The End of Vandalism Read Online Free PDF Page A

get it for six thousand.”
    “The problem with Jimmy Coates’s house is it would smell like Jimmy Coates,” said Louise. “And I don’t have six thousand dollars.”
    Mary sighed. She went to the front hall and retrieved a brightly shellacked walking stick. Louise brought her chairupright and finished the Twister. “Where’d you get that?” she said.
    Mary handed the stick to Louise; it had a snake’s features wood-burned into the handle. “Hans Cook,” she said. She put on a maroon jacket and zipped it up to her chin. “He was bringing his truck back from Ohio and he stopped to see some caves. They had a museum and little huts showing panoramas of Indian life.”
    Louise examined the stick. “What are you going to do with a cane? You run across the room when the phone rings.”
    “The phone doesn’t ring.”
    In fact Mary’s phone rang often. She held the so-called widow’s seat on the Grafton town council. The seat, of course, was not strictly for widows. But Mary had been preceded on the council by Dorothy Frails, whose husband had been electrocuted while doing what he thought was going to be simple wiring on their back porch. And before Dorothy Frails there had been another widow, but not many people remembered who that was or how she lost her husband. (It was Susan Jewell, whose husband, Howard, took a nap in the attic, surrounded by the jars of his jar collection, and never woke up, on October 4, 1962.) Mary had been on the council nine years. She considered dog issues her specialty, and once, at a convention in Moline, had given a slide presentation on the history of the muzzle.
    Louise and her mother walked outside. Mary headed for the willow, speared the orange bucket with the walking stick, and tossed it over the hedge into Heinz and Ranae Miller’s yard.
    “I thought that was your bucket,” said Louise.
    “No, I believe it’s Heinz’s,” said Mary.
     
    They went up to Walleye Lake on Route 33. Louise’s Vega made a huge racket. It had a piece of metal sticking out of the muffler. Louise knew this because she had got down on her hands and knees and looked, but that did not fix it. Summer was more than a month away, and the sky had an anxious pale color. Mary rode with one hand on the dashboard and the other on the edge of the seat. Louise stubbed out a cigarette in the ashtray.
    “How is Hans Cook?” she said.
    “Oh, Hans Cook is all right,” said her mother. “But I’ll tell you, we went to a movie in Stone City, what, two, three weeks ago, and the way he laughed really embarrassed me. The movie was supposed to be funny. I know that. But you have to draw the line somewhere.”
    “What movie was this?” said Louise.
    “Oh, with Carol Burnett,” said Mary. “ Annie . I was about to crawl down the aisle and out the door. There again, I know he takes drugs.”
    “Oh, right,” said Louise.
    “Well, he takes LSD,” said Mary.
    Louise stared at her. “Hans Cook takes the drug LSD?” she said. “Big fat Hans?”
    Mary pointed at the windshield. “You never mind. Keep your eyes on the highway.”
    “I see it,” said Louise. “Are you kidding me about Hans Cook?”
    “His neck gives him trouble,” said Mary. “He’s always driving someplace, and he says his head kind of pushes down on his neck. He’s not built right. He has an extra vertebra. He has something extra, anyway. Well, this is what he says. He claims the LSD makes his neck feel better.”
    “What does he take for a headache, crack?”
    Mary took off her glasses and cleaned them with a tissue. The glasses had square lenses and dramatic arms, and Mary’s eyes looked small and tired without them. “No, I don’t think he takes crack,” she said.
    “Maybe he’s been spiking your wine cooler,” said Louise, and Mary didn’t say anything, so Louise said, “Jesus Christ, you’re not taking it, too.”
    Mary glanced at a windmill going by outside the window. “I don’t doubt that Hans would give me some,”