Part 12 (2/2)

Tears started spilling down my face despite myself. His grip was too tight to allow me to turn and look up and down the street, but I knew there had been no one outside when I pulled up, and it was too much to hope that Kennie would come out and save me. I couldn't fight or yell now without losing my arm, but he'd need to let go to drive, and then I would kick, scratch, and yell like a banshee.

Brando shoved me all the way across the driver's seat and gave a tiny yelp, which I mistook for sick glee. The pressure eased off my arm as quickly as it had come, and the lack of pain was exquisite. My arm hung limply at my side, not broken but not right, either. I turned to kick and run but was stopped short.

Brando was on his knees in an awkward genuflection, his face resting on the pavement. Mrs. Berns was behind him, crouched down, with one hand between his legs like a c.o.c.ky quarterback taking the ball from her center. She winked at me. ”I took a cla.s.s on women's self-defense. What you do, you make a little crook, like so, with your thumb and forefinger and come up from behind and through the legs.” She demonstrated with her free hand. ”You squeeze that crook around the very top of the sac like you're castrating a pig, pinch, and twist until you can't twist no more. That way, you really get their attention.”

Or you could, if they were conscious, I thought to myself. And who was running the library?

It took three days and a couple search warrants to find out I had been mostly right about Brando and Liam Anderson. Brando had hired Liam for muscle to help him remove the statue, and according to Brando, Liam had slipped and fell once the statue had been removed. He impaled his head on the post on the way down. In Minnesota, there is no law requiring someone to bring another person to the hospital, no matter how dire their straits, so the death of Liam Anderson was ruled an accident, and no charges were filed.

However, Dolly's engineering friend found a structural flaw in Big Ole that would have resulted in him crus.h.i.+ng some unsuspecting Lutherans with cameras in under a year if it hadn't been fixed. Which it was. It required tr.i.m.m.i.n.g thirteen inches of thigh off the big guy, but he looked better for it, and now, he's as safe as Sesame Street. Finding the flaw in Ole had been enough to grant a search warrant for Fibertastic Enterprises, where the dismantled Gandhi was found stowed in a back storeroom. Apparently, Brando had been intending to resell the upper torso to a mini golf course in Branson, Missouri. There was enough left to prove that the same structural flaw that had threatened Big Ole had also sent the Gandhi statue tumbling in India, and Brando was forced to pay big to the Jains. His name and photo were on the cover of every newspaper in the Midwest, so he was humiliated as well as financially ruined.

That's not even the best news, though. They found my man. Brando had parked his Humvee with the dead or dying Liam in it in the woods near Johnny's cabin and driven the tractor trailer with Chief Wenonga in it all the way back to Stevens Point. There, it had been unloaded, and Brando had left instructions to have Wenonga's body spray-painted white, his hair spray-painted blonde, his eyes blue, his leather pants replaced with a half-robe, and the tomahawk replaced with a cross. You got it. My emotionally distant hunka hunka burning love had been this close to being reincarnated as a fibergla.s.s Jesus. Thank G.o.d for miracles.

Speaking of miracles, it was at the Return of the Chief party that Mrs. Berns explained how she miraculously came to be outside of Kennie's house just in time to save me.

”Oh, that? Well, the library was kinda slow, and Kennie said she had a business proposition for me, so I locked 'er up and headed over.”

I wiggled the fingers sticking out of my sling. The doctor said my arm was just strained and had given me a sling and prescribed some truly worthwhile painkillers. They were even better than Nyquil. I wasn't so medicated that I had lost all sense, however. I debated whether or not Mrs. Berns' work ethic and/or her business venture with Kennie were topics worth pursuing. ”Yeah?”

”Yeah. I think the woman's really got something this time, too. She wants to run an online business with me.”

My shoulders relaxed marginally. ”Oh, that's great! Online businesses are really taking off. You have a wider market that way.”

”It's going to be called *Come Again.' We're going to sell previously owned and gently used marital aids. Kennie says it's an untapped market, what with the cost of some of those things new. And you break up with someone or get divorced, you don't want that stuff lying around to remind you what you had.”

Technically, all true. ”It sure is a beautiful day to get Wenonga back.”

Brando's brother, Peter Erikkson, was now in charge of what was left of Fibertastic and had promised to work around the clock to get a repainted Chief Wenonga back to Halvorson Park by the weekend. He was true to his word. Kennie had arranged for the Battle Lake Bulldogs marching band to be present at the reinstallation of the statue. They had originally wanted to play ”Apache,” but Dolly, the town's honorary Historical Consultant and head of the new Diversity Advisory Panel, had suggested they play something less culturally weighted, hence ”Wipe Out.”

In the shortest town meeting in history, the Advisory Panel had decided that Chief Wenonga and Chief Wenonga Days were here to stay, but the celebration would from here on out be a true celebration of the First Nation people as well as the immigrants who had since arrived. That might still include turtle races, a street dance, and all-town garage sale, but it would also include historical tours through Glendalough, no more stereotypical representations of Native Americans in the parade, and introspective pieces in the Recall. There was even talk of changing the name of Wenonga Days to the Heritage Festival.

Change can be good, I thought, shading my eyes against the late afternoon sun that was reflecting gloriously off the ebony hair of Chief Wenonga. There were at least two hundred people in Halvorson Park doing the same, many of them tourists. Business was booming in town, thanks to the nationwide publicity Wenonga's and Ole's disappearances had brought. I looked around for Sid or Nancy, knowing one of them would be here. I felt a hand tap my shoulder.

