Draw the Dark (11 page)

Uncle Hank didn’t laugh. He didn’t say I was crazy. He said, “And?”

“And I think it means that . . . he . . . he
told
me.”

“But Mr. Witek can’t speak,” Dr. Rainier said.

“No, ma’am,” I agreed. “Not in words.”

Before she left, Dr. Rainier said, “Christian, I think it’s best if you skip the home for the rest of the week and come on Monday. Give things a chance to settle down.”

“You think they’ll let him come back?” asked Uncle Hank.

“Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong.” To me: “The way I understand it, you were interested in Mr. Witek’s paintings, you tried talking to him a little bit, and then you had a nosebleed. Is that about right?”

“Uh...” Not
exactly
. “Yeah. What about Lucy and Stephanie?”

“You let me handle all that. I need a chance to think about what you’ve said, but I don’t think you can be fired for a premonition. You had a
hunch
.” She fastened her eyes on mine. “Isn’t that right?”

I saw where this was going. I nodded, and her face smoothed.

“That’s what I thought, and that’s what I’m going to write into the official record,” she said. “Losing it with Stephanie will be harder to explain, but you were having a nosebleed and you were upset. So far as I can tell, there was no harm done except, perhaps, to Stephanie’s dignity. You might actually have done some good for Mr. Witek. He responded to you by opening his eyes. He hasn’t done that for anyone. I checked him before I came over, and while I wouldn’t say he’s ready for a round of golf, he’s not worse either. One more thing. I’d like to see you tomorrow instead of Friday, okay? Let’s just touch base.”

That was all right with me. Friday was a teacher workday and no school, so having the whole day off would be kind of nice. “Sure.”

“Good.” She smiled at me, but when she turned to go, she touched Uncle Hank on the arm. Just a brush of her fingers. “I think we’ll be fine,” she said—mainly to Uncle Hank, I thought.

Uncle Hank’s voice was husky. “God, Helen, I hope you’re right.”

Helen?

“All right.” He was sitting at the table with the last of the coffee. “You sleep well now.”

I walked to the hall but lingered in the doorway a moment. “Why is Dr. Rainier helping us so much?”

His face was cop-blank. I’d seen that look a hundred times before, so I knew he was hiding something. “Any doctor worth her salt’s gonna do what’s best for a patient.”

“But she’s . . .” I didn’t want to say
lying
. “I mean, she’s pretty much told me what to say. Is that allowed?”

“She’s giving you the best shot you’ve got to stay out of as much trouble as possible.”

“Okay.” I debated before asking, “So how much do you like her?”

For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer the question. To be honest, I was pretty surprised I’d ask. We’re not exactly talkative, my uncle and me. His eyes shifted to his coffee and then back to me, and he said, “I loved your Aunt Jean very much. But I’ve been lonely, and Dr. Rainier . . . she’s smart, tough. Got guts, get right down to it.”

And beautiful.
But I didn’t say that.

“I like her, Christian. I like her very much. But I’m also not going to do a thing about it.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Looking back, Uncle Hank must’ve been exhausted or else he’d have never revealed so much. You have to understand how private he is, not just because he’s sheriff but to protect me, I think. I’m willing to bet that there’s a lot of talk and gossip and heat I don’t know about, even now, because he made sure I didn’t hear it and wouldn’t suffer more than he felt I already had.

People had tried to fix up Uncle Hank before. He’s only forty-one. Sometimes he feels older to me, but that’s because he carries around the weight of so many lives. He once said that you didn’t understand mortality or real grief until you stood over the body of a high school kid on prom night.

The way he talked about Dr. Rainier, like it was a done deal, made me feel sad. “Why not? If you like her . . . Aunt Jean would understand.”

“It’s not that. I know your aunt would. We talked about it a lot, actually. Even though Winter’s pretty quiet and we haven’t had a murder in I don’t know how long, things happen. Your great-grandfather died in a fire, after all. Drunks’ll run you off the road and roll outta their cars, not a scratch on them and leave you as a smear on the road. There’s black ice and tornadoes and fools driving their trucks out onto the lake when the ice is too thin. This life will kill you a million different ways to Sunday. So your aunt and I, we’d already had that talk about what to do and how to go on if something happened. Of course, we figured it would be me, not her.” His blue eyes bored into mine. “You don’t know how many nights I wish it
had
been me instead.”

My chest got tight, and my eyes burned. Uncle Hank’s face blurred and broke apart the way light does through a prism, and then I was crying again. Yes, he would surely hate me if he knew....

