Loon Lake

37

We stand on either side of Sandy James, who holds her baby. I hunch into my khaki greatcoat. It is buttoned over my cast and I have pinned the sleeve. The grave has been dug through the snow and through the ice and, with scalloped shovel marks, into the frozen earth. I study the crystal formations of the grave walls. I imagine lying there forever, as he is about to do.

The stones around us lean at all angles as if bent to the weight of the snow banked against them. The graveyard is in a desolate outlying section of town. It is on a rise that commands a view of the adjoining streets, one filled with the blank wall of a warehouse, the other fronting a lumberyard. A traffic light at the intersection. Over the racks and open sheds of the lumberyard I can see to the tracks and signals and swing gates of the Indiana Central.

The Baptist preacher is garrulous, Southern, like the fellow in the coffin. He speaks of God’s peppers. An image comes into my mind of a green field of pepper plants and I wonder at the eccentricity of all the glories of God’s fecund earth to speak of peppers.

I look from the corner of my eye at Sandy James. She stares into the grave. I see the tracks of her tears on her cheeks. I see the corneal profile of her green eyes. The baby comes into view, leaning forward in curiosity, her arms wave over the grave, cheeks puffing their steam of baby breath.

I cannot see Clara, the mother and baby block my view of Clara.

I shift my weight from one leg to the other. A dozen or so union men are standing behind us. They hold their caps. There are others too. The reporter who questioned me in the hospital, his ferret face under a brim hat, his plaid Mackinaw.

Two green-and-white police sedans and a police motorcycle and sidecar are parked in front of the warehouse across the street from the entrance to the graveyard. The cops sit on their fenders and smoke cigarettes.

A cream-colored La Salle with whitewall tires turns the corner and slowly cruises past the cops and out of my line of vision. I hear a motor cut off, the wrench of a handbrake.

“Do not question God’s peppers,” says the preacher.

I’m trying to think. What are all these people doing here? All night I sat in a chair by the door with a heavy pistol in my lap and I tried to think. I tried to lift my head and open my eyes, shake off the exhaustion of my bones to think.

Now I do have a thought. It is really very foolish. It is that these people — the union men, the cops, the reporter — they’re all staying. I mean this is where they live, Jacksontown, Hoosier Heart of the Nation, it’s their home, it’s where they make their lives. The reason this preacher twangs on and on is because he too lives here. He’s in no hurry, why should he be?

All of them, it’s a big thing this funeral, an event. I look at the landscape, nothing is moving, even the sky looks fixed, residential.

I shiver, a chill ripples through me. I feel their entirety of interest and attention as some kind of muscling force. Some large proprietary claim in the presence of these people displaces me.

I am dispossessed.

I square my shoulders and stare straight ahead. It seems important not to reveal from my expression or my posture that I understand this. I know what it is now. It is the whispering return to my body of my derelict soul. Oh, my derelict soul of the great depression! What’s happening to me — I feel guilty! Guilty of what? I don’t know, I can’t even imagine!

Finally the twanging ends and with great satisfaction in the holiness of his calling, he closes his Bible, turns his face upon me and I nod and shake his hand. The ten-dollar bill folded in my palm passes to his. He murmurs something to the widow and for no additional charge grazes the baby’s cheek with the tips of his theistic fingers. Then he’s gone. Clara moves around in front of Sandy and hugs her and turns her away from the gravedigger, who with his shovel propped against his hip is spitting on his hands getting ready to go to work.

We walk slowly to the gate, a hand taps me on the shoulder. “Paterson?”

I turn. The heavyset man with the blue knit cap the expert on hell. Behind him three or four others.

“We don’t want to disturb Mrs. James at this time. We have made up a pot.” He puts a folded wad of bills into my hand. “The boys from the local.”

I must have looked shocked. He moves close to me.

“Do you think, Paterson,” he says in my ear, “that we would be so stupid as to permit ourselves to be overheard threatening a man in public not ten minutes before we meant to jump him in a dark alley?”

“What?”

“Use your brains, lad. I’m sorry for the beating you took, but if it was us you’d be in the grave beside him.”

He moves off, I find Sandy and Clara, I hold Sandy’s arm, I feel her bewilderment of sorrow. Faces appear, condolences drift in the cold air flutter for a moment fall.

They knew my name.

They thought it matters to me who killed him.

Clara catches sight of the cream-colored La Salle. She frowns and turns away with an involuntary glance back uphill to the grave. The color in her cheeks, the thin skin she has for the cold, the blue translucence of the eyelids, the tears in the corners of her eyes.

We are through the gate, walking on pavement. I’m between the two women. I hold their arms. It is becoming more difficult to move forward. Several bulky policemen, awkward, they don’t seem to know what to do with themselves.

“Pardon me.” A man tips his hat to Sandy. “Mr. Paterson, I wonder if you’d mind.” I can’t hear him.

“What?” There seems to be some problem. It is some misunderstanding, it’s becoming difficult to move forward, we’re in a crowd, it banks higher and higher against our progress.

“What?” I hear my own voice. “What questions? I already answered questions.”

“We just want to talk to you a few minutes, clear up some things.”

I look behind me — we’re completely hemmed in now, cops in front, the working stiffs behind us, the reporter at the edge of things his chin upraised. Everyone is terribly interested.

“I’m sorry,” I say truthfully, “there’s no time.”

I hear laughter.

“I’m responsible for these ladies, I can’t leave them alone here.”

It is explained that they will come down to the station house with me. They can wait for me where it’s warm. I am reasoned with. Just a few minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience. Clara and Sandy are being led to one police car, I to another. Just as the door opens for me I balk. “Clara!” I try to turn around, call her. I have changed my mind. I want to put her and Sandy in a cab. I want them to wait at the rooming house.

“Don’t make it hard,” a cop says.

My good arm is twisted behind my back I am bent forward at the waist the muffling of blue bulk a stick is brought up smartly between my legs I’m pushed into the car. I have the terrible sickness. I’m aware of people scattering as the police car makes a careening U-turn and picks up speed. A siren. I’m thrown against the back seat against the door we veer around the corner the cop next to me pushes me away with the tips of his fingers. “Relax, sonny,” he says. “Enjoy the ride.”