Signs of Struggle (2 page)

The farmyard included three white barns with green roofs and a wide, open-faced garage housing trucks, tractors and machinery. White grain silos stood like bleached Pringles potato chip cans. Evidence of wealth everywhere.

The wind picked up, soughing through the trees. Pretty sound. Peaceful. I looked at the sky. Storm clouds building, thunderheads rolling in from the west. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. A sudden, rough breeze drove back some of the sick feeling I was fighting from my aching leg. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes. I’d rather have pain any day over nausea, but when I have both, I can be irritable.

We stared at the body. Schumacher turned away. “Better get a body bag, John,” he mumbled.

“Looks like he fell off the tractor and got run over,” Aldrich said. “Size of that mower, man, what’s left of him, musta bled to death in seconds. Exsanguination. God Almighty, Gene, this is terrible,” he said. He edged toward the body as Schumacher brought the body bag.

The two men snapped on latex gloves and walked over to the dead man. Hugh. They hesitated, then expertly, reverently, placed the remains in the bag, zipped the envelope shut, positioned themselves at each end of the heavy brown vinyl container, and lifted. They lugged the body to their vehicle and swung it inside, grunting in unison. They peeled away their gloves, dropped them in a bio-waste container just inside, and slammed the doors shut. Aldrich was weeping.

Schumacher edged over to the women and said something to Molly Heisler, who had positioned herself so that the young widow was shielded from the moving of her husband’s body. Heisler nodded and stood, then helped the other woman to her feet. The women, hanging onto each other, struggled to the passenger side of the mini-van. Heisler opened the door and helped the other woman inside and shut the door, then scrambled around to the driver’s side, seemingly unconcerned about getting blood smears in her spiffy van. Good for her. She drove off.

The EMS truck, silent and somber, followed the van down the lane.

I took another deep breath, felt better as the nausea backed off just a little, and looked around the farmyard, admiring the obvious pride of ownership. The wind kicked up again and the first drops of rain, big and thick, typical prelude to a toad-choking downpour, began to pelt down. The clouds broke open with a booming clap of thunder that made me jump, and heavy rain slammed into the farmyard. I didn’t seek shelter. I just let the rain fall on me, soaking my t-shirt. It felt good, cleansing, cool, like a sweet shower. I took off my glasses, lifted my face to the sky, and closed my eyes.

I heard tires crunching on gravel. I put my glasses back on and looked.

A white car with “Rockbluff County Sheriff” stenciled in green on the front door crawled up the drive and pulled to a stop in the driveway. The cruiser’s headlights glowed and the windshield wipers arced back and forth. The driver killed the lights and engine and got out. The wipers stopped in mid-sweep.

The young man, big and beefy, maybe a tight end in college, slipped into his raincoat and pulled on a black baseball cap with “RCSD” across the front in yellow letters. The snug raincoat made him look shrink-wrapped. He strode over to the bloody grass, meeting me there. He said, “This is worse than I thought when they called it in.”

His blue eyes, squinty against the rain, studied the lawn, streaking now, like faint pink ribbons trailing away from a girl’s hat. He turned and looked at me, offered his hand, and said, “Stephen Doltch, Deputy Sheriff.”

“Tom O’Shea, unfortunate passerby.” It was like shaking hands with a bear.

Just then lightning lacerated the sky, the heavens cracked wide open with window-rattling thunder, and buckets fell.

“Terrible accident,” Doltch yelled through the cloudburst.

I shouted back, “What makes you think it was an accident?”

Sometimes I like to stir things up just to see what happens next; besides, Doltch’s observation seemed like a pretty quick analysis of the situation. Not that I disagreed, but my leg hurt and nausea nudged my guts. I wanted to leave, and here’s a young deputy, supposedly inured to presumptions, making judgments already.

He looked at me as if a banana slug were emerging from my left eye socket. “What else
could
it be?”

I shrugged, trying to appear disinterested, uninvolved. I looked around. I rubbed the back of my aching leg. “Suicide? Farmers have high suicide rates.”

