Spencerville (2 page)

Keith Landry walked through the quiet farmhouse. Distant relatives had looked after the place, and it wasn't in bad shape considering it had been empty for five years.

Keith had called ahead to announce his arrival and had spoken to a woman on a nearby farm that he called Aunt Betty, though she wasn't actually his aunt, but was his mother's second cousin, or something like that. He'd just wanted her to know in case she saw a light in the house, or a strange car, and so forth. Keith had insisted that neither she nor any other ladies go through any bother, but of course that had been like a call to arms — or brooms and mops — and the place was spotless and smelled of pine disinfectant.

Bachelors, Keith reflected, got a lot of breaks from the local womenfolk, who took inordinate pity on men without wives. The goal of these good women in caring for bachelors, Keith suspected, was to demonstrate the advantage of having a wife and helpmate. Unfortunately, the free cleaning, cooking, apple pies, and jams often perpetuated what they sought to cure.

Keith went from room to room, finding everything pretty much as he remembered when he'd seen it last about six years before. He had a sense of the familiar, but, at the same time, the objects seemed surreal, as if he were having a dream about his childhood.

His parents had left behind most of their possessions, perhaps in anticipation of not liking Florida, or perhaps because the furniture, rugs, lamps, wall decorations, and such were as much a part of the house as the oak beams.

Some of the things in the house were nearly two centuries old, Keith knew, having been brought to America from England and Germany, where both sides of his family originated. Aside from a few legitimate antiques and some heirlooms, a good deal of the stuff was just old, and Keith reflected on the frugality, the hardscrabble existence, of a farm family over the centuries. He contrasted this with his friends and colleagues in Washington who contributed heavily to the gross national product. Their salaries, like his, were paid from the public coffers, and Keith, who had never successfully accepted the fact that you don't have to produce anything tangible to get paid, often wondered if too many people in Washington were eating too much of the farmers' corn. But he had dwelled on that many times, and if any of his colleagues thought about it at all, they'd kept it to themselves.

Keith Landry had felt good when he was a soldier, an understandable and honorable profession in Spencer County, but later, when he'd become involved in intelligence work, he began to question his occupation. He often disagreed with national policy, and recently, when he'd been elevated to a position of helping to formulate that policy, he realized that the government worked for itself and perpetuated itself. But he'd known that secret long before he was invited into the inner sanctum of the White House as a staff member of the National Security Council.

Keith stood at the window in the second-floor master bedroom and looked out into the night. A wind had come up and clouds were sailing quickly across the starlit sky. A nearly full moon had risen, casting a blue light on the ripening cornfields. Keith remembered these fields long ago when a drought had been followed by constant rain, and the wheat — they had planted mostly wheat in those days — wasn't ready for harvesting until late July. A bright summer moon had coincided with a dry spell, with a forecast for more rain, and the farmers and their families had harvested until the moon set, about three A.M. The following day was a Sunday, and half the kids were absent from Sunday school, and the ones who showed up slept at their desks. Keith still recalled this shared experience, this communal effort to pull sustenance out of the land, and he felt sorry for urban and suburban kids growing up without a clue as to the relationship between wheatfields and hamburger buns, between corn and cornflakes.

In fact, Keith thought, the further the nation traveled from its agrarian and small-town roots, the less it understood the cycles of nature, the relationships between the land and the people, the law of cause and effect, and ultimately, he reflected, the less we understood our essential selves.

Keith Landry realized the inconsistencies and incongruities of his thinking and his life. He had rejected the idea of becoming a farmer but had not rejected the ideal of farm life; he thrived on the excitement of Washington and foreign cities but was nostalgic for this rural county that had always bored him; he had become disenchanted with his job but was angry about being let go.

He thought he had better resolve these discrepancies, these big gaps between his thoughts and deeds, or he'd become emblematic of the lunatic place he'd just left.

