The Woman Lit by Fireflies Read online

  I was pretty upset at my so-called trial because I didn’t even get a jury I could explain myself to. The sharpie lawyer from Detroit Shelley’s dad got for me said we’d be better off throwing ourselves at the mercy of a judge, a notion I didn’t care for. I had plenty of friends in Munising who knew my heart was in the right place and I thought a couple of them might squeeze onto the jury. The lawyer told me just to “act like a geek which shouldn’t be too hard” which upset me. I told the silly little fucker I was going to jerk his ears off which was held up as an example of my “unsoundness” to the judge, who had already thrown the book at Bob, which put him in a good mood. I could also see that the judge liked Shelley’s father, probably because they were both big-deal Republicans. When Bob started yelling “Retard” at me at a hearing they just took him away. Shelley cried a lot and grasped my arm. I liked that even though at the time I suspected she had other motives, such as being a famous anthropologist. Frank wasn’t too helpful as a character witness because he didn’t dress too good and lipped off to the judge. Frank is his own man and doesn’t like the authorities. What gave me the most trouble was convincing them I had dumped the Indian back in Lake Superior. The State Police divers even had a look but of course couldn’t find anything. This is where my asshole lawyer came in handy because the police couldn’t prove there was a real body before their fight with Bob. When I went into the judge’s office, just the two of us, he asked me why I thought the body was my dad’s and I said there was nothing to prove that it wasn’t. He was plainly glad to give me probation and see me drive off with Shelley.

  Now we were getting near the old homestead and I was pretty nervous. I don’t know why for sure, and I began to fiddle with the buttons on the electric seats that could put you in any comfortable position. Shelley had said the seats were calfskin but when I smelled them I couldn’t catch the scent of calf. I had her stop by a culvert so I could check out my old-time fishing creek. I walked downstream and felt bad that when they widened the road they had silted up the rocky creek with sand which meant trout could no longer spawn. Rather than keeping track of the likes of me the authorities might better be tending the health of their creeks, I thought.

  Around a curve was another shocker. David Four Feet’s house had burned down and all there was around the foundation were dry burdocks and chokecherries, and one sugar plum the bears had broken down to get at the fruit. Another quarter mile and there was our old place with David’s mom bent over putting bales of straw around the foundation to insulate against the coming winter. She hadn’t told me about this move when I called but she probably thought I knew. I had Shelley pull in the drive which she was glad to do as she knew this was the mother of my first love, Rose. The old woman admired Shelley’s vehicle for its great big tires. In the U.P. it’s the car that doesn’t get stuck that gets the admiration. She pointed over about a hundred yards to the old orchard where she said Rose was picking apples with her two kids so we headed off across the bumpy field in the car. I asked Shelley if she had something I could give Rose and she said there was a nice scarf in her bag. I took the scarf out and it smelled nice with a foreign name on the corner.

  “Your hair still looks like shit,” is the first thing Rose said to me after all these years. She was wearing overalls and had picked four bushels to make a batch of applesauce. To me Rose looked real good though she was quite round, to be frank. I had read in the newspaper that the circle was Nature’s most perfect form so that put Rose up there on the top. She introduced us to her boy Red who was called that after redskin. That’s what the kids called him at school and he didn’t seem to mind. Red was twelve and the little girl she called Berry was seven, though it was plain to see something was wrong with her. Berry was called that because all she knew how to do or liked to do was pick berries. Berry wrapped herself around my leg like a monkey and I had half the notion she might take a bite but she didn’t. Rose told Shelley not to get drunk when she was pregnant because that’s how Berry came out haywire. Red wondered if it would be okay to take a look in Shelley’s Rover so she took him for a ride around the field, partly to be nice and leave me alone with Rose.

  “That’s the whitest woman I ever saw,” Rose said when Shelley left.

  “Why not? Always thought I was white myself,” I said.

  “You never were that white. How did you ever get such a high-class lady, B.D.?”

