The Bavarian Gate

6

A Strange Courtship

Depositions by Fritzi, Axel, and several of the jacks who'd witnessed the death of Patsy Hannigan, all supported Macurdy's testimony. Not that there'd been any doubt, but now the law was satisfied. No charges were filed against him, and for a few days he was a local celebrity. It would have been talked about more, had it not been for the giant Cedar River Fire, busily devouring some quarter million acres of prime timber.

The last embers had hardly cooled before salvage logging began, with crews at first living in tent camps. Macurdy didn't envy them. On Saturdays they came to town telling of work clothes hopelessly blackened from charred bark, and of clouds of ash that rose each time a tree was felled. It was, they swore, the worst kind of logging in the world, even worse than logging blowdown.

Meanwhile Macurdy was discovering there was more to learn than he'd anticipated. Each day he went with, or stayed in the office with Fritzi or one of his deputies, learning by watching and doing. And each day he spent at least a couple of hours reading manuals and other books, while from time to time, Fritzi grilled him, the questions mostly beginning: "What do you do if…?"

He hardly had time to think about Mary, let alone talk with her, until, in his third week on the county payroll, he went with Deputy Lute Halvoy in the paddy wagon to the Moose Hall, where a brawl was reported. He'd never seen anything like it. In the lot next door, a dozen or so loggers were punching, grappling, and rolling around grunting and swearing on the ground, while twice that many were cheering them on. Halvoy blew his whistle, but no one paid any attention at all, so he drew his nightstick and waded in, Macurdy a stride behind and to one side, whacking men on arms, shoulders, backs, to get their attention.

They did. Someone turned and punched Macurdy flush on the nose. It was the wrong thing to do. Macurdy dropped his nightstick, slugged the man in the gut, and delivered a crushing blow to the side of the jaw, dropping the logger like a sack of sand, then turned to the next man, and the next, doing essentially the same thing. This gained real attention. With a loud bellow in Norwegian, a man the crowd cheered as Big Erik squared off with Macurdy, and they began to fight. Big Erik might have been as strong-even stronger-but he lacked Macurdy's technique and quick hands, and when he went down, peace descended. The two deputies herded the crowd back into the club, then handcuffed those on the ground, locked them in the wagon, and started for jail. The idea was not to discover perpetrators or punish anyone, but to remind the loggers that public brawling was illegal in Nehtaka County, and to uphold the reputation of its sheriffs department.

Macurdy's nose had been bleeding freely, and while Halvoy drove, Macurdy silently exercised his bloodstopping skills. Meanwhile his nose and eyes were swelling, so Halvoy dropped him off at Sweiger's Cafe, where he could get ice to put on them.

Mary was there when he walked in. Mainly she worked there from 9 AM till 2 PM, but this evening she was covering for Ruth Sweiger. At the moment there were no customers. She stared wide-eyed at Macurdy, at his swollen, discolored face and bloody shirt front. "Curtis!" she cried, "what happened?"

"We stopped a brawl at the Moose Club," he said, talking like a man with a bad head cold.

Quickly she got a large dish towel from the kitchen, wrapped ice in it, and brought it to him. He'd seated himself in a back booth where he couldn't be seen by people coming in. Now he held the ice to his offended features. Mary sat across from him, facing the door.

"You're all bloody."

"I know."

She giggled in spite of herself. "I suppose you do. Did you hit anyone?"

He grunted. "Guess."

She laughed out loud, then sobered. "Is it broken? Your nose?"

"It's not the first time."

"I'd noticed."

He remembered what had happened after that first time: Melody and Jeramid had rescued him, taking him half conscious to Melody's cabin. He'd had a concussion, and she'd spent the night ministering to him in more ways than one. It occurred to him that he'd like Mary to do the same, and rejected the thought irritatedly. Mary and Melody were as different as Nehtaka was different from Oztown, and that was a lot of difference.

"Does it hurt much?" she asked.

"I wouldn't want someone to hit it again just now."

The towel was beginning to drip ice water, and Mary got another from the kitchen to wipe the table with. Then they sat and talked, their first real talk since the night they'd waited for her father.

"Mary," he said at last, "would you go to a movie with me? When my face looks better?" He'd lowered the ice-filled towel to look at her. Her face sobered instantly at his question.

"I'm sorry Curtis, but no. I like you, quite a lot, but I don't date."

"Have I said anything or done anything I shouldn't?"

"No no! Really you haven't. It's not you at all. But-I just don't date. I promised myself years ago that I'd never et married, so I just don't date. Especially someone I thin I might like a lot."

He looked worriedly at her. "You can trust me. I wouldn't get rambunctious. Really. And I'm not someone that gets into fights ordinarily. This was in line of duty."

She reached for his hand, clasping his thick fingers. "Curtis, understand me. I do trust you. I can see more about people than most do, and I like what I see. It's me I don't trust, because I truly must not get married."

