When Will the Dead Lady Sing?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “I didn’t mean to.” It was Walker’s quavery voice, Walker’s whine. This kid might be part of our family after all. He handed me the pup and pulled on the shirt, muttering, “It wasn’t exactly my fault.”

  “Whose fault was it?”

  “I—uh—I had a match and Lulu jumped up on me, and I dropped it into the hay.”

  “Don’t you blame this on Lulu. You were smoking in the barn and set it on fire. Let’s keep that in the forefront of this conversation, all right?”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” he protested, reaching again for the pup and cradling it under his chin.

  I gave him the look I send down from my bench when a prisoner is trying to make excuses and we both know he’s guilty. “But you did cause the fire.”

  He looked at his filthy sneakers like they were the only interesting thing on his horizon. “Yes, ma’am.” He swiped his eyes with one arm.

  I forced my voice to be stern. “And you were smoking again.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” That was almost a whisper. “But I won’t anymore. I’ve quit.”

  “Your daddy’s insurance company is going to have to pay a lot of money to build Uncle Ridd a new barn. Do you know that?”

  His eyes flashed. “Daddy had nothing to do with it. I’ll pay Uncle Ridd back. I’ve got lots of money in the bank.”

  “That’s your college fund,” I reminded him. “Insurance will pay for the barn, but your daddy isn’t going to be happy.”

  He stuck out his lower lip and sulked.

  “And Uncle Ridd’s going to have to repaint his house where the fire hoses have knocked off the paint. He may want you to help him.”

  The lower lip jutted out a little more. Work and Tad had never been friends. He scuffed the grass with one toe and didn’t look at me. The pup reached up and licked his chin.

  When I saw a tear glisten and fall to the toe of his sneaker, I relented a little. “But thank you for saving Lulu and the pups. And Starfire. That took a lot of courage. Horses are generally scared of fire. How’d you manage it?”

  He looked up with a flicker of pride. “I took off my shirt and covered his head; then I led him out. I tied him to the railing by the steps while I called 911, but then—then—”

  “Then you got a little scared of Uncle Ridd and decided to ride off into the sunset.”

  “I didn’t get scared! It was Starfire. He was real jumpy because of the fire, so he was plunging all over the place. I was afraid he’d pull down the porch. I untied him to ride him across the yard, but he jerked the rein away and bolted into the field. I been looking for that dratted horse all afternoon.” His eyes were stormy, not the least bit repentant. Before I could reply, he added, “Mama would die if I lost her horse.”

  His daddy would have said, “Mama would kill me if I lost her horse.” I gave him points for that distinction. “So what did you do then?”

  “I took off after him, but I tripped over Feisty, who was waddling across the grass. I didn’t have time to put him in a safe place, so I dropped my shirt, grabbed him up and took him with me. It took ages to catch Starfire, and by then we were lost. We must have walked a hundred miles. I thought we’d never get out of there!” His eyes flickered with the memory of what must have been very real fear. Tad had never ridden tractors like Bethany and Cricket. I doubted if he’d ever been in the cornfield before, and ten acres can seem like the whole world to a child.

  “How did you get found again?”

  “Starfire finally got calm, so I led him to a rock and climbed on his back. I didn’t have a saddle or bridle, so I rode bareback.” Again, that flicker of pride. “We rode around for a while until I saw trees that looked like the ones beside your road and headed that way. It was hard getting through them”—he looked ruefully down at his scratches—“but when we came out, we were across from Mr. Spence’s pasture. Starfire was real thirsty, and I knew the fishing pond was over here, so I brought him for a drink. We were coming back as soon as he’d rested a little.”

  I didn’t say whether I believed that or not. I had another worry right then. “You didn’t drink that water, did you?”

  He screwed up his face. “No way. It’s full of cow poop.” He sighed. “I sure am thirsty.”

  “Let’s go back, then.” I nodded toward Feisty. “Hollis is out looking for him. She rounded up Lulu and the others, but she’s worried that Feisty got stuck in the barn.”

  “Is the barn real bad?”

  “It’s gone. The roof caved in before I left.”

  He took a step back, eyes wide. “I can’t go back there. Uncle Ridd will kill me!”

  “I doubt that. He’ll be mad, sure, but Pop and I won’t let him kill you. My guess is you’re in for some serious weeding and paint scraping in the next few days, though.”

  “I’m not going back! I won’t!” He flung the pup at me and dashed toward Starfire, who was taking a drink down beside the dock. Tad pelted along the dock, clutched Starfire’s mane, and flung himself on the horse’s back. The next minute, horse and boy were galloping toward the far horizon.

  “Tad! Wait!” I was calling to the wind.

  Furious and exhausted, I headed home. I wasn’t sure I could walk another quarter of a mile in my fancy shoes, but I sure couldn’t walk a foot on gravel without them. I was relieved to hear a vehicle tearing down the road.

  Barely able to lift my arm, I flagged down Ridd’s truck, plopped the pup on his front seat, and climbed up after it. “Are you just getting here?”

  “No, I’ve been here for an hour. There’s nothing more we can do right now, and since I was blocking his car, Daddy sent me looking for you.” He frowned.“Where the Sam Hill have you been? You look like you’ve been through the wars.”

  “A couple,” I agreed, slamming my door. “I was looking for Tad.”

