Rocket Science

Chapter Four

Ollie Wannamaker, newly minted Augusta police officer, sat at the desk in the police department’s cramped waiting room. Two benches flanked the desk, war bond and ration posters on the wall. The sandstone floor was blotched with odd stains, and someone was snoring inside the barred cell barely visible through a cracked open door behind Ollie’s desk. It sure sounded like Dad’s rattling breath, music to an entire childhood’s worth of sleepless nights.

“Oh, hey, Vernon. How ya’ doin’?”

Before the war, Ollie had been a moon-faced, big-boned kid with an unfortunate tendency to sprout blackheads. He’d gone through high school with me and Floyd. He even dated Mary Anne for a while, when we were all juniors and she was mad at Floyd for two months running. After graduation, Ollie went into the Army. Uncle Sam made him a military policeman in Hawaii, dragging drunks off beaches and patrolling nightclubs. At the end of the war, Ollie came home to Kansas — thin, tough, and tanned right out of his skin condition. He became a police officer — the natural thing to do given his service as a military policeman. I knew his Seventh Day Adventist parents weren’t too pleased about the career choice, but Ollie was a good cop who cared about the folks he had sworn to serve.

“I’m here for my dad, Ollie.”

Somewhere behind Ollie, the old man snored. Ollie scratched his head. “Your dad?”

“Yes, Ollie. My dad. Remember him? Grady Dunham, town drunk?” I stuck my hand out about the level of my eyebrows, about five foot six. “Maybe yea so high.”

“Hey, hey.” Ollie actually waggled his finger at me. “No need to be sharp about it. Matter of fact, I haven’t seen your dad in weeks.”

This was very odd. “I just got a call from Deputy Morgan that my dad was being held down here. Isn’t that him back there?”

“No,” said Ollie. “It’s old Johann Strait. What would I be holding your dad for anyway?”

“Assault.” If Ollie didn’t know whose arm Dad had broken, I wasn’t going to tell him.

“Now why would a Sheriff’s Deputy bring someone into the city police station on an assault charge? They would have taken him to El Dorado to see the judge, or at least dumped him in the county lock-up there.” El Dorado was the county seat, a tender subject as Augusta was the original seat of Butler County. “You been drinking, Vernon?”

“Ah, no. But why would Deputy Morgan tell me he was being held here?” My stomach dropped to somewhere around my knees, as I suddenly felt dizzy. It was the missing envelope. Could the whole telephone call have been a set up? My gosh, was I a prize stooge.

“How do you know he was with the Sheriff’s Department?” asked Ollie. “I don’t know of any Deputy Morgan over there.”

“Well, he told me on the telephone he was a Deputy.” That sounded stupid as soon as I said it. But it wasn’t like I could have asked him to hold his badge up close to the handset.

“Hey,” said Ollie reasonably, “Anybody can use the telephone. It’s a free country. I could call you up and say I’m the governor. How would you know the difference?”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture,” I muttered glumly. I mulled things over. I should go over to the house and see if Dad was home. I didn’t really want to talk with him, but I needed to know where he was and what, if anything, had happened to him. Nobody but me cared about Dad anymore. I was all he had — a sad comment on both me and the old man.

One more thing occurred to me. “Ollie, you ever hear of an Army captain named… ah… Marcus. No, Markowicz. Yeah, Markowicz. Know anything about him?”

Ollie got a funny look on his face, and glanced around the little office as if to see if anyone was listening from behind the file cabinet. “He was in here today asking questions about your buddy, Floyd Bellamy.”

That couldn’t possibly be good news, no matter how I tried to stretch it. “What kind of questions?”

Ollie looked even more uncomfortable. “I can’t rightly say. Military stuff. You know.” His tone of voice reminded me that he and Floyd had served our country, brothers-in-arms even while they were across the world from each other. I, the town gimp, had stayed home safe and warm with all the girls.

I tried again. “Tell me this. Is Floyd in trouble? Or is this something else, maybe a background investigation?” Floyd or no Floyd, my aircraft was in danger. I could smell it coming.

Ollie scratched his head again and stared down at the gum wrappers on his desk. “Take some advice, Vernon. Stay away from Floyd Bellamy for a few days. I know you’ve been palling around with him more than usual lately.” Still not meeting my eye, he raised his hand as if to stop traffic, or maybe wave me off. “I didn’t say nothing to the Army investigators, but your name is gonna come up if they keep asking around. I don’t know, you might ought to take a business trip to Kansas City or something. Augusta probably isn’t the best place for you right now.”

