September Fair Page 19

  “How desperate?”

  Eustia scrunched up her face, which caused her bejeweled glasses to slide off her nose, where they were caught by their chain. “Between you, me, and the wall, I think she let that bull out the other day. She wanted to get more press for the fair. If it breaks even this year, she won’t have hurt it permanently. We’ll recover next year. But if ticket sales don’t cover enough of the bills that have gone unpaid, we’re going under.”

  “That’s stupid,” Mrs. Berns said. “Releasing dangerous animals is no way to attract people. Why, if I wanted to get some rubberneckers in, what I’d do is …” She slapped her mouth shut before she let Eustia in on what we were thinking.

  I finished her thought. “You’d murder someone?”

  “I was going to say I’d have a wet T-shirt contest.”

  “Nice save. I need some fresh air. Eustia, thanks for your time.”

  My wandering didn’t clear my head, but it brought me past the Ag-Hort building, and so I figured I might as well write my articles as I couldn’t do what I really wanted to do—check the Milkfed Marys’ hair to see if they were all marked—until tomorrow, and I needed some mental space to connect the dots on Kate before gathering any more clues. Something was there, something that I was missing, a piece connecting her clearly to Lars Gunder and the two of them to Ashley’s murder.

  I stepped out of my head and into Ag-Hort. The interior of the building seemed busier than it had been during Henry Sunder’s book launch, but saying something was more busy at the fair was like calling someone more dead or pregnanter. The main exhibit in the building changed every day. Today the focus was on honey, and the entire north end of the cavernous building was given up to displays of honey-sweetened baked goods, specialty honeys, cooking with honey demonstrations, active, glass-encased miniature apiaries, and beeswax sculptures.

  A woman leaned out of the stall nearest me, its front counter creaking under the weight of hundreds of jars of honey, a rainbow of yellows. She looked a little like a bumble bee herself, with her fuzzy blonde hair streaked with gray, and a black and gold striped T-shirt. “Care to try our basswood honey?” she called out.

  I stepped in and read her nametag. “Mrs. Lieber? Jenny Lieber?” She was exactly the person I’d come to see.

  “Yes?” She didn’t recognize me and her expression said that she felt bad about it.

  “Don’t worry. We’ve never met. I was just reading your tag and recognized the name. I’m Mira, and we’re both from Battle Lake. I work for the Recall. Ron Sims, the editor, has me at the fair covering locals. Your family owns the honey business south of town?”

  She held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you. Yup, we have Honig Lieber’s Honey Farm. Three of our honeys won grand prize ribbons this year!”

  “Was the basswood one of them?”

  “You betcha. Here you go.”

  I accepted the small plastic spoon that was handed to me. The dot of honey on it was the palest yellow, almost clear, and it smelled like flowers and sunshine. I licked it off, savoring the mild spread of sweetness and light. “That’s wonderful. What makes it basswood honey?”

  “The hives are located in a basswood forest.”

  I was skeptical. “So it’s mostly basswood, but might have other stuff mixed in?”

  She laughed. “We make it as scientific as we can. Look at this.” She directed my attention to a row of ten honeys, arrayed from lightest to darkest. “Our basswood bees produce the super-light stuff. Buckwheat honey is the darkest, and it has the most antioxidants. Honey is healthy.”

  “Yum. Do you guys have anything here besides honey?”

  “Beeswax candles. My sister is over by our display if you want to talk to her.”

  I thanked Jenny and moved on to her sister, who was womaning the beeswax stall on the opposite side of the honey room, which was the size of a small gymnasium. I was fascinated by the comb pattern in the candles and the intricate shapes that could be formed from the wax. I listened to an impromptu candle-making lesson before tracking down Lisa Schmitz, Battle Lake’s reigning jelly-making queen, in the preserves room, which was adjacent to the honey room. Lisa was displaying her famous crabapple jam as well as golden raspberry jelly, apple butter, and wild grape jelly. I didn’t put up much of a fight when she made me sample each one, and I wished I had my camera so I could snap a photo of the sunshine gliding in a high window and through a stacked pyramid of her wares. The sunbeam lit them up into the deepest peach and jeweled purples, an edible pirate’s treasure.

