The Amulet. A.R. Morlan
old lady had ever been Miss Popularity or Miss Congeniality. Anna remembered the time when several of their neighbors came up to Mom as she hung out clothes in the backyard of the old lady’s house, and politely yet apprehensively explained that Ma shouldn’t think it was anything personal, but none of them would be talking or paying any attention to the old lady anymore—and the same went for Ma and little Anna.
Apparently, the neighbors had elected Mrs. Armstrong from across the alley to be the main spokeswoman. She was the one who told Ma, “Please don’t think we mean you any ill will, Tina, but that mother of yours...well, we’ve put up with about as much as we’re going to take. The backbiting, the things she yells at us out the window when you and little Anna are gone, the other things we think she’s doing—”
“What do you mean, think she’s doing?” At five years old, Anna knew when her mother was ready to blow; that vertical forehead furrow was already in place, even though Ma was only twenty-one years old.
Mrs. Armstrong began wiping her chapped hands on her apron, smoothing it against her thighs with dry, scratchy sounds. “Now, Tina, we don’t know for certain that your mother is to blame, but...well, it’s just an awfully strange coincidence that every time one of us has a tiff of some sort with her, we find—”
Mrs. Armstrong hung her head, cheeks red, so Mrs. Cooper finished for her, arms crossed over her flat freckled chest. “We think your mother is doing...dirt on our back lawn. And then scratching grass and dirt over it, like a dog or—”
And that was when Ma threw them out of the yard. But people still don’t hold it against Ma. Didn’t she have that nice hearty, break-your-eardrums laugh whenever she met her neighbors in some public place? And didn’t Ma always smile at everyone she knew?
And didn’t Ma take it out on me when we were alone? Anna found herself thinking, as she swirled the last, near-melted nubs of ice around in her half-empty glass.
“—been a shitty year all around, I say,” Mr. Winston was pontificating over at the round Colonial table near the door. He and his long-time, also sixty-some-year-old buddy Palmer Nemmitz (whose wife Bitsy made ugly fabric-vegetable refrigerator magnets to sell at the Methodist Market each spring, and she was so popular—and related to so many people—that they sold out) were chewing the fat with fiftyish Lenny Wilkes and that oily middle-aged geek Wayne Mesabi (father of that stick-in-the-cement dip Heidi, who had graduated from EHS two years after Anna), the distributor who furnished the Hinge with Old Dutch chips and snacks. Mesabi was scarfing down a bag of them right now, using a big onion and garlic chip to punctuate his reply.
“I agree with Win—heck, everybody worth a hill of beans passed on this year, and it ain’t even November yet. Think about it. No more Rita Hayworth, no Lee Marvin, no Sammy Kaye—”
“Did he take ‘Swing and Sway’ with him, like Lombardo took New Year’s—”
“Shuddup, Nemmitz, you old cynic—”
“—and John Houston, and Liberace—”
“Always said the man was a—”
“Nemmitz, put a lid on it!”
“And don’t forget about Lorne Greene and Dan Rowan. Why me and Millie used to watch that Laugh-In every week.”
“You also watch Hee-Haw, Lenny.”
“Butt out, Winston. You’re as bad as that buddy of yours, and Bob Preston, and Jackie Gleason, and Danny Kaye, and—”
“Pola Negri died, too,” Winston interjected, sipping on his Leinenkugel’s. Wayne Mesabi stopped pointing his chip at everyone and asked, “Who?”
“Somebody he screwed a long time ago,” Nemmitz cut in, then added before Winston could rebuff him, “And Randolph Scott died, and that soup can fella, Warhol, and Buddy Rich—”
“Millie and I, we used to listen to his records,” Lenny said, sneaking one of Wayne’s chips, even though he really didn’t need it.
“Well, the one that broke me up the worst was Fred—”
“Didn’t you get enough of that old fuck Ferger when he was around? Didn’t think anyone could miss Dead Fred—”
“Wayne, would you let me finish? Astaire. I’m talking about Fred Astaire,” Nemmitz said, grabbing Mesabi’s chip out of his fingers and tossing it to the imitation wood Formica below.
“So you didn’t care when Dead Fred died?”
“That is not the point, you lamebrain—”
“Hey, that reminds me. Arnie, switch that TV back to channel thirteen. Almost time for the news. I’m gonna be on—”
“Lenny lives for death,” old man Winston said to no one in particular, as he glanced over at Anna. Behind him, the other men had rearranged their chairs to face the small set mounted above the cluttered kitschy bar.
Wondering who had died, giving Coroner Lenny Wilkes another shot at TV stardom this year—his round, flat-topped face was a staple for any Ewerton or Dean County deaths deemed newsworthy enough for Eau Claire’s nightly news—Anna slid forward along the booth’s cigarette-burned orange seat, until she could just see the sharply angled screen.
Seeing her perched precariously on the edge of her seat, Mr. Winston pulled a chair over from an adjoining empty table and motioned to her. Reluctantly, drink in hand, Anna came over to join the four men, but pulled her chair as far away as politely possible.
Above the collector bottle and shlock-filled glass bar shelves, the off-screen announcer on WEAU was announcing the lead stories for the night. After mentioning the Wall Street crash (“Shit, there’s no escaping it, is there Anna?” her ex-teacher asked with a smoke-hazed wink), and a couple of Eau Claire events, the announcer said, “And up in Dean County, a body is discovered in a wooded part of Ewerton.”
Around her, the other men cheered. Draining her glass, Anna thought, Must have been someone even more unpopular than my clan. For a delirious, delicious moment, she wondered if the old lady had finally ventured out of her house, perhaps in search of Ma, but then discounted it. Anna wasn’t the lucky type.
Suddenly, she stiffened. Mr. Winston was tracing the design on the back of her satiny stadium jacket. “If you’re a regular, how come I haven’t seen you in here more often?”
“Huh? Oh, my jacket.” Anna had found her silvery nylon jacket with the black and gray banded cuffs at the launderette one morning, tossed in one of the brown garbage cans. It was a mess—the flannel lining torn; the sleeves sticky with some sort of pink stuff, the deep gray enamel worn off the buttons. The lining was soon pieced together like a soft Springbok puzzle, the pink glop washed off after three tries, and she repainted the snap buttons silver with enamel.
She had wanted a stadium jacket for years, so she hadn’t minded that there was a black screen-printed logo on the back advertising the Rusty Hinge. Everyone in town over fifteen wore stadium jackets advertising something, including bars. Wearing that jacket was one of the few things Anna did that people found acceptable, even though she seldom drank, herself. And tonight, when she finally felt that she needed a drink, in a place away from the house that still shook with the echoes of Ma’s rage, the silvery jacket was her ticket into a place where she might not otherwise be truly welcome. And yet, it was reflective enough for her to be visible during her long walk home.
“Uh...someone gave this to me. For a gift,” she added defensively, even though Mr. Winston was well aware of her financial state. The old man’s hooded blue eyes shifted to her own hazel ones. A look passed between them—if that’s what you want to say, it’s fine with me, but I know you, kiddo—and then he directed his attention to the screen.
The commercial was going off, and the perky female anchor said, “A grim discovery was made near the Dean County Fairgrounds, in the county seat of Ewerton. An anonymous phone call was made early this morning to the Ewerton Police, stating that there was a body in a patch of woods a