Bleeding Kansas (43 page)

H
ALLOWEEN FELL
on a Wednesday that year. The Monday before, Lara's grounding was finally over, and she and Robbie were blissfully reunited in the Fremantle barn. After a time, they looked up, still holding each other, but ready to take part in the larger world.

Gina and her friends from town were laying the bonfire for their Samhain festival, pulling boards from the bunkhouse and gathering brush from the apple orchard and other trees on the property. They were also picking apples from the trees that still bore fruit. It was part of the ritual that the harvest all be in or fairies would blight the crops, Gina said.

Some of the group were placing buckets of sand around the perimeter of the bonfire. The fall had been so dry that area farmers were being warned not to burn off any fields, and, in town, they were considering banning barbecues.

Elaine Logan was tagging along after the other women, picking up small sticks and adding them to the pile. She stopped frequently, sometimes looking toward the barn, almost as if she knew Robbie and Lara were up there. It was Robbie who first noticed her staring at the loft.

“How could she know?” Lara whispered. “She's too big to climb the ladder, and we'd see her if she was trying to hide behind a bush or something. Can you imagine her climbing down into the ditches? She'd never get out again.”

They both laughed quietly but soon fell silent, uneasy about whether they'd been found out.

When Elaine thought no one was looking, she pulled a half-pint from her sweatpants and took a quick swig. Lara mimicked her, mockingly, which shocked Robbie. His church prohibited alcohol altogether, as Lara knew.

“Oh, come on, Robbie, everyone knows Junior was drinking Mogen David in the parking lot as soon as he started high school, and Chip used to see him after football games over at the Storm Door.”

“Just because Junior gets drunk even while he makes Nanny believe he's the most pious boy in the whole county doesn't make drinking right. And Elaine Logan, she's been homeless all these years. I wouldn't think you'd find it a joke to see her getting drunk.”

“She came to my church last Sunday, and she'd already been drinking before the service started. She stood up and called us all whited sepulchres. And she made a creepy remark to my dad, kind of suggesting she'd seen you and me together,” Lara whispered in a hot undervoice.

“All the more reason to take her drinking as a serious problem instead of making fun of it,” Robbie said doggedly.

“Maybe you'd better go to your church Halloween party with Amber,” Lara said. “You can tell her how dreadful alcohol is and how terrible I am because my parents sometimes have a drink on their anniversary or my dad shares a beer with Blitz and Curly. Amber can pat your arm and say, ‘Oh, Robbie, I've been so worried about your immortal soul, but now I know you've returned from the brink of the pit.'”

“Don't, Lulu! You know I don't talk like that about you, so why do you make fun of me when I'm trying to stand up for what I think is right?”

“I won't if you won't preach at me.” She made a face, somewhere between a pout and a kiss, and held out her hands to him. They came together again.

It wasn't the only issue they disagreed over. Salvation Bible Church was opposed to evolution and to birth control; Riverside Church actively supported both. Because Robbie was lonelier than Lara, he struggled more to understand her point of view than she did his. Everyone at Salvation Bible when they turned thirteen took a pledge of abstinence until marriage. At least once a month, Pastor Nabo preached on how people who used artificial contraception or had abortions, or who disputed the creation of the universe as described in the inerrant Word of God, would be writhing in torment someday. It was hard for Robbie to think that the Grelliers really were Christians, when they believed that the earth was billions of years old, or that Cindy Burton wasn't damned for having an abortion.

“But you told me it was Junior who raped her,” Lara said.

“Junior came back and bragged that he and Eddie had done it together,” Robbie said. “But it was Cindy who took the innocent life of her baby.”

“If anyone is going to hell, it should be Junior and Eddie. They're the ones who hurt an innocent girl,” Lara argued. “And it wasn't a baby. It was a little fetus as big as my thumbnail.”

“And you don't think that was wrong?”

“Robbie, I don't. Especially when her own brother—Don't you see how gross that is? The baby would have had horrible problems if it had been born. Don't send me to the Salvation Through the Blood of Jesus Full Bible Church's hell, please. I mean, not unless Chip is there, and Gram and Grandpa. Anyway, how can we speak for God, deciding who is damned and who is saved? God is so much bigger than us, so much bigger than our hates and fears.”