A couple entered the cafe. Mary took their orders, then went into the kitchen and made their burgers. Macurdy had the towel back on his face again. The ice had shrunk, but the towel was still cold. It seemed to him the swelling had gone down somewhat, though he supposed his face would be discolored for two or three weeks. It would look bad for a deputy to go around with a pair of black eyes like some drunk, at least it would in Washington County, Indiana. Probably, he told himself, there was a shamanic way to clear discoloration, though Arbel had never mentioned it. Maybe he could work something out from the treatment for fractures.

When the couple had their burgers, Mary came back to the booth and sat across from him again. "Let me see how it looks," she said, and when he showed her she nodded. "The swelling's already going down." She paused. "It's almost ten o'clock. I'm supposed to close then."

"Can I walk you home?"

She smiled, touching his hand again. "Of course. I'd appreciate it. It will save Dad coming after me."

He smiled wryly. "That's the only reason I asked. To save him the trouble."

She colored briefly, then phoned her father, telling him he needn't come and get her, that Curtis would walk her home. When her customers had finished eating and left, she closed the flue and draft in the big stove, put things in the refrigerator, the cash in a bag and the bag in the safe, then turned out the lights. Larry Sweiger would come in soon to clean up. After she'd locked the door behind them, they started east up Columbia Street. The whole downtown was dark now. After a block walked in silence, Macurdy spoke.

"I don't want to badger you or anything, but I really hope you'll tell me more about not wanting to date or marry." She didn't answer at once, and when she did, it was stiffly. "There's nothing to tell."

Her aura reflected not so much irritation, though as an unpleasant mix of emotions he couldn't sort out. For the next block and a half he thought about his old mentor Arbel, remembering how the shaman had questioned people who didn't know why, or wouldn't tell why, they felt or thought or did as they did. But mostly Arbel's patients were interested in freeing themselves of whatever devils or disorders troubled them, while seemingly Mary didn't. She might not even have any.

How might he apply what Arbel had shown him? It took him two more blocks to speak again. "Can I ask some questions? To help me understand?"

This time Mary's aura did show irritation, and she stopped, about to tell him "no" again, emphatically this time. Yet somehow the word "yes" came out. "But not here," she said. "We can sit on the porch at home and talk."

They turned south down a residential street lined and darkened by Norway maples and Douglas-firs, the air cool and damp off the nearby ocean, smelling of salt and kelp instead of the smoke that had made the air so pungent recently.

The sheriff's two-story frame house stood in a large lot, well back from the street, dark with the shadows of trees and hedges, and lit dimly by a single light somewhere inside. They turned up the walk, went up the steps and onto the porch, where they seated themselves in wicker chairs, facing each other. It was hard to begin. He wished he had a shaman drum or flute, but even if he had, he could hardly start thumping a drum on the sheriff's front porch in the middle of the night. Nor had Varia used one to spell him when they were newlyweds, and she'd wanted to activate his ylvin genes.

For a moment he turned inward, gathering shaman focus, then turned that focus on Mary and spoke quietly. "I take it that you don't want to date or marry, but tell me-tell me something you could like about marriage."

She frowned. "About marriage."

"Right. Tell me something you could like about marriage." She might have told him it was none of his business-it occurred to her-or that she didn't want to talk about it. But there was something compelling in his question. She spoke even more quietly than he had. "Well-it would be nice to have someone to talk with, and go places with."

"Okay. Now tell me something you wouldn't like about being married."

There was a long lag before she answered. He wished he could see her eyes. Arbel had taught him that eye movements and color shifts could tell more about some things than auras could. "Children," Mary said at last. "I wouldn't like to have children."

That was it; that was the key. Her aura left no doubt. "All right. What is there about children that you don't want?" She was facing him, looking past him. "I couldn't stand to have children."

"Fine. What specifically is there about children…" Then, in his mind, he saw the picture that was stuck in her own, hidden from her by trauma. "That's it," he said. "What is that?"

"Nothing. There's nothing." Her voice was little more than a whisper.

"Is that lady in bed your mother?"

He felt her rush of emotion, followed by a sense of brittleness, as if she'd turned to glass. Then the brittleness dissolved, and she began silently to cry. Briefly he let her, then said, "Tell me about it."

"She-she died-because of me."

"All right. How did that happen?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, don't remember. I was just a little child. A baby, really."

"Ah. Look earlier, and tell me what you see."

"I don't see anything. There's nothing there."

"Okay. A minute ago you could see a lady in bed. Your mother. What I want you to do now is see what happened before she was in bed."

That picture came through too, for him as for her. "I see-I see her flopping around on the floor. Jerking. Howling." Mary's voice remained little more than a whisper. "I run out of the house to Mrs. Nelsen's next door." Mary's focus left the scene she'd described, shifting to Macurdy. "Mrs. Nelsen called the doctor. Mama had cancer of the brain. She died a few weeks later, maybe a few months, and they wouldn't let me see her while she was dying. They thought it was too terrible for a child to see. She'd have convulsions, and scream, and say terrible things."

