Winter in the Heartland

Artist: Eve Taft

I’m still not sure what happened. The cops found no fingerprints, and there’s only one suspect, one I know to be innocent. It remains a mystery, the kind the police department has plenty of dusty files on. I watch the newspapers, though, waiting for something to get pulled out of the snow on the highway up to Duluth that closes the case.

This is what I know. I moved from Boston to Minnesota the year after I graduated college, for a gig at a magazine there. They call the Midwest “The Heartland.” My friend, a Wisconsin native, told me I’d encounter something called “Minnesota Nice.”

“They’re very polite,” he said. “It’s just…there’s always something underneath it.”

I figured it would be a break from Bostonian rage, which is unending and results in many car accidents.

What no one told me about Minnesota is that there’s something about that flat expanse, covered in trees that only break for the suburban communities and the Twin Cities in the distance, something that makes you feel as if you’re being watched. It’s not a neck prickling thing, but more like that icy, stomach dropping feeling you get when you enter a room and move around, maybe talking to yourself a little, making coffee and enjoying being alone, jiving to whatever song is on the radio and then about ten minutes later, you realize someone has been sitting quietly in the room the whole time. 

I lived in a duplex, with a couple, Jackie and Bill, in the apartment next to me. Bill took forever to get to the end of his sentences, and he spent most of his time pulling at his moustache. Jackie usually filled in for him. Across the street lived a family of four, headed by a jolly guy called Steve. On my right, across an over-grown fence, an older man called Roy lived alone. I met them all within the first day. Jackie invited me for dinner (casserole that they termed “hot dish”), and Steve offered to lend a hand cleaning the carpet in my living room. Roy said hi and told me that his husband was dead, and his cat sometimes got out, so just bring her back to the door. I said okay.

#

After my first day of work, I came home to Jackie on her side of the porch in her rocker, reading Midwest Living. Her dark hair was, as always, perfectly coiffed and her sweatshirt read “Life is Better At the Lake!”

“And how’s your day been going?” she asked.

“Pretty good,” I said, pausing at the door and jangling my keys.

“Did you run into Roy’s cat on your way out this morning?” she asked.

“Nah. Did it get out again?”

Jackie nodded. “Again.”

“Did you bring it back?”

Jackie sighed. “I wanted to; I really did. But I was on the phone when I saw it, and then I had to get ready to go to dinner. And I mean, I’ve taken it back so often I figured it wasn’t my turn. God, that’s a lousy thing to say.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t think it is. I’ll keep an eye out for the cat.”

I went inside, made lunch, and kept an eye out for the cat.

#

About a week later, Steve came over to check out the carpets and asked how I was settling in.

            “Heard you’ve learned about the Jackie-Roy relationship,” he said.

“Not too harmonious,” I replied. “What happened?”

“She thinks he hits on Bill,” said Steve. “She hasn’t liked him since her and Bill held a barbeque when they first moved in, and Roy made the mistake of saying something about Bill’s physique. ‘Tween you and me, I don’t know what he was getting at…” Steve trailed off. “Anyway, she doesn’t like him.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Maybe he should expand his dating horizons to guys who aren’t married.”
            “You’d think,” said Steve. “Just wanted to let you know so you don’t get caught in the middle. I think Jackie has some opinions about the community he’s part of—but I don’t want to say for sure.”

           “Right,” I said, uncertainly.        

Then we rented a steamer, and Steve helped me do all the carpets, only he kept tripping over my crates, and I kept apologizing. In the end, I wished I’d done it myself.

#

After that, I started noticing little things. Bill, when he walked to the mailbox every day, threw my newspaper and Steve’s on our porches. I told him he didn’t have to, but he said it was no trouble. However, he left Roy’s where it lay. He still waved to Roy every morning, and Roy waved back.

Roy, conversely, left the newspaper lay there until around four in the afternoon, even if he came outside to sit on the porch. Jackie took the cat back once when I saw her, but she complained to me later that it had interrupted Game of Thrones, and now she wouldn’t have time to finish the DVRed episode that day. I apologized, and realized I was doing that a lot.

Jackie totally ignored Roy, and while Steve greeted everyone with the same jolly wave, he stuck around to talk to me or Bill much longer than he would Roy. Bill just seemed a little freaked out by Roy as a concept.

I wondered if Roy had really hit on Bill, and figured that would be pretty uncomfortable. I remembered the time I accidentally hit on a married girl and had a little more sympathy. You just never know.

