She brushed a hair off Sara Meg’s collar. “Yeah, she looks pretty good today.” If we hadn’t known better, we’d have thought Sara Meg was an ordinary woman with a pretty face she wore on Sundays.
As Hollis came up to the table, Joe Riddley said, “Fine job today, honey. I didn’t know we had a budding singer among us.”
She turned such a happy pink that her freckles almost disappeared. “Thanks. I wasn’t sure I could hit that A without squeaking, but it came out all right, I think.”
“It came out great,” Bethany corrected her. She looked happy, too, so I guessed that whatever had been wrong between them was fixed.
“And you played beautifully,” I told Garnet, trying to include her in the conversation.
She shrugged. “It’s easy playing music for folks to sing to. Nobody notices your mistakes.”
“She likes playing Art’s songs.” Hollis drew out the last two words as only a little sister can. “He wrote her one that’s actually not bad.” Ignoring Garnet’s quick, angry motion, she sang softly, “ ‘I once saw an angel in a forest glen, walking with her hair ablaze. She turned to give me a winsome grin, and—’ ”
Garnet elbowed her. Hollis elbowed her back. Bethany pulled her away.
“Who’s Art?” Sara Meg asked the rest of us.
“He’s a poet,” Hollis drawled, sticking out her tongue at her sister.
Garnet seized her shoulder and shook her in fury. “You have no business going through my things.”
“Garnet!” her mother cried. “Stop it!”
Garnet stopped, but she spoke with venom. “She keeps going through my private stuff and you don’t do a thing about it.” She looked at the floor and added sullenly, “That song was a class project. Art’s taking a poetry class and wanted me to set it to music.” She stomped off toward the door, then turned and looked back.
I looked quickly at Hollis to make sure she hadn’t been blasted into outer space by that glare. Like the angel in Art’s poem, she was grinning.
20
Joe Riddley and I decided to go back to our place for a Sunday-afternoon nap. Ronnie had a key to Walker’s if the women needed a snooze. I could have slept a lot longer if we hadn’t gotten a frantic call from Martha.
“Cricket’s missing. Bethany went home with Hollis, and the rest of us came home and slept. When Ridd and I woke up, he was gone. He isn’t on the property.” That’s better than an alarm clock for any grandmother.
I shook Joe Riddley. “Cricket’s gone off somewhere and Martha can’t find him.” He had on his pants and shoes and was clattering down the stairs before I got my hair combed.
I snatched up my pocketbook as he grabbed his cap. Those things are so much a part of us, our boys tease us that they’re going to bury Joe Riddley in his red Yarbrough’s cap and me with my pocketbook. I tell them to buy me a new one for the occasion.
“You look around downtown. I’ll swing out toward the nursery,” Joe Riddley ordered as we ran to our cars. We took off like we were part of a movie about a high-speed car chase. I beat him down the drive by a hair.
My heart was pounding as I clutched the steering wheel, frustrated I couldn’t soar over the trees looking for that precious small boy. In far less time than it takes to tell it, I’d pictured him hit by a truck on the highway, struck by a car in the Bi-Lo parking lot, and swept into a van and carried off to California. As I passed Spence’s pasture, I scanned it, but thank God, it was empty. The cattle pond is mighty tempting to small males. Just ask my two sons.
I was almost to the highway when I saw Cricket coming my way, pedaling his little bike with a lot of difficulty on the gravel. I screeched to a stop and jumped from my car. Joe Riddley skidded to a stop behind me.“You scared us all to death,” I stormed. “What on earth are you doing all the way down here? It’s over a mile. And how did you get across the highway?”
His face was pink with exertion and sweat matted his hair, but his grin was proud. “I looked both ways and nobody was coming. It’s boring at our house,” he added.
“Not anymore it isn’t,” I told him grimly. “You scared the living daylights out of everybody. You can’t go riding off—”
“Easy, Little Bit.” Joe Riddley put a hand on my shoulder. “Taking a ride, son?”
“Coming to swim, actually.” That was a new word, and he was proud of it, too. “Mama and Daddy are sleeping,” he added, as casual as if he rode down every day.
