One little girl raised her hand and when acknowledged replied, “To make sure that it’s clean and pure?”
“That’s right. What’s your name?”
“Louise.”
“Very good, Louise. We will make the cream even purer as we turn it into butter, but we cannot use cream that hasn’t been properly handled by the farmer to begin with. Only the best cream for Bridgeman-Russell!”
As Archie signaled the children’s teacher to take her pupils inside so that the tour could continue, Waldo leaned over to Archie and whispered into his ear, “Louise is too beautiful for this world. The world can be injurious to fragile, beautiful little creatures.”
Archie pushed Waldo away. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Archie found out what was wrong with Waldo. He spoke to Mr. Kibbee, who answered to the president of the company at its headquarters in Duluth. The meeting took place after work that day, after Waldo had gone home. Mr. Kibbee’s office smelled slightly of sour milk, though it was kempt.
“If you ask me,” said Archie, “the man should be residing at the Hospital for the Insane. If you like, I can drive him over there myself.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions, Hawke. Spraig is odd, I’ll grant you — very much the eccentric. He took time off from his job to serve in the war. You weren’t in the war. There are things you see, things you experience on the battlefield that change you.”
“He is obsessed with protecting little girls. But I wouldn’t want him anywhere near my daughter.”
The old man flattened down the hair that encircled his prominent bald spot. He got up from his chair and walked over to his bookcase. It was filled with volumes about dairying and the creamery business. “Have you tried our ice cream? It’s very good.”
“I have. And it is.”
“We make advertising plates for our ice cream. Have you seen them? Spraig came in here not so very long ago, quite worked up about the children — the little ones whose photographic images grace our plates. ‘Why do you pick only the sweetest, most adorable little girls to help sell our ice cream?’ he shouted at me. ‘Now they’ll be marked women. Certain men will see their faces and go looking for them.’”
“Mr. Kibbee, you’re proving my point.”
“Now hear me out, Hawke. It goes to what I’m saying. He’s very protective, that’s a fact. It’s strange the way he goes on about it, but there is, actually, a logical explanation for his behavior. Would you care to know it?”
Archie nodded.
“There were stories told by the men and women of a particular village in France. Who knows if any of them were true. You never knew if the Boche were actually capable of committing any of the atrocities of which they were accused. We’ve all heard stories, but these stories represented a particularly diabolical brand of depravity. I won’t give the details. It isn’t necessary to make my point. I should simply say that the stories had largely to do with the most beautiful young women of the villages in that part of France, and how the German soldiers had their way with them, as if the girls’ beauty gave the men special license. It’s madness, this human propensity for the infliction of so much pain on others, Hawke, but it is nothing new through the course of history, and it goes on around us still, right in this country, even as we try to make some sense out of that war — out of what it was supposed to have done to make us all better human beings. Don’t get me started or one of the Palmer men will pop in here and deport me to wherever it is my forebears came from. My point is that these stories had a profound impact on Spraig. And so he worries. He sees a pretty little girl and he imagines her as a lovely young woman and then the sad sickness that has taken hold of his artillery-pounded brain sends his thoughts to a very dark place. No, Hawke, it isn’t necessary for Spraig to ever meet your lovely daughter, though—” Kibbee smiled warmly. “Though I do hope that you and your wife and daughter will pop over to have a slice of pie with us at Thanksgiving. Jamestown isn’t Plymouth Rock, but our name isn’t all that slouchy as historical monikers go.”
“I will do that, Mr. Kibbee,” said Archie, returning the smile. Archie liked Mr. Kibbee. He liked nearly everybody at the creamery. Nearly everybody.
The Spanish flu had returned.
No, not really, but rumors of its reoccurrence and the fears ignited by those rumors took hold at Jamestown’s Bridgeman-Russell Company Creamery. What was probably nothing more than a galloping seasonal cold epidemic sent half of the employees of the “butter factory” to their beds.
Including — or so it appeared — the creamery’s operations manager, Waldo Spraig. In fact, Spraig had been out for a whole week, and his absence had begun to worry Mr. Kibbee, since Waldo was seldom off from work so long due to illness. Mr. Kibbee called Archie into his office. He asked his director of payroll and personnel to go to Waldo’s house and check on him.
It was nearly six thirty in the evening when Archie arrived at the Spraig house several blocks north of the creamery. It was Mrs. Spraig who opened the door. Archie identified himself and was asked to step inside. Mrs. Spraig, a woman in her late twenties, spectacled and pleasant but slightly halting and rather vacuous in her demeanor, stood with Archie in the front hall, saying nothing. Just waiting.
A moment later, Waldo emerged from the front parlor off the hall. He was accompanied by a man in his sixties, who wore a clerical collar. “Hello, Hawke,” said Waldo. “This is the Reverend Peacock. Pastor Peacock, this is one of our factory men, Mr. Hawke.”
“Good to know you,” said the minister, cheerlessly. Then, turning to Spraig: “I’ll be waiting in the parlor.”
As the minister was returning to the other room, Waldo turned to another man who had just stepped out of a room that appeared to be the kitchen. The man was casually gnawing a turkey drumstick. His eyes were on Waldo, who was wearing a sweater and trousers. The man wore the uniform of sheriff ’s deputy.
Waldo said to the law officer, “I won’t bolt, deputy, if you want to have a seat in the kitchen while we wait for the sheriff. The doctor isn’t here yet, either. It’s going to be a long night.”
The deputy sheriff nodded and went back into the kitchen.
“What’s going on, Spraig?” asked Archie. “What’s happened?”
“Sit, please,” said Waldo, pointing to the wooden bench behind him. Underneath the bench was a tidy row of boots and galoshes. The two men sat down. “Now, this is what you must tell Mr. Kibbee: I won’t be returning to the creamery. At some point this evening the sheriff and my doctor will arrive. They will confer. They will decide whether I am to be taken to the jail or to the Hospital for the Insane.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. I’ll explain. Earlier this week I went to the house of the little girl, Louise. You remember the girl who asked all those questions during our last school tour? I went to the home of that beautiful little girl and tried to see her, but her father and mother wouldn’t permit it. I persisted. They telephoned the sheriff. My request was a simple one, Hawke: I wished only to make sure that Louise remained safe, to see that she would be properly protected from those who would later seek to harm her — to violate her as the mademoiselles were so terribly violated, their womanhood sullied by the evil that is man in his true, carnal, sadistic nature. Mignon, my wife, and Pastor Peacock have made me see that my quest has gone to extremity — has become a sickness of its own that must be healed. Either that or I should be put into a jail cell — it is not my choice to make. We have discussed the matter at length and I have agreed to tell my story to those who will either help me or at least prevent me from doing any further damage.”