#

I figured out that something was up when, two days later, Bill offered me some lemonade.

“I heard your carpets look a lot better,” he said.
“Steve and I steamed the hell out of them,” I said. “Much better.”

“Steve’s been pretty busy lately. Pretty busy.” Here he took a sip of lemonade. I resisted the urge to interrupt. Bill continued: “His wife coerced him into redoing the living room…I think he took on a little too much, y’know, renovating this season.”

“Oh, he should’ve asked for help,” I said. “I was around last weekend.”

“I wasn’t trying to implicate you,” said Bill. “Don’t think that.”

“I…didn’t think you were,” I said.

Bill shrugged. “At least both of you are maintaining your houses.” Here another sip of lemonade. “This neighborhood is old, stuff falls apart, you know the way… I’m surprised that one hasn’t fallen down.”

He nodded toward Roy’s house. It looked fine to me.

“Termites?” I guessed.

“Just general disrepair. Bad neighbor talk,” he said.

“Guess so,” I said, laughing.

There was a pause, and I realized Bill was my neighbor too.

“Not bad, though,” I said. “Just a little critical. Which isn’t bad!”

“Oh, no, I knew what you meant,” he said, and then we both went inside.

#

Roy’s cat was on my porch one morning, so I scooped it up and walked over. I ran into Bill, who was shoveling the walk, even though I’d said I’d do it that day. I decided not to bring it up.

“You’re on cat reconnaissance duty?” he said, sympathetically.

“Seems like,” I said, and went to knock on the door.

I didn’t notice at the time so maybe I’m making it up. But it seems to me that it took me a few minutes to talk to Roy and let the cat in, but Bill and I walked up our walkways at the same time. I don’t know what he was doing in between times.

#

A day later, everything went to hell. The morning seemed normal enough, starting to get cold. The first of the snow flurries swirled around me as I made my way to my car. My day was long, and by the time I got back around six, it was full-on dark.

Jackie opened the door to get her mail as I was getting out of the car.

“Some weather, huh?” she called.

“You’re not kidding,” I muttered. “How good is the landlord about heating?”

“Oh, he’s great,” she said. “Just great, you know…except when it comes to maintaining that tree out front, but I shouldn’t complain…”
            She was talking, but I’d looked over at Roy’s, and I saw that the paper was still on the sidewalk.  I wouldn’t have thought twice about it a few months ago, but now it seemed suspicious. There were politics around that paper. Was this a surrender or a rally?

Aware that I might be somehow taking a side, I decided to take it up to his door. As I walked down my walkway, something disturbed me. The early winter dark seemed to press against me, and I was relieved when Jackie called me back, telling me that she had cookies and she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I told myself I’d go check on Roy later. Maybe he’d finally gotten a date. Steve was walking up his driveway as I turned to go through Jackie’s door, and he waved cheerfully. Jackie nodded to him. 

#

It took forever to leave Jackie and Bill’s. I’d been there for an hour, and there were ten minutes of “I have to go” in the living room, fifteen in the hallway, and at least half an hour by the door. They stepped onto the porch with me and watched me, without going inside. I heard their door close about thirty seconds after mine.

I couldn’t seem to focus on anything. Something in the air was desperate, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I told myself I was acting insane. Roy was fine. He hadn’t come and gotten the goddamn Star Trib because he had better things to do.

I turned on the TV and listened to the snow storm picking up outside. 

#

The next day, the cops showed up at my door. It turned out Roy had gone missing—a date had come to pick him up for breakfast that day and found him gone, with no sign of forced entry. I was the main suspect.

I had to stay at the police station for a while. Apparently both Jackie and Steve had placed concerned neighbor report that I was making threats about Roy. Both my denial and the complete lack of evidence against me meant they had to let me go around five.

I got back as Steve was pulling into his driveway. He asked if I needed help shoveling my driveway, and I told him no, I had it covered.

#

I believe in coincidence, and I’m no conspiracy theorist, but what I told my mom (the job wasn’t working out) and what I told my friends (I didn’t like the cold) were both lies. I took the first job back in Massachusetts I could get, and I locked my door every night until I left. I didn’t get any help moving out, which was the way I liked it. Roy’s cat showed up at my door the day before I left, and I took her with me.

Steve did wave one last time when I drove away, but I figure he was just being Minnesota nice.