Cold Black Earth Read online

  “I’m off duty,” said Roger. “You could light up a pipeful of meth and I wouldn’t care. Can I sit here?”

  The look that ran up and down the row told Rachel that Roger wasn’t the most popular man in the county, but after some grumbling they all shifted a place to make room for him. Matt stepped out again to let Rachel and Roger in, winking at her as she went by. Rachel sat down with Dan to her right and Roger to her left just as the teams took the floor for the second half.

  “Well, ain’t this cozy?” said Dan. “How you been, Roger?”

  “Busy. Three cars per shift to cover the whole county, and with the harvest over, too many idle hands. Today I had a domestic down near Bates City and then had to haul ass up to Anderson to chase down a drunk waving a gun. Then the paperwork, once we got him back to Warrensburg and locked up. More of the same tomorrow, no doubt.”

  “Well, cheer up, buddy. Time to leave the job at the office.”

  “You try looking at the things I deal with every day. Accidents, suicides, guys beating on their wives. You’d be depressed, too.”

  After an awkward second or two Dan reached across Rachel to slap Roger on the knee. “You’re a fun guy to be with, you know that, Roger?”

  Roger ducked his head, looking sheepish. “Sorry. Don’t mean to bring anyone down. You like basketball, Rachel?”

  As a gambit it was lame, but she grabbed for it. “Sure. Makes more sense than football. Put the ball in the basket. I can understand that.”

  “There’s more to it than that. There’s strategy and stuff.”

  Dan leaned forward to peer at Roger. “I want to hear you explain what a matchup zone is.”

  Roger grinned, knowing he was caught. “Hell, you were the basketball star. You explain it.”

  “Damned if I know. In my day all we had was Coach Hendricks. His idea of strategy was ‘Follow your shot, dammit!’”

  Roger said, “My dad never let me go out for sports. Too many chores.”

  Dan laughed. “Well, somebody has to do the work in this world. I guess you got elected.”

  With a studied casualness, eyes on the game, Roger said, “I did have the Grand Champion Single Barrow at the Dearborn County Fair one year. I guess that was what I did instead of sports.”

  I am forty-three years old, Rachel thought, and I am sitting at a high school basketball game with two guys competing for my attention. “Look at those fancy sneakers,” she said, silencing them both.

  Things did not improve for the home team despite a brief surge in the third quarter. Dan split his attention between Rachel and the guys to his right, while after a few banalities directed at Rachel, Roger eventually drifted into conversation with Matt. By the start of the fourth quarter Rachel was stifling yawns, and with five minutes left in the game and the home team losing by fifteen, the gym started to empty.

  “We got a tradition,” Dan said, reaching for his coat. “After basketball games. We go to the Outback in Warrensburg and sit around and eat and congratulate ourselves on how much smarter than the coach we are. Oh, and we drink a little, too. Usually it’s just guys, but we’re willing to make an exception for you. You’re coming, right, Matt?”

  “Sure.” Matt stood looking down at Rachel. “Coming along?”

  This was another thing Rachel had thought she was done with: having to rapidly assess the social consequences of simple yes and no answers. She could see Roger wouldn’t be included in the invitation unless she insisted, and she didn’t want any hurt feelings, but she didn’t want to be in the middle of another two hours of sparring between suitors, either. “Actually, I’m kind of tired.” She turned to Matt. “Can you drop me at home?”

  He frowned. “It’s a little out of the way.”

  “I can run you home,” said Roger.

  Take that, Danny Olson, Rachel thought. She smiled at Roger and said, “Oh, that’s so nice of you. Thanks.”

  They made their good-byes in the parking lot. The look on Dan’s face was amused. “You keep your hands to yourself now, Roger,” he said. His posse snickered, the cool guys laughing at the doofus.

  “I got a feeling Rachel can defend herself OK,” said Roger.

  “Don’t make me slap you again,” Rachel said, playing along. Everyone laughed and she climbed into the passenger seat of Roger’s Explorer.

