William Krueger - The Devil's bed

“I would never have believed that the boy I knew could be capable of such brutality,” the priest said.

“People change, Father. Or they fool us. Especially when we’re inclined to want to believe the best.” Bo sipped his coffee, a good dark French roast brewed from beans the priest had freshly ground. “It looked like you were alone at the service.”

“There were no mourners, if that’s what you mean. A lot of reporters unfortunately, stumbling over gravestones and one another. I’d hoped to keep it quiet, but newspeople…” He shook his head, and his wild beard brushed his chest.

“Did you pay for the plot and stone?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“An anonymous donor.”

“Anonymous,” Bo said. “Understandable. How were you contacted?”

“A card that contained the money.”

“You still have the card?”

The priest gave Bo a wary look.

“Sorry, Father. Instinct.” He waited a moment, then asked, “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Could I see it?”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m looking for some kind of closure. What would be the harm, if it’s anonymous?”

The big priest considered, then stood up. The hummingbird shot away from the feeder, fast as a bullet. In a few minutes, Father Cannon was back, the card in his hand.

It was a simple note asking to be allowed to contribute to a resting place for David Moses. In return, the donor requested that, if possible, the gravestone contain an inscription. Forgive us our trespasses. Except for the inscription, which had been handwritten in a florid script, the text had been typed.

“You granted the request,” Bo said.

“The contributor was more than generous. And the only one. And I quite liked the sentiment.”

“Do you still have the envelope it came in?”

“If I did, Bo, I wouldn’t let you see it. Anonymous, remember? I don’t want you speculating from a postmark.”

“The inscription is handwritten. Risky for someone who wants to remain anonymous, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure it was never meant to be seen by anyone but me. Please don’t make me regret I showed it to you.”

“I’m sorry, Father.” Bo watched the priest put the note away in his pocket. “By the way, is the cemetery plot hard to find?”

The middle of a hot August afternoon wasn’t, apparently, a popular time to visit the dead. Except for a groundskeeper on a small tractor mower that moved lazily along the fence, Bo and Father Cannon were the only signs of life. The priest directed Bo to drive toward a far corner of the cemetery. As they approached, Bo saw a mounding of fresh earth under a lofty ash tree.

“Moses?” Bo asked.

The priest nodded.

Bo parked, and they walked together to the grave. Long before they reached it, the priest exclaimed, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

Across the polished stone, someone had spray painted in black: MURDERER!

Standing beside the grave, Bo felt no sorrow for Moses. The memory of the agents killed at Wildwood and of the First Lady kneeling for execution, as well as the ache of Bo’s own wounds, were all painful reminders that for Moses, dead was best.

After a while, the priest asked, “Enough?”

“I guess,” Bo said. “I don’t know what I was hoping for. Answers only he could give.”

“The only answer you’ll get is right there in front of you. And it’s not a bad one.”

Bo looked at the vandalized stone. The black paint nearly obscured the inscription.

Forgive us our trespasses.

Afew days into his recovery, Tom Jorgenson suffered a stroke. Although not severe, it left him, according to Annie, weak and a little disoriented. Bo stayed away from Wildwood and spent his time reading and sleeping and thinking about Kate. The article in theNational Enquirerhad generated a lot of furor, and Bo’s phone rang constantly. He monitored caller ID. One of the few calls he answered was from Stu Coyote, who told him if he wanted to escape the limelight for a while, he was welcome to come down to Oklahoma. “And feel free to bring your girlfriend,” Coyote said. Bo didn’t see the humor.

Finally, he knew he had to get away. One afternoon, he left the city behind and headed south through farmland thick with tasseled corn, squat milo, and fields of soybeans made silver-green by the bright sunlight. He could have driven the interstate a good deal of the way, but he stuck to back roads where he often found himself crawling behind a big farm implement lumbering between sections of land. He loved the smell of the country, especially in the late summer when the long hot days of August brought everything to ripeness. He passed acres of freshly mown alfalfa laid out in rows to dry in the sun, and the smell took him back instantly across two decades to the summers in Blue Earth when he worked with Harold Thorsen cutting, baling, and bucking hay, summers that were absolutely the best in all his memories.

It was nearing evening when he pulled onto the dirt lane that led to the Thorsen farmhouse. He bumped over a set of railroad tracks, then crossed a narrow bridge that spanned a creek lined with cottonwoods. Beyond the creek, tall corn walled the lane, blocking Bo’s view of almost everything except the big red barn topped with a weather vane, the roof of the two-story white house surrounded by elms, and the blue sky that pressed gently against the land, holding all things in place like the hand of God.

Nell Thorsen was waiting on the porch. She was a small woman dressed in cornflower blue shorts, a white cotton shirt, and sneakers. Her legs were thin and tanned. Her hair had been recently done, short and silver. Although she looked out at the world through thick glasses, her eyes didn’t miss a trick. She was seventy-nine and gave the impression she intended to live forever.

“Right on time,” she said as she hugged him and kissed his cheek. She smelled of lilac bath powder. “I just finished setting the table.”

Nell had grown up on a farm in South Dakota cooking big dinner meals served at noon for the hired hands and the threshing crews. Ham and beef and salt pork, three kinds of potatoes, beans, squash, corn bread and biscuits, everything drowned in gravy. Her father died of a heart attack at fifty-one. By the time Bo joined the Thorsen household, Nell was cooking with an eye toward health. Meats were lean, vegetables profuse and al dente, potatoes served with butter sparingly. What she’d prepared for supper with Bo was chicken salad on a bed of lettuce accompanied by a section of cantaloupe and a croissant. She offered him iced herbal tea from a big pitcher moist with condensation.

The mantel above the fireplace in the living room was crowded with photos of the Thorsen foster children. There’d been nearly thirty in all. Occasionally when Bo visited the farm, he bumped into one of the others who happened to drop by. He was happy only Nell was there that day because mostly he’d come to be alone.

Nell asked about Tom Jorgenson and Annie and the First Lady. She mentioned the awful incident at Wildwood only to say that she’d got on her knees and thanked God when she heard Bo would be all right.

“I got the flowers,” he said. “They were lovely.”

“I’d have come to visit but my damn sciatica was acting up so I could barely move.”

Later, after he’d cleared the table and helped with the dishes, he took a walk alone along the creek. The summer had been dry, and the creek had narrowed to a thin trickle between flats of mud that had hardened and cracked. He’d spent a lot of time there when he was a teenager, wading in the water in search of crawdads and box turtles. Once he’d come out of the creek with a big black leech suckered to the skin between his toes. He was a kid fresh from the city then, and he had no idea what to do. He hobbled back to the farmhouse where Nell got the Morton’s box, covered the leech with salt, and simply plucked it off. He’d been impressed with her practical knowledge and her nonchalance.