  After ascertaining that these two were the only Battle Lakeans in Ag-Hort, I sauntered over to the 4-H building, my belly full of homemade sweetness. Battle Lake was also represented well in this arena. The town boasted one of the largest 4-H groups in the state, and the participants had various projects on display, from homemade rocket ships to quilts to farm dioramas made from tinfoil, toothpicks, and tempera paints. I interviewed any of the kids who happened to be near their projects and convinced one of the leaders of the Battle Lake 4-H to e-mail me the photos she had taken so I’d have visuals to go with the article.

  After the 4-H building, I headed to the animal barns. I’d already inspected the Otter Tail County cows in the Cattle Barn, but still had stops to make in the Swine, Horse, and Sheep and Poultry barns. It was in the latter that I discovered that Dan’s prizewinning Araucana was in fact a chicken. According to the placard in front of the champion bird, the breed was both tufted and rumpless. “Sorry,” I whispered to the chicken. It couldn’t be easy to breed with those bona fides.

  It actually wasn’t bad-looking for a bird. The tufts of feathers near its ears looked regal, like one of those giant, ruffled collars that Victorian royalty wore. True, its butt was a sad little downward slope lacking definition or tail feathers, but if it was facing away, you could hardly notice. I was leaning in to determine once and for all whether or not chickens had ears when I realized that I had voluntarily walked into an entire structure given over to poultry.

  You see, birds and I didn’t mix. They freaked me out. They were dangerous, the more so because they acted all innocent. When they dive-bombed my windows, or swooped close to my head, or pooped on my shoulders, I knew the truth: birds are malicious, calculating creatures with a tremendous aerial advantage. Peering around at the clucking, quacking inhabitants of the barn, it occurred to me that for the first time in my life, I was not scared. For sure it didn’t hurt that all the birds were locked in cages, but even better, I knew that if they were out, they couldn’t fly because they were chickens. If one of them happened to break free from its cage, all I had to do was run or kick it, and I’d be the winner.

  I closed my eyes in relief as a tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders. Why hadn’t I tried immersion therapy before? I knew how demented my bird phobia had been, but that shouldn’t have turned me away from them. Instead, I should have embraced the fowl world and moved on. Ah. The liberation of finding out you’re not afraid.

  “Wanna pet her?”

  “Eep!” I looked over to find Dan had pulled a neighboring Araucana out of its cage and was offering it to me. The sound that had escaped my throat was a wet and choking squeal. The chicken cocked her head, mirth and malevolence in her one beady eye. She blinked, and a dollop of poop fell out of her rumpless. “No. No, I do not want to pet your chicken. Thank you for the offer. I’m allergic.”

  “To chickens?”

  “All birds. Feathers. I’m allergic to feathers.” Suddenly, my world began to close in. Who had I been kidding? Birds were terrifying. I was outnumbered.

  “She lays green and blue eggs.”

  “Tell her I mean her no harm.”

  “Hunh?”

  “Tell her I’m sorry I had eggs for breakfast, and that I won’t let that happen again.”

  “You okay?”

  “Thank you. Yes, I’m totally okay. Time to go.”

  “Have you had a chance to see the sheep yet? They’re on the other side of the ba
rn.”

  I didn’t even have the presence of mind to question that organizational choice because I was being approached by two black-headed ducks with bright orange eyes and a ring of fluff like a massive boa around their necks. They were waddling toward me with malicious intent, and I was fairly certain they were packing tiny shivs under all those feathers.

  “Some other time. Thanks!” I turned and tried to walk calmly away, but I imagined I could hear the leathery thwup-thwup of charging duck feet behind me, and so instead I ran, pretending I was running toward something instead of fleeing. When I reached the sunlight and scared a flurry of pigeons into the air, I actually cried out.

  Later, after I’d sent the “Battle Lake at the Fair!” articles to Ron, I was calm enough to venture outside my trailer. In the course of writing the articles, I’d decided that I would attend Lissa’s party that evening. I felt valued writing for the newspaper and being a librarian, but I needed some closure to my past, the chunk of years that was defined by my drinking and emotional hiding. Part of me believed I needed to put the old me to rest before I could become the new me, and I wanted a fresh life, one without alcohol and people who clung together out of boredom and convenience rather than friendship.

