After the Rain Part 16

Ace smiled. "But you'd take him back in a minute working for you if you could get him away from my brother."

Gordy shrugged. They dropped the subject.

"So...Phil," Ace said. "That's his name, your husband?"

"Yeah. Phil Broker."

"So Phil got out of organic pharmaceuticals?"

Nina nodded. "He made a little money and bought some sh.o.r.e-front up north on Lake Superior, fixed up these old cabins, and now we've got the resort."

Ace and Gordy looked at each other. Ace gave this nodding gesture, something like permission. Gordy shrugged. Then Ace turned his attention back to Nina, pointed at the travel bag Broker had left, and said, "You're still in your pajamas. Think maybe it's time to put on some clothes."

"Got a point," Nina said, feeling the tension thicken in the room. She started to slide off the stool.

Then Gordy reached for her purse that was sitting on the counter, tipped it over, and slid out her wallet. Flipped it open-"Your last name is Pryce on your driver's license. How come his name is different?"

"He could have changed his name to Pryce if he wanted," Nina said, poised, hands on the bar.

"Uh-huh." Gordy continued to stare at her as she pushed off the bar, picked up her bag. As she started toward the stairs he snaked out a hairy arm and flattened his palm against her stomach, feeling around there. As she recoiled, he said. "Not upstairs. Pick some clothes out of your bag and put them on, right here."

"Strip for you? Over my dead body," Nina said in a steady voice.

"It could be arranged," Gordy said softly, coming up off his stool. Nina saw Gordy was serious, and Ace was letting it happen. A ripple of goose b.u.mps raised on her bare arms. She instinctively reached over and gripped her gla.s.s off the bar, holding it like a hand hatchet as her eyes measured the distance to the door.

"Slow down," Ace said. "It's just that Gordy has a suspicious mind."

"You see, we got a bet," Gordy said.

Nina narrowed her eyes.

Ace smiled. "Gordy bet me a hundred bucks you're a cop. He thinks maybe you're wired."

"You mean wearing a tape recorder under this this?" She plucked at the flimsy shirt.

"Ah, yeah."

"You're joking, right?" Nina said.

" 'Fraid not," Ace said.

"Show and tell time, honey," Gordy said.

Nina set the gla.s.s down, eased back two steps, lowered the bag, zipped it open, and searched around. She found a pair of shorts and a tank top.

"Okay, I'll play your silly game." She walked up to Gordy, dropped the shorts and top on the floor, reached down, crossed her arms, grabbed the hem of the shirt and peeled it up and off as she executed a pirouette. With her back to them, wearing nothing but the low-cut panties from Victoria's Secret-thank you, Janey-she tossed the shirt accurately over her shoulder. It draped Gordy's face as she stepped into the shorts, pulled on the tank top, and turned to face them.

Clearly p.i.s.sed, she said, "Just what makes you guys think you rate rate a cop, anyway?" a cop, anyway?"

Ace clapped and started to laugh. Gordy removed the shirt and folded his arms, scowling. "You think it's funny. Well, it ain't funny."

"C'mon, man, it is is funny," Ace said. funny," Ace said.

Gordy slid off his stool, stooped, and emptied the contents of Nina's bag, immediately retreating as if propelled by a natural aversion to the volume of strange items a woman could stuff into a bag. He returned to poke through the mess for a few seconds, then stepped back once more.

"Gordy," Ace said firmly.

Grunting, Gordy squatted and pushed the clothes back in. He planted his hands on his knees, stood up, and, far less hostile now, faced Nina. "Um, is Phil the kind of guy who's going to go brood about what happened out there? And come back on us with a 12-gauge at one in the morning?"

Nina shook her head. "He just turned forty-eight. He don't bounce so good anymore. I suspect what he'll do is take Kit back home. His parents are there to help out."

Gordy threw up his hands in mild disgust, spun on his heel and stomped across the barren barroom, threw open the front door, and continued across the highway. Ace and Nina craned their necks and watched Gordy enter the barnlike Quonset with the rusted Bobcat and windmill out front.

Nina turned to Ace. "He don't like women. I could tell the way he looked at me."

Ace shook his head. "He don't like women like you you. Taller than him, lean, smart. He likes 'em about seventeen, no neck, big in front, and stoned." He made a gesture with both hands cupped before his chest. Then he pointed to his head. "And small up here."

