE WAGON WHEEL Café was a simple place with a counter and ten booths. By 1958 it had occupied that spot for twenty years. Angie’s in-laws, Ida and Harvey Madison, had started the place near the end of the Great Depression. They served standard fare and did all right. But when Angie married into the family, things changed. She was from bayou country, and the folks in Black Earth County had never seen the likes of what she could do with food. Odd as it was for Minnesotans to embrace anything with a kick to it, they couldn’t get enough of Angie’s cooking. Eggs with Cajun spices. Blackened catfish. Hot pepper meat loaf. Gumbo. Fried okra and fried green tomatoes. Coffee strong and rich, the way no Scandinavian would ever make it. On Saturday evenings, she served barbecued ribs that drew folks from as far away as Lake Okoboji and Worthington and Fairmont. They came for the food, sure, but they also came for Angie, who was flamboyant in expressing her Southern roots.

“I got bayou in my blood,” she would say, “and gator in my gait.”

She was a war widow; had met her husband, Christian Madison, when he was in Texas, training to be a navigator. They’d married, he’d been shipped off to Europe and had never returned. Angie had come north to deliver her child and to live with Ida and Harvey. In the opinion of most folks in Black Earth County, Jewel became a better, far more interesting place the minute she arrived.

It was well after lunch and the café was no longer busy. The place smelled of the barbecue that, come four o’clock, would be bringing in folks from all over. There was a jukebox at the other end of the café and someone had tapped in “The Purple People Eater,” a recent popular song whose charm Angie had never quite understood. Wendell Moon, who was cook, bottle washer, general handyman, and anything else that Ida or Angie asked of him, was seeing to the few lingering customers while Ida, Angie, and a third woman sat talking over cups of strong brew.