Mazarine liked airplanes, too, or said she did, and collected pictures of pilots and race flights for Franz’s scrapbook. She also came along with him to watch the airplanes and sat in the shade of the barn when one of the pilots who kept their machines either in the barn, or who had landed there for the day, allowed Franz to work on his engine. While Franz worked with the men, she got a book from the strap on the rear of her bicycle and did her sums or geography lessons. Sometimes, when she got bored, she did Franz’s homework, too. When it was done, she got up and walked around and around the barn peering critically at the airplanes until finally Franz was ready to go home. But they didn’t go home right away. They had been going together as sweethearts for months now. They stopped just before the turnoff to the shop. Franz slipped Mazarine’s bicycle behind some weeds. Holding hands, they walked to a little spot underneath a pine tree where the branches came down all around them.
“It’s gonna get cold here pretty soon,” Mazarine said, settling herself on the soft, rust brown needles, “then what?” She pushed Franz’s hand away from her knee. He sat back a little and waited. Once, she had taken hold of his hand very carefully, and set it on her breast, the left one, and then said, “Go in circles.” He tried that, but soon she frowned and flung his hand off, and said, “That doesn’t even feel half good.” He kept his hand still, just in case she should want him to try again. Her upper lip was thin, but curved provocatively. He liked the way one curve, the left again, was a little higher than the other and rode up a fraction over her teeth. And her lower lip was full, a deep berry color. Franz knew her lips very well, and her ears, too. She always let him kiss her ears and then go down her throat to just below the delicate ridge of her collarbone. Her eyelashes were so long they made shadows, and she said the other girls envied her. They were lush brown, like her eyes, and much darker than her heavy sun-streaked hair, springing out over her shoulders.
He touched her hair, even dared tug it gently, and moved closer. She moved right next to him and sat in the curve of his arm. They were resting against the base of the pine, and had to be careful always to leave before it got dark, so that they could pick sap and pine needles off each other’s back. He turned his face to hers. She closed her eyes like an obedient child, opened them when he finally drew his mouth away from hers. She licked her lips, looked at him mockingly, then thrust her hand right between the buttons of his shirt and up the side of his chest, scratching her nails lightly along each rib. Mazarine had simple rules. Franz was allowed only to do the precise things she permitted. She, on the other hand, could do anything she wanted to him, provided he stayed still and didn’t grab for her. And that, Franz found, was very difficult when what she did became unbearable.
SHERIFF HOCK WORKED late into the evening, by the intense light of a green-shaded banker’s lamp, putting his files in order. Most all of the crimes he dealt with were petty, small thefts or disorderly conduct, saloon troubles or domestic fights, or so large as to fall beyond his influence. Of the latter category, which included acts of God and automobile accidents, he dreaded most presiding at farm auctions and foreclosures. Even though Governor Langer had ordered the banks to cease, Zumbrugge managed one or two every year, and it was the sheriff’s job to keep the peace at the event. Sheriff Hock had been approached several times in regard to auctions that would have stripped Roy Watzka of his farmstead. Yet each time the bank came near to foreclosing, Roy would at the last minute come up with the money on his loan — no one had any idea where the money came from. But he would pay the money and then drink until the next payment was due, at which time the entire process would repeat itself.
For the first time in many years, Roy had paid the bank on time. Sheriff Hock stared at the brown cardboard file in the pool of light. Surely, he thought, Roy’s prompt fiscal responsibility had to do with Delphine’s return. He wanted very much to close the case, to name the incident a terrible mistake — after all, the wake had been disorganized and people did get locked in cellars. But then there was the strangeness of it, the horror of the death. The weird glue of peach juice and ornamental beads and dog crap. The damn beads. Clarisse! He passed his hands across his face, recalling the old humiliation and Delphine’s contempt for his pain. Helpless before the memory, he cringed in his chair and diverted his thoughts. But they all led back to Clarisse. He thought of her all the time, even when he wasn’t thinking of her. She was the background to his every minute, everything he did. His best method of evading her was to imagine himself locking her in a closet. Stuffing her in. Tenderly kissing her. Turning the key. It always took her hours to get out and while she was struggling he could focus on other concerns.
There was the odd fact of Roy’s deafness to the noises underneath his house. Sheriff Hock wished that he could feel the certainty that some in town, anyway, felt about the guilt of Roy Watzka. But he had the sense that Roy was honest, if soused half the time, and basically as harmless as his daughter insisted. Sheriff Hock was, he liked to say, a man of instinct, and his gut feeling was that something was missing, some information. He wasn’t at all certain that this information had to do with Roy, and yet he saw before him, in another unclosed file, a chance to set a certain event into motion that might shake loose a fact or two. From that file, he smoothed a document which he read over slowly, nodding at the words. Deciding, he slapped his hand on the paper. Then he folded it neatly and lifted it to his front pocket. The paper crackled as he turned off the lamp.
IT WAS A BRISK gold afternoon and leaves were swirling through the air when Sheriff Hock arrested Roy Watzka for the theft of the morphine. Although the theft was way back when and Fidelis had immediately gone to the sheriff, just afterward, and explained the entire situation, Hock behaved as though he’d just begun the investigation. Fidelis had been paying Sal Birdy a little each month for the medicine, and Sal had easily accepted that. Nevertheless, Sheriff Hock made the arrest. Roy went along peacefully and seemed resigned to his jailing. He went to the cell he’d often inhabited before, only then he’d been immune to his surroundings, drunk and snoring, and hadn’t cared about the tattered blanket or the stained walls or the faintly reeking piss bucket. He walked in, as usual, closed the door behind him. This time, things were different. As a sober man, Roy had become surprisingly finicky. The first thing he did, to the amazement of Sheriff Hock, was request a certain pine-scented ammonia he’d used to make the chicken house habitable, along with a mop and bucket, water, a brush and rags. He stuffed the old blanket through the bars and tried to pound the bugs out of the mattress. And all without even asking whether his plight was yet known to his daughter. Sheriff Hock took it upon himself to go to Waldvogel’s and inform her, but first he made certain preparations to ensure that he could spy on her actions following his news.
The moment Sheriff Hock walked into the shop, Delphine knew with a sick clarity that Roy was in trouble. She knew all of the good and calm times she’d feared too good to last had been indeed too good to last. They were over. The news would be humiliating, because of course Tante was in the shop, too, talking to Fidelis just around the corner. Delphine prayed their conversation would turn into a long involved argument, that they wouldn’t step into the shop. Of course, if they shut up, they could hear everything from right where they were.
What Sheriff Hock had to say would not be good because he wore his stage manner. He couldn’t help play the part, Deliverer of Bad Tidings. The drama on his face was heavy as stage makeup. Delphine had that disengaged feeling, the same she’d had when confronting Tante with the needle, that she was playing a part, too, and that she knew all he would say and all that she would say, that this moment had been rehearsed since the beginning of time.