Knee High by the 4th of July (17 page)

I watched Brando out of the corner of my eye. Both his anger and his pants deflated slowly but steadily, as if by sheer force of will. By the time Brad reached us, Brando was his suave, good-looking self again. He offered his hand to Brad. “Those are my wheels, and thank you. Name’s Brando.”

“No shit? That’s a great name. I’m Brad.”

I could see the wheels turning in Brad’s head, or, more accurately, “wheel,” and I foresaw a name change in the near future for the leader of “Not with My Horse.” I was too grateful to see Brad to make fun of him, though. “Hey, Brad. You’re just in time. We were about to eat. You hungry?”

“You know I can always eat. As long as you guys don’t mind. We can celebrate my good news!”

“What’s your good news?”

“It looks like I found a job. When I was down at Bonnie & Clyde’s, I heard they’re hiring construction workers in Fergus Falls, or I could bartend at Stub’s, and some guy even told me there is a crazy professor in town paying good money for workers to tear down statues.”

Brando and I looked at each other. His face was unreadable, and I hoped mine was too. More likely, however, my right ear looked like a “D,” my right eye looked like an “O,” the furrowed lines between my brows looked like two “Ls,” and my left eyebrow looked like a “Y.”

Brando brushed his hand across his mouth and leaned in to kiss my forehead. I winced, whether from the leftover heat between us or fear, I wasn’t sure. “Thanks for inviting me out, Mira, but I better be getting back to town. I have some packing that I need to finish.”

“Sure, Brando. Maybe some other time.”

He gave Brad a curt nod, fired up the tank, and was out the driveway in a dramatic rumble.

“What the fuck is he driving, anyhow? A 1057 All-Desert 10-ton Dune Runner?”

“It’s a Humvee, Brad.” Now that Brando was gone, I wanted Brad gone, too. I had been through a lot the last couple days, and to top it all off, I could feel a thwarted-sex headache forming behind my eyes. “I appreciate you coming when you did, by the way. I’m really tired, though. Can I pack some food up for you to take with?”

Brad looked at me, seriously looked at me, for the first time since he had been in town. “You do look beat. Why don’t you go lay down? I’ll bring the food in and take what I need.”

His sudden kindness brought my guilt for making out with Brando to the surface. I took a stab at easing it by clearing up a bad mark from my past. “You know how I left Minneapolis without saying goodbye?”

Brad nodded, his mouth full of tofu.

“It was because I caught you cheating on me. With Ted’s dog-sitter.”

He swallowed and looked at me sheepishly. “I kinda figured. I’m sorry.”

“And I took the nuts off your bike, which is why you crashed it.”

Brad started laughing. “No shit? That hurt.”

I smiled back at him, relieved by his reaction. “Yeah, well, it was pretty childish, and I’m sorry I did it.”

“I deserved it,” he said, grabbing for another piece of tofu.

“Thanks, Brad.” I was in the house and asleep in my bed before he left.

When my eyes opened,
the birds were singing but the sky was dark. I sat up and my bed swayed under me. The digital clock on my nightstand was blinking 12:00 in an acid red, meaning the power had gone out at some point, and a rip of thunder rolled across the lake and into the house. My heart caromed off its track and hammered around loose in my chest. Was it Monday night or Tuesday morning? How long had I been asleep? Was I alone in my house?

The smell of ozone, followed by a flash of lightning, was unsettling. I forced myself out of the bed and into my kitchen. The battery-powered clock hanging on a nail over the fridge read 7:36, but I still didn’t know if it was am or pm. What time had I gone to bed? I scratched at my head and jumped as Tiger Pop brushed against my leg.

“Hey, sweetie. How long have I been asleep?” No answer. I went to my front door, which had been shut and locked. Brad, looking out for me, about a year too late. I opened the inner door and leaned my face against the cool screen. It must be morning, or the screen would still be warm. I watched the first drop of rain hit my garden, scaring up black dust. Then the second drop came, and the third, and as I belatedly realized I had left my car windows open, the sky opened up and emptied her tubs. I ran to my car, rolled up all four windows, and was drenched right down to the inner crotch seam of my cut-offs by the time I splashed back inside. As the rain pounded down, a wicked cold breeze slipped like an icy tongue through the wall of heavy air, and I knew we were in for a mother of a storm.

“Whaddya think, Tiger Pop? Should I wait it out, or make a run for town now before it gets even worse?”

“Whoof,” Luna said. To town it was. I considered my run to the car a shower, so I only needed to change clothes and brush my teeth. I got Luna and Tiger Pop fresh food and water and, umbrella in hand, put their vittles in the sheltered area under the house. I also relocated a disgruntled Tiger Pop to that area. When the rain let up, I knew they’d both want to be outside.

