Sandi waited till darkness covered Holey and then slipped out her back door. No stranger to the art of camouflage, having had so many hunters pass through her bar, she’d chosen black slacks, a navy blue sweatshirt with a lighter-colored teddy bear on the front that she had taped over with black cloth tape, a black stocking cap, and black face paint. She avoided the wide pool of illumination thrown off by the “scaredy” light on the pole in her yard and slunk through the woods the quarter mile to her neighbors’, Lindy and Bette’s. They were just pulling up in their Saturn SL1 when Sandi arrived.
“Sandi? Got a minstrel show tonight?” Lindy asked.
“Shhh. Come on inside.”
“Oh, thank you. I will go into my house,” he said.
“Oh, Dad. Quiet now. It must be important,” Bette scolded. Though married with four grown children, they still called each other Ma and Dad in the event that if a child would stop in unexpectedly, they wouldn’t be caught accidentally displaying affection for one another. “We just got back from the revival. Looks like it’s going to go all night. You, come on inside now, honey,” she said, taking Sandi’s arm.
“I think I’m being watched. Can I borrow your car?” she said once they were in the Lindburgs’ kitchen.
“You runnin’ bathtub gin to the next county again?” said Lindy.
“Dad. Stop it. It sounds serious.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Sandi. Bette looked pointedly at the perimeter of Sandi’s painted face, then at her taped sweatshirt. “Well, it’s something, but it’s not that bad,” Sandi added.
“Of course, dear. You take it,” said Bette, handing her the keys, as Bette was always the one who drove.
“Careful, though. It’s got impact-resistant panels. That don’t mean you can roll it or crash into other cars,” said Lindy, who had just made himself a brandy and water.
Checking to make sure she wasn’t being followed, Sandi drove at once to the Bugling Moose.
PONTY WAS SO used to oddities that when he heard the sound of fingernails dragging eerily over the pane of his cabin window, he assumed it was some undead creature of the night who’d had trouble shape-shifting into a bat and been unable to fly through the chimney. Or, he reasoned, it might be a timid bear, shyly trying to lure him to the window for an easy meal. Or, more remotely, it could be Eartha Kitt kindly scraping bugs off his window for reasons only Eartha Kitt could fathom. Whatever the case, Ponty didn’t really care. He wasn’t interested in whatever the window’s eerie scratcher was trying to sell.
When the scratching sounds changed and became a tapping at the window, ruining his concentration so that Ponty had to stop writing, he became annoyed, but still not enough to get up and get to the bottom of it. When the tapping changed fully into knocking, accompanied by a voice saying, “Ponty? Ponty, it’s Sandi. Please open up,” Ponty finally was forced to consider alternative theories about its source. He opened the sash.
“Ponty, didn’t you hear me?” Sandi asked.
“Um, I was otherwise engaged.”
“I saw you sitting right there. Well, never mind. May I come in?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Ponty, grasping her arm and helping her through. The procedure of actually getting her through the window hit a snag when Ponty failed to support her and she fell on the floor. “Sorry,” he said numbly. “I do have to ask, though I think I know the answer, why do you feel it necessary to crawl through my window as opposed to walking in the front door?”
“Because I didn’t want to be seen,” she said, pulling closed the drapes.
“Yes! I was right! That’s what I thought.” He noticed the tape on the front of her sweatshirt. “What is that covering? Something dirty?”
“No, it’s just for camouflage. Are you all right, Ponty? You seem a bit poleaxed.”
“Oh, yes. I was just doing some writing,” he said. “Um, getting back to my question, whom didn’t you want to see you just now?”
“Gus Bromstad,” she said, as the pair moved over to the living area, Ponty choosing the threadbare armchair and Sandi the threadbare couch.
“I suppose I can see that. He’s not a pleasant man. But, really, is there much danger of that?” he asked.
“He’s here in Holey.”
“I mean, he lives in St. Paul and really doesn’t know you—I beg your pardon?”
“Here in Holey. He came to see me.”
