The End of Vandalism (6 page)

“Do,” said Albert. “I want you to.”

So then he didn’t. But it was not a long story, and he had told it so many times, to prove so many different points about Albert’s character, that most anyone around Grafton knew the gist of it. When Albert was five or six years old, he got mad at Claude and Marietta and decided to move out to the woods behind the Robeshaw farm. He took a can of beans, a can opener, a fork, and
The Five Chinese Brothers.
Well, he sat down under an evergreen to read, and he wondered if he hadn’t brought the wrong book, because it always gave him a chill to see the picture of the first brother’s huge face as he held in the sea. But he read the whole thing and then he was hungry, and he managed to open the can and begin eating the beans. But when he came upon the little cube of pork in the beans, he didn’t know what it was, and it scared him, and he ran crying for home.

Dan waited for Earl Kellogg to come on shift, and when he did Dan left the office for the day. But it was cold, raining, and getting dark, and this made Dan think that winter was coming, so he decided to go over to the Children’s Farm with the yellow quilt, which had been brought in that day by Marian Hamilton and wouldn’t do anyone any good folded up there on the bench.

The Children’s Farm was a dark brick castle on a hill. It had narrow windows and lightning rods and stone figures that lined the roof, representing the virtues of Hygiene, Obedience, Courtesy, Restraint, and Silence. The structure was built in 1899, and rebuilt after a fire nine years later, and seemed specially designed to remind the children passing through that their circumstances were tragic. There was a farm—seventy acres and two barns, one big, one small, which were slowly falling down—and it used to be, going way back,
that the hands and the children would raise their own food and even make their own shoes. Now the fields were leased to other farmers, the kids wore navy tennis shoes from Kresge’s, and the barns had not held animals for twenty-five, thirty years. Still, cows had been there once, and it was raining, so the place smelled like wet cows as Dan stepped from his cruiser, tucked the quilt under his coat, and headed across the gravel to the front door. There was a white Ford Torino in the driveway with the parking lights on and the motor running, and Dan looked in, as was his habit, and sitting behind the steering wheel was the woman, Joan Gower, who had thrown his trowel off the roof of the trailer.

She rolled down the window. A lime paisley scarf covered her hair. “Is something wrong?” she said. “Oh, Sheriff, how are you?”

“I’m fine,” said Dan. “Do work here?”

“I volunteer,” said Joan. “Well, I’m volunteering to read to Quinn. I know the community has really poured its heart out, but it occurred to me that the one thing he probably doesn’t have is someone to read him stories. That’s why I brought these books. See this? Jesus is riding a burro on Palm Sunday. Isn’t that a beautiful illustration? And here he is, making fish for the multitude. Isn’t that the greatest?”

Rain dripped from the visor of Dan’s hat. “I have to tell you something, Joan,” he said. “This is an infant. Bible stories might be a little bit over his head.”

“Well, that’s what they said, but the age doesn’t matter. I saw a story in a magazine about a child whose parents read him the multiplication tables every night before he was born, and now Princeton University is running tests on him. But these people say Quinn doesn’t have time to hear a story. Does that
make any sense to you? What is it that he’s supposed to be doing? I don’t see what would occupy a baby’s time to the point where he couldn’t listen to a Bible story. This evades me completely. Plus, somebody has to provide him with a religious instinct—otherwise, when he’s christened it won’t take, and he runs the risk of going to Hell. And I told them this. Well, they have to run it by their supervisor.”

“You talked to them just now?” said Dan.

“Well, no,” said Joan. “It’s been a while, but they said they couldn’t predict when the supervisor would be in. It seemed like they were giving me a song and a dance, but then I thought, Why don’t I wait and see if he shows up. But I suppose it’s getting late now.”

Dan coughed. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “Maybe you ought to go on home and call them tomorrow. Where do you live?”

“I don’t mind waiting,” said Joan. “But I guess you have a point. Maybe I’m a little keyed up about this baby. I don’t know why. It’s been raining so hard. I think I need to see him with my own eyes. I would feel better if I could just see him. I mean, look at this place. It’s like the Munsters’ house.”

“Joan, that baby is fine,” said Dan. “He’s strong, he’s healthy, he’s got more blankets than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“Maybe you could put in a good word for me,” said Joan. “Maybe if you suggested it, they would let me read to him. Tell them my church might do a benefit for him. Which is true, we might.”

