WITNESS #1
That was a strange time. Seems every fifty years or so yeh hear bout them kind a things happenin. Yeh can try to rationalize it, divvy er out. Put the blame wherever it makes yeh feel better bout it all. But it ain’t the truth. All these things happenin now. I remember hearin bout Sheriff Fielding’s cousin, Eli, down in Willow, that’s jest north a Davenport, all em years ago when he was the newly lected sheriff, all em missin people and how it all turned out. That story makes yer skin crawl. Yeh know I’m goin to change what I said earlier bout it bein ever fifty years. Maybe it used to be ever fifty years but it’s happenin more now it seems. The world’s changin.
Here’s a little somethin I told my sisternlaw. Twenty years ago, maybe twenty-five, she chewed me out bout my drinkin, said, Don’t yeh want to live to see a hundern? Ain’t yeh wantin to see them grandkids git married? Ain’t yeh wantin to be a great grandaddy? I told er, if the lord cares fer me to see that age he’ll let me. I told er a hundern ain’t up to me. That’s the way I feel anyway. The damn direction this world is goin, I’d consider myself lucky not to have to live through it.
1
The nine o’clock sun burned above the eastern horizon, churning a smoke on the surface of the Mississippi River. From his office window, Edward Ness, a handsome and almost tall man around thirty-five years old, watched the laminar bands of sunlight fall frayed through the avenues of downtown Minneapolis. The city sounds swelling up the buildings. Car horns. Vendors. A jet muffled overhead. Ness took his coffee at his desk and blew the steam from it. He had his polished shoes propped in an opened bottom drawer. This morning he wore a gray suit with the jacket hung on the back of the chair. His black tie was clipped to his shirt. He was clean-shaven and his blond hair was neatly in place.
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples with one hand, attempting to work out the hangover. Then, giving up, he lifted a bottle of rye from under his feet, along with a bottle of aspirin, and unscrewed the top and poured a finger’s worth into his coffee. The coffee was too hot to swallow down the pills so he just chewed the aspirin. He sat a moment with his eyes closed. Tapped the headline of the morning paper with his finger. Blew on the coffee. Then the phone rang.
This is Ness.
Mr Ness. This is Deputy Clinton down here in Oscar.
Oscar?
Yes sir.
Why have I heard that? Where the hell’s Oscar?
Iowa, sir.
Iowa.
That’s right.
This have something to do with that grave robbery?
No sir, Clinton said. I don’t believe so. That was down in Cedar Rapids.
I see. Well. Ness leaned back and closed his eyes again. What can I do for you, Deputy?
Yeh get the mornin paper up there? The Tribune I think it is?
Looking at it right now, Ness said. He leaned forward in his chair and looked at the picture on the front page. The photo of a campground and the town’s name in the caption. Ah, Oscar, he said. I see. Looks like you’ve got something going on down there.
I ain’t got the foggiest what we got goin on down here, Clinton said. No one does.
You get in touch with the chief?
He’s the one who recommended you.
Lucky me.
When can yeh get here?
How do you mean?
Chief said you were free.
He did, did he? Ness closed his eyes and rubbed them. How’s the chief know about Oscar, Iowa?
He and the sheriff down here go way back, Clinton said. Fishing buddies and all that. Chief called us. A bit of a favor, I suppose.
You don’t have anyone there? No one in . . . where’s the next biggest town?
Des Moines.
Yeah, Des Moines. No one there?
No one as good anyway. Or so the sheriff and the chief say. Chief said it’d be good for yeh, whatever that means?
Did he? I see. Well, we all need salvation, don’t we, Deputy?
Pardon?
Nothing. How long’s the drive?
Three, four hours, if there ain’t any traffic.
Ness leaned back in his chair again and looked out the window.
Don’t you have any detectives kicking around down there in Oscar?
No sir, he said. Like I said, none any good anyway.
I see. Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning. He was about to hang up when he suddenly spoke into the phone. Deputy? You there?
Sir?
Let me ask you one more thing.
All right.
You got any good, quiet hotels in that town of yours?
2
Seven years gone and every night the same dream: Ness is walking through a bright field with grass reaching his waist. It is windy and the grass is blowing. In the distance, wearing the same clothes he last saw them in, his wife and son are standing on a slight rise facing him. The hill is barren, only dirt, and as Ness comes closer he can see his wife’s hands are bleeding. His son is holding his mother’s hand so his hand is bloody too. Every night in the same dream he starts to run toward them. The grass, however, begins to have a current and holds him in place. He’s close enough to see that his wife has a bullet hole over her heart. His son’s shirt is stained in the same fashion. He hollers at them and at this point, every night in the same dream, a thunderclap and his wife and son disappear.
And every night he comes awake from dark to dark, his shirt all full of sweat, his breath trying to catch up, and he goes to his kitchen where he keeps a calendar, and in the stale darkness marks an X over the day, and he doesn’t know if he marks it for the dreams or to prove that he’s still here.
Seven years since he lost them. What the policeman told him, via a witness, was that her purse had gotten snagged on her shoulder as the man tried to take it. He panicked and shot her. Out of horror of what he’d just committed, almost as an impulse, he shot the boy too. A petty crime turned worse. They found the purse on the sidewalk two blocks away. Her wallet was gone, the photos of her family in their thin plastic sheaths remained.
Ness was only twenty-eight at the time. His wife twenty-six. Their son, who was afraid of thunderstorms but liked the rain, was four. Ness thought about that often. Thought: Seven years ago Peter was still a baby, and seven years before that he wasn’t even real.
Ness had never been a drinker before that point. Been drunk maybe once or twice. Got sick off cherry wine one summer night after graduation and that stopped it before it became a habit. In fact, he never lost control back then. Linn, his late wife, used to joke that he wouldn’t do anything if a little fun was involved.
Seven years. What he couldn’t fathom was that the world still turned. People still went to work and paid bills and cooked supper and made love. The earth still swung around the sun and he on it.
He had sold the old house in the north end of the city because some memories are like torture. He had arranged for movers but did not remember arranging it. Perhaps it was him, perhaps some secretary within the bureau. It seemed great swathes of time passed without a single recollection. He sat at his desk most mornings, still drunk, not saying a word until one morning someone said the wrong word, and he lost his temper and tumbled into a rage. He was put on leave, the captain and another agent having to nearly carry him down to the street where a cab waited to take him home.
Take some time, the captain said.
He said, Take a shower.
Get your head right, he said.
That was six years ago, the first anniversary of their deaths.
He was reckless in the months to follow. Crashed his car one afternoon into a field of cows, killing several Holsteins. Fist fights in bars he was now banned from. When he was reinstated he nearly beat a man to death during a suspected breaking and entering. The perpetrator, Ness later heard, was now confined to a wheelchair and had to eat his supper through a straw.
Not sober, but the drinking after that incident lessened to a degree. He found God for a time and then lost him again. Church, it seemed, was held too early. And one night with hands clasped, on his knees, he simply ran out of things to say. If there was a God, Ness thought, he’d heard this all before, and night after night the only thing Ness wanted couldn’t be returned, so, rising from his knees, the only other thing he wanted was a drink and that was just down the street. And like religion, he swore he’d be better about it. And he was. He drank, but was reasonable. Not with the frequency or the amount, but in his demeanor, his temper. It was his secret that he would keep to himself. ...
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