LITMIR.BIZ

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Mom steps into the barn, a scarf tied in a bow on her forehead like Rosie The Riveter.

      “I’m up here studying, Mom.”

      “You can do that later. I’ve made you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then I want you to rake out the goat shed.”

      She has to keep her grades up. A full scholarship is her only ticket out of Abundance. She never wants to see another goat or eat another peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

      * * * *

      Gladys’s Bar sits in the mosquito zone on the west bank of the Little Papoose River. It’s built of split logs with a green beer sign flickering in the window. The walls are hung with mounted deer trophies, antique guns and Fox Indian artifacts. When you walk in, the first thing you see through the smoke is the No Smoking sign mounted above the cash register. Gladys keeps a Derringer in the cash drawer, a baseball bat behind the bar and is proficient in the use of both.

      Gladys’s is a popular establishment, frequented by men in jeans and work boots, the girls in tighter jeans, discrete tattoos of roses and butterflies inked on their ankles and shoulders. Most of the customers are regulars, the same faces week after week, year after year, until they go off to that big brewery in the sky.

      The sounds are the sounds of my childhood: leather dice cups slapping against the bar, the ding of a 1940’s pinball machine, the click of balls on the pool table and the cha-chunk as packs of cigarettes tumble from the machine into the tray. A Worlitzer bubbles red and blue beside a rear window over-looking the river.

      I enter on a blast of cold air, a big bag of kibble in my arms and Fargo trotting at my heels. Gladys gives me a nod as she slides a beer to a man down the bar. My mother is fiftyish, but looks about sixty-five. She has dyed red hair and a complexion pickled and smoked from a lifetime of alcohol and cigarette use. That doesn’t mean that a certain kind of man (like the four she married and divorced) doesn’t find her husky voice and pre-cancerous cough irresistibly sexy.

      Fargo draws an instant crowd. A man with a big handlebar mustache takes out a hunting knife and cuts the burrs from his coat. A girl in a blue topped-off tank sets a saucer of beer in front of him and watches him lap it up…the dog, not the lumberjack.

      I walk to the bar and plunk the dog food at my feet. On the back wall is a photo of me and my late fiancé, Australian-born Dingo McGlory. We’re astride his death machine in our happy days before the fast bike met the slow tractor.

      “I could use a saucer of beer myself,” I say, climbing on a stool.

      “Where did the Shetland pony come from?” says Gladys.

      She pours me a cold one and I tell her about Fargo and the dead girl. I pass my phone through the room. A trucker says he saw the dog sitting on the shoulder of the highway a few days back. A woman in a cowboy hat says the blonde looks like a masseuse who moved to Hollywood a couple years ago.

      After two more beers I climb the stairs to my room above the bar. Like me, Fargo has had one too many, trips on a step and hits his chin on the landing. I tug his collar to keep him from falling asleep on the stairs. I shift the dog food bag to my left arm, inset the key in my door and find it unlocked.

      The folks at Gladys’s are too often the ones I pick up on petty thievery and bad checks, so I religiously keep my door locked. I push it open, snap on the light and set the bag inside with a thump. Someone has been in my room, some two actually, given the odor of cheap cologne and sweaty funk. My bed-spread is mangled, a black cigarette burn near the pillows. An ashtray beside the bed contains eight butts, three smeared with bright red lipstick.

      The curtains smell like stale cigarette smoke. I raise the window with an angry clack, letting the night wind sweep the room. When I turn around Fargo is sleeping at the foot of the bed. Vibrating with indignation, I grab the ashtray, trot back downstairs and slam it on the bar.

      “What?” says Gladys, with a startled look on her face.

      “Who did you let inside my room?”

      “Just Jackie and Howie, hon. They got into a brouhaha. I couldn’t have them upsetting all the customers.”

      “Then you kick their butts out the door, not upstairs to my room. I pay my rent and it’s not like this is the first time you’ve invaded my privacy.”

      “I’m so so-o-orry. I didn’t think you’d notice.”

      “You didn’t what? They were up there long enough to smoke eight cigarettes and burn a hole in my bedspread. If you’re so magnanimous, let them camp in your room?”

      “You know I can’t do that, hon. The bank bag is in there.”

      “Oh great, why don’t you shout it through a megaphone? I should….”

      “What?” she laughs. “Call a cop?”

      “Give me your key,” I say, my hand trembling with anger.

      “That’s the only one I have. What if there’s a fire and I have to get into your room?”

      “You let the building burn down and collect the insurance. Now give.” She reaches in her pocket and drops the key in my palm. “Thank you. You can have it back in a few days when I move out.”

      CHAPTER 5

      “Wasn’t that a lovely drive?” says Martha, as Russ sets the luggage inside the door. “The season’s last golden breath. The Andersen’s will make sure we get the same cabin next summer, the one with the shower and the tub.”

      “Every time we go to the lake, someone’s missing. Have you noticed that, Martha? Last year it was Joe Pendergast carried off by cancer,” says Russ. “This year lupus took Edith Corwin.”

      “The older we get the more I think we should sell the farm after Sterling goes off to college. I’m tired of winter. It gets longer and colder every year. We could move to Florida like the Freemans.”

      “I can’t say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. It’s not like we haven’t had offers from those big conglomerates.”

      Martha moves the curtain aside and looks out the picture window. “I don’t see Sterling’s car. I thought she’d be back by now. I wonder if the Buckley girl passed along my message.”

      “Attending church with her parents isn’t exactly the high point of her social calendar. I wouldn’t go myself if you didn’t drag me there by the ring in my nose.”

      “Oh Russ,” she says with a laugh. “It can’t be that bad. Imagine what it was like in Grandma Jansen’s day with everything in Latin.”

      “Heaven forbid.” Russ picks up a business card from the coffee table. “What have we here? It’s from that lady sheriff with the odd name. She’s written her cell phone number on the back.”

      “It’ll be about the saddle. I’m too tired to deal with it today. I’m calling the Buckley’s to touch base with Sterling,” she says, picking up the phone and punching in the number. She listens for a moment and clicks off. “For heaven’s sake! I got a recording. The number you have dialed is not receiving calls at this time. Knowing them, they haven’t paid their bill.”

      “Don’t be too hard on them, Martha. They’re not the only ones affected by the economy.” He stretches and works a kink out of his back. “I’m hungry. I want to finish off that chocolate cake in the frig. All that driving has got my sciatica acting up. I don’t feel like sitting for an hour on a hard church bench, do you?”

      “Not really. See if you can find a good movie on t.v. while I get into something comfortable,” she says, giving him a peck on the cheek.

      “How about we turn off the ringer and have a real day of rest?”

      * * * *

      I open my eyes as sunlight slides under the window shade. There’s nothing quieter than a bar on Sunday morning unless it’s midnight in a cemetery. Fargo has abandoned his

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