Dakota Blues Read online

  Copyright © 2012 Lynne M. Spreen

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1475191332

  ISBN 13: 9781475191332

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62345-470-8

  PRAISE FOR

  Dakota Blues

  Dakota Blues captures a woman’s mid-life crisis and blends it into a remarkable novel. First-time novelist Lynne Spreen takes a woman whose life is coming apart at the seams and weaves a remarkable recovery. Every woman in her middle earlies will identify with and accompany Karen Grace on her journey to resolution.

  —RAYMOND STRAIT,

  Author and celebrity biographer

  Dakota Blues is a real winner. The people who inhabit the novel are flesh and blood, and the journey of the protagonist makes for captivating reading. Few first novels are as satisfying as this.

  —JAMES HITT,

  Author of Carny, A Novel in Stories,

  Grand Prize Winner for Fiction – 2011

  Next Generation Indie Book Award

  In vivid prose, Lynne Spreen’s debut novel, Dakota Blues, presents questions painfully familiar to today’s readers: What have we lost in this modern, fastpaced frenzy we call living? What if we could turn back the clock to a time and place where personal connections outweigh profit, where the land itself can both challenge and make us whole again? Dakota Blues is a novel to make you laugh, cry and revel in being human. You won’t put it down.

  —KATHRYN JORDAN,

  Author of Hot Water (Berkley/Penguin, NY)

  Insightful and extremely poignant! In Dakota Blues, Lynne Spreen has created a character to love, one who will have you cheering her on as she discovers the richest treasures of life are sometimes the simplest. A debut novel that is an absolute must-read!

  —Bette Lee Crosby,

  Award-winning author of Spare Change

  For Bill – my husband, my mentor, my friend

  Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  From Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Only a fool puts everything on paper.

  Ed Kuswa (my dad)

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Karen’s fingers hovered over the keyboard while she tried to remember the killer argument she’d been about to make, but the idea had faded. Not for the first time that day, she wished the hall outside her door hadn’t become the official gathering place for coworkers in search of gossip and idle chit chat.

  It wasn’t like her to lose focus so easily. Karen couldn’t afford to slow down, not now when time seemed to have accelerated, racing up behind her so fast she could feel its hot breath. No, at her age, and in this economy, a person had to run hard and keep running. She returned to the keyboard.

  A rap on the doorjamb interrupted her again. “You busy?”

  Karen turned to face the young man slouched in her doorway. Thank God he’d finally ditched the eyebrow ring but his slacks were still too baggy. “Hey, Ben. Sit.”

  Ben slumped into a chair in front of Karen’s sprawling desk, his eyes bloodshot. It wasn’t due to partying. The kid practically slept in his office. “Wes told me to fire Ashley.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.” He rubbed his face.

  “Unbelievable, even for him.” Karen began scribbling notes on a pad. Sometimes she hated human resources. Like most people, she chose the career thinking she could help others. Instead, every day seemed to bring new confrontations. “He knows her husband is sick, right?”

  Ben nodded. “He said we can’t let that dictate business priorities. Quote unquote. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Give me a minute. Let me think.” Karen turned to the window where, ten stories below, Newport Harbor bustled with all manner of maritime traffic. Fishing boats, their outriggers bent like spider legs, chugged past the breakwater out to sea. Just past the mouth of the channel, long-nosed speedboats flew across the waves, and a biplane slowly towed a banner. Something about beer.

  She spun back around. “Is Wes in?”

  “You think you can change his mind?”

  “I can try.” Karen slipped into her suit jacket. She marched down Mahogany Row and stopped in Wes’s doorway. “Do you have a minute?”

  Wes looked up, his eyes narrowing. “One.”

  “There’s a problem.” Karen stood in front of his desk. “Ashley’s husband has pancreatic cancer.”

  “Irrelevant. You know that.”

  “I know that, and I’m still asking you not to fire her.”

  He pushed a tablet across the desk at her. “So give me a name.”

  “What?”

  “Somebody else I can fire instead.” He sat back in his chair and chewed on a pen.

  Karen hoped it bled into his mouth, but she forced her face into a semblance of thoughtful concentration. “I’ll need a few minutes to think.”

  He tossed the pen on his desk. “I was just playing with you. She’s already gone. I saw her outside and gave her the good news.” Wes put his feet up. “So, when do you start your vacation?”

  Karen folded her arms across her chest. “It’s a funeral, Wes.”

  “Oh yeah? Who died?”

  “My mother.” Her voice cracked.

  “Sorry.”

  Karen didn’t answer.

  “And how long are you going to be gone?”

  “I’ll be back in a couple of days.” She turned to go.

  “Hey.”

  Karen stopped. “Yes?”

  “Keep your phone on.”

