LITMIR.BIZ

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had no idea what Franklin Avenue was, but from Sharon’s tone she assumed it was like NP Avenue over in Fargo where all the cheap 3.2 bars were and chronics like Ol’ Man Willie started and ended the day in their favorite booth. ‘Cept up here in the F-M area, it was old white men who were chronics, not Indians.

      NP avenue was also where she called home, drinking at the Casbah bar each night—or each night when it wasn’t beet-hauling season. She put in about an hour at the pool table after a day in the fields, playing for free drinks and the occasional dollar or five-dollar bet before heading to her apartment down the street. The only thing she knew about AIM was a couple one-night stands she’d had with a guy she called Long Braids. He had been on his way down to Minneapolis to meet up with AIM for some protest out east when their paths had crossed up Bemidji way.

      “Thought those three were coming to beat you up.” Sharon interrupted her thoughts, making a straight-in shot, but missing her next one. “Don’t know why you all look so mean all the time.”

      “Hmphh,” breathed out Cash. She had a four-ball run before sinking the 8. She started to unscrew her cue and put it away in its fringed leather case. “Gotta get to work.”

      “Are you going by your apartment? Can you drop me off in Fargo?”

      “Sure.”

      Cash and Sharon left the Student Union and headed for Cash’s Ranchero. They passed groups of students on the campus lawn, studying, flirting, protesting. Get Out of Viet Nam. Sharon talked the whole time about Danielson, then about her boyfriend’s little sister who didn’t like her because she was white, then again how she thought the three Indians in the pool room were coming to beat her or Cash up. Cash half-listened. With the rest of her attention, she drove and daydreamed along to Pasty Cline singing about someone’s kisses leaving her cold.

      “Can we find some rock and roll?” Sharon reached for the radio dial and changed the station. “Here we go: the Rolling Stones.”

      In Fargo, Cash stopped in front of the Maytag appliance store. Home. Sharon got out, waving as she walked west. Cash watched her go. She figured that after a bit Sharon would stick out her thumb to hitchhike the remaining mile to NDSU.

      Cash ran up the stairs to her apartment, threw her schoolbooks and notebooks on the white enamel kitchen table that served as a place for her to study and eat. She lit a match, turned the gas burner on low under the tin coffee pot that still had coffee from the morning. She went into the next room and pulled off the clothes she had worn to school and tossed them over the overstuffed chair that held her “almost” clean clothes. She grabbed a different pair of jeans off the floor and jerked them on. It was the same pair she had been wearing all week while driving beet truck. She shook out a T-shirt and flannel shirt from the floor and put those on too.

      Driving beet truck wasn’t as dirty as driving during combine season when chaff and wheat bits got into all the creases of your clothes and the dust coated your hair like baby powder, but the smell of the beet plant clung to your clothes. Cash figured it would be Christmas before the smell washed out completely. She wore a flannel shirt because the heater didn’t always work in Milt Wang’s trucks.

      She quickly braided her waist-length hair into one long braid and pulled on her jean jacket. She filled her red Thermos with hot coffee and opened the fridge as if there might be food in there. Two bare shelves with a half-dozen carton of eggs looked out at her. She’d have to grab a tuna sandwich at the Silver Cup.

      The evening waitress was used to Cash running in and saying, “Tuna sandwich.” The waitress, who wore her hair in a black beehive, must have seen her coming through the front window because she was already wrapping the sandwich in wax paper: tuna, mayonnaise and a leaf of lettuce between two slices of white Wonder Bread. She put the sandwich in a small brown paper bag and folded it over neatly, just as Cash imagined all the wives of the men she worked with prepared their liverwurst or roast beef sandwiches, neatly wrapped in wax paper, too, but with homemade chocolate cake or chocolate chip cookies thrown in. Some day, Cash might ask Beehive for a slice of chocolate cake to go with her tuna sandwich.

      Cash put the Ranchero in reverse, then headed east to Highway 75 going north of Moorhead. Just as she was signaling to turn on 75, she changed her mind, decided to keep going straight east to the neighboring town of Hawley, where she turned north on Highway 9, a highway that would take her directly into the county seat of Ada. After a few miles she cruised through the small town of Felton, noticing several grain trucks lined up at the elevators. She drove a few miles farther, past the Lutheran Church that sat on the edge of Borup township. Still going north, she rounded a curve on the highway and crossed a bridge over the Wild Rice River, which was not much more than a narrow creek this late in the fall.

      As she came out of the curve, she saw the county sheriff’s car sitting at a gravel county crossroad. She braked to a slow crawl and pulled in alongside the tan cruiser so her driver’s window was directly across from the police car window. She rolled down her window at the same time Wheaton was rolling down his. “Funding the Thanksgiving turkey giveaway?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

      “Nah, football practice is about to get over in Borup and the Ambrose boys will be speeding into Ada. One of them is dating the head cheerleader in Ada and he tries to get there just as soon as they get out of practice. One of these days he’s going to come around that curve and end up in old man Peterson’s field. Figure after a couple more days of seeing me sitting here, he’s going to learn to slow down a bit before taking that curve. On your way to work?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Why you coming down 9? Aren’t you driving for Milt over in Halstad?”

      “Yeah.”

      “How’s school?”

      “Okay.”

      They sat there, quiet. Cash watched the sun dip toward the western horizon. Sheriff Wheaton watched the occasional car pass on the highway.

      Cash finally spoke. “Hear anything about some girl missing from Shelly?”

      “Huh? So that’s why you’re tracking me down.”

      More silence, more sky and road watching.

      “Well?” asked Cash.

      “You just focus on your schooling, girl. Leave the police work to me.”

      Cash watched the sky turn to orange, pink and purple stripes over the Red River tree line twenty-some miles west across the flat farm prairie. Almost all the fields were plowed, row after row of black dirt clods stretched for acres. To the north a corn stubble field sat unplowed, most likely being left to winter over. A green John Deere tractor, slowly pulling a plow, raised dust behind it as it traveled down a gravel road a couple of miles over.

      “So where is she?” Cash finally asked. “Who is she? One of the hippie chicks at school said she’s missing from our biology class.”

      Wheaton looked over. “You know her?”

      “No. This chick just says she was in our class and now she’s missing. They live in the same dorm.”

      “She’s the oldest Tweed girl. Three younger sisters. She’s in college over there to get a teaching degree.”

      “But she’s gone.”

      “Yeah, I drove to Shelly Tuesday to talk to her parents after they called me. Good kid. Valedictorian. Her mom’s working at the dime store in Ada to help pay her college tuition. They’re heartsick. The sisters crying. Not a wild kid. Not one you’d expect to just take off and not say anything.”

      “Good kid, huh?”

      “Why, you know something?”

      “Nah, just that the hippie chick said she sits in the front of the class and flirts with the science teacher to get a good grade. Just talk. I better get to work.” Cash put her arm over the back of the car seat and looked both ways down Highway 9 before backing out onto the road and heading toward Ada. In her rearview mirror, she

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