Rhubarb (10 page)

After the toaster popped, Martin set a plate in front of Stewart
and then sat down with his own. “Eat,” he said. He’d hoped the breakfast would
give Stewart the chance to offer an apology, an explanation, or even his
thanks, but their plates were almost empty when Martin broke the stalemate.

“Is Cheryl in trouble?”

“Never you mind about that,” said Stewart.

“Is it something to do with the guy she met on the Internet?
The guy in Boise?”

Stewart finished off his toast.

“I mean, she doesn’t seem like the type to run off like
that. But you tell me. I barely know her,” said Martin.

“She’s—” Stewart broke off. “It’s not your problem.”

“Certainly seemed to be my problem last night,” said Martin.
Stewart sighed a growling breath and shoveled in a bite of scrambled eggs. “You
were going on about the rhubarb pie.”

“I was upset, not thinking clearly. I’ve been sick, you
know,” said Stewart. “It was a mistake to come here.”

“I’m sorry you think I would do anything to hurt your
daughter,” said Martin. “Sorry. Stepdaughter.”

“It’s okay.”

“If you think she’s in trouble, why don’t you let me help
you? We can talk to the police. I could go to Boise and look for her.”

“I don’t need your help,” said Stewart.

“And you’re in any condition…?”

“That’s none of your business.” Stewart sawed at a sausage
with the side of his fork, but before he ate a bite, he picked up his oxygen
pack and squinted at the dial. “Jesus,” he hissed.

Martin found a fresh tank on the floor of Stewart’s Skylark,
parked out on the street. “You’re driving home?” Martin asked as he helped
Stewart switch the tanks on the regulator.

“Where else am I going to go?”

“You’re sure there’s nothing I can do?”

“I’m sorry for busting in on you,” said Stewart. “And for
blaming you.”

“Hey, it’s forgivable. You love her,” said Martin.

Martin waited until the Skylark’s blue exhaust had
dissipated to worry about being late for work.

~ * * * ~

Martin flopped on a bed of the Holiday Inn Express in
Belgrade and kicked off his shoes. All he could see behind his eyelids were
two-inch galvanized nails, seven-sixteenths-inch stainless steel lock washers,
three-eighths-inch zinc-finished hex nuts, and a variety of Phillips pan head
screws. Vaguely satisfied customers in Harlowton, White Sulphur Springs,
Townsend, and Three Forks had been duly restocked for another forty-odd days.
Tomorrow, Belgrade, Bozeman, Livingston, and Big Timber would be sated in their
never-ending lust for hardware. What did people use all this stuff for, anyway?
What did they build? What was so important that it had to be fixed? Had any of
them ever given a second thought to the person who fills all those little bins?

Martin found the energy to lift the remote. On-demand
movies.
The Tonight Show
.
Baseball Tonight
. The Weather Channel.
Fox News. Some cookie cutter rom-com.
House Hunters
. Martin paused for a
while on
Man v. Food
and a burrito that could have fed an entire Somali
family for a week.

“What are you doing, Martin?” he asked himself as he put on
his shoes. He asked it several times more as he bought gas and a giant cup of
Diet Mountain Dew. The GPS gave him three hours, but he could do it in two.

~ * * * ~

“Bangor, Maine, you’re Beyond Insomnia.”

“Hey, great to be on again, Lee. This is Patrick from
Bangor. I don’t know if you remember me. I called in a couple months ago about
the location of the Pentagon and its correlation with a nexus in the Earth’s
force lines.”

“Oh, sure, welcome back.”

“Yeah. Let’s see, I’ve been awake for a long time. Renewed
my membership last month.”

“Glad to hear it. Do you have a question for Guest X?”

“Oh. Absolutely, man. This kind of thing is right in my area
of study. How it’s all connected—Roswell, the CIA, the United Fruit Company,
all that. It’s amazing to talk to this person. I have a pretty good idea who it
is, but I won’t say. Don’t want to out someone who’s a big hero of mine.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate that. What’s your question?”

“Yeah. It’s an honor to talk to you, sir. You mentioned the
memo that President Kennedy sent out a few days before Dealey Plaza, asking the
CIA for all the information about Roswell. You know how he asked for them to
pretty much hand the data over to NASA, and how Kennedy tried to excuse it all
by claiming that he needed to know about UFOs in case the Soviets figured out
what we were doing in their airspace and all…”

“Yes. What’s your question?”

