A Far Gone Night (3 page)

I gave up on trying
to figure
out God. Since He never asks for my advice, I decided to just mutter something like, “Your will, Lord, and not mine.”

And then I stumbled off to bed, stripping down and then slipping on a pair of baggy black boxers before I tossed back the covers and climbed in.
And climbed out.
And locked all three doors.
Someone had murdered that girl, and if they would murder a child, they might kill the person who found her.

Even knowing that, I was able to drop off quickly and
sleep like
someone who had been shot, which I have been, and probably would be again. My last thought
was,
why was
Doltch
so eager to call the girl’s death a suicide? And why was Payne already in his office at that ungodly hour?

I decided that, in the morning, I’d shrug aside my desire for peace and privacy and go see what I could find out about a girl stripped and double-tapped and dumped in the river.

I
t
was almost two in the afternoon when I woke up. I guess the late night at the bridge, my early morning run, and a hearty breakfast had combined to render me comatose for nearly five hours.

You’d think I’d feel refreshed after such a nap. I was awake, for sure, but not rested. It was not a quality sleep. Karen and I used to call quality sleep “slumber” when we slept together all those years.
Long gone, now.

I have noticed, over time, whenever I’m involved in an intense situation, I get hungry. It happened in Somalia when a buddy caught a round in the gut, and other places, and now it’s happening here in Iowa, with a dead girl in the river. Most people get sick and throw up. I get ravenous. I tell myself my body needs fuel to face challenge.

Or, it could be that eating fulfilled a need to be involved in something predictable to bring stability back into my world. For that, I recommend Three Philosophers and a big plate covered in sausage. It is not gluttony, either; it’s physiological fortification. You can look it up.

Now I was hungry again, and I decided that I needed to follow my own credo and refuel. I got up and walked to the foot of the bed. Gotcha opened both eyes from her sleeping position on her
tuffet
. She was, obviously, wild with enthusiasm for the remainder of the afternoon.

I took a long, hot shower, shampooed my hair, dried off, ambled back into my bedroom, yawning.

I stretched, dressed in skivvies,
faded
blue jeans, a black t-shirt and a heavy black sweatshirt with IOWA in block gold letters across the chest. Socks and running shoes completed my ensemble. I can’t remember the last time I wore a necktie. I guess it was for Horace Norris’ funeral.

I let Gotcha out for her duties, brushed my teeth in case I ran into a beautiful woman unable to keep her distance, let Gotcha back in, gave her a medium Milk Bone, and left. Normally, when there’s something eerie in the air, I carry along my new
Mossburg
, pistol grip pump shotgun, “L.C. (Law Clerk),” or “Elsie” for short, when there is trouble in the wind. But I wasn’t sure my early-morning trouble at the river was
my
trouble, so I went without.

Elsie is
kin
to Lunatic Mooning’s shotgun he keeps under the bar out at The Grain o’ Truth Bar & Grill. Lunatic calls his weapon “Chief Justice.” His backup, in the office in the rear of that fine establishment, is identical and named “Associate Justice.” Chief Justice is an excellent firearm that helped me out one edgy evening a while back.

It was cold outside, and I was glad I was wearing the heavy sweatshirt. My truck, winterized a week ago, rumbled into life on the first try, and told me it was 24 degrees. Iowa heat wave. I strapped myself in and I was on my way. The sun was bright and the sky was a brilliant cobalt blue, bereft of any clouds whatsoever. I found myself longing for the first snowfall of the winter as I cruised on into town at 93 miles per hour. I enjoy driving fast.

Arvid
Pendergast
, attired in a parka, was flat on his back just inside his front yard, his left leg hanging over the elaborate wrought-iron fence next to the gate, and I gave him a short beep to acknowledge his demise. He did not respond, of course.
Arvid
represents Lutheran Brotherhood Insurance and is preparing his wife and children for his eventual death, a near certainty according to all actuarial tables. So, he randomly falls over and acts dead. These spontaneous acts of mercy could happen anywhere—the yard, the kitchen table,
his
parked car. And they serve to prepare his family to take in stride the experience of coming upon his stilled form someday.

An unintended benefit of his fake death scenarios (he calls it “performance art”) is that his business prospered and he has been a member of Lutheran Brotherhood’s Million Dollar Round Table ever since he started playing dead. Seems that people seeing a dead body every now and then gets them to thinking about their own mortality, and subsequently, the financial effect it would have on their loved ones. People have been buying all kinds of insurance, and regularly upping it, ever since
Arvid
began his escapades into mortality reminders just a few years ago.

I smiled as I drove on by, respecting
Arvid’s
unique art form, and kept on into the village, turned left just before the bridge, drove up the street, and parked out front of Lunatic Mooning’s place. He calls it “The Grain o’ Truth Bar and Grill” because he says there’s a grain of truth in every pint. The only question is whether that truth can be handled by the patron. Most of his customers seem willing to risk it.
Again and again.
Lifelong learners.

Just inside, I paused, as I often do, to take in the setting and the smells and the general ambiance of the joint. Cozy booths beckoned along the walls on either side of the front door. A few oak tables and chairs were scattered here and there. Two regulation-sized pool tables stood stolidly to the left, authentic Tiffany lamps looming low over the green felt surfaces.

But the most unique element of the establishment is the U-shaped bar, a mission oak behemoth backed by an enormous mirror. Several barstools, the kind with backs, lined up around the bar, leaving an open space at one side where a flip-top counter provided a
passway
for the waitresses. They are not “
waitstaff
” because Lunatic hires only women to wait tables, usually women going through a hard time who need a job for a while. Moon is a softy, but if you call him that, be prepared to have him peel your face off for you.

