on the front page, and of course the author is everyone’s favorite muckraker, Wendell “ FISHERMAN STILL AT LARGE ” Green.
The sidebar is your basic recap of the first two murders (
Gruesome and Gruesomer
is how Fred thinks of them), and as he reads, Fred bends first his left leg up behind him and then his right, stretching those all-important thigh muscles and preparing for his morning run. What could be more antislippage than a morning run? What could be
nicer
? What could possibly spoil such a lovely start to such a beautiful Wisconsin day?
Well, how about this:
Johnny Irkenham’s dreams were simple enough, according to his grief-stricken father.
[
Grief-stricken father,
Fred thinks, stretching and imagining his son asleep upstairs.
Dear God, save me from ever being a grief-stricken father.
Not knowing, of course, how soon he must assume this role.]
“Johnny wanted to be an astronaut,” George Irkenham said, a smile briefly lighting his exhausted face.
“When he wasn’t putting out fires for the French Landing F.D. or fighting crime with the Justice League of America, that is.”
These innocent dreams ended in a nightmare we cannot imagine.
[
But I’m sure you’ll try,
Fred thinks, now beginning his toe raises.]
Earlier this week, his dismembered body was discovered by Spencer Hovdahl of Centralia. Hovdahl, a First Farmer State Bank loan officer, was inspecting an abandoned French Landing farm owned by John Ellison, who lives in a neighboring county, with an eye to initiating repossession proceedings. “I didn’t want to be there in the first place,” Hovdahl told this reporter. “If there’s anything I hate, it’s the repo stuff.
[Knowing Spence Hovdahl as he does, Fred very much doubts if “stuff” was the word he used.]
I wanted to be there even less after I went into the henhouse. It’s all rickety and falling down, and I would have stayed out except for the sound of the bees. I thought there might be a hive in there. Bees are an interest of mine, and I was curious. God help me, I was curious. I hope I’ll never be curious again.
”
What he found in the henhouse was the body of seven-year-old John Wesley Irkenham. The corpse had been dismembered, the pieces hung from the henhouse’s decaying rafters by chains. Although Police Chief Dale Gilbertson would neither confirm nor deny it, reliable police sources in La Riviere say that the thighs, torso, and buttocks had been bitten—
Okay, that’s enough for Fred, everybody out of the pool. He sweeps the newspaper closed and shoves it all the way down the counter to the Mr. Coffee. By God, they never put stuff like that in the paper when
he
was a kid. And why the Fisherman, for heaven’s sake? Why did they have to tag every monster with a catchy nickname, turn a guy like whoever did this into the Celebrity Sicko of the Month?
Of course, nothing like this had ever happened when he was Tyler’s age, but the principle . . . the goddamned
principle
of the matter . . .
Fred finishes his toe raises, reminding himself to have a talk with Tyler. It will be harder than their little talk about why his thing sometimes gets hard, but it absolutely must be done.
Buddy system,
Fred will say.
You’ve got to stick with your buddies now, Ty. No more rambling around on your own for a while, okay?
Yet the idea of Ty actually being murdered seems remote to Fred; it is the stuff of TV docudramas or maybe a Wes Craven movie. Call it
Scream 4: The Fisherman.
In fact, wasn’t there a movie sort of like that? A guy in a fisherman’s slicker wandering around and killing teenagers with a hook? Maybe, but not little kids, not
babies
like Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham. Jesus, the world was disintegrating right in front of him.
Body parts hanging from chains in a crumbling henhouse, that is the part which haunts him. Can that really be? Can it be
here,
right here and now in Tom Sawyer–Becky Thatcher country?
Well, let it go. It’s time to run.
But maybe
The sidebar is your basic recap of the first two murders (
Gruesome and Gruesomer
is how Fred thinks of them), and as he reads, Fred bends first his left leg up behind him and then his right, stretching those all-important thigh muscles and preparing for his morning run. What could be more antislippage than a morning run? What could be
nicer
? What could possibly spoil such a lovely start to such a beautiful Wisconsin day?
Well, how about this:
Johnny Irkenham’s dreams were simple enough, according to his grief-stricken father.
[
Grief-stricken father,
Fred thinks, stretching and imagining his son asleep upstairs.
Dear God, save me from ever being a grief-stricken father.
Not knowing, of course, how soon he must assume this role.]
“Johnny wanted to be an astronaut,” George Irkenham said, a smile briefly lighting his exhausted face.
“When he wasn’t putting out fires for the French Landing F.D. or fighting crime with the Justice League of America, that is.”
These innocent dreams ended in a nightmare we cannot imagine.
[
But I’m sure you’ll try,
Fred thinks, now beginning his toe raises.]
Earlier this week, his dismembered body was discovered by Spencer Hovdahl of Centralia. Hovdahl, a First Farmer State Bank loan officer, was inspecting an abandoned French Landing farm owned by John Ellison, who lives in a neighboring county, with an eye to initiating repossession proceedings. “I didn’t want to be there in the first place,” Hovdahl told this reporter. “If there’s anything I hate, it’s the repo stuff.
[Knowing Spence Hovdahl as he does, Fred very much doubts if “stuff” was the word he used.]
I wanted to be there even less after I went into the henhouse. It’s all rickety and falling down, and I would have stayed out except for the sound of the bees. I thought there might be a hive in there. Bees are an interest of mine, and I was curious. God help me, I was curious. I hope I’ll never be curious again.
”
What he found in the henhouse was the body of seven-year-old John Wesley Irkenham. The corpse had been dismembered, the pieces hung from the henhouse’s decaying rafters by chains. Although Police Chief Dale Gilbertson would neither confirm nor deny it, reliable police sources in La Riviere say that the thighs, torso, and buttocks had been bitten—
Okay, that’s enough for Fred, everybody out of the pool. He sweeps the newspaper closed and shoves it all the way down the counter to the Mr. Coffee. By God, they never put stuff like that in the paper when
he
was a kid. And why the Fisherman, for heaven’s sake? Why did they have to tag every monster with a catchy nickname, turn a guy like whoever did this into the Celebrity Sicko of the Month?
Of course, nothing like this had ever happened when he was Tyler’s age, but the principle . . . the goddamned
principle
of the matter . . .
Fred finishes his toe raises, reminding himself to have a talk with Tyler. It will be harder than their little talk about why his thing sometimes gets hard, but it absolutely must be done.
Buddy system,
Fred will say.
You’ve got to stick with your buddies now, Ty. No more rambling around on your own for a while, okay?
Yet the idea of Ty actually being murdered seems remote to Fred; it is the stuff of TV docudramas or maybe a Wes Craven movie. Call it
Scream 4: The Fisherman.
In fact, wasn’t there a movie sort of like that? A guy in a fisherman’s slicker wandering around and killing teenagers with a hook? Maybe, but not little kids, not
babies
like Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham. Jesus, the world was disintegrating right in front of him.
Body parts hanging from chains in a crumbling henhouse, that is the part which haunts him. Can that really be? Can it be
here,
right here and now in Tom Sawyer–Becky Thatcher country?
Well, let it go. It’s time to run.
But maybe
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