David Gates - Preston Falls

She unplugs the space heater in the kitchen, which it was dangerous to have left on all night, and feels the air start to get cold immediately, as if the place just can't wait to get back to being an empty house out in the middle of nature. She goes upstairs, glances into his study to make sure everything's turned off, then checks in the bedroom. Might as well bring Emma along. And how about that Pilgrim's Progress, to play around with that funny lettering? Forget it: she's got enough on her plate. She takes a last look around the kitchen. She should hide the boombox and CDs; incredible how much money you're looking at in a stack of CDs. But you know? You get tired of cleaning up after boys. Still, there's one thing: that mug of her father's. She just can't abandon that up here, little as he loved it. She finds a plastic grocery bag, wraps up the JOE mug and sticks it in her purse.

PRESTON FALLS

She should have warmed up the Cherokee, but by the time she gets to Quaker Bridge Road the needle on the temperature gauge is up to the first little mark and she can turn the heater on. The morning sun is bringing out the green of the fading grass and giving the bare trees long, sharp shadows. She passes poor little house after poor little house, each with a giant satellite dish in the yard. Pumpkins and tree ghosts have never looked so pagan to her: right down from barbaric times. She could never have lived up here. Not that she'd ever been asked.

She tells the post office lady she left her key at home and could she have the mail for Box 324. No problem. On the one hand it's nice that people up here are nice, but it's like anybody could just waltz in and ask for your mail. This lady's beauty-parlor perm looks odd with that mannish blue postal service sweater, but it must be cold working in here. She comes back and flops four bundles with rubber bands around them on the counter. "I guess you hit the jackpot."

"I guess so," Jean says. "Well, it can't all be bills."

''There you go." So Jean has struck the requisite Preston Falls note: wry stoicism with a hint of self-deprecation.

She goes over to the chest-high table, slips off the rubber bands and starts throwing junk mail and catalogs into the wastepaper thing. She never knew they had so many hardware stores and lumber companies up here. A couple of things marked PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL: IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUIRED, from a post office box at Cooper Square Station — probably some bogus contest. Sales at Grand Union. Full-color circulars from Ames, with all this seventies-looking type and layout; apparently they're trying not to intimidate rural people.

She takes the rest out to the Cherokee — bills, bank statements; but, again, not a single letter — and she starts the engine so she can run the heater. The most recent phone bill, postmarked October 26, says THIS IS A FINAL DISCONNECTION NOTICE: total amount overdue $157 and change. But no long-distance calls on the statement. The one postmarked September 26 shows calls to Etna, New Hampshire (his mother), Rutland, Vermont (that lawyer?), Chesterton, New York, and New York City. Two electric bills. Two American Express bills (neither one has new charges) and one Amexgram, that thing they send when you haven't paid: his balance is six hundred-odd dollars. Two MasterCard bills, balance of nine thousand and change; the October bill has some

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snippy little thing about his minimum payment. SECOND NOTICE from Allstate Insurance; Willis registers the Cherokee and his truck up here because the premiums are lower, which she's always thought was dishonest.

She rips open the bank statement postmarked October: a balance of $12.17, no canceled checks, no ATM transactions and a five-dollar service charge. The September one shows a balance of $17.17, with a single cash withdrawal: 9/18, $400, New Baltimore Service Area, New York State Thruway, plus a $1 ATM fee.

Why did he bother to leave seventeen dollars? Obviously to keep his account open. Which meant he took off for somewhere but intended to come back? Or at least to have the option? But maybe it was just that the machine only gave out multiples of twenty: her little girl-detective deduction. New Baltimore. That's the one just south of Albany, right? But was it even Willis, or had somebody stolen his cash card? But if they'd stolen his cash card, wouldn't they also have his credit cards? And since there was no activity on those statements. . But of course Willis's MasterCard was pretty well maxed out.

She fastens her seat belt, releases the brake and waits to pull out as a low-slung black car passes by. Going to the post office before the police made sense, actually. Well, so now she's been to the post office. She so much doesn't want to do this. The poHce station, she assumes, is in the town hall, where you always see cruisers parked around the side.

The officer behind the counter looks to be in his twenties; he's got one of those ultra-neat short haircuts young Christians have, with the perfectly circular cutouts around each ear. Naturally he wears a wedding ring.

"Hi. I'm Jean Karnes?" she says. "Are you the person I spoke to?"

"No, ma'am. That would be Officer Plankey." The name tag above this one's badge says ALDEN. "He went out for breakfast. Are you the lady that called about your husband?"

"Yes."

"Here," he says, pointing to a waist-high swinging door. "Why don't you come around this way and have a seat."

She sits on a metal folding chair at the side of a metal desk with a computer on it. He sits down on the swivel chair and clicks a mouse here and there on the pad, squinting at the monitor. Then he starts tapping at the keyboard. "I brought along a picture," she says.

He stops tapping, takes the picture from her, looks, puts it on the desk.

PRESTON FALLS

He asks for Willis's full name, address, age, description and occupation, tapping in her answers; then he listens to her story. He doesn't seem to think it's weird that Willis's computer was on — they've got one at home, and he's always forgetting. The broken window? Could be kids; anything missing from the house? Not that she knows of. Well, come to think of it, she didn't see his guitars. But of course he sometimes hides them, and she didn't check his hiding places. She tells about the unpaid bills and the cash withdrawal on the Thruway on September 18. He nods. And how long since she's seen or heard from him? Well, right around then, actually. He looks at her. "You mean around September eighteenth?" he says. Probably, she says. He looks back at the screen, taps a few characters, then, still looking at the screen, he says, "Was this a usual length of time with you and your husband?"

Not until she's back in the Cherokee does it hit her that she should have told about him getting arrested on Labor Day weekend; she'd honestly forgotten. And it probably had no bearing. Well, so they'll find out anyway, won't they, from their computer? But when he asked if Willis had seemed unusually upset — no, "overwrought" — it might have been good to mention that. Instead she said he was a little burned out from work. So now they'll think she was being evasive.

Well, she's done all she can do here, yes?

She could drive by the house one more time, just in case his truck is there. Maybe check on the guitars?

No. Enough.

She heads back through the center of Preston Falls, trying to remember the most direct route over to the Northway. Past the old movie theater with its windows boarded up, past the used-furniture place that's now a pile of bricks with charred boards sticking up, past Winner's, where the display window has a cardboard cutout of a black cat arching its back. Right: Halloween. At least she'll be back in time to be with Mel and Roger. She drives past Julie's Luncheonette, with the hole busted in its plastic sign. Past the one surviving nice old storefront, Howard & Sheron's, with black-and-gold lettering that still says SUNDRIES and always makes her think of sun-dried tomatoes. She's a city person; so sue her. Sometimes it depresses her that she's ended up back in the burbs, even though she'd campaigned for it because of the kids. A blast of wind comes along— ivhomp — that actually rocks the Cherokee and sends a plastic bag flapping up into the blue sky like a rising witch.