  At the other end of the Row, Karen pushed open a door to an office in which the air carried a hint of mothballs and the heavy perfume favored by older women when their noses stopped working. Behind the desk, Peggy frowned at the spreadsheet on her computer screen. “I’m busy.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Peggy’s grey suit hung on bony shoulders, and her hair was thinning in back from stress.

  “Too bad.”

  “All right, fine, but first, help me with this. The damn thing’s frozen.”

  Karen crossed to the old woman’s desk. “Ashley and her
husband need a continuance on their insurance.”

  “What are we up to now? Twenty, thirty families?”

  “Hide it in the account Wes uses for boat repairs. He’ll never know.”

  Peggy turned to Karen with a heavy sigh. “Somebody will. Then we’ll get fired.”

  “We should be so lucky.”

  “Aren’t you brave? Talk to me again when you’re out of a job. Now, what does it mean when the little arrow goes like that?”

  “First tell me we can cover Ashley.”

  Peggy looked up at the ceiling, calculating in her head. Dark red lipstick crept into the deep wrinkles around her mouth. “Six months, like the others. Now will you help me?”

  Karen bent over Peggy’s shoulder, checked out the screen, and pressed a key. Immediately the document unlocked.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Peggy stabbed at a couple of keys. “Used to be we had people to do this. Now I have to do everything myself.”

  “Why don’t you ask IT?”

  “Screw them. They act like I’m retarded. I swear to Christ, next time I get a shot at early retirement, I’m taking it,” Peggy said. “When are you leaving?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “How’re you doing, kid?”

  For one minute, Karen stopped running. She leaned into Peggy for a hug.

  “We all have to go through it, sweetie.” Peggy broke the clinch. “I don’t mean to sound like our asshole boss, but don’t stay away too long. Don’t give them an excuse.”

  “I won’t.”

  That night, Karen drove through the entrance of her gated community, exhausted. As the gate arm came down behind her, her shoulders relaxed. She turned into the driveway of the darkened house, parked in the four-car garage, and picked her way through piles of outgoing furniture and clothing. In the kitchen, she switched on a light, revealing a great-room combo that sprawled the length of the house. She never used it. Steve was the one who needed six thousand square feet of split-level, with four baths and five bedrooms and a pool and hot tub. He had lusted for a domestic showplace and paid cash for the house after one particularly good year.

  Karen kicked off her heels and considered a Scotch, but it was almost midnight and she had a flight to catch in a few hours. Instead she navigated through the dark living room out to the patio where the land rolled away in a sprinkling of lights and ended at the Pacific Ocean. The view would be hers for…what? Another six months before Steve would want his return on investment? The coastal damp smelled of salt and settled on her bare arms, chilling her. She would have to think about moving, but not tonight.

  She thought about Wes, and shivered. Leaving work for a couple days was a risk, but skipping the funeral would be asking too much, even of her. Even for Wes. Her work was done to the extent possible, and Stacey, her assistant, knew how to reach her. Everything was in place.

  She stared off into the black distance. All future crises would have to wait until tomorrow afternoon, when she returned to her hometown on the Northern Plains.

  Chapter Two

  The thirty-seater bucked and lurched toward Teddy Roosevelt Regional, but Karen continued to study her computer screen, assessing the plusses and minuses of Wes’ latest cost-cutting scheme. Only once did she pause, grasping the laptop to keep it from sailing to the floor, but she never stopped, even when the attendant warned the passengers to return to their seats and buckle up. Like most CEOs, Wes had been using the Great Recession as his excuse to slash staff to the bone, thereby showing positive growth on the company’s balance sheets. Anybody who managed to creep up the salary ladder was fair game. Age was a target, too. The older employees were tossed onto ice floes and shoved off into the dark waters of the frigid economy.

  At fifty years old and the top of the pay scale, Karen would not let that happen to her.

  The plane jerked hard and a papery hand shot across the aisle to grab her arm. Karen glanced up. “Don’t worry. We’ll be down safe in a minute,” she said, the vernacular of the Plains already reasserting itself.

  The old woman peered at Karen through her trifocals. “Are you one of the Schulers?”

  “No. Sorry.” Karen looked out the window. Far below, her home town of Dickinson, North Dakota sat like a fat hen in the middle of a checkerboard. Crops fanned out to the horizon in every direction, divided into sections by narrow strips of road. Tomorrow, the cortege would follow one of those roads to a newly-turned grave, put her mother in the ground, and Karen would officially become an orphan. Except at her age, she had lost the right to consider herself such, and she wondered when was the cutoff. She hadn’t been warned. It didn’t seem fair.

  She returned to her work. One more memo, one more critical task to finish. When the flight attendant tapped her on the shoulder, Karen slid the laptop into its case next to her return ticket. She would make her escape right after the funeral. Otherwise, the vast web of her extended family would ensnare her, trying to draw her back into the fold. It happened every time she visited, although she’d returned less and less in the past few years.

