Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 71.

According to the Internet, Parke County was smack-dab in the middle of the western side of Indiana, and claimed to have more covered bridges than any other county in the state. The bridge with the octagonal windows that spanned Miller’s Ravine was built in 1878, and was about smack-dab in the middle of Parke County. It was there, smack-dab in the middle of apparently everything, that I was going to try to find Sweetie Fairbairn.

I took the fast roads, 294 into Indiana, then 65 south, to a maze of country two-laners. My plan was simple. I would work outward from Miller’s Ravine in increasing concentric circles, stopping at gas stations and stores and diners, anyplace a newcomer might find work. I was not seeking to ruin any sanctuary she might have found; I would not flash a picture, nor ask if anyone had seen her. I merely wanted to warn her that her sister-sick, runty Alta-was coming for her, dressed as a man or dressed as a woman… and that she liked knives.

It was a fool’s plan, statistically destined not to work. It was all I could think to do, at least until Leo’s four hundred dollars ran out.

The bridge had been painted since it had been photographed for Sweetie’s postcard. No longer a weathered gray, it glistened now, restored to its original red.

I walked through it and back, making echoing footsteps, pausing to admire its odd octagonal windows. It was a fine old bridge, a piece of historic infrastructure protected by people who valued such things.

It must have looked bucolic, maybe even romantic, to a girl or to a young woman on the run from a killing in Minnesota.

I wondered if it had looked the same, years later, to a woman now much older, and running from so much more.

For seven days, I worked in circles out from the Miller’s Ravine Bridge. The towns were smaller than Hadlow, and had very few stores, but there were intersections to be checked, as well; bumps in the road with a lone gas station or a tiny grocery that might have offered work to a woman.

I worked diligently, and doggedly, sunup to past dark. I slept in the Jeep every other night, ate dry cereal for breakfast, cheese crackers for lunch, and the cheapest diner food I could find for supper-all so most of the money I borrowed from Leo could go for gas.

I worked mindlessly, never letting myself pause to think it was preposterous that Sweetie Fairbairn had run to those smack-dab parts in the first place, that a picture on an old postcard had showed a destination to a woman in trouble.

Never, though, did I let myself allow that my road trip wasn’t only about Sweetie Fairbairn, that it also had something to do with getting away from Rivertown and being at the jack-ready for the phone to ring, not knowing who I wanted to hear from most-Amanda or Jennifer Gale. Slipping into such thinking might be to disappear into a dark tunnel indeed, and I wasn’t yet ready for that.

I set my phone to go directly to voice mail. Each of the ladies called once, as though in perfect symmetry. Amanda said she was swamped with meetings about the Sweetie Fairbairn fiasco and would probably have to cancel our trattoria date.

Jennifer’s message was much more direct: “It was his Ma.” She laughed. I laughed as well, at the idea that Elvis Derbil’s mother, the mayor’s sister, had been the one to suggest he spread his greasy wings and peddle his altered oils beyond Rivertown.

Both Amanda and Jennifer ended their messages by wondering how I was getting on. I did not call either of them back, as I was not at all sure how I was getting on.

Leo called every day, because he knew how I could disappear, chasing impossibilities. His calls I returned because he made me laugh, especially on the evening I decided it was time to head back to Rivertown. I had done what I could with my time and his money, and now I was out of his money.

He sounded unusually chipper. I asked if he’d won a big lottery.

“More fabulous,” he said. “Ma’s laid up in bed; sciatica.”

“That’s fabulous?”

“Even Bernard said it was a blessing.”

“Bernard, the accountant nephew-?”

“Of Mrs. Roshiska’s, who’s now in the hospital. Threw her back out.”

“From…?”

He laughed a laugh that was almost a shriek, and said he had to go. “I have much to do. I’ve thrown out the dancing DVDs. Ma’s handyman has already taken down the poles and disconnected the special lights. I myself pulled up the gold-flecked floor tiles and down the red velvet drapes. Ma’s doctor said to get all the stuff back from storage before Ma gets back on her feet.”

“Doctor’s orders to stop pole dancing?”

“All praise the doctor.”

As with his earlier calls, he hung up without asking if I’d gotten any leads to Sweetie Fairbairn. Nor had he offered to loan me more money to perpetuate my obsession for a second week, or a third. He is my friend.

I had enough money left for one more cheap dinner and two tanks of gasoline. I headed northwest, bound for one last town that evening, and three more the next day on my way back to Rivertown.

