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Chapter 9: Bits and Pieces
"...It is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string
situated in the corresponding quarter of your frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles
or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a
nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly." - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Saturday, December 5, 1987
The sounds of the night echoed through the valley as Daisy sat on the porch, huddled in an old quilt. Though late, the barn and yard were bathed in the silvery light of a full moon, slipping now and then through the clouds. Why she was there, she couldn't say. Only that she had a feeling that she should be.
The doctor had told her to trust her intuition, explaining that feelings tied to memories were often stored in parts of the brain which had not been injured. While they couldn't bring back recall of the actual event, they were clues to what was lost.
Most of the time, she felt like a child who had mysteriously woken up twenty-five years in the future, like something out of a science fiction novel. It was in those rare moments of emotional memory that she actually felt the missing time. Deja vu was how she explained it to Uncle Jesse and her cousins, but it was more than that.
The first time it happened was 2:10pm on a Monday afternoon in November. She glanced up at the living room clock, and the strangest feeling came over her that she should go outside. Curious, she got up and went out into the yard just as Ms. Tizdale was pulling up to their mailbox on her motorcycle. Handing her a stack of mail, she told her to tell her 'handsome uncle' hello before motoring on down the road.
When she mentioned it to Bo later than evening, he told her Ms. Tizdale was as reliable as a train schedule. Rain or shine, snow or sleet, she always delivered their mail at 2:13pm on the dot.
"Some part of you remembers," he'd said, and tapped on her forehead.
Most of the time, there was no explanation. Like leftover puzzle pieces, some emotional memories fell outside the boundaries of her immediate family. The psychologist had encouraged her to keep a journal of these, in case she was able to connect them to something in the future.
She had been jotting down anything which triggered one, and also anything she did which caused her family look at her as though she'd gone crazy. The list was getting alarmingly long.
This morning, the feeling had been prompted by checking the calendar. Something about the full moon symbol in the corner of today's square had given her the notion that someone was coming to visit. Neither Uncle Jesse nor the boys knew of anyone who would be dropping by, and yet the feeling persisted. Tonight was special, or had been once.
Rain had fallen earlier, bringing a chill to the unseasonably warm air. As the first stars appeared across the horizon, she pulled the quilt tighter around her shoulders and leaned her head against the porch post. The gaps in the clouds grew larger, revealing more and more stars, until finally the moon shone bright and full.
Bootlegging runs were done under full moons. Shine moons, they called them. Could she be remembering staying up late waiting for Uncle Jesse to come back?
Maybe...maybe.
Or maybe there had been someone else; someone important she had forgotten. Coming in the dark of night with the light of the silver moon caressing the leaves and burning like fire upon the water. Then she laughed at herself and shook her head.
"Bootlegging runs, silly," she whispered. That was why the moon had called to her tonight.
With a last look at it, she turned and went to bed.
Enos turned away from the wind and blowing snow to gaze at a stand of white pine growing tall and narrow across the field, thinking that he'd rather be there watching the woods fill up with snow instead of on the frozen concrete of Highway 123 with a dead guy in a wrecked Chevy. Taking a deep breath, he counted to ten before letting it out slowly, watching it blow away in the wind.
"Sheriff?"
He turned back around to face the deputy. "Call Ed and get him out here with his wrecker," he said, focusing again on the accident. "Tell him to stay back, though, until we get the guy out. I already called Joy to get hold of Harry to bring the ambulance to take him to Newberry. II wanna know this guy's blood alcohol content before they put him on the slab."
"Yes sir." Deputy Peter Logerstadt turned to look back at the older model sedan tangled in an enormous hemlock. "Must've been going pretty fast, to hit the tree that hard, eh?"
The floor board of the Chevy was littered with beer cans, along with blood, bone, and brain matter. The amount of social drinking in Upper Michigan had caught Enos blindsided. Many Yoopers seemed to think having a beer or two or ten was a part of daily life.. They hadn't quite known what to do with a guy who didn't drink. Thank goodness no one knew what his father had done for a living.
In a year and a half as sheriff, he had seen more accidents involving drunken driving than he had in Los Angeles and Hazzard put together. Considering the entire population of Whitefish County was less than 1500, that made for some pretty sorry statistics.
This one had been complicated by heavy snowfall, and what was left of the car was rapidly turning into a white lump on the side of the road. The driver wasn't from Tamarack. The wallet Enos had fished out of the guy's back pocket identified him as John Allendale, age 42, from Bay Mills. Not much else to say about him, other than he'd had fourteen bucks cash and a scratch-off.
Christmas Day, 1987
"Say, Uncle Jesse, we should add some other people to our gift exchange next year." Daisy shook the present Luke handed her, and frowned at its silence. "Since there's only four names in your hat."
"Well, Enos would've made-" Bo stopped short, his eyes taking on a 'deer in headlights' look. "Uh... I mean, there's been others who've joined in, over the years."
Daisy's ears perked up at the unfamiliar name. "Who's Enos?"
Uncle Jesse brushed invisible dirt off the knee of his overalls before answering. "Well...Enos used to be a deputy here in Hazzard," he said, "but he moved away some time back."
"Oh." She studied the three of them, curiously, wondering why Luke was staring daggers at his cousin "What's wrong?"
