After the Rain (14 page)

“Is Ace your real name?”

“Nickname. Name’s Asa. That was my grandfather’s name. Grandfather helped organize the Nonpartisan League after World War One. You ever hear of that?”

Nina cautiously shook her head.

Ace smiled. “Grandpa used to say if you took a railroad man from St. Paul, a mill owner from Minneapolis, and a banker from New York and you stuffed them all in a pickle barrel and rolled the barrel down the hill, there’d always be a son of a bitch on top.”

“Sounds like your grandpa wasn’t a Republican.”

“You got that right. When he had a few beers in him he used to say there’s nothing more dangerous than a bunch of angry farmers with rifles. Was how America started, he’d say.”

Nina sat up a little straighter, attentive. “Sounds like militia talk.”

“Ah, I met some of those guys—just weekend beer bellies, like to dress up in camo. Not real serious folks for the most part.”

Definitely more attentive. “What’s serious?”

“Changing something. Fixing something.” Ace shrugged. “Hey, I’m not much for politics. But I do know that if one guy shoots the banker it’s murder. If twenty guys lynch him it’s a mob; but if the
whole county takes him out and strings him up it’s a change of administration. That’s kinda what they did here in the teens and twenties, took over the state, wrote new laws, created the state mill and the state bank. Back then they called them Socialists.”

Ace shook his head and laughed. “Then we become the launch site for all the missiles aimed at Communist Russia. Which made us into a big target. Kinda like payback for what the Nonpartisan League did to the fat cats, maybe.”

Nina eyed him carefully. “You have this habit of surprising people, you know?”

Ace smiled wryly, and Nina thought he could probably do that for a few more years, but once the tiny wrinkles around his mouth came up sharper it’d be sad all the way. He said, “I used to play ball. That’s a game where you stand around a lot. But then if something happens, you got to be on top of it. Got to be ready for surprises, I guess.” His eyes lingered on her when he said that, searching.

She held his gaze. “So what is it you’re going to show me?”

“Just a place where something happened.”

Nina looked away and watched the wind stream through a long row of trees. “What kind of trees are those?”

“Poplars. Immigrants used to plant them. Put ’em in cemeteries when somebody died. Instead of headstones. More windrows to cut down on the wind. Notice how they all kind of bow to the east. That’s the wind.” He grinned and gave her a sidelong glance. “You know why the wind blows in North Dakota?”

She knew that one. “Yeah, yeah. Because Minnesota sucks.”

They laughed and Nina got comfortable, curling her legs under her in the bucket seat, something she hadn’t done in a car with a man since high school.

More dead straight road, fields of wheat and oats and occasional pools of flax that seemed to float against the green like wisps of mirage.

Then a tall gray grain elevator loomed up on the left side of the
highway. Ace slowed and turned left. The red sign by the road said
STARKWEATHER
.

“Quaint name for a town,” Nina said.

“Got an echo to it, that’s for sure,” Ace said. They drove past an abandoned grocery, a shack with a gas pump, and a post office that maybe was still functioning. Ace parked across from a run-down tavern with a big Pabst Blue Ribbon sign hanging over the door. He zipped down the window, fingered a Camel out of his chest pocket, lit it, exhaled, and said, “How many chances you think people get?”

“Not sure. Sometimes I think some people never
had
a chance.”

“Well, I did. Nineteen eighty-three I graduated high school. Had a good year in Legion ball, batted eight hundred and change. Coach compiled my stats, pulled a few strings, and I got letters from the Twins and the Reds. So I went down to the Twin’s tryout.” He leaned back, smiled. “Knocked two home runs out of the old Met Stadium. Got it on film. That was before video was big. Made the cut the first day.

“Then come the second morning and I’m there warming up and…” He paused and his eyes got stuck remembering. He raised his right knee, moved it in a slow circle. “You could hear the pop clear across the field in the stands.”

“ACL tendon?”

“Big time. They told me where to go to get the best treatment and I went and they give me all this physical therapy. Said it would be six months to heal up. Maybe an operation.

“And I started the program, but I came back here…” His eyes drifted out he window. “Started driving the big stuff for Irv Fuller’s dad. Then, what the hell, I thought I’d try farming. Took over my dad’s place. He’d moved into town by then. Had the Deere dealership and the bar.

“I got in trouble with the bank and tried to cut costs and didn’t pay for crop insurance, and between the hail and the rain and the bugs, that ended my farming career.”

