Chapter 3

Wolf River, September 1966

Wolf River, Wisconsin
"A nice place to live."
Population: 21,752
Location: 135 miles north of Milwaukee, 29 miles west of Green Bay
Principal industries: dairy farms, agriculture, Moderne Gloves, Allis Chalmers Farm Machinery
Hospitals: 1
Elementary schools: 4
High schools: 1
Colleges: 1
Hotels: 2; Motels: 4
Theaters: 2; one walk-in, one drive-in
Whorehouses: 2
Churches: 22
Taverns: 21
Cemeteries: 2

LINDY

"There's nothing like the smell of a new car," Todd Hartman said. He stroked the simulated leather dash panel of the burgundy Thunderbird as he headed up Elm Street.

"It's really nice, Todd," said Lindy. She didn't really care much about cars, but she knew what was expected of her. "I really appreciate your taking me down to Moreland's. This was the last day of the sale."

Merilee Lund spoke up from the back seat, thrusting her curly blond head in between them. "Yeah, me too, Todd. This really is a bitchin' car. How fast will it go, anyway?"

"As fast as you want," Todd said, talking back over his shoulder but still looking at Lindy. "You going down to Main Street this afternoon?" he asked her.

"I suppose so," Lindy said. "That's what everybody does on Saturday."

"It is a silly custom," Todd said, "but when in Rome... you have a ride?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Roman Dixon, I suppose."

"Sure. Who else?"

"I'm not riding with anybody," Merilee said. "I mean, I haven't promised anybody."

"You really like him, huh," Todd said. "Roman."

"Sure I like him. I wouldn't go with a boy if I didn't like him."

"You just don't seem like the usual type that hangs around jocks."

"I don't think I exactly hang around jocks," she said.

"You know what I mean. Anyway, if you ever get bored, or feel like a change..."

"I'll let you know," Lindy said.

"I'm not riding with anybody," Merilee said again.

"I guess you can ride with me if you want," Todd said without turning around.

"Oh, wow! Wait'll everybody sees us in this bitchin' car!"

Todd pulled the Thunderbird to a stop in front of the Grant house.

Lindy gathered up the sweater she'd bought at Moreland's and opened the door. "Thanks again, Todd," she said and stepped out.

"I guess you're going to the Halloween Ball with Roman too," he said.

"Yeah."

"Boy, it pays to be a football star."

"I don't know who I'm going with," Merilee said. She started to push the seat forward so she could move to the front, but Todd reached across, slammed the door, and drove off.

Lindy watched them drive away. She liked them both, but somehow this year their faults were glaringly apparent. Todd was the son of the town's richest banker, and couldn't let anybody forget it. He would probably be nice enough, but his family's money wouldn't let him. Merilee was nominally Lindy's best friend, but sometimes she could be painfully dumb.

She turned and went up the walk to her house.

Lindy would have liked to show Daddy the new sweater and let him admire her in it, but Wendell Grant was in his study, where she never disturbed him. Mrs. Krantz would appreciate her bargain, but she was busy out in the kitchen, her private domain. Lindy went on upstairs.

* * *

Lindy's room was in the front on the second floor of the big old house on upper Elm Street. Both windows were open to the warm Indian summer breeze. The pink-and-white curtains billowed softly, and the perfume of autumn filled the room. A stuffed panda, propped on the bed pillows, watched the girl come in with great sad eyes. It was the last of the little-girl things that Lindy kept in her room. The rest had been banished to the attic.

"Hi, Panda," she said. "Do you want to see my new sweater?"

She laid the box on the bed, opened it, and took out the layers of tissue paper. She held the maroon-and-white ski sweater up against her.

"See? It's too hot to wear it now, but it'll be nice this winter."

Abruptly, the sweater didn't seem all that wonderful anymore. She folded it up and put it back in the box. When she saw the sale ad in the Chronicle it had seemed like she had to have the sweater or perish. Daddy had given her the money, he always did, but now she wondered why it had seemed so important.

