The End of Vandalism (13 page)

“I don’t see the enjoyment in your kind of life,” he finally said.

“Milt put a spider in my hat,” said Tiny.

“Jesus Christ, will you listen to yourself?” said Cliff. “You ain’t a man, the way you talk—you’re a little goddamned kid. Even your name. Tiny is no name for a human being. What is your given name?”

“Charles,” said Tiny.

“Then call yourself Charles. Or Chuck, Charlie, I don’t know. Tiny is a mouse’s name.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about that,” said Tiny.

“Well, take your time,” said Cliff. “Because I’m letting you go. It’s not just this. It’s a lot else. You’ve been stealing tools. This we know.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Tiny.

“Charles, accord me the simple dignity of not lying to my face,” said Cliff. “If you return them, I won’t have you arrested. You can start by handing over that nail apron.”

“Don’t fire me,” said Tiny.

Cliff removed his own hard hat, touched his silver hair, and put the hat back on. “Go home,” he said. “Come back tomorrow morning with all the tools. And I mean I had better see every tool.”

On Saturday night, Tiny and Dave Green went digging for the silver. Dave had learned that a barbershop once occupied a vacant lot next to a nursing home in August. Shovels clattered as they dragged them up the basement stairs. It was almost midnight. June was in the kitchen stirring up an Instant Breakfast.

“You’re both too soused to find anything,” she said.

“The nursing home will want our silver if we don’t keep it a secret,” said Dave.

“You’re soused,” said June.

“Who,” said Dave.

He and Tiny stepped onto the porch with the shovels and a goatskin flask. “Is there any chance of finding this silver?” said Tiny.

“I just felt like getting out of the house,” said Dave.

They drove to the lot, which was surrounded by a shabby wooden fence. Tiny and Dave went through a gate, and Dave took a certain number of paces from the northwest corner. They went to work. Moonlight made everything look like an old negative and seemed to link them to the pioneers.

Dave rested his shovel, pressed the sides of the flask, and drank. The night air had sobered him. He breathed deeply and passed the flask to Tiny, whose drunkenness had continued without pause.

“Why are you really here?” said Dave.

“I want Louise back.”

“You’re in the wrong state.”

“Granted.”

“She’s not your wife,” said Dave. “The court has split you asunder. She is married to an influential man.”

“I have goals.”

“And if it’s a high wage you’re after, Aspen pays better than they pay here. Boulder pays better. Denver pays best of all. The situation here could improve if Wild Village goes through, but hell, that’s years down the road. June and I have been putting our heads together and thinking maybe you should go over to Denver.”

“I like working for Cliff,” said Tiny.

“Well, see, that’s what I wanted to tell you,” said Dave. “I was talking to Cliff, and the sad fact is he really can’t keep you on. My initial plan was that Milt would leave, but as you know, that didn’t come to fruition.”

“June had a say in this?”

“We’re the best friends you have,” said Dave.

“What did she say?”

“You don’t necessarily want to know the exact words.”

“Yes, I do.”

Dave looked at the crooked fence. “She said she thought you should go to Denver,” he said.

Tiny ran a red light that night. He was crossing downtown August when he ran a red light and a truck plowed into the driver’s side of the Parisienne. The truck was a delivery vehicle for Bazelon Lighting and Fixtures in Colorado Springs. Tiny had a broken nose; the driver of the truck seemed to have something wrong with his arm. Police converged. An officer brought Tiny into a patrol car and handed him gauze for his nose. Banks of light danced on the dashboard.

“You are Charles Darling?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Have you been drinking, Charles?”

“Well, I had some beer with supper.”

“You had some beer with supper.”

“Yes, a Grain Belt.”

“And that’s all you had to drink?”

“I had the one Grain Belt.”

“How fast would you say you were going upon entering the intersection?” said the policeman.

“I don’t know.”

“Make an estimate.”

“I’m sure I drive around looking at my speedometer every minute,” said Tiny.

“I see,” said the policeman. “Where do you live?”

“At the foot of Mount Astor.”

“Uh-huh. I have a sister lives over that way.”

“It’s a nice area,” said Tiny.