  For a moment the plane leveled off and floated above the runway in that sickening pocket of silence before the wheels hit. It landed hard, bounced once, and braked. As it slowed, she opened her eyes to see the old woman smiling at her. Karen smiled back. “See? We made it. Enjoy your visit.”

  “Oh, I’m not visiting,” the woman said as the plane jerked to a stop. “I’m home.” She stood, her back crooked with age, her thin sweater rucked halfway to her shoulders. Karen reached over and gently pulled it down.

  Outside, a man in a reflective vest and ear protectors wheeled a metal stairway across the tarmac to the door of the plane. At the exit, the wind painted Karen’s scarf across her face, blinding her. She followed the small group to the terminal, where she spotted her cousin, Lorraine, and wrapped her in a hug. For a moment, Karen was lost in Lorraine’s perfume, reminiscent of summers when they piled into station wagons headed for Patterson Lake, baked their taut brown skin under a sheen of cocoa butter, and impressed the boys with graceful dives from the floating swim dock.

  “Where’s Steve?”

  Karen blinked, lost in her memories. “He’s not here. He couldn’t come.”

  Lorraine reached for a suitcase. “Is everything okay?”

  Karen stopped what she was doing and looked Lorraine in the eye. Around them, the terminal cleared as North Dakotans headed for town. “I think we’re getting divorced.”

  “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.” Lorraine hugged her. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Karen shrugged and got in the car. What else could Lorraine say? They hadn’t seen each other but a couple of days in the past thirty years. “Thanks.”

  Lorraine placed the suitcase in the back seat and sat watching her cousin. “How long has it been since you decided to separate?”

  “He moved out a few months ago.”

  “That’s so sad.” Lorraine stared through the windshield a moment before starting the car. “It’s weird. The same thing happened to two of my friends just in the last six months. Both of them had been married for like, thirty years. It’s like an epidemic among old people.”

  “Steve’s just having a midlife crisis. Not too original,” said Karen.

  “Well anyway, you still have us. And I have no doubt you’ll be fine. You’ve always been the strong one.” Lorraine reached across and squeezed Karen’s arm. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

  “Ready as I can be.” As much as Karen dreaded the thought of the funeral, almost more foreboding was the thought of her childhood home filling with mourners. She would play hostess for the bereaved, wearing her game face for the family and friends, but only until it was time to leave. “Can you do me a favor and bring me back here after the wake?”

  “You just got here. What’s the big hurry?”

  “Work.” Karen snuck a look at her phone. One hundred fifty-seven new emails since she boarded the plane this morning. She wished she could shut the stupid
thing off. Once she had even tried, right after a wellness seminar on keeping your life in balance, but learned her lesson after seeing the resulting load of messages in her inbox. Wellness would have to wait.

  Lorraine turned onto the highway. Thanks to the oil boom, new subdivisions sprouted on the outside of town, new banks and restaurants within. Karen saw what looked like car dealerships, but the showrooms were filled with shiny green tractors and farm implements. North Dakota had sailed through the Great Recession with full employment and was enjoying a wave of reverse migration, with young professionals swarming in from the godless coasts to rear their children in the bosom of the heartland. Or what was left of it, with all the fracking.

  “There’s the new rec center.” Lorraine pointed at a two-story structure occupying an entire block, and the parking lot was packed. They passed a strip mall where a new rib joint offered local beers. Next-door stood a yoga studio where you could burn it off.

  Lorraine slowed for the bridge over the Heart River. Placid and golden in the afternoon sun, it seemed not to have changed since Karen was a kid. Cattails waved on both banks, the tough shoots decorated with red-winged blackbirds.

  The highway narrowed as they approached the old part of town, where tattered businesses marked the passage of time since her birth. She saw a brick two-story, where a friend–what was her name? Marla? No, Marlene–had lived above a furniture store with her parents and brother. Karen wondered whatever happened to Marlene and the rest of the kids from the neighborhood. Had they left the state too?

  A boarded-up gas station sat in the middle of a stretch of blacktop, where weeds and sunflowers grew up through the cracks and a giant elm threatened to settle onto the building. The neighborhood seemed smaller and shabbier than she remembered, and the loss weighed on her. Everything was diminished, but she had been warned. The past is a fantasy, her father used to say. Memory gets distorted over time, and pretty soon it’s no longer true. Karen didn’t want to believe it. If you couldn’t count on your memories to tell you who you were, where did that leave you?

  They turned a corner onto her old street, where shade trees formed a canopy over the road, and a wave of nostalgia washed over her. “Do you remember riding bikes? Every day, morning to night, all summer long.”