“Are you even a fan of his work?” Ponty asked listlessly.
“No. And after his visit I’m even less of one. He’s a horrible man. And his head is so big.”
“I could have told you that. You didn’t have to have him to your house to find that out.”
“How do you . . . ? Never mind. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. Let’s back up. Why didn’t you call me after your . . . your accident? Ralph told me you fell in the tub, which I completely understand—most injuries are tub-related, I know. But after that it was like you seemed to just fall off the face of the earth.”
“Well, Sandi, I didn’t fall in the tub. It was thugs. They hit me with—I don’t know—hard things.”
“Oh, that’s horrible. Did they hit you while you were in the shower, or did they drag you out of there?” she said, craning to look at his injury.
“No, no. I wasn’t in the shower. I told a lie because I was too cowardly to let everyone—well, you, really—know how dicey this whole thing had become.”
“You think the men who hit you had something to do with the book? You don’t think they just wanted to hit you? You know, for money or whatever?”
“No. No, I’m positive it was because of this . . . business. And I guess I pulled away because I was ashamed of myself. I didn’t want you to have to spend time with such a miserable, cowardly, wormy . . . coward like me.”
“Ponty!”
“It’s true. That’s another reason I’ve been out of sight. I’ve been writing my confession.”
“Confession?”
“Yes. What I’ve done is wrong. I know right from wrong, and yet I talked myself into ignoring it—for what? For this? Everything, from the start, I’m the one, the one who did everything: wrote the book—a cynical act to begin with—talked Jack into pretending he wrote it. Being too cowardly to confess my mistake when things went wrong. Talking you and these good people of Holey into lying for us. Despicable. You want to know another thing about it? I couldn’t even tell the truth to the people who were going to lie for us. It wasn’t our publishers who made the mistake with the book. Jack didn’t write any of it. He didn’t ‘punch up’ the text. He said that because I was doing a bad job of convincing you all to lie. From the very start it was me who made up everything, because I was too cowardly to face my old age like a man and, I don’t know, too insecure to admit that I really haven’t made much of my sixty years here on earth.”
“Ponty,” said Sandi quietly.
“Well, I’m going to fix things as best as I can. There’s a couple of small lies in my confession, but I feel good about them. I’ve absolved Jack. I’ve confessed that I fed him the idea for the story, that I showed him forged documentation, but otherwise he did write it. I’ve said that my motivation was revenge for having seen him act in Strindberg’s Wallet. I think that should do the trick. And that he paid me for the material and the research—there’s nothing unusual about that. As for the town of Holey, it works the same way. I showed you the proof. Everything else, of course, is all true. The players are all real—Lynch, Fuller. None of you had any reason to doubt me. When I turn this in, you’re all free and clear,” he said, holding up his notebook. Though his eyes were cast down, Sandi could see that they were about to spill over with tears.
She was making a motion to touch his face when Ponty’s door was flung open and two naked men with guns burst in.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?” said Bromstad.
The other man just stood there dangling.
GUS BROMSTAD, WHETHER he knew it or not, lived in a continual state of mild irritability. This was his baseline, and he never fell below it; circumstances caused it to rise by varying degrees, but catch Bromstad at his best and you still had a man who was moderately prickly.
After his visit with Sandi, upon returning to the Bugling Moose, Gus Bromstad had added to his baseline considerably, and the irritability needle was spiked into the red.
“Morons, all!” he’d announced to Stig as he flopped onto their couch.
“Who are all morons?” asked Stig, looking up from his book, Man One, Mountain Zero.
“Everyone! Everyone I’ve ever met since first I drew breath upon this earth.” Stig looked at him questioningly. “The jury’s still out on you. But this Knutson woman, bah. She didn’t give me anything, and she threw a cat at me! No one’s ever thrown a cat at me!”
“Was the cat seriously hurt?” Stig asked.
“A ceramic cat, you jackass! And a clown statue.”
“You have a cut on the bridge of your nose.”
