In Reach Page 10

  Lessons at the PO

  On the day of the murder, Elsie Morton goes about her business slipping envelopes into the brass boxes of the Bluestem Post Office. George Washington looks up at her, unsmiling, from purple three-cent stamps. Finished with her job, she lumbers to the kitchen in her cramped apartment behind the PO, lowers herself into a chair, and pours a glass of iced tea. A peeled edge of torn upholstery gouges her thigh where her short muumuu has hiked up. She lifts one leg, the plastic seat tearing from her sticky body with a sickening suck-suck. She sets the leg down again, sighs, and mops at her neck with a balled-up hankie.

  Beyond her kitchen window, the neighbor kids loll on the front porch of their abandoned storefront home. They go to school across the North Platte River, in Reach, but now it’s summer and too hot to swivel a Hula-Hoop, too hot to do anything but lie in the shade and hallucinate. As if the heat weren’t bad enough, there’s this killer wind. The air hums with static. Tumbleweeds pitch across open fields, and whirlwinds steal the topsoil. Whine and grit have settled in Elsie’s ears, rented rooms inside her head.

  Elsie and her husband, Banjo, don’t have a fan in this place. No wall-to-wall carpet. No picture window. No decent overhead light. There’s a couch, a black-and-white TV, this kitchen table. On her right, a sink and refrigerator. Behind her, a two-burner stove. The room is littered with sheet music, scraps of fabric, whiffs of feather, dirty dishes in the sink, spilled corn flakes on the floor. Perched on a footstool, a pair of silver high-heeled shoes, open-toed and sling-backed. They belong to Cindy Lou, who moved across the river last weekend to live with Wade Schumacher in sin, without the benefit of marriage. Elsie tried to talk her out of it by reciting a litany of women done wrong, starting with Elsie’s own mother, whose husband ran off with a tattooed girl from a traveling circus. Cindy Lou said anything was better than living in this place. Pigsty, is what she called it. She packed her clothes, her graduation picture from Reach High, the buffalo salt and pepper shakers from their one family trip to the Black Hills, and a heap of brush rollers in cardboard boxes, and carried it all out to Wade’s pickup. He waited for her with the engine running. After all that, she forgot her prom shoes. Those silver slippers.

  Elsie hefts herself out of the chair and caroms her way from the table to the sink, to the stove, through the too narrow doorway into a back bedroom. She rummages through paper sacks and digs around under shoe boxes looking for a piano piece called Tarantella.

  When the bell rings, she trudges back to the front half of the apartment. The door’s wide open in an effort to catch a breeze from the lobby of the PO. Not wanting to take more steps, Elsie waves in her piano student, nine-year-old Annie Cantwell.

  “Whew,” Elsie says, fanning herself with her hand. “Hot enough for you?”

  Annie shrugs. She’s a skinny kid, stands there with her books clasped in front of her. Lank brown hair, watchful eyes, crooked teeth hiding behind a closed mouth.

  “Sit on down a minute.” Elsie motions at the table, but Annie moves toward the orange flowered couch. She pushes aside an ashtray mounded with paper clips, lays her music down on the corner of a blond end table, crushing further a frilly crocheted doily that needs starch and ironing. She picks up a pile of clean laundry from the sofa, holds it, and turns corners for a while, searching for a place to unload it. Finally she sits with socks and shirts cradled in her lap. Elsie watches all this with something like awe, the prissiness of it, and then, the girl’s discomfort.

  Elsie oozes into her kitchen chair and lifts her glass of tea. “It’s the wind that gets to me,” she says. “Drives me straight out of my mind.”

  “My mom’ll be back in half an hour,” Annie says.

  “Right.” Elsie sets her glass down. Using her arms to rise from the chair, she hangs on to the edge of the table, dizzy, heat piled up on her like wool blankets she can’t throw off. “Well, then, we best get started.”

  Before Annie can budge, Banjo’s pickup pulls up outside. He slams the door, lunges across the lobby, and bangs into the room. For a tall, bony man, he takes up a lot of space. His face and body are hard and dried out, like beef jerky. He wears cowboy clothes: checkered yoked shirt, boots, and peeled-on jeans. He crosses to the sink, runs the water hard, and washes his hands over piles of dirty dishes, splashing water onto the linoleum. His voice barks across his shoulder. “Got my supper on?”

