Lethal Lineage (18 page)
Stuart called early the next morning. I was still at the house. Sam was on duty. Keith was out checking on cattle and I had arranged for help at the historical society so I could spend the morning at Edna’s.
“Hi, Stuart. I hope your mother is still doing all right.”
“That’s what I’m calling about. Yesterday wasn’t a great day for her, but she did all right, everything considered.”
“I thought so too. But they couldn’t have picked anyone better than Agent Brooks.”
He cleared his throat. “What would you think of me leaving Mom right here in Gateway City for a while?” he asked. “If we can keep the right help coming in, I think she’ll be better off. She just loves her little house.”
“Stuart, I think that’s a wonderful idea. Good for you. The longer she can stay in her own place, the better.”
“Whew. I was afraid you’d think I was trying to duck my responsibilities.”
“Not at all. What made you change your mind?”
“After everyone left last night, I helped her outside to the porch. And I kept looking at her flowers. I’ve never known anyone who loves flowers more.”
“She can’t keep them up, you know.”
“I know that. But she loves children. And I’m going to find youngsters who don’t mind being bossed around. She can tell them what to do. It won’t be the same as kneeling in the dirt, but it’s the next best thing.”
“But it will be plenty good enough,” I said softly. “Plenty good enough.”
“Lord, Lottie. I’ve heard my mother say that a million times.”
“Did she talk to you any about other things?”
“No. And it wouldn’t have been good for her. We kept it simple last night.”
“I’ll be over there this morning,” I said. “Please tell her I’m coming and tell Mrs. Hargraves she needn’t come back until after lunch. And Stuart, this won’t last forever. There are more changes coming.”
“I can’t give up my accounting practice,” he said wistfully. “You know that. But I can come back here once a month. At least.”
“Do not neglect your business. You’ll need all the money you can make if she has to go to Assisted Living. And as to moving her, don’t give that another thought.” I thought of all she had endured. “She’ll understand when the time comes. Your mother is a realist. A survivor.”
***
Edna smiled when I came through the door.
“Well, look at you,” I said. “And we were worried that yesterday would be too much for you.”
“That was a real nice lady. I kind of felt sorry for her. She was trying to do a job.”
“You were just fine.” I bustled around and looked for chores I might help with, but the place was spotless. “I’ve brought a seed catalog.”
Her smile faded.
“I know you can’t plant,” I said immediately. “But Stuart and I are going to round up some youngsters who will be glad to earn extra money and you can tell them what to do.”
She looked pleased. Then she trembled. “It will have to be annuals. Not sure I’m going to live long enough for perennials.”
I started to protest, then stopped. What had I said to Stuart? A realist. Timid in some ways. Tough in others.
“You can go through the catalogue, pick out what you like, then tell me if it can be grown from seeds or if I should pick plants up from the All-Season Nursery.”
We spent an hour doing that. Then she dozed while I browsed through journal articles and marked the must-reads.
She awoke with a start. “Did you bring the tape recorder, Lottie? We didn’t finish the other day. Do you remember where we left off?”
I certainly did. “We didn’t tape it, Edna,” I said. “It wasn’t official. Did you want me to?”
She shook her head. “I just wanted someone to know. I want Stuart to know, but I don’t want to tell him myself. Maybe you can tell him a lot later.”
At least now I had her permission. By “a lot later,” I was sure she meant after her death. But, I suspected I wouldn’t have to. The day was quickly approaching when she would tell him herself.
“You were telling me about the children,” I prompted. “All the fun times with the children.”
“That’s when it started,” she said. “The beginning of it all brought the end. Oliver called his sister ‘my own little chickie’ because she would follow him around. We laughed too much. Those two and me. We was like a little club.” Her voice faltered. “I was just like them. Just as bad. Full of giggles over nothing. Anything could set us off.”
Her face stilled. “Henry couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t a part of it. Not at all. We shut him out. He was jealous. Couldn’t stand to hear us. We started play-acting when he was around. Like we did nothing but work. But he sneaked up on us plenty. He heard us.”
Hiding laughter
. Forced to hide emotions. Patterns set for life.
“Well he found ways to put a stop to it. Mean little ways. And it just took about a half a year. He smothered a quarter of my new shipment of little chicks and claimed it happened because I was careless. But I saw him. He took the food out of the children’s lunch buckets and claimed I sent them to school hungry. He tripped over Oliver’s project he’d made for a science project and said it was an accident.”
Her little body shook and she closed her eyes. “He pulled all my flowers out by the roots and told me it was cut worms. My hollyhocks. My roses. My Sweet Williams.”
She reached for a tissue, blew her nose and looked at me.
“We stopped laughing.”
I didn’t bother to hide my own tears.
“I couldn’t stand to see Oliver and Mary Claire broken down every day. I decided to leave him. For the children’s sake. Go live with my sister awhile. She and her husband couldn’t have kids. She loved my two like they was her own. I told him and I guess he showed me. Three days later some men pulled up with papers and they hauled me off.”
