Who Plowed the Church Lot Before Dawn
Judy is the kind who carries news through a church like a woman carrying a pan of bars, held out level so none spills. “Did you hear about Lyle Engstrom?” she said to the vestibule in general. “Gene found him in his barn Friday night. Broke his hip carrying a bucket of something out to the shed. They took him to the hospital in Jamestown, and they were going to put in a new one Saturday.”
“Lyle Engstrom,” I said. “Is he still living out on 63rd Avenue?”
“Alone, ever since his folks passed. Gene says he has not been to town for groceries in a year. That man keeps to himself.”
I did not know Lyle Engstrom. I knew only that he was Marnie Zimmer’s husband, once, a long time ago, and that everyone said he had gone away after her funeral and then, in some way nobody could account for, hadn’t.
I felt a pull on my sleeve. Ardis had hold of it, hard, with a hand that was not steady. She pulled me down until her mouth was by my ear. Her breath smelled of peppermint.
“Janelle,” she said. “Take me to Jamestown.”
“Ardis, today? We have a roast in the oven…”
“Now. Please.” Her eyes were wet and fierce. “I will tell you what I can in the car, and it will not be much. I gave a man my word fifty-four years ago. I am not going to break it. I’m going to go and ask him.”
I looked at Judy, who had gone quiet with her purse. I looked at Frank, who read my face from across the vestibule, nodded once, and went to find my coat.
It is thirty-eight miles to Jamestown on a good day, and the wind had the ground blizzard running across the section roads like smoke along a floor. We took the Silverado for the high seat, and Frank drove, because the roads were bad and because neither Ardis nor I had asked him to stay behind. She sat in the middle with her pocketbook on her knees. Her wheelchair rode in the bed under a tarp.
For nine miles she said nothing. Then, to the windshield:
“You’ll think I’ve lost my wits. Two things. I knew whose truck it was. I have known since the first winter. And I am not going to tell you whose it was, because it isn’t mine to tell, and I’d like to ask him first.”
“All right,” I said.
“You don’t have to be all right with it, Janelle.”
“I’m all right with it.”
“If he says no, then it stays with me till I’m in the ground, and that is not very long.” She almost smiled. “And you will have driven a ninety-four-year-old woman to Jamestown on a Sunday for a hospital visit with a man you hardly know. You may say that is a fool’s errand.”
“I would say,” Frank said from the wheel, “that the lot is plowed on Sundays by somebody who gets up at two in the morning and doesn’t ask for a dime. If it’s a fool’s errand, I’ll drive it.”
Ardis put her gloved hand over his on the wheel for about a mile.
The hospital was quiet in the way a hospital is on a Sunday afternoon. The woman at the desk had a sweatshirt with snowmen on it and the patience of someone who has seen every kind of family.
“Engstrom,” she said. “He’s on the second floor. Are you family?”
“No,” Ardis said. “I’m an old friend. Would you ask whether he would see me? Tell him Ardis Zimmer, from Nordby. Tell him it’s about the church. Say that I haven’t told anyone, and that I would like to ask him something first.”