  In Battle Lake, I had friends, like Curtis and Mrs. Berns, or Nancy and Sid and Jed, whom I could count on. That was new to me, and a big deal. I wasn’t used to having people that I could rely on to pet sit, or bring me soup and bagels if I was sick. I was the first person to complain about living in a small town, but the truth was Battle Lake was a good place to heal. I couldn’t imagine myself residing there long term, but the comfort and safety of the place was helping me to move to a new level, one defined by the choices I made instead of the life events thrust on me. And saying goodbye to my empty, drunken, loose past would feel great. Maybe it would even free up some psychic space to make more room for Johnny.

  I splurged on a cab to the West Bank. The Metro Transit system at night felt about as safe as walking naked through a prison. Sure, a lot of people connected to Battle Lake had been murdered in the last five months, but at least we knew the killers by their first names. All part of the small-town charm. Come to think of it, I had read somewhere that the majority of murder victims knew their killer, yet I didn’t have any Battle Lake natives on the suspect list for Ashley’s death. The State Fair just felt too far away from home to look in that direction. If one of Ashley’s classmates or dance-line partners was going to off her, why would they bother doing it so far from home?

  I paid the cabbie $13, plus a $2 tip, and stepped onto Cedar Avenue in front of Palmer’s Bar, which was rocking as usual. When I had left the Cities last spring, the trend among college students and suburbanites was to prowl upscale bars expensively decorated to look like dives. Well, Palmer’s was the real deal, having more in common with the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars than a Hard Rock Café. Inside, the drinks would be stiff, Hamms would be flowing on tap, and the jukebox would be stacked deep with an eclectic mix of local bands, blues, and acid metal.

  Directly across the street, reggae and a domestic fight filtered out of the Holzermann, a rabbit’s warren of apartments snaking above the stores lining the opposite side of Cedar Avenue. I’d never met anyone who knew the actual number of apartments that comprised the Holzermann, or where it began or ended. A person could easily get lost in the crisscrossing halls, the dead ends, the studio apartments that were actually carved-out closets from the two-bedroom next door. I’d once attended a party at a Holzermann apartment above the West Bank drug store. During the course of the party, a fire had erupted in the kitchen, probably started while someone was cooking drugs. Rather than calling the fire department and risking getting caught, the guy who rented the place put out the licking flames with an extinguisher. The fire had opened up enough of the thin wall to show through to the other side, where we discovered a dusty and worn but fully intact theater in the heart of the Holzermann, all entrances and windows to it completely boarded up and plastered over. We’d spent the night crawling in and out of the hole in his kitchen and acting silly on the stage. The West Bank was a strange place.

  I bypassed both the Holzermann and Palmer’s, skirting around the bar to the Riverside Plaza, the ugliest apartment complex west of the Mississippi. The imposing structures comprising the complex, each a different height, looked like enormous cinder blocks with multicolored panels placed randomly about. Instead of brightening the appearance, the dingy peach, powder blue, yellowed, and Easter-egg green panels served to age the entire building. I’d been told that the front of the complex had been featured in the opening shots of The Mary Tyler Moore show, the idea being that Mary Richards lived inside. If that was true, it was a surprise anyone ever moved here, thinking that this was the best Minneapolis offered.

  Lissa lived in the McKnight building, the tallest in the complex. It had thirty-nine floors and over four hundred apartments, but only five elevators. A swaying man in work boots was urinating in the one that was open.

  “Going up?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’ll take the stairs.” The building hadn’t changed.

  Lissa’s apartment was on the seventh floor, apartment number 711, which was an easy number to remember, even though my senses had been hazy every time I’d stumbled to it. I followed the geometrically-patterned 1960s carpet and stopped at the red diamond in front of Lissa’s apartment. I could hear laughter inside, and people singing along to the music. I recognized the tune—“Waitress in the Sky,” by The Replacements. Alison and I used to crank that song at Perfume River. It was the anthem of waitresses on the ground, and listening to the lyrics, I couldn’t remember why. I knocked. No one answered, so I opened the door and walked in.

