“I think you need a lawyer.”
“We can’t afford one.”
“Then maybe you can’t afford to be involved with this.”
“We shouldn’t need a lawyer. We haven’t done anything wrong. This is the United States of America.”
“No country is immune to human nature.”
Grahm reached the end of his desire to talk. He regretted coming. Talking to people was difficult enough, even in the best circumstances. Now he felt angry, and he drove away.
THINK LESS, DO MORE
JACOB HELM CLIMBED INTO THE JEEP, BACKED OUT OF THE GARAGE attached to the side of his log home, and drove the eight miles into Words. He had bought the Words Repair Shop building soon after moving into the area, converting it from what had once been a creamery. At the time he’d known little about running a business, but he needed a new beginning. After Angela’s death, he’d quit his job of eleven years (he’d been an engineer for an electrical component company), sold their suburban property, and left Sheboygan. He ended up here, determined to immerse himself in anything that bore no resemblance to his past.
The old creamery was bigger than he’d needed for a repair shop—even a shop where he worked on everything from tractors to watches. He added a craft room, managed by Clarice Quick, who opened and closed the building when he wasn’t there. She knew the local people, ran the cash register, and did the billing.
The smells from the two parts of the building competed for dominance. Oil, grease, gasoline, hot metal, fermenting leather, burned-out electrical components, tobacco, mildew, mud, and workbench solvents did battle with the thinner but better defined odors of scented candles, dried flowers, paraffin oil, fabrics treated with fabric softeners, lemon furniture polish, air fresheners, Clarice’s lavender body wash and her hair spray. The combined fragrance one encountered in the doorway adjoining the two rooms, if truth be told, resembled nothing else on earth.
“Good morning, Mister Helm,” Clarice said when Jacob came in. He suspected she would refrain from using the formal title if she ever thought about it, but when her mind was consumed with other things—in its normal state—she relied on the expression her upbringing had prescribed to her for addressing teachers, shopkeepers, and employers. “We have an order for eight quilts, Mister Helm.”
“Someone must be reselling them.”
“They said they would make good Christmas presents.”
“I forget who makes them.”
“Olivia Brasso—the cute one in the wheelchair. Her sister Violet, the bigger one, usually brings in her things. They work as a team, you might say. Always have for almost as long as I can remember, though if you ask me it would be no picnic taking care of Olivia. Despite her small size and her infirmity, there’s something quite frightening about her. I don’t know if others have noticed it, but, oh, yes, and Mr. Shrinkle left a wheel from his farm wagon. I guess it needs a tube or spokes or something.”
Jacob stopped listening and resumed welding a hay rake that he had begun working on the day before.
Mid-afternoon, five men dressed in olive fatigues came inside. Jacob had seen them before but did not know them by name. For several minutes they walked from place to place, not speaking. The largest man closed the door into the craft shop. Another turned off the radio beside the air compressor.
“You the owner?” asked the oldest of the five, a muscular man with small eyes set inside a wide, square face.
Jacob nodded.
“Know anything about guns?”
“Not much.”
“Know anything about machine guns? Ever work on them before?”
“Some. I was a mechanic in the Guards.”
“We have several we want you to check over.”
“If they’re Chinese nine millimeter, forget it. They’re junk.”
“These are American and Israeli, thirty and fifty caliber.”
A tractor stopped in the road and backed an empty manure spreader toward the open double doors into the shop.
“We’ll bring them over to your house,” said the man. “We know where you live.” And they left.
July Montgomery climbed off the tractor and came inside.
“What did those men want?” he asked, watching them climb into an SUV with tinted windows.
“Nothing,” said Jacob. Three years ago July had pulled Jacob’s jeep out of a ditch after he’d had too much to drink, and after that awkward meeting they got along well. July even occasionally showed up at Jacob’s house with beer and cigars. They played chess and cribbage next to the woodstove. Though July was ten or fifteen years older, he was the only person Jacob ever talked to, in the sense of really talking to someone.
“That was Moe Ridge, and those men are in his militia,” said July.
“I know who they are.”
July turned toward his spreader. “Chain broke,” he said. “Bearings are making noise and she needs new grease cups.”
“Might take a while, I’m busy.”
“You look tired, Jacob. You should get more sleep. Where’s the soda machine that used to be here?”
“Company took it back. Said they’d replace it, but I haven’t seen them for two weeks.”
“Too bad. I was going to buy you a soda. Say, there’s a lawn mower on the edge of town that won’t start.”
“Bring it over sometime next week.”
“The woman who owns it doesn’t have a way to get it here,” said July. “It’s a big one and she doesn’t know anything about motors.”
“You can show her,” said Jacob, opening the door to the craft shop and returning with a can of soda from the refrigerator on the other side of the cinder block wall. He handed it to July and turned on the radio.
“Thanks,” said July, “but I want you to show her.”
“Don’t have time.”
“Poor thing’s lawn is getting away from her.”
“Don’t have time.”
“Jacob, this is a good idea. She needs your help.”
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know how old she is. Ask her. She’s at the end of the first road after the bridge, right over there,” and he pointed behind him. “Her name’s on the mailbox: Gail. Tell her I sent you. If she isn’t home, go back. Her schedule is hard to predict. Gail Shotwell, don’t forget.”
“Clarice can call her.”
“Don’t do that—she’ll say she doesn’t need any help.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t like talking to women I don’t know. I just don’t think—”
“That’s your whole problem, Jacob. Think less, do more, that’s my motto.”
PROTECTING PAPERS
GAIL SHOTWELL WORKED THE NIGHT SHIFT AT THE PLASTIC FACTORY in Grange and drove home in gray light. She made a piece of toast with peanut butter, ate half of it, partly undressed, slept three hours on the sofa in the living room, woke up, and ate the rest of the toast. She played a CD and felt pretty good then in a sleepy kind of way. She thought about eating another piece of toast, but before she could get a slice of bread into the toaster a loud knocking arrived on the front door.
Gail