Floater, Part 2: Caz Pays a Visit
Where He Unburdens Himself
If you found Part 2 before reading Part 1, you can take a short detour and catchup here.
I awoke this morning sitting up in bed, my head on a swivel, looking for signs of the familiar. My heartbeat was unusually high for 5:00 AM, racing even, because I had such a terrible time walking on that old bridge, to the house, a house I didn’t even want to go to anyway, and definitely didn’t want to be in. There was something there I had no interest seeing.
Eventually I caught my breath, and came to the realization that I was in bed in my house. Mary was there, still sound asleep; she always looks so small in bed, so dedicated to sleep. I finally relaxed and slowly laid back down, looking at the ceiling, wondering what the devil that terrifying house was all about, and the bridge; I could only see where it went, never where it came from. After a few minutes a sense of relief came over me, I was alive in the real world, and I quietly slid from the bed to the clothes tree, found a pair of jeans and a fleece and carefully closed the door behind me. I clicked on the kettle and went for the bathroom. It was chilly, normal, the sky just starting to lighten. Coffee, that would be good, very good.
As the coffee dripped through the filter I remembered that I volunteered the night before to make dinner today. It’s been three days since I butchered our chickens, that’s about right, I think they’re ready; chicken it is then, on the pellet smoker, that sounds good, with horseradish cream on the table, salad, a vegetable.
Coffee in hand I went to the front porch to watch the day break over the hills and trees to the east, over Kalkaska as it were. The chicken yard was quiet now, but the turkeys were excited to get started on their day, so I lumbered over to the barn to get them water and food. Caz should see this, the turkeys, he’d have a laugh, me a city boy with turkeys. “You know they sell these in the store, right?” he’d likely crack.
The rows of the orchard were all visible now; the trees, thick with fruit, were somber, waiting for relief. The morning air just started to stir when I noticed Caz walking up one of the lanes between the trees. “You’re up early,” I said in low voice, not wanting to make a fuss.
Caz and I met in a lane, our shoes wet with dew, our breath thick with the chilled morning air. He explained that he often didn’t sleep well and sought the fresh air of the farms on the peninsula as a curative, a way “to clean up my head,” as he put it. Caz rolled his head back, stretching his neck to the limit to empty the stress. When his head rolled forward, he sighed and started the following story:
A few years back, as I was starting to think about retirement, I was up on the peninsula on an investigation into a motor vehicle crash. We were on our way back to town when the idea of getting something to eat in Leland came up. I was with a Sargent detective, some experience but still learning the ropes. As we traveled down M-22 on the big lake side of the peninsula, I see some state trooper cars with lights on pulling into Gill’s Pier. I called it in, ‘What’s happening on M-22 north of Leland?’ the answer came back, “They found a floater.” I asked permission to stop and investigate, and permission was granted, of course. We turned down Gill’s Pier and took it to the end, to the little lake access there. I got out of the car and as I was walking down the slope to the lake, I saw a girl in a hoodie, just a teen ager, but she caught my attention, and I suddenly realized she was my niece, my brother’s girl. I hadn’t seen them in some years, we were estranged, on the outs. When I got to the bottom of the incline I turned to look at her again but she was gone. They had just pulled the body from the water. I went to take a look, and it all made sense, the girl, the body.
“It was your brother!”
It was. I was overcome, you can understand, seeing him there, barely recognizable, not the boy I’d grown up with, not the man and father I once knew before we were strangers. Strangers, it’s almost too painful to say.
I held Caz by the shoulder, my eyes searching for words where they are never found. “OK, OK,” Caz tapped my side before strolling on. I couldn’t completely comprehend what I’d heard, and soon found myself two lanes closer to the house. Mary was on the porch now, a cup of coffee in her hand.
“What were you doing in the orchard this early?” she asked.
“Nothing really, just taking a look at some trees, I’m going to have broken branches soon, there’s too much weight.”
“So what are you making for dinner tonight?”
“I thought we would have a chicken on the pellet smoker,” I answered.
“Oh, that sounds good.”
We sat together and drank our coffee, talking, watching the day come together. My heart rate eventually fell to normal, and I put the meeting with Caz out of my head for the rest of the day. There was plenty to be done, cleaning apple crates, getting the trailer ready for its big annual run to the processor.
We had a few potato plants that were already withered, so I dug their potatoes up. The chicken went on the smoker at three in the afternoon, and while it roasted along merrily I made potato salad and also managed to fit in a well needed shower. Mary set the table, but for four people.
“Why are you setting it for four,” I asked?
“You invited your friend and his guest, you told me.”
“Oh, right, no, no, he told me this morning that he can’t make it now,” I responded.
“You saw him?”
“Well, he called,” I said, hoping to end the conversation. Mary stared at me for a minute, worried, not quite sure what all this meant. My new friend was more complicated than I thought at first. I needed to tone it down, to push him out of the light.
The chicken and the potato salad turned out very well. The key to a chicken on the smoker is to give it one and a half hours at low heat and high smoke, and then raise the temperature to high for the last hour and a half to crisp the skin. The smoky chicken meat with the rich bite of horseradish cream was outstanding. The potato salad was also excellent. Fresh potatoes taste as you might imagine, like fresh potatoes, nearly a different vegetable. I like to add buttermilk to the mayo and sour cream dressing, the acid really makes the flavors pop.
Even now in late summer the sky was still light at 8:30 when I went to put the turkeys away for the night. I opened the barn door to grab a little food, and Caz was sitting on the edge of the juice trailer, his arms folded, that light, satisfied smile on his face.
“So how was dinner, sorry we missed it,” he said.
“Excellent, really good, the chicken was juicy, smoky and tender.”
Then he motioned me to find a chair and he continued the story from earlier. I dutifully found a place to sit and listen:
So I didn’t give you the full story earlier, you looked a little upset, so I stopped, but after I recognized that the body lying on the beach was my brother, I ran back up the slope to the little parking area and went to find my niece. I spent maybe 15 minutes running in different directions but never found her. Finally I had to take a break so I sat down in our car, my partner was still down on the beach. I had a moment to think. If I told them it was my brother, they’d take me off the case, of course. There’s just too great a chance for bias in your work if you know the victim, especially if you’re related. I was mulling this over in my head when my partner returned. He got into the car as well and he carefully went over his notes. The medical examiner also arrived about this time. I knew it was the wrong thing to do, I knew it, but I stayed mum, not a word. I told myself that I would come clean later that day as if it just occurred to me that the body was my brother’s. I convinced myself that I could at the least communicate between the various entities to help the investigation to its rightful end. I just had to find my niece, get some information, get some answers, then I would come clean.
Well, look you had better take care of your turkeys, we’ll talk again soon.
I took a small can of feed out and enticed the turkeys back into their roost house for the evening. Then I walked back and sat on the porch for a bit, watching the orchard disappear into the night. Mary stopped by for a moment.
“Everything ok with the turkeys, you were gone a while,” she asked?
“Oh, yeah, the turkeys are fine. Just excited for Thanksgiving!”