After the Rain Page 14

  Nina shook her head. “He just turned forty-eight. He don’t bounce so good anymore. I suspect what he’ll do is take Kit back home. His parents are there to help out.”

  Gordy threw up his hands in mild disgust, spun on his heel and stomped across the barren barroom, threw open the front door, and continued across the highway. Ace and Nina craned their necks and watched Gordy enter the barnlike Quonset with the rusted Bobcat and windmill out front.

  Nina turned to Ace. “He don’t like women. I could tell the way he looked at me.”

  Ace shook his head. “He don’t like women like you. Taller than him, lean, smart. He likes ’em about seventeen, no neck, big in front, and stoned.” He made a gesture with both hands cupped before his chest. Then he pointed to his head. “And small up here.”

  “So you think I’m a cop?” Nina asked, pretending to be flattered. And confident, because she could cross her heart and hope to die and swear she was not a cop.

  “Don’t know what you are,” Ace said, Then he ran his hand along the bar and felt the leather grain and distinctive scale pattern of her wallet. “Don’t know for sure what this is either.”

  “Ostrich. Phil’s got a buddy who raises them for the meat and makes leather goods from the hides.”

  “Really.” Ace kneaded the leather. “Tell me something.”

  Nina threw a wary glance out the front window toward the corrugated tin building where Gordy had disappeared. “Depends.”

  “You think ostriches could run with buffalo? After the bar’s gone I was thinking of going out further west, maybe try to raise some buffalo.”

  Nina got stuck, once again blindsided by this easygoing, mostly sad, but definitely hard-to-read man. It wasn’t easy to locate the danger in him. But it was there. She had to catch her breath and restart her act.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “What’s okay?” Nina said, letting herself drift, letting the color come into her cheeks.

  Ace winked. “That you like me. C’mon, let’s take a ride. I want to show you something.”

  In the Tahoe, heading west. “So why would I be a cop?” Nina asked.

  “One reason is whiskey. Most of the bars up around the border backdoor a little extra inventory into Canada. Bottle of booze costs fourteen bucks here, sells for thirty-eight up there. Hell of a markup. So there’s money to be made. Same’s true for cigarettes.”

  “Give me another reason.”

  Ace pointed out the window, at a grain elevator. “See those tanks?”

  A big one looked like a giant white sausage to Nina; half a dozen smaller ones sat on wheeled carriages.

  Ace went on: “Anhydrous ammonia. Basic fertilizer, used throughout the state. Also an ingredient in making methamphetamine. Meth freaks driving through here from the West Coast are struck dumb by all this stuff just sitting out here, like fat white cows waiting to be milked. They think they’ve died and gone to heaven. Just have to pull over by the side of the road and cook up a batch.”

  He turned to look at her. “I’ve sold some whiskey to Canadians from time to time. But I’ve never taken it across the border myself. And I got nothing to do with that meth shit. So if you’re some kind of fancy ATF agent slumming, you gonna have to wait around a long time to get something on me.”

  “Give it a rest,” Nina said. Then she stared straight ahead, scanning the straightedge of Highway 5 heading west. After a few minutes Ace slowed and turned left off the road. An overgrown gravel drive led up to a chain-link fence that surrounded a square empty plot. A big white sign with black letters: A7.

  “What’s this?” Nina said.

  “Where we keep the invisible monsters.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said. Then she thought about it and maybe she did.

  “They trucked the missiles off to Montana and imploded the silos. They keep the fences up and numbered so Russian satellites can verify that they’re empty. My brother Dale insists they ain’t empty. He says we got these cages all over the county, looks like nothing in them. Dale says they’re still in there, pacing back and forth. Wanting to get out. We just can’t see ’em.”

  “Kind of creepy,” Nina said.

  “For sure. That’s Dale’s sense of humor. He was the only kid who had trouble with the missiles. Only one I know about. Most of us just took it in stride. We had two silos on our farm. One next to the barn, and one like this, in our wheat field a couple hundred yards from the house. And Dale, he’d have these bad nightmares. Fire falling from the sky, burning up all the animals, stuff like that. Twenty years ago we were still on the farm. I was seventeen, Dale was about eight. I heard this shooting and I ran down to the barn and there was Dale with the .22 rifle. He had shot two cows, some chickens, a pig. He was reloading the gun when I took it away from him.

