Michael’s Wife

by Marlys Millhiser

  Laurel had been sitting there in a warm peacefulness, the real world (as Harley called it) far away and hazy, talking about herself as though she spoke of someone else. But now she was aware of that sense of urgency, a desire to get away from this place and back to her own world of the beige bungalow and safety. She had the creepy sensation that images were trying to force their way up through her consciousness, that she soon would be unable to stop them. She had to be safe at home before they swamped her.

  “I have to go, Harley. I left Jimmy with the neighbor and I haven’t had any lunch.” She started to rise and then sat back down, staring at Harley. Nausea and a sweaty weakness came over her.

  The same pinkish rocks and lizards alternately freezing and scurrying … the same place … but she wasn’t seeing Harley McBride.…

  “Hey, this your family? Devereaux?” He pushed a crumpled newspaper at her.

  “I told you to leave me alone, Larry.”

  His long curly hair was tied back with a leather shoestring. His lips looked feminine and pink over the shaggy beard. A beard like Sid’s. Why couldn’t she convince him that he could never be another Sid to her?

  “Just asked you a simple question, Sunny.” Larry leaned against the rock and smiled at her. A lizard darted away from his boot as he stretched out his legs. “You’d better read this.” He tapped the newspaper and put it on her lap. “There’s an article in there about a wealthy Arizona family by the name of D-e-v-e-r-e-a-u-x. Ring a bell?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Larry.”

  “No? Well, I’ll just tell you, Sunny. I was sitting in the two holer reading the toilet paper and came across this article, and this name Devereaux just kind of jumped out at me and I asked myself why? Well, I have a cousin married a Devereaux, but that wasn’t it. Then I remembered a couple of years ago, this man hanging around that place in Colorado where I met you and Sid.…”

  “Larry.…”

  “Now wait, it gets better, this story. This man had a picture and he was showing it around and I said, ‘That’s Sunny,’ and I pointed you out. He looked at you and said, ‘No, that’s blank Devereaux.’ I don’t remember the first name now but the Devereaux stuck because of my cousin. He watched you and Sid for a while and asked some questions and said he was just checking to see if you were all right and I never saw him again and I kind of forgot about it till now.… Getting interested, aren’t you?”

  Sunny picked up the paper. It was really too much to hope for. ONE OF TUCSON’S FIRST FAMILIES. Below the title was a row of pictures with captions. “Paul Elliot Devereaux I, pioneer, land and mining baron of early Arizona, died.…” Her eyes moved to the second picture, “Paul Elliot Devereaux II, author and professor of.…” Again she was disappointed.

  “Janet Hamlin Devereaux”… “Captain Michael James Devereaux, Luke Air Force Base”… “James Michael Devereaux”… Her eyes left the picture of the baby at the end of the row and came back to the picture just before it … those eyes … the mouth … were they familiar or did she just want them to be?

  “Larry, can I have this?”

  “Oh, no.” He tore it away from her and stood up. “I’m going to keep this, Sunny gal.” A slow smile separated his mustache from the shaggy beard. “I can tell by your face that I got the right Devereaux. Tell you what, you be a little nicer to me and I won’t go into Tucson and tell them where you are. Poor little rich girl runs away from home? Something like that?” He started to chuckle.… “And to think I almost wiped my ass on your family.”

  But Sunny didn’t care if Larry Bowman laughed at her. She’d find something to write that name on before she forgot it … Captain Michael James Devereaux, Luke Air Force Base.…

  “Doe Eyes, you going to sit there dreaming? Thought you wanted to go.” Harley stood looking down at her as Larry had. But Harley wasn’t laughing.

  “I’m starting to remember things … being here. Harley, I’d feel better being home right now … I.…”

  “Sure. Want me to drive you?” He helped her up.

  “No. Thanks anyway. I don’t want to leave my car here.”

  He held her arm as they walked down the path. The smell of food came to them from the ranch house, and it seemed that the whole tiny community had gathered on the porch and the steps for lunch. Their noisy chatter and laughter stopped as she and Harley passed. Laurel avoided their eyes for fear she’d recognize some of them.

