Blockbuster

by Richard H. Smith

  Sweat dotted her forehead. Her pupils were enlarged. She slurred a word I couldn’t understand. I felt one of her wrists, the pulse erratic, thumping. Others had gathered, all seeming to look at me to do something.

  I recognized the medical bracelet on her wrist. It was similar to one I’d seen worn by someone with diabetes. I led her over to a lobby bench.

  “Are you a diabetic? You need some sugar?”

  She didn’t answer, but I looked at Hogan and said, “Phil, get me a Coke. Make it quick. Straw too.”

  I went with the odds and figured it couldn’t hurt to give her the drink. Hogan had Carrie fix a Coke, and she rushed it over to us. I pressed the straw past the woman’s lips, which were now clammy and limp.

  “Here’s some Coke,” I said.

  As if by muscle memory, she started sucking, almost like a baby.

  “That’s right. You’ll be fine,” I said, hoping this was true.

  She continued sucking for half a minute while we all watched. It was helping too. She looked up at me and said, “My head hurts. Where am I? Who are you?”

  “You’re at the Yorktowne Theater,” I said, pressing my hand again her wrist. “You have diabetes, don’t you? Your sugar was low, but you’re getting better now.”

  “Yes, yes, I do. I must have had a reaction.”

  “You look okay now.”

  “It was mild, just mild. I’m fine, really. I need my tablets. Where’s my pocketbook?”

  By this time her husband had exited the theater.

  “Oh, honey. There you go again,” he said, as he came over to us, not looking too concerned. He knelt and reached for her pocketbook, which I had placed near her feet, and found a medicine bottle. He shook out two pink tablets and popped them into his wife’s expectant mouth.

  “Here, honey,” he said.

  She crunched them and took another suck of Coke.

  “Wanda, right?” I remembered the name from before.

  “Yes, it’s Wanda, Wanda Mallard. I’m so sorry to have caused a problem. I’m fine now. Thank you all so much.”

  “Why don’t you and your husband both get back to the movie.”

  Mr. Mallard stood and glanced down at his wife. Then he took my arm and led me off to the side. He said, “About last week, I want to apologize.”

  “Hey, all’s forgotten.”

  “And I’m sorry about what happened to your manager. I wouldn’t wish that on nobody.”

  I said, “Listen. I appreciate your saying this. But you both go enjoy the movie. No need to miss any more of it.”

  Mrs. Mallard was now standing, and her husband led them both back into the theater.

  Carrie asked me, “Nate, how did you know what was wrong with her?”

  “The medical bracelet she had on her wrist.”

  “She was lucky you figured it out.”

  “Pin a medal on his chest,” Hogan said with a strange purring sound.

  “Her husband would have taken care of things soon enough,” I said.

  “I suppose so,” Carrie said. I liked the sound of her using my first name.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The following afternoon Spence came by early to introduce me to his great-grandson, Ricardo. With the same creamy dark skin and long-limbed build, he favored Spence. He also had a similar wise cast to his eyes, like he’d already figured out how the world worked. They were twins, born sixty some years apart. We decided that Ricardo would do both concessions and ushering as needed and help with the cleaning when Jaws started. Ricardo’s mom would pick him up soon, and he moved to a lobby bench to wait for her.

  “Spence,” I said, once we were by ourselves. “Any word about Milton?”

  “There will be directly.” This got me going.

  “What’s up? Tell me.”

  “I will, presently.”

  “Tell me, Spence.”

  “Not yet, Nate. Can’t yet. You plant your seed in April, and you harvest it in October.”

  I should have known I couldn’t rush Spence. It occurred to me that this was how he worked too. When he did the landscaping, he never hurried. He took his time. The effect seemed fast, though. If you left him alone, when you came back, the job was done. He was on to something else.

  Owen and Carrie came into the lobby. This shifted my attention. Usually, they walked close to each other, sometimes touching. But this time they came in separately, Carrie first, looking unhappy about something. She headed to the restroom.

