Dead Floating Lovers (4 page)

“Who’s gonna pay for gas?” I stopped, thinking of my sorry bank account.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

Good deal. The only thing I’d be missing out on was a few days of typing Jackson’s Chaucer into the computer. Anyway, with my skill on the Internet, we’d never have to take the trip. How many Chet Wakowskis could there be?

I waited at the counter and thought about the jobs I had to do at home—find Chet Wakowski and plan my luncheon date with Jackson. I figured I’d make mushroom soup after all—but no self-picked morels involved. I thought of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath: a funny, bawdy woman now in Jackson’s clumsy hands. It was partly for her sake I kept helping him. I loved seeing her take Jackson’s self-serving words about her and twist them on their head. One of Chaucer’s greatest characters. A “gat-toothed” woman after my own heart.

Eugenia took the twenty I held out and slapped change into my hand.

“Think ‘pickle.’” She leaned across the broken and taped counter glass, whispering the two words at me.

“Huh?”

She jerked her head toward the vestibule. “I said, ‘think pickle.’ It’s a hint.”

I made a face. As if I needed a hint. “I’ll find her as soon as I get home.”

Eugenia shrugged and took aim at an early fly with her ever-present flyswatter.

I went out to my Jeep with nothing but mushrooms, pickles, and a bright future in computer research dancing in my head.

The next morning I had a lunch to plan; mushroom soup to make. Part of me looked forward to Jackson’s visits—they reminded me why I divorced him. Part of me dreaded them—he made me remember that steady stream of coeds calling, showing up at the front door of our Ann Arbor home, and leaving little things like panties in our car. When you have a history with someone, no matter how checkered, it makes a mark. There was odd comfort in feeding Jackson again, in sitting afterward, having a glass of wine, laughing about people we knew. I wouldn’t mention my looming financial crisis to him. Not his problem anymore. We had split everything fifty/fifty in the divorce. I’d taken the money from the sale of our Ann Arbor home and bought the Willow Lake property. I used my inheritance from my dad to live on. How things went for me from here on in was solely up to me. I had resources. I would figure it out.

It was one of those fortunate May mornings when the earth apologizes for winter. There was a warm, soft breeze. Daffodils and blue windflowers bloomed through last year’s rusty leaf bed. The warming wind in the garden smelled of earth moving. It smelled of worms and seeds stretching and carving summer niches. It smelled of water and then of powdered leaves. Some of the daffodils were caught and couldn’t open, buds bent at the neck, leaf spikes twisted through a single noose-like hole in an old oak leaf. It was my job to police the bloom, free the bright yellow heads. Jobs like these took precedence over soup. I got on my knees, down where the earth was still cold, and freed the flowers. Beneath the leaves were more pale flower heads just breaking through. Even the reluctant double pink peony had little bent spikes coming in around last year’s dead foliage.

Days like this were rare. Pure and clean. Nothing to do with dead bones. Nothing to do with sadness. All new life and possibility. I wanted to crawl through the beds and clear and see which of my plants made it—pure joy. And which were dead. I would do some mourning—for a poppy that was black and rotted, with no sign of life. But for the tree peonies I could only rejoice that they’d made it through another winter: my lovely, frilly showgirls of the garden.

I gave myself an hour then sat back on my knees looking wistfully at my filthy, cracked nails. I sighed. I had that mushroom soup to prepare. Shopping to do. Jackson would be here for lunch and I would have nothing.

As I stood, wiped my hands along my jeans, and kicked dirt from my tennis shoes, Crazy Harry Mockerman, my neighbor, came down the drive in his slapped-together vehicle which was half truck, half car, and parts from other things I couldn’t identify. The vehicle choked to a halt and Crazy Harry waved as he turned it off. The motor went on chugging. Harry flipped the key again—back and forth. Nothing. The motor coughed a couple of times and went right on running.

Harry climbed down and stood looking at the front of his contraption. He lifted one side of the hood and stared in. I joined him, looking down, without comprehension, at the crusted motor. Harry turned, gave me a grizzled smile, and scratched the back of his gray head.

“Heard of ’em not starting …,” he said.

We watched the motor bounce and cough until it finally stopped and Harry shut the hood.