  “Got half a mind to round up some of the boys for a little target practice. Might scare ’em out.” He opened the door of the pickup and looked past her to the diners on the porch.

  “What if one of the women or children got hurt? Wouldn’t that make you feel like a big man for the rest of your life? Harley, promise me you won’t do it.”

  “Oh, for.…”

  “Please?”

  His glance came back to rest on her. “Okay,” he said softly, a half-grin on his lips that wasn’t in his eyes. “But I’m going to have to tell the sheriff about that new grave over there.”

  “I know.”

  “You’d better get out of here before I do.” Then he bent down and kissed the end of her nose. “Good-bye, Doe Eyes. This time I mean it. Take care of yourself.”

  Laurel watched the old blue pickup until it disappeared and then the dust clouds that traced its path in the sky above the cacti. Even after the dust had settled and the sun had washed the sky clean again, even then she didn’t move.

  Laurel. Sunny. Doe Eyes. Which one? Or was she really any of them?

  23

  “I just couldn’t get those kids to stop horsing around and go to sleep, so I took Jimmy over to his own bed. He snuggled down with his Teddy bear and the puppy and went right off.” Myra opened her screen door and joined Laurel on the front step. “Don’t look so shocked, Laurel, I’ve been checking on him.”

  “It’s not that … I’m just … I’ve had a strange day and I’m not feeling too well.”

  “Come on, I’ll take you over and tuck you in with Jimmy. You probably could use a nap yourself.” Myra took her arm and led her down the steps. “You’re shaking. Do you want me to call your doctor?”

  “No. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.…”

  “That’s funny, I could have sworn I heard Colleen drive in and Clyde bark a few times. Then I was on the phone for a while. I was just coming over to see if Clyde’s barking woke Jimmy when you pulled up.”

  Colleen’s front yard was empty. “Maybe she left again.”

  “Must have.” Myra lowered her voice as they stepped into Laurel’s living room. “All seems quiet here. I hope he didn’t wake up and find himself alone. The colonel’s wife called and talked on and on about this luncheon … I’m on this committee … I couldn’t very well hang up on.…”

  “Myra.” The tingle started casually at the back of Laurel’s neck but grew stronger as it moved down her spine. “Clyde’s not barking.”

  “Puppies sleep soundly some.…”

  But Laurel ran down the hall and into the bedroom before Myra could finish. She grabbed the edge of the crib to keep her balance. No Teddy bear, no puppy.

  No Jimmy.

  “Well, I’ll be … that little squirt must have been playing possum on me. Now don’t look so worried. He couldn’t have gotten far. Probably snuck in the back door to wake up Sherrie.”

  Jimmy was not with Sherrie or in Myra’s house. He was not in the front yard or the back. Both of Colleen’s doors were locked tight. He was not in either of the cars or under the beds. Laurel moved automatically through the search, painfully aware of the silence, the lack of puppy yapping that accompanied Clyde wherever he went.

  They ended up in Laurel’s living room, Myra shaking her head. “I really feel responsible for this. He must have wandered down the road. Let’s split up and you go one way and I’ll go.…”

  “No.” Laurel sat on the lumpy couch. “I’d better stay by the phone. There wasn’t any note.”

  “Note? Jimmy can’
t write.”

  “But if someone took him and didn’t have time to leave a note, he’d call.” How could her own voice sound so remote, detached?

  “Took him … you mean … Laurel Devereaux, that is the most hysterical thing I’ve ever heard. Strange things like that just don’t happen … or not often anyway. Why would anybody … you mean you’re going to sit here while he.…”

  “You … wouldn’t believe the strange things that happen to me, Myra. I know it sounds ridiculous but.…” The telephone’s ringing cracked into the room with a sharp raucous sound. Laurel covered her mouth with her hand, muffling the cry that came out on her breath.

  “Laurel, it’s not what you’re thinking.” But the color had disappeared from Myra’s round cheeks. “I’ll answer it.…”

  “No.” Laurel reached the phone before her friend was halfway across the room. “Hello … hello!” Someone breathed but did not speak. “This is Laurel Devereaux, please answer.”

