Witch Cradle (4 page)

“I ain't so sure about that. I heard of a few that came back, but they never said nothing about it. You could try Pelto. At the high school. His old man was a big wheel in the Party. Orville. He traveled around getting people all stirred up to leave, handled the arrangements.” Touminen craned his neck to look out the window. “There's smoke coming from the school. Pelto spends the night when the weather looks bad. He mighta got stuck there.”

The weather wasn't looking all that good right now. The afternoon's sunshine had given way to low-hanging clouds spitting out snow in sporadic whirling gusts. It was an innocuous flurry so far, but with a determined look about it.

McIntire looked at his watch. Plenty of time for one more stop before dark.

Chapter Seven

St. Adele High School's science, mathematics, and boys' phy ed teacher had put on still another of his hats, and McIntire stood well away while he aimed a gas-fueled blowtorch at an ice-filled keyhole. He stuck in a key, gave it a twist, and grinned as he opened the door to lead McIntire down the hall to the science room.

The school hadn't changed a whole lot since McIntire had served his time there. This classroom had the same gray walls and cracked window blinds, dreary as it had been thirty-five years before. Erik Pelto's foldaway cot and carton of Tenderleaf tea bags did nothing to add a homey, or an academic, touch. It was not exactly an atmosphere conducive to preparing youngsters to take on the world, unless giving them resilience was the aim.

Pelto threw his yellow work gloves on a desk but didn't remove his cap or jacket. He pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and spent the next half minute blowing his nose, giving McIntire time to look around. He recognized two new additions. A skeleton hung from a metal stand in the corner, and a glass-fronted cabinet contained an impressive collection of what might have been fairly valuable antique scientific instruments. Next to a brass sextant was a cache of home-away-from-home essentials: shaving mug and razor, an array of vitamins and medications to ease the common cold, and a carton of Fig Newtons.

“Come to offer your services?” Pelto asked.

“At chipping ice?”

“We could use a foreign language class.”

McIntire parked himself on a wooden stool. “Any particular language you had in mind?”

“Not really. Spanish, French, maybe even German. How about it?” Pelto poured water into a beaker and turned the tap on a Bunsen burner, beaming in triumph again when it responded to his lit match.

“I'll think it over.” He might, for about half a second. McIntire had spent too many years incarcerated in these rooms, bruising his knees on the underside of the skimpy desks, to consider voluntary servitude. And his last stint at language teaching was something he refused to be reminded of.

“Seriously, being able to offer a foreign language would….” Pelto gave a shake of his head and opened the cabinet to take out a bottle half-filled with an evil-colored liquid. “But what was it you did come for?”

“I was hoping you could tell me how to get in touch with your father.”

“My father? Did you know him?”

“No. I'm just looking for some information. I understand he was once active in politics.”

Pelto hesitated with the bag suspended over McIntire's cup as though he might consider reclaiming it. Then he shrugged, dropped it in, and added a stream from the bubbling water.

“That was a long time ago.”

“The information I need is from a long time ago.”

Pelto didn't respond, only regarded McIntire expectantly. His eyes were a translucent blue that made them seem lit from the inside.

“I'm trying to find out about a couple that supposedly left St. Adele back in the Karelia Fever days. No one's heard from them.”

“That's hardly unusual.”

It was the usual response, though, and one McIntire didn't quite understand. Several thousand people seem to disappear, and the people left behind just shrug it off. Didn't anyone try to find out what happened? The organization that was responsible for their emigration, for instance.

“It's not unusual
if
they went to Karelia,” he replied, “but we're not sure that they did. Sulo Touminen tells me your father was a recruiter of sorts, and that he helped arrange passage. He might remember if the Falks were on the boat as planned.”

“Falks?”

“Teddy and his wife. Her name was Rose. You remember them?”

“Nooo.” He let the word drag out, slowly stirring his tea, pressing the bag against the side of the cup. “It doesn't ring a bell. Well, that was a while ago. I was just a kid when all that happened.”