Luke shook his head and gave her a half-hearted smile. "Ain't nothing wrong, Daisy," he said. "He was a good cop. We lost touch after he left. Lots of people miss him in Hazzard. "
"Well, with Cletus on the job, I can understand why," she grinned. Of the people she had 're-met' since the accident, Cletus was sweet as molasses, but not much in the brain department. "Why isn't Cooter part of the gift exchange? He's practically family." Cooter, who she vaguely remembered as one of Luke's wild and reckless friends, had turned into a pretty nice guy. There was even talk of him running for Congress!
"Cooter goes down to Alabama to see his daughter, Nancy Lou, for Christmas," answered Uncle Jesse. "Maybe adding a couple of others wouldn't be such a bad idea. We'll talk it over later." He nodded at Daisy's present. "You gonna open that or keep it till next year?"
She tore off the wrapping paper and opened the box to find a new pair of fuzzy slippers. "Hey, thanks Luke!" She slipped her sock feet into them. "Perfect fit." She grabbed the gift wrapped in newspaper from underneath the tree and checked the tag. "Alright, I get to be Santa next. Bo, this one's for you from Uncle Jesse."
Later that night, after Rosco and Cletus had come and gone, and the carols had been sung and they had stuffed themselves full of leftover pie and ham, Daisy sat on her bed in the quiet of her room. In the lamplight, she bent her head over her journal and added a line to her list of things she didn't understand.
Enos. A former deputy who used to be a part of the Duke family Christmas gift exchange.
She closed the book and leaned over to slide it inside the hole in her box springs. So many mysteries surrounded her past that she barely knew where to start. She was tired, and this one could wait for another day. After all, Uncle Jesse said he'd moved away a long time ago.
She got up, turned off the lamp, and went over to the window. The field beyond the farmhouse was dark and still, the stars only small pinpricks of light in the moonless sky. She raised her hand to the cold glass, wondering if the answers were out there, somewhere.
Enos stood at the window of the station, watching the snow cascade in sheets of thick, white flakes. The perpetual twilight of winter enveloped the town in an eerie orange glow, as if the overcast sky burned with a hidden flame. In reality, it was the reflection of Tamarack's streetlamps off the clouds and the two feet of snow that Superior had graced them with thus far.
He had sent everyone else home to their families, keeping his deputies on call but working the full day himself. Why not? He had no family here. To her credit Joy Yergen, the county's dispatcher, had invited him to join their extended family for dinner., but it hadn't feel right to intrude.
On any other night, he would happy to simply sit and stare at the snow out the window, but Christmas reminded him of all he had lost and left behind. He raised his hand to the window and watched its warmth cloud the glass picturing a tree full of lights, and hymns sung round a fireplace, surrounded by those who called him family -
The phone rang, interrupting his melancholia. He frowned at it, hoping it wasn't an accident. Surely people could stay off the streets for one night out of the year.
It rang a third time and he picked it up. "Whitefish County Sheriff's Department, Sheriff Strate speaking."
"This is Doctor Fisher from HNJ Hospital in Newberry," the woman on the line sounded confused. "Are you the sheriff?"
"Yes, ma'am, that's me. What can I do for you?"
"Oh geez, I'm sorry," she laughed. "I didn't expect anyone but dispatch tonight. I was just gonna leave a message for you to call me Monday morning. I wasn't gonna come in myself, but the grandkid got sick and my daughter and her husband decided to go on home. I thought I'd catch up on a few autopsies before it gets crazy on New Years. You left a note about wanting the blood alcohol on that accident down 123 on December 5th?"
Forgetting the past, he switched his thoughts back to the present. "Yes, ma'am, I did. How high was it?"
"It came back negative."
"Zero? He had to have had thirty empty beer cans in the car. You sure?"
"I was surpised, too," she said. "So I sent the toxicology off to Waterford. Wanna know what your boy died of?"
"I'm all ears."
"Ethylene Glycol. Anti-freeze poisoning."
"Possum on a gumbush! How the heck did he get out to the middle of nowhere after drinking antifreeze?"
"The lab estimated he drank it between eighteen and thirty-six hours earlier, so you don't know if he did it himself or someone spiked his drink or something. Could be a suicide, but that's a bad way to go."
"Sounds painful," he agreed. "Well, thanks for letting me know doctor. Will you send me a copy of the lab results?
"You betcha, I'll mail them Monday. You have a yourself a good night now, Sheriff. Merry Christmas!"
"You too, thanks."
He pulled John Allendale's file out of his desk drawer. He had been a part time janitor at Bay Mills Community College during spring and summer, taking off falls and winters the last eight years to work on an iron ore freighter to earn a little extra. That wasn't unheard of for single men in the U.P. The freighters were good money if you didn't mind playing Russian Roulette with the weather on the lake.
Friends had seen him last at Smiley's bar in Bay Mills before he'd headed off with only one beer, saying he had to get up early and make it back to Sault Ste Marie before the last haul of the year. Roughly ten hours later, he was stretched out in Newberry's morgue dead of antifreeze poisoning.
Enos hated to call the State in, but he wasn't equipped to test everything in that bar for ethylene glycol. He closed the file and set it on his desk.
Tomorrow, he would re-interview the witnesses and go talk to the bar owner and find out which ship he'd crewed on. Tonight was his own, and he would sit and watch the snow and allow himself one night to remember the world he'd left behind.