  “And he was crying. Real shook. So I ask him just what the hell he was doing, and he said he didn’t want the animals to suffer in the fire that was going to fall from the sky.” Ace shook his head. “Well, Dad was gonna be pissed for sure, so I went in the house, got out the whiskey, and started drinking. When Dad came in from work he found me shit-faced, shooting pigeons in the barn with that .22. I took the heat for Dale and had to get an extra job to make enough money to replace the stock.”

  He looked over at Nina and winked. “That’s when I started drinking.” He slowly turned the Tahoe around and pulled back on the highway. “That’s a true story,” he said. After that they rode in silence for a while. Ace came to an intersection and turned east on State 20.

  “So how’s life look today? What you gonna do?” Ace asked.

  “Not what I been doing, which was what other people wanted me to do.”

  “I can relate to that. The trick is to find what you want to do.”

  “Easier said.”

  “Amen.”

  “So, are you doing what you want to do?” Nina asked.

  “I’m driving you, aren’t I?”

  “I guess.”

  Nina caught herself unconsciously touching at her hair. She put her hand in her lap. Then she reached in her purse, took out an American Spirit, and lit it. “So, you ever have any nightmares?” she asked.

  “Lots. Only one real good one, though,” Ace said. He flung his hand at the surrounding fields. “Our people came out here, hell, before practically anybody else. Early 1850s. Lived in one of those sod houses. We found these letters they wrote, and they said one time they got stuck in that house for two days straight while the buffalo came through.”

  Nina shook her head.

  Ace explained. “Herd of buffalo so big it took two days to pass. And so close-packed my ancestors couldn’t open the door to get to the well.”

  “And that’s your dream?”

  “Sort of. I dreamed I was up on the border running a dozer, knocking down some bankrupt farmer’s house, and that herd of buffalo came through again. Me trapped on the bulldozer and the buffalo coming forever.”

  “Is Ace your real name?”

  “Nickname. Name’s Asa. That was my grandfather’s name. Grandfather helped organize the Nonpartisan League after World War One. You ever hear of that?”

  Nina cautiously shook her head.

  Ace smiled. “Grandpa used to say if you took a railroad man from St. Paul, a mill owner from Minneapolis, and a banker from New York and you stuffed them all in a pickle barrel and rolled the barrel down the hill, there’d always be a son of a bitch on top.”

  “Sounds like your grandpa wasn’t a Republican.”

  “You got that right. When he had a few beers in him he used to say there’s nothing more dangerous than a bunch of angry farmers with rifles. Was how America started, he’d say.”

  Nina sat up a little straighter, attentive. “Sounds like militia talk.”

  “Ah, I met some of those guys—just weekend beer bellies, like to dress up in camo. Not real serious folks for the most part.”

  Definitely more attentive. “What’s serious?”

  “Chang
ing something. Fixing something.” Ace shrugged. “Hey, I’m not much for politics. But I do know that if one guy shoots the banker it’s murder. If twenty guys lynch him it’s a mob; but if the whole county takes him out and strings him up it’s a change of administration. That’s kinda what they did here in the teens and twenties, took over the state, wrote new laws, created the state mill and the state bank. Back then they called them Socialists.”

  Ace shook his head and laughed. “Then we become the launch site for all the missiles aimed at Communist Russia. Which made us into a big target. Kinda like payback for what the Nonpartisan League did to the fat cats, maybe.”

  Nina eyed him carefully. “You have this habit of surprising people, you know?”

  Ace smiled wryly, and Nina thought he could probably do that for a few more years, but once the tiny wrinkles around his mouth came up sharper it’d be sad all the way. He said, “I used to play ball. That’s a game where you stand around a lot. But then if something happens, you got to be on top of it. Got to be ready for surprises, I guess.” His eyes lingered on her when he said that, searching.

