7
‘I’d like to say that in the end I broke her hold over me, but that’d be a lie. It was just happenstance – or what Program people call a higher power. You have to understand that by 1960, I was entirely cut off from the rest of the town. Remember me tellin you that once I was a member of the Rotary Club, Sam? Well, by February of ’60, those boys wouldn’t have hired me to clean the urinals in their john. As far as Junction City was concerned, I was just another Bad Baby livin the life of a bum. People I’d known all my life would cross the street to get out of my way when they saw me comin. I had the constitution of a brass eagle in those days, but the booze was rustin me out just the same, and what the booze wasn’t takin, Ardelia Lortz was.
‘I wondered more’n once if she wouldn’t turn to me for what she needed, but she never did. Maybe I was no good to her that way … but I don’t really think that was it. I don’t think she loved me – I don’t think Ardelia
could love anybody -but think she was lonely. I think she’s lived, if you can call what she does living, a very long time, and that she’s had . . .’
Dave trailed off. His crooked fingers drummed restlessly on his knees and his eyes sought the grain elevator on the horizon again, as if for comfort.
‘Companions seems like the word that comes closest to fittin. I think she’s had companions for some of her long life, but I don’t think she’d had one for a very long time when she came to Junction City. Don’t ask what she said to make me feel that way, because I don’t remember. It’s lost, like so much of the rest. But I’m pretty sure it’s true. And she had me tapped for the job. I’m pretty sure I would have gone with her, too, if she hadn’t been found out.’
‘Who found her out, Dave?’ Naomi asked, leaning forward. ‘Who?’
‘Deputy Sheriff John Power. In those days, the Homestead County sheriff was Norman Beeman, and Norm’s the best argument I know for why sheriffs should be appointed rather than elected. The voters gave him the job when he got back to Junction City in ’45 with a suitcase full of medals he’d won when Patton’s army was drivin into Germany. He was a hell of a scrapper, no one could take that away from him, but as county sheriff he wasn’t worth a fart in a windstorm. What he had was the biggest, whitest smile you ever saw, and a load of bullshit two mules wide. And he was a Republican, of course. That’s always been the most important thing in Homestead County.
I think Norm would be gettin elected still if he hadn’t dropped dead of a stroke in Hughie’s Barber Shop in the summer of 1963. I remember that real clear; by then Ardelia had been gone awhile and I’d come around a little bit.
‘There were two secrets to Norm’s success – other than that big grin and the line of bullshit, I mean. First, he was honest. So far as I know, he never took a dime. Second, he always made sure he had at least one deputy sheriff under him who could think fast and didn’t have no interest in runnin for the top job himself.
He always played square with those fellows; every one of them got a rock-solid recommendation when he was ready to move on and move up. Norm took care of his own. I think, if you looked, you’d find there are six or eight town police chiefs and State Police colonels scattered across the Midwest who spent two or three years here in Junction City, shovelling shit for Norm Beeman.
‘Not john Power, though. He’s dead. If you looked up his obituary, it’d say he died of a heart attack, although he wasn’t yet thirty years old and with none of the bad habits that cause people’s tickers to seize up early sometimes. I know the truth – it wasn’t a heart attack killed john any more than it was a heart attack that killed Lavin. She killed him.’
‘How do you know that, Dave?’ Sam asked.
‘I know because there were supposed to be three children killed in the Library on that last day.’
Dave’s voice was still calm, but Sam heard the terror this man had lived with so long running just below the surface like a low-voltage electrical charge. Supposing that even half of what Dave had told them this afternoon was true, then he must have lived these last thirty years with terrors beyond Sam’s capacity to imagine. No wonder he had used a bottle to keep the worst of them at bay.
‘Two did die – Patsy Harrigan and Tom Gibson. The third was to be my price of admission to whatever circus it is that Ardelia Lortz is ringmaster of. That third was the one she really wanted, because she was the one who turned the spotlight on Ardelia just when Ardelia most needed to operate in the dark. That third had to be mine, because that one wasn’t allowed to come to the Library anymore, and Ardelia couldn’t be sure of gettin near her. That third Bad Baby was Tansy Power, Deputy Power’s daughter.’
‘You aren’t talking about Tansy Ryan, are you?’ Naomi asked, and her voice was almost pleading.
‘Yeah, I am. Tansy Ryan from the post office, Tansy Ryan who goes to meetins with us, Tansy Ryan who used to be Tansy Power. A lot of the kids who used to come to Ardelia’s Story Hours are in AA around these parts, Sarah -make of it what you will. In the summer of 1960, I came very close to killin Tansy Power … and that’s not the worst of it. I only wish it were.’
8
Naomi excused herself, and after several minutes had dragged by, Sam got up to go after her.
‘Let her be,’ Dave said. ‘She’s a wonderful woman, Sam, but she needs a little time to put herself back in order. You would, too, if you found out that one of the members of the most important group in your life once came close to murderin your closest friend. Let her abide. She’ll be back – Sarah’s strong.’
A few minutes later, she did come back. She had washed her face – the hair at her temples was still wet and slick – and she was carrying a tray with three glasses of iced tea on it.
‘Ah, we’re getting down to the hard stuff at last, ain’t we, dear?’ Dave said.
Naomi did her best to return his smile. ‘You bet. I just couldn’t hold out any longer.’
Sam thought her effort was better than good; he thought it was noble. All the same, the ice was talking to the glasses in brittle, chattery phrases. Sam rose again and took the tray from her unsteady hands. She looked at him gratefully.
‘Now,’ she said, sitting down. ‘Finish, Dave. Tell it to the end.’
9
‘A lot of what’s left is stuff she told me,’ Dave resumed, ‘because by then I wasn’t in a position to see anything that went on first hand. Ardelia told me sometime late in ’59 that I wasn’t to come around the Public Library anymore. If she saw me in there, she said she’d turn me out, and if I hung around outside, she’d sic the cops on me. She said I was gettin too seedy, and talk would start if I was seen goin in there anymore.
“‘Talk about you and me?” I asked. “Ardelia, who’d believe it?”
‘ “Nobody,” she said. “It’s not talk about you and me that concerns me, you idiot.”
“Well then, what does?”
“Talk about you and the children,” she said. I guess that was the first time I really understood how low I’d fallen. You’ve seen me low in the years since we started goin to the AA meetins together, Sarah, but you’ve never seen me that low. I’m glad, too.
‘That left her house. It was the only place I was allowed to see her, and the only time I was allowed to come was long after dark. She told me not to come by the road any closer than the Orday farm. After that I was to cut through the fields. She told me she’d know if I tried to cheat an that, and I believed her – when those silver eyes of hers turned red, Ardelia saw everything. I’d usually show up sometime between eleven o’clock and one in the morning, dependin on how much I’d had to drink, and I was usually frozen almost to the bone. I can’t tell you much about those months, but I can tell you that in 1959 and 1960 the state of