Of course, as is the way of the world, and most of his dreams, it all went straight into the toilet when he got to Fischer’s.
—
Janet Fischer lived in a tiny house that looked exactly like a big house only shrunken; it was roughly the size and shape of a boxcar. The roof was peaked, with a small window at its apex; the roofline couldn’t have been more than twelve feet up; a narrow plank porch framed the front door.
The house had been built by the same man who’d built all the town windmills, sometime after World War II. It contained a compact kitchen that was separated from the living room by a breakfastbar; the living room contained a two-cushion couch and two easy chairs, separated by a coffee table. The single bathroom had only a sink, toilet, and shower, no tub. The single bedroom contained a queen-sized bed. The bed frame butted against the wall at the head end, with not more than a six-inch-wide clearance on one side and two feet on the other, and no more than four feet at the end of the bed. When the sex got intense, the bed knocked on the wall between the bedroom and the living room and shook the entire structure.
Van Den Berg crossed the porch and walked in without knocking, where he found both chairs at the coffee table occupied, one by Fischer and the other by Skinner. A laptop computer sat in the middle of the table.
“What’s the kid doing here?” he asked.
Skinner shrugged, and Fischer said, “I went over to your house to clean it up a little bit and I got curious and I looked in your computer and you know what I found? Porn. All kinds of disgusting porn. You pig. We are no longer engaged.”
She had her one-third carat diamond ring in her hand and she threw it at him. He tried to grab it, but it bounced off his chest and landed on the floor. She threw something again, this time a house key, and he managed to catch it. “I’ll want my key,” she said. “Right now.”
Van Den Berg was taken aback, and some of his confidence leaked away. He thought he might be able to talk his way out of it, but it’d be tougher with the kid sitting there. “We can chat about it,” he said, as he stooped to pick up the ring. To Skinner, he said, “Get lost, dickwad.”
“We’re waiting for Wardell,” Skinner said. “He should be here in a minute or two.”
“Oh? He wants to talk about the Virgin Mary, huh?”
“Not really,” Skinner said. “I’m making a movie, and I’m hoping you three will give me some criticism, to make it better.”
“You’re making a fuckin’ movie? Of what? The Virgin Mary?” Van Den Berg hee-hawed, and at that moment they heard the odd, unmatched footfalls of the mayor on the porch. Fischer shouted, “Come in,” before Holland knocked and pushed through the door. He said, “Hey, Larry. Skinner. Jennie.”
“Now that everybody’s here, let’s get the movie going,” Skinner said.
Van Den Berg said to Fischer, “I’m not here for no movie. We gotta talk.”
“Give me my key,” she said.
“Everybody quiet down, the movie’s started,” Skinner said. “It’s only a minute or two long.”
The movie started on the laptop, a shaky video of a farmhouse. There was a voice-over, recognizable as Skinner. Van Den Berg, much to his surprise, was immediately engaged.
I’m at the farm of Ralph Van Den Berg, as you can see. Right here we’re crossing the ditch and fence into Ralph’s woodlot, but wait, what’s this? A trailer from a tractor-trailer, back in the woods? Wonder what that’s doing here? It’s almost new. Still has this year’s license plate.
There was a close-up of the plate, and then a jump cut, and all the shadows shifted, as if a couple of hours had passed. A silver GMC pickup backed up to the trailer, and a man got out. A whispered voice said,
I believe that’s Ralph. Wonder what he’s doing?
That became clear when Ralph Van Den Berg took a padlock off the trailer, rolled the door up, and began loading boxes of Legos into the pickup.
Oh, my goodness. Look at all the Legos. L’eggo my Legos...
“What the fuck is this all about?” Van Den Berg demanded, as the movie rolled on and his brother unloaded more Legos into the bed of the pickup.
Holland cleared his throat. “Well, you called Jennie and said you thought she looked a lot like our Virgin Mary. She’s not the Virgin Mary, but she does look a little like her. All you’d have to do to fuck up the town, Larry, is start talking it around. We can’t have that.”
“Bullshit. What you mean is, you and this fuckin’ Skinner can’t have it,” Van Den Berg said.
“However you want to cut it,” Holland said. “The Marian apparition is real. Jennie had nothing to do with it. But a few people think it was faked somehow, and if you start talking it around... well, you’ll wreck the town. So, as mayor, I’ll tell you what, Larry. You say one fuckin’ word about Jennie being the Virgin, and we’ll take this movie down to the Iowa cops. Me’n Skinner tried to figure out how much a trailer full of Legos was worth and we came up with a half million dollars minimum. And it could be a million, depending on which sets you got. That about right?”
“You motherfuckers,” Van Den Berg said.
“We’re the motherfuckers?” Holland asked, his voice rising toa dangerous growl. “You’re threatening to wreck the town, and we’re the motherfuckers? You stole a trailer full of Legos, and we’re the motherfuckers? l’ll tell you something else, Larry. We have a state cop in town, and I kinda casually asked how long somebody who stole a half million dollars’ worth of merchandise would go to prison for. He said maybe two years, unless there were exacerbating circumstances. There’s nothing like destroying a town’s economy to qualify as an exacerbating circumstance, Larry. You go to trial in this county, and I believe you’d get five to ten. Of course, you’d have your brother in there to keep you company.”
Skinner said, “We’d hate to see anybody from our town go to jail, Larry.”
