“There is no man alive who is not partially jackass. When we detect some area of jackassery within ourselves, we feel discontent. Our image suffers.”

A Tan and Sandy Silence - John D. MacDonald

Pain stabbed at Ned Tuttle’s temples as he smeared paste on wallpaper draped over Mrs. Robideaux’s dining room table.

Too many boilermakers last night, so many he couldn’t recall leaving Snow’s, starting his truck, risking another DWI during the two-block drive to the renovated Mobil station where he lived.

His portable radio, blaring some ancient Benny Goodman tune, only made the pain worse. But the radio was company, and besides, he wanted to hear the nine o’clock news.

Ned mixed the paste with an old ruler, brooding over last night’s blackout, the latest in a series of blank pages. Wasn’t sleeping either, usually drifting off just before time for work. He’d been late for his job this morning, a ticklish project since he’d never hung paper before. Yesterday, he’d fumbled through the prep work, checking the instruction manual every few minutes.

He finished with the first strip, set it aside. The book said heavy wallpaper needed to soak, so he had time to paste another section before he hung the first. Mrs. Robideaux had chosen an awfully strange design: Nimrod and his minions building the Tower of Babel. The thing looked like a wedding cake left out in the rain, but Mrs. R. said towers like that really did exist. Ziggurats, pyramid structures made out of sun-dried brick.

This particular ziggurat stretched all the way to the clouds, and Yahweh, with a white beard as long as Princess Diana’s train, was sending angels to confuse the tongues of the Babylonians. Scattering like blackbirds rousted from a tree, they were. Punishment for getting above their station, Mrs. R. said.

Not exactly the kind of wallpaper you typically saw in Plunder Lake. But Mrs. R. was heavily into Bible history and the design would spark discussion during bridge night. Or perhaps provide an object lesson for her son-in-law, Art Voigt. He was the owner and main announcer on WPLM. He was also the richest man in Plunder Lake.

The music ended, and with a preliminary cough, Uncle Art began reading the news. “Two Ojibway youngsters, Nathan Oja, 18, and a seventeen-year-old minor were apprehended breaking into Yeager’s Super Mart at 2:30 this morning. A rear door was broken, setting off the burglar alarm. Deputy Kneebone was able to subdue the culprits with minimal force used.”

Ned groaned. The boys at Snow’s would be on the warpath about the Indian problem getting out of hand.

Uncle Art moved on to the weather. Freezing rain predicted. Thirty-eight degrees, northwest winds at ten to fifteen. Awful cold for September. But that was Minnesota. Swelter in the summer humidity, freeze your ass anytime after Labor Day.

His head still pounding, he hung the first strip, smoothed out the bubbles with a paperhanging brush, then pressed the paper well into the corner. Next, he made a mark between the ceiling and the wall with a scissors, pealed it back, and cut along the marked line.

“It’s going well, isn’t it?”

His heart skipped a beat and he almost dropped the scissors. Standing in the doorway, the old woman wore a silk kimono, red with blue butterflies flitting about. Coulda passed for a past-her-prime Geisha girl, what with the inky black hair piled high on her head and all that face powder.

He set the scissors on the stepladder. “I should have it finished by tomorrow afternoon, Mrs. R.”

“No hurry, Ned; I welcome the company. Like some tea?”

“That’d be great.” Although he hated tea, he was so thirsty he’d gladly drink dishwater. After gobbling a handful of Tylenol High Test he found in her bathroom, he washed up and joined her at the kitchen table.

She gawked at him as though he had a booger hanging out of one nostril. “Ned Tuttle, I hadn’t realized how gray you were getting. You’re not even forty, are you?”

“Just turned,” he said. He’d had no idea he was that gray.

She nattered on about how her husband Andre had gone gray at thirty and about what a fussy eater he’d always been. And a miserable old Scrooge, Ned mused. Thought you were stealing from him if you took time to take a leak. Eighty hour weeks during the long hot summer, paving roads for a buck fifty an hour. Andre owed Ned big time.

“Found Andre’s safe when I was sizing the walls yesterday,” he said. “Got the combination? I want to get the money your husband forgot to pay me when I worked his road crew as a kid.”

“Go near that safe and I’ll blast you with Andre’s thirty-odd-six.” Her laugh was a wheeze.

“You will, huh? You know you can’t hurt twisted steel and sex appeal.”

“You’re such a joker,” she said.

“Seriously,” he said. “If there’s money in that safe, you oughta put it in the bank. I’ll bet there’s a roll of bills in there that’d choke a Clydesdale.” More than enough to show Loretta she’d made a mistake when she’d dumped him for Dainty Darwin.

She gave him a dismissive wave. “You just let me worry about that. Andre never trusted banks. Neither do I.” She sipped at her tea. “How’s Loretta doing? Haven’t heard anything about her in years.”

