The Devil's bed

chapter
thirty-one

Afew days into his recovery, Tom Jorgenson suffered a stroke. Although not severe, it left him, according to Annie, weak and a little disoriented. Bo stayed away from Wildwood and spent his time reading and sleeping and thinking about Kate. The article in theNational Enquirerhad generated a lot of furor, and Bo’s phone rang constantly. He monitored caller ID. One of the few calls he answered was from Stu Coyote, who told him if he wanted to escape the limelight for a while, he was welcome to come down to Oklahoma. “And feel free to bring your girlfriend,” Coyote said. Bo didn’t see the humor.

Finally, he knew he had to get away. One afternoon, he left the city behind and headed south through farmland thick with tasseled corn, squat milo, and fields of soybeans made silver-green by the bright sunlight. He could have driven the interstate a good deal of the way, but he stuck to back roads where he often found himself crawling behind a big farm implement lumbering between sections of land. He loved the smell of the country, especially in the late summer when the long hot days of August brought everything to ripeness. He passed acres of freshly mown alfalfa laid out in rows to dry in the sun, and the smell took him back instantly across two decades to the summers in Blue Earth when he worked with Harold Thorsen cutting, baling, and bucking hay, summers that were absolutely the best in all his memories.

It was nearing evening when he pulled onto the dirt lane that led to the Thorsen farmhouse. He bumped over a set of railroad tracks, then crossed a narrow bridge that spanned a creek lined with cottonwoods. Beyond the creek, tall corn walled the lane, blocking Bo’s view of almost everything except the big red barn topped with a weather vane, the roof of the two-story white house surrounded by elms, and the blue sky that pressed gently against the land, holding all things in place like the hand of God.

Nell Thorsen was waiting on the porch. She was a small woman dressed in cornflower blue shorts, a white cotton shirt, and sneakers. Her legs were thin and tanned. Her hair had been recently done, short and silver. Although she looked out at the world through thick glasses, her eyes didn’t miss a trick. She was seventy-nine and gave the impression she intended to live forever.

“Right on time,” she said as she hugged him and kissed his cheek. She smelled of lilac bath powder. “I just finished setting the table.”

Nell had grown up on a farm in South Dakota cooking big dinner meals served at noon for the hired hands and the threshing crews. Ham and beef and salt pork, three kinds of potatoes, beans, squash, corn bread and biscuits, everything drowned in gravy. Her father died of a heart attack at fifty-one. By the time Bo joined the Thorsen household, Nell was cooking with an eye toward health. Meats were lean, vegetables profuse and al dente, potatoes served with butter sparingly. What she’d prepared for supper with Bo was chicken salad on a bed of lettuce accompanied by a section of cantaloupe and a croissant. She offered him iced herbal tea from a big pitcher moist with condensation.

The mantel above the fireplace in the living room was crowded with photos of the Thorsen foster children. There’d been nearly thirty in all. Occasionally when Bo visited the farm, he bumped into one of the others who happened to drop by. He was happy only Nell was there that day because mostly he’d come to be alone.

Nell asked about Tom Jorgenson and Annie and the First Lady. She mentioned the awful incident at Wildwood only to say that she’d got on her knees and thanked God when she heard Bo would be all right.

“I got the flowers,” he said. “They were lovely.”

“I’d have come to visit but my damn sciatica was acting up so I could barely move.”

Later, after he’d cleared the table and helped with the dishes, he took a walk alone along the creek. The summer had been dry, and the creek had narrowed to a thin trickle between flats of mud that had hardened and cracked. He’d spent a lot of time there when he was a teenager, wading in the water in search of crawdads and box turtles. Once he’d come out of the creek with a big black leech suckered to the skin between his toes. He was a kid fresh from the city then, and he had no idea what to do. He hobbled back to the farmhouse where Nell got the Morton’s box, covered the leech with salt, and simply plucked it off. He’d been impressed with her practical knowledge and her nonchalance.