The clouds obscured the moon and stars now, and he was struck by how totally dark and still the countryside was. He could barely see the old ghost of the kitchen garden twenty feet from the house, and beyond that the landscape was black except for the lights of the Muller farmhouse half a mile away.

He turned from the window, went downstairs, and carried his bags up to the second floor. He entered the room he had shared with his brother and threw his luggage on the bed.

The room had oak furniture, pine floors, and white plaster walls. A hooked rug, older than he was, lay on the floorboards. It was any farm boy's room from the last century until recent years when local people had started buying discount store junk.

Before he had left Washington, Keith had filled the Saab with the things he needed and wanted, which turned out to be not so many things after all. There were a few more boxes of odds and ends, mostly sporting gear, coming by UPS. He had given his furniture in his Georgetown apartment to a local church. He felt basically unencumbered by possessions.

The house had been built before closets were common, and in the room were two wardrobe cabinets, one his, one his brother's. He opened the one that had been Paul's and unpacked first his military gear, his uniforms, boots, a box of medals and citations, and finally his officer's sword. Then he unpacked some of the tools of his more recent trade: a bulletproof vest, an M-16 rifle, an attache case with all sorts of nutty spy craft gizmos built in, and finally his Glock 9mm pistol and holster.

It felt good, he thought, putting this stuff away for the last time, a literal laying down of arms and armor.

He looked into the wardrobe cabinet and contemplated what, if any, significance there was in this moment.

In college, he'd been taken with the story of Cincinnatus, the Roman soldier, statesman, and farmer in the days before Rome became an Imperial power. This man, having saved the fledgling city from a hostile Army, accepted power only long enough to restore order, then returned to his farm. In Washington, Keith had often passed a building on Massachusetts Avenue, the stately Anderson Mansion, which housed the Society of the Cincinnati, and he imagined that its members had the same sort of experience as its Roman namesake, Cincinnatus. This, he thought, was the ideal, Roman or American, this was the essence of an agrarian republic: The call to arms came, the citizen militia were formed, the enemy was met and defeated, and everyone went home.

But that was not what happened in America after 1945, and for the last half century, war had become a way of life. This was the Washington he'd recently left, a city trying to cope with, and minimize, the effects of victory.

Keith closed the door of the cabinet and said, "It's finished." He opened the other wardrobe and unpacked the two handmade Italian suits he'd decided to hold on to. He hung up his tuxedo and smiled at the incongruity of the thing in this setting, then hung a few items of casual clothing, making a mental note to stop at Kmart for jeans and plaid shirts.

To continue the Roman theme, he reflected, like Caesar, he'd burned his bridges behind him, but he wasn't certain that the future included this farm. It depended on who Keith Landry had become.

In his mind, he still thought of himself as a farm boy, despite college, travel, custom-made suits, proficiency in foreign languages, and proficiency with exotic weapons and exotic women. Whether he was in Paris, London, Moscow, or Baghdad, he still imagined there was a residue of hayseed in his hair. Probably, however, this was not true; perhaps what he had become was who he was. And if that was true, he was in the wrong place. But he'd give Spencerville some time, and if he started enjoying trout fishing and church socials, the VFW Hall and small talk at the hardware store, then he'd stick around. If not... well, he could never go back to Washington. He'd spent over half his professional life on the road, and maybe that's where he belonged: everywhere and nowhere.

Keith noticed that the bed was made with fresh linen and a quilt blanket, compliments of Aunt Betty, and he realized that she remembered this was his room, and she hadn't upgraded him to the master bedroom. This had been his father's room as a boy, and his father's before him, so Aunt Betty probably figured he should sleep there until he grew up. He smiled.

Keith walked downstairs into the big country kitchen. The round table could seat ten: family, farmhands, and any kid who stopped by for a meal. Keith opened the refrigerator and saw it had been stocked with basic necessities, except beer. Many of the rural people around here were teetotalers, and the county, while not dry, wasn't awash in alcohol either. Keith, on his rare visits, had found this quaint, but as a resident, it might be a problem. Then again, this might be the least of his problems.

