Rocket Science (7 page)

I pressed the starter on the Hudson, and checked my mirrors before pulling out. I noticed a police car parked three or four spaces back down the street from me. That was odd — the station was around the corner. The police department had plenty of parking there.

Ollie, keeping an eye me.

Avoiding eye contact with Ollie, I pulled out and headed up State Street. The car still lagged just a little, as if I was carrying extra weight. I figured I’d go ahead and stop at the service station and check the air in my tires, then drive out to Dad’s house on the north side of town, near the lake, and try to make it back to my boarding house for the supper seating.

Mrs. Swenson had strong opinions about people who came late to meals.

A siren interrupted my thoughts. I looked in the rearview mirror to see the police car right up on my bumper, its revolving light flashing. That was when I realized it was a Sheriff’s patrol car. Not Ollie following me at all. I pulled over to let him pass. He pulled over behind me.

“Wonderful,” I shouted at my windshield, fist curling and uncurling on the steering wheel. My head started to pound — blood pressure rising, which was bad for my game leg. I wondered if CID had arranged to have me arrested so they could pull me in without being obvious about it.

I turned off the Hudson and rolled down my window. The deputy walked up to the car. It was Deputy Truefield, from El Dorado. He had turned Dad over to me a few times rather than driving him all the way back to the county seat to lock him up. Deputy Truefield was okay, if a little stiff.

“Taillight’s busted out, Vernon,” he said as he leaned in my window. His peaked cap brushed the head liner in my Hudson. Deputy Truefield had razor stubble that would have scared a porcupine, which he kept long in an unsuccessful attempt to cover a chin that receded like the tide.

My taillight? “I’m sorry, sir. It was fine the last time I looked at it.” I glanced over my shoulder, out the back window. As if that would tell me anything. “You want my license?” I asked, hoping this was just a routine traffic stop.

“Nope,” he said. “I know you’re clean. No warrants, never had any trouble from you. But I’d be much obliged if you stepped out of your automobile.”

I resisted the urge to ask why, knowing that would only irritate him. Truefield looked sufficiently nervous and annoyed as it was. I opened the door of the Hudson and got out, trying my hardest to look like a good citizen. Truefield motioned me around to the rear of the car. His right hand kept brushing his service revolver.

“See there?” he asked. The taillight was indeed broken. The license plate was bent up on its mounting bracket as well.

I had no idea how that had happened. “That’s odd.”

“Thought so myself,” said Truefield. “You mind opening the trunk?”

“Why?” I asked before I could stop myself. Me and my big mouth.

“Because I have reliable information that causes me to want to inspect your trunk,” he said flatly, his eyes narrowing. Truefield’s hand closed on the grip of the revolver. “Now look Vernon, you and I, we ain’t best buddies or nothing, but I’ve done you a few favors regarding your dad in the past few years, on account of your mama dying that way and all. I know it’s been hard on both of you.” His face relaxed at the memories and the hand wandered away from the revolver. “Do me a favor, open the trunk. If I have to call Judge Abernathy, you and I are both gonna wish you’d just opened the trunk when I asked in the first place.”

There was nothing in the trunk I could think of except a badly patched spare tire, a few tools and my laundry for McVay’s Cleaners. Nothing about Floyd’s aircraft, I was certain. I popped the latch and pulled the trunk open.

I was wrong about the contents of my trunk. Dad was in there, dressed in his underwear, curled up so tight he seemed as if his knees and elbows had been broken. And from all the blood on my grubby office shirts, Dad wasn’t doing too well.

“Vern,” said Truefield slowly. He had drawn his revolver, but kept it pointed at the street. “We should discuss this.”

It could have been worse. I suppose if Dad hadn’t still been breathing Deputy Truefield would have arrested me then and there. On the other hand, dragging Dad’s bloody, unconscious body out of my trunk and settling him into the back seat of Truefield’s patrol car on a Saturday afternoon on State Street pretty much ensured that all of Augusta would know by supper time that something bad had happened to my father, and that I had something to do with it.

Truefield didn’t say much, just grunted, as we folded Dad into the patrol car. He waved me into the front as he got in on his side. Truefield started up the lights and siren.

“I’ve got to say, Dunham,” he yelled over wailing and clicking, “you’d better have a mighty good explanation for all of this.”

