The Big Mitt (A Detective Harm Queen Novel Book 1) (13 page)

Anderson had avoided Bemidji since his wife had died. He hadn’t wanted the painful small talk he knew would go with every trip to town. He winced internally whenever he heard “How are you holding up?” from concerned acquaintances. Talking about painful things was not a practice Anderson got an ounce of relief from, so he’d been surprised at how much he relished a visit from a family friend one day. Schmidt, the old German who ran a hardware store in downtown Bemidji, had knocked on his door on one of that winter’s more bitterly cold nights. He brought a handful of letters. He also thoughtfully produced from his saddlebag a bottle of good brandy and a pile of newspapers, both the
Bemidji Sentinel
and the
Saint Paul Globe
. After they took care of the horse and warmed up old Schmidt in front of the kitchen stove, they drank the bottle over good-natured conversation about local gossip and state politics. Rural free mail delivery hadn’t come to his neck of the woods yet so Anderson was grateful to the German for suffering a miserable ride just to provide him and a few other neighbors with their letters.

With a hearty wave, Schmidt left the following morning, carrying a jar of coffee and some bacon sandwiches Anderson had packed for his ride. After he watched him trot down the road, through the flurry of white snowflakes dropping from the stone-colored sky, and eventually out of sight, Anderson sat down at his kitchen table, with his own mug of black coffee to read his mail. His long curled mustache, white with age, touched the inside of the mug as he drank, staining the hairs. Once, his wife would have chided him for his carelessness, and gently wiped his mustache clean with the apron she always wore around her plump waist, but now he was left to his own mannish, absentminded ways.

He thought he’d get through these miserable letters of condolence first, of which he’d had more than enough for a lifetime. One was from an ancient aunt he barely knew, now living in San Francisco. She’d met his wife only once, and evidently the news had taken a while to reach her, but the old lady, who had to be close to a hundred now, still wrote poetically about the passing of time and love lost. He put the envelope aside to save the return address, and threw the card and letter into the little fire in his cook stove. He followed this pattern for the next three letters, all of which were from people he hardly remembered. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the thought behind their contents. Picking up a pen and paper takes time, and he accepted that the sentiment behind them was genuine. It was just that he couldn’t connect to them, because they really couldn’t understand what he’d agonized through.

These people, well intentioned as they were, hadn’t bothered to write her a letter when she was alive, and she might have appreciated hearing from them. God knows she had written plenty herself, and not just the Christmas cards she mailed with regularity every October. They hadn’t been there with him when he found her, at the foot of their bed, a clean sheet still clutched in her hands, dead of what the doctor said was a heart attack. He still had blueberry on the corners of his mouth from the piece of pie she’d cut for him a few minutes before when he heard an awful crash just above him. She was a heavyset woman and he tried his best to lift her from the floor and lay her on the bed, but his back gave out at the strain and he had fallen too. They’d laid there together for an hour at least, him weeping, and her eternally silent.

No one outside of a few friends from town had been at the funeral either, at the little Methodist church, as the minister said his words, or in the procession that led them back here to the farm where she was buried under the shade of the birch trees near the garden.

A knock on the kitchen door interrupted his thoughts. Schmidt was standing outside, next to his horse, and handed him a piece of folded paper.

“I forgot about this, Dix,” he said, pulling his mitten back on. “This is a message from Sheriff Roy. He asked me to pass it to you.”

“Thank you for coming back. Important?”

“Didn’t tell me. Just asked me to deliver it if I could.”

“Well, fine, Rolf. Appreciate it.”

“Oh, sure. You said the Berg farm was just past that hill with the big jack pine that fell over, right? Take a left there? I’ve been to their place before, but everything looks different with the snow.”

“That’s right. That your last stop?”

“Yep. Back home after that.”

“Well, thanks again.”

“Any time, Dix.”

He didn’t watch Schmidt ride off this time, but instead went back into the kitchen and sat down. He took a long drink of coffee as he unfolded the note. It had gotten wet, and the ink had smeared the writing on the bottom corner, but he was able to make it out.

Jan. 3rd

Dix Anderson:

Hope you are well, old man. I received a telegram today from a Sheriff Eagleton in Minot, ND. He wants you to get in touch when you can. Come by the office when you’re in town to send the wire. I will buy you lunch at the Gem.

Sincerely,
John Roy

Anderson put on his glasses and read it again. It said Eagleton’s wire had arrived January 3rd, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what the date was now. He hadn’t replaced the 1900 calendar that hung raggedly from the kitchen wall. It pictured a gigantic buck with massive antlers, courtesy of Bemidji Steam Laundry, which he hadn’t recalled ever patronizing. Something else his wife had taken care of that he had now let slide.

The letter was curious to him. Had it been just a few days ago that this telegram arrived? Perhaps it had been even a week ago or more, for all he knew. And what on earth did Eagleton want anyhow? It’d been three years since he’d lived in Minot, and hadn’t heard from him since then. They had departed company amicably, and he had trusted Eagleton would do a solid job as sheriff after the election. The voters of Minot had rightly chosen someone younger than Anderson, and he understood their motive. He was long past his ability to chase sling-shot wielding delinquents through back alleys. He couldn’t imagine what the sheriff needed from him now, though. Perhaps advice on an old case?

He suddenly realized it was getting chilly, so he piled up wood inside the stove, and opened the door to the parlor where he had moved his bed for the winter. The heat from the kitchen could reach him there until late into the night. The sun went down early in January, and he liked to make decisions by the sun. Winter meant less to do, and sleep seemed to be a logical way to fill the monotony of the evenings when his eyes began to get blurry and hurt from reading by oil lamp. Every moment was heavy to him, and everyone precious to him dead or gone away, so time meant little. A clock on the shelf had sat silent for months, and spiders wove strands of web behind it. Even his back betrayed him. Once strong and flexible from years of herding cattle as a cowboy during his youth in the Dakota and Wyoming Territories, it announced itself sporadically through bursts of intense pain and hideous creaks and crunches.