He went into the living room, removed a bottle of Scotch from one of his boxes, returned to the kitchen, and made himself a Scotch and water in a blue plastic glass that made the drink look green.

He sat at the big round table, in his chair, and looked around at the empty places. Aside from his mother and father and Paul and Barbara, there had been Uncle Ned, his father's younger brother, who used to sit opposite Keith, and Keith could still see his uncle at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, eating quietly, tired after a long day of farm work. Ned was a farmer through and through, a serious but not humorless man, a son of the soil who wanted only to marry, raise children, raise crops, fix broken things, and do a little fishing on Sunday, usually with his nephews, and someday with his yet-to-be-born sons.

Keith was about ten when Uncle Ned was drafted into the Army, and he remembered his uncle coming home one day in his uniform. A few weeks later, Ned left for the Korean War and never returned. They'd sent his things home, and they were stored in the attic. Keith had gone through the trunk when he was a boy and had even put on the green dress uniform once.

A forgotten war, a forgotten man, a forgotten sacrifice. Keith recalled that his father had cried when they got the news, but oddly, Ned's name was never mentioned again.

Perhaps, Keith thought, the last man to die in World War II had made the last meaningful sacrifice; since then, it was all politics and power freaks playing with people's lives and families. Perhaps now, he thought, we're starting to figure it out. He looked at Uncle Ned's place, empty now for over forty years, and belatedly, but with sincerity, he said, "I miss you."

Keith finished his Scotch and made another. He looked out the screen door into the dark garden. The wind blew harder now, and in the west he saw lightning, followed by a clap of thunder.

He smelled the rain before he heard it, and heard it before he saw it. A lot of memory circuitry — sights, sounds, smells — were deeply imprinted before a person turned eighteen, Keith thought. A lot of who you were in middle age was determined before you had a chance to manipulate, control, or even understand the things around you. It was no mystery, he thought, why some old people's minds returned to their youth; the wonder of those years, the discoveries, the first experience with the dirty secret of death, and the first stirrings of lust and love were indelible, drawn in luminous colors on clean canvas. Indeed, the first sex act was so mind-boggling that most people could still remember it clearly twenty, thirty, sixty years later.

Annie.

So, he thought, his journey of discovery had led home. On the way he had seen castles and kings, golden cities and soaring cathedrals, wars and death, starvation and disease. Keith wondered if old Pastor Wilkes was still alive, because he wanted to tell him that he'd actually met the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and knew more about them than their names; he knew who they were, and obviously they were us.

But Keith had also seen love and compassion, decency and bravery.

And here, alone with himself, sitting in his place at the table, he felt the journey was not ended, but was about to get interesting again.

So here it was, twenty-five years since he'd stepped off his front porch into the world, and he'd put a million miles on his trip meter since then, and he'd had so many women he couldn't remember half their names if his life depended on it. Yet, in the dark times, in the mornings and in the evenings, on long plane rides to scary places, in the jungles of Asia, in the back streets of Eastern Europe, and in those moments when he thought he was going to die, he remembered Annie.

Annie Baxter lay sleepless on her bed. Brief, incandescent flashes of lightning lit the dark room, and thunder shook the house to its foundations. A burglar alarm, triggered by the storm, wailed somewhere, and dogs barked in the night.

The dream she'd had crept into her consciousness. It was a sexual dream, and it disturbed her because it was about Cliff, and it should have been about Keith. In the dream, she was standing naked in front of Cliff, who was fully dressed in his uniform. He was smiling — no, leering at her, and she was trying to cover her nakedness with her hands and arms.

The Cliff Baxter in her dream was younger and better built than the Cliff Baxter she was married to now. More disturbing still was that, in the dream, she was sexually aroused by Cliff's presence, and she'd awakened with the same feeling.

