Storm Front

consciousness. The docs at Regions had his Mayo medical file electronically transferred, looked at it, looked at Jones, and suggested that the old man be sent home.
    “He’s right there at the end,” an oncologist told Virgil. “He’ll never be back, now. His coma is getting deeper. He’ll be dead in a week. He’ll need a lot of morphine, and it’ll save everybody a lot of money if he got it through a hospice service, instead of here.”
    Virgil related that to Ma, who teared up for a moment, then splashed some creek water in her eyes and washed the tears away. “That man saved my life,” she said. She’d told Virgil all about it during their extended slumber party. “He hadn’t come along, I had the potential to turn into a real piece of trailer trash.”
    “I doubt it—you’re a survivor.” Virgil looked at his watch and said, “Your kids still gone?”
    “Another hour or two. Why?”
    “We could get back to the house . . . and then I’ve got to head back to the Cities, now that I’ve recovered the stone.”
    “Are you going to tell them the truth about the stone? Your cop buddies?”
    “I have to, Ma. You called me this morning and said you’d found it at Jones’s old family place, while you were tearing it down. He must’ve ditched it there. Rolf was a witness—not that anyone will care, since they’ll have the stone.”
    “I was amazed when that thing popped out of the wall,” she said. She got in the shallow water, stood up, arched her back, and stretched and yawned. “If we’re gonna do it, we better get ’er done, before the boys get back.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Virgil said.
    She was a sight.
    —
    O N THE WAY back to the house, Virgil said, “I got a question for you, Ma. I know you’re smart, because somebody told me. I don’t mean a little smart, or somewhat smart, but really, really smart. When we’re talking, sometimes you use perfect grammar and syntax, and sometime it’s this rednecky ‘slicker’n snot on a doorknob,’ ‘dumber’n a bag a hammers,’ and all that. Why do you do that? Switch back and forth?”
    She glanced at him and said, “You’re not totally unperceptive. I’d noticed that.”
    “So why?”
    “I don’t know. Because people expect it, I guess,” she said. “I drive around in a pickup truck and tear down buildings and I got five boys without daddies . . . so that’s what they expect. ‘Dumber’n a bag of hammers, dumber’n a barrel of hair, slicker’n owl shit . . .’ If I act that way . . . well, they won’t see me coming, if I’m ever in a spot where I don’t want them to see me coming.”
    Virgil cupped a hand over his ear and pumped a drop of water out, and said, “Okay. I can buy that.”
    “I’m sure you can, since you do the same thing—laid-back surfer-boy bullshit, those band T-shirts and that long blond hair, until you have to be mean. Then you can be meaner than the average rattlesnake.”
    “I resemble that remark,” Virgil said.
    “Yes, you do,” she said. “So, let’s walk faster. I’ve got a couple new things I want to try. As it turns out, lucky for me, you’re not the bashful sort.”
    —
    A N HOUR LATER , Virgil called Yael and asked, “You packed?”
    “I am ready. Do you still have the stone?”
    Virgil had called to tell her that he’d recovered the Solomon stone. “Of course. You thought I’d lost it again?”
    “Not exactly, but I thought I should inquire, in case I shouldn’t check out.”
    “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Virgil said.
    He kissed Ma good-bye on the front porch, and as he was walking out to his truck, saw Sam coming down the driveway on his bike, in his Cub Scout uniform. Virgil turned the truck around, stopped next to the kid, and asked, “You fish?”
    “When I can.”
    “I got a boat. If your mom says okay, we’ll go up to the St. Croix and knock down some muskys,” Virgil said.
    “Can you eat muskys?” Sam asked.
    Virgil crossed himself. “Never, never ask anything like that. No, you can’t eat muskys. Maybe we should go for walleyes.”
    “Either one is good with me,” Sam said. He looked down at the house, then back at Virgil. “You didn’t knock her up, did you?”
    “Jesus, I hope not,” Virgil said. “You don’t need another redneck in this family.”
    “That’s the goddamned truth,” Sam said, and pedaled on.
    —
    O N THE WAY to pick up Yael, Virgil called Davenport, who came on and said, “Now if we just had that