“You aren’t allowed to swim without grown-ups,” his granddaddy reminded him. How on earth did that man stay so calm in times like this? It drives me crazy sometimes, but it’s one of the things I love about him and depend on.
“You were home,” Cricket pointed out. “You’re grown-ups.”
“We might not have been home. We’re staying over at Uncle Walker’s, remember?”
Uncertainty flickered behind his brown eyes. “Oh, yeah, that’s right.”
I jumped in. “And you don’t come to swim unless you’re invited.” I hoped my heart would soon get out of my throat and let me catch my breath.
Cricket’s lower lip trembled. “Bethany got to swim. And all the Honeybees. It’s not fair.”
Joe Riddley squatted down and looked him in the eye. “Do you think it’s fair to scare your mother and daddy? They’re real worried. They don’t know where you are.”
“Call and tell them. Then we’ll swim.” He set his right foot against his pedal again.
His granddaddy picked him up, bike and all. “Don’t you have a rule about leaving your yard?” Cricket looked down and didn’t reply. “Can’t swim today, then. We can’t reward you for breaking the rules. But I’ll take you home and we’ll fix a time when you can come swim. Okay?”
Cricket’s lips tightened and he got a mutinous look in his eyes. “You got that pool every day of your life, and I don’t ever get to swim.”
“Keep that up and you’re heading in that direction,” I warned.
Joe Riddley separated boy from bike, stowed one in the trunk and held the door for the other to climb in. “He’s fine, Little Bit. You can relax. Call Martha and tell her we’re coming.”
“Tell her not to spank me,” Cricket ordered. “I’d have asked,” he added virtuously, “but I didn’t want to bother her when she was sleeping.”
Ridd chuckled when I told him that over the phone; then he sighed. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with him. Bethany never wandered off, but that’s the third time he’s left our lot this month.”
“Bethany stayed down here until she started school,” I reminded him. After Cricket was born, Martha arranged her schedule to be home more. Cricket also went to nursery school, because his parents felt he was too much for Clarinda to handle. “I warned you when you bought that house that it’s too near the highway.”
“Well, it’s the one we’ve got, so Cricket’s got to learn to live in it, under our rules. I don’t remember you and Daddy having this much trouble raising us.”
You boys grew up in this house, at the end of a road with lots to do and space to roam, whispered a nagging voice that lives somewhere at the back of my head. Joe Riddley’s folks moved to town when Walker was born, telling us the big house was getting to be too much for them. We moved in, and our boys grew up in the same house Joe Riddley and three other generations of Yarbroughs had—the big blue one his great-great-granddaddy built. You and Joe Riddley have talked about looking for another place, added that pesky voice.
Other things keep coming up, I reminded it. Maybe Cricket’s bicycle adventure was a wake-up call. I’d think about that as soon as I got time.
To Ridd, I said, “The operative phrase is ‘I don’t remember. ’ I clearly remember somebody thinking he could fly from the roof of our barn and a few discussions with the palm of your daddy’s hand about Hubert’s cattle pond.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Yeah, well. But listen, did you mean what you said about us looking for whoever drove DeWayne to do what he did?” I
wasn’t ready to mention my question about what he might have jumped from. There was no point in Ridd thinking it could be murder unless he had to.
“If we can do it without Daddy killing us both.”
“I thought of a few things we could check on. Could you find out whether DeWayne gave a bad grade to any of Smitty’s gang, somebody who might be holding a grudge? I’m going to talk to Tyrone again, if I can find him, and see if he knows who painted DeWayne’s house. You got any other bright ideas?”
“Not right now, but I’ll think it over. I’m coming by the store tomorrow to pick up some more begonias, and then Yasheika and I have to decide what to do about the team. She wants me to coach it, but I don’t know. . . .”
The specter of DeWayne hanging in the locker room floated between us. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” Mothers do what we can, but some decisions a man has to make himself.
I’d barely hung up when Clarinda called. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going home? Are those women supposed to move all their stuff down to your place?” She sounded as aggrieved as if we had taken off for Mars and left guests without food or water.