Keith Landry and the other men she'd been with before Cliff were more sensitive and better lovers in the sense that they were willing to experiment and to give her pleasure. Cliff, on the other hand, had been, and still was, into sexual dominance. She had been turned on by this initially, she admitted, like in the dream; but Cliff's rough sex and selfishness now left her feeling unsatisfied, used, and sometimes uneasy. Still, she remembered a time when she was a willing and aroused partner.

Annie felt guilty that she'd once enjoyed that sado-sexual relationship with Cliff and guilty that she still thought and dreamed about it with no revulsion or loathing. In fact, it was quite the opposite, like now, awakening from that dream, moist between her legs. She realized she had to kill that dream and those thoughts once and for all.

She looked at the clock beside the bed: 5:16 A.M. She rose, put on her robe, went down to the kitchen, and poured herself an iced tea. After some hesitation, she picked up the wall phone and called police headquarters.

"Sergeant Blake speaking, Mrs. Baxter."

She knew that her phone number, name, and address appeared on some sort of screen when she dialed, and that annoyed her. Cliff wasn't comfortable with a lot of new technology, but he intuitively recognized the possibilities of the most sinister, Orwellian gadgets available to the otherwise Stone Age police force of Spencerville.

"Everything okay, Mrs. Baxter?"

"Yes. I'd like to speak to my husband."

"Well... he's out making the rounds."

"Then I'll call him on the car phone. Thank you."

"Well, hold on, let's see, he might be... I had some trouble raising him before. The storm, you know? I'll try to get him on the radio and tell him to call you. Anything we can do?"

"No, you've done enough." She hung up and dialed his car phone. After four rings, a recorded voice said the call could not be completed. She hung up and went into the basement. Part of the basement was the laundry room, another part was Cliff's den, carpeted, and finished in pine paneling. On his escorted house tours, he liked to point to the laundry room and say, "Her office," then to his den and say, "My office."

She went into his office and turned on the lights. A dozen mounted animal heads stared down at her from the walls, glassy-eyed, with the trace of a smile around their mouths, as though they were happy to have been killed by Cliff Baxter. The taxidermist, or her husband, had a sick sense of humor; probably both of them did.

The police radio crackled on a countertop, and she heard a patrol car talking clearly to headquarters with not much storm static. She didn't hear Sergeant Blake inquiring about Chief Baxter.

She contemplated the wall-mounted gun rack. A braided metal cord ran through the trigger guards of the dozen rifles and shotguns, through an angle iron, and ended in a loop secured by a heavy padlock. Annie went into the workshop, took a hacksaw, and returned to the gun rack. She pulled the metal cord taut and began sawing. The braided wire began to fray, then the cord separated, and she pulled it loose from the trigger guards. She chose a 12-gauge double-barreled Browning, found the boxes of shotgun shells in a drawer, and slid a heavy-load, steel-shot shell into each of the two chambers.

Annie shouldered the shotgun and went up the stairs into the kitchen. She put the shotgun on the kitchen table and poured herself another glass of iced tea.

The wall phone rang, and she answered it. "Hello."

"Hello, baby doll. You lookin' for me?"

"Yes."

"So, what's cookin', good-lookin?"

She could tell by the static that he was calling from his car phone. She replied, "I couldn't sleep."

"Well, hell, time to rise and shine anyway. What's for breakfast?"

"I thought you'd stop at Park 'n' Eat for breakfast." She added, "Their eggs, bacon, potatoes, and coffee are better than mine."

"Where'd you get that idea?"

"From you and your mother."

He laughed. "Hey, I'm about five minutes away. Put on the coffee."

"Where were you tonight?"

There was a half-second pause, then he replied, "I don't ever want to hear that kind of question from you or nobody." He hung up.

She sat at the kitchen table and laid the shotgun in her lap. She sipped her iced tea and waited.

The minutes dragged by. She said aloud, "So, Mrs. Baxter, you thought it was an intruder?" She replied, "Yes, that's right."

"But there was no forced entry, ma'am, and you knew the chief was on his way home. You had to have cut the cord, ma'am, long before you heard a noise at the door, so it kinda looks premeditated. Like you was layin' in wait for him."