“Not Hugh,” Doltch said, his voice loud. Another shaft of lightning, farther away, then a distant rumble, rain letting up a little. “Too much to live for: Wendy, this farm, children someday, season tickets on the forty at Trice Stadium, forty rows up. No, sir, this wasn’t any suicide. Besides, I don’t think anyone would do himself in this way. My God.”

So the dead man was an Iowa State guy. Talk about a string of bad luck. First the football team, now this. I said, “I knew a guy in college who killed himself by drinking a beaker of hydrochloric acid.”

“This ain’t no suicide.”

“Murder?” Forever picking. Wise guy
. Provocateur
.

“Murder?” The young lawman grimaced. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, where do you get murder? Everybody liked Hugh. Good grief. You obviously aren’t from around here.”

“Actually, I am.” Faint flash of lightning in the next county east, thin thunder following. I pushed my glasses up on top of my head and wiped the rain from my face, took my glasses in hand and ran a fingertip across the lenses. I put them back on. I felt suddenly cold on a warm spring day. “I am about to buy a house. As soon as I find it.”

“That your truck back up the lane?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very nice.”

“Thank you.” The new, four-door pickup was a failed attempt to help me get my mind off my dead family. An attempt to buy a change of pace back in Georgia. Still, it is nice, a luxury I can easily afford after selling my half of the business; collecting on insurance policies; selling the house, furnished; selling the lake house, also furnished; selling the ski boat, and closing out our checking and money market accounts. My liquid assets nudge well into seven figures with more than my toenails on that million-dollar line.

The truck, a big V-8, is very fast, and I have driven it out to the top end, sometimes in the middle of moonlit nights on remote Georgia blacktops. With the headlights off. Slowing when I thought maybe a dog might wander out in front of me. Some farm kid’s pet. No fear for me, however. After all one’s greatest fears have happened, what is left to fear? I looked back at the deputy as he began to speak again.

The deputy said, “Georgia plates. I ran them. No problems, but they still aren’t Iowa plates, if you get my meaning. You’re still a stranger.”

“In a suddenly strange land.”

“I don’t appreciate a wise guy right now, Mr. O’Shea. Hugh Soderstrom was my friend.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know him.”

“Your loss.” A challenge in the statement, gone unanswered. No reason to.

I nodded my head. “I guess so.”

Doltch looked at me, searching for sarcasm. Another time. “I understand Chuck Aldrich was the first person here.”

“Besides Mrs. Soderstrom, that’s right.”

“Mind if I ask you what you were doing here?”

“Do I need a lawyer?”

Doltch smiled a little smile. “You are not a suspect; not even a person of interest.”

“If it’s an accident, there aren’t any suspects, or persons of interest.” Wiseguy again. Doltch picked up on it. His little smile went away. I rubbed my leg just below my butt. The rain continued, somewhat abated. Like it was tired, or had seen what was on the ground and slowed for a look before moving on. We both stood there, listening to the sound of gentle rain pelting into the earth. “To answer your question, I was just out enjoying a drive when I bumped into all this,” I said.

Doltch hunched his thick shoulders against the rain, reached inside his gray, opaque raincoat, and fished in his shirt pocket until he produced a pen and notebook. Technology stampede. “I’d like to ask you a couple more questions.”

Instantly, the rain stopped, as if to listen to my answers. Just like that. We both looked up. The sun came out. Perfect growing conditions which drive the economy of an entire state. The world smelled fresh and clean.

Doltch asked routine questions. No edge at all. He did not ask me if I saw or heard anything unusual. It was an accident and would be reported as such, although he had yet to ask the only witness what she saw. He finished in ten minutes, leaving me stunned over his zeal to get to the truth.

I must confess, though, it did excite me to see a law enforcement professional at work. It’s a natural rush no television crime show can match.

When the questions ended, Doltch said thanks, strode over to his cruiser, opened the rear door behind the driver’s side, pulled off his raincoat and tossed it in the backseat. He slammed that door, opened the driver’s door, scrunched in behind the wheel, turned his baseball cap around backwards, and began writing on a clipboard. He finished writing, placed the clipboard onto the seat next to him, and pulled the door shut. Then he left, nodding soberly at me as he drove away, tires wet on the gravel.