  “A lot of women see things in me you were blind to.” It was then I handed her the scarf which she shook out and tied around her neck without a word. She reached down and selected an apple, polished it against the sweater covering her big breasts and handed it to me. We looked off to where Shelley was coming back at us across the field. I was nervous but I didn’t know if she was, so I bit into the apple.

  “If you don’t mind I’d like to stop by and visit,” I said with a bit of quaver in my voice and almost choking on the apple.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, which wasn’t much to go on, but when Shelley pulled up and Rose pried Berry off my leg Rose gave my ass a good pinch. Later at the hotel I checked out the red spot and it made me feel good.

  It was at dinner that Shelley described to me what was going to happen, depending on my cooperation. We were sifting in the fancy dining room of the House of Ludington Hotel in Escanaba, and I was glad I had on my new sport coat despite the dried gravy spot. I was agitated because Shelley didn’t want me to have a drink until she discussed the deal she had cooked up on the phone. The upshot was that either I told her where my burial mounds were or I was facing three to five years in the prison down in Jackson for the crime of arson, added on to the other stuff.

  “I’ll sleep on it,” I said, mostly because that was what people seemed to say when they were discussing a big deal. A man at the next table who was eating alone finished his whiskey and water, then poured himself a full glass of wine with a burbling sound. Three to five years was a long time. I couldn’t remember exactly what I was doing that long ago.

  “No you won’t sleep on it. You’ll sleep on shit. You’re always sleeping on it.” She was angry and sounded like her dad when he was pissed at me. “You think each day is a fresh new start, which it isn’t.”

  “I don’t get why you and your friends are always doing rundowns on people. You’re always taking people apart in pieces, especially me.” I felt my ears getting red. I had never been real mad at Shelley before but now she was squeezing my balls too hard. I was close to the point I had been when I poured the drink down the lady’s neck in the Soo.

  “I need to know your answer. People are waiting to hear. My dad and my lawyer are waiting. A State Police detective is waiting. My friends whose tent and field notes you burned up are waiting. You’re going to tell me or you’re going to prison. If you tell me, I’m going to help you out with some money and we’ll say goodbye. Also, you can’t go back to Grand Marais for one year.”

  “Why’s that?” The man next door had finished one glass of red wine and was starting another.

  “Because I can’t trust you to not sabotage our field work. That’s the whole deal. Take it or leave it, but tell me now. I’ve got to make some phone calls.”

  “I’ll tell you what. If I don’t get a drink I’m going to kick over this fucking table on your lap.” I stood up as if to judge my leverage. Shelley signaled the waitress and I ordered two doubles and sat back down. There was something in her face of the school principal who used to tell me I was headed for the reform school down in Lansing, the same one who made fun of me when Rose hit me over the head with her books. One night David Four Feet and me snuck up on the principal’s house and poured a couple pounds of sugar into his gas tank to generally get even.

  “What do you say now?” Shelley asked as I was eating my shrimps for appetizers and sipping whiskey. She wasn’t touching her soup and slid it over when I looked at it. There was nothing in the soup but beef-tasting water but it was so good I could have drunk a quart.

  “I’m lost in thought over
your proposition. Who is to say which of us is right? I know I could use a bottle of red wine to go with dinner.”

  “You are fucking driving me crazy.” Now she was hissing and called the waitress over and ordered a bottle of red. The waitress knew something was wrong and brought the wine in a hurry.

  “You know you got me cornered. I’ve been taken prisoner in the war of life. That’s how I look at it. Maybe they keep the prison too warm in winter and I couldn’t stand that. I’d have to hang myself with a sheet.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she said. Shelley can’t stand the talk of suicide because she had an aunt who did herself in.

  “Yes I would. You know I can’t stand the hot air, and there wouldn’t be any walking or fishing or trees. In fact, if you called the police right now I wouldn’t be taken alive. When I got my toothbrush out of the van I also got my pistol which is in my back pocket.”

  “I don’t believe you, but you’re putting off the answer.”

  I reached toward my back pocket where there wasn’t a pistol and she waved at me with alarm. The waitress brought my huge porterhouse and Shelley a little piece of fish.

