The Driftless Area Read Free

sleepwalker among people in suits and dresses, peoplehovering in stairwells. That his parents were gone seemed impossible. He thought of them as still alive. The problem loomed but the solution was out of reach. It felt like there was still something he might do if only he could think of it.
    A kind of nervous seizure came upon him as he waited for his father’s funeral to begin at the Church of the Four Corners. His hands shook and his breath grew short. He got up and sidled down the row of half siblings from Council Bluffs. He left the main part of the church and went up two stories to the bell tower and stood looking out over the half wall at the light on the snow-covered hills. He smoked a cigarette and put it out and then he cried pretty hard and for a long while. He had a blue handkerchief like the old farmers carried, and with it he wiped his face and blew his nose. The light bothered his eyes because it was so bright and thin and evidently unaware of what it was shining on.

TWO
    T HE STRANGE sequence of events that would end in the violence on Fay’s Hill began on New Year’s Eve of the year that Pierre turned twenty-four.
    He was living in Shale again, in an apartment above the stationery store. He had a bachelor’s degree in science and a job as a bartender at a supper club called the Jack of Diamonds out by Lens Lake.
    He was the youngest bartender by a number of years and so he was given the early shift that night, before the customers would be laying down the big careless tips of the end of the year.
    Thus Pierre left the bar around nine o’clock and went to a house party in Desmond City. The house belonged to some people he didn’t know very well and was arranged in a stark and random style. There was a hammer in the bathtub, a Bakelite radio in the fireplace, and guitars and drums in the living room. Torn paper blinds lay over the back of a bench near thewindows, as if someone had taken them down but forgot to throw them away. The walls were painted dark red and blue.
    Appropriated advertising art was not unusual in such a house and the example they had found was rare and hypnotic. It was a clear blue brick in the shape of a pack of cigarettes but three or four times larger, and the inside was alive with perpetual lightning. Touching the surface brought a swarm of rays to your fingertips. The surgeon general’s warning was printed on the side of the display, and on the front it said:
    Kool
    Milds
    The House of Menthol
    Pierre got a tumbler of whiskey from the kitchen and sat in a rocking chair drinking and watching the blue light. After a while a woman came and sat on the arm of the chair. She was rangy and mascaraed and she smelled like spice and wore a black leather jacket with silver studs and thick fringe down the sleeves.
    Her name was Allison Kennedy, and she worked on the line at the glass factory in the town of Arcadia. She had ice-colored eyes with gold flecks and sang in a band called the Carbon Family.
    “Somebody said you play drums,” she said.

    “Yeah,” he said. “That and cello.”
    “We’re trying to get something going, but our drummer’s not here.”
    “I’ll play.”
    The music started in half an hour or so. Allison Kennedy had a red ASAT Classic and there were two other guitarists and Pierre on the drums. The little amps sat back by the wall, throwing out a big jangling sound. They played “Thrift Store Chair,” “Coralville Dam,” “Polyester Bride,” and “In Heaven There Is No Beer.”
    Few played the last song as the Carbon Family did. It was a slow version full of minor chords and sorrow. With her highest ghostly voice, Allison Kennedy made you believe it was true.
In Heaven there is no ale
    And no one delivers the mail
    And when our heartbeats fail
    Our friends will attend the rummage sale
    The song ended, but the despair of it remained in the heat of the party room. The band members walked off to have a beer and figure out what to play next. Pierre stayed at