Feeling restless, she wandered over and sat down at her dressing table. She placed a hand to her cheek and inclined her head to the side. All around the mirror were Polaroid photos wedged in between the glass and the frame. Although none of the pictures was more than a year old, the edges of some had curled and the colors were already starting to fade. The events pictured seemed remote and nostalgic to sixteen-year-old Lindy, as though they had taken place in some Polaroid past.

There was a posed shot of the yell squad with Lindy, the yell queen, kneeling in front. Merilee was prominent in the first row, giving it the big openmouthed smile. The girls wore pleated red skirts, white letter sweaters decorated with red megaphones lettered WR, white socks, red-and-white saddle shoes. They held red-and-white crepe paper pompons, and the lot of them were smiling like the Pat Boone family.

The picture had been taken at last year's Thanksgiving Day game with Appleton, and at the time it had seemed exciting and fun. It should be even more kicky in this, her senior year, with a good chance for the team to win the state championship, plus the brand-new sweaters the school board had promised the yell squad. Why, Lindy wondered, couldn't she feel it?

She continued to study the photos, unemotionally, as though they belonged to somebody else. Here was a shot of her and Roman Dixon standing alongside his candy-apple 1957 Chevy. The car was dazzling, having just received its umpteenth coat of hand-rubbed lacquer. Roman, his thick blond hair BrylCreamed into a gleaming D.A., glowed with the pride of ownership. Lindy clung to his sweatered arm and smiled her All-American smile. She studied her white, even teeth. The braces Daddy insisted on when she was little had been a pain and a half, but the results were worth it.

And here was one from the Junior Prom - Lindy in pale green chiffon with orchid corsage, Roman stiff in white dinner jacket with scarlet cummerbund and matching carnation. They made a lovely couple. Just about perfect. Everybody said so.

The class picnic. Lindy and Roman at the lake, turning to grin up at the camera from the table where remains of chicken and potato salad crusted under the springtime sun.

The lovely couple again, this time after a football game, with Roman sweaty and triumphant in red-and-white uniform, helmet cradled under one arm like a knight after the tournament. Lindy, clutching her pompon, gazed fondly up at her champion.

And here they were costumed as Superman and Wonder Woman for the last year's Halloween Ball. How appropriate. Everybody said so.

There were other pictures of Lindy and friends, Lindy alone, and one of Lindy with her father. In many of the pictures the kids were seated in or standing next to somebody's car. There was one with Todd Hartman lounging against a shiny Cougar. Last year's car.

Lindy reflected that her father's high school album from thirty years before, with all the funny haircuts and the impossible clothes, also featured cars in many of the old black-and-white snapshots. Cars, Lindy decided, were treated like members of the family in America. She wondered if they did that in other cultures.

Bored with the Polaroid snaps, she got up and walked over to the chest of drawers. From the top she picked up a framed photograph of a dark-haired woman with fine cheekbones and smiling pale eyes.

"Hi, Mom," she said softly. "Here I am starting another school year. Last one. After this, no more Wolf River High. No more 'Fight, fight, fight for old Red and White.' I'll be glad to get out, I guess, but sometimes I wish you were around to tell me what happens next. Sometimes? Shoot, a lot of the time. I mean, Daddy's a prince, and he'll always take the time to talk to me, as long as I want. But there are things you just can't talk to your father about, you know? Aah, nuts."

She set the picture back in its place on the dresser. Lightly she touched the delicate Hummel shepherdess that stood next to it. The figurine had been a favorite of her mother's, brought down from the attic by her father as a special gift for Lindy's twelfth birthday. The little porcelain girl with her peasant dress and delicate crook always seemed to bring her mother closer.

Elizabeth Grant had died of lung cancer when Lindy was six years old. Her father talked about her only rarely, but Lindy could tell they had been very much in love. Old photographs showed them as a strikingly handsome pair. Had they once, back in the thirties or forties maybe, been known as the Perfect Couple?

