beach, where he took off his pack and sat on a bench by a playground. The beach was empty, except for a man playing with his dog. Russell searched through his gear for a canteen he’d packed away. He pulled out half of his stuff before he found it, and spent a good deal of time re-packing, trying to make it all fit again. He filled the canteen from a water fountain then headed toward the fairgrounds and the last known address of Helen Kolopnok.
Russell and Helen had met six years ago, when he had just turned eighteen and she was going on twenty-five. They were introduced at a high-school graduation party thrown by the parents of Carl Paulette, one of Russell’s closest friends. Helen had been invited to the party by Carl’s older sister, who was a nurse at the hospital where Helen volunteered. They hit it off right away, and spent most of the evening making wry observations about the increasingly inebriated partygoers. Before she left she gave him her phone number. He called the next day and they became fast friends that summer, sharing their stories and enjoying each other’s company.
They had last seen each other four years ago, when she’d gone with him to Carmela and Manny’s wedding. That night she told him all about a difficult relationship she’d been in that had recently ended, and thanked him for lifting her spirits. He was glad to oblige. They’d stayed in touch, but gradually the frequency of their communication declined. Now while he walked down her street, he felt bad that he wasn’t even sure she still lived here.
He consulted his old pocket watch. It was pretty early, but she always made a big deal about being a morning person, so he thought she’d most likely be up. She might even be at her summer job, if she had one. Her main livelihood came from managing the rental properties of her parents, but most every summer she took a part-time job for both supplemental income and experience. A carpet of wildflowers surrounded the house, colorful evidence that this was still her place. He climbed the steps and read the names on the two mailboxes, one for H. Kolopnok and another for M. Petersen. That would be Myrtle, he figured, the upstairs tenant Helen had described as “splenetic.” He stood on the porch. Her door was slightly ajar. Wind chimes tinkled. The butt of a cigar rested in an old tuna can next to a wicker chair. Her collection of blown-glass paperweights had grown. They used to line the window ledges, but now also adorned most of the porch railing.
“Helen?” he called out as he knocked on the screen door. “Hello, Helen?”
The interior door jerked open. He was confronted with a gaunt, blotchy old woman whose blue hair twisted wildly out from her scalp like extruded strands of gunmetal. She took a step back, her floral-print muumuu billowing about her shrunken form.
“What do you want?” she demanded, scrutinizing him through squinty eyes.
“I was looking for Helen. Is she home?”
She put her hand on the edge of the door and replied sternly, “I don’t know you.”
“I’m Russell,” he gave a halfhearted wave. “Russell Pinske. A friend of hers. Are you Myrtle?”
“I said I don’t know you.”
“Well, I’m a friend of Helen’s. She mentioned you once to me.”
She thought about this, then said, “She never said anything about it.”
“Yeah, I haven’t actually talked to her in a long time.”
In a niche on the far wall stood a statuette of St. Christopher that Helen had always displayed. It was something he’d entirely forgotten about, and the sight of it set him adrift in a flood of memories until the old woman responded.
“Doesn’t sound too friendly to me.”
He shifted the weight of his backpack and returned his attention to the conversation. “Is she home? I just got in town and I’d like to see her.”
“I’m not saying a thing,” she said, closing the door a little and placing more of herself behind it.
He craned around to more fully face her. “Could you tell her Russell came around? I’m sure she’d like to know.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she told him, then slammed the door and loudly threw the bolt.
Either he’d forgotten that downtown was pretty noisy, or there was more traffic running through here than there used to be. A few blocks along Lincoln Way, the town’s thoroughfare, he came upon a local furniture dealer and was greeted by a novel sight. In the parking lot was a king-sized canopy bed with a high mattress and fluffy comforter. A sign hanging from the canopy identified it as “The Celestial Bed.” Beside the bed stood a fat man in a tasseled nightcap and flowing nightgown, waving to passersby with a glittery wand topped by a silver star.
Russell walked on and was glad to see the usual contingent of bums loitering around the Red Rooster Inn, open for business already. Carl used to tend bar there, but now he worked an office job in Chicago, commuting from the town of Stillwater, about twenty miles southeast, where he and his girlfriend, Ellie Sellers, lived. He talked to Carl a week ago and told him about what he was up to. They’d get together somehow, but it was uncertain when, as was just about everything else in his life.
In the window of a shop he saw one of the posters that was part of the new tourist initiative, reprints of advertisements first produced in the Twenties. They were stylish renderings of bobbed beauties and dapper gents enjoying the charms of the Indiana duneland. A couple of years ago Carmela had sent him a print depicting well-heeled couples on Door Prairie’s lawn-bowling greens. During the years he’d been away she’d kept him abreast of local developments, like the old tractor factory being turned into a shopping mall and the expansion of the marina on Long Lake, largest of the town’s nine lakes. He called her the day he sold the poster, and they discussed his planned trip. She insisted that he come see them before heading off to points unknown, so here he was.
He left the main drag and made his way down a cobblestone alley behind old warehouses, then crossed the tracks and cut through the parking lot of the roller rink on his way to where he thought his friends lived. Twenty-one Melon was the address he had for the house they’d bought shortly after their marriage. He didn’t know exactly where Melon was, but knew it was by Lily Lake, on the east side of town.
The street took him past a foundry and a scrap-metal yard, then into a residential area built on a low rise above the blue ellipse of Fox Lake. Bulging roots of sycamores buckled and broke the sidewalks. He took the road that wound out to Lily Lake, a fair-sized body of dark, still water ringed by lily pads. He stopped in the weeds on the side of the road to get his canteen from his pack. As he drank he looked across the street at the overgrown acreage that was once owned by Door Prairie’s most notorious citizen, known locally as Nellie Widow. Her gruesome exploits were popularized in all manner of lurid publications and duly chronicled by the county historical society.
Early in the twentieth century a woman calling herself Nellie Harper advertised in lonely-hearts newspapers for eligible bachelors to come visit her at her farm, luring them with livestock and land. She used a hatchet to dispose of seven unfortunate suitors, along with three children and two farmhands before the brother of her last catch took his fears to the police. Her house burned to the ground as an investigation got underway. The remains of her victims were found in a pit in the cellar, chopped up and covered with quicklime. A female corpse was recovered from one bedroom, but it had been decapitated, and a positive identification was impossible. Witnesses said the body belonged to a woman much smaller than beefy Nellie. She was reportedly seen in California the following year, and sightings persisted along the West Coast