Ollie folded his arms and finally met my eye, giving me his best cop stare. The interview was over. I’d probably already learned more than I was really supposed to know.

“Thanks, Ollie,” I said. “I appreciate it.” I made an effort to sound like I meant that, covering my anger and confusion.

I turned and walked out to 5th Street. I didn’t really feel like calling Dad’s neighbors from the telephone on Ollie’s desk. The Johansens were as sick of him as I was, with the late night screaming and the shotgun blasts and the knocked-down mailboxes. But Mr. Johansen would have gone and checked if I’d asked him to. Besides, I wasn’t sure who might be listening. It would have been bad enough to have the conversation in front of Ollie.

Most of all, I hated the fact that I was starting to think this way. The war was over, we were all supposed to be going back to our normal lives.

My car was parked around the corner and down the block on State Street. Walking toward it, I morosely studied the Hudson. She wasn’t that old, just barely pre-war, and was a good car — had seen me through college and the war. I had been looking at brochures for new Studebakers at a dealership over in Wichita, but the money was more than I could spend. My faded black sedan had served me well. She was cheap, loyal and dependable, and I loved her lines. If I squinted in a bad light, I could almost convince myself I was driving a Hudson Terraplane, just like the Negro bluesman Robert Johnson.

I laughed. Being an engineer didn’t exempt me from waxing emotional about the machines that served me. I was already in love with the German airplane in the Bellamys’ barn, no matter who — or what — had buried her in that deep ice. I would come to understand her. I patted the Hudson’s fender and opened the door.

The crank telephone call really had me wondering if I should go over to Dad’s place. I drummed my fingers on the Hudson’s cracked bakelite steering wheel and stared out at the street. Today was Saturday. He would be drunk as a lord until Monday or Tuesday, then dry up just far enough to wander into town.

Dad had been a weekend alcoholic for years. But he’d slid further away, losing the habit of working after Mom died in that wreck while he slept off a bender in the back seat, and he’d pissed away months after in the rehabilitation hospital. Dad’s weekends stretched out to encompass most of the week. He usually managed to do something on Wednesdays and Thursdays, hauling junk or doing odd jobs to earn enough to stay alive and get drunk for another weekend. I should let him be, stop by on my way back from work next Tuesday.

On the other hand, if something really had happened to Dad, if the telephone call had not been a complete ruse… who had made it? I tried to imagine any other reason for the call other than distracting me to effect the theft of my German files. Nobody cared about Dad. Then I tried to imagine how I would feel if I didn’t go by until Tuesday and he had been missing for three days. I didn’t need that kind of responsibility.

I pressed the starter on the Hudson, and checked my mirrors before pulling out. I noticed a police car parked three or four spaces back down the street from me. That was odd — the station was around the corner. The police department had plenty of parking there.

Ollie, keeping an eye me.

Avoiding eye contact with Ollie, I pulled out and headed up State Street. The car still lagged just a little, as if I was carrying extra weight. I figured I’d go ahead and stop at the service station and check the air in my tires, then drive out to Dad’s house on the north side of town, near the lake, and try to make it back to my boarding house for the supper seating.

Mrs. Swenson had strong opinions about people who came late to meals.

A siren interrupted my thoughts. I looked in the rearview mirror to see the police car right up on my bumper, its revolving light flashing. That was when I realized it was a Sheriff’s patrol car. Not Ollie following me at all. I pulled over to let him pass. He pulled over behind me.

“Wonderful,” I shouted at my windshield, fist curling and uncurling on the steering wheel. My head started to pound — blood pressure rising, which was bad for my game leg. I wondered if CID had arranged to have me arrested so they could pull me in without being obvious about it.

I turned off the Hudson and rolled down my window. The deputy walked up to the car. It was Deputy Truefield, from El Dorado. He had turned Dad over to me a few times rather than driving him all the way back to the county seat to lock him up. Deputy Truefield was okay, if a little stiff.

“Taillight’s busted out, Vernon,” he said as he leaned in my window. His peaked cap brushed the head liner in my Hudson. Deputy Truefield had razor stubble that would have scared a porcupine, which he kept long in an unsuccessful attempt to cover a chin that receded like the tide.

My taillight? “I’m sorry, sir. It was fine the last time I looked at it.” I glanced over my shoulder, out the back window. As if that would tell me anything. “You want my license?” I asked, hoping this was just a routine traffic stop.

“Nope,” he said. “I know you’re clean. No warrants, never had any trouble from you. But I’d be much obliged if you stepped out of your automobile.”

