I excused myself past a woman and two small boys who were trying on rubber boots in the aisle, and headed for the door marked “Feed Bin”.
Susan was slinging fifty pound sacks of feed around like down pillows, her short iron-grey hair standing up on end like the feathers of a startled rooster. Her hat was on the floor and her sleeves were rolled up to expose the kind of muscles that I only dream about.
“Hey,” she said, “catch.” A bag of feed came sailing towards me. Susan was always doing that kind of stuff when I was living with her, but I was in better shape then. Back then, I would have tossed it back. I had to catch it—or lose face, and I did both. The bag bowled me right over and I landed on my butt with the feed sack in my lap like a large, unwanted baby.
“Thanks, Susan,” I said.
“Not at all. Toughen you up. You okay?”
“I’m fine.” The feed truck guy had come around the corner at the moment of impact and looked mildly surprised, but very kindly did not laugh. I scrambled to my feet and put the feed onto a storage rack. I can’t say I tossed it. Not really. But I tried.
“Can you give us a hand?” Susan said, and I spent the next twenty minutes acting stronger than I am, which I would undoubtedly pay for the next day.
It was just as I was easing the last sack into place and Susan was signing the invoice that I heard a noise from Susan’s apartment upstairs. It was the cry of a baby.
Thirteen
Old man singing songs to a hairless child
lullabies in his eyes
and he wonders was he ever that damn small?
—Shepherd’s Pie
I pretended I didn't hear that cry. I suspected that Francy was up there with Beth. In fact I was surprised that I hadn’t figured it out right away, but I had promised the cops that I would tell them if I found out where she was. I wouldn’t know for sure unless I asked, and I wasn’t planning to ask.
I didn’t promise the cops I would report all my suspicions. I could suspect that Francy was there without actually knowing it for a fact. That little detail would keep me from blushing like a tea rose the next time I saw Becker or Morrison. The most important thing was for me to find out who killed John Travers, before the cops got to Francy.
Aunt Susan heard the little Beth-cry as well and gave me a sharp look, one eyebrow raised. Her eyebrows are bushy and black and it’s quite the effect. She taught me how to do it when I was twelve, both of us practising together in front of the mirror. I still can’t do it as well as she does, although my eyebrows are pretty severe, too.
I started whistling, picked her hat up off the floor, dusted it off and handed it to her with a smile. She handed the clipboard back to the feed guy, and we headed back out to the front of the store.
The woman and the kids were still trying on boots in the aisle and one child seemed to have its foot stuck. The dog food buyer at the counter was gone, replaced by Otis Dermott, one of the Cedar Falls holy rollers. I’d seen him handing out tracts outside Rico Amato’s antique store. Theresa, Susan’s help, beckoned us over.
“Afternoon, Susan,” Otis said, touching his hat. He’s bald as a baby and wears the hat all the time, probably even in the bath.
Susan gave him a curt nod.
“Donna-Lou’s been thinking to install some more waterers in the chicken house,” Otis said. His wife had a successful egg-business in Cedar Falls. She started out with a couple of laying hens for bingo money and found a big local market.
Otis still kept pigs the way he always had, but it was “Donna-Lou’s Dozens” that kept the farm afloat. You could get them in Cedar Falls and a couple of places in Laingford, and people kept telling her to expand. Guess she was doing it, finally.
Otis saying something like that to Aunt Susan was like saying “Donna-Lou’s been thinking to give you a couple of hundred dollars.” She just had to pay attention.
“How many?” she said.
“Thirty,” Otis said.
“Business must be picking up,” Susan said.
Otis just grinned. “What have you got in stock?” he said.
Susan gestured with her head for him to follow her into the aisle where the water stuff was. I like agri-plumbing—it’s unpretentious physics at its best, so I tagged along. We squeezed past the rubber-boot family and a mountain of small boots. They were having some disagreement about which colour to buy.
“We’ve got a couple of raccoons hiding out in the barn,” I said, generally.
“That’s awkward,” Aunt Susan said.
“Real varmints,” Otis said.
“The Boss-man is trying to trap them,” I said.
“Of course. They’re wily, though,” Susan said. “Especially if it’s a mother with her young.”
“I haven’t seen them, but I know they’re there.” I said.
“What kind of trap’s he set?” Otis said. “If it was me, I’d just shoot ’em.”
“Raccoons are survivors,” Susan said. “They can elude a man with a gun, no problem.”
“I hope so,” I said. “You heard Dweezil died?”
“Who’s Dweezil?” Otis said.
“Poor old Dweezil,” Susan said. “Randy bugger though, wasn’t he?”
I lost the subtle thread for a moment. “Randy? Susan, the poor thing had asthma. You know that. It wasn’t his fault.” Up went the eyebrow. Oh. Duh.
“Well, he did mess around,” I said. “Probably got what was coming to him,” I said. “Old goat.”
“Who’s Dweezil?” Otis said.
“At least we know what killed him,” Susan said. “Now Otis, we have a full set of Grunbaum waterers and all the hookups in stock—look at this.” She pulled a bunch of plumbing off a rack and started to talk business. I crept away, having got what I wanted.
As I passed the rubber-boot family, I leaned down to the smaller of the two children, who was crying.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Is there a problem here?” He was about three and looked up at me with some surprise.
“He wants the same kind as his brother, but they don’t make them that small. They only have these,” the woman said, holding up a very small pair of black wellies. The older child was looking smug and holding a pair of camouflage green rubber boots to his chest.
“Hey,” I said to the small kid, “see these?” I was wearing my barn boots, size eight versions of the tiny ones in the woman’s hand. The kid looked. Then he nodded.
“These,” I said, “are the very coolest boots in the world. If Michael Jordan was a farmer, he’d wear these boots.”
By the time I got to the counter, the older child was frantically searching for black wellies. I only hoped Susan had them in his size.
I bought and paid for a couple of bags of Shure-Gain and Theresa helped me carry them out to the truck.
“Polly,” she said, “can you do me a favour?”
“Sure,” I said. “What?” I didn’t know her very well, but any friend of Susan’s, etcetera.
“Well, my uncle’s in the hospital, eh?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Not serious, I hope.”
“No. Just a head injury, they said.