  She held his gaze. “So what is it you’re going to show me?”

  “Just a place where something happened.”

  Nina looked away and watched the wind stream through a long row of trees. “What kind of trees are those?”

  “Poplars. Immigrants used to plant them. Put ’em in cemeteries when somebody died. Instead of headstones. More windrows to cut down on the wind. Notice how they all kind of bow to the east. That’s the wind.” He grinned and gave her a sidelong glance. “You know why the wind blows in North Dakota?”

  She knew that one. “Yeah, yeah. Because Minnesota sucks.”

  They laughed and Nina got comfortable, curling her legs under her in the bucket seat, something she hadn’t done in a car with a man since high school.

  More dead straight road, fields of wheat and oats and occasional pools of flax that seemed to float against the green like wisps of mirage.

  Then a tall gray grain elevator loomed up on the left side of the highway. Ace slowed and turned left. The red sign by the road said STARKWEATHER.

  “Quaint name for a town,” Nina said.

  “Got an echo to it, that’s for sure,” Ace said. They drove past an abandoned grocery, a shack with a gas pump, and a post office that maybe was still functioning. Ace parked across from a run-down tavern with a big Pabst Blue Ribbon sign hanging over the door. He zipped down the window, fingered a Camel out of his chest pocket, lit it, exhaled, and said, “How many chances you think people get?”

  “Not sure. Sometimes I think some people never had a chance.”

  “Well, I did. Nineteen eighty-three I graduated high school. Had a good year in Legion ball, batted eight hundred and change. Coach compiled my stats, pulled a few strings, and I got letters from the Twins and the Reds. So I went down to the Twin’s tryout.” He leaned back, smiled. “Knocked two home runs out of the old Met Stadium. Got it on film. That was before video was big. Made the cut the first day.

  “Then come the second morning and I’m there warming up and…” He paused and his eyes got stuck remembering. He raised his right knee, moved it in a slow circle. “You could hear the pop clear across the field in the stands.”

  “ACL tendon?”

  “Big time. They told me where to go to get the best treatment and I went and they give me all this physical therapy. Said it would be six months to heal up. Maybe an operation.

  “And I started the program, but I came back here…” His eyes drifted out he window. “Started driving the big stuff for Irv Fuller’s dad. Then, what the hell, I thought I’d try farming. Took over my dad’s place. He’d moved into town by then. Had the Deere dealership and the bar.

  “I got in trouble with the bank and tried to cut costs and didn’t pay for crop insurance, and between the hail and the rain and the bugs, that ended my farming career.”

  He pointed across the street at the run-down bar.

  “Was right in there on a Friday night. I had a little too much to drink and this fool named Bobby Pease, who was just a big bag of wind and a bully and a real mean drunk—well, Bobby decided he was going to throw me out of the bar, and he came at me with a beer bottle and I was not in the best mood, having just lost the farm…” He held up his right hand, studied it. “So I hit him. Just once.”

  Ace sighed. “Well, some who were there said it was the fall that broke his neck but I heard it crack when I hit him. He must have been way off balance.” He sucked his teeth and his voice turned wistful. “And I always did hit pretty good. There was more than a few bankrupt farmers on the jury and I’d been working for Fuller, plowing under farmhouses to make more room for the big twelve-bottom plows.” Ace shook his head. “They gave me manslaughter. Reckless endangerment. Cost me a year at Jamestown, the state farm.”

  Nina didn’t know what to say.

  “But you know what they say about silver linings.” Ace grinned, starting up the Tahoe. “That’s where I got started reading.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  His cameo role completed, Broker limped back to town in the Explorer. Walking funny, nursing his swollen eye, he came back into the Motor Inn, ignored the scrutiny of the elderly lady behind the desk, went up the stairs, and rapped on Jane’s door.

  The door opened. The sound of the Road Runner was muted in the motel room. Now Kit was up on the bed, doing the chicken dance opposite Holly.

  I don’t wanna be a chicken

  I don’t wanna be a duck

  So I’ll shake my butt…

  Broker stared at the hoary Delta full bird shaking his bony ass. Barrel of laughs, these guys.

