“Cars?”
Karl shrugged. “Important to them, I guess. They didn’t do any real damage.”
At the mention of Morris Engdahl, Jake gave me a piercing look. “Tell them, Frank,” he said.
“Tell me what?” the sheriff said.
I didn’t want to say anything because I figured I’d have to go all the way back to the quarry incident and tell my father that we’d gone to a place we weren’t supposed to go but Jake gave my shoulder a nudge and my father and Doyle and the other two men stood looking at me and I knew there was no way around it so I told them pretty much everything. About the quarry and Engdahl chasing us and how at the celebration in Luther Park he’d tried to drag me off into the dark and for a reason I couldn’t explain I said, “He didn’t like Ariel.”
“How do you know that?” the sheriff asked.
“He called her names.”
“What did he call her?”
“Skag.”
“Anything else?”
“Harelip.”
“All right,” the sheriff said.
My father spoke to me from the other side of the fire char. “Frank, he said these things to you?”
“Yeah. Me and Jake.”
“Engdahl’s scum,” Doyle said.
The sheriff said, “Let’s finish here, then we’ll worry about Morris Engdahl.”
We fanned out and spread the search in a loose circle that reached the river and extended a hundred yards in both directions along the banks but found nothing the sheriff thought significant. We gathered back at the fire and the sheriff said, “Okay. I’m going to get Morris Engdahl down to my office and ask him a few questions. Mr. Drum, I’d like you there for that.”
“All right,” my father said.
“And your two boys as well,” the sheriff added, “if that’s all right with you. I’d like to get a complete statement from them about their altercations with Engdahl. And I think we’d all be interested in hearing what Engdahl has to say for himself. On a lot of fronts.”
We started up the trail that led through the cottonwoods but Doyle hung back. The last I saw of him that morning he was headed downriver toward the Flats.
19
At home we found Gus with my mother which was odd. Though she tolerated his presence my mother didn’t care much for Gus. She often told my father that his friend was crude and vulgar and an influence on us boys that we would all come to regret. My father acknowledged the truth of much of what she said but in the end always defended Gus. I owe him my life, Ruth, he would say but I never heard him say why.
They sat at the kitchen table both of them smoking and when we walked in my mother stood and looked with hope toward my father. He shook his head. “We didn’t find anything,” he said.
“They’re looking for Morris Engdahl,” I said.
“Engdahl?” Gus swung around and eyed me. “Why Engdahl?”
“I told him about the quarry and about Luther Park.”
My mother put a hand to her mouth and spoke from behind her fingers. “You think he might have done something to Ariel?”
“We don’t know anything,” my father said. “They just want to talk to the boy.”
We ate. Cold cereal with slices of banana chewed and swallowed in an awful silence. Near the end the telephone in the living room rang and my father leaped to answer.
“Oh,” he said. “Hello, Hector.” He bowed his head and closed his eyes and listened, then said, “We have a situation here, Hector, and I can’t make the meeting. Whatever the group decides is fine with me.” He hung up and came back to the kitchen. “Hector Padilla,” he said. “There’s a meeting this morning to talk about the migrant worker shelter.”
The phone rang again and this time it was Deacon Griswold calling to say he’d heard about Ariel and if there was anything he could do just let him know. And it rang again a few minutes later and it was Gladys Rheingold saying that if Ruth wanted company she’d be happy to come over. And it rang and rang after that with offers from townspeople and neighbors who’d heard about Ariel and wanted to know if they could help. And finally it was the sheriff saying he had Morris Engdahl at his office and would Dad and we boys come down there.
“Mind if I tag along?” Gus said.
“I don’t suppose it’ll do any harm,” my father replied. Then to my mother he said, “Would you like me to call Gladys?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
But it was clear to me that she wasn’t fine. She looked sick, her face drawn and ashen, and she was smoking one cigarette after another and drumming her fingers on the table.
“All right,” my father said. “Frank, Jake, let’s go.”
We left, all of us except my mother, who sat staring at the kitchen cupboard with cigarette smoke above her head as thick as if she herself was on fire.
• • •
The sheriff sat with his arms folded on the table. Engdahl sat across from him slumped in a chair in a manner that was clearly meant to communicate his disrespect. He looked bored in a calculated way.
The sheriff said, “Is it true you threatened these boys?”
“I told them I’d kick their asses, yeah.”
“I understand you assaulted Frank last night.”
“Assaulted? Hell, all I did was grab the little puke’s arm.”
“And might have done more if Warren Redstone hadn’t been there?”
“Redstone? I don’t even know who the hell that is.”
“Big Indian.”
“Oh. Him. We had some words, and I left. That’s all.”
“Where’d you go?”
“I don’t remember. Around.”
“Alone?”
“I ran into Judy Kleinschmidt. We kind of made a night of it.”
“Did you go to Sibley Park and do a little partying with some kids there?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see Ariel Drum?”
“I saw her, yeah.”
“Talk to her?”
“I might have said something. Hell, I talked to a lot of people there.”
“I heard you got into a tussle with Hans Hoyle.”
“Yeah. Traded a couple of punches, nothing serious. He called my car a piece of shit.”