Early Warning

Sometime later, he saw Lois waving to him. He finished his row, made his turn, tried to ignore her. He hated turning the tractor off and on unless he had to. She went inside. He continued his task, but he watched, promising himself that if she came out and waved again, he would go see what she wanted. She didn’t come out. Joe finished the field, once in a while glancing toward the house. Nothing.

On the porch, Joe heard Minnie say, “Do we call the sheriff?”

Through the screen, Joe said, “What about?”

Minnie’s face turned toward him, blanched but blank. She said, “My father is at the bottom of the basement stairs.”

Joe didn’t understand at first, then, when he registered how pale and how angry Minnie looked, it finally clicked. “Is he dead?”

Lois said, “He’s really cold. As though he’s been down there a long time. I saw him when I opened the door to go down for ajar of peaches. What was that, an hour ago.” Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact.

Joe peered down the stairwell. There wasn’t much light, but he could see the old man staring upward, his neck twisted to the right and backward. His hands were above his head, as if he had been reaching for something on his way down. He was wearing a dirty shirt with long sleeves, and overalls.

Sheriff Dee arrived just then with his deputy. After they spent maybe fifteen minutes in the cellar, they sat everyone at the kitchen table for the questions, which Sheriff Dee asked as if he were reading them from a piece of paper, though he wasn’t. Lois bounced Jesse on her knee. Minnie looked half upset, half angry, but Lois looked blank. The deputy, Carson, wrote everything down. Joe told about the back door being ajar when he came in the first time. Lois told about noticing a car by the side of the road when she went into town, but she didn’t recognize it, it was partly in the ditch, there was no one in it — she’d thought maybe someone had run out of gas. They never used the front door, but, no, neither of the doors was locked. No one locked their doors around here. And what had they all been doing today? Rosanna had been at her house with Annie, Minnie had been at school, Joe had been out cultivating the corn, Lois had been away for about four hours, taking Jesse for a checkup, then shopping, mailing some letters, visiting with Dave Crest at the store, and browsing at the Denby library. Witnesses? Joe didn’t say anything at first; then: “I guess my only witness is the cultivated field.”

The deputy nodded, but Sheriff Dee remained serious and still.

Rosanna said that, yes, Roland Frederick had appeared — when was that? — two years ago now, came and went, said he was working in Omaha, seemed like he’d been drinking steadily for eight years, hardly coherent, but, no, he hadn’t seemed threatening, exactly, and he’d gone away as quickly as he came. She had told Minnie about it. Joe’s head snapped toward Minnie; then, under the table, he took Lois’s hand.

Minnie said, “I thought I mentioned it to you, Lois.” She cleared her throat.

Once they had been “questioned,” Joe and Minnie sat there while Sheriff Dee and Deputy Carson — oh, Seth, his name was, Rodney’s kid — walked around the house, looking at this and that, going out on both of the porches, then coming in, staring at the floor, checking doorknobs. They went back down into the cellar, but this time only stayed for under five minutes. It was now after six. Sheriff Dee went to the phone and called the undertaker. Lois asked if they were free to go over to Rosanna’s for the rest of the evening, and that’s where Minnie, Lois, Jesse, Rosanna, and Annie did go, taking Poppy along. But Joe stayed, sitting quietly at the table, making sure that Nat sat next to his leg while the undertaker and his two assistants carried the shrouded corpse up the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the front door. Nat growled once or twice, but he knew better than to bark. Joe gazed at him, wondering what he knew — he would not have been in the house, but he might have seen something. Joe felt ashamed and somehow suspected, though he didn’t know why or of what. Maybe because he really was an interloper in the Frederick house? Maybe because at last the farm was his?

—

DR. KATZ SAID, “How about dreams?”