I resisted the urge to ask why, knowing that would only irritate him. Truefield looked sufficiently nervous and annoyed as it was. I opened the door of the Hudson and got out, trying my hardest to look like a good citizen. Truefield motioned me around to the rear of the car. His right hand kept brushing his service revolver.

“See there?” he asked. The taillight was indeed broken. The license plate was bent up on its mounting bracket as well.

I had no idea how that had happened. “That’s odd.”

“Thought so myself,” said Truefield. “You mind opening the trunk?”

“Why?” I asked before I could stop myself. Me and my big mouth.

“Because I have reliable information that causes me to want to inspect your trunk,” he said flatly, his eyes narrowing. Truefield’s hand closed on the grip of the revolver. “Now look Vernon, you and I, we ain’t best buddies or nothing, but I’ve done you a few favors regarding your dad in the past few years, on account of your mama dying that way and all. I know it’s been hard on both of you.” His face relaxed at the memories and the hand wandered away from the revolver. “Do me a favor, open the trunk. If I have to call Judge Abernathy, you and I are both gonna wish you’d just opened the trunk when I asked in the first place.”

There was nothing in the trunk I could think of except a badly patched spare tire, a few tools and my laundry for McVay’s Cleaners. Nothing about Floyd’s aircraft, I was certain. I popped the latch and pulled the trunk open.

I was wrong about the contents of my trunk. Dad was in there, dressed in his underwear, curled up so tight he seemed as if his knees and elbows had been broken. And from all the blood on my grubby office shirts, Dad wasn’t doing too well.

“Vern,” said Truefield slowly. He had drawn his revolver, but kept it pointed at the street. “We should discuss this.”

It could have been worse. I suppose if Dad hadn’t still been breathing Deputy Truefield would have arrested me then and there. On the other hand, dragging Dad’s bloody, unconscious body out of my trunk and settling him into the back seat of Truefield’s patrol car on a Saturday afternoon on State Street pretty much ensured that all of Augusta would know by supper time that something bad had happened to my father, and that I had something to do with it.

Truefield didn’t say much, just grunted, as we folded Dad into the patrol car. He waved me into the front as he got in on his side. Truefield started up the lights and siren.

“I’ve got to say, Dunham,” he yelled over wailing and clicking, “you’d better have a mighty good explanation for all of this.”

I twisted around and looked at Dad. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror, one that made me older and shorter and worn out, like a weathered stump on a river bank. He appeared relaxed, stretched out in the seat as if he was taking an afternoon nap. The nervous guilt that always haunted his face was absent. Bloody, unconscious, maybe breathing his last for all I knew, Dad still looked happier than he ever had since Mom died.

I wondered what that said about me.

“Where are we going?” I asked Truefield as he ran the blinking red light at the Wichita Highway.

“Doc Milliken ought to be home this time of a Saturday,” he answered. “Otherwise we have to go on to either El Dorado or Wichita. Don’t rightly know if your dad could make that trip right now.”

“Okay.” I was a little short of choices myself.

Truefield pulled onto Broadway, the patrol car sliding across the paving bricks as it lunged for a skid that Truefield steered right out of again. Kids scattered as we swept down the road. Doctor Milliken, Odus Milliken’s brother, had a large house about two blocks down from Mrs. Swenson’s where I boarded. More neighbors to watch and wonder about me. I was pretty sure my brief career as an upstanding citizen of Augusta was on its last legs.

Truefield pulled into Doc Milliken’s driveway, knocking over the old hitching post in the process. “Let’s get him up onto the porch,” he said as he jumped out of the car. I climbed out more carefully and came around to Truefield’s side. The Deputy already had his hands under Dad’s arms, tugging him out of the back seat. Dad groaned, his face crumpling into pained wrinkles even in his sleep.

My eyes began to fill with hot tears. This was Dad, my daddy who carried me across icy winter creeks on his shoulders and fed me water with a spoon all through the frightening, stunning heat of my polio. Dad, who had been dying in the trunk of my car with blood all over his face while I sat in the library reading German reports about some crazy Arctic expedition for some worthless airplane I’d cared too much about.

“Damn it, Dad, don’t leave me,” I whispered. I grabbed Dad’s legs as Truefield pulled him out of the back of the patrol car and staggered off after the Deputy.

Mrs. Milliken came out onto the porch, screeched once with her hands on her cheeks, then ran back inside. I hoped she’d gone to fetch Doc Milliken. His blue Cadillac convertible was parked in the driveway, so I figured he was home.

