I went in the waiting room and read an ancient Tv Guide. There was an article on James Arness of Gunsmoke and how he’d played the monster in The Thing, and how this new guy Ernie Kovacs was ushering in a new era of “hip” Tv, and then a piece on the family life of Lucy and Desi and how they really were just as lovey-dovey as they appeared on the air.
I was trying not to think about what I’d come here for.
Dick Keys was one of the town’s best. He’d been around since before I was born, hawking cars and boosting the town. He was a decent guy.
He came in and said, “Rick said you were looking for me, Sam. How about you wait in my office?
You want some coffee?”
“I thought maybe you’d take me for a ride.”
“A ride? You serious?”
“Sure. Try out the Edsel.”
He looked at me. “You? In an Edsel?
C’mon. You can’t shit a shitter.”
“I just want to talk a little, Dick.”
“Talk?”
He watched me carefully, as if I were holding something secret and suspicious behind my back.
“Yeah. Just a little talk is all.”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Talk.
Sure. Why not? Well, you go pick out the beast you wanna ride in and I’ll meet you on the lot.”
“Appreciate it.”
He started to leave the reception area and then stopped. “I heard Cliff found Chalmers.”
“Yeah.”
“Arrested him and charged him, huh?”
“That’s the story.”
“A lot of people are going to breathe easier now.”
“I sure will,” I said.
He smiled. “I still can’t see you in an Edsel, Sam.”
I picked out a lemon-and-lime one.
Two-door. Not only could you make love on the seats, you could raise a family inside the plush confines of the thing.
Keys saw me and waved. He disappeared back inside, returning moments later with a pair of keys.
When he got in the driver’s seat, he said, “Believe it or not, they’re starting to sell.
Got a call from my buddy over in Des Moines. He said that on Saturday people acted kind’ve funny around them. Didn’t know how to react. But he said by Sunday they started buying them. That’s been my experience too. Sold three this morning, including a station wagon. Top of the line.”
We were already out in traffic. Sunny Friday noon hour. We passed the library. I wanted to be sixteen again and sitting on the steps in the warmth and light and reading a science-fiction magazine-y know, the kind you have to keep the cover turned over because it always shows a half-naked girl being felt up by a purple guy with six very busy hands.
“Anyplace special?”
“How about the river road?”
“You’re making me nervous, Sam.” The once-handsome face had developed a slight tic under the left eye.
“I don’t mean to.”
“Something’s going on, isn’t it?”
“I guess so. Let’s get out of town before we start talking.”
He was wound very tight.
“How about rolling down the windows?” I said.
“Kill the astc, you mean?”
“Astc?”
He laughed nervously. “That’s car-dealer talk for air-conditioning.”
“Oh. Yeah. Let’s kill the astc. The park smells great this time of year. All the leaves and everything.”
“I sure wish I knew what was going on.”
He killed the astc. He had power windows.
Soon we were breathing the air God intended us to.
And then we were on the river road.
The Edsel had power, no doubt about that. The river was on the right. On the left were shaggy bluffs of pin oak and pine. An old barnstormer was out for the afternoon, a real old-time showoff, swooping and tumbling and diving so fast birds sat by in frozen envy.
“Imagine how free you could be if you had a plane like that,” Keys said.
“Yeah.”
“I bet that’s the very first thing man wished for. I mean, way back when we had just learned how to stand up straight. To fly. To have that freedom.” Then he added, “To escape.”
I said, gently, “Some things you can’t escape, I guess.”
He looked over at me. “That’s what my old man always said during the Depression. That there wasn’t any escape. They went on strike, the milk farmers. Your dad ever tell you about that?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Right up north of here. Hambling Road.
About fifty farmers with shotguns. They were getting only a few pennies on the dollar for their milk, so they decided to make the truck drivers dump it rather than take it into the cities. They got these spiked telegraph poles and laid them across the road. Sheriff and his deputies showed up. But the men didn’t back down. My uncle was one of the strikers. He always bragged about what he did. Walked right up to the sheriff with his sawed-off and said, “I’ll take your gun and your badge.” And damned if the sheriff didn’t hand them over. Guess he figured my uncle would’ve killed him. And he probably would’ve, knowing Ken. So what they did was dump out half the milk and then they drove the rest on into Cedar Rapids and gave the rest away free in the poor sections. Isn’t that a hell of a story?”
“Yeah,” I said, and it was. “Your dad involved?”
He made a sour face. “No. Not us, me or him.” He smiled with great sadness. “We’re the salesman type. Talk your head off and don’t do jack shit. Hell, half the men in this town might as well be women, the way they’ve lived their lives. And I’m one of them.” He sighed. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “I haven’t even taken care of my wife very well. She deserved a hell of a lot better than me. All the years she put up with me. And she didn’t get anything out of it.
Well, it’s her turn now. I just want her to know that for once in my life I’m a man. I did something honorable. She needs to know that, and I need to know it too.”
I wondered what he was talking about.
I knew he’d killed Susan and Squires, but he wasn’t exactly saying that. I needed him to say it.
“You scared to have me open this up?” he asked.
“Nah. It’d be fun.”
“One hundred and twenty?”
“If it’ll do it.”
“Oh, it’ll do it.”
“Then let’s go.”
So we went. Faster and faster. He didn’t slow down much on the long, deep curves: … 100… 105. I gripped the dash with both hands. I was starting to get cold.
He looked over at me. “Scared?”
“A little.”
He looked defeated. “You figured it out, didn’t you?”
One-twenty pegged. The countryside had become an impressionistic painting-colors fading one into another, the shapes of farmhouses and silos and outbuildings blurred.
“Figured what out?”
“Who killed Susan and David.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.”
“This is some motor, huh?”
There were several curves ahead of us I didn’t want to think about. “Yeah, it’s some motor.”
“Maybe I should just run us off the road.”
“I don’t want to die, Dick. I mean, if I’ve got a say in this at all.”
He shook his head. “Those Rotarians aren’t going to believe it, are they? When they hear who killed Susan and David.” He laughed.
“They’re women. They sit around and gossip and bad-mouth people and then go back and sit in their offices and make their secretaries do all the work for about one-third the pay. If that.”
“Just watch the road, will you?”
“It’s funny, Sam. Right now I feel freer than I have since I was a boy. I really d. I feel free. I’ve got life and death in my hands. One little flick of the wrist and we’re both dead. That’s man stuff. It’s not all this rah-rah business bullshit. You don’t have to smile and kiss ass and be a clown all the time.
I always wanted to be like my Uncle Ken. He ended up being a labor organizer. He’d bust heads when he needed to; I think he even took pleasure in it. But when I got a chance to marry the richest girl in the valley, my old man really pushed me. She couldn’t even give me a child. I used to go into Chicago once a month on some pretext, and man did I whore it up. I did the whole thing: colored whores, Chinese whores, Mexican whores. You name it.