Macurdy took a deep breath. "All right." He paused. "Did you do something to make that happen?"

Mary grimaced through her tears. "Me? What could I have done?" Abruptly her voice intensified. "She had cancer! In her brain! Don't you understand?"

"How old were you?"

Her anger subsided. "I was three when she died. On my birthday. So, two-something when she-got sick."

"Okay." He continued quietly, with a calm learned from Arbel. "Look a little earlier, to before her convulsions started, and tell me what you see."

She frowned, peering inward, then her aura sparked and swelled like a threatened cat, while her face began to slacken as if entering a trance.

"What do you see?" he nudged.

"I-see -a little child. Me. I'm playing with a dish, a bowl, and drop it. It breaks in pieces. Mamma's bowl that her isoditi gave her. I start to cry, and mamma hears and comes in, and cries hard, and scolds me because her grandma is dead, and spanks me so hard.! So hard! And screams at me because I broke her grandma's beautiful bowl she gave her before she died, that I knew I wasn't supposed to touch. And I'm so scared, and she spanks me so hard, I pee on her lap when she spanks me, and she throws me on the bed and falls on the floor, and begins to jerk and scream!"

All through her description, Mary's whisper had tightened, tightened, her body writhing now, twisting with inner agony. "Then cry!" Macurdy ordered sharply. "Cry! Let it out!-" and she began to keen, dismally.

Seconds later he heard feet hammering down the stairs inside. A wild-eyed Fritzi stepped onto the porch in his nightshirt. "What in hell?!" he said, staring.

"She told me about her mother dying."

Fritzi gawped, bug-eyed. Mary's keening had turned to blubbering; it seemed to Macurdy she didn't even know her father was there. When she'd calmed a bit, he spoke once more. "Tell me again, from the beginning. See if there's something you missed before."

Basically she repeated, this time in the past tense but added something now. "And while she was spanking me, mama yelled, `You terrible terrible child! I wish I'd never had you! How could you cause me such pain?!' Then she threw me on the bed and fell on the floor."

Mary's tears still flowed, but the terrible grief was gone. Both Macurdy and Fritzi stared. Klara too was peering out the door now, alarmed and bewildered. "And that's it," Mary said, then hiccuped, which made her giggle. Even Macurdy gawped at that. He'd seen Arbel's patients respond in more or less the same way, but he'd never caused such an effect himself.

"Sorry" she said. "Yes, Curtis, I'll go to a movie with you. What night?"

"I better find out for sure what night I can have off. I'll let you know."

She stared unseeingly past him toward the lilac bushes at the comer of the porch. "You know what? When they picked mamma off the floor and laid her on the bed, I told myself I would never ever have a child who would do such wicked things and make me die. Because I knew she was going to die. I knew it before any of the grownups. And I thought it was my fault. I was too little to understand that she'd already had the cancer, probably for months, and no one knew it; a kind the person is dying from before they show any symptoms. I remember Pappa telling Uncle Wiiri that."

Fritzi stared, shaken. "I remember. The doctor told me, and told Wiiri. He called it glioblastoma something. I remember that. It is what killed my Aina."

Klara spoke sharply to Fritzi in German, and he gave her a brief summary. The old woman grumbled something more, then left, presumably returning to bed. Fritzi spoke gruffly to Mary: "Better you come in and go to bed. Rest. The whole neighborhood must be awake now."

"In a minute, Pappa. First I have to thank Curtis. Privately." Fritzi backed through the door, no doubt to wait listening in the hallway. Macurdy wondered if Mary was going to kiss him. Instead she talked.

"You're a strange man, Curtis Macurdy, but a very nice one. How did you know what to do? To ask those questions? I feel like a new person, I can hardly believe how new."

"I had a friend once who did things like that," he answered.

"I'll tell you about him sometime; I'll tell you a lot of things you should know about me. But not tonight. Your dad's right. Wash your face and go to bed. Sleep on it. I'll see you tomorrow, and see how you feel."

She peered at him for a moment, seeing he didn't know what. Then, standing on tiptoes and holding his face in her hands, she did kiss him, gently. He left in a daze.

Back in his rented room, Macurdy again gave shamanic attention to his damaged face, then went to bed, where he reviewed the evening in his mind. He knew he'd ask Mary to marry him, probably soon, and he knew she'd say yes. It seemed strange but inevitable.

Mary lay looking at a shaft of moonlight through her window. If her mother hadn't had that cancer in her brain, she told herself, she wouldn't have gotten so mad about the dish. Wouldn't have hit her so hard and said those terrible things. Poor aiti! It must have been an awful death.

And if it hadn't been for Curtis and his questions, she'd never have remembered, never have known what festered in the back of her mind, hidden by her sense of childish guilt.

What kind of man was Curtis Macurdy? She'd find out, she told herself. Because she knew he'd ask her to marry him. And she would. She would. Perhaps he'd ask her after the movie. Perhaps in a week or a month. She would not, she resolved, disappoint him, with her answer or her love.