Daddy's Gone a Hunting

8

At six o’clock, as Lottie Schmidt was having coffee at her kitchen table and desperately worrying about why Gus had left to meet Kate Connelly at the ungodly hour of 4:30 A.M., the doorbell rang. When she answered the door and saw her minister and a policeman standing together on the porch, she almost fainted. Before they could say a word, she knew that Gus was dead.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of disbelief. She was vaguely aware of neighbors coming in and out and of talking to her daughter, Gretchen, on the phone.

Had Gretchen said that she would fly in from Minneapolis today or tomorrow? Lottie couldn’t remember. Did she warn Gretchen not to be flaunting pictures of her beautiful home in Minnetonka? Lottie wasn’t sure.

Lottie left the television on all day. She needed to see the video of the destruction of the plant, needed the comfort of knowing that at least Gus hadn’t been burned to death.

Charley Walters, the director of Walters Funeral Home, had made the arrangements for most of the people in their congregation and was reminding her that Gus always said he wanted to be cremated. Later Lottie remembered that she responded to Charley by saying something like, “Well, he was almost cremated in that fire, but luckily was not.”

Her neighbor and close friend, Gertrude Peterson, came by and urged her to have a cup of tea, a taste of muffin. The tea she could swallow, but she waved off the muffin.

Sitting hunched in the fireside chair in the living room, her small frame diminished by the chair’s high back and wide seat, Lottie huddled under a blanket. The cop had told her that Kate Connelly had been gravely injured. Lottie had known Kate from the day she was born. She had mourned for the motherless little girls after the terrible accident their parents were in.

Oh God, she prayed. No matter what she’s done, let her live. And forgive Gus. I told him he was making a mistake. I warned him. Oh God, please have mercy on him. He was a good man.