“We didn’t ‘go home.’ We just came by for a nap. I’m heading back to Walker’s right now. There’s no point in all of us moving unless we have to. Are the women back there?”
“Yeah, they went back after dinner to lay down awhile. Now they’re real upset and need you. Elda got through to Gerrick—at the prison, you know?”
“I know.” If Gerrick weren’t in prison, DeWayne could have grown up in Hopemore and become the strong young man he was created to be.
“He wants DeWayne buried out at Mount Olivet, in his family plot. Elda and her sister want to take him back up to Washington to bury him there. Yasheika is all confused, wanting to honor her daddy’s request but not feeling real kindly about Hope County—”
“—for which we can’t blame her—”
“—so Elda doesn’t know what to do. You need to get on over there.”
I have never been an expert on where other people ought to bury their dead, but I know better than to try to reason with Clarinda in that mood. “As soon as I feed the animals.”
I gave Bo food and water in the barn and fed Lulu and put her in the yard dogs’ pen. I could hear her complaints all the way to Hubert’s. Beagles are never shy about telling you when they’ve been insulted, at full voice.
On my way, I called Joe Riddley over at Ridd’s. “Why don’t you drive them up to Mount Olivet?” he suggested. “At least they can see the place.”
Ronnie was at Walker’s, too, and said he’d like to drive out to the cemetery with us. Yasheika gave him a look that said as plain as day that he was horning in where he wasn’t wanted, but I remembered that his mama was buried there.
I could tell by the way Yasheika’s aunt—whose name was Doris—climbed into my small backseat that she wasn’t crazy about driving five miles and back in cramped quarters on what she considered a fool’s errand. When Elda got in the front, Yasheika looked at the available remaining space and announced sourly, “I’ll take my own car. You want to ride with me, Ronnie?”
“Sure. My life insurance is paid up.”
As we drove through the countryside, Elda pointed out houses and barns she remembered from when she used to live in Hopemore. She told me they’d been raised down near Wrens, but she’d come here to work in the meat-packing plant, which is where she’d met Gerrick.
Mount Olivet was a little white frame church with a squat steeple, sitting in a bare-ground parking lot. Tall pines shaded the church and surrounded the cemetery, which lay up a slight rise to the east. It was a lovely burial ground, smelling of pine and honeysuckle, with grass full of sunny-faced dandelions and mockingbirds singing overhead. People had placed vases of flowers beside many stones, and if they were plastic, at least they were bright and showed somebody cared. It was the kind of place I’d feel better about leaving one of my children, if I had to leave him anywhere. From the look in Elda’s eyes, I could tell she was now leaning in the same direction.
Ronnie went quietly toward his mother’s grave. Yasheika prowled, shredding a dandelion. I got the feeling she hadn’t spent much of her life roaming cemeteries. Some folks do, some don’t.
“There’s your grandparents.” Elda pointed out a tombstone with Lawton carved on it.
Yasheika gave the stone one look and shrugged. “That doesn’t mean a thing to me. DeWayne and I never knew them. You know what, Mama? I don’t think he’d want to be buried way out here, miles from nowhere.”
“It’s mighty pretty. And I thought you wanted to do what your daddy wants.”
“I’m changing my mind. DeWayne wouldn’t want to be out here in the sticks.”
“This isn’t the sticks, honey. It’s lovely. Real peaceful under the trees.” Elda’s voice had lost its Washington sharpness and was getting softly Southern again out in that cemetery.
Yasheika’s was sharp enough for them both. “I don’t want DeWayne way down here and us up there.”
“Maybe you ought to think about somebody else for a change.”
Uh-oh. They were starting to yell. This is where Clarinda expected me to play peacemaker and help them come to a good decision. I sure was glad when Ronnie strolled back and said, “Like DeWayne told Mr. Tanner the other day, you have to get over things the best you can. Seems to me like it’s not a matter of what DeWayne or even Gerrick wants at this point. DeWayne’s not going to care, and Gerrick’s not going to be visiting him anytime soon. You all need to do what will most comfort you in these coming months.”
