Rocket Science Read online

  “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 i
t. 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?

  Chapter Five

  We were in the Millikens’ living room. It was a tasteful version of what Mrs. Bellamy had aimed for out at the farmhouse, wingback chairs and a horsehair couch, with doilies everywhere and a water clock on the hand-carved mantelpiece, where dolphins chased bare-chested mermaids through walnut-grained waves.

  “I’m going to have Deputy Truefield take your father into Wichita to Saint Francis Hospital,” said Sheriff Hauptmann, leaning forward in one of the dining room chairs reversed under him, his hands clutching the chair back to his chest. Hauptmann was a big man, creased skin and folded muscles like a ham out of the can, all crammed into his green uniform. The Sheriff had a tiny little voice for his size, like a kid whispering in church. “That ambulance over at Dunsford Funeral Home won’t be available until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

  “It’s getting on to evening, Vernon,” said Doc Milliken from the wingback chair next to Hauptmann’s precarious perch. The doc was being gentle with me, as if I was the one who was sick. I had thrown up in the lilac bush after helping clean Dad’s blood out of Truefield’s patrol car, but that was just nausea. Mrs. Milliken was cooking pork roast in the kitchen, and the smell was making me sick all over again even as my mouth watered from hunger. Seated on the couch, I kept an embroidered pillow pressed to my lap to hide the trembling of my bad leg inside my work pants.

  Doc gave me a sidelong stare. “We don’t know how long he was out in the trunk of your car. He might have a concussion, and I still want those X-rays.”

  “We won’t find much out else until he wakes up,” squeaked the Sheriff.

  There was a knock on Doc Milliken’s front door. “Come in,” called the Doc.

  Ollie Wannamaker walked into the room, rubbing his hands together, followed by Truefield who had been outside smoking. With night falling, it was getting a little chilly, even for late September. “Well,” he said. “I’ve been over to the Dunham house.”

  “And...?” asked Sheriff Hauptmann pointedly.

  Ollie glanced at me. He didn’t work for the Sheriff, but Hauptmann outranked him every way there was. He didn’t like being pushed around. The town cop shrugged. “Place is a wreck.” I smiled sadly and shook my head. “More so than usual,” he added.

  “What do you mean?” asked Hauptmann.

  “Furniture’s turned over, couple of busted picture frames, that kind of thing. Not like a search, or a burglary. Looks more like there was a knock-down, drag-out fight. Found some fresh boot prints in the yard that didn’t look like Grady’s size nines, either.”

  I wondered briefly how Ollie would know my Dad’s shoe size, then realized he’d been looking in closets.

  “Your Dad know how to fight?” Hauptmann asked me.

  “Yes sir,” I replied. “He bayoneted three Germans in the Somme during the Great War. That was in one afternoon.” I’d seen the stains on that big old knife. It scared the heck out of me, even now, that Dad had kept some German’s heart blood in the tool shed for all these years. He always said it reminded him what he was supposed to do.

  “Good thing he’s a quiet drunk now,” laughed Truefield. I wanted to pop h
im one, but held my ground.

  Sheriff Hauptmann looked calmly at Truefield until the Deputy blushed. “Deputy Truefield, why don’t you get started taking Mr. Dunham to Wichita? It’s a long drive. Stay at the hospital with him until they can tell you something useful, then call it in to me.”

  “I’ll get my hat,” said Truefield, stepping toward the coat tree by the front door. “Can someone please help me bring Mr. Dunham out to the car?” He was a lot more polite with Sheriff Hauptmann around than he had been before.

  “I’ll help,” volunteered Ollie.

  “Get some blankets from Mrs. Milliken,” Doc Milliken said. “Can’t have him getting chills in his shape.”

  The two policemen clattered and huffed around the house, finding blankets at the direction of Doc’s wife, then fetched Dad from the examining room. I watched from my chair as they carried him out. He didn’t look peaceful now, just pale and ill. Old, he was, that funhouse mirror of who I would be. It made me want to gather him in my arms and weep as if he had been my son instead of I his.

  A moment later, I was left alone in the room with Sheriff Hauptmann and Doc Milliken.

  The Sheriff and the Doc looked one another in the eye for a long moment. Something that I couldn’t follow passed between them, words unspoken lingering in the air just out of my earshot. Hauptmann cleared his throat.

  “Vernon,” he began. “We don’t know each other, but the Doctor here speaks highly of you.”

  “Yes sir,” I said noncommittally. I was worried about Dad, sick of Floyd’s airplane, and now Hauptmann’s tone made me feel like I was about to be pitched at like a farmwife facing off with a brush salesman.

  “I understand that you and your father don’t get along, and I believe I understand why.”

  Now Mom’s ghost was in the room, hanging over me as if she were waiting for Dad. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak right at that moment.