“Knew it’d get the idea sooner or later.” He smiled, his lips not moving enough to show teeth but enough to give the idea of merriment. “Came to rototill that bed.”

My house sat in a valley cut by water racing downhill to Willow Lake eons ago. I already cleared and planted most of the level back area. Now it was time to begin moving uphill. I was thinking beds of zucchini and pumpkins; stands of tall, heavy tomatoes. Maybe beans and corn. Things I could can and eat as starvation loomed when my money ran out. Or, more probably, give away all those zucchinis as they piled up on the kitchen counter, filled the refrigerator, and spilled out the door. And pumpkins? How many pies could I eat? But there was pumpkin bread, soup, and muffins. I’d live like a queen, right out of my freezer.

Harry had cleared out the trees from the new bed the year before, but still he complained he would be awhile. “What with all the roots.” He unloaded his old rototiller, lugged it up the hill to where the bed was staked out, pulled the cord a couple of times to get his machine roaring, then bent his skinny chest into it, pushing hard as the tines dug and cut into the sandy soil.

I was used to the look of Harry Mockerman, ministerial in his black funeral suit (in case he died and no one could find it to bury him in) and to the wry humor he treated me to as he would smile over my latest diagram for a flower bed—all perfectly detailed—scratch at his rough chin, and shake his head. He wasn’t one to put things on paper. Maybe he couldn’t write, or read. I didn’t know and didn’t care. He knew the woods and knew the earth and how to live with little to rely on but his wits. Someone to pay attention to, I’d thought from the first time I met him. A lot to learn from Crazy Harry Mockerman, though I wouldn’t be cooking roadkill, the way he did, anytime soon. Dead possum stew and flattened squirrel frittata still weren’t part of my favorite cuisine.

“Brought you over those morels you wanted,” he yelled above the noise of the machine and gave me another smile, a kind of sinking in of his lips over teeth that had to be there somewhere.

“Thanks,” I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled back.

“Six dollars. Cheap compared with what those city stores charge you.” He shut off the rototiller and made his way back down to talk. He’d been working all of five minutes. He charged me by the job, not by the hour, so Harry’s frequent conversation breaks cost me nothing.

I nodded. “Very cheap,” I agreed.

“Better than buying them, you could come out in the woods with me and find ’em. My eyes ain’t what they used to be. Other things I could show you. Milkweed pods. Best thing ever when you know how to cook ’em in three boiling waters and fry ’em up in butter. Puffballs be coming soon. Slice ’em up, cook ’em in butter. Um, um.”

Almost every recipe Harry gave me ended with “fry ’em up in butter,” but whenever he sent over one of his delicacies I had to agree: Harry Mockerman knew how to cook.

Maybe this was just what I needed to learn. Lots of people back in the woods didn’t have jobs. Lots of families at the far end of sandy two-tracks didn’t rely on a steady income. Some did logging. Some made crafts all winter and went from fair to fair, selling them all summer. Some lived off welfare. They got along the way families have always gotten along. A secret I hadn’t learned yet. If I was going to be able to stay up here I had to find a source of income. It wasn’t going to be welfare. Probably not logging. I wasn’t very handy with string and ice cream sticks. Had to be something else.

I left Harry at his job and drove all the way into Kalkaska, ten miles beyond Leetsville, and bought my salad vegetables at the Cherry Street Market. I bought a pint of thick cream for the soup, and a loaf of Stone House Bread. Jackson had said he’d bring bread but he rarely remembered details like a loaf of bread, a jug of wine …

A fine mind such as Jackson’s spun incessantly with Middle English conjugations and minutia of fourteenth-century dress. No place in there for bread or—when we were married—a lot of other things.

Back home I let my sliced morels simmer gently in butter, onions, and garlic while I called Detective Brent in Gaylord. Each state police post covered a lot of territory up here. They took over in cases too big for the smaller village police departments—like Leetsville, though Chief Lucky Barnard and Dolly fought hard to keep their hands on what they thought of as their turf. Michigan State Police detectives were constantly over-extended but very professional and hard-working. Still, this particular detective didn’t much like the press, especially stringers like me, who came and went like the seasons.