Yasheika turned and glared at him for horning in again.
I said quickly, “Your mother’s buried here, isn’t she?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He looked toward her stone again. “I don’t get out here as much as I’d like to, but it always makes me feel better to drop by.”
Elda took Yasheika’s arm. “He’s right. Your daddy isn’t going to be doing any visiting, so let’s put DeWayne where it will do us the most good.”
Yasheika jerked away. “Daddy is going to get out, Mama. Can’t you get that through your head? He is going to get out if it’s the last thing I ever do. And if he wants DeWayne here—”
“Don’t talk about the last thing you’ll do when your brother’s just died,” her aunt Doris snapped.
Yasheika turned so we couldn’t see her face. “Sorry. But Daddy is going to get out, so it makes me mad when Mama won’t believe it. And if he wants DeWayne here, we ought to put him here.” She sounded, however, like they’d be abandoning DeWayne to a fate worse than death. The little cemetery hadn’t worked any magic on her spirit.
“We’d never see his grave again,” Elda protested. “Never get to put flowers on it or say a little prayer beside my baby, never just stand beside him and remember all the things he used to do . . .” Her voice broke and she turned away, sobbing. Doris went to take her in her arms.
Ronnie stepped next to Yasheika and spoke so low, I almost couldn’t hear. “When your daddy does get out, you think he’s gonna want to come back to Hopemore? More likely, he’ll wind up in Washington where you all are. Put DeWayne where it will do everybody the most good.”
“Where he’d do me the most good is right here, alive and well.” Yasheika turned and stomped off toward her car.
Ronnie took a step after her, but I grabbed his arm. “Let her be for a minute.”
Doris and Elda were wandering around finding names they recognized, giving Elda time to recover a bit. I asked Ronnie to show me his mother’s grave.
As we stood there, I asked, “When did you hear DeWayne say that thing to Buddy about getting over things the best you can?”
Ronnie bent down, pulled a grass stem, and started chewing it. He’d learned that from Ridd when he was five and spent that whole summer with grass between his lips. I pulled up a stalk of my own. The tips are real sweet. But I looked at him to show I wanted an answer.
“Thursday morn
ing,” he said reluctantly. “DeWayne came to our office, and my desk is in the main room, not far from Mr. Tanner’s door.”
I smiled to hear that Buddy was “Mr. Tanner” now that he was also boss.
“What else did you hear?”
“Not a lot. I was waiting for somebody to get off the phone and show me what to do.” He flung a stone toward the horizon.
As a little boy, Ronnie had given new meaning to the word “nosy.” He had outgrown most of that, but surely he had wanted to know what his best friend wanted with his boss. “Did you hear DeWayne tell Buddy he was Gerrick Lawton?”
“Well, yeah, I did hear that. They didn’t close the door right away. I didn’t know who Gerrick Lawton was, and it was such a strange thing for him to say that I did listen a bit.”
“What did Buddy say?”
“He gave a little whoop—you know how he does—and the next thing I knew they were hugging and laughing and slapping each other on the back. Then they talked for a while—stuff like, ‘Do you remember the time we painted the crosses and Sara Meg made us scrub it off?’ and ‘Remember how we used to play house, with Anne as the mama and you as the daddy and me as the little boy?’—stuff like that. Then they talked softer for a while, until DeWayne raised his voice a little and said that thing about everybody needing to get over things the best they can. Then he told Buddy that Yasheika was planning to bring all that back up again, and you thought he—Buddy—ought to know, and Buddy said that was kind of you. They noticed the door was cracked around then, and somebody closed it. When DeWayne left, they stopped by my desk and Buddy said, ‘Ron, you won’t believe it, but this man used to be one of my best friends.’ He showed DeWayne to the door and they were laughing and cutting up all the way. As he left, DeWayne gave Mr. Tanner his card and said, ‘Call me sometime,’ and Mr. Tanner said something about he’d talk to Hollis. Then they hugged again. That’s all.”
Who Let That Killer in the House? Page 17