Speechless with grief for this wronged woman, I couldn’t move. America’s checkered history toward mental illness changed in the 1960s after Edna’s time, but we still had a long ways to go. We swung from one extreme to the other. During the fifties it still wasn’t a problem at all to have a wife committed. Or a gay son. Or a promiscuous daughter.
No, Henry wouldn’t have met with one iota of resistance. And her parents probably wouldn’t have objected either. Since Henry didn’t drink. Didn’t beat her. Was a splendid provider. Of course she was crazy.
“Only good thing was that Henry hated the kids, too. So he just gave them to my sister and her husband. I could rest easy knowing that. If you can call being locked up in a cell resting easy. I wasn’t crazy when I went in. But those was terrible times. Just terrible.”
It isn’t right for a professional historian who has heard about everything to lose all composure. My job requires a measure of distance. There is a fine balance between empathy and maintaining objectivity, but in a heartbeat, I lost that balance. I felt with Edna, became one with her. Heard rats scratch along pipes, endured the screams of terrified women.
Tears streamed down my face. Alarmed, Edna reached for my hand. “Now no point in carrying on, Lottie. I tried to look on the bright side and every morning when I woke up I reminded myself that things could be worse. I hadn’t gotten that terrible operation they were doing to a lot of people.”
“Lobotomies,” I whispered. “They were doing lobotomies back then.”
“Yes, that’s the one. No brains left at all. Anyway, most of the guards was women and we didn’t have to worry about those perverts I’ve read about.”
She stopped. “Then spring came,” she said finally. “That first spring…no baby chicks, no flowers. The walls were gray, you see. And the floors were concrete and there was no green and I…it was when they always sent my chicks. Me and the kids always went plumb crazy. We had races to the pond. We planted marigolds and zinnias.”
I swallowed hard and pressed my fingers against my throat.
“You’re plumb undone,” she said. “You need to get hold of yourself.”
The wall clock chimed. She looked up. “Meals on Wheels will soon be here. Those are real nice ladies. Real nice.” She patted the seed catalog. “Thank you for this. Just wanted you to know I’m not crazy. I never was crazy. I want Stuart to know that. It was all Henry’s doings.”
“No, you were definitely not crazy,” I said finally.
That afternoon I began organizing the meeting from hell. The one where I would tell the Episcopal women in Western Kansas who had worked diligently to build and furnish St. Helena, that they had labored in vain. There was no way to pretty up this message.
Sick at heart already from my visit to Edna, I gave up trying to find phrases that wouldn’t incite a lynch mob against Talesbury. I was resting my face in my hands when Myrna Bedsloe came through the door.
“Headache, Lottie?”
I hadn’t expected her and could not stand the thought of even three seconds of her screaming kids. The total chaos. Besides, she had already redone her story five times.
“Just thought of a whole bunch of things I left out of the last one. You might want to look this over.” She handed me the pages. I gave a weak smile and started reading. She lifted the boy on her hip into the air, shoved her face under his t-shirt into his tummy and blew against his skin.
He shrieked and the one clinging to her leg yelled, “Me too, me too.”
“This is fine. A great improvement,” I said abruptly.
Leave
, I thought.
Just please leave
. To my credit, I didn’t say the words out loud.
“Great,” she stammered. “I thought it was better than the last one.” She looked around at office: the computers, the printers, the books, the unprocessed pages. A shadow crossed her face.
“Well. I’ll be going then.”
Something clicked. I looked at her open freckled face and saw Edna’s instead. I kicked myself for being so blind.
Myrna making piddling little changes to a simple story five times. Myrna needing an excuse to seek out the company of grown-ups. Myrna laughing only with her children. Pretending her life was just fine, when anyone could see she was practically an indentured servant.
“Wait,” I said. “I have a few questions for you. Have a seat, Myrna.”
Confused, she looked at her child. “Here, I’ll take him.” I reached for the boy before she could protest and then grabbed the hand of the other one. “We keep toys here for good little boys,” I said, leading them away from their mother. I opened the cabinet where I kept a huge supply of Lincoln logs. They squealed with delight.
“Myrna, would you like coffee or tea?”
“Tea, I think.”
I would bet she didn’t know what she liked. Only what her kids liked.
“My questions have to do about your family. Your stories have really concentrated on Ted’s people.”
“Yes, my husband’s is much more important.” Clearly uncomfortable, she looked at her watch, then sipped her tea. I sensed she was dreadfully self-conscious. Like a child being judged on manners.
I looked. Looked for bruises, dark circles under her eyes. The day was warm and she wore a T-shirt. No long sleeves to conceal injuries. I would check hospital admissions, but I would bet Myrna was not a victim of physical abuse. Her abuse would take another form.
After hearing Edna’s story, I looked for other things. Myrna looked like she was ready to bolt. When was the last time she had just sat and visited with another woman? Did she know how?
Since I was collecting family stories, urging her to tell me about herself and her own family was a perfect opening. “Did you grow up in Kansas?” I asked.
“Yes. Lived here all my life.”
“How does Ted’s wheat look?”
“Depends on which field.”