He pointed across the street at the run-down bar.

“Was right in there on a Friday night. I had a little too much to drink and this fool named Bobby Pease, who was just a big bag of wind and a bully and a real mean drunk—well, Bobby decided he was going to throw me out of the bar, and he came at me with a beer bottle and I was not in the best mood, having just lost the farm…” He held up his right hand, studied it. “So I hit him. Just once.”

Ace sighed. “Well, some who were there said it was the fall that broke his neck but I heard it crack when I hit him. He must have been way off balance.” He sucked his teeth and his voice turned wistful. “And I always did hit pretty good. There was more than a few bankrupt farmers on the jury and I’d been working for Fuller, plowing under farmhouses to make more room for the big twelve-bottom plows.” Ace shook his head. “They gave me manslaughter. Reckless endangerment. Cost me a year at Jamestown, the state farm.”

Nina didn’t know what to say.

“But you know what they say about silver linings.” Ace grinned, starting up the Tahoe. “That’s where I got started reading.”

His cameo role
completed, Broker limped back to town in the Explorer. Walking funny, nursing his swollen eye, he came back into the Motor Inn, ignored the scrutiny of the elderly lady behind the desk, went up the stairs, and rapped on Jane’s door.

The door opened. The sound of the Road Runner was muted in the motel room. Now Kit was up on the bed, doing the chicken dance opposite Holly.

I don’t wanna be a chicken

I don’t wanna be a duck

So I’ll shake my butt…

Broker stared at the hoary Delta full bird shaking his bony ass. Barrel of laughs, these guys.

“So? I ain’t
all
snake eater,” Holly protested as he stepped off the bed and studied Broker’s face. “I got grandkids.”

“You don’t look so hot,” Jane said.

“You got a black eye, Daddy,” Kit said.

“I got too involved, I overacted. Took a swing at Shuster. With my bad hand,” Broker said. “His helper stepped in and pasted me.” He pointed to his left eye.

“Hey, great touch,” Holly said. “I’ll go get some ice.” He grabbed the ice container off the dresser and disappeared into the hall.

“Bravo,” Jane said, “let’s have a look.” She went to her equipment bag, took out a first-aid bag, and motioned Broker to the sink. Holly returned, wrapped some ice cubes in a washcloth, and handed it to Broker, who held it against his cheek.

Broker flinched as Jane peeled up the edge of the adhesive strips holding the bandage in place over his infected palm. Kit and Holly moved in to watch.

Jane said, “You’re an old-fashioned macho tough guy like Holly, right?” Before Broker could respond she yanked the tape off. Broker winced and gritted his teeth.

“Ex–macho tough guy,” Jane said.

“Yuk,” Kit said, screwing up her face but peering intently. The wound was going purple in the center and draining pus. An area the size of a silver dollar was bright red. “You want to know something?” Kit said. “In Africa they put maggots on infections to eat the bad germs.”

Broker remembered something Nina’s dad had said about
his
daughter. About how he knew he had his hands full when she was five and went out and poked her finger into some day-old roadkill.

A certain kind of curious.

“This is going to sting,” Jane said.

“That’s what the doctor says when it’s
really
going to hurt a lot,” Kit said.

“Thanks, honey,” Broker said.

Jane pointed to the injured hand. “Move your little finger.”

Broker did.

“Looks like you’ve got full function. How about numb?”

“Sore as hell, not numb.”

“Looks like your ulna nerve is all right,” Jane said.

“I
been
to the doctor,” Broker said.

Jane pressed some gauze into the wound, making Broker wince.

“He tell you to change the dressing every day and not go hitting people?” She swabbed the wound—which hurt—then poured on some Betadine and wiped it down. She reached in her bag and took out a brown tube. “This is Bag Balm. Topical antibiotic. Vets use it on distressed udders. Good for infection.” She daubed on the salve, then wrapped on a clean bandage, and taped it in place.

Then Jane turned to Kit and handed her the tape, three bandages, the disinfectant, and the veterinary salve. “Make sure he changes the bandage every day, got it?”

Kit accepted the medical supplies and nodded solemnly. “Got it.”

Jane turned on the tap and scrubbed her hands. “So how’d it go?”

“Can’t tell for sure. Maybe they buy it, maybe they don’t. You guys are flying by the seat of your pants, that’s how it went,” Broker said.