“Well, they killed Kennedy to keep the truth from coming out
about Roswell, but who is ‘they’? Who actually had the most to lose? Of course
it’s the aliens. The CIA is just a bunch of men. The aliens didn’t want to be
outed. So even if a human pulled the trigger, it must have been the aliens that
gave the order. But this means that aliens held positions of power, and
probably still do.”

“Thank you, Patrick. Well, Guest X? Could JFK’s
assassination indicate that there are aliens active in the United States shadow
government?”

“There has been some speculation of this kind. I’m
personally not convinced, although there have been many strange occurrences
involving known members with Majestic clearance over the years. Beginning
obviously with Forrestal’s supposed suicide. While the reports of dead or dying
EBEs in the Roswell craft are credible and corroborated, the reports of living
EBEs interacting with officials are less so. But your concern for motive is
valid. Why would the government care so much to keep the aliens secret?
Especially when such a secret can never hold. National security means something
very different today than it did during the Cold War. Especially when the war
on terror is—and forgive me if I’m not being politically correct—but it’s a
religious war. It’s long been assumed that proof of alien life would
significantly alter citizens’ religious worldview. Why not drop the A-bomb,
then, so to speak? Why not release the proof of extraterrestrials and
destabilize organized religion, weakening bases of terror? If the shadow
government doesn’t do this, it means one of two things: One, there are valid
reasons for keeping the truth hidden, or two, they are being compelled to
publicly deny the truth. I don’t like either of those alternatives, because
they point to something potentially very nasty going on.”

~ * * * ~

Herbert’s Corner floated like a mirage in the night. The gas
pumps gleamed. The neon flashed. Insects swirled and collected around the
buzzing lights as if trying to rescue, or join, their perished brethren inside
the plastic. Gary, the overnight clerk, sat an uncaring guard over the
embarrassment of prepackaged riches in the convenience store. Patsy Cline
lamented to an empty diner from the jukebox.

Eileen looked up from a magazine as Martin took a stool at
the counter. “Martin? Whatcha doin’ here? You know what time it is?”

“I know,” said Martin.

“Coffee?”

“Please.”

“You lookin’ to eat, too?”

“Came to see you, actually,” said Martin.

“Well, if you’ve come to find out what happened with Cheryl,
you’ve come to the wrong place. Surprised us all when she left town.”

“You still haven’t heard anything? Because I’m having a hard
time accepting this story about an Internet romance. I’ll admit I’m practically
a stranger, but it doesn’t seem like her,” said Martin.

“People do strange things,” said Eileen. “And this town can
do strange things to people.”

“But Cheryl?”

“You think you know people, but you really don’t,” said
Eileen.

“She gave me her phone number that night I had dinner at her
place.”

Eileen slid a bowl of creamers and the sugar shaker within
reach. “How about some pancakes?”

“I could use some pancakes,” said Martin.

“Luis, tall cakes,” Eileen called through the window.

“Is anyone looking out for Stewart?” asked Martin.

“Laura and Milton have been looking in on him,” said Eileen.
“A couple other neighbors.”

“I think he’s sicker than he lets on,” said Martin.

“Why do you say that?” asked Eileen.

“Cheryl said he won’t go see a doctor.” Martin ached to tell
her about Stewart’s visit but shut himself up with a gulp of coffee.

When Eileen set his pancakes down, the scoop of butter slid
off the top and began to dissolve into a foamy pool on the side of the plate.
She added a little pitcher of maple syrup to the counter. “You need anything
else, my dear?”

“What can you tell me about what happened to Cheryl’s
mother?”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about all that,” said Eileen.

“Please,” said Martin. “Did you know her?”

“I met her after she came back to town. I started here in
1986. I was her replacement, in fact.”

“Eighty-six? That’s when she disappeared?”

“Right after Cheryl was born. Right after Herbert Stamper
was killed, too.”

“He was killed?”

“Yep, shot. Right there in the store. Holdup, I guess.
Weren’t more than a hundred bucks in the till.”

“This all happened about the same time?”

