Free Dead Sleeping Shaman by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli Page B

walls. I continued hunting, looking up names and places. I searched for Marjory Otis in the local high school news of thirty-five to forty years ago. I looked up Arnold and Paul Otis. I found two of them under News from around Traverse City of 1971 . A Marjory Otis from Leetsville High School had been a candy striper. It didn’t say which hospital or nursing home she candy striped at, just that she said she found the work rewarding and hoped to be a nurse when she grew up.
    Arnold had been president of the debate team. There was nothing on Paul. Not a single mention of his name. It seemed Marjory was behind Arnold by two grades, so two years younger than Arnold, which would put him at fifty-four. I wished I’d looked for Arnold in more recent papers while I was at the newspaper office. I’d have to Google him at home, though that was always a tedious job since I had only a dial-up connection.
    I left the library, checked my watch, and decided to treat myself to lunch at Amical, downtown near Horizon Books and the State Theatre. It was late for lunch and I was meeting Dolly and Crystalline for dinner at five-thirty, but I was hungry. I got a table near the fireplace and ordered squash soup plus an endive salad and a glass of chardonnay, spending everything I’d made on my column that morning. I felt I was owed a treat—a kind of celebration for my “columnist” status. And hadn’t I recently stumbled over a dead body? Such things could be hard on a woman. I needed soothing and sustenance. Enough of death, and a town full of people claiming the world would end soon. I threw caution to the winds and ordered a crème brûlée for dessert.
    As I drove back through town after lunch, I decided that if the Reverend Fritch had real proof the end of the world was coming on October 27, I’d go shopping. I had a feeble line of credit, but Macy’s was having a sale. Wouldn’t it be fun, if I wasn’t going to be around to pay the bill anyway, to buy everything I desperately wanted to own and never could afford? That would be a gorgeous down coverlet with thick down pillows. A lot of books I’d coveted. Maybe some big steaks. I’d invite everybody I knew over and make primavera pasta, grill the steaks, and have bottles and bottles and bottles of wonderful wines from The Blue Goat. And think of the Murdick’s fudge I could eat!
    I didn’t like fur, had no use for jewelry—beyond a pair of gold hoop earrings—and didn’t want a new car. Maybe I’d buy a boat to get out on the lake—but I’d never be able to use it, so that was out of the question. As I thought about things I dreamed of having, I realized how pathetic I was. No big wants and must-haves. No big cravings. I wanted my books published and liked. I wanted nice people around me. I wanted plenty to keep my mind busy. As an American consumer, I truly sucked.
    Then I got real and thought about what the end of the world might be like. I guessed lots of fire. Brimstone too, but I didn’t know what that was. And those four horsemen pounding their way down US131—there would be gnashing of teeth. There would be screaming and lamenting. The storms would be terrible, with wind bending the world in half, lightning streaking the sky; thunder crashing overhead.
    One thing I knew for certain, Sorrow wasn’t going to like it.

Still 13 days of sunrises and sunsets
    Fuller’s EATS, with its upside-down neon arrow pointing toward the door, was already crowded, the parking lot filled with pickups, rusty Chevys, and new Toyotas. People had their supper early in Leetsville. I parked and went in, pausing in Eugenia Fuller’s vestibule to take a quick glance at the latest genealogy sheets she’d pulled from the Internet and hung around the walls, some with big golden stars denoting special people. Since she considered herself an expert in tracing family trees, she’d hung a sign above the doorway into the restaurant: EUGENIA’S GENEALOGY SERVICE: Let Me Find The Lost Sheep