“I’ll talk to them,” said Dan, “see what I can do.” He watched Joan Gower drive up to the highway, and then he went into the lobby, which was heavy with the smell of musty furniture. He gave the quilt to Nancy McLaughlin, the night administrator. She had her arm in a cast and explained that she had been
knocked down by a rainy gust while trying to get from her car to her house. She took him to see Quinn. They had him on the second floor, which was painted yellow and gray. In a low room with bright lights, Dan’s second cousin, the nurse Leslie Hartke, was giving Quinn a bottle.

“Hi, Dan,” she said. “Want to feed him?”

Dan shook his head. “Just brought another quilt over,” he said.

“This has been a bonanza for us,” said Nancy McLaughlin, rubbing her cast with her hand.

“Oh, come on,” said Leslie Hartke. “Feed the baby.” So Dan washed his hands and sat down, and Leslie gave him the baby, and the baby’s blankets, and the bottle. The baby took the bottle for a moment, looked at Dan with wide eyes, and began to cry.

“I remind him of Hy-Vee,” said Dan.

On his way out, Dan paused with Nancy McLaughlin to watch some boys playing checkers in the common room. The boys wore pajamas and sat at a card table in the corner by the stairs. The common room had high plaster walls, and the only sound was the melancholy click of the checkers.

“King me,” said one of the boys.

The other stared at the board. “Fuck,” he said.

“Checker time’s over,” said Nancy McLaughlin. “Good night now.” After the boys had disappeared up the stairs, Dan asked Nancy about Joan Gower.

“Not a happy woman,” said Nancy. “She read me a verse, what was it, something about being shut up in the hands of my enemies.”

Dan tried all the way home to decide whether Joan Gower was trouble or just overly dedicated to whatever it was she
believed in. When you got down to it, Dan did not know what anyone believed in. He had told her he was comfortable with his own beliefs, but that was just to keep her moving. He didn’t have any beliefs to speak of. A world that would deposit a child in a beer carton in the middle of nowhere seemed capable of you-name-it, but Dan did not think that you-name-it qualified as a belief. The trailer was dark in the rain. Dan had left a Folgers can under the drip in the corner of the bedroom, and he emptied the can in the sink and put it back in place.

In order to see the records of the Mixerton Clinic, Dan had to talk to Beth Pickett. She was a spindly older doctor who stamped around with her chin in the air. She had begun her career in 1944, as an intern with Tom Lansford, a famous general practitioner in Chesley. Dr. Pickett had seen Grouse County medicine through its youth and would not let go. She was insufferable, and the public loved her dearly.

Dan waited in Dr. Pickett’s office, where the walls were crowded with homemade images of Dr. Pickett. She had been needlepointed, watercolored, and macraméd, although the last made her look like the trunk of a tree. She had been sketched and caricatured many, many times. Soon the doctor marched into the room and sat down behind the desk.

“We don’t think the baby was born in a hospital,” said Dan. “We thought we’d take a list of the people who came in pregnant, and a list of the people who gave birth in the hospitals, and compare the two lists. It’s a pretty simple idea.”

“Well, it’s not as simple as you think,” said Dr. Pickett, “because when a woman comes into this clinic, nobody sees the records. They’re protected by legislation I went to Des
Moines and got passed in the summer of 1966. A man named Clay drove me down. He was a big drinker. All the time I was talking to the legislature, he was down at the Hotel Leroi. Drank and drank and never got drunk.”

“All I need is the names,” said Dan. “Maybe I could just look at the names.”

“No,” said Dr. Pickett. “The names are in the records, and the records cannot be seen.”

They went back and forth like this for a while, but however Dan could think to phrase it, Dr. Pickett said no, and finally Dan said he could come back with a warrant if that’s what it took.

Dr. Pickett pretended not to hear. “That’s right,” she said, “you come back anytime.”

“Help me find this woman,” said Dan. “Come on.”