  “What’s to happen to me if I can’t live in Grand Marais? The son of man has no place to lay his head.”

  “I’d give you a thousand dollars and you could make a fresh start, maybe over this way.”

  “I wouldn’t accept more than seven hundred,” I said, which sounded like a solider figure to me than a thousand.

  “Then we have a deal?”

  “Of course,” I said, and she got up to make her phone calls. “You’re not going to eat your dinner?” I asked.

  “Go ahead,” she said and rushed off.

  I took her plate and dumped the piece of fish alongside the steak. A portion of bird meat would have completed the circle. It wasn’t exactly a happy meal but I cleaned my plate. If you live on the railroad tracks the train’s going to hit you, Grandpa used to say. I had a notion to call up Frank and ask him the name of that tribal lawyer he knew over in Brimley. Maybe they could organize a welcoming party for the grave diggers, but suddenly I was tired of the whole damn thing. The steak had heated me up as beef will do, so I went outside and stood under the awning, letting the cold wind blow on me. I stood there like a statue until I got real cold, then I stood there longer. Grandpa and I used to drive past the hotel but neither of us had ever been inside. He said it was a place for the men who owned the trees, not for the ones who cut them down. Come to think of it, I was not likely to return myself.

  After a while Shelley came running out as if I had made an escape. “There you are,” she yelled. We took a long walk without saying much. I had an urge to haul her into Orphan Annie’s striptease club but it didn’t seem to go with the evening. There would be other times for that, I thought, if I came back this way for a year. We took a turn down a side street so I could show her the church that sent me off to Chicago so many years ago. I had been sentenced to attend church by a juvenile judge after a couple of unfortunate accidents. David Four Feet and me found a source for black-market fireworks, serious stuff like cherry bombs and M-80s, and there was a lot of noise around town for a month. Before we got caught for that we had cabled a county snowplow to a fire hydrant outside this diner, with a lot of slack so the truck would have a head of steam before the cable came tight. Little did we know the truck would uproot the fire hydrant and cause a flooding problem in the middle of winter. I had to shovel city sidewalks all winter for free, and attend church where everyone was nice and thought of me as the prodigal son.

  We went back to the hotel because Shelley was cold and tired, probably because she didn’t eat her dinner. She got us two connected rooms again with the living room having a big flat-top piano in it. I said it was wasting money but she said that this is where we were to have our meeting in the morning. Nice to have something to look forward to, I said, wandering around the room hunched up like I was a lot older, which always irritates her. I admit I was a bit blue so I sat down at the piano. Back in my church days I could play “The Old Rugged Cross” with one finger, also “Chopsticks,” but now I didn’t feel up to it despite the rare opportunity of a piano.

  Shelley tuned me in a hockey game on TV while I sat there on the piano bench. Hockey’s the only sport I was ever good at except boxing. I suddenly got this idea I was a great piano player whose hand had been crippled when his girlfriend had slammed it in a door, so near to greatness but yet so far. I told this to Shelley and she gave me a big hug to cheer me up and she said she had brought along my favorite nightie for our last night. This nightie is purple and smooth as satin because that’s what it’s made of. It clings to her and you sort of peel it off until bingo, you’re there.

  She went to take a shower and I sat down by the phone with an urge to call Frank and give him the sad tidings. There was a card attached to the phone that said to dial 33 for room service so that’s what I did. They asked me what I’d like and since I had already eaten I wondered if they could bring me a couple of drinks. Presto, a guy was there in minutes. They let me sign my name as I only had fifteen bucks after the six-pack and pickled bologna and wasn’t counting on the big payment mentioned. I took my drinks over to the piano and tried to noodle along singing my favorite country songs, but I couldn’t get the piano to go with the words and, what’s more, the drinks weren’t making their way through the load of shrimp, fish and steak in my gut. I had just about decided to ask Shelley if she had ever loved me or was she just hanging in there for the burial mounds when she came out in the purple nightie and I didn’t have the heart to. She came right over and I lifted the nightie and a lot of shower heat escaped. “It’s like a blast furnace in there,” I said, dropping the hem. She laughed and had a slug of my second drink. I asked if she’d mind getting up on the piano and laying out so I could sing to her. She scrambled up with no problem and lay there leaning her head on a hand. I tinkled along singing a mishmash of my favorite lines from country music, including one I made up: “Our love was not meant to be, at least not in the long run.” She was getting tears in her eyes so I swiveled her legs around so the backs of her knees were over my shoulders and I sang, “Yes, we have no bananas,” and she started laughing. I stood partway up and she slid down, her butt hitting the keys in a nice way like the lost chord. We did it right there which wasn’t easy.