Hill’s Knob did not look to possess a knob, though where the ground had actually risen might have been obscured by the dense, intertwined weeds that lined both sides of its cracked blacktop main street. No one in the business district was there to mind, since most of the town had burned. Only two buildings remained: an empty old gas station, missing its pumps like Ralph’s in Hadlow; and the husk of something that once was a general store, judging by the signs for bait and men’s socks that still rested, sun-curled and faded, behind its filthy windows.

The only indication that any commerce was alive anywhere nearby was a billboard for a diner called Blanchie’s, five miles farther on. It advertised the best apple pie in four counties. Apple pie would do nicely for dinner, especially since driving five counties away to find better seemed unreasonable.

I drove the required distance, and pulled into the gravel lot in front of a brown-sided, green-roofed building raised up on a cinder-block foundation. The only car in the lot was a twenty-five-year-old station wagon, dotted with at least fifteen years’ worth of rust.

It was eight o’clock and there were no customers, just a white-haired grill cook behind a pass-through window, humming along with an easy-listening radio station, and a gray-haired waitress sagging in a pink uniform at the far end of a white Formica counter. She was turned away from me, staring out one of the windows. I supposed that anything of interest was better found by looking out of such a barren place.

Neither of them was a candidate to be the missing Sweetie Fairbairn. That was all right. There would be pie. I sat in a booth by the window.

For several long moments, nothing-absolutely nothing-happened. The grill cook continued to busy himself, mostly invisibly, behind the pass-through. The waitress continued to be absorbed by whatever was outside the far window, though to my eye there was nothing out there but spindly trees, and even those were fading in the tiring sun. Hill’s Knob, Indiana, didn’t look like anywhere a right-thinking person would run to. People ran from such places, even if the next stop was a place like Hadlow.

Definitely, it was time to go back to Rivertown.

“Best apple pie in four counties?” I called out to the waitress lost in thought, after another few minutes had passed.

“Good enough,” she said, without tearing her eyes from the mesmerizing view out the window. Her voice was barely audible, and carried no trace of enthusiasm about the pie.

“I’d like a slice, à la mode, with vanilla.”

“Coffee?”

“How much is the pie?”

She mumbled something to the window that I couldn’t hear.

“How much?” I asked again.

“Six fifty,” she said, a little louder. “With the ice cream.”

I would have mumbled, too, if I was looking to get almost nine bucks, with tax and tip, for a piece of pie daubed with ice cream, in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana. Those were Chicago prices, and downtown numbers at that.

“No coffee, thanks,” I said.

She continued to sit, staring out the window, as though expecting me to get up and leave, offended by the high prices. Certainly, such exorbitant numbers could explain why the joint was empty. More time passed until finally, when I’d made no sounds to leave, she sighed loudly, got up from her stool, and disappeared through a door into the kitchen.

Another twenty minutes went by, and I’d just begun to wonder if Hill’s Knob was so removed that Blanchie had to send someone on a bicycle clear to Terre Haute to get the ice cream when the waitress finally came out of the kitchen and ambled over with a plate. Her face was averted, her eyes behind her red plastic eyeglasses still fixed on the parking lot outside, lit now by one lone dim bulb fixed to the side of the diner. It had gone dark.

She set my pie down, but there was no vanilla ice cream on top, as requested. Instead, there was a chunk of melted yellow cheese.

I thought about reminding her I’d ordered ice cream, but reasoned that might delay my research into the quality of the pie by another fifteen minutes, maybe longer, and by now, I was very hungry.

Besides, the cheese, melted as it was on the pie, did look good.

She walked away.

I picked up my fork, cut the point from the wedge, and brought it to my mouth. It was fine pie, and to my mind, the cheese made it tastier than could any scoop of ice cream.

My tongue puzzled, though, as to the identity of the cheese. It wasn’t the usual cheddar or American usually encountered on restaurant apple pie. I lifted off a speck so I could taste only that.

I knew that cheese. The back of my neck tingled. I looked up.

She’d come over with a Thermos pitcher of coffee. She set it down and slid into the booth across from me.

Her forehead was crossed with a dozen deep lines, unhidden now by any cosmetics. Her lips were thin without lipstick, and her breasts were low inside her uniform. If there was a twinkle in her eyes, or a pinch from fear, it was obscured behind those heart-shaped, cartoonish red glasses.

“Around here, folks know to enjoy their apple pie with Velveeta,” she said.