1
One night, late March 1930, Jim Beely and his brother Ward squatted on a sandbar, a sliver of bank jutting from the Omaha side of the Missouri. They took turns plunging another man’s face in the cold current. The river was black and slicked with stars.
Jim could hardly make out Vern beneath his brother. For as much wreckage as the son of a bitch wrought, Vern Meyer was puny. Maybe being small was how the sneak blended in, got away with the wreckage. Jim and Ward couldn’t blend in. They were too big. Too tall and wide. Even if they’d been reasonable-sized, people eyed their black hair and olive-tinged skin like a puzzle to figure out. At least being big meant they could hold their own. Ward spent days slinging four-hundred-pound ice cakes with cast-iron tongs. He must’ve had a pint of whiskey in him, and Vern was still light work. Ward just sat on him. Clamped the puny shit’s upper arms and elbows to his sides. About all Vern could do was kick his feet and claw the muddy sand.
When his fingers dug with a frenzy, Jim said, “Air.”
Ward pulled Vern’s head up so he could gasp and hack, get a good lungful. Then Ward plunged him back under. Vern gurgled.
Right then, mid-gurgle, Jim knew this was no good. There should’ve been a crumb of relief in roughing up Vern, in knowing he’d leave town and never come back. But Jim felt worse. He felt like a goddamned rube for chasing a crumb—for thinking the constant squeeze behind his ribs would let up a minute. The squeeze was like a laundry mangle wringing his lungs and stomach.
Jim needed to finish what he’d started. Get through it. He’d try taking stock of what he’d be glad about if he were some ninny who walked around being glad all day. Aside from the gurgling, Jim guessed it was quiet down here. He was upwind of the downtown sounds that ricocheted through his office every night: screams and laughter. The thuds of drunk heads hitting pavement or cobblestones and the scramble of pockets and purses being picked. Shoes getting ripped off a sap’s feet. Every Sunday paper, some variation of the same classified ad ran: PLEASE RETURN SHOES TAKEN OUTSIDE PAT DOYLE’S. At least down here on the river, there were no Victrolas and radios, no bawdy stage shows or movie theaters letting out, belching chatter into the air. Hell, the air itself was decent for late March. Warm enough Jim was in his shirtsleeves.
That didn’t do it—taking stock of what to be glad about. Jim still had the squeeze in his chest. His knees ached from squatting, and the tongues of his cheap oxfords gouged his bent ankles. A corn on his left foot stabbed like a hot poker.
And somehow, the worst of it all was he could see too far—clear to Iowa. The night-dark cliffs of the bluffs made the horizon too high, like he was at the bottom of a pit. Any colder a night, the city’s soot would’ve at least walled off the distance. Walled off now from whatever came next.
Vern’s fingers stretched straight and bent back high like he was being electrocuted.
“Air.”
Ward pulled up Vern’s head to let him gasp, then plunged it again. Under the visor of his flat wool cap, Ward peered toward the river, too. Jim wondered if Ward saw they were in a pit. Jim doubted it. They had the same eyes, their dad’s, dark umber like buckeyes. But they didn’t see alike. People only saw half of what was in front of them. The other half was fogged up by everything else they’d ever glimpsed. Memory was a goddamned cataract.
Ward’s voice was deep and rough like sawteeth gnawing through bark. “Still say we drive him out to Washington County. Grab what cash he’s got, send it to Molly and Addie. Tell Shumway he was at the Burlington, hopping a train.” Shumway was sheriff up in Washington County. “They’ll lock him up till trial. Then let the pen have him.”
“Molly don’t want money. She did, she would’ve wired the address. Stenos get paid same in Spokane as here. Probably got Addie working at a laundry. Two more weeks, they’ll be worth three of me.” Another man would’ve been bothered by that. Jim was used to it. Molly never let him forget his worth.
“She’s too hard on that kid.”
“Molly’s too hard on the whole goddamned world. And kids—Christ, look what having kids’s got us down here doing.”
