Installment #12
Chapter 17, 18 & 19
17
Despite his hangover, Walt was up before the sun, out of habit. He hoped his head would clear by the time he met up with Vern. He ate a leisurely breakfast at the café. Mylinda was working again and remembered him. As she poured his coffee, she apologized for having been so blunt informing him of his girlfriend’s death. She brought him the local newspaper.
He ate while he read birth notices, zoning ordinances, wedding announcements, obituaries and police notes. His reading finally interrupted when Deputy Randall slid into the booth across the table.
Walt waited for the deputy to tell him to get out of town. Instead, Randall started in about racehorses.
“I never saw her run but they say she was a damn fine horse,” said Randall about Jenna’s Back, a horse Walt had once trained.
“She was,” Walt said. “Didn’t have any quit in her.
“That was too bad she had to be put down.”
“Well, she was too good to have to suffer.”
“Can I ask a favor of you?” said Randall. “I bought this horse. He’s no thoroughbred but a nice quarter horse. I bought him off a fella over in Plainfield a few months back. He’s acting kind of funny.”
“The horse or the fella you bought him off of?”
Randall chuckling, saying good one.
“I’m no vet,” Walt said. “But I can tell you if you need one. How about we take a look at him this afternoon.”
“Works for me.”
“I’d take a look now except I’m supposed to meet Vern Mason soon.”
Walt noticed the sour look on Randall’s face at the mention of Vern. Walt was about to ask him about it when Sheriff Cady walked into the café.
. “There you are, Randall,” Sheriff Cady said “And looky there you are too, Mr. McKinley. Filling up your tank before you hit the road, I guess?”
The sheriff’s tone was friendly but Walt caught the point the man was making.
“I like to start the day out right,” Walt said. “Especially when I got a full day ahead of me.”
“Funny how just driving can take it out of man,” the sheriff said.
“True. Thing is, though, I’m spending the day here in Eden.”
“Is that right?” Sheriff Cady said, no change in his friendly tone. “Even when local law enforcement – that’s me, you understand? – wants you gone? Now, what on earth could make you go and do something so ill-advised?”
Walt glanced at Randall.
“I need to see a man about a horse.”
Sheriff Cady glared at Randall. The deputy forced himself to peruse the sports page of the newspaper, avoiding eye contact.
“Damnit, Randall,” Sheriff Cady said, shaking his head.
18
Walt met Vern at the office near the front of Mason’s Salvage Yard. Walking, he followed Vern back through the piles of junk. They made their way down orderly isles of broken cars and trucks, salvages stacked carefully and so high they cast shade from the morning sun. Then it struck Walt—the junkyard was immaculate.
Walt marveled at the neat rows of deserted machinery and the green, trimmed grass growing between the rows. Lush, like outfield grass in a baseball stadium. And no rats. None of the usual junkyard vermin. Spare parts were stacked neatly rather than scattered. A place for everything; everything in its place. Like every thin hair on the back of Vern’s noggin.
“I put it over here in Section C, row 54,” Vern said.
“This is the cleanest junkyard I ever saw,” Walt said. “Hell, it’s the only clean junkyard I ever saw.”
“Thank you.”
“Why do you bother?” Walt said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why keep it so clean?”
“I work here,” Vern said. “Who wants to work in filth? How come nobody’s amazed that Mylinda keeps the café so clean?”
“Well, people eat there. You put something in your mouth, you expect the place it was made to be clean. Nobody expects a junkyard to be clean.”
“Well, maybe I’ll open up a restaurant in the back here,” Vern said, stopping to lean against the trunk of a junked white Thunderbird. Vern pointed.
Walt turned his head, following the direction of Vern’s arm. It pointed to the charred hull of a car. The front end mangled. The door missing with nothing but twisted gaps where they should have been. It took Walt a moment to recognize the hull at Geri’s Camaro.
Walt squatted, looking into the driver’s side. The seats and steering wheel melted like candle wax.
“You know you could have warned me, just a little bit maybe,” Walt said. “Told me there was a fire.”
Vern shrugged. “Yeah, well, you know. It’s burned.”
Walt clenched his jaw. “What the hell did you drag me out here for? I don’t need to see this.”
Walt felt Vern move in closer from behind.
“The way the frame’s all bent up, I’d say she never felt the fire,” Vern said.