He went back to his car and took out the book he’d brought with him, the one Kate had given him, then he went to the barn and climbed into the loft that was filled with hay bales. From there he could see a good part of the farm and beyond. In the pasture to the northwest, cattle grazed. Three miles south rose the water tower in Blue Earth. All around were other farms nestled among their own fields, neighbors all deeply connected by more than just those distant property lines, connected by the land itself and the life it dictated. When he’d lived with Harold and Nell, he often sat in the loft after his work was done. Sometimes he had a book and he read. Sometimes he just sat and drank in the beauty of the place. Sometimes Harold joined him and they talked. He’d been a gorilla of a man, a blond gorilla, with a chest that had seemed to young Bo big as the grille of a Cadillac. Mostly he was quiet, but when he laughed it was a huge sound, like the earth rumbling, and it always filled Bo with happiness. He’d never known his own father. The fathers of the other kids he’d run with in St. Paul were men careless in their parenting. Or worse, brutal. If it hadn’t been for Harold Thorsen, Bo would have grown up believing that being a man was a harsh and selfish thing.

“You up there?” Nell called from the bottom of the ladder.

“Yes.”

“Figured. I’ve got some coffee made if you’d like some.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Bo picked up his book and headed down.

Nell served the coffee on the porch where there was a small wicker table and two wicker chairs. It was a warm evening, early yet for mosquitoes.

“Were you reading in the loft?” she asked.

“Remembering mostly.”

“Good memories?”

“I was thinking about the time I stormed up there and threatened to run.”

“I remember that.”

“Harold followed me up. I figured he was going to-I don’t know-hit me or handcuff me or something. I told him he couldn’t keep me here, working me like a slave.”

“You weren’t the first he’d heard that from.”

“He sat down beside me. The sun was low in the sky, like it is now. I remember everything seemed very precise, either shadow or light. The fields were orange. The trees were black. But all I saw was red. Man, I was pissed.

“He didn’t say anything at first. We sat for a while. Then he said, ‘Give it a week. If you want to run after that, tell me where you want to go and I’ll take you there myself.’” Bo held his coffee mug in both hands and laughed softly. “Bet he said that to everybody.”

“Only the ones he was sure wouldn’t take him up on it.”

“I miss him.”

“We all do.” Nell lifted the book Bo had set on the table.

“A gift from a friend,” Bo said.

“Good?”

“I don’t know. She confuses me.”

“I meant the book.”

“Oh.”

“But tell me about the friend.”

“Nothing to tell.” Bo looked away. The sun lay on top of the cornfield, a red ball bleeding onto the green stalks. “She’s married.”

Nell put cream in her coffee and stirred. In the still air of evening, the spoon made little clinking sounds against the cup. “A blossoming bedside romance?”

Bo gave her a dark look.

“I live in the country, not outer space. We have tabloids at the checkout counters in Blue Earth, too. You wouldn’t believe the number of calls I’ve had from folks wondering if it’s true.”

“It’s not.”

Nell opened the book and read the inscription. “That’s a lovely thing for her to say, Bo. I’ve always liked her.”

She handed the book back, still opened to the page with the inscription. Bo looked down at the words, written in Kate’s beautiful, florid script.

Nell said, “Harold and I always hoped you’d find a nice girl someday. We just imagined it might be someone not married to the president.” She smiled.

In the elms around the house and in the cottonwoods along the creek, the cicadas began to sing. It was a one-note song, long and hypnotic. Just when it seemed the sound would go on forever, it suddenly died. Bo had been staring at the words written in the book, something almost coming to him for a long time. The moment the cicadas stopped singing, he had it.

“My God,” he said in the quiet.

“What is it?”

“Nell, I’m sorry, I have to go.” He stood up and wedged the book under his arm against his side. “Forgive me?”

“I could forgive you anything, Bo.” She gave him a parting kiss and stood on the porch, waving as he turned his car in the yard and headed back down the lane.

It was well after dark by the time he reached Wildwood. He’d called ahead on his cell phone, so he was expected. After he passed through security at the gate and parked his car, he hurried to the main house and knocked on the door. Annie answered.

“She’s upstairs with Nicole Green, working on First Lady business. She’ll be with you in a minute. It must be important if it couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”

“How’s Tom?” Bo asked.

“Tough. Alive. Thank God it was a mild stroke. It could have been worse.”