Jim shouldn’t have said it. When it came to kids, Ward got moody. Jim wasn’t up for one of Ward’s moods. He tried to head it off. “Look. Maybe it would’ve been different with you and Loretta. Or you and Cel.” Ward’s first two wives and kids were dead. Loretta bled to death, pushing out a stillborn. Then Celestina overdosed on morphine two months after theirs died of fever. “All I know’s me and Molly never figured it out—the kid thing. We never figured out much.”
“Ma would’ve said me and Cel cursed it, naming that baby after Loretta.”
“Old wives’ tales are good at that—explaining what already happened. Be a hell of a lot handier if they said what’s coming.”
“I don’t know what I ever did.” To deserve it all, Ward meant, though there was never self-pity in how he said it. He sounded stumped.
“Christ. Not like there’s a tally anywhere. Besides, you got Edith now. We’ll drop this prick at the depot, get you back to Pop’s.” Pop was Edith’s dad. He ran a saloon in South Omaha billed as a soft drink parlor. “This way the son of a bitch skips town. I’m fine with him skipping town. So long as it’s permanent.”
“Don’t fix what’s wrong with him. Half drowning and throwing him on a train don’t.”
“Can’t be fixed,” Jim snapped. “A kid-diddler’s a mad dog. You want him fixed, cut off his head. Airmail it to Chicago.” He’d done that with a dog once, when Addie was too young for school yet. He’d had to. If he hadn’t, the health department would’ve. A mad dog bit Champ, then Champ bit Addie. Jim shot him, used a hacksaw, and put his head in a crate. Tests came back negative. Waste of postage and a good goddamned dog—the best goddamned dog there was—and all for what? So his fifteen-year-old daughter could get knocked up by a pervert. At least she’d lost it—the kid. Hell of a bright side, but Jim took what he could get. “Air.”
Ward yanked up Vern’s head to sputter and wheeze, then dunked it. “Heard any more? From Molly?”
“No. The once. Knowing her, that’ll be it.” Her sister lived in Spokane. Molly wired a week and a half ago, said she and Addie made it there. No address, no telephone number.
Jim wondered when he’d get served the papers. Or if he’d get served any. He wouldn’t put it past her to never file. If she didn’t file for divorce, she could keep looming over him like some disembodied harpy who sent telegrams. Wire an occasional reminder that he was the lousiest eighteen-year- long mistake she’d made. If he knew where the hell she was, if he had money to burn on lawyers, he’d have sent Molly some goddamned papers.
“Here,” Jim said. “Switch.”
Ward held Vern down and Jim maneuvered himself over, lifted Vern’s head. As soon as Vern coughed out, “Fellas,” Jim dunked him.
“You hear that?” Ward said.
“What?”
“Owl.”
“Stop talking like an old woman. It ain’t no omen. Owl hoot’s an owl hoot. It’s a goddamned bird.”
Ward was fishing in his shirt pocket, eyes on the far riverbank. He pulled out a smoke and lit it. The match head hissed when it hit water. “Think he’ll stay away from Spokane?”
“She’s fixed it so I can’t even find them up there. That sister of hers remarries twice a year. I’d find Atlantis sooner than her latest last name. Molly’s way of making a point. Saying I’m a shitty PI, too. Shitty husband, shitty father, shitty PI. No. He’ll just find another Addie.” He shoved Vern’s head till he felt resistance, Vern’s nose and chin meeting the sandy mud. Jim made himself lighten the push but felt the knobs at the base of Vern’s skull, the void between, where the spine met. “Hell, he already found the one.”
That’d been what did it, what made Molly pack up and leave two weeks ago. What finally did it, nearly a year after Vern Meyer swooped in and out of their house and left everything that’d been rotten to begin with a goddamned wreck, Molly saw an article in the morning Tribune about Vern and a twelve-year-old up in Kennard. Molly had the trunks packed, her and Addie boarded on a westbound train before the evening edition’s ink dried.
“How much time’s he looking at?”
“Three, five years. Tops.”
“You’d know where he was, at least.”
