I took a drink of the water and watched Pammy drink her beer. Her answers were coming eagerly, abruptly, and yet nothing was cohering, none of the crucial questions had been solved. On the jukebox, another song ended, and rising in its place were the opening strains of “Are You Lonesome Tonight.” Pammy leaned back, savoring the sound.
“All right,” I said. “Now I want to know all you can tell me about the history of the riding stable.”
She sighed, frowning slightly. “Yes, Cindy said you’d be asking that.”
“My mother went out there, and then I went out there, but those ladies couldn’t help us much.”
“I like to call it the Angel Riding Stable. Have you seen their collection? So darling. I sure would love to have all those pretty angels hanging on my walls.”
“I want to know about the Lockridges. Or even better, if you have any facts from the years before that.” I looked closely at the tape machine to confirm it was indeed recording, and then I turned the notebook to an empty page. “Can you talk about the late forties, maybe the fifties?”
She gave a fast, hair-loosening shake of her head, as though dispelling unwanted memories. “For years, that place had nothing but terrible luck. Everybody used to think it was cursed! First there was the tornado. I was just ten or eleven, but I remember. Touched down southwest of here, then drew a long line right across Sterling and up through Little River and all the way to Marquette. Knocked the steeple off the Congregational church and demolished half the grade school. Some people lost all their crops or their livestock. I think twenty people were killed, maybe more.”
“Pat Claussen said the land out there was badly damaged.”
“The main house was sturdy and withheld the winds, but the stables were nearly destroyed. They used to sit farther away from the house, and unfortunately, in the direct path of the storm. Those poor horses. There’d been a handsome chestnut Morgan they called Whirlaway—they’d named him after the famous Triple Crown winner—and the tornado damn near broke that poor horse in half. Supposedly the wind ripped all the hide off one side of him.”
She paused to see if I was taking notes, so I quickly scribbled on the pad. “In the weeks after the storm,” she said, “the town picked itself up and started to rebuild. They had the funerals. They had a fund-raiser for the church, and then one for the school, and then a special one just for the stable. People were very upset, because that place had always brought a load of business to town, so of course they wanted to get it up and running again.”
“You said twenty people…were any of those killed out at the stable?”
“I don’t think so. No, not then. Not until the next year, in the fire.”
“Yes, Pat mentioned that a few people died then.”
“I believe there were four.”
“And this fire—it happened just a year later?”
“September 1951. Nobody ever found out how it started. But it was bad. Burned down the owners’ house—they were called the Huntleys, and they were there before the Lockridges—and it burned down the cabins where the hired hands were living. And all the stables where they kept the horses. New stables, rebuilt just after the storm the year before.
“I remember how pretty the place had been before the fire,” she said. “The old Huntley mansion, with the white pillars and the balcony, and forsythia bushes and a tall weeping-willow tree. That house was like a museum. Inside they had expensive antique furniture, expensive sculptures, and paintings and whatnot. And then the pair of smaller cabins behind the house, like quaint little boxes, and behind the cabins, the rows of new stables. Folks in town would drive out there, just to see how pretty everything looked. But then, on that one horrible night, it all burned to the ground.”
“So it was the Huntleys who died in the fire?”
“Not all of them. Only the missus was killed. She and her husband were some of the richest folks in Sterling at the time, practically millionaires. If you go and search through the newspapers, you’ll find that’s pretty much all the stories talk about—the death of the wealthy Huntley woman. I imagine she and her husband gave a lot of money to churches and schools, both here and in Hutchinson. And they’d been a big help in rebuilding things after the storm the year before. People thought quite highly of the Huntleys.”
I couldn’t let her stop now; I nodded to urge the story forward. “Please. Anything else you can remember.”
“Well, the fire happened late at night, with everybody asleep in bed. It woke the people in the cottages first—the hired men—but by then it was too late. Because of the way the buildings were connected, the fire just—what’s that word?—engulfed. It engulfed everything. Fire on all sides, everywhere. They couldn’t get to the horses. But one of the hired men tried his darnedest to save the Huntleys. There was a teenage girl, named Rebecca—she was the Huntleys’ only child—and the hired man wound up rescuing the girl and the father. But he couldn’t save the missus.”