  Owen said, “Guess I gave you a hard time yesterday. Sorry.”

  His eyes were streaked with red. I detected the smell of pot on his clothes. He was high. From his pocket he pulled out a small metal object, placing it in front of me on the counter. He said, “You say you like Norman Rockwell. That’s cool. What’s your expert opinion on this, this piece of sculpture.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. What was he up to?

  It was small for a sculpture, but it had some interesting shaping. I suppose it showed creativity. Was he testing me? I didn’t think much of it, but I didn’t want to offend him—on the chance that he had made it. Mindy Hawkins and Billy Gossett were watching, and I said something positive.

  “I like the material it’s made of.”

  Carrie returned and saw the object. Her face flashed with anger.

  “Owen, what are you doing with that?”

  “I’m just asking Norman, our art expert, what he thinks of this sculpture.”

  She grabbed it off the counter and thrust it back at him.

  “Put it away,” she said, glaring at Owen. “It’s not sculpture.”

  “What is it?” I asked. No one said anything, though Carrie and Mindy exchanged glances.

  “It’s a specula or something,” Mindy said, blushing slightly.

  “What?” I said.

  Carrie gave Owen another irritated look and said, “It’s a speculum.”

  I understood. It was an obstetrical instrument. He’d been pulling a trick on me.

  “Just wanted to make a point about art,” explained Owen, with an innocent expression.

  “Stop equivocating,” Carrie said.

  “Aww, come on. He knew it wasn’t a real sculpture,” Owen said, though he didn’t seem to be swaying Carrie.

  Owen continued, “I got the idea from reading about Thomas Hoving, you know, the art curator at the Met. How was I to know he’d never seen one before?”

  “You are so very clever,” Carrie said.

  I wanted to grab him by his tie-dyed shirt and send him bouncing across the carpet, right out the front entrance.

  Directing his attention back to me, Owen said, “My point is that art is subjective. If you like Norman Rockwell, I’m cool with that. Frost, he’s hip too.”

  I wasn’t sure how his demonstration helped make this point, but I said, “We agree on one thing. I don’t need your approval to like something. I didn’t think it was a real piece of sculpture.”

  “Owen, you’ve lost all credibility. That’s what Nate gets from trying to be nice to you,” Carrie said as she shook her head.

  “Oh, ‘Nate’ is it?” Owen said in quick reply, shifting his focus back to Carrie.

  I ignored this shift in focus—although I very much liked Carrie using my first name—and said, “But now you bring up Frost, you’re wrong about him, Owen. He’s the equal of any poet I’ve come across.”

  “How many poets do you know much about? Hey, Mindy, hand me a box of popcorn. Put it on my tab.”

  Mindy ignored him.

  “You make Nate out to be a Caliban. You’re so pretentious,” Carrie said, as if she and Owen were having a separate conversation, out of my earshot, one I might not understand. But who was Caliban, I wondered?

  “Okay, okay,” Owen said. Then he turned to me and said, “You stick by your man, Frost. He’s a great poet.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  “Like Nate said, he doesn’t need your approval,” Mindy said.

  I gav
e her a secret glance as if to say I’d handle it.

  “So, Owen,” I said. “Have you actually read many of Frost’s poems?” I had settled down, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe, it was because I had been so impressed by Frost’s poem about the spider. Frost was better than Owen realized. Anyway, now I was curious.

  “Sure. I mean, everyone knows the two roads one. And, honestly, that was in middle school. Elementary school more likely.”

  “Everyone? Can you recite it?” Carrie asked, crossing her arms like an English teacher.

  “Come on. Who can do that?” Owen said. But then he took the bait. After clearing his throat, he began reciting it,

  “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood ...”

  He paused.

  “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me.”

  Carrie tapped her right foot. But Owen couldn’t remember what came next. She helped him.

  “And sorry I could not travel both

  And be one traveler.

  Owen reddened. Carrie continued,

  “And long I stood

  And looked down one as far as I could

  To where it bent in the undergrowth.