I hobbled back down the lane to my truck, opened the door, and slid inside, lifting my right leg and swinging it into a position on the floorboard in front of the accelerator. It felt like someone had stuck a hot ice pick in the back of my leg, then wiggled it around. My nausea was gone, gradually replaced by significant discomfort. Now it was tightening up. Oh, joy. I started the engine.

For a moment I just sat there, soaked to the skin, staring at that beautiful mailbox, but seeing the face of Wendy Soderstrom. The cloudburst had washed away the gore she’d pressed onto me, but I didn’t have any trouble remembering it felt like that gelatin that oozes out from around the circumference of the meat in a can of Spam just opened. Only warm.

Maybe it was time for the Iowa Tourism Board to revise their ad campaign. Maybe they could entice visitors with a come-on, something like, “See Iowa! Four beautiful seasons! Friendly people! Gorgeous, bloody women screaming down lovely country lanes!”

Maybe not.

After a while I dropped the truck into gear, performed a loose, three-point turn in the smushy gravel road, and headed back the way I had come. Clearly time to have adult beverages, a little reliable chemotherapy to smooth me out through the next little while. Time to think, my least favorite activity these days, next to messing around with the cell phone I hate and refuse to use.

B
ack at the motel, I asked Gotcha if she wanted to go out. She declined. So I took a quick shower, swallowed four Advil, then two more, and changed clothes. Even after seeing all the gore out at the Soderstrom place, I wanted food. I burned up a load of calories hugging the bloody lady, sprinting up the lane, fighting the pain of my hamstring, and holding back my sarcasm with “CSI Rockbluff” star, Deputy Stephen Doltch.

So I decided to forage for food after providing Gotcha with a jumbo Milk-Bone to tide her over. Her sloppy, wet munching sounds followed me across the room and out the door. She sounded like a Shop Vac cleaning up an oil spill.

The Grain o’ Truth Bar & Grill commands the west side of the Whitetail River at the edge of a business district cuddled alongside the river, north of a double arch limestone bridge. Beautiful bridge. Unique. Centerpiece of the town’s identity. Just today I saw it as part of the town’s logo on the side of the EMS vehicle and Deputy Doltch’s cruiser. I guess it’s an official bridge. Iconic.

I had noticed the bar and grill the day before and made a point to see what it offered beyond its interesting name. The “Grill” part drew me. And “Bar” produced a certain existential appeal, too.

A dozen vehicles hunkered down in the sunny parking lot, but one, a mint-condition pearl-gray '51 Packard, stood out among the Asian sedans and assorted pickup trucks with bumper stickers extolling the virtues of DeKalb Corn, Lutheran marriage, and Iowa football.

I parked and ambled toward the entrance, gritting my teeth as I concealed my limp, and crossed the slate patio. I pushed through the solid-core oak door. Subdued lighting and air conditioning greeted me inside.

In the background, the jukebox offered up Carmen Quinn singing “Stardust.” I needed, in addition to food, something nice, something soothing, and Carmen delivered. Nice surprise. I expected to hear “Bubba Shot the Jukebox Last Night.”

An old, sunburned, string-bean of a man sat in a window booth, watching me. He wore a white t-shirt with a green Celtics tank top over it, camouflage Bermuda shorts, orange elbow and knee pads, and red socks. No shoes. A pair of black in-line skates were plunked down on the bench at his side. In front of him, a skid-marked white bicyclist’s helmet with a peeling Cubs decal rested next to a half-empty pint. His wispy white hair sweat-stuck to his bony head, and he nodded at me and lifted his beer in salute.

“Horace Norris is the name,” he said, smiling through the gap in his front teeth.

“Thomas O’Shea, sir.”

“With that name, then, it’s the top o’ the mornin’ to ye at The Grain o’ Truth Bar & Grill, sir!”

