Chapter 23 of 23Like a Weather Report

Dorothy Mercier carried the announcement in her barn-coat pocket, one sentence long, and nobody in Legion Post 114 in New Ghent knew she was about to stand up and say it. The estate had ordered a full forensic audit of the Wagon Wheel's books and records, and the family had agreed to medication-compliance testing, both starting Monday.

She had written it out on an index card so she wouldn't soften it, and gone over the wording with Rollie Schuette until he told her she was reading it like a policy. Post 114 sat two blocks east of the Four Corners, and on a Saturday night it ran hot as a July kitchen: folding chairs, the flag in the corner, bratwurst bundles stacked on the pool table in Deneys' Market paper, and the pull-tab jars the Auxiliary guarded like the parish silver. Bonnie Tetzlaff had the microphone, which was where she lived.

"Four forty-one," Bonnie said. "Four forty-one, and Arlene Vandermause takes home a bacon bundle and the envy of every woman in this hall."

The hall came apart laughing. Arlene held her ticket over her head like a walleye somebody had already weighed. A man at the back called out, "Where's the quilt at?"

"The quilt comes after the half hog and not a minute before," Bonnie said. "Sit down and behave."

Dot worked her way along the wall to the table where Lu had saved two chairs with her coat and Peg had saved one with a brat.

"You've got your church face on," Lu said.

"I've got my adjuster face on," Dot said. "You've never once seen the difference, and that's a compliment to my craft."

"Two dollars with the roll and the onions," Peg said. "Sit before somebody wins you in the raffle."

"I'm always on the clock," Dot said, and sat. She ate the brat slowly, because it was good and because eating gave her hands somewhere to be. Across the hall, Marv Deneys worked the ticket table off the same steel cash box the village bought the year Dot was in high school. "Two dollars a strip," he said, and Father Bert bought one, lost it, and stood at the crowd's edge warming his hands on a decaf he never finished.

"Say it or don't," Lu said. "But quit chewing on it."

"It'll keep till the break."

"Everything keeps but you."

Doris from the Auxiliary took the microphone for the quilt drawing and read out the numbers in the voice of a woman reading a seed catalog. Dot wiped her fingers on the napkin and stood.

"Estate update," she said. "Short version, and then you can all get back to the pork."

Somebody laughed.

"Monday morning, the estate begins a full forensic audit of the club's books. Every register tape, every deposit slip, every binder, as far back as the auditors care to go." She let that sit about as long as it took a man to set down his glass. "And because the family asked for it, the county will run medication-compliance testing on the same schedule. Both start Monday."

For a moment, nothing.

"The club was never a bank," Marv Deneys said.

"That's the whole trouble with it," Arlene said.

Lu leaned over from her chair. "You made it sound like a bake sale."

"That's how you tell this room anything," Dot said.

The hall shrugged and bought another round of tickets, exactly as it would have shrugged at a hail forecast in August.

At the end of the bar, Kurt Vandehey drank his water and studied the quilt numbers and did not look at Dot once, which was the friendliest thing he had done all week.

Bonnie took the microphone back and finished the night flawlessly. She sold the half hog in three calls, got Father Bert to stand for a bow he hadn't earned, and told an Orv story about a walleye that left half the hall wiping their eyes.

"Anybody with a question about the books can ask me," she said. "Anybody with a question about the pork can ask Doris."

Her hands never stopped. She squared the ticket stubs, tapped the stack even, turned the bills in the cash box so they all faced the same way, none of it with a look down. Behind her reading glasses ran the September pages of the current binder, the Friday deposits that had gone light since before half the men in this room bought their first boat, and a dark building with a Sunday still in front of it. Nobody else in Post 114 saw a thing. Dot saw the hands.

"One sheet," Dot said, and laid the two dollars down. She didn't want the pull-tabs. She wanted a reason to keep standing at the table.

"Take the last brat," Bonnie said. "I set it by for you."

"I've had mine."

"Then take it home for tomorrow and don't tell Peg, she'll say I play favorites." Bonnie slid the paper bundle across the table and her hand went straight back to the stubs. "Monday's going to be a busy day around here."

"It will be."

Dot folded her napkin.

"I've got the September pages to square up before anybody comes in with a clipboard. You know how I am about the labels."

"I know how you are about the labels," Dot said.

Bonnie's glasses slipped on the beaded chain and she pushed them back up with one knuckle. "You want a brandy? You never have one. It worries me."

"Sweet, with a cherry, and don't let Doris make it."

Then Dot went for her coat. It hung on the rack by the door, and when she reached for it the right-hand pocket was pulled inside out. The only thing that lived in that pocket was a Kwik Trip receipt from a fill-up she'd forgotten, and the receipt was still there, folded twice the long way. She stood with the coat over her arm while the Auxiliary counted the cash box behind her, then turned the pocket back the right way and put the coat on.

Rollie Schuette was outside on the sidewalk with his collar up, watching the clouds come in off the southwest.

"How'd it land?" he said.

"Like a weather report. Everybody nodded and went back to the tickets."

"You told them plain."

"I told them plain."

He put his hands in his pockets. "Then it's out of our hands and into somebody else's."

"Rollie."

"Dorothy."

"You going to spend the night in a truck in the Wagon Wheel lot?"

"I've got no plans past Sturgeon Bay," he said, which was not an answer, and he knew it, and he walked to his cruiser without another word.

The wind had swung around to the southwest, warm for October, and Dot drove west through the Four Corners and south onto County K with the windows down, because her own furnace ran hot these days and she had stopped apologizing for it. The last thing she saw of town was the Legion lot emptying out.

Bonnie Tetzlaff had put a brat aside for her. Twenty-four years of coffee cake and neat labels and pie on a paper plate, and Dot had a name on an index card in the visor of her truck, and no exhibit number existed for the space between those two things.

The Wagon Wheel's kitchen light was on at midnight.

The club had gone dark by ten every night since Orv died — lot empty, sign lit, kitchen black behind the glass. Tonight the light over the prep table burned, and something crossed it once at shoulder height and was gone.

A car came north on the bay road with its headlamps off. It slowed at the gravel mouth, turned in, and rolled toward the back door over the stones without any hurry at all.

The light stayed on. Monday was closer than it had been at suppertime.