Just 12 days left to make plans

In Leetsville, Sy Huett, our go-getter used car salesman, was out trolling for business, driving his hearse slowly up 131 while yelling to robed people gathered in groups beside the road. “Give ya the deal of a lifetime, folks,” he called as he drove along beyond me. “You only have to pay for your new car if the world don’t end. Good bet. Like getting a car for free.”

I hoped to get by him, pretending to be invisible, but he saw me as I drove into the post office parking lot to mail off the manuscript. I got out of my car, the manuscript package in my hands, still pretending nobody could see me and that I couldn’t see anyone either. I was almost to the door when he whipped his hearse in front of me, blocking my way.

“Emily! How ya doing?” He leaned out the driver’s window, smiling wide. Sy’s comb-over was especially dramatic today, starting somewhere down by his left ear, where he’d made himself a part then flipped the hair up and over a growing bald spot at the top. He’d sprayed his whole head so the hair didn’t move, just sat there like a furrowed, and always fallow, spring field.

I nodded in greeting.

“I’ve been thinking. Isn’t it time you replaced that old Jeep of yours?” He smiled.

I shook my head, smiled back, trying to walk around his car. He edged the old hearse forward so I had the choice of talking or having my foot run over.

“Lots of good years left in it, Sy.”

He made a sound in his throat, then clucked and wobbled his head from side to side. “Winter’s coming. You know what that means. Gotta have a vehicle you can count on when the snow and ice get here.”

“Mine’s fine.” I smirked and started around his car. He rolled backward enough to stop me. “Anyway, Sy, the world’s going to end. Maybe I won’t need a car at all. Maybe you’ll be out of business and we’ll all ride around on fluffy clouds.”

“Isn’t this something? Did you ever …? I’ve got a deal going with those people …” He nodded to where two of the cultists stood beside the road. A big, broad, yellow-toothed smile spread from ear to ear. “Don’t pay me a dime until twelve-o-one, October twenty-seventh. If we’re all still here, I get my money. If it’s all over—well, they’ll have a newer car to drive while they’re waiting it out. You know what they say, Emily: This world and one more; and then come the fireworks. Give you the same deal I give to all of them.”

How could I not laugh at this go-getting, skinny guy in a suit jacket that bunched up around his ears? He sat there, inside his hearse, grinning at me, head back just a little, expecting to make a deal there and then.

“Who says that?”

“What?”

“That fireworks stuff.”

“Everybody.”

“Never heard it before.”

“Trust me. Common saying. Now about the deal …”

“Thanks, Sy, but I’m betting not one of us will get out of paying you.”

“Me, too.”

I thought a moment, about how Sy was everywhere and heard everything. “By the way, Sy, did you hear anything about Arnold Otis coming to town, the man running for state senator?”

He nodded. “Yeah, he’s making a campaign stop in Traverse then heading over here, because of Marjory, you know. I heard you found her out there at Deward. Strange thing. You think she just up and died?”

“I don’t think so. If you read the Northern Statesman there’s news in there about her death.”

He waved a hand at me. “Don’t need to read any newspapers. I go into Eugenia’s place, there,” he pointed back toward EATS, “when there’s something to learn.”

I figured this was one of the reasons newspapers were having such trouble in the country: a non-reading public. Maybe people everywhere were going back to spreading news around a campfire. Maybe the oral tale would take the place of a front-page story. Maybe the tom-tom would come back—Detroit to Saginaw to Grand Rapids to Traverse City and places north. Maybe the hysterics of the Internet would replace who, what, where, when, and how. I sure hoped not.

“Come on, Sy. Break down and buy yourself a newspaper. And, to tell you the truth, I love my Jeep. I’m keeping it. And you know what else, Sy? When it comes time to replace this car I’ll be looking on the Internet. Like you getting your news cheap, lots of deals there. I have to watch my money.”

Sy wasn’t happy. “You don’t want to do that, Emily. Who’s gonna service it? Who’s gonna get you the best financing …?”

I smiled, shrugged, and left Sy sputtering.

Dorothy, behind the counter at the post office, put her hand out for the package I carried. I hesitated. It seemed I was committing an irrevocable act I couldn’t call back. She frowned at me, her thick, black brows coming together in the middle of her forehead.

“Well? You wanna mail it or not?” she demanded.

I wrote REQUESTED MATERIAL across the front of the envelope then held it out one more time, delicately, as if it were velvet, with a diamond tiara perched on top. She grabbed it, slapped it on the scale, asked me if it was potentially hazardous—which I had a hard time answering, fearing it could be—asked a few other questions, ran off metered postage to overnight it, then threw my manuscript in the bin behind her. I heard it hit and kept my head down, rooting in my purse for money as I got a hold of myself. It was only a manuscript, not my whole life, falling into that bin.

When I turned to leave, it was like leaving a child behind, in the hands of people who didn’t know what a delicate thing I’d given them, nor how they would break my heart if it didn’t get directly and safely to New York City.

Next was the IGA. I bought eggs and dog food and a bottle of wine for Bill’s party. When I came out, brown paper sack in my arms, I figured I had time left to get over to the Feed and Seed and ask a few questions before I met Crystalline and her friends in Kalkaska.

