The Driftless Area Read online

Dear Pierre,

  I can’t believe senior year beckons and with it our last chance to do the things that will last a lifetime in our memories. Whoever said every day is a gift from somewhere really had the right outlook. As Carrie told you, I want to be free to see other people in our last year at Shale-Midlothian High. Always remember how I wore your coat on the field trip to Effigy Mounds.

  Yours truly,

  Rebecca

  Pierre let the letter sail down to the floor. It sounded as if she were dating a class-ring salesman, though he was touched that she remembered wearing his coat. But they never did get back together, and the following year Rebecca moved to Arizona, where her father took a job with the city of Yuma, and Pierre never saw her again.

  The years went by. Pierre went off to college in Ames, 175 miles south and west. It took him five years to finish. His parents died the winter of his third year. His mother’s death had been predicted for some time, but his father’s heart quit on him without warning three weeks later. His father was coming home from the hardware store in Shale and pulled over to the side of the road, where a mailwoman making her rounds found him in his car.

  When Pierre looked back on that time it was as if he were seeing it through clouded glass. He moved like a sleepwalker among people in suits and dresses, people hovering in stairwells. That his parents were gone seemed impossible. He thought of them as still alive. The problem loomed but the solution was out of reach. It felt like there was still something he might do if only he could think of it.

  A kind of nervous seizure came upon him as he waited for his father’s funeral to begin at the Church of the Four Corners. His hands shook and his breath grew short. He got up and sidled down the row of half siblings from Council Bluffs. He left the main part of the church and went up two stories to the bell tower and stood looking out over the half wall at the light on the snow-covered hills. He smoked a cigarette and put it out and then he cried pretty hard and for a long while. He had a blue handkerchief like the old farmers carried, and with it he wiped his face and blew his nose. The light bothered his eyes because it was so bright and thin and evidently unaware of what it was shining on.

  TWO

  THE STRANGE sequence of events that would end in the violence on Fay’s Hill began on New Year’s Eve of the year that Pierre turned twenty-four.

  He was living in Shale again, in an apartment above the stationery store. He had a bachelor’s degree in science and a job as a bartender at a supper club called the Jack of Diamonds out by Lens Lake.

  He was the youngest bartender by a number of years and so he was given the early shift that night, before the customers would be laying down the big careless tips of the end of the year.

  Thus Pierre left the bar around nine o’clock and went to a house party in Desmond City. The house belonged to some people he didn’t know very well and was arranged in a stark and random style. There was a hammer in the bathtub, a Bakelite radio in the fireplace, and guitars and drums in the living room. Torn paper blinds lay over the back of a bench near the windows, as if someone had taken them down but forgot to throw them away. The walls were painted dark red and blue.

  Appropriated advertising art was not unusual in such a house and the example they had found was rare and hypnotic. It was a clear blue brick in the shape of a pack of cigarettes but three or four times larger, and the inside was alive with perpetual lightning. Touching the surface brought a swarm of rays to your fingertips. The surgeon general’s warning was printed on the side of the display, and on the front it said:

  Kool

  Milds

  The House of Menthol

  Pierre got a tumbler of whiskey from the kitchen and sat in a rocking chair drinking and watching the blue light. After a while a woman came and sat on the arm of the chair. She was rangy and mascaraed and she smelled like spice and wore a black leather jacket with silver studs and thick fringe down the sleeves.

  Her name was Allison Kennedy, and she worked on the line at the glass factory in the town of Arcadia. She had ice-colored eyes with gold flecks and sang in a band called the Carbon Family.

  “Somebody said you play drums,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That and cello.”

  “We’re trying to get something going, but our drummer’s not here.”

  “I’ll play.”

  The music started in half an hour or so. Allison Kennedy had a red ASAT Classic and there were two other guitarists and Pierre on the drums. The little amps sat back by the wall, throwing out a big jangling sound. They played “Thrift Store Chair,” “Coralville Dam,” “Polyester Bride,” and “In Heaven There Is No Beer.”

  Few played the last song as the Carbon Family did. It was a slow version full of minor chords and sorrow. With her highest ghostly voice, Allison Kennedy made you believe it was true.

  In Heaven there is no ale

  And no one delivers the mail

  And when our heartbeats fail

  Our friends will attend the rummage sale

  The song ended, but the despair of it remained in the heat of the party room. The band members walked off to have a beer and figure out what to play next. Pierre stayed at the drums. There was a bass with two mounted toms, a snare, a floor tom, and two cymbals, a ride and a high-hat. He began a solo that roamed around gathering volume and speed and always coming back to a series of rim shots that sounded like a machine breaking down.

  Yes, we will die—this was the message of his drumming—but until then we must make a big racket like this one. He was trying to restore the psychic balance of the party, but once people know a drum solo is under way they will usually leave the room no matter why the solo is being played, or at least that’s what happened in this case.