“Yes,” Officer Brent, of the unibrow, big chest, stiff back, and zipper-straight mouth, said in response to my inquiry about the bones found out at Sandy Lake. The informative “yes” was in response to a question as to where the bones were now.

“No,” I said, and gave my little false laugh. “I’m asking you if they’ve been taken down to Lansing for further analysis.”

“And your answer was ‘yes,’” he said, sighing at the other end of the line.

“What are they hoping to find? Age of the bones? Are they Native American? Female? Murder?”

“Female. Looks like murder. Bullet hole straight through. That’s it. I’ve given you all I can. We might not know more for weeks.”

“Has anyone from the Odawa been in touch?”

“They called us.”

“Are they willing to wait?”

“Have to. This is a criminal investigation. Unless we find this all happened a few hundred years ago, and that was a musket ball went through her, we call it current and ongoing.”

“If ongoing, do you have any leads as to who the bones might have been?”

“Too early for that.”

“Anyone missing over the last few years?”

“A few. We’re looking into it.”

“So, no imminent arrests, no suspects, no persons-of-interest.”

“Nope.”

“Anything found out at the lake?”

“Nope. Divers going in as soon as I can get them out there.”

“Any idea what they’ll be looking for?”

“Nope.”

Since we were down to the “nope” answers, I figured I’d better write up what I had and send it to Bill. Tomorrow would be another day. Maybe I’d call the tribal offices, see what their story was. By then I would have found Chet Wakowski. Dolly would have talked to him. We’d get him back up here and the whole thing would be cleared away. Maybe that wedding present of hers had nothing to do with anything. Maybe it was another set of worn-off dog tags with a red beer stein charm attached … well … there was no getting around that one.

I hung up and wrote my new story, padded with facts about the water levels in the Great Lakes. Not a big story, but intriguing. Bill called when he got it and asked me to get back to him daily until it was over. The thought struck me, as I hung up, that there might be a full-time job right there at the newspaper. I’d have to go in and talk to him. At least I could make him aware that I was looking. It wouldn’t hurt.

I finished the soup and put the salad together, chilled the bottle of white wine I’d bought, and went back to the computer to search for Chet Wakowski. Probably not a lot to find, but I felt kind of sorry for Dolly and wanted to help. This “family” stuff was important to her, for whatever reason. I still had the vision of those dog tags lifting out of the water, a glint of sun on the red beer stein. Made me an accessory. As long as I kept what happened a secret, I was as culpable as Dolly.

I Googled Chet Wakowski, then Chester Wakowski, first in Detroit, and then in all of Michigan. Nothing. I Googled Mildred Wakowski, his mother. Nothing. I did a reverse phone book search. Again nothing. I could spring for a full search from one of those pop-up companies—supposedly there was information on a Chester Wakowski, but I didn’t want to. Dolly would be over later. We would compare notes then.

While I was on the computer I looked for Ellen Liddy Watson, Eugenia’s new “relative,” and found her easily. An outlaw all right. A woman hung by a lynch mob because she dared settle land and buy cattle. What a story! Could break your heart. Good for Eugenia, to claim Ellen. Maybe I’d write up something on her. Had to be a magazine printing the truth about old lies. Or not. Old lies have a way of digging deep into American psyches. But that “pickle” hint … ?

Eugenia was still ahead of me. Maybe there was more than one Ellen Liddy Watson. Nope, there it was on the screen. Her first husband’s name: William A. Pickell.

I felt so smug. Nobody could put anything over on me. I might not be able to find Chet Wakowski, but I could sure find a “Pickle.”

With the addition of cream and a lot of chicken stock, the soup was ready. I set a table out on the deck. The sky was dark off to the north, but when I asked Harry what he thought he told me not to worry, “Nothin’ comin’ our way. Blow right on over.”

My faith in Harry’s nature knowledge was so deep I spread a white tablecloth, set a bowl of daffodils at the center, and put out bright yellow dishes.

The soup cooled. The salad warmed. The bread hardened. The daffodils bent to drop pollen on the white cloth. I sat at my lovely table and waited, yet one more time, for Jackson, thinking seriously about poisonous mushrooms and how everything had its place in the big scheme of things.