"Nonsense. I loved my husband. Who didn't love him?"

"Well, ain't nobody I know who did love him. Least of all you."

Annie smiled grimly. "That's right. I waited for him and blew his fat ass into the next county. So what?"

Annie thought about Keith Landry, about the possibility of him being dead, laid out at Gibbs Funeral Home. "Excuse me, Mrs. Baxter, that's Parlor B, a Mr. Landry. Mr. Baxter is in Parlor A, ma'am."

But what if Keith wasn't dead? Did that make a difference? Maybe she should wait to hear for sure. And how about Tom and Wendy? This was their father. She vacillated and considered putting the shotgun back in the basement, and would have, except he'd see the cut cord and know why.

The police car pulled into the gravel drive, and she heard the car door open and shut, then his footsteps coming up the porch, and she saw him at the back door window, putting the key in the lock.

The door opened, and Cliff Baxter entered the dark kitchen, silhouetted by the back porch light. He was wiping his face and hands with a handkerchief, then sniffed at his fingers and turned toward the sink.

Annie said, "Good morning."

He swung around and peered into the dark alcove where she sat at the table. "Oh... there you are. Don't smell no coffee."

"I guess not, if you're smelling your fingers."

There was no reply.

Annie said, "Turn on the light."

Cliff went back to the door, found the switch, and the kitchen fluorescents flickered on. He said, "You got a problem, lady?"

"No, sir, you have the problem."

"I ain't got no problem."

"Where were you?"

"Cut the shit and put on the coffee." He walked a few steps toward the hallway.

Annie raised the shotgun from her lap and laid it on the table, pointed toward him. "Stop. Back up."

Cliff stared at the gun, then said softly, "Take your hand away from the trigger."

"Where were you tonight?"

"On the job. On the goddamn job, tryin' to earn a goddamn livin', which is more than you do."

"I'm not allowed to get a paying job. I have to do volunteer work at the hospital thrift shop down the street from the police station where you can keep an eye on me. Remember?"

"You hand me that shotgun, and we'll just forget this happened." He took a tentative step toward her and reached out with his hand.

Annie stood and raised the gun to her shoulder, cocking both hammers.

The loud metallic clicks caused Cliff to back up into the door. "Hey! Hey!" He put his hands to his front in a protective gesture. "Now sweetheart... that's... that's dangerous. That's a hair trigger... you breathe and that's gonna go off... you point that away..."

"Shut up. Where were you tonight?"

He took a deep breath and controlled his voice. "I told you. Cars stuck and stalled, bridge over Hoop's Creek is out, panicky old widows callin' all night..."

"Liar."

"Look... look at these wet clothes... see the mud on my shoes?.. I was helpin' people all night. Now, come on, honey, you just got yourself all worked up."

Annie glanced at his wet cuffs and shoes and wondered if he was telling the truth this time.

Cliff went on in a soothing tone, using every term of endearment he could think of. "Now, sweetheart, darlin', that thing's gonna go off, baby, and I ain't done nothin', sugar..."

Annie saw that he was truly frightened, but oddly, she wasn't enjoying this reversal of roles. In fact, she didn't want him to beg; she just wanted him dead. But she couldn't just kill him in cold blood. The shotgun was getting heavy. She said to him, "Go for your gun, Cliff."

He stopped speaking and stared at her.

"Go on. Do you want people to know you died with your gun in your holster?"

Cliff took a shallow breath, and his tongue flicked across his dry lips. "Annie..."

"Coward! Coward! Coward!"

A clap of thunder exploded close by, startling Cliff Baxter, who jumped, then went for his gun.

Annie fired both barrels, and the recoil knocked her back against the wall.

The deafening blasts died away but still echoed in her ears. Annie dropped the shotgun. The room was filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder, and plaster dust floated down from the gaping hole in the ceiling above where Cliff lay on the floor.