Erik Pelto didn't look so terribly young, and the exodus had gone on for quite a while. He plopped the soggy teabag into an ashtray and looked up, his contemplative aspect abandoned. “Did you say that the…these people didn't go to Russia?”

“It looks like they might not have. In which case we'd like to find out where they did go.”

Pelto opened his mouth, but must have thought better of what he was about to say. Once again he waited for McIntire to continue.

“Can you tell me how to reach your father?”

“No.”

The terse reply caught McIntire unprepared. “He
is
still living?”

“He is,” Pelto replied, “but he's not all that well. I'm not going to pester him with that stuff after all this time.”

McIntire could see that the elder Pelto's communist connections might be a touchy subject, but all he wanted was a small piece of simple information.

“I'm only—”

“My father was, as you put it, a recruiter. He convinced a whole lot of people to give up their homes here, sell everything they owned, leave their families behind, and go off to what he promised them would be a workers' Utopia. It's probable that things didn't go well for those people. He doesn't need to have it brought up now, and…” he turned expressionless eyes to McIntire, “neither do I.”

McIntire wasn't ready to get this close and give up. “I'm sympathetic,” he said, “but we can't just let this go. We need to find out what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Falk.”

“What makes you think anything happened to them? Who is it says that they didn't go to Russia as they planned?”

“Nobody
says
so. It's just that some of their belongings have turned up. Things they would have taken with them. That's why I want to talk to your father. If he arranged for the trip, he should be able to tell me if they backed out.” McIntire tried not to squirm under Pelto's expectant stare, a tactic no doubt calculated to elicit confession from the most recalcitrant fifteen-year-old, probably practiced by the hour in front of a mirror. McIntire barely managed to out-wait him.

The teacher wiped his nose on his sleeve and turned his attention to the bottle. He twisted off the lid, releasing an aroma of licorice-flavored acid. “What if they did back out?” he asked. “It's a free country. They had a right to go where they pleased. If they didn't go to Karelia, all the better for them.”

“That depends, I'd say, on where they ended up. I'll try to be tactful,” McIntire said, and felt himself turning into Sheriff Pete Koski when he added, “It's not like I won't be able to find him without your help.”

The gaze went from water to ice, a transformation that left McIntire doubly glad that he was not one of Pelto's students. “Okay, I'll ask my father about this…Teddy Falk,” he relented. “He'll remember. He remembers every one of them.” He stood up. “It's going to take a little while. I'll have to write. I'll let you know when I find out.”

McIntire left Pelto in the darkening classroom spooning down his cough syrup.

He brushed the powder of new snow from the Studebaker's windshield. The sky was heavy with more. The teacher had better get home, or he'd be likely to end up with only fig bars and the Smith Brothers to sustain him over the next few days.

Chapter Eight

Another few inches of fluffy snow dusted the twenty or so that had been dropped over Tuesday night's layer of ice. With the snow had come enough wind to deposit most of it in the network of paths—trodden more than shoveled—to the workshop, to the car, and to the biffy. Mia tucked the cuffs of her slacks into her overshoes. She pulled on her mittens and fumbled to get a grip on the handle of the white enamel chamber pot. There was no more expecting Nick to go out in the night to answer nature's call. Not even to the edge of the porch, which had been about the limit to his midnight expeditions before his illness.

She proceeded gingerly down the steps and scuffed her feet to locate the track under the snow. When she was a child, Mia's family had owned a succession of dogs. Mia had been mystified at the way the animals always seemed to know where the path was, even when a heavy snowfall had obliterated every trace of it. Scent, she supposed now. Whatever the trick, Mia didn't possess it, and she had no four-footed companion to lead the way. She inched along, knowing that if she stepped off the hard-packed snow of the path, now treacherously coated with ice, she'd sink halfway to her hips and was liable to be doused with the contents of her pot in the process.

How long would it be before Nick wasn't able to make this trip in the daytime either? How long before he was a complete invalid, maybe bedridden? She used to say that indoor plumbing was something they should have when they got old. Before she knew what had happened, old had sneaked up and slapped them in the face.