  “… are you alone?”

  “Yes, I’m alone.” And she gave Myra a warning glance.

  “If you want to see your kid alive”—Laurel lowered herself slowly to the floor—“follow these instructions carefully.” She could barely hear the throaty whisper over the sounds in her head. “Drive down the old road to Tucson. After you pass Florence, slow down but keep going until I contact you. Do not bring anyone with you. Do not contact the police or tell anyone. Have the top down on your car so that I’ll know you are alone. Got that?”

  “Drive down the old road to Tucson, slow down after Florence … oh, please don’t hurt him.”

  “If you call the police or tell anyone, I will kill him.” He hung up with a nasty crash.

  She kneaded the crawling skin on the back of her neck. Her legs felt hot and sticky.…

  Laurel could have sat on the creaky swing, but she sat instead on the wooden steps because the porch light attracted too many creepy bugs to the swing. She curled her arms around her bare, sticky legs and rocked her body back and forth to still her troubled thoughts.

  Fireflies blinked at her from the lilac hedge. The heavy heat of a July night weighed on the world till even the massive oaks in the parking lot seemed to sag under it.

  Dishes clinking in the house behind her made her feel guilty. She should be helping her mother, but she couldn’t summon the energy to stand and walk back into the house.

  A tired shuffle behind her and the screen door creaked open and slammed closed, and she knew her father had come to join her. The swing groaned under his weight. Daddy wasn’t afraid of bugs. Daddy wasn’t afraid of anything. The old resentment rose again inside her. Since she’d started college that resentment had grown harder to put down.

  “Dreaming again?” The familiar tolerant note to his voice that he reserved not just for her but for women in general. John Lawrence had little time for the weak. His pride would never recover from the fact that his only living child was female.

  “Laurel Jean, don’t you think it’s about time you got out of that fairy tale world of yours and started coming to grips with this one? You could start by picking a major.”

  “Oh, Daddy.”

  “Well, we can’t afford to send you to the university indefinitely. You’re going to have to decide what you want to do with your life. You can’t dream the years away forever.” The smell of his cigar smoke hung stagnant on the heat of the night.

  “It’s a hard decision to make.”

  “There’s no decision worth making that isn’t. Can’t you just consider it a challenge?”

  “It’s all so hopeless. What difference does it make what I want to be if someone’s going to drop a bomb and wipe out everything?”

  “That’s what you said when you were in high school and the Russians launched Sputnik. Ran around like Henny Penny with the sky falling in. You’re still here, aren’t you? Have some faith in God.” John Lawrence sighed and rose from the swing to sit beside her. “Look, I know you’re tired of hearing about the Depression and World War II. But those were scary times, too. And.…”

  “Not like this.”

  “Well, you’d better learn to live with it, it’s the only world you’ve got.”

  And they were at the impasse again. He would never understand her, and she could never be quite all that he expected. But she loved him and it hurt that the strange frightening barrier existed, had always been there.

  Laurel looked over her shoulder into the proud heavy face and whispered, “You’ll never forgive me if I don’t make it in life, will you?”

  “The one thing I couldn’t forgive, Laurel Jean, is if you ever stopped trying.” He got to his feet and walked back into the house, slamming the screen, leaving behind him the harsh anger of his voice and the smell of his cigar.…

  Myra stood above her with the telephone receiver in her hand. “Laurel?” The plumpness of her face seemed to sag. “I’ve called the police, and the control tower is contacting Michael. Don’t get up. This is all my fault.”

  Laurel sat up and, holding onto the edge of the stereo, pulled herself to her feet. “What did you tell the police?”

  “That Jimmy had been kidnapped. They’re coming right over. Lay down on the.…”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes, but.…”

  “Myra, he said he’d kill Jimmy if I called the police … or brought anyone with me. I have to get out of here before they come.”

  “You’re not going to do what he said? You’re in no shape to drive anywhere.”

  “He doesn’t want Jimmy. He’s just using him to get me. Maybe I can talk him into not hurting Jimmy if.…”

  “Who wants you? Why?”