  I didn’t recognize anyone. Lissa had inserted special light bulbs with stained glass patterns in all her lamps, giving the room a muted, warm glow. The front space, her living room, was packed with chattering party-goers, clinking drinks in their hands, and behind, in the kitchen, pairs of guests were laughing and leaning in close. The music was louder in here, and it swooped in and out of the many conversations playing around the room. I wasn’t a part of any of them. I put my hand on the doorknob at my back. This had been a bad idea. I started to twist, and the knob twisted back. The door opened, and in strode Alison.

  “Mira! You made it! Lissa, come over here. Mira’s here!” Alison draped one arm around me and waved across the room with the other.

  Near the stereo, a dark head popped up, and I saw Lissa’s familiar kohl-rimmed eyes and blood-red lipstick framed in a Bettie Page haircut. She finished her conversation and wove through the crowd toward us.

  “Mira! Where you been? I haven’t seen you around for a while.”

  “I moved.”

  “No shit. When?”

  Alison laughed. “Last winter. Remember? I told you about it when I quit Perfume River.”

  “Actually, I moved last spring.” I smiled wanly. “Same difference.”

  “Well good to see you,” Lissa said. “Hey Alison, did you hear about Bill getting busted?”

  “Again? What for this time?”

  “Selling pot. What else. Hey Mira, grab me a drink, will you, and get one for yourself. If you go in the kitchen, you’ll see there’s hard liquor and a keg. Choose your poison. Oh, and there’s a ten dollar cover. You can pay Glen. He’s the guy in the tie dye.” She steered Alison toward the stereo.

  I found myself standing there, alone in a crowd. The Replacements were now singing “Little Mascara.” On the other side of the room was the entryway to a brightly lit kitchen full of liquor. With ten dollars, I could buy comfort and familiarity. I’d get a little tipsy, enjoying that warm tingle as it spread to my fingers and toes, and realize that I knew more people than I thought here. I’d strike up a conversation with that guy whose band I had seen at the 400 Bar last year, or that chick who’d always come in to Perfume River on Wednesdays for lunch and order Imperial tofu, hold the onions. We’d realize we had tons
in common. As the evening grew late and the drinks flowed, we’d get looser and pledge our undying devotion to one another and hash out what was wrong with the world and what we’d do to fix it if given the chance. In between, we’d dance wildly and loosen our clothes, smoke whatever was passed our way. When Lissa and Alison would cross my path, I’d hug them and tell them it was okay that they hadn’t written or called, that we’d be friends forever, even if we never showed it, we’d just know.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  I blinked, holding on to the wall for support. Next to me was a long-haired guy with a giant nose as hooked as a claw. “I think I need some fresh air,” I told him.

  He looked concerned. “You want me to get one of your friends?”

  “I don’t have any friends here,” I said. “Thanks anyway.” I opened the door and stepped into the hallway. Following the geometric pattern back down the hallway to the stairs, I passed a dreadlocked pair making out in front of the exit door. I chose the elevator, pinching my nose against the vinegary pine scent of urine-soaked carpet and used my elbow to push the button for the first floor.

  Outside, I hailed a cab, which dropped me off in front of the State Fair. Following a familiar path, I was back at the Airstream in no time. Warm light spilled out when I cracked the door, along with the comforting smells of hot cocoa and buttery, microwaved popcorn.

  “Mira! You’re just in time. We’re putting together a care package for the Pederson family, and then we’re going to play some Gin Rummy. Care to lose oodles of money to an old lady and a crazy mayor?”

  “More than anything.”

  I was growing tired of watching Milkfed Mary heads take shape out of butter, but I needed to check the hair of all the contestants to see if every one of them had the same chunk missing. Unfortunately, the scheduled morning appearance of the entire cast of Milkfed Marys had been canceled as they had a community event to attend in St. Paul, followed by a last-minute interview set up at the KSTP station. Megan was going to miss out, but somebody had to stay at the fair and hold down the butter fort.