Bo thought how Minnesotan that was. It could have been worse. How often had he seen tragedy dealt with in that way, a stoic comparison to a greater possible harm. He’d watched a news report earlier that summer after a tornado had ripped through central Minnesota. They’d interviewed an old Finn standing in front of the rubble that had once been his home. “I’m lucky,” he’d said. “I got insurance.” Then he’d glanced behind him toward the lake shore where a small structure still stood. “Heck, coulda been worse. Coulda lost the sauna, too.”

Annie went to a bookcase near the fireplace. From where it had been folded and shoved into a dark nook, she took a newsprint publication, and held it up.

“Bo?”

It was a copy of theNational Enquirer.

“That’s garbage, Annie.”

“I know. I’d just like you to be careful. There’s so much at stake.”

“Am I still invited to Sunday dinner?”

“You’re always welcome here.” At the sound of feet on the stairs, Annie folded the tabloid and put it back into the dark place from which it had come.

The First Lady appeared, looking a little tired. She smiled when she saw Bo.

“I wondered if you’d like to take a walk with me,” Bo said.

“Now?”

“We need to talk.”

Kate glanced at Annie, who offered her only a brief shrug. “Of course,” she said.

They walked out onto the dark porch and down the stairs. The moon was almost directly overhead, a quarter moon dimmed by a high haze. However, the yard light mounted on the barn was bright, and in its glare, the asphalt of the drive shone like black opal and the grass blazed with a false flame. Bo headed toward the dark nearer the orchard.

“To the bluff?” Kate asked.

“No,” Bo said. “Secret Service will follow us there. I’d rather we talked alone.”

He paused at the rail fence that separated the compound from the apple trees. The door of the guesthouse opened and an agent appeared against the light inside.

“It’s okay,” Bo called. “We’re not going any farther.”

The First Lady waved. “Thank you.”

The figure held a moment longer, then closed the door.

In front of the guesthouse, the sculpture by Roland Jorgenson, the curled sheets of polished metal calledGoddess, caught the harsh glare of the yard lamp and glowed as if white-hot. A long flow of reflected light spilled from it across the ground toward the place where Bo and the First Lady stood.

“All this sounds so serious, Bo. What is it?” Her face was a blur of pale skin and shadow.

“Forgive us our trespasses,” Bo said.

Only a moment before, there had been the suggestion of a smile on her lips, but it vanished in an instant.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Forgive us our trespasses. It’s on his grave.”

She opened her mouth, a dark hollow in all that hard, artificial light, but she didn’t speak.

“I talked with Father Cannon,” Bo said. “He took me to the grave of David Moses. He showed me the note from the anonymous donor. The handwriting on the note matches the handwriting of the inscription in the book you gave me. You paid for the plot and the stone and the burial of the man who tried to kill you. Why?”

She folded her hands and put them to her lips.

Bo said, “I’ll tell you what I think, then. I think you lied all those years ago about what happened on the bluff that night. I remember something I read in your father’s autobiography, The Testament of Time. He wrote that he went through a dark period after Myrna died, after he came back to Wildwood, and he turned to drinking as a way of forgetting. Was he drunk that night? Did he attack you while he was drunk? Did David Moses tell the truth? Did you frame an innocent man?”

Her fingers spread now, like the pickets of a fence across her mouth, preventing any words from escaping. But something crept out at last, a whisper. “Yes…and no.”

Bo stepped back and waited.

“Yes, I lied,” she said slowly. “David didn’t attack me. He was trying to help. It was just that he saw everything wrong.” She turned from him and walked away a bit, wading into the light that spilled off the sculpture. “It wasn’t my father with me.”

“Who was it?” Bo asked.

“I’m not sure there’s any way to explain it. I can tell you how things were. Maybe that will help you understand.

“When we came back to Wildwood, my father was devastated. He was lost to us in a lot of ways. He’d begun drinking, yes. We were all a little lost, Ruth and Earl and me. I was afraid. It felt like our whole world had collapsed. Annie did her best to hold us together, but she had her own judicial career, and we needed something more than she could give, the kind of strength my father used to have. We found it. Or for a while thought we did. It came from Roland.