You know what really got me? Uncle Hank thought my tears were because I felt bad for him, . . . which I did. But he got mad at himself for making
me
upset. He wrapped me up in a bear hug, patted my back, rubbed my hair the way he had when I was about ten or so, and kept telling me everything would be okay.

When he pulled back, his eyes were moist. “You all right?” I’m about four inches shorter, and he ducked down a little to grab my eyes. “It’ll be okay. We’re going to get through this the way we always have.”

I said something like yeah and sure and thanks, and then I got out of there. Only when I was in my room did I realize that Uncle Hank never had answered the question.

I was ashamed. Here, I’d been ready to, you know,
die
or run away, but Uncle Hank was hanging tough. He didn’t think I was a bad person.

I felt like a little kid inside, like there was this other me who was about five and wanted to be told everything would be okay. Maybe everybody feels that way. In history, we were talking about the Iraq war—there are a lot of local guys who’re army or National Guard—and someone said wounded guys call for their mothers. People kind of giggled, and the teacher snapped at us. But I didn’t laugh. I
understood
that feeling. Maybe only kids who’ve had parents hang around until they’re all sick to death of each other don’t get it. I did.

So that’s when I decided that I had to help myself. I’m seventeen, for heaven’s sake. Yeah, I was worrying about colleges and stuff, but it hit me that kids in college had it easy. Things are still done
for
them: their meals, their schedule, all that stuff. All a college kid has to do is get to classes, do the work, and figure out how to do laundry.

But take someone like Uncle Hank. No matter how much horror he saw, he dealt with it—because nobody else would or could. The same for Dr. Rainier, I’d bet. Somebody had to be responsible. So I had to do that too.

I pushed out of bed, went to my desk drawer, pulled it open, and unrolled the canvas brush roll. The brushes felt as right and natural in my hand now as they did back at the home. I’d
drawn
and been drawn to Mr. Witek’s room, and the moment I’d picked up the pouch, Mr. Witek opened his eyes. There was a message in all that.

So, enough self-pity already. I could be scared. I could be freaked out. But things were happening; there were messages being sent my way and tasks that, perhaps, only I could do. I just had to figure out what and why.

Then I Googled.

I realized that without a last name, I wouldn’t get far with Marta. Ditto on the farm. All I could find on the foundry involved the company’s website, which gave an abbreviated timeline and history of the Eisenmanns. The reading was fairly skimpy. The company’s founder, Sigismund Fried-rich Eisenmann, immigrated to the States from Germany in 1856, along with his second wife and nine children. The son of a cattle farmer, Sigismund had dreams of being a businessman and settled first in Chicago, working as a shoe salesman by day and attending college at night, earning his degree in metallurgy seven years later. Shortly thereafter, he came to Wisconsin to visit cousins and met a local businessman named Kramner, also a German, who wanted to take over a local foundry that was apparently going under. The two struck up a partnership, purchased the foundry, and operated it jointly as Kramner-Eisenmann Manufacturing Company for ten years churning out farm implements and residential items like cast-iron tubs, plumbing fixtures, and kitchenware. When Kramner died, Eisenmann took over sole ownership, and the company has stayed in the family to the present. The Eisenmann
I
knew, Charles, was Sigismund’s great-grandson. Charles’s son, Jonathan, currently managed the bulk of the company’s day-to-day operations, but Charles Eisenmann still had the final word.

One thing that I did find pretty interesting, though: Sigismund faced a serious shortage of skilled workers as his company grew larger. There were—still are—large German, Swiss, and Austrian populations in Wisconsin, many of whom came over in waves beginning in the 1840s. By the time Sigismund arrived, these first immigrants had established communities that welcomed new workers, and Sigismund realized that he could lure skilled craftsmen and ironworkers to his company if he provided them not only with a community but a means of integrating into American society. So he built dormitories: comfortable living quarters in which workers lived rent-free. Their meals were provided. Classes in American history, English, and business were offered twice a day to accommodate the shift workers; workers were put on a path to citizenship. The idea was to get the workers to view the company as family and stay put once they’d arrived.

Hunh. I clicked back to my list and checked off
dormitories
as the real deal. Which freaked me out a little, because that meant at least part of my visions or dreams or whatever . . . were real.

Searching for prisoners or a prison in connection with Eisenmann’s company was a big zero. So was the White Lady.

Plugging in
Winter, Wisconsin, murder,
and
1945
got me a single useful hit, the first paragraph of an archived item on “National News” from the
New York Times
: