Page 23 of The Bootlegger’s Bride

H e sensed they were hiding something from him. Something important.

Friday, A.J. fetched the mail from the row of tin mailboxes where the lake road and the cutoff intersected.

He found four or five business envelopes, some with cellophane windows that looked like bills.

He didn’t bother checking to see where they came from.

None of his business. When he delivered them to Aunt Helen in the kitchen, where she was fixing their supper, she froze.

She dropped what she was doing and took them into the bedroom.

When she returned she looked worried and sad, on the verge of tears.

But she’d been that way a lot over the past month, ever since his mom died.

Same for him, unsure what he felt from moment to moment. Numb, like he had been frozen inside.

Then Saturday mid-morning as the sun began warming the spring air a bit he came up from the lake where he’d been raking the moss for crawfish.

As he moved onto the back porch where he slept, A.J.

heard through the open kitchen door his aunt talking to Uncle Raymond, who had worked late and slept in.

“She never mentioned it to me. Such a shock when I read the report…”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Though she did say something curious around Christmastime…”

She looked up to find A.J. standing in the doorway and stopped mid-sentence. She reached across to touch Raymond’s hand. Then they both sat quiet staring into their coffee mugs.

So, this morning when it was time for church A.J. clutched his stomach and said he wasn’t feeling well. Though in truth he felt fine and was itching to get out of the house and into the spring day after he did what he needed to do.

Aunt Helen squinted and raised an eyebrow like she didn’t believe him. But all she said was, “You know it’s Palm Sunday.”

Now that he was orphaned they didn’t discipline or question him so much.

But he didn’t take advantage as he could have except when he really needed to.

Like when he couldn’t eat dinner and had to be alone.

Or when he yearned to be with Lonnie Sullivan out combing the fields, shotguns in hand, just to get away from everything and get his mind off what had happened.

Or like today, when what they were hiding was eating at him.

In their absence he would search for the piece of mail that had upset Aunt Helen so.

Then he would make his sudden recovery, and they would find him fishing off the dock when they returned from church.

Once the black Plymouth sedan had backed down the drive under the greening willows and headed up the cutoff toward Granite City, A.J. moved to their bedroom.

The bed’s dark mock-walnut headboard had ornate designs cut into the wood that echoed those above the dresser’s large mirror.

A reddish-brown fake-mahogany desk sat to the left by the window facing the lake road.

Atop it stood two hand-carved owl bookends, Uncle Raymond’s handiwork, clutching a dozen envelopes that had been slit open.

A.J. moved to the desk and retrieved the envelopes.

Bills from the electric company and Dressel’s Dairy, a letter from Commonwealth Steel, another from the First Presbyterian Church of Granite City. A brochure for a fishing lodge at The Lake of the Ozarks, and an envelope whose return address read “Madison County, Illinois, Coroner’s Office.”

From it he unfolded an autopsy report for “Decedent: Hazel Marie Robinson Nowak.” Clutching the three sheets of paper with both hands A.J. lowered himself onto the padded desk chair.

First the report listed her age, race, sex, length, and weight. Brown eyes, dark brown hair. “Body identified by Helen Robinson Lomax, sister of the deceased,” it read.

Next it described her clothing—her topcoat with fox-fur collar, black cocktail dress, silk undergarments and stockings. He scanned the external examination and toxicology report—blood alcohol level .28. A.J. didn’t know what that meant exactly but could guess.

Then under “Gross Description” he read: “approx. 16-week fetus, .27 lbs.”

A.J. looked out through the window whose wood-slat blinds had been raised to the sun-dappled front yard. The willows swayed in a light wind. An orange-breasted robin strutted across the emerald grass.

He knew what that meant. Growing up he had seen cattle and dogs mating without understanding why.

That is, until the older boys on the school bus—the same ones who had revealed that Santa was a fraud—filled him in, suggesting that their parents did it too.

Then one hot Friday night two summers ago when he still lived with his mom A.J.

was awakened by anxious muffled voices. He padded barefoot over the carpeted hallway.

The door of his mother’s bedroom stood ajar.

A.J. peered through the opening and in ochre candlelight saw Richard Dupuis kneeling naked behind his mother, mounting her much the same as he had seen animals doing.

Now that image resurfaced and lingered until he shoved it aside.

Further down he read: “Immediate Cause of Death: Acute drowning, hypoxemia and cerebral anoxia,” and “Manner of Death: Accident.”

Again, he looked up out the window to the willow trees.

He traveled back to wintertime as a child, which came to him vaguely.

He pictured the frozen lake as if in a fog.

He saw himself standing on the cold dock at their home and his mother and father ice-skating back and forth, up and down the lake hand-in-hand, looping around the thin ice of the nearby spring where later he discovered her body.