Lara was unconsciously quoting Pastor Natalie and Pastor Albright. Like Robbie with Pastor Nabo, she had listened to her church's theology every week her whole life and believed it to be the truth.

“Only God knows what is in our hearts and souls,” she added. “And He knows that in my heart and soul, against all my best judgment, I'm in love with you.”

And the argument ended, as theirs always did, in each other's arms, fumbling hotly in the sleeping bag, Robbie tormenting himself with the question of whether he'd be doubly damned if he, a., let himself get inside Lara and, b., used one of Chip's condoms to go there.

It was after that particular argument that he first asked Lara to go to his church's Halloween celebration. “We don't do a hell house—you know, those setups some churches use to show us what happens to the damned. But Pastor Nabo preaches about the godly life, and then we have kind of a dance. Chris and me are going to play this year.”

“Can I wear a costume?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Pastor Nabo discourages them because they're part of the satanic version of Halloween. No, don't jump down my throat. I'm only telling you what
he
calls it.”

“If I can't wear a costume, then everyone would know it was me,” Lara said. “And, pretty soon, our private business would be everyone's supper conversation.”

“But a lot of kids come from the community because their parents like them to be in a safe place on Halloween,” Robbie urged. “And I want you to hear me play—I mean, really play, not just listen to my lame podcast that I had to record myself. Oh, why can't we see each other publicly?”

Lara hunched a shoulder. “My dad already knows—or, at least, he's guessed—so it's just a question of your father.”

“And Nanny and Junior. Oh, Lulu, maybe we could run away together.”

“To a cave by the river!” Lara was enthusiastic. “We could live on what we stole, or maybe Kimberly Ropes would bring us care packages. In the spring, I'd plant sunflower seeds and tomatoes. You could sneak over to your place and get us milk!”

“I was thinking of Nashville, so I could try out my music for a real audience and see what they think.”

For a moment, they both got carried away by the fantasy: Robbie a star, singing on Grand Ole Opry, Lara famous for her album-cover designs. No more getting up every day at five to milk, no more Nanny criticizing every move Robbie made, no more Susan sitting like the original Immovable Object, sucking all the air out of the Grellier house.

Lara's cell phone rang. It was Jim. The grounding still fresh in her mind, she answered at once. Her father told her she had fifteen minutes to get home.

“If we aren't going to run away together tonight, we'd better get home now or he'll ground me for a whole month instead of two weeks,” she reported.

Reluctantly, they untangled their arms and legs and slipped down the ladder to the barn floor.

Elaine Logan was standing at the bottom. “I caught you, I caught you, I knew you were up there! Mean children, not letting me play with you. What will you give me not to tell?”

The two stood frozen for a moment and then dove through the loose board in the back of the barn and ran for their lives through the field to the road.

“Spies inside, spies inside!” they could hear Elaine screaming to Gina and the other Wiccans. “Myra the murderess has her spies looking at you!”

Robbie and Lara crossed the road and landed in the drainage ditch, waiting for the pursuit to begin in earnest. A minute later, they heard the eastbound freight approaching. They scrambled out of the ditch and jumped across the tracks. Shielded by the train, they ran on the grading until they reached the county road, where they laughed triumphantly.

“Still,” Robbie said after a final kiss, “we'd better find a different place to meet.”

“How about Nassie's manger?” Lara teased.

“Don't joke about it, Lulu,” Robbie begged. “Junior's started lurking around Nassie's pen at night. He had so much fun beating up the lady from Animals R Kin, he can't wait for someone else to try to break in. He's carrying Dad's second gun, the Colt. He even talks about training an armed militia, but Dad won't agree to that.”

“Doesn't he have to go to class or anything over at that Bible college?” Lara asked.

“Yeah, like Junior ever cared about class, even in high school,” Robbie said. “He got the football coach to give him some special pass or something for the holy or sacred or whatever work he said he was doing, guarding Nassie, because curfew over there is supposed to be eleven o'clock for all the good Christian boys and girls.”

Headlights appeared on the Schapen road. Lara fled for her own home; Robbie dropped into the ditch.

L
ARA REACHED HOME,
breathless, as Jim was taking lasagna—another gift from the church women—out of the oven. He looked meaningfully at the clock, but all he said was, “Bring plates over to the oven and get yourself washed up. You've been mining coal or drilling for oil, judging by your looks.”