“Sure, I’d know. For three, five years I’d know. Then he’s dumb enough to show his face again, and I’m right back here doing this shit. He skips town now—hell, even Vern’s bright enough to stay gone-gone. I want the son of a bitch invisible.” Beneath him, Vern wanted air. He kicked and wriggled, tried to buck Jim off. Vern should’ve known there was no use. Jim had over a hundred pounds and a foot of height on him. If Jim wanted to snuff him out right now, the only chance Vern had was Ward’s intervention. Jim eyed his brother. Ward still smoked and stared at the river, half drunk.
Jim pulled Vern’s head up by the hair. Vern didn’t try to talk. He was too busy gasping. He huffed. A clod of sand plopped from his nose. Jim dunked him.
Three to five years. Then this shit again.
An image of Molly hovered in Jim’s head. Her standing on the porch after she’d caught Vern messing with Addie. She was waiting for the cops, but Vern had hightailed it. Molly stared hard from the doorstep and told Jim to stay the hell away, said he’d caused enough problems. For a flicker, then and now, he thought of what Vern must’ve done. Under Jim’s own goddamned roof.
His face flooded with heat. He felt those knobs of Vern’s skull. The back of Vern’s head cupped against his palm.
Jim pushed. He pushed, felt the resistance of sand and muck, then pushed harder. He pushed that head deep as it could go. Then he held it. Air bubbled up around Jim’s elbow and burst.
Vern squirmed and kicked, but Jim was braced. He held his shins steady and used the whole of his weight to press Vern’s body into the grit. Vern Meyer would disappear. If Jim did nothing else worth doing in fifty-one years on this earth, he’d erase Vern Meyer from it.
After the last few twitches, the river lapped and glimmered. A frog chirped in the brush at Jim’s back—it was too peaceful. Too scenic. It scraped against the images he tried to shake from his head: Molly at the doorstep. What Vern must’ve done.
The air had stopped moving and gone thick. Jim’s collar was already unbuttoned. He used his free hand to loosen his necktie another nudge, get a decent breath.
“Shit,” Ward said like he’d been daydreaming. “Air.”
“He wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“Jim,” he said. “Jim—you didn’t—”
“If I wanted to kill him, I got a .38.” It was a dodge, not an answer, but he couldn’t lie to Ward any sooner than he could say the truth. And he did carry a pistol, in a shoulder holster. He only used it for leverage and knocking down cans, but carrying it was habit from years as an on-again, off-again cop. “Heart attack, maybe.”
“Jesus.” Ward heaved himself upward to stand. “Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t panic.”
“‘Don’t panic,’ he says. Jesus. Jesus goddamn Christ, Jim.”
Jim sat back from where he’d knelt. He sat back on Vern’s skinny ass-bone like it was a piece of driftwood.
Ward double-, triple-puffed his cigarette. “So what the hell now?”
“We say he went for a swim, owl hoot killed him.”
“Should I go call Duffy? He’ll vouch it was a heart attack—aneurysm—whatever it was—leave us off the report.” Duffy had been police surgeon for years. When Cel died, he’d been good to Ward. He’d put “pulmonary hemorrhage” on the certificate. Said she died of TB.
“Retired. Couple months ago. Who’s deputy?”
Hat off, Ward scratched his hair so it stood like brush bristles. “Hell, I don’t know. Favano? Favana? Favara?” Then he seemed to focus. He looked like he was doing math in his head, measuring dimensions of river and sand. “Floater? Grab whatever’s on him—license, letters, anything with a name—roll him out, let him drift?”
It was an option. Floaters were common enough. The river was good for nothing but fishing, dumping garbage, and drowning. The bottom was fickle. Shallow stretches dropped to deep ruts. The bank was fickle, too. Water flooded and receded, redistributed shore. Made one state bigger, the other smaller. After the last big flood, dry silt piled up north of the dump. Squatters built a shack town on it. Between the sand and mud and water strewn with dead trees, the Missouri was made for floaters.
Jim was tempted. They could roll Vern in, let him bob alongside some bloated pig carcass. But anything that easy would go wrong. “He’d screw that up, too. Get caught on a tree trunk downstream. Some kid fishing at dawn spots him, they find him while he’s still got a face—it’s no good. Somebody might’ve seen us leave Pop’s with him.”
Jim could think of only one option. “Let’s take him to Gilson.”
Copyright © 2024 by Chris Harding Thornton