“Living in San Rafael, California. Social worker at one of the middle schools there. The boy’s graduating high school in June.”

She slurped her tea, thick veins blue against the yellow cup. “What happened between you two?”

Before he could answer, the doorbell rang, and Mrs. Robideaux got up to answer it. Jehovah Witnesses peddling their Watchtower magazine. It would be a while.

The crafty old broad had a lot of gall asking him about Loretta. Everyone in town knew what broke them up. It all started with Pamida Discount. When she’d asked if she could apply for a part-time job, he’d said “over my dead body.” A man should take care of his wife. ”But Jeannie Allyn’s is working,” she said.

He’d had no argument for that; Bud and Jeannie Allyn were their best friends. But that hadn’t been the end of it; she’d got to huddling with the divorcees at work: Pamida was a dead-end existence; she needed to get herself a career. Next thing he knew, she’d enrolled in a night course at Bemidji State. Then, she’d quit her job to study full-time and started hanging out with social worker majors, one of whom had been Dainty Darwin.

Loretta never approved of his dropping out of school; he guessed she was embarrassed that she had such a dunce for a husband.

Mrs. Robideaux was back, looking at him expectantly. “What did you say?” he said.

“I said ‘You didn’t hit her, did you?’”

“Never,” he said, “Sexually impotent. And they didn’t have viagra in those days.”

She slapped his hand. “You’re terrible,” she said.

He munched on a croissant, sipped the tea, the most delicious soaked orange peel he’d ever tasted. Finally, he said: “Ah, Mrs. R. I hate to ask, but I need an advance. Loretta needs some money and I never paid her any child support.”

Mrs. R. looked at him like a chicken looking at a kernel of corn, all jerky and stop action. For a second he thought she’d turn him down, but then she tottered over to the kitchen cabinet and withdrew a small beaded purse. Shaking, she handed him a bill. Benjamin Franklin’s picture on it; been a while since he’d seen old Ben. “My mad money,” she said. “Don’t you spend that on liquor now. I have half a mind to mail it to Loretta myself.”

“I won’t,” he said. Instead, he planned to use the money to buy up the pull tab jar at Snow’s. There was a five hundred-dollar ticket in there nobody’d managed to snag yet.

She twisted her kimono tight at the neck. “I’m flying to Seattle next week to visit Renee and the grandkids, and I want you to keep an eye on the house. She’s always been my favorite. At least since Lorna married Arthur Voigt. Never approved of that marriage. He’s divorced, you know.”

“He’s a real prince all right,” Ned said. He played poker with Mr. Entertainment Mogul every Thursday night. Hardly ever won a pot. Them that has gets.

Back at work, Ned daydreamed about how he’d break into the house if he did decide to crack Andre’s safe. He’d have to make sure she didn’t have any kind of alarm. Could he make a key to the back door? On the cop shows the burglar made an impression in clay. Play Dough would work, but who could he get to make the key?

Nobody! that’s who. If you don’t quit thinking about this shit, you’re gonna wind up in a cell next to some baby raper.

Stepping down off the stepladder, Ned lit a Pall Mall, then reached in his upper breast pocket for Loretta’s letter, dog-eared already from rereading:

“Dear Neddie,

Just a little note to let you know how everybody’s doing. Darwin’s been laid off from his real estate office until things pick up. He’s off on a gambling junket with his friends in Las Vegas. Didn’t say when he’d be home.”

She’s worried about him running off, Ned told himself again for maybe the twentieth time.

“I hope one of those legalized prostitutes they’ve got there doesn’t steal him away. Ha! Ha!”

Darwin had always been a bit of a lover boy; she’d complained about it that time they’d briefly gotten back together, out there in California, the time he’d gone to see Blake, who hadn’t known him anymore.

“Sis was here last summer for a visit. We went to Los Angeles and I showed her where Cher, Johnny Carson and a few other movie stars live. She couldn’t believe they could build houses that big. She and Will seem to be getting along well, but I have to confess I was surprised when she married him. Every time we went shopping down to the Cities and we’d see a mixed couple, she’d say, ‘How could they do that to the children?’”

Ironic that. Will Kneebone was the fair-haired boy on the Rez, and his grandfather thought Lila wasn’t good enough for Will!

“Stupid me. Forgot to renew my car insurance, and sure as heck, I had an accident. Nobody hurt, but my cute little Toyota is totaled. I don’t know how I’ll find the money for a new one.”

She wanted him to send money now. If he knew her, she’d been skipping lunch and doing without her bi-monthly beauty appointments to make ends meet.