It wasn’t morning, it was early afternoon. I replied, “And the rest o’ the day t'
you
.” I was in no mood to quibble over niceties like time reference errors. I’m Irish; the niceties often escape my countrymen and me, especially after dark.

The old man shifted in his booth, like a cat wiggling its backside before it pounces on prey. Then he lowered his voice, looked around conspiratorially, and said in a stage whisper, “I’m dyin’.”

I didn't know what to say to that, so I replied, “Aren’t we all, now?”

Horace Norris smiled. “And ye can’t stop me.”

“Nor would I try, without your permission.”

The old man grinned thoughtfully and nodded his head. “I can live with that!”

I nodded, smiled, and looked around.

There was a decent lunch crowd in the place, but the establishment's U-shaped bar, an ornate mission oak monster complete with a gleaming brass rail, drew my attention. Carved wooden shelves and an enormous mirror backed the bar, and on the walls a variety of old neon beer signs presented themselves, including one for Pickett’s, no longer made in Dubuque or anywhere else, to the deep sadness of connoisseurs.

Wooden booths along the walls, two antique pool tables and several tables and chairs rounded out the furnishings. In the back a standard red “EXIT” sign glowed and, nearby, a lavender neon sign reading “rest rooms” in elaborate script decorated the wall. Tiffany lamps, or more probably their replicas, hung low over the pool tables and throughout the place.

The presence behind the exquisite bar commanded my interest. Taking in my conversation with Horace Norris stood a man, thick and strong looking, wearing a loose black t-shirt with “IOWA” across the front in block gold letters. I approached the bar, sat on a stool, and scrutinized the hand-written menu on whiteboard over the mirror behind the bar. The bartender acknowledged my presence with a nod of his head, but said nothing. He put down his Wall Street Journal.

“Beautiful bar."

“Thank you,” he said, his voice a deep baritone, rich and rumbling.

I ordered the Specialty of the House, the Loony Burger, a 12-ounce ground round burger on a Kaiser roll. French fries included. The man silently prepared the food, working efficiently at the grill and deep fryer. When the meat sizzled and the fries bubbled in the hot oil, he returned to stand before me.

"What would you like to drink, Mr. O'Shea?"

I ordered a Three Philosophers, not expecting him to have it. The bartender produced my favorite Belgian ale, popped the cap, and handed over the bottle and a frosted tulip glass. He said, “Excellent choice for a hot day.” I poured the liquid, leaving a one-inch head, drank it down, and set the empty glass on the counter. He gave me another and I polished it off, too. A minor buzz edged into my head. Empty stomach syndrome combined with 9.8% alcohol.

"You call it the Loony Burger because one has to be crazy to order that much?"

The bartender, handsome in a rough way, my age, not quite as tall, inclined his head just a tad. His t-shirt hung loosely from thick trapezius muscles inserted into the base of his skull. He did not have a neck. The sleeves of the black t-shirt were tight. I noticed when he came back from starting my order that he wore black jeans and a black belt with a small turquoise and silver buckle.

His black and silver hair was combed straight back and gathered into a short, flat ponytail. Black eyes under thick salt-and-pepper brows scrutinized me. The man’s hawk nose made him look menacing, although the eyes were merely intelligent.

He said, “I named it after
me
. It is my creation. It is my business. Loony Burger lacks dignity, but enjoys twisted commercial appeal. It works. I sell many Loony Burgers. Chance to sell out to big businessman from Waterloo for serious wampum. I declined. He envisioned chain. He calls every year with ever-growing offer.”

“You named it after yourself?” The man nodded solemnly. “You’re an Indian.”

“You have a steel-trap mind. Custer could have used you.”

“So what’s your name, and don’t tell me it’s Burger,” I said. “I’ve been there, and I know a German when I see one.”

A hint of humor passed across the bartender’s visage, either at what I had said or the name he was about to provide. His eyebrows danced independently of each other, giving his craggy face an aura of interior conflict.

“My name is Lunatic Mooning,” he said, his rich voice adding luster to his name. The Loony in Loony Burger is short for ‘Lunatic.'”