I stuck my groceries in the back seat and made my way to the big red Feed and Seed, kitty-corner from the gas station, an ancient building leaning toward the east, waiting for a strong wind to bring it down.

I had no use for pig food or udder cream, so I’d never been in the Feed and Seed before. The smell of the place, when I walked in, surprised me. The smell was good, like old leather and old wood and, maybe, old farmers. The floor, of bare planks, creaked as I walked around stacks of feed and bird seed, looking for someone to ask about a tractor salesman.

Three elderly men stood near the back of the store, talking, laughing, carrying on. They wore overalls and flannel shirts under wide-open jackets. Every one had a billed cap on his head advertising either John Deere or the Detroit Tigers. One of the men saw me walking toward them and frowned, causing the other two men to turn slowly and give me appraising looks.

“Emily Kincaid,” I introduced myself, and said I was a reporter with the newspaper. That got their attention.

“Know who you are,” one man said. “See you over to EATS. Sometimes in the IGA. Sometimes getting gas.” This man was wrinkled but still very good looking, with dark hair sticking from his cap, a wide chest, and a good smile. “Bob Whitfield.” He held out his hand.

I didn’t recognize Bob Whitfield or either of the other two men. In a small town like Leetsville, it seemed everyone had a knack for recognizing new people who might stay around a while. I didn’t have that knack myself, having brought my city obliviousness up north with me.

“With the newspaper?” This man was thin and bent. He wore a checked flannel shirt; said his name was Don Croton. “Well Emily, I guess they’re using women in lots of different jobs now. Though I suppose Lois Lane’s been around a long time.”

I laughed, knowing I was being teased. I took the big, flat paw of a hand he held out to me and shook it.

“Yup, like back in World War II. Let ’em do riveting and stuff,” the third man, heavy set, stomach pushing against the front of his stained coveralls, said. “Name’s Rowdy.”

“I’ve got a question …”

Rowdy looked to the other two, settled back on the heels of his boots, and raised his eyebrows. He turned to me. “Now what’s the question, Ma’am? You want to know how the harvest went this year? You want corn yield per acre?”

They were really having their way with me, these old, and very sharp, men.

“I’d love to know all of that but it’s about something different. A woman died out at Deward and …”

“Heard about it. Marjory Otis, wasn’t it?” Rowdy turned to the others for confirmation. “Think I heard you was the one found her.”

“I did. Now I’m looking into the death with Deputy Dolly Wakowski …”

The thin man, Don, raised his eyebrows. “With Deputy Dolly, eh? Heard our Dolly’s been doing some pretty good police work lately.”

Bob snickered. “Sure beats busting up patrol cars the way she used to do. Wasn’t it Chet Acorn’s son, Willard, she chased when he took that candy bar? Ran her car into the corner of the bank when the kid went in?”

“What I want to know,” I interrupted before I spent an hour or so trying to get them back on track, “is about her mother, Winnie Otis. I was told she ran away with a tractor salesman back when Marjory was in her early teens.”

“Heard that, too,” Bob said.

“Do you know who the tractor salesman was?”

All three took the time to look directly into each other’s faces, shake their head, and toe the floor. “Never could figure it out.” Rowdy, the heavy man, looked at the other two. “You figure out who the guy was? Only tractor salesman I knew back then was Jimmy … eh … what his last name now?”

“Think it was Little.” Don, the thin man, took off his cap, scratched the back of his head, then set the cap carefully in place.

“What was ‘little’?” Rowdy asked, frowning at his friend.

Don frowned back at him. “His name. What in hell you think I’m talking about?”

“Well Don, to tell ya the truth I’m clueless here.”

Before they got off track again, I quickly asked, “His name was Jimmy Little?”

“Could be,” Bob said, turning to the others. “Wasn’t he the guy would come out to the farm to see how the new tractor was working? Then sometimes, I remember, came out for planting, even for a christening and such? Sure, you remember. Jimmy—big guy, always laughing and carrying on—like he loved what he was doing.”

Don asked, “Didn’t he get transferred to a different store? Sure he did, down to Kingsley, I think.” He turned to me. “Yup, I’d try there. Down to Kingsley. Call ’em first. Make sure before you go. John Deere place, don’t remember the guy’s name who owns it. They’ll know how to find ’im, but he’s not involved with any of that business out to Deward, is he, Emily? Wouldn’t think so. Must be at least sixty, if he’s a day.”

“So I might be looking for a man named Jimmy Little in Kingsley?”

“Well now,” Bob said. “That was a long time ago. Who knows where the man got to after that.”

“Any other tractor salesman you remember around here back then?”

One by one, they shook their head. “None that come to mind,” Bob, the good-looking one, said. “But if you find Jimmy, he’ll be able to tell you. Jimmy knew everybody. Good businessman.”

I thanked the three of them, talked about the weather and what winter was going to be like this year, then shook hands all around and left them to their ruminating and reminiscing about Jimmy and what a good guy he’d been and the winter he’d come out to help plow Rowdy out of a ditch when the snow got over two hundred inches by the first of January.

I was out the door and on my way south, to Kalkaska and the Burger King.