  “Banjo?” Elsie leans into the table. “It’s four thirty. What are you doing home this time of day?”

  “I ain’t coming home later, that’s for sure. Open me a can of beans.”

  Banjo’s voice sounds like gravel under truck tires, raw and punched. He puts one hand on the back of a yellow chair piled with boxes of soda crackers and Wheaties and tips the chair so the boxes fall and scatter across the floor, collide with the cat dish, ricochet off shoes and magazines. Then he turns the chair backward and straddles the seat. He spreads open Field and Stream on the table, paying no attention to the pitcher of iced tea, dirty glasses, piles of unread newspapers, leftover breakfast dishes, or silverware that has strayed from its drawer.

  “Watch out. You’ll break something,” Elsie warns.

  Banjo grunts but keeps right on reading. He picks his teeth with a toothpick. His right leg bounces up and down, and he glances from his magazine to the door. Elsie moves over to the cupboard above the sink. She wipes the top of a can of pork and beans with the tail of her skirt while she searches through a drawer for a can opener.

  “Thought you was goin’ hunting with Floyd today.”

  “Did,” Banjo says. He stretches out his hand for the can of beans. Elsie sets it in his palm. He picks up a spoon from the ones scrambled on the table and feeds himself from the can. Elsie stands behind him, hands shelved on mountainous hips.

  Banjo keeps on shoveling beans. Elsie watches him, too tired to move. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Annie shift on the couch and push the footstool with her toe. The silver high heels teeter until one shoe clatters to the floor. Banjo’s head jerks up.

  “Annie’s here for her lesson,” Elsie says.

  Banjo turns his head and looks at Annie. He works his tongue in his cheek. “Shut the door,” he says, diving back into his beans.

  Elsie’s piano is wedged in a tiny room off the living area of their apartment. With the door shut, it feels like a closet and smells like old work boots, but on this Tuesday, Elsie closes the door and leaves Banjo on the other side, picking his teeth and spooning beans from a can. Elsie moves her bulk around, shifts piles of sheet music from the piano bench to the floor, throws a red corduroy jacket off a broke-down chair. After a few minutes, there’s a cleared space for Annie to sit down.

  Annie opens the music to Lady of Spain. She romps through the first line, pounds hard and fast, her breath quickening, and Elsie imagines ruffled skirts and heaving bosoms and a man’s penetrating gaze while a familiar shiver of alarm runs up her spine. What’s to become of this girl? She needs music like other people need air. She’ll have to learn to bridle that passion, the way women do, before it propels her into danger, before she launches a revolution from which she can’t return. She should stop giving this girl Latin pieces. Why, for God’s sake, was she looking for Tarantella? Learn to play pianissimo, she should say. But she closes her eyes and rides on the tumultuous waves, through the second chorus and to the end of I adore you before somebody pounds on the piano room door.

  “Elsie, you in there?”

  “Now, who in blazes is that?” Elsie mutters under her breath. She heaves herself out of the rickety chair and opens the door. Sheriff Pinski stands with his hands on his hips, brown uniform, sweat rings large under his arms.

  “Bob? What are you doing here?”

  “Best you come on out here.” The sheriff nods his head at Annie. “You, too, Annie. Best you call your parents. Tell them to come and get you early.”

  “Now hold on there, Bob.” Elsie hasn’t been paid yet. What’s the matter with everybody? “Her folks
don’t have a phone.” With one hand, Elsie motions Annie back to her seat on the piano bench.

  Bob speaks softly to Elsie. “Well. I expect this is going to be all over town anyway.” The sheriff picks at the plastic liner on his shirt pocket. He studies his shoelaces. Elsie worries about Sheriff Bob because his daddy and his granddaddy both shot themselves, and who knows but maybe those things run in families. He seems nervous now, and Elsie’s glad he doesn’t have his finger on the trigger of a gun. “I got to take Banjo here in for a few questions. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Questions,” Elsie repeats. “What for?”

  Banjo shifts in his seat like he’s plunked down on a cocklebur. “What’s going on?” Banjo asks.

  “We found Floyd Markham’s body down by the river.” The sheriff gazes over their heads, trying to find some place to put his eyes that offers a more restful picture.