Dr. Pickett brought out some brandy and poured it into jam glasses. “I don’t see what good that would do,” she said, pushing a glass across the desk, steering it around a plaster bust of herself. “When I went to medical school, I lived in Grand Forks, North Dakota, with Aunt Marilyn Beloit. This was many years ago. Every house on her street was a bungalow, and they were all small and nicely taken care of. Aunt Marilyn was a singer who went by the name of Bonnie Boone, and she must have done all right, because she had all her suits tailored in Fargo. Anyway, also living in this neighborhood was a young woman, not married, who had given birth to a child and left it on the doorstep of a family named Price. The Prices lived up the hill, and they didn’t lack for money. Well, this was the way it was done in those days. Babies were left on doorsteps all the time, and it was not unusual to open your door in the morning and find that three or four had
been deposited overnight. I’m exaggerating, of course, but it worked very smoothly, as I recall, and you didn’t talk about it, but you didn’t throw up your hands in horror, either. Anyway, one evening I took the bus home, and as I was walking by this woman’s place—her name was Nora, and she rented the back of a house—she asked me to come over and visit after supper. She was older than I was, but we were not that far apart in age, so I said yes. Well, it turned out that Nora was a bohemian. She had a piano and a pregnant cat and a big bottle of red wine, and her bed was a mat in the middle of the living room floor, which I thought was an unusual arrangement. We had two or three glasses of wine, and the next thing we knew that big black and white cat had crawled onto the bed and broke her water. Nora dragged out a suitcase, opened it, and lined it with towels. She put the cat in the suitcase, and that cat began to purr so loudly it sounded like singing. I was spellbound, but with the wine I could not keep my eyes open past three kittens. When I awoke there were five, suckling in the suitcase, and Nora was playing the piano.”

Dan waited for her to conclude the story, but that seemed to be it, so he said, “Did it ever bother Nora that she gave her baby away?”

Dr. Pickett shook out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “It bothered her a great deal,” she said, “and I believe she tried to get it back. But Jack Price was a judge, so you can imagine how that went over.”

Claude Robeshaw did not give up on the water-tower issue, and the county board of supervisors eventually agreed to a deal in which he would put up four hundred dollars toward the restoration, and his son would pay off the rest
by working after school for the sheriff’s office. Dan did not have to go along with this arrangement, but it seemed like the punishment would mean more to young Albert if he had to put in time; also, let’s face it, sheriff was and remains an elected position in Grouse County, and Claude Robeshaw was a faithful Democrat, who once had Hubert and Muriel Humphrey to his house for supper.

The first thing Dan had Albert do was clean up the basement of the sheriff’s substation in Stone City. This was a tiny storefront on Ninth Avenue that once had been a barbershop called Jack’s. The reason the sheriff’s department got no more than a barbershop’s worth of space in the county seat goes back to 1947, when the sheriff was a popular fellow called Darwin Whaley. He was handsome and young and just back from the South Pacific, and the board of supervisors hated him. The supervisors got their own way about everything, and wanted to keep getting their way, and decided that the thing to do with Darwin Whaley was stick him far from the rest of the government, where he would have a hard time finding out what was going on. So they built the sheriff’s building off in Morrisville—where it is to this day—and for years the sheriff had no place whatsoever in Stone City, although the courthouse was there, and appearing in court and consulting court records were common things for the sheriff to do. It was in 1972 that the county made a deal with the dying barber, Jack Henry, to buy his shop and rent it back to him for one dollar a year until his demise. But Jack Henry surprised his doctors by holding on until 1979, at which time the sheriff (this would have been Otto Nicolette) finally got his barbershop.

The basement was still full of everything a careless barber with one foot in the grave might care to throw down there:
newspapers, hamburger crusts, magazines, sun-faded comb displays, pop bottles, torn seat cushions, burned-out clippers with tangled cords, radios with cracked faces, moldy calendars featuring bland farm scenes or naked women with scissors and comb. The worst was the hair tonic, which would take Albert several days to find but which he could hear dripping everywhere, like underground springs. He went to work with a shovel and an aluminum basket. On the second day he uncovered two barrels full of mannequin heads—many more heads than one barber would need, you would think, but it turned out that each one was printed with dotted lines suggesting a different cut or style. This would have seemed touching to anyone who had been around when Jack was barbering, because he was known for having exactly one haircut in his repertoire and applying it equally to all customers. Albert carried the heads up the narrow stairs in the aluminum basket. They had the feel of an important archaeological find, and Albert kept three for a use he had not yet determined, but the rest went into a dump truck parked in the alley.