“Did you two cook this up while you were living down there in Minneapolis?”
“No.”
“So it’s a coincidence that Abercrombie shows up on television just weeks before his high school’s twenty-five year reunion?”
“I don’t know who that is on television, and neither do you.”
“Did Abercrombie have a girlfriend in high school?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
Jack Start thought about it. “No.”
“Are you going to attend this reunion?”
“I hadn’t planned on it, no.”
“Why not?”
The old high school quarterback didn’t answer the question. He stared out the window at Lake Superior. Seemed the great lake was the one constant in his life.
The inspector lifted a transcript from the file. “When God signed off last night, he went off the air singing a World War Two hit.” Now the FBI man began singing, his fingers setting the tempo.
Jack Start sat listening to the inspector warble, more amazed than amused. He scratched his head. “Actually, Pudge was more into the Beatles.” Suddenly, he put his finger to his lips, as if something had just occurred to him. “There was one thing…”
“What?”
“Pudge liked the Partridge Family. I always thought that was spooky.”
The FBI inspector was losing his patience. “Was there anything else…back in high school?”
Jack gave the question serious consideration. “Once, during our junior year, somebody commandeered the intercom system. Nobody was ever caught, but Pudge was the main suspect. It was pretty harmless stuff. He came on at 1 o’clock and dismissed school for the day. Before the vice-principal got back on the microphone, we were all heading down the hill into town.”
Inspector Whitehurst dropped into his chair, seemingly exasperated. “We’re going to find him…and we’d be surprised if you’re not in cahoots with him.”
“Well, that would surprise me.”
“C’mon, Jack…a drunken, washed up newspaperman with a degenerative disease suddenly finds himself with the big scoop. An exclusive interview with God. You’d be back in the game, wouldn’t you?”
Jack had to chuckle, more to himself than the FBI man. “You’re not really from Minnesota, are you?”
The inspector smiled, an evil little smile. “Let’s talk about that night on the canal…the night he disappeared. Do you think he was suicidal?”
Jack Start took a moment before answering. He was startled, as if some revelation had just come to him. For the first time in years a twinkle appeared in his eyes. “You know, maybe that’s how he gets back and forth.”
“Who?”
“God. He comes down here to live for a while, and then to get back, he stages some spectacular accident.”
“So now you’re saying you went to high school with God?”
Jack Start, one-time star quarterback for Duluth High, raised an eyebrow in delight. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “I never thought of it like that before. And we were in the same backfield.”
Under the suspicion that God might be there, so many people signed up to attend the twenty-five-year reunion that it was moved from a private room at Grandma’s Saloon to the ballroom at the Convention Center, overlooking Canal Park. By the time the reunion was in full swing, non-class members outnumbered the real class members by ten to one. FBI agents were planted at the entrance and the exits. Satellite trucks ringed the parking lot. Reporters were interviewing anybody they could find.
Old Coach Young was popular. “Pudge was a great athlete,” he said into a battery of microphones. “But he lacked discipline. Do you know what I mean?”
“Are you saying God was lazy?”
“No, no. I’m saying the God I knew was something of a screw-off.”
Television sets were scattered around the ballroom in case God made his seventh appearance over the airwaves. Only the night before, in his sixth appearance, God had entertained the Iron Range by popping a beer and choking on a pretzel.
The reunion continued. A local band was playing Beatles songs. Badly. More and more drinks were poured. The room grew increasingly louder. And hotter.
“Get you a beer, Jack?”