  “He’d been shot.” The sheriff takes his fingers off the plastic pouch and rubs them on the front of his shirt. “He’s dead.”

  “Can’t be.” Banjo stands up and looks Sheriff Pinski straight in the eye. “I was just with him a few hours ago. We was hunting down there on the old Jenkins place.”

  “Well.” The sheriff’s hand roams along the line of his jaw. “That’s right where we found him, Banjo. It don’t look good, what with, and all.”

  “What do you mean, what with?” Elsie asks, as if she hasn’t heard the gossip about Banjo and Floyd’s wife, Betty. Floyd is Banjo’s best friend. And what does Betty see in Banjo that’d make her give up a secure life with the county surveyor?

  “Well now, Elsie.” The sheriff sounds like a man who resents having to do his job and resents her for making him do it. “I think you know what I mean.”

  Then, in a real quiet voice, Banjo says, “I been home most the afternoon. What time’d you say you found the body?”

  “That true?” the sheriff asks Elsie. “Has Banjo been home most the afternoon?”

  Banjo runs his fingers through his hair, sweeps back the few long strands that have slipped out of the rubber band at the base of his neck. Then he speaks straight into his can of beans. “You know, Honey. I told you straight off how Floyd and I packed it in early.”

  Elsie’s jaw hangs slack, her face stuck a few minutes behind in the conversation. The sheriff turns all his attention on Elsie. “Floyd was shot at real close range. Not that long ago, from the looks of it. Right in the side of the head, like he didn’t suspect a thing.”

  Elsie steps aside, to weigh things in her mind. Banjo’s no picnic, God knows. He can be downright mean. Half the time, he can’t hold a job. Still, they’ve been together twenty-six years, hell, they grew up together. What would it do to Cindy Lou, her dad in jail? And who else would want a woman like her? She’s not thinking about Floyd and his blown-away head. She can’t think about that now.

  “’Course he was here, Bob.” She whispers it, more or less, trying it out on her tongue. “Banjo, here, he came home and said they’d had enough today. Too damn hot, and the wind nearly bowled them over. You know what this whole summer’s been like. Would you want to be out there in the heat of the day?”

  She lets her voice get strong, there at the last. She makes it sound like Reverend Kane when he’s working himself up for a big finish, laying off the fire and not a single drop of water for all us sinners and heading over into glory if you will take the name of Jesus. Elsie has the name of Jesus singing in her voice, and there’s not a thing Sheriff Bob can do about it.

  Except. She forgot about Annie.

  Sheriff Bob takes a few steps toward Annie. He kneels down in front of the piano bench. “Annie,” Sheriff Bob says in a no-nonsense voice. “Did you see Banjo when you came in for your lesson this afternoon?”

  Elsie watches Annie squirm on the bench. This little Miss Priss, straight A’s, perfect do-right-fuss-budget kid is going to tell on her, send Banjo to the pen, maybe get her arrested for obstructing justice. But Annie says nothing. She sits in stony silence, like she’s none too bright and didn’t understand the question.

  “Did you see Banjo, Annie?”

  Annie bites her lip. When she removes her teeth, tiny red beads appear. Elsie risks a sidewise look at Banjo. He’s trying to hide it, but she reads the smirk on his face.

  When Elsie turns back, Annie is looking at her over Sheriff Bob’s head. Slowly, Elsie realizes that Annie is waiting for a signal. The kid would lie for her, if she tells her to. For her. All Elsie needs to do is nod her head, and Banjo will walk free.

  Elsie closes her eyes. She’d snort if she knew how. She’d bay at the moon, bugle like a randy elk. She’d wail like an Irishwoman at a wake. Laugh like a crazy relative hidden in the attic. Instead, she puts her hand on Sheriff Bob’s shoulder.

  “Leave her alone,” she says.

  “I’m just asking . . . ,” the sheriff says.

  “He wasn’t here.” It’s not hard to tell the truth. In fact, it falls out of her mouth. She says it again. “He wasn’t here.”

  “Annie?” The sheriff’s voice is gentle, but solid like a cellar door.

  “No,” Annie whispers.

  “He wasn’t here?” the sheriff asks.

  Annie shakes her head. “He came later,” she breathes.