As a result of his drunk-driving conviction, Tiny lost his license and was forced to go eleven times to group counseling in the basement of the courthouse in Sedonia. The approach was psychological. A red banner with letters of yellow felt hung across the front of the room: LIQUOR IS BAD. Tiny did not take any of it very seriously, and one time he raised his hand to ask whether pent-up rage might not come in handy in certain situations. It wasn’t until the ninth meeting that something got through to Tiny. The people in the group were taking turns behind the wheel of a video monitor that simulated the warped road perceptions of the drunk driver. You could turn it up—one drink, three drinks, eight drinks, legally dead. Every level ended in a crash, and then a little cartoon man would stagger across the screen with crosses where his eyes should be. When Tiny touched the steering wheel, the machine malfunctioned, delivering an electrical shock that knocked him unconscious.

He lay on his back on the floor, dreaming of being on a lake. Ghosts moved swiftly about in small boats. They called his name:
Charles
…
Charles
… They all got around fine. Only Tiny drifted toward the waterfall. When he reached it, however, he found that he too was a ghost, able to keep going in the air.

A CAR HIT Kleeborg one hot and sunny Wednesday as he was walking back from church in Stone City. It was an old blue Galaxie at a four-way stop. A man and a woman got out of the car and stood over the fallen photographer.

“You were in my blind spot,” said the man.

His name was Frank. He was a handsome man in a yellow shirt who sold billboard space and breath mints. He had been popular in high school and felt somewhat victimized by everything that came after.

“See my hand?” he said. “How many fingers do I have?”

Kleeborg closed his eyes.

“I hate to think what this will do to our premiums,” said Frank. He lit a cigarette and threw the match in the street. “What a fraud that is. What a big racket. You pay and pay every month of your life, and what happens?”

“I never should have let you drive,” said the woman. She wiped her brow with the back of her arm. She wore a sleeveless blouse, a short, full skirt, and a pin that said “Grace.”

“They raise your rates, that’s what,” said Frank.

“You know, this is a really old man,” said Grace.

“What did they do with the money you’ve been giving them
all along?” said Frank. “But we’re not supposed to ask that.”

“Here’s his glasses,” said Grace. “Broken.”

“Imagine it’s the other way around,” said Frank. “Imagine your record is spotless. Imagine you have no violations.”

“Will you shut up?” said Grace. “You’ve hurt him.”

Frank smoked his cigarette and paced in a big circle. “Tell you what we could do,” he said. “We could say that you were driving. This would be your first infraction, and that way we could stay out of the risk group. What about it? Good idea?”

Grace lifted Kleeborg’s feet. He wore penny loafers in which the pennies had drifted from the slots. She put Kleeborg’s feet down.

“You drove yesterday,” said Frank. “So it wouldn’t necessarily be a lie.”

“Look at this gorgeous old shirt,” said Grace.

“Oh, hell,” said Frank. “He doesn’t know what day it is. Mister! Hey! He’s out like a night light. If there aren’t any witnesses, our testimony takes on added weight.”

A teenage boy came down from one of the big houses on the bluff east of Eleventh Avenue. “I’ve called the 911,” he said. “I saw everything that happened.”

“Good,” said Frank. “Great.”

The boy knelt and laid a washcloth on Kleeborg’s narrow forehead. “Something told me, Go to the window. I was making a sandwich and suddenly—I don’t know—it was like, Put down your knife.”

“These voices, tell me about them,” said Frank.

“Were you driving?” said the boy.

“So many questions.”

Three blocks away, the county supervisors were having their weekly meeting. Sheriff Dan Norman had to attend these
meetings, although he thought picking up rocks would have been more fun, and surely more useful. For the past five minutes he had been surveying the little white scars on his hands in an effort to stay awake. This was done by a band saw, this by a hammer, this by a fishing knife …

The supervisors were retired people, mostly, and they took their time. Lately they had been toying with a plan, obviously illegal, to unilaterally extend their terms. This allowed them to confer often with county attorney Lee P. Rasmussen, which they seemed to enjoy. “Better run this by Lee,” they would say.

Today, however, they were talking about Ronnie Lapoint’s plan to build self-storage units next to Lapoint Slough. This was on the low part of Route 29, south of Lunenberg and northeast of Margo. There was some disagreement about the proposal. The chairman of the board of supervisors, Russell Ford, seemed to be in Ronnie’s pocket. But other supervisors were concerned about the environmental impact and about the creepy nature of self-storage places.

“I guess my question would be twofold,” said Supervisor Phillip Hannah. “Who are these people and what exactly will they be storing? If this is something they can’t put away proudly in their own home, my feeling is, should we be providing a place to hide it.”

Bev Leventhaler argued that bitterns nested near the slough and that the U-Stow-It building would disrupt their habitat. She was the county extension woman and host of The Coffee Club, which was on the radio every day except Sunday.