  I woke up from a bad dream where I was suffocating in a hot cabin and I couldn’t walk, then I saw where I was and lightened up. The first of the morning sun was red in the east and there were black rolling clouds and snow flurries, sure sign of a coming gale. The red sun made the room pinkish and I turned to look at how Shelley’s nightie was pulled up all the way under her arms. I opened the window which squeaked to cool it off.

  “B.D., is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Not so you would notice. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. That’s all I know.”

  She said “Oh” and went back to sleep. It was then I had the notion that I’d better memorize her body as another one this fine was not likely to pass my way again. I started with her face but I knew it well enough so I went down to the feet and stared at them, then the ankles and knees. I thought of the old grade school song which we used to sing to the tune of “I’m looking over a four-leaf clover.” The dirty version went, “I’m looking under a two-legged wonder” but I couldn’t remember the rest. Also, in the pink light her body was too lovely to be thinking of nonsense. She didn’t wake up until I turned her over to memorize the other side.

  “B.D., what are you doing? It’s too early.” She checked her watch on the nightstand and put her face in the pillow.

  “I’m memorizing your body because we’re going to part,” I said, and she went back to sleep with another “Oh.” I said I never cried but I think I was getting pretty close by the time I got the memorizing job done, also I remembered how the Chief told me to keep my feet light. Luckily other emotions took over and by the time she fully awoke she was making yodeling
sounds like Judy Canova on the Louisiana Hayride program.

  The meeting wasn’t all that it was pumped up to be. I was the sailor who took the red sky as a warning and played it hard and cold as Robert Mitchum. I had had breakfast in bed for the first time since I was sick as a kid so I was in a good mood except I couldn’t get a beer. I had eaten Shelley’s ham and mine too, so I was a bit dry, but when I called room service they said it was state law—no beer on Sunday until noon. I asked them what kind of low-rent hellhole they were running and they apologized. It was a comfort somehow that rich folks had to wait until noon just like everyone else.

  First to arrive was Shelley’s lawyer fresh off a stormy ride on the morning plane from Detroit. He kissed Shelley on both cheeks, like I’ve seen on television, and told her her dad couldn’t come because he had to do a “C-section” on an important lady. He just looked at me and sighed, deciding not to offer his hand for a shake, partly because I was staring him down like he was so much dogshit. Then came the State Police detective and the two of them whispered in the far corner while I watched snow swirling up the street which was putting a jinx on the color tour. Along came Jerk and Jerkoff with a tube of topographical maps which they spread out on the lid of the sacred piano. They glanced at me out of the corner of their eyes. I told Shelley that they had to stand over against the wall or the deal was off and I wouldn’t trace a route on the map. The lawyer and the detective came over and gave me some papers to sign that said the arson charge would be resumed if I showed up in Grand Marais within a year. I was given two days to move my stuff out. I signed the papers and the detective said he’d be keeping an eye on me.

  “No doubt you will because you can’t find honest work,” I said with a sneer. Then I went over and worked on the map with Shelley, using the lawyer’s gold pen I intended to swipe. She gave me a pleading look that said “Please no tricks,” but it was too late in the game for that. When I finished with the topo map she said she was surprised how close she had been several times. She waved over Jerk and Jerkoff but I yelled, “Stay in the corner, shitsuckers,” so they did. For some reason I picked up the cover of the piano bench and looked at some sheet music. There was a piece by Mozart, whose name I’d heard on the NPR station out of Marquette. I took it out and sat down to play.