“We don’t need the executive summary. A simple Sit Rep will do,” Holly said.

Broker exhaled. “Jealous husband delivers suitcase, gives possessive ultimatum, gets pummeled by local rubes.” He removed the slip of paper Nina had given him from his pocket with his good hand. “Nina says check out this guy. Him and Ace have something going down.”

“Wonderful.” Holly seized the note. Scrutinized it. “Khari, that ain’t no white-bread wheat farmer.”

“Could be Syrian or Lebanese,” Jane said offhand.

“We’ll get right on it.” Holly pressed his open palms together. “Well, that’s it. Shake it up, Janey. We’re outta here.”

“You gonna leave her on her own?” Broker asked.

Holly narrowed his eyes. “She’s a one-sixty. They don’t come any better.”

Broker studied the older man’s blank eyes, then shook his head and looked away. Christ. This Holly was a case of early dementia, lost in his elite bullshit.
One-sixty. Jesus!
It was an in-group term
that got thrown around in MACV-SOG during Vietnam. It referred to a Pentagon study on combat effectiveness compiled in the Second World War. According to the study, the average infantryman became ineffective after 155 days of combat.

“One-sixties” were people who adapted to the unadaptable and continued to function. Lots of people in SOG were logging two and three tours in the war zone.

People like Broker.

Broker scowled. “I’d watch the way you’re throwing terms around, considering you guys haven’t been in a war that lasted more than a month for the last twenty-five years.”

Holly sighed. “Okay. Go on. You’ve earned the right to sound off, I guess.”

“Guess is right! They call it undercover work for a reason.
Cover
being the operative word. A commodity there ain’t a lot of around here. Like, say, back in the city a lot of people buy dope, so it’s easy to slip a UC into the revolving door. Penetrating a tight organization is more problematic and takes a long time to build up street credentials. You can’t just fall off the turnip truck and do it over the weekend.” Broker was grim.

Holly nodded. “Sure. That’s the conventional wisdom. And if we come up empty we’ll go to the locals, the state, the feds. But then we lose the element of surprise. When those Washington goons gear up their egos and intramural politics it’s like a herd of touchy elephants getting organized.”

Jane’s face tightened up. “That’s why
we’re
here, not the people who are hung up on procedure and protocol, like the FBI.”

Holly was less sanguine. He held up a hand to calm Jane and said, “We know this is a serious reach. We talked it over and decided we gotta give it a try,” Holly said.

Then, in a spooky divot of speech, Holly and Jane both turned and looked at Kit and said, at exactly the same time, “Too much is at stake…”

Kit was perplexed. The three grown-ups in the room had abruptly stopped talking, and remained silent for almost half a minute.

Jane broke the silence, and her first words came out naked and vulnerable. It took her a full sentence to get back to the disciplined meter of her language: “And we figured having Kit on the scene would provide a touch of realism—plus make you show up. Now it’s up to her.” Jane rushed past the unprotected moment by furiously packing her go-bag.

Slam-bam. Efficient. Hu-ah.

“Aw,” Kit whined a little as Jane packed her fancy laptop.

“Sorry, honey. No more computer games. This has to go with me.” She picked a hefty book off the bureau and handed it to Broker.

“
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone?
” Broker read the title slowly, wondering out loud.

“You got some catching up to do, muggle,” Jane said. Then she knelt and hugged Kit. “Okay, Little Bit. Uncle Holly and Auntie Jane have to go. And so do you and your dad. We talked about this with your mom, remember?”

Kit nodded and chewed the inside of her lower lip. Broker didn’t especially like the way she was
handling it.
The way she nodded, stoic, and said, “We’ll all get together on the other side.”

Seven was too young to have a game face.

Holly’s knees creaked when he kneeled down and said goodbye to Kit. When he got up, his pale ghost-eyes cut Broker fast. “We’ll be close, but not in the town.”

“How close?” Broker asked.

Again, the fast, cool eyes. Impatient with being challenged by a civilian, Holly said firmly, “We got it in hand, okay? Now, I advise you two to get out of here, pronto.”

Yeah, bullshit you got it in hand,
Broker thought. But he nodded
as Holly and Jane went into motion, lugging their go-bags out the door.

Special ops. The manner of their leaving made a New York minute seem like overtime.

Broker sat on the bed and held his daughter in his lap. Sensing his anxiety, she made an effort to reassure him. He listened, amazed as she flipped roles with him:

“In Italy, when the dads went away, the kids and the moms just sit and wait. Like now.”