Truefield dragged Dad bodily up onto the porch with me swinging along behind. Tears ran down my face as my nose flooded hot and prickly. I had lost Mom for no better reason than a jackrabbit and a bald tire one night when Dad had a little much and was sleeping it off in the back seat instead of driving them home like he usually did. Now Dad was going to die because I’d gotten involved with Floyd Bellamy’s secret Nazi airplane. To heck with the documents, to heck with the mysteries of the ice. I decided to burn down Mr. Bellamy’s barn as soon as I could, and be shut of the whole mess for good and all.

Doc Milliken came out in a dressing gown and pajamas. He had a pipe in one pocket and a newspaper in the other, with little half-moon glasses and a grouchy expression. He didn’t look much like his brother the railroad agent, except for the weight of age on both their faces.

Doc helped Deputy Truefield and me get Dad into his examination room where he laid Dad out on the table. “Ruthie,” Doc shouted, “get me sterile rags, and prepare a suture kit.”

“Is he going to die?” I asked. Someone asked that question in everyone’s life. I hated that it was me, now, standing next to Dad as he bled his life away.

“Just hold on a minute, son,” snapped Doc Milliken. “Help me get his shirt off.”

As Doc Milliken cut with a pair of short-bladed steel scissors, Truefield and I pulled Dad’s shirt away. I could see fresh red marks along his ribs. Dad groaned and twisted as we tugged at the cloth.

“Be careful,” Doc said. “It looks like someone broke his ribs for him.”

Mrs. Milliken came in with some clean white rags. She smiled at me a moment, then went to work on Dad’s face, wiping the blood off. I fought back my tears, but my sinuses had filled up and were driving more out and I couldn’t blink away the pain inside me.

Doc Milliken grasped Dad’s face between his hands and thumbed back the eyelids. “Take it easy, Vernon,” he said softly over his shoulder as he shut the lids again. “Grady’s a tough old buzzard. He isn’t going to check out today.” He began to examine Dad’s scalp.

I looked around for Deputy Truefield. He was in the front room, talking on the telephone. I’d had enough law enforcement shenanigans for one day, and didn’t really want to know what he was discussing. Instead I took Dad’s hand and held it. The rough, callused fingers were familiar, their hard textures reminding me of my boyhood. I looked down and realized that he was still wearing his wedding band.

I had no idea he’d never taken it off. Not even knowing that much about Dad made me sad all over again.

Doc Milliken, Deputy Truefield and I stood on the front porch. Mrs. Milliken had brought out a tray with some frosty bottles of grape pop, then gone to sit in the front hall, listening through the screen door. The ceiling above me was painted blue to keep the wasps off it, and I found myself studying the knobby gingerbread along the edge of the porch roof.

Truefield cleared his throat. “Sorry about the hitching post, Doc.”

“I expect that young Vernon will make good on it.” Doc Milliken winked at me. “It was historic, you know.” I smiled weakly as Truefield glared at me.

“Sheriff’s on his way over from El Dorado,” Truefield said conversationally. “There’s going to be some hard questions asked.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but no words came out. I didn’t have anything to say. Doc Milliken patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t you think that the Augusta police should handle this, Peter?” he asked Deputy Truefield.

“Normally, yes, but I’m already involved. There’s reports to fill out, and where there’s reports, there’s questions.” Truefield shrugged and looked uncomfortable. His expression reminded me of the way Ollie had looked at me back at the police station.

“He’s going to be fine, you know,” said Doc Milliken. “There’s been no murder done here.”

“No, but we have attempted murder for sure.”

Milliken caught Truefield’s gaze and stared him down. “Vernon didn’t do it.”

I was glad to hear that. I knew I hadn’t done anything to Dad, but I wasn’t sure I could convince anybody else of that. Having him in the trunk of my car would be pretty convincing to a judge and jury. It wouldn’t be hard to construct a motive for me, either. God damn Floyd Bellamy and his magic Nazi airplane.

“How do you know?” demanded Truefield.

“Three ribs cracked, several more bruised. I’d like to send him on to Wichita for X-rays, just in case I missed some.”

“So?” Truefield’s tone was belligerent, his hand straying toward the revolver. I really wished he would stop that.

“Do I have to spell it out?” snapped Doc Milliken. “Vernon Dunham’s been lame from polio since he was eight years old. I know. I treated him through it and damned near lost him. It’s a miracle he can walk at all. Grady Dunham’s ribs were kicked, very hard, by someone. Now, do you suppose Vernon stood on his good leg and kicked his dad’s ribs in with his lame leg? Or did he stand on his lame leg and kick them in with his good one?”

“Oh,” said Truefield. “I see,”

I felt miserable, but I had to point something out. “I could have had an accomplice.”