“’Lunatic Mooning’?” I said to myself. He turned away and attended to my order, then brought the Loony Burger on a large, thick porcelain plate in one hand and, in the other hand, a green plastic tray lined with waxed paper overflowing with French fries. In the background, Nat Cole was singing about how, when he falls in love, it will be forever.

I looked at the man, selected a fry as thick as a hot dog, dunked it in a coffee-cup sized stainless-steel vat of ketchup shoved in next to the fries, and placed it in my mouth. It tasted good, fresh, clean. An excellent French fry seasoned with lemon pepper and garlic salt. Crispy on the edges. Outstanding. Good to be hungry.

“So, tell me about your name,” I said, picking up the Loony Burger with both hands.

“My mother, slave to Indian myth and tradition, named me after the first thing she saw after I was born. She gave birth to me in the state mental hospital in Mt. Pleasant, looked up, and saw a lunatic mooning her for all he was worth. Not a common name. I happen to like it.”

“Lucky for you your mother didn’t look out the window and see a squirrel with diarrhea. Otherwise you might not have liked your name so much.” I took a bite of the burger. Delicious.

The big Indian, his gaze intense and dark, looked at me, nodded slowly, and said, “Ugh.”

I finished chewing my first bite and swallowed, nodding in satisfaction. I took another bite of the burger. The inside of my mouth smiled and sighed. Thick, succulent meat with some kind of sauce I’d never tasted before, plus honey mustard and crisp dill pickle chips. Understanding the extent of my hunger, I ordered another Loony Burger, hold the fries. Then, “As long as I’m being nosey,” I said, “tell me about the name of your establishment.”

“With pleasure,” he said. “Good beer is made from good grain, and there is a grain of truth in every good beer. One grain of truth I have acquired after several good beers, often realized, is this: I don’t like people.”

Sensing a trap, I said, “But that’s the exact wrong reason to open a bar, isn’t it? Bar owners are gregarious, enjoy social interaction, want people to know their name. Haven’t you ever seen
Cheers
re-runs?”

“Every man should engage in work that affirms his beliefs, and I have done so. I have strong beliefs, which once were mere biases but are fast becoming convictions, about the ultimate distastefulness of man. I opened this bar to prove it, and I haven’t been disappointed. The Grain o’ Truth. Everybody reinforces my predisposition about how unlikable people really are.”

“What about Horace Norris over there, he seems like a great old guy.”

“Sometimes it takes a while. Most people do not immediately reveal their character. There is a veneer behavior that makes real behaviors difficult to discern. With Horace, time will tell, as it does with everyone. Especially politicians.”

I paused, thinking about what Lunatic Mooning just said. Then I asked him, “So, you don’t like me?”

“I
won’t
,” he said simply. “But don’t take it personally. It’s just information.” Then, “Perhaps another Three Philosophers?”

I nodded and said, “Even though you’re not going to like me, I still would like to ask you a question. Bartenders are famous for being veritable founts of knowledge spanning the breadth and depth of the human experience.”

“You have the gift of discernment,” Lunatic Mooning said.

I told him I was looking for a house and some land, and described it. I wanted a unique house, solid construction, private, ideally on land with trees. A nice view from an elevation. No nearby neighbors. A place to heal, if that was going to happen, but I left out that part. Mooning listened intently, and when he served the third ale, surprised me.

“There is a man who has such a house, Mr. O'Shea,” he said. “His name is Gunther Schmidt, and he built a house on the bluffs south of here, before you get to Guttenberg. The land is more than you want. Fifty or sixty acres, mostly timber and rock. He might break it up for you if you only want part of it.” Mooning leaned forward a little and put his hands on the bar. The hands were thick and broad, more like a pair of catcher’s mitts.

“Gunther builds strong houses to last. Exceeds code on everything. Uses four-by-eights two feet apart, copper wire and copper pipes, screws in hardwood floors instead of nailing them, countersinks the screws and hand-cuts wooden pegs to fill in. Even the sub-flooring’s oak. He takes pride in what he does. You will see eagles from that place.”