“I’ve got a book with a picture,” said Bev. She was slim and pretty, with red lipstick and an attractive overbite. “Can everybody see that? I’ll pass it around. Please be careful. It is a library book. What can I say? My husband Tim and I love
these birds. I’m not saying they’re domestic—they’re not—but we’ve had some success with small feeders fashioned from an ordinary Clorox bottle.”

“Thank you, Bev,” said Russell Ford, who was picking his teeth with the edge of a matchbook.

Dan put in his opinion. “A lot of people hunt ducks in Lapoint Slough. I hunt ducks in Lapoint Slough. The slough is a game area where the hunting of ducks is encouraged. It was deeded to the county twenty years ago by Ronnie’s grandfather, and I don’t think he ever anticipated that Ronnie would try something like this. It does not seem wise to me to allow commercial development on the edge of a game area. Who’s to say birdshot won’t rain down on people using these units?”

Ronnie Lapoint stood and defended his plan. He claimed that family heirlooms make up ninety percent of the contents of self-storage places, that the bitterns would welcome the company, and that if birdshot were to reach the building, which he didn’t think it would, it would fall harmlessly on the heavy-gauge corrugated roofing.

Dan did not stay for the whole thing. He slipped out of the courthouse and drove down Ninth, took a left on Pear, and eventually happened on the crowd around Kleeborg.

In addition to Frank, Grace, and the teenage boy with the washcloth, there were now a dozen people who had, like Kleeborg, attended the liturgy at St. Alonzo’s, and two young women leading a pack of children on a rope, and some landscapers who had stopped their green truck and were leaning on rakes, watching the commotion.

“It’s Dan Norman, Mr. Kleeborg,” said Dan. “Louise’s husband. Dan. Can you hear me?”

Kleeborg put his hand to his forehead. “I don’t know why, but I am reminded of something that once happened to my sister.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” said Dan.

“She would write letters late at night,” said Kleeborg. “Her name was Lydia. She had a strange habit of moving her hands over the page when she was done writing. Well, one night I heard her crying. It was important that our father not wake because he worked for the creamery and had to get up before daylight. So I lit a kerosene lamp and went to see what the matter could be. Kerosene was all we had for lighting, and there were many fires. Well, Lydia had upset the inkwell, and I’m afraid it had fallen. The letter to her boyfriend was ruined and so was her nightdress and the rug beneath her writing table.”

“Oh, my,” said Dan.

“‘Well, Lydia,’ I said, ‘maybe you’ll learn not to move your hands so much when you write.’”

“What did she say?” said Dan.

“I don’t remember. I believe she kept crying.”

“What happened here?” said Dan.

“I wonder why I thought of that,” said Kleeborg.

“You’ve had a hit on the head, Mr. Kleeborg,” said Dan.

“The man in yellow ran me down,” said Kleeborg. “I was coming back from the church and he struck me with a car.”

The EMTs got Kleeborg onto a stretcher and put a protective clamp around his head. Dan went after Frank. “Sir—were you driving this car?”

“No,” said Frank.

“What’s your name?”

“Franklin Ray,” said Frank.

Dan walked around the Galaxie. It was dark blue and dusty, and there were regular indoor stereo speakers sitting crooked in the back window. This arrangement always struck Dan as pathetic, like a suitcase with a rope handle, or a dress held together by pins. “Is this your car?”

“I would like a lawyer handy,” said Frank.

“Then it is your car,” said Dan.

“I didn’t say that,” said Frank.

“Don’t go anywhere.”

Sheila Geer of the Stone City police pulled up, new Chevy cruiser gleaming white in the light of a summer noon. Although the county stood at the peak of local government, the towns seemed to get better police cars.

“What do we have, Dan?” said Sheila. She was a short and tough sergeant who loved to roar up to a crime scene and ask what they had. Dan had stayed over at her apartment a couple of times years ago, when she had been a patrolwoman and he a deputy. She had more candles than Christmas, and beanbag chairs.

“Apparently there’s this Galaxie 500 over here, and it collided with Mr. Kleeborg,” said Dan. “There he goes into the ambulance.”

“Hey, he took our yearbook pictures,” said Sheila.

“Very possibly,” said Dan. “My wife works for him.”

“Which reminds me, congratulations,” said Sheila. “Your wedding and everything.”

“Thanks, Sheila,” said Dan.

“Louise Darling, right? Her second time?”

Dan nodded.

“You know, I once considered getting into photography,” said Sheila.

“Louise does real well with it,” said Dan.