“Do you know anything else about the Huntley girl?”
“I didn’t know her very well at the time. She was older than me, and they’d sent her to a private school in Hutchinson. I know she’d been a champion show rider. But I saw her only three, maybe four times, dressed all fancy and nice, out with her parents on the street or in church. And then, after the fire, I never saw her at all. Mr. Huntley packed up what little they had left, and he and his daughter took their memories and their grief and moved somewhere up East. By the time the Lockridges bought the land to restart the business, Mr. Huntley and the girl were long gone.”
Pammy stared at me, waiting to hear what questions were next. But her stories still weren’t connecting, weren’t providing the solutions I needed to bring home to Dolores and my mother. I reviewed the notes on the pad, barely legible words from my jittery hand, and then I tried again. “You said three others died in the fire,” I said. “Any chance you remember who they were?”
“Yes, of course. One of the hired hands was killed. He was young, just out of high school, I think. The other man—the older hired hand—was burned very badly, but lived. And here’s the saddest thing—this older man was the one who wound up saving Mr. Huntley and the daughter. But in doing so, he couldn’t save his own family, and the two children died inside their cabin.”
“Do you remember their names?”
Pammy turned her face to the wall, as though some answer might be hidden among the Kansas license plates. I looked there too, but saw only meaningless numbers, letters, flaking paint. The room was silent, and I realized the jukebox had stopped playing many minutes earlier. Between us, the tape recorder’s wheels were slowly spinning, preserving our words.
Finally, she looked back to me and said, “I can’t recall. You might be able to find out more if you go through newspapers from that time. Library records, something like that. But like I said, most of the stories focused all their attention on the Huntleys. They talked a lot about the loss of the art and the antiques, and the loss of all those thoroughbreds. But they never said much about that young hired hand or those two little children. It’s sad. It’s like they died in the fire, and then the world forgot them. It’s like they just faded away.”
I put the pencil down. Pammy looked at me suspiciously, at my face and the name tag on my shirt, and then she raised the glass of beer and drank. As she finished, to her surprise, I reached across the table and touched her hand. “Two children,” I said.
“Again, I can’t remember much. You’ll get better information from newspapers. But I know that the older man—the older hired hand—was living in one of the adjoining cabins with his wife and their two little grandkids. The man was burned from saving the folks in the mansion, but he made it out alive. And somehow his wife escaped unharmed. But the two children—it was a brother and sister, I remember, just an innocent little boy and girl—wound up dying in the fire.”
As she spoke, the room began to blur, the walls soft and wobbly, each license plate loosening its numbers and lette
rs. I suddenly felt very ill, and tried to stand from the table. Warren, I was thinking. Donna. My hand bumped my glass, spilling water across the booth, the knees of my jeans. I stumbled over the sawdust-scattered floor, hurrying to the back-corner restroom. Just an innocent little boy and girl. I didn’t bother with the light; didn’t look in the mirror. I bent double and vomited loudly into the sink, not caring that Pammy or the waitress could hear.
As I was walking back, my vision was dark, and I briefly lost my balance. For a moment, the woman at the table wasn’t Pammy at all, but Pat Claussen—then she briefly changed to Dolores—and then once again she was Pammy Sporn. “I’m sorry,” I tried to tell her. I’d never before had hallucinations like this. I’d never felt so sick. Echoing in my head was something I’d said to my mother, weeks earlier, that first night I’d arrived from New York: I haven’t quite lost my mind; not yet. And my mother had smiled and replied, Then maybe things aren’t all that bad.
Then Pammy was standing, waiting for me to rejoin her at the booth. She had hastily mopped the spill, leaving wet lumps of napkin across the table, and I thought of the bloodied paper towels on my mother’s kitchen floor. “I can see you aren’t feeling well,” she said. “I hope I didn’t say something wrong.”