Nick wasn't doing so badly right now, though. He was stiff and weak on one side, and sometimes hard to understand when he talked, but didn't seem to be quite so shaky. The tree clean-up was giving a boost to his spirits. Maybe the challenge made a difference physically, too. Still, he'd never be able to finish it by himself.

A long mound of white sprawled like a landlocked Moby Dick showing where the smaller of the limbs were stacked. Other branches, themselves as large as full-sized trees, lay where they'd fallen, most still firmly attached to the massive trunks. Crawling in among them with a saw would be dangerous work, especially for someone unable to move very quickly. Nick would have a tough time doing it, but it sure wasn't going to be her. They'd either have to pay somebody to cut the things up and haul them away, something Nick would never give in to, or they could just stay there. Mia guessed that the pines would be right here, rotting into the earth, long after she was gone and forgotten.

She swished her foot to scrape some of the snow off the concrete block that served as a step, yanked open the outhouse door, and ducked inside.

When she came out, a ribbon of crimson ran the length of the horizon, tying the earth to a sky-full of charcoal cloud, and leaving a streak of brilliant green before her eyes as she bent to scoop the empty chamber pot full of fresh snow. She dumped the yellowed crystals and dipped into the snow once more.

Why hadn't they had the plumbing put in when they could afford it, before they were facing the time when Nick couldn't work? Well, they could afford it now. Seven hundred dollars should cover it. She had every right to spend that money. Nobody could stop her. If Nick hadn't been fool enough to bring John McIntire into it, there'd be no question. They could have given him the few scraps of paper, if Nick thought it was so important. They didn't have to mention the money. Those bills didn't have J. T. Falk's signature on them, for cripe's sake. So what if they were in a jar with an old paper that did? Teddy and Rose Falk were long gone. What difference could any of it make now? John McIntire was a natural born snoop, and he was bored silly. A dangerous combination. He wouldn't rest until he'd dug up something, and she had a queasy feeling that it wouldn't be something good.

One last swish of the pot through the snow and she straightened up.

It was curious, though. Why did her father have that money? And why had he hidden it? Could he really have done something awful? There must have been something he wanted to keep to himself, that was for sure; he'd never have hidden money from her and Nick otherwise. If it really came from Teddy Falk in 1934, that would have been during the Depression. But even then Nick had a secure job, and her father still managed to sell his furniture. The Thorsens were better off than most. Maybe he'd stowed it away as a hedge against the time when that might not be the case.

Her morning ritual ended with the usual contest with herself. The Tossing of the Pot. The object was to throw it as far as she could toward the house while still keeping it near enough to the path to avoid a trek into the deep snow to get it back. Mia drew back her arm.

It was the residue of the ice storm that was her undoing. With a mighty swing, she hurled the pot high into the air and felt the earth slip from under her. Without even a second to catch herself, she fell heavily into the snow, her foot skating off the concrete step and smashing through the privy's rotting siding. The pot, along with her mitten, came to rest a paltry twenty feet away. She lay for a moment, stunned and feeling foolish enough to glance toward the house for reassurance that Nick hadn't gotten up extra early to take a peek out the window. She pushed up onto her hands and twisted around to free herself. A wave of nauseating pain swept up her leg, accompanied by an instantaneous bath of sweat. The foot didn't move. She braced her free one against the side of the building and pushed with all her strength. It wasn't enough.

She sank back into the snow, tears chill on her cheeks.

Nick might not be up for an hour or more, and how much longer might it be before he thought to look for her? She could die of exposure. Frozen in her own sweat, trapped by an outdoor toilet.

Maybe she could pull her foot out of the trapped overshoe. She floundered in the snow, struggling like a turtle on its back, until she could reach to loosen the zipper. Another explosion of pain threw her onto her back, and the dazzling glare of the rising sun turned black.

When the light returned, she was aware only of cold. Then of her husband's voice. His words floated off, carrying no meaning for her.

“I'm caught here, Nick.” Mia felt the shivering begin. “Get the crowbar.”