  The band’s drummer arrived. Pierre walked around the party with his tall glass of whiskey, listening to conversations and sometimes joining in, but he never seemed to say the right thing. It’s funny how you can become the unwelcome guest when you don’t know that many people, and should be at worst simply a stranger, but Pierre had a knack for it.

  Once, for example, he found a boy and two girls talking in an alcove between the kitchen and some other room. They had the bright quick eyes and Goodwill wardrobe of students from the junior college.

  “They told me I was supposed to take them,” said the boy. “And I did. But my ears started ringing worse than ever so I stopped.”

  “Taking what?” Pierre asked.

  “Was I talking to you?”

  “Not till now.”

  “Antidepressants.”

  “Are you sad?”

  “I’m depressed.”

  Pierre nodded and took a drink. “What’s the difference?”

  “This is just what I’m talking about,” said the boy.

  One of the girls looked flatly at Pierre and chewed on a small plastic sword. “It’s a common misunderstanding about depression that it has to do with something depressing,” she said.

  “You should try listening to music,” said Pierre. “It always makes me feel better.”

  “I’m sure it’s that simple,” said the boy.

  “The Decemberists have a good album out. Listen to ‘The Sporting Life.’ If that doesn’t make you smile, nothing will.”

  “Who are you?”

  “He’s the one that was smashing on the drums,” said the girl.

  “Oh,” said Pierre. “Did you like that?”

  “Not really. It hurt my ears.”

  So Pierre was not doing that well at the party but could not seem to help himself. And yet sometimes, just when you least deserve it, something good happens.

  Pierre was coming down the stairs and Allison Kennedy in the black fringed jacket was going up and they saw each other in the narrow stairwell and without a word began making out.

  This was the kind of thing that never happened to Pierre, and he felt that the desperate kisses were absolving him of the drum solo and of bothering the depressed student.

  Then it
was over—he went down and Allison went up—but he understood that some part of the night might be salvaged, and he found his gloves and coat and went outside to take a walk and sober up a little if he could.

  He walked to a park down the street where he could look up and see if anything changed when the year gave way to another one—as if the starpaper sky might fade out and reappear in a different pattern.

  Pierre wore a herringbone overcoat of black and gray, and yellow leather gloves with straps across the back, and once he was outside of the dark-walled house he congratulated himself on moving with great coordination down the sidewalk and into the park.

  There was nothing unusual going on in the sky. He did see a falling star, but they were so common on winter nights in that place that it would have been more out of the ordinary not to see one if you looked up for any time at all.

  In the picnic shelter of the park an old man was sitting on a table with his hands in his coat pockets and black cowboy boots resting on the bench, and Pierre walked over to talk to him.

  “Happy New Year,” said Pierre.

  “And to you.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for somebody. Almost beginning to think they made other plans.”

  Pierre tried to put his foot up on the cement floor of the picnic shelter but he missed, so he tried again and made it.

  “Been drinking?” said the old man.

  “A little bit.”

  “Well, this is the night for it, I guess.”

  “I’m at a party up the street.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. The new year. Whatever it brings.”

  “More than ready.”

  “Good. Let’s shake on it.”

  They took their gloves off and shook hands.

  “Listen,” said Pierre. “It’s pretty cold out here. Why don’t you come along to this party I was telling you about.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Painful introductions. Onion dip on the table. It’s not for me.”

  “It’s just a circus anyway. Nobody knows who’s in one room from the next.”

  “You go alone. I’m sure you’ll find it.”

  When Pierre was out of sight, the old man got up and walked across the park to the street where his car was parked. His name was Tim Geer. He drove north out of Desmond City and up through Shale to a house on the bluff above the lake. He got out of the car and knocked on the door, where he was met by a young woman in faded jeans, red socks, and a black felt shirt. She invited him in and poured two glasses of champagne, and they sat in the house and talked.

  “He made it,” said Tim. “Showed up at midnight.”

  “How do you know it’s him?” she said.

  “He wouldn’t have been there otherwise. And you’ve seen the skater, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he’s the skater.”

  “When does that happen?”

  “Not for a while. You’ll know.”

  “It seems kind of underhanded, doesn’t it.”

  “Can’t be helped, Stella. You came here out of a pretty bad situation, if you remember.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the one that put you there has got to be found. That’s only right. And you can’t do it, and I can’t do it.”

  “But this guy can.”

  “I think so.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. That’s for him to figure out.”

  Pierre walked back to the party. Everything looked different following his encounter with the old man—the cars along the road seemed newer, the snow less trampled upon. And when he opened the door and walked into the house he realized that he was at the wrong party.

  Momentum or perhaps fear of embarrassment carried him across the living room, and he sat down in an easy chair. The two parties were very different. Here the floors were polished hardwood with a vibrant green rug in the center, and there were flower paintings on the walls, and middle-aged people had gathered around a piano by the picture window to sing “This Magic Moment.” They had lyric sheets and dark pewter mugs to swing back and forth, keeping time like happy people on a television show.

