“Helen?” he called out as he knocked on the screen door. “Hello, Helen?”
The interior door jerked open. He was confronted with a gaunt, blotchy old woman whose blue hair twisted wildly out from her scalp like extruded strands of gunmetal. She took a step back, her floral-print muumuu billowing about her shrunken form.
“What do you want?” she demanded, scrutinizing him through squinty eyes.
“I was looking for Helen. Is she home?”
She put her hand on the edge of the door and replied sternly, “I don’t know you.”
“I’m Russell,” he gave a halfhearted wave. “Russell Pinske. A friend of hers. Are you Myrtle?”
“I said I don’t know you.”
“Well, I’m a friend of Helen’s. She mentioned you once to me.”
She thought about this, then said, “She never said anything about it.”
“Yeah, I haven’t actually talked to her in a long time.”
In a niche on the far wall stood a statuette of St. Christopher that Helen had always displayed. It was something he’d entirely forgotten about, and the sight of it set him adrift in a flood of memories until the old woman responded.
“Doesn’t sound too friendly to me.”
He shifted the weight of his backpack and returned his attention to the conversation. “Is she home? I just got in town and I’d like to see her.”
“I’m not saying a thing,” she said, closing the door a little and placing more of herself behind it.
He craned around to more fully face her. “Could you tell her Russell came around? I’m sure she’d like to know.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she told him, then slammed the door and loudly threw the bolt.
Either he’d forgotten that downtown was pretty noisy, or there was more traffic running through here than there used to be. A few blocks along Lincoln Way, the town’s thoroughfare, he came upon a local furniture dealer and was greeted by a novel sight. In the parking lot was a king-sized canopy bed with a high mattress and fluffy comforter. A sign hanging from the canopy identified it as “The Celestial Bed.” Beside the bed stood a fat man in a tasseled nightcap and flowing nightgown, waving to passersby with a glittery wand topped by a silver star.
Russell walked on and was glad to see the usual contingent of bums loitering around the Red Rooster Inn, open for business already. Carl used to tend bar there, but now he worked an office job in Chicago, commuting from the town of Stillwater, about twenty miles southeast, where he and his girlfriend, Ellie Sellers, lived. He talked to Carl a week ago and told him about what he was up to. They’d get together somehow, but it was uncertain when, as was just about everything else in his life.
In the window of a shop he saw one of the posters that was part of the new tourist initiative, reprints of advertisements first produced in the Twenties. They were stylish renderings of bobbed beauties and dapper gents enjoying the charms of the Indiana duneland. A couple of years ago Carmela had sent him a print depicting well-heeled couples on Door Prairie’s lawn-bowling greens. During the years he’d been away she’d kept him abreast of local developments, like the old tractor factory being turned into a shopping mall and the expansion of the marina on Long Lake, largest of the town’s nine lakes. He called her the day he sold the poster, and they discussed his planned trip. She insisted that he come see them before heading off to points unknown, so here he was.
He left the main drag and made his way down a cobblestone alley behind old warehouses, then crossed the tracks and cut through the parking lot of the roller rink on his way to where he thought his friends lived. Twenty-one Melon was the address he had for the house they’d bought shortly after their marriage. He didn’t know exactly where Melon was, but knew it was by Lily Lake, on the east side of town.
The street took him past a foundry and a scrap-metal yard, then into a residential area built on a low rise above the blue ellipse of Fox Lake. Bulging roots of sycamores buckled and broke the sidewalks. He took the road that wound out to Lily Lake, a fair-sized body of dark, still water ringed by lily pads. He stopped in the weeds on the side of the road to get his canteen from his pack. As he drank he looked across the street at the overgrown acreage that was once owned by Door Prairie’s most notorious citizen, known locally as Nellie Widow. Her gruesome exploits were popularized in all manner of lurid publications and duly chronicled by the county historical society.
Early in the twentieth century a woman calling herself Nellie Harper advertised in lonely-hearts newspapers for eligible bachelors to come visit her at her farm, luring them with livestock and land. She used a hatchet to dispose of seven unfortunate suitors, along with three children and two farmhands before the brother of her last catch took his fears to the police. Her house burned to the ground as an investigation got underway. The remains of her victims were found in a pit in the cellar, chopped up and covered with quicklime. A female corpse was recovered from one bedroom, but it had been decapitated, and a positive identification was impossible. Witnesses said the body belonged to a woman much smaller than beefy Nellie. She was reportedly seen in California the following year, and sightings persisted along the West Coast for a decade or so. The case was never resolved.
Melon was to his right, directly opposite the heavy steel gate that barred vehicles from entering the desolate, old farm. Hot and tired, weighed down and unsteady, Russell trudged in dirty gravel beside broken asphalt. So far the exhilaration of the open road had proven elusive, while a profound weariness was inescapable. He questioned the wisdom of his enterprise, this so-called adventure that now seemed like a played-out folly. On his first day he was already despairing. The house to his left was a ramshackle, cinderblock eyesore whose mailbox bore no address. House numbers here were apparently assigned at random. Next to number 9 was number 14, across the street from number 11. Seventeen was next to 14, across from 12 and 15. An empty lot on his left flanked what turned out to be number 21, on the corner.
The place was real nice, right across from the lake, a two-story, old, craftsman-type house with a wrap-around porch and a climbing rose on a trellis. It looked like it had been painted recently, a clean, creamy white with lavender trim. Behind the house was a barn-like garage. Three large maples and a tulip tree stood in the open yard, the property demarcated by a pile of rocks at the curve in the road, and by a weed-entangled fence next to the empty lot. Up by the steps they’d stationed the pink flamingoes he’d given them on their wedding. He took off his pack and set it on a stool painted in fine Carmela style. On the seat she’d drawn a menacing crab, and between the outstretched pincers were the words: “Sit At Own Risk.” He knocked. A fish-shaped windsock hung limply from the eaves. The blanket of lilies heaved in rhythmic ripples. He knocked again. There was no car in the driveway. He sighed, more pessimistic than before about his prospects here. A corner of the curtain was drawn back, then the door opened and Carmela stepped out.
With a little squeal, she wrapped her arms around him and exclaimed, “You’re here! We were just talking last night about what you were up to. I even called down there, but your phone’s disconnected. Manny said you’d blown us off and you were probably in Timbuktu already, but I knew you’d come.”
She stepped back, bobbed her head, and shimmied her shoulders. Sunlight poured across her smooth cinnamon skin; her dark eyes danced above high, smiling cheeks. She wore her black hair in a thick braid that hung down half the length of her spine. The bridge of her proud nose crinkled as her smile spread, dissipating any gloom still shadowing his thoughts.
“I’m glad you’re home,” he said. “Hope