“You going to tell me about it?” I’d asked.
He laughed. “You know better than that. I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation with a guy who won’t move to Des Moines. But when it’s all over, we’ll have a steak dinner and I’ll give you every gory detail. And believe me, they really are gory.”
So now here I was all these months later, sitting with his letter in my den, a chill rain starting to pummel the roof and windows, Mike dead and me about to get involved in the same case that at least as Nora told it may well have taken his life.
I picked up a Xerox copy of an article I was going to use in my book about Iowa. The article was about granny medicine in the Midwest, granny medicine being a kind of radical folk medicine practiced on the very early frontier. Next time you think that going to the doctor is so bad, consider some granny remedies (true facts) for health problems back in the early 1800s.
Consumption could be cured by eating the fried heart of a rattlesnake.
Lockjaw could be cured by grinding up cockroaches into boiling water and serving the concoction as tea.
Mouth odor could be cured by rinsing one’s mouth every morning with one’s own urine.
Birthmarks on babies could be made to disappear by rubbing against the marks with the hand of a corpse.
(I will never again complain about the fee I pay to visit my doctor.)
I took the odd nap in the odd place, right there in the den with my head thrown back against the wall, so that my neck would be nice and stiff when I woke up.
To be perfectly honest, I had no idea what the sound was that woke me. Not at first, anyway.
Just glass breaking late in the night.
I clipped off the reading light, set Tasha next to Crystal and Tess on the couch, then groped my way through the darkness to the kitchen.
I’d left my Ruger on the table, which was where I usually cleaned it.
The second noise identified itself exactly. Somebody was firing bullets through my front window.
I got on my hands and knees and crawled through the small dining room.
In the living room I went to the far window and eased my head up an inch or so for a quick look at the gravel road fronting my house.
A lone and lonely street lamp outlined the dark car sitting across from my house. There was a man inside with a long rifle with a long scope on it. He didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. He didn’t seem to be especially afraid.
He squeezed off the third shot
He must have seen me because he took the window where I crouched. Breaking glass made a sharp, dramatic sound and then began falling, in jagged bits and pieces, on the top of my head and my shoulders. A few pieces cut me.
Long silent seconds passed. My body was chilled from cold sweat. My breathing came in hot gasps. My hands were shaking. Some people may get used to being shot at, but I’m not one of them.
I was just starting to raise my head again when I heard him gun his motor. And then he was gone.
I stood up and watched him race out of the circle of light the street lamp provided, roaring into the rolling prairie darkness.
Now it wasn’t just my hands, it was my whole body shaking.
I went into the den and turned on the light and sat down next to the cats. They didn’t look scared at all.
I leaned forward and slid open one of the lower panels on the small bar.
The Jack Daniel’s Black Label I took from there filled half a glass just right. I knocked the stuff back and had another one. I wasn’t much of a drinker — in fact on a bad night two drinks can make me sleepy — but tonight I needed a little help.
I thought about calling the police, but I didn’t want them to look into my background as an investigator. Local police tend to get unfriendly about such folks.
Two hours later, I fell asleep in bed, the cats sprawled out all over the foot, my Robert Louis Stevenson novel now being occupied by Tess.
I had troubled dreams, none of which I could remember when morning came and sang her siren song.
5
“You asleep?”
“Huh-uh,” he says.
“I talk to you a little bit?”
“Gee, Henry, is it about—” Then he stops himself. Henry’s gonna talk anyway. Henry always talks anyway. And it’s always the same old thing. That operation he’s gonna have someday.
“You think I’m pretty?” Henry says from the bottom bunk.
While he’s on the top bunk sweating his ass off. One-hundred-and-four-degree July day today. Can’t be much cooler tonight, even nearing midnight. Now he has to talk to Henry.
“Yeah, Henry. I think you’re a great lookin’ guy.”
“I don’t mean handsome. I mean, I know I’m handsome. People have always told me I’m handsome. Even when I was little. The nuns even told me I was handsome. There was this one nun, when I was about fourteen, you know? I think she wanted me. I mean she was this big old fat nun with onion breath and warts and all kinds of stuff like that and a Bride of Christ and all but I think she wanted to bop me anyway. I really do.”
“Was she any good?”
“Very funny. I wouldn’t’ve touched her with your dick. But you didn’t answer my question.”
“I must’ve forgotten what it was. I’m kinda sleepy, I guess.”
“You can’t sleep in weather like this. You know I heard from my friend in Kentucky that they’ve got air-conditioned slammers down there.”
“In Kentucky, huh?”
“So you gonna answer my question?”
“About you bein’ pretty?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re gorgeous, Henry. Is that what you want me to say?”
“How come you don’t want to screw me? Everybody else here does.”
“I’m not gay.”
“You sorta look gay sometimes.”
“You sorta look gay all the time, Henry.”
“I take that as a compliment.”
“Good.”
Henry, miraculously, shuts his mouth for three or four minutes.
He just lies there basking in the Henry-silence. Sure, guys are farting / coughing / sneezing / shouting / laughing / belching / talking — but not Henry.
Henry-silence, these weeks of co-habiting with Henry, has come to be devoutly desired.
Then (oh no):
“You know what they do?”
“What who do, Henry?”
“The doctors.”
“Are we gonna talk about your sex-change operation again, Henry?”
“Yeah. Unless you wanna be macho and talk about sports or something.”
“I hate sports.”
“You sure you’re not gay?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. But it would come in handy in a place like this.”