“He was ten years younger than my father, different in so many ways. Not reserved or cautious. He was bold, exciting. He and Dad had never been close. We seldom saw him before we came back to live at Wildwood. But we all fell in love with him. He was like this wonderful, blazing sun. Wildwood was his studio, so he was here for us all the time. We loved his energy, his enthusiasm, his attention to us. He seemed so strong, in so many ways. Those great hands of his. His laugh. He could be very gentle. You should have seen how he was with Earl.”

She stared at the glowing metal sculpture.

“You and your uncle?” Bo said. “An affair?”

She still wouldn’t look at him, but she nodded. “I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t care. I was so in love, so…in need, really. After a while I began to see the flaws, the faults. He could be selfish, manipulative, possessive. Then I began to consider the consequences, the dangers, and I knew it had to end. That’s what I was trying to do on the bluff that night, the night David discovered us. I’d told Roland it was over. He was furious. We argued. David blundered in. They struggled. It was terrible. I was so scared. David was lying there unconscious. I begged Roland to go. If the truth were ever known, I mean, incest, my God. On top of what Dad was already dealing with. Roland went back to the house, I tore my clothes and, God forgive me, I accused David. And he accused my father. It was a nightmare. I’ve told myself over the years that if they’d prosecuted David, I would have told the truth. But I don’t know. He just…went away, and it was fixed. Roland and I were over. It all became the past. The terrible past.”

“Your father never knew the truth?”

“He figured it out later and confronted Roland. It’s the only physical fight I know of that my father was ever in. He was no match for Roland, with all those muscles from his metal work. But Roland wouldn’t fight back. He just let my father hit him. Then he got himself drunk and he drove his car into a tree.

“It sounds so sordid, I know.” She finally looked at him, turning her back to the sculpture, her face fully shadowed. “What do you think of me now? Hardly heroine material, huh?”

“I think it was a mistake,” Bo said. “And I think it was a long time ago, and far behind you.”

“I thought so, too. Until David…” Even in the shadow, her tears somehow managed to glisten as they rolled down her cheeks. “All those people, Bo. He killed them because of me.”

“No, he killed them because of who he was, not you.”

“It feels like it’s my fault.” She bent her head, and her shoulders shook as she wept.

Bo went to her, took her in his arms, and held her. He laid his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes. He felt an ache himself, as if her pain were his own. He wished he could make her hurt go away, that somehow he had the power to absolve her. And he knew that he loved her. He knew it beyond all doubt.

She drew away. Her nose was running, and she wiped at it with the back of her hand. “What do you do with a confession like this, Bo?”

“I’m trained to keep secrets.”

She reached up and touched his cheek. “Whenever you’re with me, I feel safe.” She stood on her toes and gently kissed his lips.

“Thank you.”

The door of the guesthouse opened again, and this time the dark form of the agent there came forward.

“It’s late,” Bo said.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Dinner.”

“I’ll be here.”

She left him. Bo watched her disappear into the shade of the porch. He saw her once more briefly in the light as she opened the door and stepped inside.

“Thorsen.” It was Stan Calloway who, in the absence of Chris Manning, now headed the FLOTUS detail. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? My God, that’s the president’s wife. We’ve got that kiss on tape.”

Bo knew Calloway from his days in D.C. A good agent. A little humorless, but solid in the right ways.

“The kiss wasn’t my idea, Stan.”

Calloway put a hand to his forehead. “Jesus, what am I supposed to do with this?”

Bo reached into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. “Do whatever you feel you have to do with it. I’m going home.”

Calloway took his arm and held him back a moment. “A lot of people are looking up to you right now, Thorsen. Don’t blow it.”

Bo glared at Calloway’s hand until the grip was released. He said, “Good night, Stan.”

He got in his car, drove home to Tangletown, and readied himself for bed. Then he sat at the window in the dark, trying to find a place inside himself to lock away what he felt. It was too big, this affection. It was way out of hand. What not long before had been only a pleasant conceit was suddenly something with substance, real enough to cause him trouble. What was the point? He had Kate’s confidence, but he could never have her love. And even if by some miracle she were to feel the same way, what could she do? She was not just a married woman. She was the First Lady.

“Christ, Bo, you’ve done it this time,” he whispered.