“That would be the Snow Baby,” said Gus, touching his injury lightly. “Idiot! She’d rather take a fall. Well, that’s fine with me. Someone in this Podunk little bulge in the road is going to talk, and when that happens, then they’re all going to the big house,” Bromstad raged, poking his forefinger into the air for extra emphasis.
“You allow events to influence you too much, Mr. Bromstad. Evenness is the key. We Danish have long understood that. In fact, there is an oft-cited Danish proverb, Ingen ko på isen, which means “No cow on the ice.” He shook his head meaningfully.
“‘No cow on the ice’?”
“Ja. Ingen ko på isen,” Stig repeated.
The men looked at each other. “Perhaps you hadn’t noticed that I was waiting for you to explain that,” said Bromstad.
“It means that there is no problem. If one of our cows was out on the ice, that would be something to worry about. As it is, our cows are safe on land. No problems. Do not become agitated until your cows are out on the ice.”
“That’s what you Danish people worry about, is it? Cows out on the ice? That’s the ultimate tragedy for you?”
“Within the internal logic of that one saying, yes. I don’t think you can generalize all Danes through the lens of that one proverb, however. If that were the case, I would judge all Americans by any number of sayings. Take, for instance, ‘Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle’ or, more comparably, ‘Why buy the cow when you are able to enjoy the milk for free?’ I certainly could judge Americans by those, but I have taken care not to, and—”
“All right, all right. Lay off. I think we should go into town, check out that bar. Maybe poke one of the locals and see if he howls.”
“I’ll get my shoes.”
In the car Bromstad mulled over Stig’s adage. “Let me tell you something: I got plenty of cows on the ice, you square-headed simpleton Dane! They think it’s their pasture right now. The ice is cracking, and there are hooves poking through into the water.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s all that—Um, please, watch the road, Gus Bromstad. You nearly hit a rabbit.”
“Good,” said Bromstad. They angle-parked in front of the Taconite Saloon, and as they climbed out of Bromstad’s Acura, Stig advised, “Mr. Bromstad, you are agitated. Why don’t you let me cast about to see what I can find out. In your state you might rile them.”
“Oh, I shall rile, my friend. Let the riling begin,” said Bromstad, a hard look in his eyes.
“Have it your way.”
They pushed open the door and entered a fairly lively saloon. The pinball machine, pool table, and video games all were occupied, and the sound of Molly Hatchet from the jukebox only added to the mood of rowdy festivity. Stig and Gus helped themselves to the last remaining vacant stools at the bar. Stig, recognizing the barkeep as Ralph Wrobleski, tilted his head and mouthed the words, “It’s him,” to Bromstad.
“What’s your problem?” said Bromstad, looking down at the front of his sweater and then wiping his mouth. “What? What?”
“Nnnn,” said Stig out of the side of his mouth as Ralph approached and leaned his mass toward them.
“Hey,” he said suspiciously.
“Hello, stout fellow,” said Stig, who was still learning the language. “May I have some vodka on the rocks, and my friend will have . . . ?”
“Same.”
Ralph withdrew with a backward glance toward the pair, and Stig leaned in to Bromstad. “That’s the one from the photo, the one with the head,” he said, making a gesture with his hand that was supposed to represent an asymmetrical skull.
Gus, however, was not at his best and could not pick up Stig’s gist. “The one with the head? Have you gone mad, you fish-creaming freak?”
Ralph returned before Stig could clarify. Stig broke off and asked Ralph in honeyed tones, “So why, may I be so bold as to ask, is it this busy?”
“Revival,” said Ralph impatiently.
“Oh, the King Leo–sponsored event at the mine, is it?”
“Yeah. He’s going ’round the clock now. People take their breaks here, I guess.”
“I see, thank you. I wonder if I might—”
“So listen, buddy, just what the heck is this flimflam about the rat anyway? I happen to know it’s not true, and I’ve got the goods—” Bromstad began, but he was interrupted when Ralph pulled him halfway over the bar by the front of his sweater, taking dozens of Bromstad’s chest hairs out in the process.