The light was low in the west, so he struck a match and lit his lamp’s round wick. In the sitting room, he set the lamp and the matches on the little table next to his favorite armchair. He took a quilt draped over Martha’s rocker and a cup of hot water from the tea kettle on the stove to sip on, and finally settled down in his chair, feeling the tension from his body ease and the pain in his back dissipate. His thoughts turned back to the letter and to Minot, and his prior life. When he and his wife had first arrived there in 1886, it was a tent town, final stop on James J. Hill’s Great Northern railroad extension. He remembered vividly the conductor shouting “Minot, this is Minot North Dakota, prepare to meet your doom!” as the train ground to a stop. While he and Martha had exchanged smiles at the declaration, they quickly discovered that it was as rough and tumble a town as they’d ever set foot in. Anderson had decided to hang up his star and go into private business, and they opened a little cafe to feed hungry railroad workers. They’d come alone, as their only daughter Minnie and her husband Pete, employed as an insurance man in Chicago, had no interest in following them. Anderson didn’t blame them. He’d been a lawman of one kind or another for over forty years, always in the west, and Minnie had begged for fancy dresses and big cities since she could first talk.

When their granddaughter was born in 1880, he’d still been a marshal in Colorado, and they’d spent weeks traveling by foot, horse, wagon and finally train to Chicago to witness her first months in the world. Martha was overjoyed at the birth, and asked him if they could stay longer. Perhaps Anderson could find a job as a police officer or detective in the city? The railroads hired their own detectives. She’d wondered this out loud in hopeful expectation, barely able to contain her excitement at the possibility of a permanent reunion with her daughter and now granddaughter. Guilt twisted into his heart like a rusted screwdriver thinking about their conversation, and how he’d explained to her that they absolutely needed to return. The town required it. Criminy, now he’d even forgotten the town’s name, but he could still remember, as clear as any memory he had access to in his thick stupid head, the look of grief in her eyes as she silently nodded back to him, yielding. She had been a good, good wife.

Six years later Minnie and Pete both died of typhoid fever, and he and Martha had gone to fetch Maisy. Anderson brushed over the memories of heartache at his daughter’s death. Too painful to contemplate now, in the comfort of his armchair. He sipped some hot water and closed his eyes, willing forward happier thoughts. Maisy was the apple of his eye, and she had helped ease the crushing pain for both of them, with a sweet dimpled face and golden hair that streamed like a river from some mythical land. He and his wife had been living in Minot when she arrived, but quickly bought a house in the country to give her space to run and play. By this point Anderson had sold the cafe for a tidy profit, and agreed to stand for election as county sheriff. He’d make her pancakes on Sunday mornings before church and she’d come downstairs, rubbing her sleepy eyes and smiling like the world was the most amazing, exhilarating, wonderful place imaginable. Despite Minot’s raw pulse, she grew up unscathed by its bawdy existence. She seemed to draw the best from the town, its passion and earthiness and ribald energy, without letting it corrupt her soul. A single exquisite light in a colorless world’s vast emptiness was how he saw her, every moment of every day she was in his presence.

When she’d decided to attend the University of Minnesota, he felt two things: a grandfather’s incredible heart-bursting pride, and a lawman’s wariness. He supported her desire to expand and explore, but Minneapolis was a big city, and he wasn’t so sure traveling that far away was necessary.

“I’m a little over-protective, I know,” he admitted to her one afternoon, as they took a walk along the lane near their house. It was fall, and the golden waves of billowing wheat surrounding them would be threshed soon. The air was fresh and cold.

“I’ll go straight to the campus,” she laughed, and reached out to grab his ample, callused hand. “I’ll be safe in the girls’ dormitory. There are strict rules about those things. When I do visit the city, I promise I’ll only go with a respectable chaperone.”

“How will you know he’s respectable?” he asked, the words feeling gravelly in his throat.

“It will be a lady, I’m sure!” she reassured him brightly. “They’ve got teachers and others to do those things; employees of the school! Please try not to worry about me, Grandpa!” She squeezed his hand tighter and he knew he was helpless against her arguments. Containing a soul like hers would be near impossible, and it grieved him and gave him joy at the same time.

On the day she’d finally left, both he and Martha were at the train station to see her off. Martha was crying and so was Maisy, and they all embraced. He remembered the bounce in her step as she climbed the steps to the car, and her eyes, round and excited, as she turned to wave one last time. She’d promised to telegraph when she got there, after she settled in to her dormitory. He was supposed to wire her money for tuition so she could register for classes, and he waited at the Western Union office most of the day for a message that never came.

He sent a telegram to the University of Minnesota, and the clerks in the dean’s office were equally perplexed. They’d sent someone to meet her at the depot but said she never got off of the train.

Stop thinking about this, he told himself, or you won’t sleep tonight. He drained the last bit of water from his cup. He was quite warm, and decided to spend the night in the armchair instead of having to get up and irritate his back. He reached over to extinguish the lamp and settled back in, humming Vivaldi’s
Spring
. It always soothed him and reminded him of budding trees, fat flowing creeks and singing birds. Anything to remind him of life instead of death.

A loud knocking on the door the next morning brought him into consciousness. He rose slowly, taking special care to make no sudden movements. Once straightened out, he strode briskly to the door. More visitors in two days than in two months, he thought, as he pulled the door open. A good-sized man in a fur coat and slouch hat stood in front of him, his thick brown mustache caked with frost.

“Hello, Dix.”

“Hello to you, John.”