“No, everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine now.” I was still struggling to focus on the room, on the vinyl booths and sparkling jukebox. I managed to lean down, gathering the gloves and jacket, the pencils and notepads and recorder. “Really, you’ve been a lot of help. You’ve provided the link—the information about the stable and the fire. This is exactly what my mother needs.”
She shook her head. “I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
“I’ll take your advice about the newspapers, and I’ll find out more. If only I had more time.”
She followed me to the door of the bar and grill. She moved with a weak, sluggish limp, as though our hour of answers and revelations had been one long and arduous race. When we stepped out into the bracing air, Pammy leaned against the wall, under the faint blue shade from the overhead awning, and watched as I stepped toward the truck. I opened the passenger door and slid the interview materials onto the seat. Then I turned to tell her good-bye.
“Don’t go yet,” she said. “Isn’t there something else you need to know? You were supposed to ask me about the boy.”
“The boy? What boy?”
“Cindy—from the stable—told me you’d asked her about a boy. Someone who looked like you. She said you’d surely ask me, too, that it seemed especially important. She said you almost—well, scared her when you asked about this boy.”
I shut the passenger door and returned to Pammy’s side. In her hand was the empty beer glass, laced with white webs of foam. Now I could see she wasn’t quite as tall as I’d initially thought; her blouse wasn’t nearly as yellow. Above her head, along the canvas of the awning, hung an unbroken row of icicles; higher in the sky were the gathering, graying clouds.
“He’s just a boy named Allen,” I said. “Dropped out of high school last spring. I think he lives around here with his uncle and aunt.”
“Allen,” she repeated. Tightly she shut her eyes, her brow tensing as she pondered the name. “I’m not sure. You say he looks like you?”
“He used to work at a grocery store. Can’t you think of anyone? Seventeen or eighteen? Sort of pale and skinny, auburn-reddish hair, living here in Sterling?”
“I’m sorry. No, I can’t think of any person like that. Certainly no one named Allen.”
I unfolded the photograph from my pocket, the picture of myself I’d removed from the kitchen wall. “Then I guess it doesn’t matter anymore,” I said. I placed it in Pammy Sporn’s hand.
She looked at me with apprehension, then brought the photo closer to examine the face. “Is this him?” she asked. “Is this the boy?”
I couldn’t form the true answer. I could only stare at her, smiling. And then, in a sudden rush, I wrapped my arms around her in a stiff but sturdy hug. A gesture of thanksgiving and surrender: an embrace not only from me but also from my mother. For a moment, I felt Pammy recoiling; she floundered, trying to lift her arms. Then she relaxed and let me hold her. Neither of us spoke. Pammy Sporn and I remained like this, under the clouds and the awning’s blue shadows, until at last I let her pull away, until I turned and headed back to the truck.
The roads were slick, but I reached the Hutchinson Public Library four hours before their special collections department closed. Throughout the drive, I’d been reprising Pammy’s stories in my head, her secrets and suggestions, pairing them with everything my mother had confessed to Dolores and Alice and me. Already I felt I knew what I’d find in the Hutchinson News microfilm reels. I believed I understood how my mother had disappeared, and believed I understood why.
Four hours was just enough time. I worked fiercely, in spite of the sickness, taking notes, feeding Dolores’s loaned dollar bills into the vast, thunderous copy machine. My search began with the tornado of 1950, the victims and photographs and aftereffects. I worked through to the spring of 1951 and the fire. I persevered until the end of that year, and by then I’d learned enough for my mother, by then it was time to piece together my knowledge and go back home.
In the rearview mirror, I looked alarmingly ill; the fatigue was numbing my legs and arms. But I kept my hands on the wheel, steering south across town. While I drove, I planned the words I would say to her. I thought about Mary’s advice: One of the best things is to keep talking. At the end, they might lose the ability to speak, and they might not be able to see well. But their hearing stays…it’s their last connection to the world.
