John Keegan

Here are the opening pages of Keegan's CLEARWATER SUMMER:

They wouldn't let me see the body. But I couldn't accept the death until I'd seen some evidence. So I made a solo journey to the A&M Wrecking Yard.

People in town tried to explain it away with bromides. Car accidents were the leading cause of death in the county for minors. Youthful carelessness. A neat package.

But there was nothing conventional about the death weapon or the victim. A hundred-ton Great Northern locomotive pulling forty-five boxcars had hurtled through town in the blizzard, unaware of a stalled car at the State Route 16 crossing. It wasn't the first time someone had died there. The train ran through that gully like a swollen river. It owned the channel. This was the chute where the train had to build speed before climbing out of the valley and onto the plains.

The yard, on the outskirts of Clearwater, was fenced off on the highway side to screen the wreckage. I must have looked lost when I pushed the door open and stuck my head inside the windowless wooden shed just inside the gate.

"In or out but don't just hold the door open!" The man behind the desk in the shack was Shorty, the operator of A&M. "Can't you see it's snowing?" The coils of a space heater next to his swivel chair glowed fire-log red. The room smelled like burning dust. A&M Wrecking calendars with bosomy farm girls covered the wall. They sat on fenders, roofs, and running boards of cars and pickups, wearing short pants and men's shirts parted generously down the front.

"Do you have the car from Friday's wreck at the crossing?" If it had really happened, he didn't need more details than that. If the whole thing was a conspiracy, fabricated in the four months I'd been away at college, I doubted they would have thought to include Shorty in it. Judging from the cigarette butts floating in the half-drunk bottles of cream soda on his desk, there was no pretense in this man.

He moved a plug of chew from one cheek to the other and spat into the galvanized mop bucket on the backseat that served as an office couch. The juice was forced through the gap in his teeth like milk from a cow's udder. It sang against the metal. "I'm the undertaker, who else do you think scrapes 'em up?" His voice was bitter as if he'd been sentenced to this job. "Who are you?"

"Will Bradford. Do you mind if I have a look at it?"

"If you're claiming ownership, you can have it," he said. "Usually, I get one or two good tires, maybe a speaker. This sucker's pure scrap." He shuffled through the mess of invoices and notes on his desk. A bottle tipped over. "Holy Christ!" Cream soda gurgled onto the papers before he could grab the bottle and put it upright.

"I don't want it, I just want to see it."

"You an adjustor or something? Believe me, it's totaled." He searched the mess on his desk for a rag. Finding none, he pulled open a drawer and retrieved two bent slices of white bread and dropped them onto the pool of soda.

"No, I'm just a friend."

"Your friend's been spooned out of there." He flipped the bread slices over and scrubbed them across the top of his pile.

"I know. I just want to see the car."

He studied me carefully as he wiped up the rest of the soda and tossed the soaked bread into his spittoon. "You some kind of masochist?"

I had to see how it happened, hoping the remains would explain something. "Just point me to it, you don't need to leave the hut."

"Didn't intend to, buster." He stuck his arm out, poining past the 1959 calendar with a Daisy Mae blonde looking under the hood. "Follow the tracks, it's on the far side of the yard, the heap with the least amount of snow on it." He rang the bucket again and I imagined the bread on the bottom sopping up his spit.

As I wedged the door closed against the warped frame, the shack trembled. I immediately felt the sting of the snow blowing into my face. The thick flurries darkened the sky, creating a premature dusk. What a godforsaken piece of town this was.