  For the first couple of minutes they were silent, both of them laboring fiercely to find an opening. “You go to all the games?” Rachel said finally.

  “Most of ’em. Not a lot else to do around here.”

  Tell me about it, Rachel thought. “You ever think about moving, going somewhere else?”

  Roger drove for a while before answering, steering smoothly with a hand resting loosely on the bottom of the wheel. “Thought about it. Not sure I got the courage.”

  “Courage? Roger, you’re the one who faces down drunks with guns. I wouldn’t think courage is the problem with you.”

  “Well, there’s courage and there’s courage. Drunks with guns I can handle.” He chuckled, a dry breathless sound. “It’s talking to regular people that makes me sweat. You know what I went through just to get up the courage to ask you to the prom that time?”

  Please, thought Rachel. Don’t let this turn into a declaration of undying passion. “Well, you managed it.”

  “Yeah, I did. I managed to get married, too, somehow. Not sure how I did it, and it didn’t last, but at least I can say I did it. Anyway, I always thought what you did was pretty damn impressive. Musta took guts to go off and live in foreign places like that.”

  “I didn’t feel brave, really. Just curious. I just kept running after things that interested me.”

  Roger seemed to consider that for a time before saying, “Well, we’re glad to have you home.”

  “I don’t know that I’m staying, Roger. I’m just catching my breath.”

  “So where you going next?”

  “I don’t know. Ask me in a week or two.”

  Another silence followed. As he turned onto the road that led to the Lindstroms’, Roger said, “See if you can get that nephew of yours curious about something while you’re here. Now there’s a kid that really needs to get the hell out of Dearborn County.”

  “Billy? Yeah, I don’t get the impression he’s a very happy boy.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s a smart boy, but he’s confused.”

  Roger slowed, approaching the driveway. As he made the turn Rachel said, “Level with me, Roger. I’ve heard the rumors about Billy. How much trouble has he gotten into?”

  Roger rolled to a stop near the back door, and put the car into park. “Not that much, really,” he said. “So far. I’ve stopped him for speeding. One time he was drunk and disorderly and wound up in the tank.” He hesitated, examining a fingernail. “And he was at a party last year where a couple of kids never woke up after taking some bad drugs somebody passed around.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “We never could prove who brought the drugs. Some said Billy had a hand in it, but I’m not sure. I think it was his asshole friends, if you’ll pardon the expression. He’s got a couple of buddies who’ve done time, and they didn’t exactly come out reformed. Billy’s a lot better than the company he’s been keeping.”

  “That’s so scary. But I don’t know if I have any influence at all.”

  “Billy just needs to figure out what he wants to do with his life and go do it.” Roger turned his head to look at her in the dim light coming through the windshield. “If you can help him figure that out, you’ll be doing a good thing.”

  Rachel pulled on the handle to open the door. “I’ll get right on it,” she said. “As soon as I figure it out for myself.”

  The purring of the telephone woke Rachel up. It took her a second to focus: She had dozed off in front of the TV. She groped for the remote to mute it, then fumbled with the wireless phone to answer it. “Did you have to slap him?” said Matt in her ear.

  It took her a second to think what he was t
alking about, and then she was irritated. “You and all your friends have overheated imaginations.”

  “Relax, will you? I’m joking with you. Did I wake you up?”

  “I was just watching TV. Where are you?”

  “Just leaving Warrensburg. We ran a little late and I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “You didn’t drink too much, I hope.”

  “Just the usual amount. Don’t worry, the highway’s pretty straight right here.”

  “Well, be careful. Listen, Matt.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not in the market for a boyfriend. See if you can put the word out, will you?”

  There was nothing but static in her ear for a few seconds, and then he said, “I’m sorry, sis.”

  She could hear the contrition in his voice. “Maybe I shouldn’t be so touchy. How was dinner?”

  “The usual. Good for some laughs. We didn’t spend the whole time talking about you, I promise.”