Broker noticed she was chewing at the corner of her thumbnail as she spoke. He moved her fingers away from her mouth and saw that several fingers were worried almost raw.

Kit went on. “When a dad doesn’t come back, the mom gets a flag. And, um, the chaplain comes and talks.”

“Chaplain?”

Kit furrowed her brow. “You know. They talk about God. How when something bad happens, it’s his will.”

Broker cocked his head at his daughter as a thought occurred. “Did you and Mom ever go to church over there?”

Kit shook her head. “Nah. Mom told me you said if God was really there, he wouldn’t live inside a house. He’d live outside.”

“Your mom said that, huh?”

Kit nodded. Then she sniffed—chlorine from the pool, or allergies maybe. Not tears. She rubbed her nose with her forearm. Scrunched her forehead, thinking. “Sometimes I go outside and look up.”

“We never talked a whole lot about God, did we?” Broker said.

“Mom says we did but I was little so she’d remind me.”

“So what’d you come up with?”

“I don’t know. Some kids believe in Santa Claus and some kids
believe in Jesus. In America, you get to believe what you want. That’s Mom’s job.”

“What?”

“You know, keeping it so people can believe what they want.”

Broker stared at his child.

After a moment, she said, “So now we gotta go home and wait?”

Broker continued to stare. He pictured them traveling back to Minnesota, to the house on the point overlooking Lake Superior. Saw himself pacing. Making breakfast, lunch, dinner. Waiting for Nina to walk down the road to Broker’s Beach.

Or the chaplain with a flag.

When Broker didn’t answer right away, Kit chose her next words carefully, “I can’t stay, can I?”

“No. You’re going back to Grandma and Grandpa tomorrow.”

“Are we gonna drive?”

“You’re going to fly. They’ve got an airport here, I drove past it. I’m going to call Grandma and arrange for a plane.”

She considered this for several seconds. Broker could almost hear the thoughts churning behind her broad forehead. She kept the tears out of her eyes but not entirely out of her voice.

“Dad, are we gonna leave Mom here all alone?”

“No.”

He swabbed some of the Bag Balm on Kit’s chewed fingers and ordered her to keep them out of her mouth. Then he called his mother. Two hours of phone tag followed, with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny for accompaniment on the TV. Finally they arranged to have a reliable local pilot, Doc Harris, fly in with Lyle Torgeson, a Cook County deputy, and pick up Kit at the Langdon airstrip. Torgeson’s wife, Lottie, ran a preschool back home that Kit had attended three years ago. Kit would be comfortable traveling with
Uncle Lyle. The Torgesons were extended family. They just had to nail down the time. As he waited for the call with an ETA for tomorrow, he took Kit on a walk around the corner from the motel and down the main street.

After window-shopping, they went into a store and bought a locally sewn quilt. Kit picked it out, calling the tight pattern of grays, maroons, and blues “Grandma’s colors.”

Irene Broker, who dabbled in astrology and melancholia, was Norwegian.

They went back on the street. Looking up, Broker saw that the clouds matched the brooding colors of the quilt. The barometric pressure throbbed in his wounded hand like mercury, marking heavy time.

They had an early supper at a restaurant next to City Hall. Kit had macaroni and cheese. In elliptical snatches, mixed in with a forced game of “I Spy,” she told him about going to first grade at the military school on the Aviano Air Base. Then about Ria, her tutor in Lucca.

Lucca was a town out of a history book, located in Tuscany, between Pisa and Florence. “It’s got a big wall around it. You could walk or ride your bike,” Kit said.

Broker nodded along with her conversation, chewing his rib-eye (hold the potato, double veggies). After hot fudge sundaes—strictly a no no for the Atkins Aware—Kit said she wanted to swing. She explained that Jane had taken her to a playground near the swimming pool, so they took the quilt back to their room and then walked toward the city park.

They passed by old houses double shaded by trees and the solid clouds. The late-afternoon breeze heaved, thick with humidity, slow tidal air pressing in. Holding Kit’s hand, sensitive to the gentle pressure of the pulse in her moist palm, Broker was nudged by eddies of foreboding.

He accepted clinical depression as a condition for other people,
but not for himself. He had never been incapacitated by his dark thoughts. But he had never been free of them, either. They ran non-stop in the back of his mind like a cable TV package of channels from Hell.