"So you think I'm a cop?" Nina asked, pretending to be flattered. And confident, because she could cross her heart and hope to die and swear she was not a cop cop.

"Don't know what you are," Ace said, Then he ran his hand along the bar and felt the leather grain and distinctive scale pattern of her wallet. "Don't know for sure what this is either."

"Ostrich. Phil's got a buddy who raises them for the meat and makes leather goods from the hides."

"Really." Ace kneaded the leather. "Tell me something."

Nina threw a wary glance out the front window toward the corrugated tin building where Gordy had disappeared. "Depends."

"You think ostriches could run with buffalo? After the bar's gone I was thinking of going out further west, maybe try to raise some buffalo."

Nina got stuck, once again blindsided by this easygoing, mostly sad, but definitely hard-to-read man. It wasn't easy to locate the danger in him. But it was there. She had to catch her breath and restart her act.

"It's okay," he said.

"What's okay?" Nina said, letting herself drift, letting the color come into her cheeks.

Ace winked. "That you like me. C'mon, let's take a ride. I want to show you something."

In the Tahoe, heading west. "So why would I be a cop?" Nina asked.

"One reason is whiskey. Most of the bars up around the border backdoor a little extra inventory into Canada. Bottle of booze costs fourteen bucks here, sells for thirty-eight up there. h.e.l.l of a markup. So there's money to be made. Same's true for cigarettes."

"Give me another reason."

Ace pointed out the window, at a grain elevator. "See those tanks?"

A big one looked like a giant white sausage to Nina; half a dozen smaller ones sat on wheeled carriages.

Ace went on: "Anhydrous ammonia. Basic fertilizer, used throughout the state. Also an ingredient in making methamphetamine. Meth freaks driving through here from the West Coast are struck dumb by all this stuff just sitting out here, like fat white cows waiting to be milked. They think they've died and gone to heaven. Just have to pull over by the side of the road and cook up a batch."

He turned to look at her. "I've sold some whiskey to Canadians from time to time. But I've never taken it across the border myself. And I got nothing to do with that meth s.h.i.t. So if you're some kind of fancy ATF agent slumming, you gonna have to wait around a long time to get something on me."

"Give it a rest," Nina said. Then she stared straight ahead, scanning the straightedge of Highway 5 heading west. After a few minutes Ace slowed and turned left off the road. An overgrown gravel drive led up to a chain-link fence that surrounded a square empty plot. A big white sign with black letters: A A7.

"What's this?" Nina said.

"Where we keep the invisible monsters."

"I don't get it," she said. Then she thought about it and maybe she did.

"They trucked the missiles off to Montana and imploded the silos. They keep the fences up and numbered so Russian satellites can verify that they're empty. My brother Dale insists they ain't empty. He says we got these cages all over the county, looks like nothing in them. Dale says they're still in there, pacing back and forth. Wanting to get out. We just can't see 'em."

"Kind of creepy," Nina said.

"For sure. That's Dale's sense of humor. He was the only kid who had trouble with the missiles. Only one I know about. Most of us just took it in stride. We had two silos on our farm. One next to the barn, and one like this, in our wheat field a couple hundred yards from the house. And Dale, he'd have these bad nightmares. Fire falling from the sky, burning up all the animals, stuff like that. Twenty years ago we were still on the farm. I was seventeen, Dale was about eight. I heard this shooting and I ran down to the barn and there was Dale with the .22 rifle. He had shot two cows, some chickens, a pig. He was reloading the gun when I took it away from him.

"And he was crying. Real shook. So I ask him just what the h.e.l.l he was doing, and he said he didn't want the animals to suffer in the fire that was going to fall from the sky." Ace shook his head. "Well, Dad was gonna be p.i.s.sed for sure, so I went in the house, got out the whiskey, and started drinking. When Dad came in from work he found me s.h.i.t-faced, shooting pigeons in the barn with that .22. I took the heat for Dale and had to get an extra job to make enough money to replace the stock."

He looked over at Nina and winked. "That's when I started drinking." He slowly turned the Tahoe around and pulled back on the highway. "That's a true story," he said. After that they rode in silence for a while. Ace came to an intersection and turned east on State 20.

"So how's life look today? What you gonna do?" Ace asked.

"Not what I been doing, which was what other people wanted me to do."

