They walked over a few shallow yellow hills and along a dragged-down fence, and suddenly there it was: a deep quiet flue straight down into the prairie. It was blue inside and then black. It didn’t look like the work of nature nor of man. Teaford had rigged a simple harness inside, something like people used for rock climbing, and he strapped himself into it and descended with little ceremony out of sight. He had uncapped the pipe he used for talking to people up on the surface and the Sheriff and his guys went and stood around it.
“What do you reckon he had us write that stuff down for?” Tommy said. He was leaning away from the pipe, whispering.
The truth was, the Sheriff hadn’t appreciated that part, hadn’t liked turning over personal details, but this excursion was his idea so he’d gone ahead and done what was asked. He’d put down correct information, and that now seemed an odd choice. “I expect we made his holiday card list,” he whispered.
A wind kicked up and whistled in the pipe. The Sheriff tested the ground with his boot and it wasn’t as hard as he’d expected. The sky was vacant and still. After a few minutes they heard noise coming from the pipe, Teaford jostling around in his harness. Then they heard him hemming and hawing, mulling something over, and then it was quiet again. Gil got out his cigarettes and the Sheriff shook his head, motioning for the deputy to put them away. But the Sheriff was feeling impatient himself. He felt a pang of regret about giving Teaford the dinner money. He had hoped to make a point, but the point already seemed labored, standing as they were in the middle of a remote field waiting for clues from a crazy person down in a well.
“Do you know who used to play it? The piano player at the church — was it a man or woman, young or old, or what?” Teaford’s voice, resonating up through the metal pipe, was thinner and less grave than it had been up above ground, like he’d fallen out of character.
The Sheriff lowered his head toward the pipe and said usually it was the Parmalee gal. She was early twenties, a student at the junior college.
There was another silence, and the Sheriff wasn’t sure whether he was rooting for or against Teaford.
Tommy yawned and Gil took a step away from the pipe and coughed, and then Teaford was speaking again. He told them the piano was in fine shape, though out of tune after its bumpy late-night ride, and that it was being housed in a red barn that was nearby an institution of learning.
The Sheriff tipped his head upward, a gesture of consideration. Off the top of his head, he could think of two such barns. Three, really. He looked back toward Teaford’s house, the direction they’d walked from. The watermelon patch, even from this distance, was a sorry sight, a charred tangle. But the oak tree on the other side was immense and lording and seemed somehow disappointed with everything in its view.
III
THE CUSTOMS
Joyce had taken up smoking again. As a girl she’d smoked imported cigarettes that came in lavish tins, but now she smoked light American brands like everyone else. She was able to go to a street fair themed on berries and pick out a red ashtray shaped like an octagon, on which was printed the message: OH, GO AHEAD. She got to buy a lighter too. The lighter had a dolphin on it, and a sun of faded orange.
Outside a liquor store a kid stopped Joyce and handed her twenty dollars, wanting Joyce to bring him out some beer. The kid had two bony, bad-haired girls waiting in his car. They were in bikini tops. They were watching the kid open-mindedly, giving him every chance. Across the street was a driving range. People in thin sweaters kept smacking balls and losing sight of them.
Joyce asked the kid why he’d chosen her and he said he’d been waiting ten minutes and no one young had gone into the store. Not that she was old. He said there was one guy who was fairly young but he didn’t look right.
“Why not?” Joyce asked.
“Just the attitude, I guess,” the kid said. “He seemed… really sure about the day he was having.”
Joyce shouldn’t have known what he meant, but she did. She nodded toward the girls in the car. “Where are you going to take them?” she asked.
The kid was wearing a dress shirt, sleeves buttoned at the wrists. He took a moment deciding what to do with Joyce’s question, realizing he had to answer whatever she asked if he wanted his beer.
“Way out in the woods,” he admitted. “This place my dad took me fishing once.”
“I hope it’s still the way you remember it.”
“Nobody would’ve built on it or anything,” the kid said. “It’ll be the same. It’s just a scummy little pond.”
“Well, maybe you’ll make some new memories on it.”
“Thanks,” the kid said. He might’ve been blushing.
“My father never took me fishing. He only took me to rodeos.”
The kid glanced inside the liquor store. “My dad is dead. He’s been dead for years. I guess your dad’s probably dead too.”
“What did your dad die of?” Joyce asked.
“Liver troubles. Among other things.”
“You should tell the girls he died last week. Or do they know you?”
“No, they don’t know me. They don’t know a damn thing about me. I live in Colorado now. I’m just back for the week.”
Joyce smiled at the girls in the car. She had the kid’s crisp bill folded and pinched between her thumb and forefinger. The multitude of low pings from across the street was mustering into some kind of crescendo.
The name of the lot was Coos Auto Brokers and the motto was Good Cars, Good People. The cab dropped her off under a huge concrete overhang, and she pushed inside through the glass doors. On the counter in the lobby sat a toaster-size television playing a British movie. After a minute, Joyce’s salesman, Garrett, took her outside. Joyce had shared a car with her daughter for years, neither of them needing to drive very often. She’d gotten rid of that car, a modest Japanese errand-runner, but hadn’t bought another one. She hadn’t felt up to visiting a car lot until today.
Garrett looked like a Navy kid home for a holiday — crew cut, cloth tie. He pressed a button on the keychain then guided open the driver door of a Saab station wagon. The cars passing on the road were very close, mostly pickups.
Joyce said she wanted the car. She said she wasn’t in the mood to do a test drive. Garrett looked into Joyce’s eyes. He told her that test-driving the car wouldn’t prove anything, anyway. He gave her his word that it ran as smooth as whatever simile she liked, that it handled as tight as whatever simile she liked, that the extra space in the back was as handy as any simile she liked. On the downside, the stereo was tricky. Also, the nearest Saab mechanic was up the coast in Florence.
In Garrett’s wood-paneled closet of an office, Joyce filled out the paperwork. Garrett lit a cigarette and put his feet up on his flimsy desk. He had hung tiny stuffed fish on the walls, fish that looked like bait.
Garrett put his cigarette out; the room was too small. “Do you want to go see those carnivorous flowers with me? I’ll tell them about this sale and they’ll give me the afternoon off.”
Joyce dialed her daughter’s number and the recorder picked up. She listened to her daughter’s voice, then she called back and listened to it again.
Her daughter had had about a hundred friends. She’d been on the verge of adopting a Korean child, an ordeal she’d reached the final stages of after three years of hustle. She’d been a steady, strong person, not feisty and impulsive like Joyce. Joyce had gotten pregnant young and had raised her daughter with everything she had, persistently, at times by example.