Lara ran up to the bathroom to clean up the worst of the dirt; she'd have to wash her hair after supper. She helped Jim set up trays in the family room, where Susan was ensconced in her corner of the couch, the afghan making a handy barrier between herself and her family.

Over supper, Lara tried again to interest her mother in the Halloween bonfire. “They'll be dancing, and everything, like they always do. They don't call it Halloween, you know, but Samhain, which is some ancient word meaning ‘summer's end'—I looked it up at school. Gina's picking apples from the old Fremantle trees to roast in the bonfire—”

Lara broke off nervously, afraid that Susan would ask how she knew, but Susan only stared at her dully and said, “That's nice,” in the dead voice that made Lara want to pick up a knitting needle and skewer her mother. Jim raised his eyebrows but said nothing—not for the reasons Lara feared, that he guessed she'd been on the Fremantle land overhearing Gina—but because he wanted to know what Gina had been doing and saying, and he could hardly ask his daughter. Lara stopped trying to make conversation. She gulped down the rest of the lasagna, hurried into the kitchen with the dishes, and ran upstairs, muttering, “Homework.”

“I hope that's what she's doing,” Jim said to Susan. “Rachel says her schoolwork is marginally better. But she's spending too much time with Robbie. I'd like to know where! I don't want her having sex in a ditch with a boy. Could she have found someplace over on the Fremantle land? Do you think we should talk to her about it?”

Susan shrugged. “If you think it's the right thing to do, go ahead.”

“She's your daughter, too, Susan. I don't want her destroying her long-term happiness just because she's feeling lonely and abandoned right now.”

“Maybe Etienne would still be alive if I hadn't argued with him about his life choices. I'm not going to kill our other child by arguing with her.”

Jim, like his daughter, wanted to scream with fury, but he picked up the remote and turned on the football game. Susan stared vacantly at a recent issue of
Farm Family Living.

They were both startled to hear Elaine Logan yelling from the kitchen, “Farmer Jones? Farmer Jones, I know you're around here someplace.”

“Elaine Logan.” Jim got to his feet, wondering if—hoping—Gina had gotten into trouble again.

“Farmer Jones, don't think you can hide. I've seen the spies you and Myra Schapen set on me, murdering bitch. Don't think I haven't. And don't think I'll put up with it for one second longer!”

Elaine appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room. Burrs covered the legs of her turquoise polyester pants; her faded yellow hair was matted with leaves she'd picked up resting on her way from the Fremantles' to the Grellier farm. Her appearance startled even Susan, who dropped her magazine.

“What are you talking about?” Jim demanded.

“I need to sit down, and you could give me something to drink. Just because I'm not ready to take off my pants and wave them in your face doesn't mean I don't deserve to be treated as politely as Gina.”

Jim looked nervously at his wife, wondering what she would make of Elaine's comment, but Susan only said, “Sit down. You are as welcome as any other visitor to our home.”

Her cold, languid voice didn't sound especially welcoming, but Elaine went to the couch, sinking into a heap of afghan. Susan exclaimed angrily and tried to extract her handiwork, but the burrs on Elaine's pants stuck to it. Elaine made no offer to help Susan clean the blanket but reiterated her demand for a drink. When Jim offered tea, coffee, or juice, Elaine gave him a sour look, but said juice would do.

She swallowed the orange juice in one long, loud gurgle, slammed the glass down on the coffee table, and announced, “I'm tired of your daughter and her lovebird boyfriend spying on my home. I have a birthright to that house, Myra Schapen only has a death right to it. The farmer's daughter and the murderess's grandson better get used to it.”

Jim looked at her in blank bewilderment. A birthright to the Fremantle house? Did Elaine have some delusion about being a secret Fremantle heir? Then he thought of the newspaper clipping Elaine had dropped in his cart. If she had miscarried in the Fremantles' back bedroom, maybe that's what made her think she had a
birth
right to the house.

Jim went back to the kitchen and found the clipping buried in his printout of planting charts. “Is this what you're talking about?”

Elaine snatched the paper from him. “How did you get that? Did your lying, whoring daughter steal it for you?”

“Elaine, you can't come in here calling everyone in my family names and hope to get any support from us,” Jim said. “You dropped it in my cart when you slept in it two weeks back. I've been too busy to return it.”