“Linda had her baby. Then Herbert got shot. Then Linda ran
off.”

“Linda was Cheryl’s mom?”

“Her name was Linda Laughlin.”

“I’ve heard that Cheryl’s grandma worked here, too.”

“I didn’t know Margie. She died before I moved to town,”
said Eileen.

“And they made the rhubarb pie?” asked Martin.

“Now, where’d you hear about the rhubarb pie? We ain’t had
that since…”

“Since Cheryl’s mom disappeared?”

“What are you getting at, sweetie?” asked Eileen.

“What was the deal with the rhubarb pie?” asked Martin.

“That pie built Herbert’s Corner. Used to be signs fifty
miles out in every direction. Don’t know how it was that good, but people would
drive miles out of their way for a piece. They said truckers would eat an
entire pie in one sitting and then ask for more. Story was that Margie and
Linda had some secret recipe. I used to think that it was just one of Stamper’s
tall tales, but then after Linda left, no one could make the pie. The new
owners took out the bakery anyway.”

“Who were the new owners?”

“Some corporate group. They own a bunch of truck stops from
Texas on up.”

Martin didn’t realize he was tapping on his plate until
Eileen glanced at his fork and said, “You’ve got a Columbo look in your eyes.
What are you thinking?”

Martin sank his fork into the last pancake. “I shouldn’t
have come. I’m going to drive myself crazy.”

Eileen peered into his eyes. “Something happened to you.
What do you know?”

“Maybe I listen to Lee Danvers a little too much,” said
Martin.

“All right, finish up,” said Eileen.

“What?”

“I’m not the one you need to be talking to.”

Gary barely looked up from his
Soldier of Fortune
magazine when Eileen called across the store that she was stepping out. She led
Martin out the back door to her Dodge Shadow. As she turned out onto Highway
15, she lit up a cigarette. Martin cleared his throat, and she muttered an
apology and rolled down the window.

Eileen didn’t slow up through Brixton. She waved her
cigarette at the lurking deputy, who flashed his lights but didn’t pull out
after her.

“Shouldn’t we call ahead?” Martin asked.

“She’ll be up. She listens to that blamed show all night,
just like all you drivers.”

A couple of miles out of Brixton, Eileen turned onto a dirt
lane, then another, then one more. They approached a lonely orange light
clinging to a pole outside a mobile home in a barbed-wired half-acre. The front
door opened before Martin had a chance to shut his car door.

The woman in the doorway must have been about a hundred. She
wore a housecoat and sported a shotgun that would probably have put her back
through a wall if she ever fired it. “Eileen,” she yelled. “Scared the bejeezus
out of me pullin’ up this time of night.”

“Evenin’, Doris. Care for some company?”

Doris Solberg studied Martin from head to toe. “Little young
for you, ain’t he?” she said.

“Get your dirty mind back inside before you catch a cold,”
said Eileen.

Doris’s double-wide had wood-paneled walls and shag carpet.
The furniture wouldn’t have been out of place on
That ’70s Show
. Lee
Danvers’s voice drifted down the hall from a bedroom.

“Can I get you anything?” asked Doris. She shuffled into the
kitchen, flipped on the light, and set the shotgun on the turquoise laminate
counter. Martin declined. “Sit down,” she said, waving behind her to the little
round table as she opened the refrigerator.

Doris clanked a six-pack of Rolling Rock in the middle of
the table. “Been saving this for company,” she said and pulled three free.
Martin took one. Couldn’t hurt to be polite. Doris’s frizzled, silver hair was
a fright, but her face was bright and alert. “Now what’s going on?” she asked,
taking her can. Her finger looked like it would snap as she pried the tab, but
the aluminum yielded first.

Eileen introduced Martin as “the young salesman who was
after Cheryl Laughlin.”

“I thought Cheryl ran off with you,” said Doris. Martin
shook his head insistently.

“No, Doris,” said Eileen. “Remember, she met some man on the
computer.”

Doris smacked her lips at Martin after a long pull of beer
and said, “Must piss you off.”

“He came to the Corner tonight asking about Linda and the
rhubarb pie and Herbert. Thought he should be talkin’ to you,” said Eileen.

“Long before your time, son,” said Doris. “You aren’t even
from Brixton. Where are you from?”