  The music stopped after a while. The piano faltered and the voices died away. A man in an embroidered vest led the group from the piano to the chair where Pierre was sitting. The man was short and burly and the vest illustrated an alpine scene in which a horse cart had overturned, spilling riders in the snow, and the horses stood looking back over their shoulders. There was a little story going on right in that vest.

  “Do you know someone here?” said the man.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then what might I ask are you doing?”

  “I was at a party,” said Pierre. “But it wasn’t this party. I don’t really understand what’s going on.”

  “Someone’s private home is what’s going on. And you have to leave. I’m an off-duty police officer.”

  “I’m a bartender.”

  “Tell you what we’re going to do, and that is, Get up and walk out of here like none of this ever happened.”

  “Is there onion dip on the table?” said Pierre.

  “Onion.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Never mind what’s on the table.”

  “Do you want to see my coin trick?”

  “No.”

  But then a woman spoke up on Pierre’s behalf.

  “Oh for God’s sakes let him do his coin trick,” she said. “The poor kid only wants to do a coin trick on New Year’s Eve.”

  She had curly blond hair and her face was flushed and she wore a straw hat with a broken brim.

  “He’s drunk,” said the cop. “I guess you would know all about that.”

  “Oh, let him do his coin trick,” she said.

  People gave her the cold eye for having broken their unity against the intruding Pierre, but it also seemed that she had taken the upper hand of the argument by bringing the spirit of the New Year into it. It was like patriotism in that you could throw it out there on the side of whatever ill-advised thing you wanted to do. And let’s face it, most people will take the time to watch a good coin trick, or any coin trick, and they can decide later whether it is good or not.

  Pierre got up and took off his gloves and coat and tossed them on the chair. The cop in the mountain vest turned his back and raised his hands as if to put an end to his role in whatever happened next.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I would ask you now for your spare change,” said Pierre.

  They came up with quite a lot, probably five dollars’ worth, including seven dimes, which would complicate the trick but make it more impressive if it worked. Or impressive might be overstating it, because it was a pretty common trick, and really wasn’t a trick at all.

  Pierre stacked the coins carefully. That was critical. Quarters on the bottom, then nickels, then pennies, then dimes. He secured the stack between the thumb and first two fingers of his left hand. Then he cocked his right arm up and beside his head as if he were going to throw a baseball using only the motion of the forearm. With his left hand he set the stack of coins out on the flat of his raised right elbow. When he was satisfied that the coins would not fall he withdrew his left hand, letting it fall to his side, and looked at the partygoers. They looked at the coins, which formed a trembling tower out at the end of the lonely pier of his inverted forearm. Then he moved his right arm forward with such speed that the open hand caught the coins with a steely snap just as the elbow dropped away from them.

  Not one coin flew wild or fell to the floor. Not one stuck out between Pierre’s closed fingers. The people loved it. They clapped and whistled and forgot for a moment that Pierre was only a stranger who had wandered into the house. It was a small bit of perfection, so rare in this fractured world. And he held out his hand and opened it to reveal the fistful of coins.

  “Okay, trick’s over, very nice, shove off,” said th
e off-duty policeman.

  Pierre left the party he had not been meant to attend and stood looking up and down the street wondering where in hell the other party was.

  As he did so, a police cruiser pulled up in the street with the blue lights wheeling on the snow.

  The police officers talked over what to do. Though Pierre was out of the house to which they’d been summoned, there was no telling he wouldn’t go into some other house. And they had come all this way.

  So it was not a hard decision. They put him in the back of the cruiser and took him to the jail. He argued a little but didn’t care that much as he was still caught up in the success of the coin trick.

  “Swing by the park,” he said. “There’s this old guy there and I want to make sure he didn’t freeze.”

  “You ought to worry about yourself,” said one of the officers.

  At the jail they fingerprinted him and took the things from his pockets and put him in a cell. Thick chains anchored a plank to the wall for a bed and a shaft of light came through a window. It was cold and there was ink all over his hands.

  Pierre remembered the movie Modern Times and the cell that Charlie Chaplin did not want to leave. This was not that absurdly homey place but it was not so bad. He lay down on the bunk and thought about kissing Allison Kennedy on the stairs at the first party.

  He always had to have something to think about when he went to sleep. That way if he woke up in the middle of the night the thing that he had been thinking about would be waiting for him to take up again and his mind wouldn’t race in all directions.

  She had been warm and unexpected with her scented hair and fool’s-gold eyes. And reliving that moment on the stairs, Pierre passed the night away in the Desmond City jail.

  THREE

  PIERRE’S LAWYER called one Sunday afternoon in February when Pierre was in his apartment in Shale with all his stuff around him: cello, books, and model boats. A wooden box on top of the TV held the ashes of the dog Monster.