Cliff Baxter got up slowly, on one knee, knocking chunks of plaster and wood lathing off his head and shoulders. Annie saw that he'd wet his pants.

He checked to see that his pistol was in his holster, then glanced up at the ceiling. Still brushing himself off, he stood and walked toward her. She noticed he was trembling, and she wondered what was going to happen next, but she didn't much care.

He walked right past her, picked up the wall phone, and dialed. "Yeah, Blake, it's me." He cleared his throat and tried to steady his voice. "Yeah, had a little accident cleaning a gun. If you get any calls from the neighbors, you explain... Yeah, everything's fine. See ya." He hung up and turned to Annie. "Well, now."

She had no trouble looking him right in the eye, but she noticed he had trouble maintaining eye contact. Also, she thought his order of priorities was interesting: control and contain the situation so as to protect himself, his image, his job. She had no delusions that he was protecting her from the wrath of the law. But that's what he'd say.

As if on cue, he said, "You tried to kill me. I could arrest you."

"Actually, I fired over your head and you know it. But go ahead and take me to jail."

"You bitch. You..." He made a threatening move toward her, and his face reddened, but Annie stood her ground, knowing that ironically it was his badge that kept her from a beating. He knew it, too, and she took a little pleasure in watching him bursting with impotent rage. But one day, she knew, he'd snap. Meanwhile, she hoped he would drop dead with a stroke.

He backed her into a corner, pulled open her robe, then put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed the spot where the shotgun had recoiled.

A blinding pain shot through her body, and her knees buckled, found herself kneeling on the floor, and she could smell the urine on him. She closed her eyes and turned away, but he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face toward him. "See what you done? You proud of yourself, bitch? I'll bet you are. Now, we're gonna even the score. We're gonna stay right here like this until you piss your pants, and I don't care if it takes all goddamn day. So, if you got it in you, get it over with. I'm waitin'."

Annie put her hands over her face and shook her head, tears coming to her eyes.

"I'm waitin'."

There was a sharp rap on the back door, and Cliff spun around. Officer Kevin Ward's face peered through the glass. Cliff bellowed, "Get the hell out of here!"

Ward turned quickly and left, but Annie thought he saw that his boss's pants were wet. For sure he saw the plaster dust covering Cliff's face and hair and her behind Cliff, kneeling on the floor. Good.

Cliff turned his attention back to his wife. "You satisfied now, bitch? You satisfied!"

She stood quickly. "Get away from me, or so help me God, I'll call the state police."

"You do, I'll kill you."

"I don't care." She fastened her robe around her. Cliff Baxter stared at her, his thumbs hooked in his gun belt. From long experience, she knew it was time to end this confrontation, and she knew how to end it. She said nothing, just stood still, tears running down her face, then she dropped her head and looked at the floor, wondering why she hadn't blown a hole in him.

Cliff let a minute go by, then, satisfied that the pecking order was reestablished to his liking, that all was right with the world again, he put his finger under her chin and raised her head. "Okay, I'm gonna let you off easy, sweetie pie. You clean up this here mess, and you make me a nice breakfast. You got about half an hour."

He turned to leave, then came back, took the shotgun, and left. She heard his footsteps going up the stairs, then a few minutes later, heard the shower running.

She found some aspirin in the cupboard and took two with a full glass of water, then washed her face and hands in the kitchen sink, then went down into the basement.

In his den, she stared at the rifles and shotguns, all unlocked now.

She stood there a full minute, then turned away and went into the workshop. She found a push broom and shovel and went back up to the kitchen.

Annie made coffee, heated the frying pan, added bacon, swept up the plaster and put it out into the trash can, then washed the kitchen counter and floor.

Cliff came down, dressed in a clean uniform, and she noticed that he entered the kitchen carefully, his gun belt and holster slung over his shoulder and his hand casually on the pistol grip. He sat at the table, his gun belt looped over the chair instead of on the wall peg. Before he could react, she grabbed the gun belt and put it on the peg. She said, "No guns at my table."