I twisted around and looked at Dad. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror, one that made me older and shorter and worn out, like a weathered stump on a river bank. He appeared relaxed, stretched out in the seat as if he was taking an afternoon nap. The nervous guilt that always haunted his face was absent. Bloody, unconscious, maybe breathing his last for all I knew, Dad still looked happier than he ever had since Mom died.

I wondered what that said about me.

“Where are we going?” I asked Truefield as he ran the blinking red light at the Wichita Highway.

“Doc Milliken ought to be home this time of a Saturday,” he answered. “Otherwise we have to go on to either El Dorado or Wichita. Don’t rightly know if your dad could make that trip right now.”

“Okay.” I was a little short of choices myself.

Truefield pulled onto Broadway, the patrol car sliding across the paving bricks as it lunged for a skid that Truefield steered right out of again. Kids scattered as we swept down the road. Doctor Milliken, Odus Milliken’s brother, had a large house about two blocks down from Mrs. Swenson’s where I boarded. More neighbors to watch and wonder about me. I was pretty sure my brief career as an upstanding citizen of Augusta was on its last legs.

Truefield pulled into Doc Milliken’s driveway, knocking over the old hitching post in the process. “Let’s get him up onto the porch,” he said as he jumped out of the car. I climbed out more carefully and came around to Truefield’s side. The Deputy already had his hands under Dad’s arms, tugging him out of the back seat. Dad groaned, his face crumpling into pained wrinkles even in his sleep.

My eyes began to fill with hot tears. This was Dad, my daddy who carried me across icy winter creeks on his shoulders and fed me water with a spoon all through the frightening, stunning heat of my polio. Dad, who had been dying in the trunk of my car with blood all over his face while I sat in the library reading German reports about some crazy Arctic expedition for some worthless airplane I’d cared too much about.

“Damn it, Dad, don’t leave me,” I whispered. I grabbed Dad’s legs as Truefield pulled him out of the back of the patrol car and staggered off after the Deputy.

Mrs. Milliken came out onto the porch, screeched once with her hands on her cheeks, then ran back inside. I hoped she’d gone to fetch Doc Milliken. His blue Cadillac convertible was parked in the driveway, so I figured he was home.

Truefield dragged Dad bodily up onto the porch with me swinging along behind. Tears ran down my face as my nose flooded hot and prickly. I had lost Mom for no better reason than a jackrabbit and a bald tire one night when Dad had a little much and was sleeping it off in the back seat instead of driving them home like he usually did. Now Dad was going to die because I’d gotten involved with Floyd Bellamy’s secret Nazi airplane. To heck with the documents, to heck with the mysteries of the ice. I decided to burn down Mr. Bellamy’s barn as soon as I could, and be shut of the whole mess for good and all.

Doc Milliken came out in a dressing gown and pajamas. He had a pipe in one pocket and a newspaper in the other, with little half-moon glasses and a grouchy expression. He didn’t look much like his brother the railroad agent, except for the weight of age on both their faces.

Doc helped Deputy Truefield and me get Dad into his examination room where he laid Dad out on the table. “Ruthie,” Doc shouted, “get me sterile rags, and prepare a suture kit.”

“Is he going to die?” I asked. Someone asked that question in everyone’s life. I hated that it was me, now, standing next to Dad as he bled his life away.

“Just hold on a minute, son,” snapped Doc Milliken. “Help me get his shirt off.”

As Doc Milliken cut with a pair of short-bladed steel scissors, Truefield and I pulled Dad’s shirt away. I could see fresh red marks along his ribs. Dad groaned and twisted as we tugged at the cloth.

“Be careful,” Doc said. “It looks like someone broke his ribs for him.”

Mrs. Milliken came in with some clean white rags. She smiled at me a moment, then went to work on Dad’s face, wiping the blood off. I fought back my tears, but my sinuses had filled up and were driving more out and I couldn’t blink away the pain inside me.

Doc Milliken grasped Dad’s face between his hands and thumbed back the eyelids. “Take it easy, Vernon,” he said softly over his shoulder as he shut the lids again. “Grady’s a tough old buzzard. He isn’t going to check out today.” He began to examine Dad’s scalp.