  Then took the other, as just as fair,

  And having perhaps the better claim,

  Because it was grassy and wanted wear;”

  Carrie paused again. Owen frowned and rolled his eyes. He said, “Just because you know it—”

  “Owen,” Carrie continued. “I’m afraid we must give you a failing grade.”

  “You flunked, Owen,” Mindy said, laughing.

  “Yeah, you choked,” Billy said. “And no wonder. You’re stoned.”

  Owen looked straight at Mindy. “You don’t laugh at me.” And turning to Billy, he said, “I’m not stoned, airhead.”

  “You’re not only a pothead, you’re a jerk too,” said Billy.

  “This is so lame,” Owen said. “Carrie knows it, but she doesn’t count. Nobody else can do it.”

  I knew I couldn’t. Only the famous ending lines.

  “Anybody?” said Owen, looking smug.

  Billy opened his mouth slightly. For a high school kid, I had found him well-read. He seemed to be mouthing the lines with Carrie. But he stayed silent.

  Carrie came to the rescue and began reciting it again, repeating the last line she’d already spoken.

  “Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

  Though as for that the passing there

  Had worn them really about the same.

  And both that morning equally lay

  In leaves no step had trodden black.

  ‘Oh, I kept the first for another day!

  Yet knowing how way lead on to way,

  I doubted if I should ever come back.”

  She paused, looking around at everyone. No one knew them.

  Carrie continued,

  “I shall be telling this with a sigh

  Somewhere ages and ages hence:”

  Suddenly, I heard the more familiar last lines in my head. Billy too, because we said them together with Carrie in a loud chorus,

  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

  —I took the road less traveled by

  And that has made all the difference.”

  Carrie said, “A poem worth remembering and remembered because it is good.”

  Owen broke the spell by saying triumphantly, “But, by going with Frost, you are taking the road more traveled by, are you not? Anyway, it’s trite stuff.”

  “Always the last word. It seems trite because it is so well known. If it were inherently trite, it would not be so well known,” Carrie said sharply.

  “She got you, Owen,” I said.

  Mindy’s face brightened. Owen had hurt her feelings with his earlier insult.

  “Listen, friends, Romans, ushers,” I continued, using a turn of phrase that surprised even myself, and made me feel I was inhabiting Mrs. Roe’s skin. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Did you hear all that?” I asked Spence in a low voice.

  Spence had been sitting on a lobby bench, as he often did, biding his time before starting with the cleaning.

  “Sure enough did. Follow me outside.”

  We went outside toward Spence’s car. I think he wanted to make it seem like there was a reason for our going out together, beyond just chatting. He opened his trunk and grabbed something, a replacement rubber belt for our main vacuum cleaner.

  “I’m going to need to show you something later after everyone’s gone,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Just wait.”

  “Spence, come on.”

  “Not yet. But, yes sir, I did. That young man can razzle-dazzle, but he thinks the sun rises to hear the cock crow. Needs to grow more knowledge.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, though I needed to think through what Spence meant exactly.

  “A tin can makes a racket with a few pebbles in it. He set you up with a lie.” Spence closed the trunk hard to emphasize his point.

  “He sure did.”

  “Needed bringing down a peg. Anyway, I need to change the belt and tighten the pin in that vacuum.”

  “Come on, Spence. Tell me what you know.”

  “I need Samantha gone first,” Spence insisted.

  “Samantha? Spence, you’ve got my mind racing.”

  Samantha came out from the office door as we entered the lobby. I called out, “Good night.”

  She gave me a stiff nod and made her way past us. When she was outside, I said, “Spence, please put me out of my misery.”

  “Hold your water. How about fetching me a flashlight?” The expression across his face brimmed over with mischief.

  “How come?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I retrieved a flashlight from the office. As soon as Samantha had driven off, he led me outside the building again and over to the side where he’d found Bullock’s body. The area was dark, concealed from street lights or the marquee. I was about bursting with curiosity.