I looked around, searching for another topic where she might volunteer some information. Finances. Henry had made Edna account for every penny. That was a common form of control.
I gestured toward one of my files. “Tax time coming up,” I said, hoping I looked innocent. “Budget time. We have to account for every cent we spend to the commissioners.”
“It’s not that hard,” she said. “Not that hard.”
Clearly, I had hit a nerve.
“Ted bitches about it all the time.”
She did not have to stand for this. It’s the twenty-first century. She was entitled to her own money.
“When I was out there the other day, I noticed you don’t have a computer yet. Do you do everything by hand?”
“Absolutely. All those fancy-pantsie machines are going to be the death of us.”
“We have to prepare budgets for the commissioners. At first I didn’t like budgets, but now I’m all for it.” I looked at her expectantly, hoping she indicate the extent of financial control.
She looked at her watch. “Ted doesn’t like it either, so I just gave up. Now I just give him a set amount every month and figure it’s none of my damn business how he spends it. For all I care, he can tear it up and feed it to the hogs.”
She looked at her watch again. “Don’t mean to be rude, Lottie. Ted is with Mom this morning and he’s as likely to let her holler as not while he watches NASCAR. Lazy bastard,” she added, with an indulgent smile. “Place would fall to pieces if I didn’t keep after him.”
She controlled the finances! Chagrined at how badly I’m misjudged her situation, I watched her gather up her boys who had fallen to quarrelling several minutes ago.
She turned to me and frowned as she swung the smallest back onto one hip. “As to the wheat, I’m trying several different varieties this year. Need something more rust resistant. It’s a crap shoot.”
I recalled Margaret’s assessment of that household. That Myrna called every shot. Stunned that I had projected one person’s situation onto another, I rose and saw her to the door.
“Been nice visiting with you,” she said. “Gotta run. Baking day today.” She pulled the little boy’s hands out of her hair. “I make all our own bread,” she said, her face bright with pride. “I have our own wheat ground at a little mill in another county, so I can tell exactly what we’re offering from our farm.” She walked off.
Josie would love this. I couldn’t wait to tell her about my bumbling. From time to time, she was amused at my attempts at amateur psychology, instead of leaving it to the experts. Namely her. Perhaps I needed to check out Ted for signs of abuse.
I stood in the doorway and watched her child-burdened progress toward the stair. Humbled, I speculated that this energetic happy woman was a modern day version of an old European painting,
Song of The Lark
. Myrna was born for the land, the day. For planning and plotting and matching her wits against the weather, the wind, the government, the economy.
I recalled one of Willa Cather’s novels,
O Pioneers.
Her character Alexandra Bergson could out-think, outsmart any of the men around her. Why had it not occurred to me that there were modern versions of the same kind of women. Myrna was also the living, walking epitome of one of the most puzzling characteristics of Western Kansans. A goodly number of them simply wanted to work all the time.
And Myrna Bedsloe clearly adored her undisciplined brood of children and her no-count husband.
She paused at the rack of literature in front of the extension office. Chip came out the door, stopped, removed his hat and watched her sort through the bulletins.
She turned to him and smiled. Her beaming sons stopped their howling and gazed at the “real cowboy” with adoration.
“If you’re looking for a rust-proof strain, ma’am, you might want to consider this one.” He pulled a brochure.
“Thank you, Mr. Ferguson.” She glanced at the literature. “I don’t want you to think I’m forward, but I hear you know more about farming than anyone in the county.”
He beamed, stood straighter. “Just been at it a long time, that’s all. Can’t say as I have any special knowledge.”
“You do. I’ve seen your crops, Mr. Ferguson. Car rides soothe my mother-in-law, so she and the boys and I drive around a lot of evenings. Besides, it gives me some idea how other folks are faring. I’d like to know what variety of seed corn you planted. Your corn crop stood the heat better than any other in Carlton County. I would treasure your advice.”
Who would have thought?
The old recluse seemed to blossom, right before my eyes.
***
My cell phone rang. It was Agent Brooks. First she inquired about Edna, then she asked me to help her.
“Even though there wasn’t a register, we’re trying to make a list of everyone there that day.”
“All right. In fact, I’ve had to compile the names of persons who helped with fund-raising so I can tell them there’s been some complications with possession of the acreage.”
“Great. You’ve already got a start on what we want. After you do that, please note everyone that you can remember attending that day. Do you use Excel?”
“Yes. I’ll create a yes/no column for those who helped raise money and also came to the service.”
“Then we would like you to add everyone you can remember attending who is not on your fund-raising list. Then call those persons and ask who they can remember. They might be able to come up with names that you aren’t familiar with. And additional names. That’s what we’re really after.”
“That’s a great idea.
“Obviously, if you can remember names and faces, they weren’t strangers. It’s the strangers we want to zero in on.”
When I hung up, I set to work with renewed purpose. It helped, knowing the KBI was not viewing our law enforcement entity as a poor relation. And Brooks’ assignment gave me something to do that actually made sense. It might be possible to zero in on Edna’s perfectly normal average man.