“Blake reminds me so much of you when you were that age. I swear the girls are calling every hour of the day. I don’t know what this world is coming to when the girls chase the boys, do you? Now, don’t you forget that he’s graduating in June. He told me he’s expecting a large check from his dad. Ha! Ha! Well I guess I’ll let you go for now. Don’t be such a stranger. Call me sometime.

Love, Lorie.”

He supposed that was a compliment about Blake reminding her of him at that age. In those days she’d worshiped his young ass. Next-door neighbors, the Bushnagel girls and the Tuttle boys played touch football in the Tuttle back yard. It got to be touchie-feelie when Loretta got to be around thirteen or so. They’d gotten married when she graduated high school, they’d had Blake a year later, and they’d been divorced by the time he turned six.

Ned stubbed out his cigarette on the heel of his shoe, stowed the butt in his shirt pocket, then looked over at Andre’s safe. Nope, he could never rob Mrs. R. She’d hired him for odd jobs when he’d gotten fired from his dozer-jockey gig for showing up drunk. Besides, only a sucker would burglarize a house without knowing for sure if there was anything in that safe.

But he had to get money for Loretta somehow. If he could prove he was still a breadwinner . . . But a hundred bucks just wouldn’t cut the mustard. Bet he knew the combination. Andre was so unimaginative he’d probably used his birth date.

At three-thirty he’d done about as much as he could do for the day, so he rinsed his brushes and knocked off.

The pelting rain soaked Ned’s field jacket as he ran for his truck parked next to the guest house abutting Mrs. Robideaux’s hulking Victorian. Once inside, he switched on the wipers and sat there, staring out at the most beautiful sight in his otherwise dreary existence. Plunder Lake stretched out to the horizon, so far the opposite shore was invisible. 65,000 acres of water, a hundred square miles, forty feet deep in spots.

White caps danced amidst the slanting rain; a blue and white fishing launch bobbed on the frothing waves. Legend had it that a gang of river pirates had robbed the Fort Snelling payroll and submerged the cache on a reef. Ned personally thought that if the loot was there at all it was buried in the woods.

One of these days he’d take a day off and catch his limit of walleyes. Fishing, the one thing he and his dad had enjoyed doing together. Ned had driven by St. Christopher’s Cemetery on the nub of land just west of Cove Road on the way to work. Would’ve paid his respects if he hadn’t been so late.

Ned’s ancient truck, all bondo and dimples, started on the second turn. The DWI had been a blessing of sorts, since the old cement mixer only got seven or eight miles per gallon. Trips to the Cities for Viking games were definitely out. Ned lumbered down Cove Road, then swerved onto Highway 55 and headed into the town of Plunder Lake. Yellow “Vote Yes” signs cluttered the lawns, advocating changing the name of the high school mascot. That one had about as much chance as a fart in a perfume factory; the Chippewa, the town’s pride and glory, had won the Class A football title last year and were favored to repeat.

Ned lit a Pall Mall, sucking the tar and nicotine as far into his lungs as he could stand. He felt pleasantly dizzy and his headache finally began to ease. He drove with his arm out the window, ignoring the rain. Practically every person he saw on the street wore camouflage. Duck hunting season. Supposed to go with his brother Sonny and his best friend Deputy Will Kneebone. Loretta never liked hunting. It was like murdering Daffy and Donald, she’d said.

When he reached the stoplight on Main, he put the truck in neutral, the heater making whooshing sounds, more cold air than heat. He couldn’t get Andre’s safe out of his mind. Andre had stolen that money from him and other poor slobs like him, why shouldn’t he steal it back? He deserved it; Loretta deserved it. Once again he skimmed her letter, thinking about her hint that they get back together. When they’d divorced, he’d agreed she should have custody of Blake, with a little extra added pressure coming from Sonny, who’d insisted a boy belonged with his mother. Loretta, in turn, agreed not to sue for child support. He should’ve insisted on paying something.

The light changed to green, and Ned rumbled past a barn-red rectangle, Snow’s Bar, his home away from home, hooked a right at Mom’s Café.

Cruising around town, checking houses for weathering, hail damage, fascia and soffit problems, he left his card in the occasional mailbox. The end of September wasn’t too late for one or two more jobs, and people would pay more if you could fit them into your schedule this time of year. He’d found that a lot of his customers kept the insurance money from hail damage instead of having it fixed, encountering problems later when they tried to sell the place. Roofing wasn’t a bad job if you ignored the skin cancer scare. Outside in July with the scorching sun beating down, made even more blistering by tar paper, which absorbed heat. But he had a need to get up high. Sometimes the wind would pick up and threaten to blow him off the roof and he’d just hang on to the TV antenna and wait it out. He would’ve made a good Mohawk or Huron, whoever those Indians were who worked on the high iron.