  “What are you doing, Spence?”

  “Turn that flashlight on and shine over at that juniper bush, the one where I found Mr. Bullock.”

  “Spence, what the—”

  “Just do it, Nate.”

  Spence moved into the juniper bushes, parting their prickly branches until he got close to the brick. I gave an involuntary shudder as I remembered the sight of Bullock’s body.

  “Over here,” he said.

  He reached down, tore off something, and made his way back. In his hand was a leaf of poison ivy.

  “Spence, don’t play around with that stuff. That’s poison ivy.”

  He folded it into his mouth and chewed.

  “Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?” I almost screamed.

  He continued to chew for a few moments as I stood waiting for an explanation. Spence had to know what he was doing. He always did. He spat the resulting wad onto the asphalt in a long, practiced arc like it was spent chewing tobacco.

  “It don’t bother me. I work around it all the time. Early spring, I start eating it. Get mune to it. A trick my daddy taught me. Would make a salad with it—if I liked the way it taste.”

  He watched me thinking. He gave another spit, a smaller one this time. Suddenly, I understood where he was heading.

  “Spence, you’re a genius.”

  My mind shifted into overdrive. Chances were that the person who killed Bullock had a breakout of poison ivy.

  “Them junipers, choked with it toward the back. Been meaning to do something about it. It’s been almost a week since Mr. Bullock was killed. I’m thinking. Now it can take a while for blisters to show. Next day mostly. But a week, maybe longer, if the first time.”

  “Have you told Detective Riggs about this?” I asked.

  “Naw,” he said with a chuckle.

  “We need to tell him. We’ve got to tell him.”

  “It ain’t hard evidence. Don’t want to make too much of it.
Just something gets you wondering a different way.”

  “Detective Riggs could use it.”

  “Likely not. But, in my observing, don’t see no one with no blisters. Like I say, can take a while.”

  “I haven’t either—though I haven’t been looking,” I said.

  “It ain’t much,” Spence said. “Anyway, I’ve got a funny feeling about what happened to poor Mr. Bullock. Let’s be watchful. Not me so much. I move about and nobody see me, pay me no mind. Maybe you.”

  “Me?”

  “Nate, I know Milton didn’t do it.”

  “Why would anyone want to harm me?”

  “Whoever killed Mr. Bullock won’t right in the head. Crazy. This worries my thinking—you making the deposit now.”

  “So, who did it, Spence? We’ve come up with blanks. We’ve been through all the possibilities.”

  “Sometimes, it’s the dogs that don’t bark will bite you bad. I’ve seen this to be true.”

  “Who?”

  “How about Miss. Hicks?”

  “Samantha?”

  “Don’t know we can rule her out.”

  “She’s hard to figure. Tell you the truth, she is kind of creepy. Dead to the world,” I said.

  “She might be big enough to bring Mr. Bullock down,” Spence noted.

  “I guess she does have a nasty temper. I’ve seen it flash once or twice, and it was scary. Wouldn’t want to get on her bad side, as I think about it.”

  “If she wanted, she could flatten you like she was laying asphalt like you was a week-old grape,” Spence said.

  “True enough,” I admitted, recalling again one of the cold looks she had given me.

  “She and Mr. Bullock didn’t get along. Am I right?” Spence said.

  “She ignored him, mostly, Spence. I don’t think she liked his dirty talk. Did it upset her? Not enough to kill him. There’s fire in her. I see that now, though I used to think she was more a block of ice. But she left early that evening, about ten o’clock.”

  “She’s a snake,” Spence added, scratching his chin in thought.

  “Snake?”

  “Lot of creatures come to my mind. Take the sow me and my daddy tangled with on the farm. She was just a regular sow, peaceful, her piglets sucking on their mammy’s teats. But one day she ate one of them and ran off, crazy. Me and my daddy hit the woods to go kill her. Had to. She had the froth in her mouth. Rabies. So we killed her. Burned her. Buried her deep.”