  As soon as the sheriff hustles Banjo out the door, Elsie sits herself down at the table. She rustles up a half-eaten package of chocolate chip cookies and stuffs two in her mouth. She takes a couple swigs of the tea warming in her glass. Annie stands in the doorway of the piano room, watching her.

  Elsie waves a hand in the air. “Ohmygod,” she says. “Ohmygod, mygod, ohmygod.” Elsie’s voice breaks, and she closes her mouth, sniffs hard through her nose. She looks away, out her kitchen window. When she turns again, Annie has seated herself at the table.

  “You think he’s guilty.” Annie states it. Not a question.

  Elsie stares at her. She’s covered for Banjo so many times, she never stopped to think that he might not have done what he was accused of.

  “I don’t know what I think. Man like Banjo . . .” Elsie’s voice drifts away.

  “Yeah?”

  “Sometimes he wakes up in the morning, swings his feet out of bed, and lands on the wrong side of luck.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Elsie looks at Annie’s puckered face. She’s never going to be pretty, too much forehead, the chin too small. Maybe life will be kind to her, likely it won’t. Elsie manages a crooked smile.

  “You want a cookie?”

  Annie shakes her head. Elsie helps herself to two more. Once again, she turns toward the window. While she is looking out onto nothing, she hears Annie creep back to the piano bench. She’s ripping through Lady of Spain, the notes banging against the cords of Elsie’s tight chest. Elsie wipes her wet face with the back of her hand. To no one but herself, she speaks. “Play it loud, kid. Play it free.”

  After Death

  Hazel Mueller makes her rounds at the Reach hospital. She pushes a cart with ammonia, disinfectant, paper towels, window cleaner, dust spray, abrasive powder, a broom, feather duster, mop, and bucket. Some of the rooms are carpeted. These she has to come back to with the vacuum cleaner. She lugs the beast down the hall, cursing the stupidity of whoever designed this place. Flat roof that leaks. Carpet that carries infection. The old hospital has been turned into county offices, or she might raise a petition to move back there. It had only ten rooms, and they were small.

  Still, it’s not a bad job. Cleaning up the dirt of other people’s lives. Sweeping up behind them. Swabbing their shit out of bathroom stools. Scrubbing vomit off the floor. Smelling the decay of sickness. Tossing out bloody tissues, caked gauze, drooping plants. It’s not so bad, sanitizing a room after death. Wiping the slate clean.

  Hazel enters room 5. She’s timed it so the patient is out of the room, down the hall doing physical therapy. Hazel hates talking. She hates small talk and conversation. President Reagan is smiling all over the TV tube;
she turns him off. She runs her fingers over the window ledge and decides not to bother dusting it. She’s lasted at this job twelve years, first at the old hospital, now this one, because she’s learned how to pace herself.

  This is Nellie Watkins’s room. Broke her leg. Fell down on her porch and had to wait for hours until Judy Cochero came to pick her up for pinochle. That can happen to you when you live alone in a small town. Hazel knows this for a fact.

  She sits down on the edge of Nellie’s bed. She runs her hands over the pillow cover, smooths it, and picks up the cards propped on Nellie’s bed stand. Any of them that say God bless you or I’ve been praying for you don’t interest her. She knows better, ever since Ralph left her for that Norcroft woman. There’s one card, though. It’s white with white raised roses on it and Thinking of you across the top. The sender has written a special note inside. I think of you every day, with love. Hazel runs her fingers over those two words, with love. Then, she pockets the card, hitches herself to her feet, and goes about her cleaning.

  Later, when she gets home, she stands the card up on her nightstand. She takes down the one from last week, the one with pink roses and thoughts of you. The one that Mabel Becker’s husband sent. He wrote, in his own hand, I don’t think I can live without you. Mabel went home, but she has cancer and the chemotherapy isn’t working. Still, every night for a week, Hazel read that card before going to sleep.

  The next week Mabel Becker is back in the hospital, and something else bad happens. Hazel gets paired up with Iris Cantwell. She’s supposed to show Iris the routine. She’s supposed to take Iris with her room to room and put up with Iris’s constant chatter. Iris knows every patient, too, and takes it on herself to cheer them up. She thinks she’s an expert on coping because her husband died some years back from Huntington’s disease.