Lindy Grant, one half of Wolf River's Perfect Couple of the sixties, was starting her senior year, and she was troubled by strange new feelings. It seemed to her that somehow during the summer she had outgrown her classmates. Not physically so much as, well, emotionally. They had all come back with the same flighty attitudes they had last year - concerned with their complexions, the hot new records, the football game, who was going with whom, and, of course, their cars.

It wasn't that Lindy had completely lost her interest in these pursuits, it was just that they didn't seem so all-consumingly important.

The influence of her gentle, educated grandmother, with whom Lindy had spent the summer in Boston, may have had something to do with her intellectual growth. She had taken her granddaughter to the ballet, the theater, and a Red Sox game in Fenway Park. Lindy began to understand that there was, after all, life beyond high school. Things were happening in the world that made shaking a pair of pompons seem just slightly ridiculous for anyone past puberty. A man had walked in space. Live television pictures were beamed from the moon. Rumors circulated that more American boys would be sent to that peculiar conflict in Vietnam. Nobody at Wolf River High seemed to care.

Lindy sighed. She felt old. By the time she graduated next June she would be seventeen. Childhood was behind her.

She returned to the mirror and leaned close to search for some new sign of maturity or wisdom in her face. The skin was clear and unlined, the pale blue eyes bright and arresting. The glossy black hair fell to the nape of her neck in soft waves. And the teeth, of course, were still perfect. Nothing there really to mark her new awareness of the world. She sighed again and put the heavy thoughts out of her mind. Plenty of time for that stuff.

She left the mirror and crossed the room to her record player. She selected a single by the Mamas and the Papas, dropped it on the spindle, and flopped down on the bed. She hugged the well-worn panda and listened to "California Dreamin."

What would it be like to live in California, she wondered, her newly acquired world-awareness slipping away. Could it be as dreamy as they said? It couldn't all be surfing and beach parties. But at least it would never be boring.

California was closer to where things were happening. Important things. The young people out there would surely be more aware of world events than they were here in the middle of Wisconsin. It wasn't as vital as New York or Boston, maybe, but the climate was a lot nicer.

Lindy let her fantasies take over as she thought about what a high school in Santa Monica must be like. Were all the girls blond, long-legged, and tanned to a beautiful creamy beige? Were the boys all dreamboat surfers and bongo players? She raised up on the bed and stuck out her tongue at the mirror. Of course not. That was just those silly beach party movies. Still, it would be kicks to live there.

A soft knock at her door.

"Come in, Daddy."

Wendell Grant at forty-seven was still a remarkably handsome man. He was straight and slim, and his hair was the same sexy shade of gray as Cary Grant's in North by Northwest. He smiled at his daughter, and Lindy felt the familiar little ache of pride.

"Busy?"

"I was just playing records."

"So, let's have a look at the sweater."

She held it up in front of her, kneeling on the bed.

"Terrific, honey, you'll knock 'em dead on the ski slopes."

"Daddy, you know there aren't any ski slopes around here."

"Oh, right. Well, you'll knock 'em dead anywhere you wear it."

Once again she felt a whole lot better about the sweater. It would look terrific.

"I stopped in to say good-bye," he said. "I've got to go up to Shawano, honey. There's a county committee meeting, and I might be late getting back."

She frowned. "You have to work on Saturday?"

"Judges don't have a union," he said. "Ida will fix you a nice dinner."

"I don't need any dinner. Roman's coming over. We'll get something downtown."

"Isn't he in training? I thought you guys had a football game next week. Clintonville, isn't it?"

"They don't put football players 'in training' anymore, Daddy. Besides, Roman's in great shape. So he says, and maybe he is. He worked all summer on some kind of construction job in Madison."

"Good for him. What's going on downtown tonight?"

"Nothing special. We'll just cruise around."

Wendell Grant shook his handsome head. "I'm darned if I can see what kick you kids get out of driving all the way up Main Street then turning around and driving all the way down Main Street."

"It's Saturday, Daddy. Everybody does it."

