Spencerville

former intelligence officer to figure out who planned it.
    So at least one of the questions in Keith’s mind was answered: Police Chief Baxter knew he was in Spencerville. But did Mrs. Baxter know?
    He’d thought about Cliff Baxter’s reaction upon hearing that his wife’s former lover was back in town. Big cities were full of ex-lovers, and it was usually no problem. Even here in Spencerville, there were undoubtedly many married men and women who’d done it with other people, pre-marriage, and still lived in town. The problem in this case was Cliff Baxter, who, if Keith guessed correctly, probably lacked a certain sophistication and savoir faire.
    Annie had never written a word against him in any of her letters, not on the lines or between the lines. But it was more what wasn’t said, coupled with what Keith remembered about Cliff Baxter and what he’d heard over the years from his family.
    Keith had never solicited anything about Cliff Baxter, but his mother—God bless her—always dropped a word or two about the Baxters. These were not overly subtle remarks, but more in the category of, “I just don’t know what that woman sees in him.” Or more to the point, “I saw Annie Baxter on the street the other day, and she asked about you. She still looks like a young girl.”
    His mother had always liked Annie and wanted her stupid son to marry the girl. In his mother’s day, a courtship was prelude to marriage, and a reticent beau could actually get sued for breach of promise if he ruined a girl’s reputation by taking her on picnics unchaperoned, and then not doing the decent thing and marrying her. Keith smiled. How the world had changed.
    His father, a man of few words, had nevertheless spoken badly of the current police chief, but he’d confined his remarks to areas of public concern. Neither sex, love, marriage, nor the name Annie ever came out of his mouth. But basically he felt as his wife did—the kid blew it.
    But they could not comprehend the world of the late 1960s, the stresses and social dislocations felt more by the young than by the old. Truly, the country had gone mad, and somewhere during that madness, Keith and Annie had lost their way, then lost each other.
    In the last five years since his parents had moved away, he’d had no other news of Spencerville, of Chief Baxter, or of how pretty Annie looked in a flowery sundress, walking through the courthouse park.
    And that was just as well, because his mother, though she meant well, had caused him a lot of pain.
    Keith drove slowly through town, then turned south on Chestnut Street, crossed the tracks, and continued through the poor part of town, past the warehouses and industrial park, and out into the open country.
    He looked in his rearview mirror again but did not see a police car.
    He had no idea what Chief of Police Baxter’s game plan was, but it really didn’t matter, as long as both of them stayed within the law. Keith didn’t mind petty harassment and, in fact, thrived on it. In the old Soviet Union and the former Eastern Bloc, harassment was the highest form of compliment; it meant you were doing your job, and they took the time to express their displeasure.
    Cliff Baxter, however, could have shown a little more cleverness if he’d lain low for a while.
    But Keith suspected that Baxter was not patient or subtle. He was no doubt cunning and dangerous, but, like the police in a police state, he was too used to getting instant gratification.
    Keith tried to put himself in Baxter’s place. On the one hand, the man wanted to run Keith Landry out of town very quickly. But the cunning side of him wanted to provoke an incident that would lead to anything from arrest to a bullet.
    In the final analysis, Keith understood, there wasn’t room in this town for Keith Landry and Cliff Baxter, and if Keith stayed, someone was probably going to be hurt.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    T he next week passed uneventfully, and Keith used the time to work around the farmyard and the house. He cleared the bush and weeds from the kitchen garden, turned over the ground, and threw straw in the garden to keep the weeds down and the topsoil from blowing away. He harvested a few grapes from the overgrown arbor and cut back the vines.
    Keith gathered deadfall from around the trees, sawed and split it into firewood, and stacked the wood near the back door. He spent two days mending fences and began the process of cleaning out the toolshed and barn. He was in good