“I’ll have whatever kind of paint thinner you’ve got on the house tap, Cornelius,” Ned said as he pulled up a stool. Five o’clock, and Snow’s was almost empty. Just a few guys from the fish professing plant, all of them wearing camouflage.

Cornelius returned with his beer, foam slopping over the edge of the glass. The old man slid a slip of paper across the bar. “The boss says you need to pay some on your tab.” Cornelius’s white pompadour looked like he combed it with a rake, his glasses the thickest Ned had ever seen, the black horned rims magnifying the pink in the corners of his eyes.

“You can tell that prick Snow I spend more money in here than any customer he’s got.” Like salt for good luck, he tossed the slip of paper over his shoulder, then reached in his billfold and flipped a fiver at Cornelius, the butt of a million jokes.

“Don’t get all worked up,” Cornelius said. “Just doing my job.”

Ned made like he was going to spit, and Cornelius did a wobbly about-face, then slunk back toward the fish people, like an accordion player who’d been booed off the stage.

Fishing a notebook out his pocket, Ned set about writing reminders for his roofing clients who hadn’t paid the second half of their bills. The other roofers had advised him to have the money put in escrow, too much of a pain in the ass for him. Most people paid up, but he was owed a couple thousand bucks.

As he scribbled, Billi Jennings, a dyed redhead at least ten years his senior with a butt the size of a road grader, sashayed by and slapped him on the rear. “Hey, look but don’t touch,” he squawked. Usually, as the night progressed, the beer goggles thing happened and she got a whole lot better looking. Her husband worked in the Cities and only came home for the occasional weekend; he’d planked her a couple of times.

“Got some stamps, Billi?” he asked.

“That all you want?” she said, sliding her talons along the inside of his leg. Goose bumps erupted along his thigh and a ticklish sensation gushed through his loins.

“Jeez, Billi! Why don’t you just broadcast our relationship over KPLM?”

“Touchy, touchy. I’ll tell Corny to get those stamps for yah.”

She waddled away, doing what she thought was a stripper’s strut. He removed the Benjamin from his wallet and folded it into one of the billing envelopes. He’d mail it along with the reminders. Then he took Loretta’s letter out of his back pocket and sniffed the envelope. During his National Guard stretch, Loretta wrote him every day, sometimes twice, and she sprinkled jasmine perfume on the letters. His sniffer wasn’t the best anymore, but he thought he smelled the jasmine. “Hey, Corny!” he bawled. “Com’ere”

Cornelius shuddered, as though he’d been hit in the back of the head with a spit wad, but he turned and poked on down to where Ned was finishing his drink.

“‘Nuther. But before you go, I want you to smell this letter for me.”

“You want me to what?”

“Just smell it before I slap that goofy grin off your face.”

Cornelius flinched. Maybe he was being too hard on the old bastard. Probably because he really did play the accordion, every Friday night. Thought he was Myron Florin, his favorite torment “Lady of Spain.” The geezer took the letter, held it to his nose, and sniffed. “Smells like paper to me.”

“Should have known better than to ask an old fuck like you.”

“I’ll get that beer.”

“Try to cut down on the foam this time.”

Cornelius drifted off.

The scent of buttered popcorn wafted Ned’s way, and he realized he was starving to death. He’d been so intent on hunting out new customers and thinking about Loretta he’d forgotten dinner. Once he started drinking, he wasn’t going to want to eat, and all they had at Snow’s were these cardboard sandwiches they heated up in this little toaster oven.

Piss on it, he’d settle for popcorn.

Cornelius placed a book of stamps and the beer in front of him, much less foam, and Ned commenced licking the billing envelopes, and the letter to Loretta.

Somebody put a quarter in the jukebox, and Patsy Cline launched into Willie Nelson’s “Crazy”, one of Loretta’s favorite tunes. Cornelius climbed the footstool, muted the sound on the TV. The fish plant guys favored ESPN. Chinese ping-pong. Rugby. Curling. Australian football. It didn’t matter. They stared at the thing as if they were watching the shower scene from Psycho.

Ned scooped up the letters, ducked outside, hustled down to the corner mailbox. Back before his seat got cold, he was positive he’d regret sending Loretta the whole hundred before the night was out.

“Corny, get your ass down here, will yah? And bring the pull-tabs.”

Match all three cherries, and he’d win five hundred smackers. Yeah, right. Dropped five, won a buck. If he still had the hundred, he could buy the rest of the jar.

He was about to invest another five when the door opened, and the Indian blew in, along with a gust of cold air and

marble-sized hail pelting off the threshold. He stomped his feet on the doormat, then mounted the stool next to Ned. Cornelius was there with a grape soda before the Indian could undo the snaps on his White Tail County Sheriff’s Department slicker.

“Whatcha doing, bud?” the Indian said.

Ned handed him Loretta’s letter. “Smell this, whydon’cha?”