  “He wants to kill me … I can’t quite remember why or who.…” Laurel was out the door and running toward the Jaguar.

  “Come back. You can’t—”

  She couldn’t risk waiting for the police even though she knew she was doing a stupid thing. She couldn’t risk Jimmy. This is one time I won’t stop trying, Daddy. But Myra was right. She shouldn’t be driving. She had to fight fatigue and a funny lightheaded drowsiness as well as city traffic. Once out in the country, she had to fight harder. The road stretched long and straight and endless, the desert on either side a monotone of dun-brown with the green of the cactus muted by drenching sunlight. The sky, an eternity of cloudless uniform blue without even a contrail to liven it up.

  Laurel tried not to think of what might be happening to Jimmy; she tried counting fence posts. But that made her dizzy. She knew she was driving too fast. When she passed the turnoff to the Milner Homestead, Laurel couldn’t believe she’d been there only a short while ago. Everyone would be gone now … she’d known it was wrong, but she’d warned Rollo that Harley planned to bring the sheriff … that all seemed so long ago … hardly any cars on the road.…

  The Florence turn off just ahead … she slowed the Jaguar to about fifty. Leaning forward over the wheel in the most uncomfortable position she could find, she analyzed herself. She felt drunk, the high buzzy drunk before the low sets in, and she didn’t trust this feeling.

  A semitrailer roared up behind her. It bleated a warning and passed, its tailwind throwing the little car about. Sounds—the truck, the rumble of the Jaguar, even the buzzing of the tires on the warmed pavement—were magnified in her ears. And the beat of her heart, the pulse of blood through the veins in her neck, all seemed to make noise. An almost unbearable racket.

  Something was happening to her or was about to happen. She should pull over and stop until it passed. But she couldn’t. She had to get to Jimmy. Paul’s face floated into the windshield, the sad knowing half-smile under the thin mustache.… “Man was nature’s one great error … the most destructive of her predators … a most unnecessary creation.…”

  Laurel jerked and so did the Jaguar. Two right wheels bit into the shoulder, trying to pull the car with them. The steering wheel fought to free itself from her hands and a concrete abutment above a culvert loomed ahead. She foug
ht the skidding, swerving car back onto the road, missing the abutment by a bare foot. Rushing air screamed through the open car.

  Wide awake and tingling now, Laurel slowed the Jaguar even more, searching the sides of the road for some contact with the man who had Jimmy. How would she know? Had she passed them already? What was Jimmy feeling now?

  Far ahead, a car was parked at the side of the road. Laurel’s legs trembled. Drawing closer, she could see it was a small Volkswagen. She pulled behind it and as she turned off the motor, a puppy’s injured yelping replaced the roar of the Jaguar.

  The Volkswagen was locked and empty, but Clyde, tied by a short rope to a rear wheel, had almost strangled himself as he’d wrapped the rope around the wheel. He lay still and whimpering as she untied him, and then free, he scampered about frantically, jumping up to nip at her legs and then off to anoint a cactus and back again.

  “Clyde, where’s Jimmy?” She leaned against the Volkswagen and looked about her, waiting for some kind of signal. The trembling took ahold of her again … nothing moved … except the puppy.…

  She watched the old blue pickup until it disappeared and then the dust clouds that traced its path in the sky above.

  “Harley?”

  “Good-bye, Doe Eyes. Take care of yourself.”

  Sid’s head lay heavy on her lap. He smelled of warm beer and sweat. “What we had was nothing to be ashamed of. It was good, Sunny. Never be sorry for love, Sunny.…”

  Sunny looked at the note again. “Captain Michael Devereaux, Luke A.F.B.” She’d walked a long way from the corral, trying to work off her confusion. Should she do something about this before Sid came back or wait and discuss it with him?

  “I’ll wait. Sid will know what to do.” She turned back, taking her bearings from the nearby mountains.

  A grunting and crashing across the little gully ahead brought her up short. Two men rolled over each other on the packed desert floor, kicking and jabbing. They came to the edge of the gully and then rolled and slid to its bottom without letting go of each other. A dark stain on the gully’s side … where they’d marked their trail in blood.…