I started toward the bar, glancing to the right at the booth historically inhabited by Horace Norris, now dead and buried. No one sits there and it remains perpetually vacant, a memorial to Horace. I returned my gaze to the bar, and the person behind it, the big Indian, Lunatic Mooning, so named after the first thing his mother saw after giving birth to him in the state mental hospital in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.

Lunatic is built like a middle linebacker, a bit shorter than I but heavier, with bigger slabs of muscle everywhere. My guess is six feet and 245, but I don’t know for sure and I’m not asking. His hair is black with streaks of silver, worn pulled back into a short, flat ponytail. He was wearing a long-sleeved, dark burgundy cotton
sweater,
the sleeves snug against his biceps.

My stomach growled as I approached the bar.

“I heard that, paleface. The white man’s burden,” Lunatic
proclaimed,
his deep voice a burly baritone.

“What white man’s burden, Squanto? I thought the white man’s burden was an exhortation to colonization and the Rudyard Kipling poem and all that.”

“
Your
hungry belly is the burden. My people, the Ojibwa, also known as the
Anishinabe
, learned generations ago to discipline every area of their lives, including hunger, and how it manifests physiologically.”

“And my people, the Irish, also known as the Wackos, learned generations ago that booze is the only answer, and that discipline is usually wasted effort,” I said, sliding onto a barstool.

“You speak with forked tongue, white eyes. Navy SEALS are rumored to be highly-disciplined, even the ones who had to overcome Irish ancestry.”

“I was never a SEAL,” I said, scrutinizing the hand-lettered menu on the whiteboard behind the bar, on one side of the mirror, even though I knew what I was going to order when I decided to drive into town.

Lunatic gave a short laugh. “You continue to speak with forked tongue, yet I continue to accept you.”

Actually, I am not speaking with forked tongue regarding the SEAL reference, but it’s nobody’s business that I washed out twice, very nearly at the end of training, both times with a broken leg forcing me out of training. After the second fracture, I gave it up and took the Navy’s Medical Discharge, and training with me. But I was noticed by the military, who found other work for me, every bit as entertaining as SEAL assignments. And those experiences helped me get a job in private enterprise when I left the Navy.

“I’m your best customer, you’d better continue to accept me,” I said. “And, by the way, can I get some service here?” I said, looking around. “The help has an attitude.”

“You forget. I am not the help. I am the owner-operator.” He was polishing a glass with a bar towel, his biceps rotating inside the tightness of his sweater, the muscles bulging and smoothing out again.

“And a credit to your people,” I added. “And with that acknowledgement of your greatness, sir, may I please have two Loony Burgers, an order of fries, and the first of three
Three
Philosophers, please.”

“Thanks for saying ‘please,’ Thomas. I’ll get right to it.” He turned to his work, placing the pair of 12-ounce ground round burgers on the grill and dropping a wad of raw fries into a wire basket and then into hot grease. My mouth began watering as he turned back to the bar, drew a Three Philosophers, and poured it into a tulip glass. He pushed the Belgian ale across the bar and I picked it up and drank half.

He said, “
Three
Three
Philosophers? What’s up, Thomas?
Something to do with a body in the river?”

Rockbluff
, Iowa, is a small town. More like a village, really. News travels fast, of course, but this was ridiculous. There was no point in faking ignorance. Lunatic Mooning knew.

“How did you know about that?” I asked.

“The night has a thousand eyes.”

“What do you know?”

“What do
you
know?”

I finished my drink and pushed the empty glass to Lunatic. He took my glass, exchanged it for a clean one, and slowly poured another Three Philosophers. The creamy head was a thing of beauty. He set the glass before me. I took a sip. “I asked first,” I said.
“After you, Chief.”

“I know that the tulip glass is required for full enjoyment of your Belgian ale. The long stem is for the imbiber to hold in his, or her, hand in order to keep heat from the fingers compromising the chill of the drink, and the distinctive tulip-shaped top is so constructed as to allow a full head to form, advancing both a visual and palate-pleasing experience.” He smiled at me.
A rare thing.

“Thank you for that narrative,” I said. “I knew that in fourth grade. Now, omniscient one, what do you know about the body in the river?
Name?
Age?”

“I will speak. I know that you discovered a dead woman south of the bridge around two or three in the morning. She was white, or at least, not African-American. EMS came and took the body away to Doc
Jarlsson
, probably for an autopsy.”

“That’s it? That’s all you know? I thought you had a comprehensive, systematic, and sophisticated network of Ojibwa operatives who know everything. The night has a thousand eyes alright, but that’s not much information. ‘Woeful’ pretty well describes it,” I said.

“Give us time, I will know more.”

“I’m sure you will—by reading the newspapers. The key thing is that I know more than you do, and you’re a native, while I’m an outsider, from downriver, Clinton. Maybe you should sign up for remedial information-gathering systems at the
juco
.”

“Okay, I lied,” Mooning said.
“Something that’s rubbed off on me from being around Caucasians all the time.
I also know that Harmon Payne was there, and that the two of you went to his office after the body was removed. I know Steve
Doltch
took pictures and roped off the area with yellow tape. Maybe it was an accident, or a suicide.
Someone upstream getting in too deep, or too despairing of this vale of tears.”

“You are unusually chatty this morning, oh Native American.”

“I am loquacious from time to time. Never, as you put it, ‘chatty.’” He turned and attended to my order. My stomach growled again in anticipation of the food. The fragrance of my meal cooking was almost as wonderful as puppy breath. Lunatic brought me a big ceramic platter with two Loony Burgers on it and another, smaller dish with the fries, the best on the planet. I finished my second Three Philosophers and Lunatic brought me my third.