I chuckled, took another drink of my coffee. “Okay, Orville, I got nothin’. You’re too clever for me. And besides, I guess I’d believe anything Timmy said, too, if I thought it meant he wouldn’t take my hat again.”
Now Orville had murder in his eyes, and he was lunging in front of Dad, knocking over his coffee and the sugar dispenser, which plunged to the floor with a great crash on the waitress’s side. “You take that back,” he said, attempting to grab hold of the front of my jacket, but I had leaned back, and as Orville tried to get me, he pushed Dad back and off his stool.
“Oh fuck!” said Dad, unable to swing around and save himself because of his one weak leg. As he began to plummet toward the floor Orville and I both jumped to catch him, getting our arms under his back before he hit the cracked linoleum.
“You two just knock it off!” Dad bellowed, and both of us felt chastened, catching the look of shame in each other’s eyes for a second before lifting Dad back onto his stool. Lana was running over from the cash register.
“Good God, what have you fools done to him?” she said. “Arlen, are you okay?”
He grumbled something.
Lana noticed the spilled sugar, the knocked-over coffee cup, and peered over to the other side of the counter. “And who do you boys think is going to clean up this mess?” she asked me and Orville.
Orville and I craned our necks over to inspect the damage. The dispenser had shattered, spreading sugar everywhere.
“He did it,” I said, pointing my thumb toward Orville.
“You started it!” he said.
“For the love of Pete,” Dad said.
And then we heard a cell phone. Orville looked bewildered by the interruption, then reached into his jacket for his phone.
“Hello?” he said. His eyes grew wider as he listened. “Okay,” he said. He folded the phone shut and said to Dad, “You know Tiff, over at the Braynor Co-op?”
Dad nodded slowly. “I think so. Tall guy, kind of goofy looking?”
“I know him,” said Lana.
Orville nodded. “Yeah. Well, he’s dead.”
Lana gasped, put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my Lord. That’s terrible. He was a relatively young man, wasn’t he? Was he sick? Because I think I saw him in here just a few days ago.”
“He wasn’t sick,” Orville said.
Lana was puzzled. “Was it an accident? They have all that farm machinery over there. Was it a thresher? Was he caught in a thresher?”
“Sounds like somebody put a knife in him,” Orville said. He glanced at the mess we’d made. “I’m sorry, Aunt Lana, but I have to go.” He picked up his hat, and strode out.
“I don’t believe it,” Lana said.
“What’s the Braynor Co-op?” I asked Dad.
“Farm stuff. Feed, grain, tools, all that kind of thing.”
“Seems like a funny place for someone to get killed,” I said. “A bank, a liquor store, a gas station, that’s where people get killed.”
Dad just shook his head, like it was all getting to be too much. “What the hell is happening around here?”
“Why don’t we go find out?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s go over to the co-op, see what’s happened.”
Dad thought about that. I expected him to say no, that we should head back to the camp, that there were things he didn’t need to know about, but to my surprise, he grabbed hold of his crutches that had been leaned up against the counter, and said, “Yeah, okay. Bye, Lana.”
Dad directed me to a building nearly a mile north of town, set back a little from the road, with a parking lot out front. There were half a dozen lawn tractors on display out front, some decorative hay bales, rolls of chain-link fencing. “This is where I got my tractor,” Dad said. Like a lumber operation, there was an enclosed store up front, and a huge warehouse out back. We saw Orville’s police car down around the side of the building, so we drove down there and got out. A small crowd was gathered at the open garage door that led into the warehouse. There were co-op employees—they all wore jeans and the same dark green shirts with “Braynor Co-op” stitched across the right breast—plus Orville and one of his deputies, the coroner I’d offended, Dr. Heath, and Tracy from the local newspaper. The usual crew.
Tracy came over to us. “How ya doin’?” she said. “You think Sarah would take another story from me this soon?” she asked me.
“Looks like all the news is happening up here,” I said. “Maybe we can set up a bureau, you and I can run it. What’s happening?”
“Tiff Riley didn’t show up for work this morning, or so they thought. He was on late last night, was supposed to be here first thing this morning, nobody could find him, so they called home and got his wife, Edna—that’s why they called him Tiff, because he was always arguing with her on the phone, his real name was Terrence—and she said he’d never come home the night before. She figured he got drunk or something. Anyway, someone was putting together a fertilizer order, went around to where they store it, they find Tiff there.”