  “I’m sorry, Matt. Thanks for checking in.”

  “Billy home?”

  “No sign of him. Get off the phone and drive.”

  “You got it. See you in a few minutes.”

  Rachel sat with the dead phone in her hand, drowsy and dislocated. After a time she rose and put on her coat and went outside and stood in the dark beneath a breathtaking sky, shielded from the barnyard light by the house, looking at the far-flung stars. I have no place in this world, she thought.

  Beirut was just a fading dream, sunlit and turbulent, a pain in her heart. There weren’t going to be any children, spoiled or otherwise. Paris was simply remote, a stage for the brave, hungry girl she had been a long time ago. And Washington had never been anything more than the company town, and she was done with that company.

  Which left this. Could I live here again? Rachel asked herself. People do. They make their lives here and raise families and are happy. I could come home again. I could teach school and have time to write those books and make my way back into this life I left and maybe eventually find somebody nice who would rescue me from being a spinster, growing old with her widowed brother in the house they grew up in.

  Sound carries a long way in cold air, and Rachel stood listening to the faint scattered disturbances of the night. The clanking of distant hog feeders, a car burning rubber away from an intersection somewhere down the road, the rumble of a far-off train. Rachel frowned, fixing on an angry grating sound just audible somewhere, she thought, to the southeast.

  She identified it at last and turned to go back to the house, wondering who on earth was out at midnight using a chainsaw.

  9

  Greenview Terrace did offer a view of green slats in a chain-link fence along the back of the parking lot; in addition Rachel estimated that the concrete walkway along the front of the building might just qualify as a terrace. Beyond its compliance with the truth-in-advertising statutes, however, Rachel did not find much to recommend the institution in which her seventy-eight-year-old aunt had come to rest.

  The odor that pervaded the place was a delicate blend of overcooked food, poor hygiene, chronic disease and inevitable decay, with a subtle undertone of pine-based cleaner. The hallways were starkly illuminated by fluorescent tubes and populated by shambling disheveled ancients supporting themselves on walkers, harried by attendants dressed like hospital personnel but with the dead-eyed stares of prison warders. The place made Rachel want to cry.

  “I do miss a good home-cooked meal,” her Aunt Helga said, looking out the window at the fence. “The food here isn’t fit to give to the hogs.” Helga’s hair was cobweb-white and imperfectly subjugated with bobby pins placed at random; arthritis, osteoporosis and myriad unguessable afflictions had reduced her to a frail collection of limbs in a chair. But the eyes were still bright and the voice, while cracked, still had breath behind it. Her room was crowded with pictures and knickknacks but still looked like a hospital room.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rachel. “I can bring you something if you want.”

  Helga smiled. “It’s not your fault, honey. You didn’t put me in here.”

  “I just meant . . .” Rachel foundered. In truth she was appalled that her cousins had deposited their mother here, but then it was easy for her to pass judgment; she and Matt had been spared the tough calls by the simplifying expedient of death.

  “You’ve been away, haven’t you?” said Helga.

  Rachel nodded. “I worked for the State Department. I lived overseas for a long time.”

  Helga raised a crooked index finger. “You told me. I remember now. My memory’s going, you’ll have to be patient. You were married, I seem to recall.”

  “I’m divorced now. He was Lebanese.”

  “And a very handsome fellow. Your mother showed me the pictures.”

  Rachel smiled. “That’s why I fell for him, I suppose.”

  “You’re not the first gal who ever did that.” Helga shook her head once, a slow uncertain gesture. “Your Uncle Clay was a handsome fellow, oh about sixty years ago.”

  “Steve looks just like him.”

  “Yes, he got his father’s looks. And his father’s land. Where he got the expensive tastes, I don’t know.”

  “Steve seems to have done pretty well for himself.”

  “Oh, he’s made himself a lot of money. I think he needed to, to keep that wife of his in the style she was accustomed to.”

  “I don’t really know her.”