“Whose side are you on?” asked Doc Milliken. “Besides, whoever hit your father in the head didn’t know him well. That knock would have killed almost anyone else, but they got him right in his metal plate. He’ll be weak from blood loss and have a heck of a headache when he wakes up, but that’s about it. You would have done a better job.”

The metal plate. Dad’s reward for surviving the accident that had killed Mom. The jackrabbit in the middle of the road had lived for a while, but Mom had her head torn off by a fence post. Sleeping like a baby in the back seat, Dad’s head just got bashed in. The nice metal plate that the surgeons at St. Francis hospital in Wichita had implanted in his skull put him back together just like new — a medical advance courtesy of the war. Dad was as good as ever, except for his endless capacity for gin, draining through the Mom-shaped hole in his heart.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I know all about the plate.” Mom’s surgical steel tombstone, stuck in Dad’s skull.

“That might let you off the hook,” said Truefield sternly, “but it still doesn’t look too good. County attorney will want to talk with you for sure.” Then, in a weird echo of Ollie’s advice, “I wouldn’t take any trips if I were you.”

I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere.” Never again.

Who would have wanted to kill Dad? He made it to services at the First Christian Church downtown once or twice a month, he did a little hauling and light chores. He was harmless. Dad was the town drunk, but everybody knew why. Most folks looked past it and treated him well enough. There were even a few widows with designs on him, although Dad was pretty adroit at avoiding that kind of attention. He hadn’t been very adroit at avoiding someone else’s attention, though.

Something occurred to me. “Doc, you see anybody in here in the last day or so with a broken arm? Maybe an Army captain named Markowicz?”

Truefield’s head snapped towards me so hard I could hear his neck crack. His eyes narrowed and his hand went firmly to the butt of his revolver. Doc Milliken gave me a narrow-eyed look and said, “Now what would you know about that, Vernon?”

“I heard a rumor that Dad might have broken the Captain’s arm for him. Maybe he did this to Dad.” I waved back vaguely into the house behind us where Dad still rested.

“I think maybe we shouldn’t discuss this,” said Deputy Truefield in a low, tight voice.

That finally broke through my blues to make me angry. I tolled the litany of my complaints. My dad had been dying in the trunk of my car. Some strong-legged bastard had kicked a harmless old rummy in the ribs, whacked him upside the head, not caring whether he killed or not. Truefield kept trying to pull his gun on me, like I was John Dillinger or something.

I thought about my missing Nazi envelope, about Floyd’s stupid stunt of stealing the aircraft in the first place. I thought about how out of control my life was getting and how fast that had happened.

“You big… big… goober!” I screamed at Truefield. I could feel my lips stretch back, spit flying as I yelled. My leg throbbed in time to the angry cadences of my speech. “You talk about arresting me for trying to kill my own father, but when someone with a real reason to do it comes up, you don’t want to discuss it. This isn’t Germany, by God, this is Kansas. We don’t think that way around here.”

Doc Milliken put a hand on my shoulder, his fingers firm and warm. “Vernon, calm down.”

He turned to Truefield, who had his revolver pointed at my chest. “Now Peter,” said Doc Milliken, “put that gun away. Young Vernon’s just upset because something terrible has happened to his father. I suggest you go wait in your patrol car for the Sheriff to arrive. We won’t say any more about broken arms, none of us, until the time is right.”

“You be careful, Vernon Dunham,” said Truefield to me, sticking his left index finger in my face like a little pink gun even as he holstered the pistol. “There’s some pretty big stuff going on. You’re likely to be swept away by it.” He paused, catching his breath. “I want things back to normal here in Butler County. That includes you and your dad, Vernon. So just you take it easy.”

He turned and stomped off the porch, heading back to his patrol car. I watched Truefield open the trunk and get out some rags. He began to clean Dad’s blood out of the back seat. If I wasn’t so angry, I would have gone to help him. I wondered when I was going to get to clean out the trunk of my Hudson.

“Come inside, watch your dad sleep, and wait for the Sheriff,” said Doc Milliken gently. “Or you can go help Peter clean his car. I know what I would do.”

I turned to look at the doctor. He held out another rag and a little glass bottle with a sprayer screwed into the top. Disinfectant.

I thought about Truefield dragging Dad up the stairs. He hadn’t busted my head, he hadn’t taken me in. He’d done right by Dad, regardless of his suspicions about me.

I took Doc Milliken’s rag and headed for the patrol car. As I bent to work beside the Deputy, neither of us willing to speak the other, I wondered what reliable information Truefield had been given about me and my car.

Where he had gotten it?

From whom?