"Oh, well, if everybody does it, what the heck. Have a good time." He winked at her. "And don't get arrested. It would look bad for a judge's daughter."

He left her with a smile. He was right of course, she thought. Cruising was stupid and juvenile, an excuse for the boys to show off their cars and for the girls to wear the pretty new clothes they'd bought over the summer and fool around with the boys. It was all so very high school. But it was the first Saturday of the term, and everybody would be there.

Lindy didn't care about the flirting of fooling around. As the most popular girl in her class every year since ninth grade, she could have any boy she wanted. And she already had the prize catch of Wolf River High. Roman Dixon had been her acknowledged steady since she was old enough to date. The perfect couple - handsomest boy, star of the football team, and the prettiest girl, queen of everything. It was like a movie. It had been natural and inevitable. And it definitely had its advantages. Being known as Roman Dixon's girl saved her the trouble of fending off the creeps. Then there was knowing she was envied by every other girl in school, and that was a treat to be savored.

Roman might not be the brightest thing in pants, but he was easily the best-looking boy she'd ever seen, and he treated her well. Sometimes he got a little too eager with his hands. She let him get inside her blouse, but drew the line when he started going for the goodies down below. He was hot to go all the way, but he didn't hassle her about it.

Going all the way was something she had thought about a good deal during the summer. She had more or less decided that this year she would give in. It would be a nice farewell gift to Roman. She might even enjoy it, and it would save her the embarrassment of entering college next fall as a virgin.

She took the Mamas and the Papas record off the turntable, holding it carefully so as not to put fingerprints on the grooves, and slipped it back into the cardboard envelope. She slid the album into its place with the rest of her records and, with a last approving look at herself in the mirror, went downstairs.

* * *

Ida Krantz had been with the family eight years. After trying hard to be father and mother to Lindy after his wife's death, Wendell Grant was vastly relieved after two years to take the bony, capable woman into his household and let her assume charge of the domestic affairs.

For her part, Ida had come gratefully to work on Elm Street after her drunken bully of a husband fell asleep on the railroad tracks and failed to wake up at the approach of the 11:10 from Milwaukee. She had taken over as surrogate mother to the household, pulling together the pieces of the broken family.

Ida stood now at the foot of the stairs as Lindy came down. Her long bony face was tight with disapproval.

"Aren't you going to wear the rest of that skirt?"

"This is all of it, Ida."

"Does your father know you go out dressed like the town tramp?"

"Hey, this is nothing. The kids are wearing them up to here in the big cities. Miniskirts, they call them."

"I could think of a better name." Ida changed the subject. "Your father says you're not eating at home tonight."

"I'll get something downtown."

"A McDonald's burger, I suppose. With greasy French fries and one of those pasty milkshakes."

"The fries aren't greasy, the shakes are thick," Lindy said. "Besides, a government report came out last week that said McDonald's burgers are more nutritious ounce-for-ounce than wheat germ and alfalfa sprouts."

"I don't believe that for a minute," said Ida, her frown slipping a little.

"Well, it was worth a try." Lindy grew serious for a moment. "Ida, do you think Daddy has somebody over in Shawano?"

"Has somebody?"

"You know. A girlfriend."

"I'm sure I wouldn't know. Your father's private life is his own business."

"Come off it. You'd know if anybody did."

The thin woman sighed. "As far as I know your father is not dating anybody seriously at the moment. Not here or in Shawano or anywhere else."

"I didn't say anything about 'seriously.'"

"If you want to know about your father's love life, ask him."

"I have, but he's not ready to talk to me about it."

"Then I expect when he's ready he'll let you know."

"I wish he would find somebody. Get married again, even. Do you think he'll get married again, Ida?"

"I wouldn't be surprised." She started for the kitchen. "I've got things to do. Say hello to Mr. Wonderful for me."

Lindy caught up with her and gave her a quick hug. "Roman likes you, too."

"There'll be cold cuts in the fridge if you're hungry when you come in."

Lindy fluffed her hair one more time and went out to the front porch to wait for the other half of the Perfect Couple.