"I can relate to that. The trick is to find what you want to do."

"Easier said."

"Amen."

"So, are you doing what you want to do?" Nina asked.

"I'm driving you, aren't I?"

"I guess."

Nina caught herself unconsciously touching at her hair. She put her hand in her lap. Then she reached in her purse, took out an American Spirit, and lit it. "So, you you ever have any nightmares?" she asked. ever have any nightmares?" she asked.

"Lots. Only one real good one, though," Ace said. He flung his hand at the surrounding fields. "Our people came out here, h.e.l.l, before practically anybody else. Early 1850s. Lived in one of those sod houses. We found these letters they wrote, and they said one time they got stuck in that house for two days straight while the buffalo came through."

Nina shook her head.

Ace explained. "Herd of buffalo so big it took two days to pa.s.s. And so close-packed my ancestors couldn't open the door to get to the well."

"And that's your dream?"

"Sort of. I dreamed I was up on the border running a dozer, knocking down some bankrupt farmer's house, and that herd of buffalo came through again. Me trapped on the bulldozer and the buffalo coming forever."

"Is Ace your real name?"

"Nickname. Name's Asa. That was my grandfather's name. Grandfather helped organize the Nonpartisan League after World War One. You ever hear of that?"

Nina cautiously shook her head.

Ace smiled. "Grandpa used to say if you took a railroad man from St. Paul, a mill owner from Minneapolis, and a banker from New York and you stuffed them all in a pickle barrel and rolled the barrel down the hill, there'd always be a son of a b.i.t.c.h on top."

"Sounds like your grandpa wasn't a Republican."

"You got that right. When he had a few beers in him he used to say there's nothing more dangerous than a bunch of angry farmers with rifles. Was how America started, he'd say."

Nina sat up a little straighter, attentive. "Sounds like militia talk."

"Ah, I met some of those guys-just weekend beer bellies, like to dress up in camo. Not real serious folks for the most part."

Definitely more attentive. "What's serious?"

"Changing something. Fixing something." Ace shrugged. "Hey, I'm not much for politics. But I do know that if one guy shoots the banker it's murder. If twenty guys lynch him it's a mob; but if the whole county takes him out and strings him up it's a change of administration. That's kinda what they did here in the teens and twenties, took over the state, wrote new laws, created the state mill and the state bank. Back then they called them Socialists."

Ace shook his head and laughed. "Then we become the launch site for all the missiles aimed at Communist Russia. Which made us into a big target. Kinda like payback for what the Nonpartisan League did to the fat cats, maybe."

Nina eyed him carefully. "You have this habit of surprising people, you know?"

Ace smiled wryly, and Nina thought he could probably do that for a few more years, but once the tiny wrinkles around his mouth came up sharper it'd be sad all the way. He said, "I used to play ball. That's a game where you stand around a lot. But then if something happens, you got to be on top of it. Got to be ready for surprises, I guess." His eyes lingered on her when he said that, searching.

She held his gaze. "So what is it you're going to show me?"

"Just a place where something happened."

Nina looked away and watched the wind stream through a long row of trees. "What kind of trees are those?"

"Poplars. Immigrants used to plant them. Put 'em in cemeteries when somebody died. Instead of headstones. More windrows to cut down on the wind. Notice how they all kind of bow to the east. That's the wind." He grinned and gave her a sidelong glance. "You know why the wind blows in North Dakota?"

She knew that one. "Yeah, yeah. Because Minnesota sucks."

They laughed and Nina got comfortable, curling her legs under her in the bucket seat, something she hadn't done in a car with a man since high school.

More dead straight road, fields of wheat and oats and occasional pools of flax that seemed to float against the green like wisps of mirage.

Then a tall gray grain elevator loomed up on the left side of the highway. Ace slowed and turned left. The red sign by the road said STARKWEATHER STARKWEATHER.

"Quaint name for a town," Nina said.

"Got an echo to it, that's for sure," Ace said. They drove past an abandoned grocery, a shack with a gas pump, and a post office that maybe was still functioning. Ace parked across from a run-down tavern with a big Pabst Blue Ribbon sign hanging over the door. He zipped down the window, fingered a Camel out of his chest pocket, lit it, exhaled, and said, "How many chances you think people get?"

"Not sure. Sometimes I think some people never had had a chance." a chance."