My house was still tidy, so there was nothing to do but go into the storm and drive. The sky was black, except for the razors of lightning that cut through it, and the thunder was the only sound loud enough to trump the shovelfuls of rain hammering down. Battle Lake was getting itself cleaned behind the ears, sure enough, and I knew the farmers were going to be elated, as long as no hail came with the package. Their crazy high corn needed to be watered.

The drive to town was slow. At thirty miles per hour, I could just barely make out the hood of my car, and my windshield wipers were doing more stirring than removing of rain. Sid and Nancy, bless their hearts, had the Fortune Café open when I arrived at 8:30, but there wasn’t much business in town. The only other customers in the café were some out-of-towners and their miserable-looking kids (“But honey, we can play Monopoly in here until the rain lets up!”), Les Pastner, and a waitress from the Turtle Stew ordering some real coffee before her shift started.

I stepped in line behind the waitress but was distracted by the sound of radio snaps and burps. Les was at the two-top table to my immediate left, fiddling with a small radio poorly hidden in his jacket. To my infinite surprise, he looked to be drinking a marble mocha macchiato, extra whipped cream, hold the cinnamon. Apparently, even militia men are not immune to the finer pleasures life has to offer.

“What’re you listening to, Les?”

“Police scanner.”

“Any news?”

“Can’t hear. The storm is messing up my frequency.”

“Mind if I join you after I get my breakfast?”

Les’ hair was slicked off to one side with a part you could land a jet on, and his squinty eyes were so deep-set, I couldn’t tell what color they were, though the green-gray of his eye bags reflected off their surface. Right now, he looked at me as if I had asked him if I could paint his toenails pink. “Why?”

“You and me need to talk.”

He looked around furtively. The waitress had taken her coffee and left, and Sid and Nancy had politely disappeared into the kitchen. Meanwhile, the family had settled into the back room to see if the Parker Brothers could keep them sane. “You said you weren’t gonna tell no one you saw me outside the motel.” His voice sounded accusing.

“And I meant it. I just want to know if you found out anything else about Dolly and Brando. Did they come to town together?”

Les tried to look tough, like an impenetrable gangsta, but it wasn’t an easy look to pull off with whipped cream on your upper lip and a macchiato in hand. “I’m not working for you.”

That set me back on my heels. Les had tipped his hand a little too far. “But you’re working for someone.” It was a statement, not a question. “Who?”

He took another sip of his gourmet coffee and busied himself fiddling with his radio.

“OK, don’t tell me who it is. What’d they hire you to do?”

A clear stream of words came out of the radio, though it sounded distant. Les pulled up the antennae and readjusted them like they were metal chopsticks and he was trying to pick up a tiny ball of rice.

“Was it a male or female who hired you, or both?”

“… Big Ole statue missing from Alexandria …”

Les’ eyes got big, and he tuned in the information stream cackling from the radio.

“It’s just gone. What does someone want with a big Norwegian statue?”

There was a crackle, and then a response from another officer, or the dispatcher. “Ransom? Or maybe Chief Wenonga was getting lonely.” Followed by a chuckle. “No scalp on this one?”

“No blood. I repeat, no blood. The statue has just disappeared.”

I had been leaning into the radio and so jumped when Les slammed it against the tabletop, spilling his coffee. “God bless it! This is not how it was supposed to go!” He ignored the mess he had made and stormed out of the Fortune Café, radio in hand.

Sid reappeared from the kitchen. “What was that all about?”

I shook my head in amazement. “Les’ police scanner. Someone took Big Ole out of Alexandria.”

“No way!” She wiped her hands on the towel she was carrying, and I was shocked to notice she was wearing a skirt. “Well, it looks like our bad luck is spreading around a little. But why is someone stealing schlocky statues?”

I bristled at the “schlocky,” but made a joke of it. “Maybe they want to build the world’s biggest mini golf course?” Inside, though, my thoughts were spinning. I had assumed that Chief Wenonga had been stolen to strike a blow for PEAS, and the missing Bill Myers dressed as a Native American had lent credence to that theory. Now, Bill had been found, and a non-Indian statue had been stolen. This was clearly about the statues, and not the politics, which pointed the finger squarely at Brando. But how was Dolly involved?

“I don’t think it’s for mini golf. Where do you hide twenty-plus-foot statues?”

Good question. “I dunno, Sid. Can I get a sun-dried tomato bagel with provolone cheese, to go? And maybe a Diet Coke. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.”