”Mira?”

It was Johnny, still tanned, rippling, and smelling of vanilla and warm earth, despite his two days in the clink. Other than the tired pull around his eyes and his hesitant smile, he seemed to be my old Johnny. I smiled at him. ”You look so hot.”

”What?”

”You look shot. That's what I said. It's something we used to say in Paynesville. You know, like *you look kind of tired.' Guess that saying didn't make it over to Wisconsin.” I giggled a tad hysterically and fought the urge to pull out my painkillers and convince him I had a prescription to be stupid.

”No, I guess it didn't.” He rubbed his hands across the front of his jeans, glanced in my eyes and looked hastily away. ”I heard you helped bring the Chief back.”

”No, that was all Dolly. You were right to check her out, you know. She had all the information. She just didn't know who to share it with.”

”I thought she stole the Chief.”

”Yeah, me too.”

”Mira?” This time he held my gaze. His eyes were a deeper blue than I had ever seen them, and I had to struggle not to look away. ”I heard you helped me get out of jail.”

”Oh, that would have happened sooner or later.”

He reached for my arm, looked angrily at my sling, and pulled back. ”You trusted me, and that means something to me.”

It was too much. I was going to cry or hump his leg, neither of which I wanted accompanied by ”Wipe Out” and an audience of two hundred. I twisted to lose myself in the crowd, but not before he grabbed my good hand.

”Wait.” I turned back and thought I saw a kiss in his eyes before he looked away shyly. ”I owe you a thank you.”

I nodded, wondering why my fight-or-flight mechanism was kicking in. Johnny wanted to thank me, and if I let it, it could be the best thank you ever, much better than a card. That's when his cell phone vibrated against his hip.

He reluctantly reached for it and got a worried look when he saw the number. ”It's my mom. I have to take it.”

He stepped away, leaving me vibrating without the need for electricity. Was this my chance to fall for a good guy? I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying, but when he turned back to me, the concerned look was on his face for a different reason. ”I'm sorry, I have to go. My mom hasn't seen me since I got out of jail, and I need to show her I'm all right.”

My disappointment was palpable, but how upset can you be with a guy who worries about his mom? ”That's OK. I appreciate the thank you.”

He pushed a stray hair off my cheek. ”I can come over tonight. Will you be around?”

Do Norwegians like white food? ”I think so.”

”I'll knock three times.” He smiled his shy grin and walked away.

I hurried home to get shaved and perfumed-no beer and eggs in my hair this time-and was ready like a rocket for him. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it 100 percent. It went without saying that this was my last shot at a healthy relations.h.i.+p, of course. If it didn't work with Johnny, it was the nunnery-or a quick trip back to the Cities to finish my grad program and become a dried up, cat-collecting, fist-shaking, as.e.xual English professor. I had pulled Dr. Lindstrom's note back out after I had arrived home from the Return of the Chief party: Dear Mira:.

You are missed! I hope you haven't gotten so involved in the active animal rights movement up there in G.o.d's country that you can't give us a hand back here. I need a research a.s.sistant this fall, and you're my woman. Pay is meager, but your tuition would be free. Is it a deal? Respond at your convenience, as long as it is before August.

Sincerely yours, Dr. Michael Lindstrom.

Smoothing the note on my counter top, I made a deal with myself. If Johnny came tonight, I would give him a chance. I would open up to him in every way I could. If he didn't show, or he came and turned out to be like every other guy I had ever been with except for Jeff, I was packing it up and moving back to the Cities. No one could say I hadn't given Battle Lake a chance. But oh, did I hope that Johnny would do right by me tonight.

I tried to read and watch TV but spent most of the time squirming and beaming at my animals. Johnny Leeson was going to be with me tonight. I watched anxiously for the telltale headlights down the driveway, the clock ticking a happy beat. The beat, however, soon became monotonous, and then taunting. At first, I consoled myself by pointing out that Johnny had just said ”tonight,” and not given a specific time. Then, I moved on to worrying. Johnny was a decent guy, and he would have called to cancel if he could have. By 11 pm, however, I had decided that Johnny had had second thoughts. Fine. That's fine. It probably would have had a terrible ending anyhow, with me finding out he was a lousy lover, or emotionally distant and unable to commit to a relations.h.i.+p even though we both really liked each other and had buckets in common, or a collector of toenail clippings.

That's what I was telling myself as I walked past my front door, angrily ripping off the cute T-s.h.i.+rt I had chosen just for the occasion, the one that actually made me look like I had b.o.o.bs. When, I wondered fiercely, would relations.h.i.+ps with men stop being painful experiences I had to learn from and instead be a nurturing relations.h.i.+p I could grow in? Never. Absolutely never. I rubbed hot tears out of the corner of my eyes, angry at myself for even getting my hopes up. It was the cloister for me, or maybe a job teaching English at a rural technical college.

That's when the first knock came. I jumped away from the door and pulled my T-s.h.i.+rt back on. I hadn't heard or seen a car. Then the second knock came, and my heart and loins did a little leprechaun kick. What was on the other side of this door was going to decide whether I returned to the U of M to be Dr. Michael Lindstrom's research a.s.sistant or whether I stayed in Battle Lake a little longer.

Instead of waiting for the third knock, I ripped open the door, naked hope in my eyes. The hope quickly turned to shock, and then confusion. Actually, I shouldn't have been surprised at the body before me. This was Battle Lake, after all. Anything can happen here, and it usually does.

end.

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