  “So? I ain’t all snake eater,” Holly protested as he stepped off the bed and studied Broker’s face. “I got grandkids.”

  “You don’t look so hot,” Jane said.

  “You got a black eye, Daddy,” Kit said.

  “I got too involved, I overacted. Took a swing at Shuster. With my bad hand,” Broker said. “His helper stepped in and pasted me.” He pointed to his left eye.

  “Hey, great touch,” Holly said. “I’ll go get some ice.” He grabbed the ice container off the dresser and disappeared into the hall.

  “Bravo,” Jane said, “let’s have a look.” She went to her equipment bag, took out a first-aid bag, and motioned Broker to the sink. Holly returned, wrapped some ice cubes in a washcloth, and handed it to Broker, who held it against his cheek.

  Broker flinched as Jane peeled up the edge of the adhesive strips holding the bandage in place over his infected palm. Kit and Holly moved in to watch.

  Jane said, “You’re an old-fashioned macho tough guy like Holly, right?” Before Broker could respond she yanked the tape off. Broker winced and gritted his teeth.

  “Ex–macho tough guy,” Jane said.

  “Yuk,” Kit said, screwing up her face but peering intently. The wound was going purple in the center and draining pus. An area the size of a silver dollar was bright red. “You want to know something?” Kit said. “In Africa they put maggots on infections to eat the bad germs.”

  Broker remembered something Nina’s dad had said about his daughter. About how he knew he had his hands full when she was five and went out and poked her finger into some day-old roadkill.

  A certain kind of curious.

  “This is going to sting,” Jane said.

  “That’s what the doctor says when it’s really going to hurt a lot,” Kit said.

  “Thanks, honey,” Broker said.

  Jane pointed to the injured hand. “Move your little finger.”

  Broker did.

  “Looks like you’ve got full function. How about numb?”

  “Sore as hell, not numb.”

  “Looks like your ulna nerve is all right,” Jane said.

  “I been to the doctor,” Broker said.

  Jane pressed some gauze into the wound, making Broker wince.

  “He tell you to change the dress
ing every day and not go hitting people?” She swabbed the wound—which hurt—then poured on some Betadine and wiped it down. She reached in her bag and took out a brown tube. “This is Bag Balm. Topical antibiotic. Vets use it on distressed udders. Good for infection.” She daubed on the salve, then wrapped on a clean bandage, and taped it in place.

  Then Jane turned to Kit and handed her the tape, three bandages, the disinfectant, and the veterinary salve. “Make sure he changes the bandage every day, got it?”

  Kit accepted the medical supplies and nodded solemnly. “Got it.”

  Jane turned on the tap and scrubbed her hands. “So how’d it go?”

  “Can’t tell for sure. Maybe they buy it, maybe they don’t. You guys are flying by the seat of your pants, that’s how it went,” Broker said.

  “We don’t need the executive summary. A simple Sit Rep will do,” Holly said.

  Broker exhaled. “Jealous husband delivers suitcase, gives possessive ultimatum, gets pummeled by local rubes.” He removed the slip of paper Nina had given him from his pocket with his good hand. “Nina says check out this guy. Him and Ace have something going down.”

  “Wonderful.” Holly seized the note. Scrutinized it. “Khari, that ain’t no white-bread wheat farmer.”

  “Could be Syrian or Lebanese,” Jane said offhand.

  “We’ll get right on it.” Holly pressed his open palms together. “Well, that’s it. Shake it up, Janey. We’re outta here.”

  “You gonna leave her on her own?” Broker asked.

  Holly narrowed his eyes. “She’s a one-sixty. They don’t come any better.”

  Broker studied the older man’s blank eyes, then shook his head and looked away. Christ. This Holly was a case of early dementia, lost in his elite bullshit. One-sixty. Jesus! It was an in-group term that got thrown around in MACV-SOG during Vietnam. It referred to a Pentagon study on combat effectiveness compiled in the Second World War. According to the study, the average infantryman became ineffective after 155 days of combat.