The rocky, frost-crusted roads…the spent fields of wheat…the distant grain elevators, towering like ivory monuments from the snow. The radio played only static, as though the cold had frozen the frequencies. I passed a ditch littered with tires and upended grocery carts. Then a split-level farmhouse, where once, years before, my mother had purchased a used lawn mower. I remembered her leaving Alice and me in the pickup as she went inside to finalize the deal. The sun piercing the windshield; the white hens circling the gravel drive as we waited and waited.
Back then, she’d tried so often to succeed: her repeated attempts to impress Alice and me, which had consistently, dismally, failed. I remembered the clothes she bought us, the shirts and sneakers and jeans she’d believed to be the emblems of adolescent popularity, which only proved awkward or gaudy. Or the comet she said we’d see if we hiked to the top of Quarry Hill: we expected spills of gilded seeds, light suspended like a jeweled badminton birdie across the stars, but instead saw no comet, no miracle, only fogbanks hunkering below the town’s deceitful sky.
So many memories. Their weight, making my body weak. But soon I’d be home again; soon I’d sit beside the bed and tell her everything I’d learned.
The old man and old woman.
Their two grandchildren.
Warren and Donna.
Ahead, to the left of the snowy road, was KSIR, the prison where she’d once worked: its solemn walls and towers, its sawtoothed coils of razor wire. I thought of the True Detective magazines she’d always smuggled home; of the handcuffs she’d saved and later used for the boy’s slender wrists. And I thought of weekend afternoons when I was young, sixteen, with my first car, when I’d drive to KSIR to surprise my mother. I’d idle in the street below the walls, radio blaring, and then I’d squint skyward to confirm my mother was on tower duty. Eventually, she’d look down and see her son, grinning from the window of the car, waving.
It was during those same days, too, that I first discovered Carey Park. It was less than a mile away. So many afternoons or evenings, I’d innocently wave to my mother, only to speed unobserved toward that forbidden scene of drugs and sex. Once more, I recalled Dolores’s voice as I’d left the house: Do the things you did when you were young. Go out and be a kid again.
The sky was dimming with the threat of snow. I reminded myself of the
day’s sole priority, and knew I should return home. But, ultimately, the withdrawal was overwhelming. The possibility of scoring drugs, however remote, lured me through the gates and onto the park’s narrow road.
My heartbeat was rushing, my palms slick on the wheel. I passed the duck pond, the nine-hole golf course, and the stark, neglected playground with its broken swings and corroded corkscrew slides. And lastly, in the glowing headlights, the familiar stretch of woods. I could see another car, parked in the adjacent playground lot. Don’t stop, I thought, just go back home. But I eased behind the car; I shut the engine and stepped outside.
The woods were dark and cold. I could hear the swallows, bickering unseen from the cottonwood trees: the exclamating air; the weird din of them. The snow had melted in patches, revealing a muddy path peppered here and there with tiny glittering stones. I followed its downward slope, silent as a shepherd, watching for any nearby movement. Farther into the trees, along the softly slapping river.
Even in the twilight, I could see the footprints, the heavy tracks of boots. I trailed them through the tangled scrub, pushing deeper into the trees, but I saw no other soul. Gradually, the footprints faded in the mud. I began to think I’d dreamed the car in the playground lot, even dreamed, perhaps, these woods, this desolate park. Soon the guilt was swelling inside me: I’d chosen to cruise this place, hoping for drugs or sex, while my mother lay sleeping in the hospice bed. I dared myself to allow the words: her deathbed.
To the left, I heard a rustle, a hesitant cough. Someone was standing in the shadows of the trees.
As I neared, I saw the figure was a teenage boy. He wore paint-spattered combat boots and a long black coat. A silver hoop through each earlobe; another through the crook of his bottom lip. Beneath the coat was a black T-shirt; on the front, glowing white, a smiling skull.
Littered among the leaves at his feet were wadded tissues, ripped condom wrappers, unrolled condoms. I stepped close enough to touch, to prove the boy was real. “About time somebody showed up,” he said.