Elaine kissed the article but stared at him belligerently. “Where is my picture?”

“What picture?” Jim said.

“Don't act naive with me, Farmer Jones. I kept them together, my baby's picture and my story. Now, where is it?”

Jim shook his head. “I don't have it. You can come out to the barn with me to see for yourself.”

“No you don't, mister. You don't go dragging me off to your barn and shut me in that cart overnight again. You produce that photograph now!”

“What does it look like?” Susan asked, interested despite herself. “If we knew what you were looking for, it would be easier to find.”

“Oh no you don't,” Elaine said. “If you knew what I was looking for, you'd use it against me. I bet your butter-won't-melt-in-her-mouth Sunday-school daughter knows what I'm talking about.”

“My daughter doesn't steal people's private papers,” Jim said stiffly.

“Of course you'd stand up for her against me. But you ask your darling daughter what she's doing in that old barn, her and that boy from the murdering Schapens. If she's hiding my papers up in that loft, you tell her I won't put up with it. I'll call Sheriff Drysdale and get her arrested for trespassing. Then we'll see what kind of song you sing.”

“Are they hiding in the Fremantle barn?” Susan asked. “Did you interrupt them in the middle of fucking?”

Jim winced at the coarseness of his wife's language, but Elaine hissed, “They were up the ladder, spying. They think because I can't climb up after them, I don't know what they're doing, but they're wrong.”

“I'll talk to Lara,” Jim said quietly, “and let her know she's upsetting you. Now, why don't I drive you home.”

“Not in the back of that tractor. Don't think I'm stupid enough to do that twice.”

Jim couldn't help laughing. “No, we'll go in the pickup.”

He helped hoist Elaine into the truck, but when he turned left at the crossroads, toward the Fremantle house, Elaine demanded that he take her to the Schapen farm.

When he refused, she said, “You want to take off all of Gina's clothes and get in bed with her again, don't you? But one of her girlfriends is doing that tonight, so you're shit out of luck, buster.”

Did every woman talk like a field hand these days? First Susan and now this monstrous woman. “I'm not taking you to the Schapens', Elaine. If you don't want to go back to Gina's, I'll take you into town.”

She started to harangue him, but he cut her off. “If you go to Schapens', remember that Arnie is a sheriff's deputy and he's not afraid to use his power. They won't invite you inside for orange juice and a chat.”

“I know what Arnie likes to do, beat up women, or get his son—the big thug, not the skinny spy—to beat us up for him. No women allowed near their heifer, but he doesn't care what men do. And that mother of his, setting fires, she murdered my baby.”

“You had a baby in the Fremantle house, and you think Myra murdered it?” Jim said, trying hard to sort out Elaine's disjoint accusations.

She was quiet for a moment, then said, as if surprised by the thought, “That's right. There were two of them. I lost them both. Myra burned him, too. ‘Fire within fire.' I used to know that whole poem by heart because it was by Dante. I met him in Mr. Patterson's class on Victorian poetry. He was the most beautiful boy in the world.”

“Dante?” Jim's head was spinning. “You're out of your mind. Even I know he's been dead for a thousand years.”

“Not that one!” Elaine was scornful. “
My
Dante. And then Myra burned him to death. And now that she thinks I'm collecting evidence, she's siccing that grandson of hers to spy on me, him and your darling daughter both.”

“Get out. Get out here, Elaine. I've had enough.”

“I can't get out of this great big truck alone,” she whimpered.

“Then I'll drive you back to Gina's.”

She gave him a bitter look but clambered down to the road, reciting curses under her breath. He turned the truck around. But when he reached his own yard, he didn't think he could bear to see his wife, or even his daughter, again tonight. He drove into town, to the coffee bar where he usually met Peter Ropes or some other friend. His insurance broker was there tonight. Jim sat talking with him about the Kansas football team until the place shut down at midnight.

It was only when he was driving home that he thought again of Elaine and her outburst.
Her
Dante. And Gina had said the ringleader of the kids in the bunkhouse had been named Dante something. Her lover, her father, she'd said tonight. Had Elaine Logan been the young woman Jim saw in the cornfield all those years ago? He couldn't remember her face, only the waterfall of pale hair and the provocative smile.