Walt squatted there, Vern hovering behind him. Walt sensed Vern’s arms go up in the air. On instinct Walt turned, an arm raised to block whatever might descend on his head.
Vern was stretching, mouth agape.
“A tad jumpy today, aren’t you?” Vern said, laughing through a yawn.
Walt stood and walked away.
19
Geri cussed when she accidentally slammed her pinky finger in the drawer of the highboy dresser in The Doll Room. The cursing and the yelling hurting her sore jaw. Her gums were still tender from her do-it-yourself dental work of the day before.
To ease the pain in her finger, she sucked on it for a few seconds. When she finally pulled her finger out of her mouth, her lips made a suction-kissing sound.
Geri examined her long nails. She had painted them earlier that morning, right after her ice cream breakfast. And just before she’d started in on the house, searching the place for the money. Her money. Now the crimson paint on her middle fingernail was scraped from tip to cuticle. She cursed again as if that might help.
Retrieving the nail polish and remover from the kitchen table, Geri returned to the spare bedroom. She plopped down on the bed among the carnage of broken doll heads and sagging, gangly bodies. Chemical fumes filled the room as she wiped at her nail with a cotton ball soaked in nail polish remover. She peered around the room.
Where? Fucking where would Vern hide it?
She wasn’t buying Vern’s “safe as baby Moses in his basket” horseshit about hiding her money in his junkyard. If Vern would take the money, he sure as shit was capable of lying to her about where he hid it. Best to look around, satisfy her curiosity. But where?
She screwed the cap back on the bottle of nail polish remover, bending down to place it on the floor. The bed creaked. She grabbed the bottle of red nail polish lying among the doll parts on the bed. She sat up straight, causing the mattress coils to groan. Geri glanced at the handmade quilt spread over the mattress. Quickly and expertly she repainted her nail.
She held her hand in the air limply as her nails. Geri bobbed up and down on the bed. The old mattress squeaked and creaked. She sat and waited, surveying the room.
Once she was sure her polish was fully dry, Geri stood and flipped the mattress. Doll parts flew every which way around the room. She expected to find the money layered in neat stacks over the box springs but found only a gingham dust ruffle.
She tapped the box springs with her bare left foot, careful not to scratch the fresh paint on her toenails. Grabbing the box springs firmly, she heaved it up against the wall. Nothing but an ugly rug underneath the bed.
Being thorough, she jumped around on the mattress where it had landed on the floor. Nothing out of the ordinary inside it.
Good for Vern, she thought.
It dawned on her she wasn’t looking for the money—she was looking not to find the money.
To hide the money from her was bad enough. But to lie to her about where he hid it? She would take that to mean Vern had decided to go off on his own, cut her out completely. She turned to the closet.
“I know my money’s not in there,” she said to herself.
She took a breath.
“Or is it?”
Walking into the closet, she scooted clothes on hangers from side to side. She peered behind them, below them. On the floor, pressed against the back wall and hidden by some old dresses was a large suitcase. It had a hard outer case, cream-colored, with a handle wrapped in leather.
The suitcase held something, she could tell that much as she dragged it with both hands to the center of the bedroom. The latches popped easily.
Geri lifted the top to reveal several bound stacks of old photographs, black-and-whites with yellowed edges. She thumbed through a few stacks of the pictures. Generations of Vern’s family standing, frowning against a backdrop of the grim, empty plains, next to ramshackle barns, atop the occasional nag workhorse.
“Nothing here but a bunch of dead people who look like Vern,” Geri said.
She tossed the photos back into the suitcase. She grabbed the nail polish remover and unscrewed the cap. With her other hand, she dug a lighter from the pocket of her blue jean cutoffs.
She held the remover over the photos, poised for pouring. She struck the lighter. The tongue of flame danced on its stream of butane just below the nail polish remover perched at the lip of the bottle. Her eyes darted back and forth between the dancing flame and the waiting liquid.
At the last second, Geri cut off the flame and put the lighter down. She screwed the cap back on the bottle of nail polish remover.
“Vernie can steal my money,” she said aloud, “but he can’t quite bring himself to lie about where he hid it. That’s a good boy.”
Besides, if her money did eventually turn up around the farmhouse – meaning Vern had in fact stolen from her and lied to her – she could always come back and torch his precious family photos to get even.
“I got options,” she told herself as she inspected her pretty nails.