“Sure thing, shug.” Sid wrapped my food in waxed paper and filled a to-go cup with pop, and I went back into the rain. It had let up from “firehose in the sky” to “water pressure in the average double-wide,” so I gambled I wouldn’t need my umbrella to dash the fifteen feet from the front door of the Fortune to my car. I lost that bet. I was soaked, for the second time that day. The temperature was 74 degrees, according to the bank’s LCD screen, so at least it wasn’t a miserable soaked.

I drove to the library and shook off inside. I fired up the front desk computer and began searching, starting with “Big Ole Alexandria Minnesota.” The first link pulled up an attractive (if you like the Nordic type) picture of big Ole, horned-helmet on his head, blonde, shoulder-length locks cascading into his beard and moustache. He carried a wussy-looking spear in one hand and a shield in the other, with his sword strapped at his waist. He wore a skirt that would make Paris Hilton proud. It was bright yellow and skimmed the upper thighs of his unusually long legs. It also highlighted nicely the fact that one leg was raised and stepping forward, as if to say, “I have conquered this land, and I did it in a skirt.” It was suggestively sexy, in a homoerotic sort of way. Me, I preferred tall, dark, and handsome. There was something nagging me about that statue, though. Something familiar.

I read the caption and was brought up to date on Alexandria history. The town called itself “The Birthplace of America,” due to the Kensington runestone found nearby in 1898 under the roots of an aspen tree by Olaf Ohman, an illiterate local farmer. The markings on the 202-pound stone were believed to be a runic inscription describing a Viking expedition in 1362, a date well-preceding Columbus’ “discovery” of America. Controversy followed the discovery, with Ohman’s veracity being called into question.

In 1948, the Smithsonian displayed the runestone, where it stayed for about twenty years until the museum decided it was a fake, returning it to Minnesota. Unfortunately, the curators had scrubbed off with a wire brush all the microevidence that could have dated it. It was apparently quite a scandal, with differing conspiracy theories as to why the museum had scrubbed the stone.

Before the Smithsonian biffed and at the high point of the positive runestone publicity, Alexandria commissioned a twenty-eight-foot fiberglass statue of Ole Oppe, better known as the Viking, Big Ole. Big Ole began his existence at the World’s Fair in 1964 before moving to Alexandria. I searched three more sites using “Big Ole” as the search term, and finally found what I was looking for under “Ole Oppe”: the statue had been built by one Fibertastic Enterprises out of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Hello, Brando Erikkson. Why, pray tell, are you stealing your own statues? And why scalp Liam Anderson?

I flipped back to my computer and Googled “Fibertastic Enterprises.” I had tried this search earlier, but had not dug deeply. This time, I was going to find something, even if I had to read all 1,314 hits. The first hit was the same home page for the Stevens Point company that I had come across in my original search. The next hundred or so were links to the websites of communities that had purchased statues from Fibertastic and were crediting the company. Among these were links to Chief Wenonga in Battle Lake and Big Ole in Alexandria. It was at link number 132 that I hit pay dirt in the form of a brief article in the online English version of the
Mumbai Mirror
out of Bombay. The article was titled “Gandhi Falls on Jain Passersby, Injuring Many”:

A group of six Jain devotees, on a pilgrimage to Shatrunjaya Hills, were injured as the twenty-three-foot statue of Mahatma Gandhi they walked under fell on them. The statue had been commissioned in the late 1970s by a wealthy Brit named Bobcat Perham and intended as a reminder of Gandhi’s sacrifices. Fibertastic Enterprises, a Wisconsin, United States, company, built, shipped, and installed the statue. The statue’s fall appeared to be an act of God.

The article included a picture of the Gandhi statue, presumably taken before it had toppled over. In the photograph, the statue looked unusually robust, given Gandhi’s historically emaciated appearance, and strangely familiar. I contemplated that as I ran the name of the town through my memory. Shatrunjaya Hills. When Johnny had called from Wisconsin, he had said Dolly Castle had taken the study-abroad program to Shatrunjaya Hills, India.

The mystery was solved!

Brando, who for all I knew had a hand in creating the Ronald McDonald statues Dolly had vandalized, had built a statue that had injured innocent bystanders. Dolly, swept up in the cause of the unfairly injured Jains, was doling out her own form of weird punishment by stealing his statues. I wondered if her group, PEAS, even existed or was just a front for her as she skulked around Battle Lake and Alexandria, publicly humiliating Brando while he was in town to celebrate a Wenonga-less Chief Wenonga Days.

It was time to confront one Dolly Castle, woman to woman.