I looked around for Deputy Truefield. He was in the front room, talking on the telephone. I’d had enough law enforcement shenanigans for one day, and didn’t really want to know what he was discussing. Instead I took Dad’s hand and held it. The rough, callused fingers were familiar, their hard textures reminding me of my boyhood. I looked down and realized that he was still wearing his wedding band.

I had no idea he’d never taken it off. Not even knowing that much about Dad made me sad all over again.

Doc Milliken, Deputy Truefield and I stood on the front porch. Mrs. Milliken had brought out a tray with some frosty bottles of grape pop, then gone to sit in the front hall, listening through the screen door. The ceiling above me was painted blue to keep the wasps off it, and I found myself studying the knobby gingerbread along the edge of the porch roof.

Truefield cleared his throat. “Sorry about the hitching post, Doc.”

“I expect that young Vernon will make good on it.” Doc Milliken winked at me. “It was historic, you know.” I smiled weakly as Truefield glared at me.

“Sheriff’s on his way over from El Dorado,” Truefield said conversationally. “There’s going to be some hard questions asked.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but no words came out. I didn’t have anything to say. Doc Milliken patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t you think that the Augusta police should handle this, Peter?” he asked Deputy Truefield.

“Normally, yes, but I’m already involved. There’s reports to fill out, and where there’s reports, there’s questions.” Truefield shrugged and looked uncomfortable. His expression reminded me of the way Ollie had looked at me back at the police station.

“He’s going to be fine, you know,” said Doc Milliken. “There’s been no murder done here.”

“No, but we have attempted murder for sure.”

Milliken caught Truefield’s gaze and stared him down. “Vernon didn’t do it.”

I was glad to hear that. I knew I hadn’t done anything to Dad, but I wasn’t sure I could convince anybody else of that. Having him in the trunk of my car would be pretty convincing to a judge and jury. It wouldn’t be hard to construct a motive for me, either. God damn Floyd Bellamy and his magic Nazi airplane.

“How do you know?” demanded Truefield.

“Three ribs cracked, several more bruised. I’d like to send him on to Wichita for X-rays, just in case I missed some.”

“So?” Truefield’s tone was belligerent, his hand straying toward the revolver. I really wished he would stop that.

“Do I have to spell it out?” snapped Doc Milliken. “Vernon Dunham’s been lame from polio since he was eight years old. I know. I treated him through it and damned near lost him. It’s a miracle he can walk at all. Grady Dunham’s ribs were kicked, very hard, by someone. Now, do you suppose Vernon stood on his good leg and kicked his dad’s ribs in with his lame leg? Or did he stand on his lame leg and kick them in with his good one?”

“Oh,” said Truefield. “I see,”

I felt miserable, but I had to point something out. “I could have had an accomplice.”

“Whose side are you on?” asked Doc Milliken. “Besides, whoever hit your father in the head didn’t know him well. That knock would have killed almost anyone else, but they got him right in his metal plate. He’ll be weak from blood loss and have a heck of a headache when he wakes up, but that’s about it. You would have done a better job.”

The metal plate. Dad’s reward for surviving the accident that had killed Mom. The jackrabbit in the middle of the road had lived for a while, but Mom had her head torn off by a fence post. Sleeping like a baby in the back seat, Dad’s head just got bashed in. The nice metal plate that the surgeons at St. Francis hospital in Wichita had implanted in his skull put him back together just like new — a medical advance courtesy of the war. Dad was as good as ever, except for his endless capacity for gin, draining through the Mom-shaped hole in his heart.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I know all about the plate.” Mom’s surgical steel tombstone, stuck in Dad’s skull.

“That might let you off the hook,” said Truefield sternly, “but it still doesn’t look too good. County attorney will want to talk with you for sure.” Then, in a weird echo of Ollie’s advice, “I wouldn’t take any trips if I were you.”

I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere.” Never again.

Who would have wanted to kill Dad? He made it to services at the First Christian Church downtown once or twice a month, he did a little hauling and light chores. He was harmless. Dad was the town drunk, but everybody knew why. Most folks looked past it and treated him well enough. There were even a few widows with designs on him, although Dad was pretty adroit at avoiding that kind of attention. He hadn’t been very adroit at avoiding someone else’s attention, though.

Something occurred to me. “Doc, you see anybody in here in the last day or so with a broken arm? Maybe an Army captain named Markowicz?”