“I remember there was a printing paper called Agfa,” said Sheila.

“Yes,” said Dan.

“Always liked the sound of that,” said Sheila. “Agfa. Are you going to take care of this accident?”

“Not if I can help it,” said Dan.

“Who’s operator number one?” said Sheila.

“Got to be the guy in the yellow shirt,” said Dan. “A Mr. Franklin Ray. But he’s being all evasive.”

“Know the type,” said Sheila.

“Some kind of legal scholar,” said Dan.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Shh,” said Dan. “Here he comes.”

Frank had his hands in his pockets and was walking like someone out for an evening stroll. “Let me offer you a hypothetical situation,” he said. “Assuming I was the driver—now, I’m not saying I was, but just assuming—would I be looking at a moving violation or some other kind of violation? Or are they all moving?”

“Look,” said Dan. “I don’t have time for this. Either you were driving the car or you weren’t.”

Frank scuffed his foot on the pavement. “I was,” he said.

“Well, you drive like shit,” said Dan.

“The old guy leaped in front of the car,” said Frank.

“I really believe that,” said Dan.

“Come on, sir,” said Sheila Geer.

Rollie Wilson approached Dan with a clipboard. He was a farmer, a mechanic, and an ambulance driver. He raised antelopes as a hobby animal. His coat was smudged with oil but his fingernails were scrubbed.

“Need your John Henry, Danny,” he said.

Dan signed. “How is he?” he said.

“He seems to have a minor concussion,” said Rollie. “He’ll be all right. They might keep him overnight to make sure. You look terrible, but he looks all right.”

“I’ll admit to not sleeping well,” said Dan.

One of the young women walked by, reeling in the string of children. “I wouldn’t push her out of bed for eating a cracker,” said Rollie. “You know, I had insomnia there for a while. After our place burned. You remember our fire.”

“Vividly,” said Dan.

“I’ll be honest with you, Dan. I went to see a psychiatrist,” said Rollie. “I don’t mind telling you that, don’t mind it a bit. I’ve really come around on this question. I used to be ashamed, but shame is so stifling.”

“Oh, I know it can be,” said Dan.

“I’ve never been one for talking about myself,” said Rollie. “The family I come from, you more or less keep your mouth shut. I bet my father never said a complete sentence to us kids the whole time we were growing up. Not with a subject and predicate—no, sir. But the funny thing is, when I finally got to the psychiatrist, get this, I didn’t have to say two words. She wrote me a prescription right off the bat. She said a lot of people can’t sleep. This is no lie. She said go home and have pleasant dreams. I was in and out of that place in fifteen minutes.”

“Really,” said Dan.

“I can write her name down if you want,” said Rollie.

“Are you still taking something?” said Dan.

“You bet,” said Rollie. “And I sleep great.”

Louise was making prints in the red light of the darkroom at Kleeborg’s Portraits. She wore blue jeans and a faded blue work shirt.

“Rollie said they might keep him overnight,” said Dan. “He was none too lucid when I talked to him. I know that.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“He was talking about his sister spilling ink back in the days of kerosene,” said Dan.

“Lydia,” said Louise.

“Yeah, Lydia.”

“Poor Kleeborg,” said Louise.

“You know what we ought to do. Call her.”

Louise laughed. “You better have a good phone. She’s been dead for years. That’s why he goes to church.”

“Why?”

“Because of Lydia,” said Louise.

“He misses her.”

“Yeah, or whatever,” said Louise.

When Mary heard about the accident, she rather ruthlessly pushed for Louise to take center stage at the portrait business. But about Mary it was sometimes said that you could no sooner change her than you could teach a badger to fix cars.

She drove out to the farm one scorched evening. The heat had been bad for weeks. The air did not turn over, the sun burned the basin of the Rust River, and events acquired a random quality, separated by rings of heat. And Grouse County was scattered to begin with. Family agriculture seemed to be over and had not been replaced by any other compelling idea.

Louise and Dan were sitting in lawn chairs in cutoffs and loose T-shirts. Louise read the paper and Dan shucked corn. They were expecting relief. They lived on a hill, and whatever wind came from the east funneled through their yard.

“Did you see the six o’clock news?” said Mary. “A gal went to the statehouse dressed in road maps.”

“Why?” said Louise.

“I only caught the tail end of it,” said Mary. “I thought there might be something about it in the paper.”

Louise turned a page noisily. “Doesn’t seem to be.”

Dan snapped the stem from an ear of corn. “Probably some kind of protest,” he said.

“Evidently,” said Mary.