“IT’S TRUE, YOU GOT IT, PAL?” bellowed Ralph as he shook Bromstad like a can of paint. “I will not be answering any more questions about that. That rat was real, okay? As real as you or me.”
Bromstad, who had first sounded off with a high-pitched shriek at the shock of being manhandled by this publican, now made gruff vocalizations each time the air was forced out of his chest.
“Yeah, ‘ugh, ugh, ugh’ better be the only thing you say, pal,” Ralph encouraged. “I am not going back there, you hear me? I refuse to listen to any more hoo-ha about amniotic fogs and tomorrow jellies, you got that?” he asked of Bromstad, and then, without really giving him a fair chance to answer, dropped him on the floor. “I’m doing my mission work. I’m spreading the word. This is my going forth,” he hollered in a rather unorthodox method of proselytizing. “All right, who’s thirsty?” Ralph said to his stunned clientele.
“He just roughed up Gus Bromstad,” said a tourist with a pool cue as Stig scraped his partner off the floor.
WHAT DID YOU say to tick that guy off?” Bromstad asked from a reclining position on his couch at the Bugling Moose, sipping an aquavit that Stig held to his lips.
“Perhaps I just have that effect on people.”
“Well, tone it down a bit, will you?” he asked, sipping some more. “That guy’s not going to give us much, I’m going to guess. So what next?”
“Perhaps I am going to sound like a broken record, but the day is coming to a close, and I think we should sauna.”
“Sauna?”
“Yes. Things always seem better after a sauna. They are almost magical that way.”
“I have to ask, what part of speech is sauna? You seem to use it as a noun and a verb?”
“I am taking liberties with Danish speech as I speak it in English. Sauna is the place, the hot room, saunoa is the action of enjoying it. I use them interchangeably in English. Many Danes do this in America. Please forgive the liberty.”
“Forgiven.”
“So. Sauna?”
“Yes. But it must involve the water of life.”
“And so it will,” promised Stig.
Soon they were ensconced in their favorite location at the Bugling Moose, the humid, superheated cedar room that stood alone among the cabins.
“So the nudity? It’s so horrible. Why?” asked Bromstad once the löyly was thick in the air.
“It is a custom. Finnish, to be certain, but we have adopted it, as have the Swedes. What can I say, except that it is like your custom of eating turkey at Thanksgiving or of going to brunch on Mother’s Day?”
Bromstad considered this. “Well. I suppose once you’ve seen so many naked men, nothing can ever, ever match it in terms of shock and horror and pure mental trauma. So as far as inuring one to tragedy, perhaps it serves a purpose,” he allowed. “I’m going to shake hands with a millionaire,” Bromstad declared, and stood to leave.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ll return shortly,” he clarified, slipping on his sandals.
“Oh. Oh, of course,” said Stig, getting the gist.
Bromstad wandered out into the brisk moonlight and immediately regretted his decision not to wrap himself with a towel, given the night’s average low temperature of fifty-nine degrees.
“Whew,” he said, recognizing the distinct danger of shrinkage. He looked up at the moon and, noticing how it undulated, discovered that he was tipsy. He stood for some time in the wood, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and when they did, he saw to his surprise that a female rear end was protruding from the side of Cabin 5. He crept up to investigate. Staying a discreet distance away, concealed for the most part by a thick tamarack, he could make out the words of the voices inside.
“Um, getting back to my question, whom didn’t you want to see you just now?” said a male voice.
“Gus Bromstad,” came the answer, and in an instant Bromstad knew all. He listened for just a moment more and then ran to his cabin at the top speed that his sandals and nudity would allow, fetched their two pistols from Stig’s leather travel bag, and ran back to the sauna.
“It’s go time!” he announced to Stig, who was leaned against a wall, dozing. Bromstad pitched him his towel. “Put this on for a change.”
“Huh?”
“And take this. We gotta go!” he said, throwing a Beretta into his lap.
Stig, awoken effectively by the cold metal, secured his towel, slipped on his sandals, and followed Bromstad without question.