Page 47 of The River We Remember

The phone rang and Brody answered. It was Lyle Anderson, who ran a gas station at a crossroads north of Jewel. He was irate, calling because he’d repaired a tire for a customer who’d taken off without paying. He knew the customer and gave the name. He wanted Brody to, in the words of Anderson, “arrest his ass.” Brody said he’d be out to get the full story.

After the sheriff hung up and explained, Graff looked at his watch and said, “What time are you picking up Angie for that date of yours?”

“It’s not a date, Connie. I’m just giving her a ride to the Prairie Blooms.”

“If you say so. What time?”

“A little before six.”

“Lyle’s cantankerous. He’s pissed off customers before. He’s also a man likes to paint the truth a bit, so getting down to what really happened might not be simple. This could take some time, and I’d hate to have you late in picking up your”—Graff smiled—“traveling companion. I’ll see to Anderson.”

“What about Kyoko Bluestone?” Brody said.

“It’s just speculation. We need more to go on, and there’s always tomorrow. You just worry about having a good evening, okay?”

Graff headed off and Brody went upstairs, Hector at his heels. From his bedroom closet, he pulled his one and only suit, which was dark blue, and a white shirt, and the blue tie he always wore with the suit. He picked up his good black shoes from the floor of the closet and figured he should give them a shine. He busied himself, trying not to think about the evening ahead. He didn’t want to look at this approaching time with Angie Madison as a date. He was simply doing her a favor, giving her a lift. But it had been a very long time since he’d felt so nervous about being with a woman. When he thought this, in the middle of buffing his black shoes, he stopped and considered his times with Garnet. What he shared with his brother’s wife was all that he would ever share, and although in the end it always left him feeling lonely, even the loneliness was familiar and safe. Evangeline Madison, on the other hand, was an unknown in so many ways. He supposed that was true for her of him. Two people who didn’t really know each other; what might come of that? Brody put the thought aside and went about getting ready for the evening while Hector lay on Brody’s bed patiently observing the sheriff’s every move.

WHEN BRODY ROLLED up his in cruiser, Angie Madison said, “He’s here, Ida.”

Ida Madison had left the Wagon Wheel in the hands of Wendell Moon. Scott was there to give him a hand, and also Vivian Shaw, one of the part-time waitresses. Ida wanted to be available to help her daughter-in-law prepare for what she insisted was a date, Angie’s first since coming to Jewel a widow with her womb full of Ida’s unborn grandson.

“Nervous?” Ida asked, peeking through the curtains at the cruiser that had pulled up to the curb.

“It’s not a date,” Angie said for the umpteenth time. “He’s just giving me a lift.”

Ida turned from the window and appraised Angie a final time. She was, herself, a smallish woman who’d gone heavy with years of preparing food and liberally sampling everything she made. She studied Angie with loving eyes and said, “You look real good. A man wants two things from a woman: fine food and fine curves. You’ve got no worries there.” She took her daughter-in-law in her arms and kissed her cheek and said, “Knock his socks off, girl.”

“Ida!” Angie said with a laugh. “How many times do I have to tell you—”

“It’s not a date. I know. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the company of the man. And make sure that he enjoys yours, you hear?”

There was a knock at the screen door. Ida released Angie and sent her off with a wink.

Brody told her she looked nice and opened the door of his cruiser for her and they headed away. And she was… happy.

CONNIE GRAFF STOOD at the open door of the jailhouse watching the sun drop in the west. He’d taken swift care of Lyle Anderson, whose story had changed as Graff pressed him with questions, and who, in the end, had agreed to deal with the matter of the repaired tire on his own, without the complication of legal complaint. When Graff returned to the jailhouse, Brody was gone.

Driving out to Anderson’s and back, the old deputy had continued to mull over the question of Jimmy Quinn’s presence on Inkpaduta Bend. Now, as he watched the sun set beyond the narrow valley where the Alabaster River ran, his thinking kept bringing him back to the same place, the same well of possibilities, and finally he said to the dog at his feet, “Sorry, Hector, got to leave you on your own for a while.” He brought the dog inside and took from a desk drawer the printed sign that gave his telephone number and the number of Asa Fielding in case of emergency, posted it on the door of the jailhouse, locked up, and headed south out of town toward Fordham Ridge.

BRODY AND ANGIE arrived at the Wicklow home at the same time as Charlotte Bauer, the retired lawyer who preferred to be called Charlie. Loretta Wicklow breezed in from the kitchen to greet them at the door, wearing a little apron over her black velvet dress, bringing with her the scent of something Italian, the rich aroma of thyme and rosemary and garlic. She wore a string of pearls. Her shoes were black high heels. She’d had her black hair done in an elaborate bouffant. On the whole, the effect was probably meant to resemble Jacqueline Kennedy, whose photograph, even before she would become First Lady, was in all the magazines.

The talk at first was of Ruth Coffee, inspiration and mentor over so many years, a woman who loved Balzac, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and, most recently, J. D. Salinger. She’d not only organized the Prairie Blooms but been almost single-handedly responsible for the Prairie Lights Playhouse, the community theater, which put on three productions every year, many of which Ruth herself directed. The group toasted her memory, and then, because she would have wanted it, discussed The Catcher in the Rye. The general sentiment was that Holden Caulfield whined a good deal and made bad choices, for which he refused to accept the responsibility or the consequences. Sam Wicklow offered a different perspective. He’d listened quietly and had commented only reservedly, but finally he said, “He’s a kid who’s never been shown the way to manhood. He has no one in his life to initiate him.”

“Initiate?” Loretta Wicklow said. It seemed spoken with such clear disdain that for a moment the conversation stopped.

Loretta was a woman who wanted more than life in Jewel offered her. Brody had always suspected she blamed Sam for not having it. Her father had been a successful businessman and a senator in the state legislature. After graduation from high school, she’d planned to go to a university in the East. The war had intervened, and before he went into the service, she’d married Sam, whose family published the Clarion. She’d told everyone that when her husband came back, they were going to move to New York City and start an exciting life there. But when he returned, he was terribly changed in body and spirit. That prosthetic leg, those startling scars, these were things she hadn’t counted on when she stood at the altar and said, “I do” and “for better or for worse.” While Sam was away at war, his father had died and Sam, on his return, took over the running of the newspaper. Loretta settled for working with him, contributing items on cultural happenings and social events and taking on the responsibility of dealing with advertisers and subscribers. She was a woman with a ready smile that somehow never seemed to fit quite right. They were childless, and Brody always wondered if it was because of the particular nature of Sam’s wounds or the nature of their marriage.

Sam replied to her in what seemed to Brody a practiced calm. “Most cultures have a rite or ritual of some kind that marks the end of childhood and the assumption of the responsibilities and standing of an adult. In the tradition of the Sioux or the Chippewa, our native tribes here in Minnesota, that’s a vision quest. At a certain age, a boy leaves his village and goes alone into the wild to seek a vision that will guide him for the rest of his life. When he’s received that vision, he returns to his people and is welcomed as a man. The Aborigines of Australia do this in what’s called a walkabout. Some other cultures bury their children and then dig them up in a ritual resurrection. Holden simply doesn’t know the way to manhood.”

“I never underwent any kind of rite of passage,” Gordon Landis declared.

Landis was someone Brody figured Ruth Coffee would never have invited to a book discussion. But he was courting Mimi Fowler, the town librarian, who was one of the Prairie Blooms, and she’d insisted he be allowed to accompany her.

“You fought in the war, Gordy,” Sam replied.

“Wounded at the Battle of the Bulge,” Landis said proudly.

“Boot camp, that was your initiation. And the battleground, that was your proof.”