SATURDAY OCTOBER 27, 2007
THE SIGN ALONGSIDE THE FREEWAY read PRISON FACILITY. DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS. Lee Ann turned off at the next exit and parked in the area assigned to visitors, checked her hair in the rearview mirror, and collected her purse and notebook.
Saturdays and Sundays, Level 1 admitted visitors to a large, yellow common room crammed with long Formica tables, metal chairs, and a few vending machines lined up on gray linoleum, everything jammed together and smelling of Pine-Sol. A chain link fence enclosed an outdoor area with a few concrete tables and benches.
Lee Ann passed through security and took a seat at one of the indoor tables between a family of four and a young couple tattooed all the way up to their chins. A month ago, she’d have forgiven their sins and offered compassion. Today they were questionable characters—sad and crude, smelling bad, and talking too loud.
Pat Merker walked through the double doors, taking only a second to spot her. He might have been Walker’s twin—slight build, light step, twinkling blue eyes, long nose, and ready smile. He looked like he’d been washed in warm, all the colors having bled into a faded, neutral tone, and yet a hot, orange flame burned inside. He winked and made his way across the room. Two warm hands captured her cold one and she blushed when he said, “I’ve seen your picture, but let me tell you, you’re a hell of a lot better looking in person!”
The same Walker con. A carbon copy.
“Thank you,” she said, retrieving her hand. “Let’s talk outside.”
“You’ll be cold.”
“I’ll put up with the chill to have some privacy.”
“All right then,” he said.
They stood next to the cinderblock wall, benches and tables empty, shadows of two leafless locust trees spreading veins across the concrete.
“I’ll come right to the point,” she said. “I need to find my brother.”
His lips stayed set in a smile and his eyes held hers.
“An urgent matter has come up regarding a large sum of money he’s inherited.”
“I wish I could help, ma’am, but I wouldn’t know where he is.”
“The money is from our mother. She died.”
Pat’s smile vanished, as if swiped by a damp cloth.
“Where is your mother?” she said.
“She died when I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry.”
Two young boys burst into the yard and chased each other around the tables.
“Walker doesn’t know.” She bowed her head. “He was very close to Mother.”
The boys aimed their index fingers and shot at each other, yelling, taking cover behind the benches.
“The money was left by our grandfather, who was a gambling man. I believe it comes to about twice the amount of what Walker got from Keith Lampert for Ross Plank’s property.”
“Bam! Bam!”
Pat leaned in, hands in his back pockets.
“Walker has to sign the appropriate papers in order to claim his half of our ranch, either in person or by mail. And of course, half of the large sum of grandfather’s money is his due, as well. I need an address.”
Pat’s eyes darted back and forth across the pavement.
“He’s in Des Moines,” he said, finally. “You can find him through Jimmy Zebrowski.”
“Bam!”
He held the door.
“Wait inside, I’ll get Jimmy’s number for you.”
She stopped at the Los Lunas Walmart and washed her face and hands in the bathroom, then washed her hands a second time. On a pre-paid cellphone, she called home from the parking lot. Scott reported everything under control.
“Be careful, Mom. They’re expecting blizzard conditions in the Dakotas, Iowa, across Michigan, and Illinois. I wish you’d let me come with you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “See you in a few days.”
A fat man struggled with his shopping cart, maneuvering it between two trucks and letting it roll into the back of his car, and she got out to help.
“Stocking up before the storm,” he said.
During the blizzard of ’88, when she and Wayne were building the house, the power had gone out for four days. Snow piled on itself, half burying the stacked lumber, sheetrock, and vehicles, covering the fences. The first night she cooked hamburgers in the wood stove. The second night she roasted hot dogs in the fireplace and made popcorn by candlelight. The snow was supposed to stop by morning, but it kept on. Wayne grew irritable and resisted her attempt at a romantic interlude, grumbling about the lousy electric coop’s inability to fix the power lines, how it’d take days to get the vehicles out, how he despised kicking the dreaded muck off his boots. She had the first inkling of her mistake then, and as time passed, the premonition proved true. She would have continued, had Eugene not appeared and persisted and won. He’d been patient, offering her time to work it out with the first man in her life, the Lord. When she broke her promise to love, cherish, and obey her husband, Eugene stood by her, sympathizing with her inner turmoil, respecting her faith without engaging in spiritual dogma, for Jesus was not his savior. Eugene asked for nothing more than taking life a day at a time, acceptance of man and nature at his core. He’d married a woman who prioritized virtue at the expense of everything else and sought guidance from a phantom god—a wife who, from the start, had relegated him to second place. A man couldn’t help resent that rank, feel diminished compared to perfection.
The storm might strand her in a cheap motel, eating packaged muffins with weak coffee for who knew how many days. She took the exit to the Albuquerque airport and found the long-term parking lot. A shuttle delivered her to American Airlines, where she booked a flight at 10:35 the following morning. After a stop in Dallas, the plane would land in Des Moines at 4:50. She caught another shuttle to La Quinta Motel, left her suitcase in the room, tucked the key in her purse, and walked over to Denny’s. A baked potato and a cup of hot tea were all she could stomach. As a girl, she and Mother had flown to a cousin’s wedding in Phoenix. The wind had blown that plane around like a tissue.