Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 38.

Things went smoothly, for much of the rest of the day.

My one-way flight to Minneapolis got in at seven fifteen, right on time. I rented a tiny, squared-off Chevrolet, cheap, from Swifty’s Rent-a-Car, just off the airport grounds. I’d never heard of Swifty’s, and the car looked like a delivery van left too long in a dryer, but the price was right, thirty a day. For most of the forty miles southeast to Hadlow, things were fine.

Then, at dusk, I came up on a man driving a pickup truck with its headlights off. He was pulling a stake trailer, also unlit, filled with pigs.

The man and the pigs seemed content to move along at fifteen miles an hour. I was not. I was in a hurry to find a place to stay in Hadlow, have dinner, and be set to start prowling what I hoped was Sweetie Fairbairn’s hometown first thing the next morning.

I put on my turn signal and pulled out on the left, to pass.

The farmer, without signaling, chose that exact moment to turn left.

As did his trailer. As did his pigs.

I T-boned the moron, slammed right into the side of his truck. The impact sent me off the road, upright, down into a ditch.

His truck also managed to stay upright, down in the ditch, ahead of me. Not so his trailer. Not so his pigs.

The trailer had twisted over, onto its side, splintering its stubby wood fence. Amid great squeals of terror, or perhaps enthusiasm, the pigs exited and took off across the field.

“Son of a bitch,” the livestock owner shouted and started to run after his pigs.

“Son of a bitch,” I echoed, thoroughly caught up in the drama of the moment.

After two hundred yards, the man realized the futility of chasing his bacon across the field, and he came back. Furious.

“Didn’t you see I was turning?” he demanded.

“Didn’t you see I was already in the other lane, with my lights on, about to pass you?”

So it went for another minute or two, until we both got on our cell phones. He called a friend of his who had a brother. They each had tow trucks. I called Swifty’s Rent-a-Car.

“You waived our insurance,” the unruffled female voice said around the gum she was chewing. “It’s your responsibility to have our vehicle towed to our nearest service center. They’ll provide an estimate of repairs.”

“Where are your service centers?”

“There’s only the one, at the airport in Minneapolis where you rented the car.”

I told her getting towed there would cost a fortune.

“You should have thought of that before you declined our insurance.” I heard her type on her computer. “Meanwhile,” she said, “we’ve placed a ten-thousand-dollar charge on your credit card. That will be reversed once the car has been repaired, at your, or your insurance company’s, expense. Thank you for using Swifty’s Rent-a-Car.”

I was about to wish her good luck, because my credit card has a five-hundred-dollar limit, when I remembered I’d given the Swifty’s agent Koros’s plastic to use for a security imprint.

It didn’t matter. The gum-chewing Swifty girl had already hung up on me.

The two tow trucks came. The driver of the one that pulled my Chevy up from the ditch asked me where I was headed.

“Hadlow,” I said.

“Good enough. Ralph’s got a service station there. He can look at your car.”

“It’s a rental,” I said, without knowing why.

“Even better. Rental companies take care of everything. They’ll get you a new car delivered pronto.”

“I used Swifty’s Rent-a-Car.”

“Never heard of them.”

“They’re cheap,” I said, finding no comfort in that at all.

We clattered southeast along two-lane blacktop in almost total darkness for forty-five minutes. Then, topping a hill, I saw a round yellow light, disembodied and hovering, high in the distance.

“Do you see that?” I asked, leaning closer to the windshield.

He laughed. “UFO?”

“What is it?”

“Chief Winnemac,” he said, “or at least his big cement head. The rest of him is obscured by the tree line.”

“How tall is the statue?”

“Fifty-some feet, but being high on the bluffs over the Mississippi River, he appears much taller. He looks over everything for miles around.”

“Including Hadlow?” I asked, mostly to make conversation.

“Especially Hadlow, because of the way the river bends.”

Ten minutes later, our headlamps picked up a scalloped beige sign announcing that the chamber of commerce wanted to welcome us to Hadlow, Minnesota. For good measure, they’d cut a profile of Winnemac at the top of the sign, implying his delight as well.

As we drove through town, I imagined the chamber of commerce would delight in welcoming anyone. The description Kathy had given Linda Coombs had been accurate. Hadlow was just another tiny, fading town: two blocks of storefronts, some twitching, some long dead; a grain elevator, missing clapboards, peeling paint, but seemingly still operating; four taverns shining small neon beer signs at the darkness; and one gas station.

It looked like it had been a fine place to leave for decades.

Ralph’s service station, by its fading red and yellow colors, appeared to have once been a Shell franchise. Now it sprouted no name or logo at all.

“End of the line,” the tow driver said. Once he pocketed two hundred of George Koros’s dollars, he dropped the Chevy. By now, I’d run through more than half of the ATM cash.

A man in overalls came out of one of the service bays as the tow truck pulled away, and eyed the unhealthy way the Chevy’s front wheel was canted out. “Animal or metal?” he asked.

“A bit of both. A man and his pigs turned in front of me.”

“Won’t be able to look at it until morning.”

“Is there a place to stay in town?”

“Five miles south. Place used to be an Econo Lodge before the economy tanked.”

“Have you got a car I can rent?”

He started to shake his head no, then stopped as though lightning had charged his skull. He wet his lips and pointed to a flatbed truck, parked next to a tow truck at the side of the station. It had been red and yellow once, too. Now it was mostly gray, where the paint had weathered off, exposing the primer.

“That’s what I got to rent. Fifty bucks a day.”

I told myself that, should I lose my mind, I could buy pigs, and use the truck to take them for picnics in the countryside. I also told myself that the truck was all that was available.

In the sky, in the distance, the yellow-headed Winnemac appeared to grin. I peeled off another hundred of my rapidly dwindling dollars.

The truck cab had an authentic working smell to it, a mixed bouquet of gasoline, grease, and sweat. I rolled the windows down to draw in the night air as I drove the five miles to the motel.

As Ralph had said, the place had recently been an Econo Lodge. The outdoor signs were gone, but the name was still stenciled on a canvas laundry hamper left outside a service door. I hoped that meant the place still sported beige walls, safe and free of depictions of creatures wanting to bite in the night.

My room was blessedly bland, beige and more beige. I took a long shower, had a few Ho Hos for dinner, and slipped into bed. As I lay in the darkness, drapes pulled tight against the bright concrete eyes of Winnemac, my mind stabbed me with the thought that this trip was a waste of time. Sweetie would not have come back to a place like Hadlow. It was too small in which to hide.

I pushed the thought away. Anyone could hide anywhere.

Except perhaps Winnemac.