  A couple of seconds went by. “Must have been the government that taught you to be diplomatic like that.”

  Rachel laughed. “It’s the truth. I never had a chance to get to know Becky. I missed out on a lot, being gone.”

  “We were all so proud of you. Your mother would pass your letters around. When something would come on TV about the Middle East we’d all wonder if you were in the middle of it. You should have seen the way your father talked about you. I swear, his chest would swell up. ‘My daughter’s in the State Department, and she says the PLO’s finished.’ And people would be so impressed.”

  “I wasn’t a big deal at all. If I had any opinion about the PLO, it wasn’t particularly authoritative.”

  Rachel sat and watched her aunt’s gaze wander. Eventually her eyes came back to Rachel’s and she said, “And now you’ve come home. For good?”

  “I don’t know, Aunt Helga. For the holidays, anyway. And then we’ll see.”

  “Did Matt tell you to come home?”

  Irked, Rachel opened her mouth to tell her aunt things didn’t work that way anymore, not in her family. She hesitated and said, “No. It was my decision. It was time.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you’re here. That house could use a woman.”

  “They just need a good nutritionist.”

  “Such a shame, Matt’s wife. To do that, right there in her home. At least he found her, and not the boy.”

  “I don’t know if it was any easier for Matt.”

  “Better him than the boy. Poor Esther Johnson was never the same after she found her father hanging in the barn. That was before your time, I guess.”

  “Esther’s father killed himself? How awful. I never knew that.”

  “People do. And they never consider that somebody’s got to find them and deal with the consequences.”

  “I think if you’re severely depressed you may have trouble thinking through the consequences.”

  “Depressed? My heavens, girl. All it is is what they used to call feeling sorry for yourself. They’ve given it a fancy name, and now if you feel sorry for yourself long enough you get to go to the doctor and get pills. You think I’ve never felt bad? I used to stand at the sink washing dishes and looking out the window at the fields and thinking all I would ever have to look forward to in my life was more dishes to do and nothing but beans and corn to look at for the whole rest of my life. But you keep getting up in the morning and sooner or later it passes. That girl just didn’t have the faith to wait for it to pass.”

 
And I don’t either, thought Rachel. “Not everybody’s as strong as you are.”

  “That boy’s gone off the rails, too. My Lord, that hair. And running around with a bad crowd. All that started after his mother killed herself.”

  In the silence that followed Rachel stared out the window and wondered about train schedules. With any luck she could be on a jet at O’Hare within twenty-four hours, taking off for some place that had not yet been soured by death and failure.

  “It’s good you’ve come home,” said Helga. “The family needs you.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Oh, yes they do. And you need them, too. You’re still grieving.”

  “It shows, does it?”

  “Honey, you look so sad it makes me want to cry. You’re grieving for your husband, aren’t you?”

  Rachel could not speak. She nodded, looking out the window, determined not to break down.

  “And you’re doing the grieving for your parents you didn’t get to do because you were far away. You’re going to have a hard time for a while, but then it’ll get better. And you’ll be glad you came home.”

  “Maybe,” said Rachel after a few seconds had passed. “It’s early yet.”

  It looked as if there were snow coming. In the west the sky looked like sheet steel. Rachel was suddenly anxious for a comforting fall of snow, something to brighten the dark earth, soften the hard edges, muffle the sharp sounds. She wanted a white Christmas, lighted windows glowing across the fields, her mother and father silhouetted in the doorway as she pulled up in the yard.

  That’s all gone, Rachel thought. You could have had that, but you left. She turned down the gravel road that led to Ed Thomas’s farm.

  After what she’d heard from Debby Mays the day before, this errand had a distinct whiff of being invited up to look at etchings. But Rachel remembered Ruth Thomas too fondly to let her husband pitch her life’s work, however amateurish, into the trash. Kindly and patient, Ruth had taught her how to see line and color, how to wield pencil and brush. There had always been cookies at the end of the lesson and affection from a woman who had, inexplicably, no children of her own.