Max Collins - No Cure for Death

“The other full-time secretary on the campaign team was Janet Ferris, a young student the same age as me who went to Drake in Des Moines, and in her spare time during the school year’d worked as a part-time secretary in Norman’s office, in the Capitol Building. Norman had brought Janet from Des Moines to Port City, which was to be the launching pad for his campaign. She and I became close friends, worked intimately together, shared the same dedication to Norman-Janet always spoke of the senator in glowing terms-and the summer months went quickly by.

“Janet and I had our tearful good-byes at the bus station, Janet heading back for Des Moines and Norman, to help him continue with phase two of his campaign, and me back to the community college and part-time work on the local level as a Norman volunteer.

“On the whole,” she said, “even though we were college students, Janet and I had a very high school-ish relationship. Giggling girls caught up in the importance of what we were doing-you know, helping to change the world and all. When we got together last month, after I found out she was back in town, it was an awkward situation. I mean, we were ‘friends’ with a relationship based on something past, and everything that happened to her since I saw her last was such a downer. We never did say much about that summer we worked for Norman. Sometimes I wonder how Janet must’ve taken it when Norman lost.”

“Norman,” I said.

“Whatever happened to him?” John asked.

“Norman’s dead,” I said. “He and his family were killed in some freak accident, as I recall.”

Lori nodded. “A sad thing. He was getting ready to make another bid, this time for the House, and the polls had him out front, too.”

“He’s dead?” John said.

“Yes,” Lori said. “A car crash, two or three years ago or so. He and his wife and little girl. Say, you know something funny… now isn’t that strange.”

“What?” John said.

“The crash he was in,” she said. She paused. “Seems to me that happened out on…”

“Out on Colorado Hill,” I said.

I opened the Rambler door with my free hand and struggled with the other to balance a wobbly cardboard tray, the tray trying desperately to contain its cargo of one fat white paper bag and two lidded paper cups. I handed the tray in to John and let him juggle with it for a while, amazed at the ease with which he set it safely down on the seat between us, and watched as he drew out two hamburgers and a little sack of french fries from the bag, leaving in it the same configuration of food for me. My Rambler was one of many cars squeezed into the lot at Sandy’s for noontime conversion into dining rooms.

“Mal,” John said, unwrapping one of his hamburgers, “about both those accidents being out at Colorado Hill…”

“Yeah?”

“That could be a legitimate coincidence, you know. Don’t rule it out, anyway. Hardly a year goes by without one or two accidents out there.”

I nodded.

A minute or so went by, the sound in the car one of mouths chewing, not talking. In between hamburgers, John said, “Mal?”

“What?”

“You going to keep snooping around today?”

“Planned to.”

“Well, uh…”

“Well, uh, what?”

“You suppose you could drop me off some place after we eat?”

“Sure. Any place in particular?”

“Suzie Blanchard’s. It’s over on Spring.”

“Suzie Blanchard? Well, some things never change, I guess. But isn’t she married?”

“Divorced.”

“She expecting you?”

“No. I’d kind of like to surprise her.”

“I’ll bet. I didn’t know you two had kept in touch.”

“Just the last few months or so-we’ve been writing letters.”

“I see. Will she be home? Doesn’t she have a job?”

“No, she’s got a kid. Byproduct of the marriage.”

“Oh. Well. You won’t want me around.”

“Right.”

I started in on my french fries.

John said, “What are you going to do this afternoon?”

“Thought I’d run over to the college and see Jack Masters. I figure if anybody in town can give me a line on that black guy at the bus station, it’ll be Jack.”

“Not a bad idea, Mal. Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“You won’t mind it, me dropping out of the picture for a while?”

“No, no.”

“I’ll stop by your trailer around eight, okay? And see how it’s going.”

“Sure. And if you get stranded anywhere, just call me and I’ll play taxi.”

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. This is my hang-up, not yours.”

“I can probably help you out later on.”

“Sure. When I uncover a vast Communist conspiracy behind all this, I’ll just about have to send for the Marines, won’t I?”

He grinned. “That’s Army, kid. Keep it straight.”

I grinned back and started peeling away the wrapper from the second hamburger. “Suzie Blanchard, huh?”

“Man does not live by french fry alone,” John said, biting into one.

Down the right half of the hall, on the left side, was the college office, and beyond the glass wall of the outer office all the typewriters were covered and desks cleared and employees gone, except for Jack Masters, of course, who was in one of the inner offices with the door open, talking on his phone. It was Thanksgiving vacation and the community college was otherwise empty.

I took the seat across the desk from Jack and sat watching him bark at the superintendent over his phone.

It reminded me of the day a couple months back when our conservative, near-elderly dean was showing a bunch of guys from the North Central accrediting board around the school, and when they went into Jack’s office, he was wearing a Hamm’s Beer sweat shirt and smoking a cigar, his feet on his desk. The dean blew what of his lid was left after many such confrontations with Jack, but the North Central boys said nothing, sensing the rapport Jack had built with the two young men he was in the process of counseling.

Jack is five-eight, and near as wide as he is tall, though he isn’t fat. He’s chunky, and he’s got a paunch, but he isn’t fat. His age is indeterminate: he could be forty, he could be fifty. He looks more like a truck driver than a Dean of Admissions of a college, and he’s black.

Jack was a token black who backfired profoundly on his employers. Besides championing liberal causes and pushing his own and other minorities’ down the throats of an unwilling school board, Jack didn’t play by the unspoken rules. For instance, there was the case of the woman he was living with-a white woman. She had an apartment downtown over one of Port City’s many taverns, and unofficial word came from the school board that the Dean of Admissions shouldn’t be seen coming in and out of the apartment of such a woman (“such” being a euphemism for “white,” one supposes). Jack said, well, fine, then he’d be glad to marry the gal and make it legal. No further criticism of the Dean of Admissions’s love life was heard.

I watched as he hung up the phone. He spotted me waiting and grinned and waved me in.

“You got a minute, Jack?”

“Sure, Mallory, sure.” He gestured to the chair opposite his desk. He didn’t have his Hamm’s shirt on this time, just an off-white sport shirt.

I sat down. “Been going a few rounds with the superintendent?”

“Naturally.” He offered me a cigarette and I declined while he lit one up. “From major issues to minor. Like, he thinks the Ag boys should be excused from the Humanities, but I think they need a history course, not just history of the plow, and a literature course, not just ‘How to Read a Harvester Manual.’ And then there’s that black kid from Moline he wants expelled, just because the kid called his gym instructor a mother.”