  “You couldn’t find him?” Ridd sat there without putting the truck in gear. He looked real worried, and no wonder. This was the first time Walker and Cindy had ever gone off and left their kids with anybody except her parents.

  “Oh, I found him, over yonder by the pond. We had a nice little chat. But he refused to come back to your place. He’s run off on Starfire.”

  Ridd shrugged. “He won’t go far without somebody to wait on him hand and foot.”

  “Honey!” I chided him. “Granted he hasn’t grown up as rough as you two did—”

  Ridd snorted. “I doubt if he’s ever had to lift a finger for himself. He has to be reminded every morning to make his own bed and hang up his clothes, and when I asked him to weed the garden this morning, he told me he’d rather not, he doesn’t like getting dirty and he’s ‘a bit nervous, ’ ”—he sketched quotes—“around bugs. How can any boy of ten be scared of bugs? And when I told him it was an order, not a request, he pulled up a whole row of leaf lettuce and told me he thought lettuce only grew in balls.” Ridd pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “Face it, Mama, the kid’s sweet, but he’s a loser—and now he’s burned down my barn!” He laid his head on the wheel and sobbed.

  I touched his shaking shoulder. “You’re scared and worried, and that’s okay, honey, but don’t take it out on Tad. He’s scared, too. Scared you’re gonna kill him for burning the barn, scared Walker will kill him because he carries the insurance on it.” I peered across Ridd toward the pasture. “I just hope he comes back.”

  Ridd put the car into gear and started down the road. “Oh, he’ll come back when he gets hungry or sleepy. I can’t see His Highness scavenging food or sleeping rough.”

  But Ridd was wrong. Tad did not come home.

  7

  We hung around Ridd’s kitchen drinking iced tea and discussing what ought to be done about the barn, but we didn’t start worrying about Tad until it began to get dark. That’s when I got ready to call Buster and have the entire sheriff’s department scouring the county for my grandson.

  Ridd, Joe Riddley, and even Martha voted me down, willing to wait a while longer for him to come home on his own.
“We don’t want to embarrass him any more than we have to,” Martha reminded me.

  “Nail his hide to what’s left of the barn, maybe, but not embarrass him,” Ridd agreed sourly.

  You may be wondering why we weren’t frantic. An out-of-state friend assures me, “If my twelve-year-old granddaughter disappeared for several hours, with or without a horse, I’d have the police, the National Guard, and the Royal Canadian Mounties out looking for her, and her parents would never forgive me if I didn’t involve them.”

  If it had been one of our granddaughters, we’d probably have done the same. If we’d lived in a city among strangers, we’d have been terrified. And if Tad had disappeared without the horse, we’d have worried that he would thumb a ride with the wrong person.

  As it was, three of us around that table could remember that Ridd and Walker had each taken off in a huff around Tad’s age. Ridd slept all night in the cornfield and crept in to make breakfast as an apology. Walker bedded down with a friend, then called us the next morning to demand, “Are you ready for me to come home yet?”—having given us time to straighten up our act. We all figured Tad was just running off his temper and putting off the time when he’d have to come home and accept his punishment.

  Still, even though he had Starfire with him, I kept picturing him trying to jump a fence and breaking his neck, the horse stumbling in a hole and falling on him, or a stranger trying to steal that gorgeous horse and child. When I mentioned each of the possibilities, Joe Riddley reminded me that it’s hard to kidnap a child with a horse; Hope County is small, rural and basically still a safe place; and Tad has ridden horses since he was six and was a good, careful rider.

  Joe Riddley was ready to call Walker, however, until Ridd disagreed. “You know what would happen, Daddy. If we tell him Tad’s run away, we’ll have to explain why, and you know exactly what Walker would do.”

  We certainly did. Walker would hop the next plane so furious that Tad burned down the barn, he might forget that the boy was ten years old and scared. Walker was just learning to be a good daddy to Tad. None of us wanted Tad coming home to a furious father who’d say things he would later regret.

  “We could at least go out looking for him,” I suggested. So Martha started putting together a scratch supper while Ridd and Joe Riddley went driving up and down logging roads and tractor trails. I drove over to Walker’s, thinking maybe the boy had gone home. He wasn’t there, but I did see crumbs on the counter and a smear of peanut butter that indicated he’d swung by for something to eat. The pantry had no bread or peanut butter, so I figured he’d taken them with him. I hurried upstairs to his room and saw that his sleeping bag was also missing from the closet shelf. The little rascal—his whole family were seasoned campers. He had come home long enough to provision himself for at least one night of sleeping rough.

  I did take time, though, to use Cindy’s directory to call her friends, thinking maybe Tad had gone to one of them. He hadn’t. I made them promise not to alert his parents, explaining that he had camping supplies with him and promising we’d call Cindy and Walker if Tad weren’t home by the next day.

  I returned to Ridd and Martha’s. Joe Riddley came back at dark, and Ridd half an hour later. We all sat on the side porch not eating much, exhausted and drained. A gentle rain had started falling. “He’s gonna get wet,” Ridd said, and sounded downright satisfied.

  I understood that he was still mad at Tad for putting us through that horrendous day, but grandmothers have more patience and sympathy than parents and uncles. “I hope he doesn’t catch a cold or get bitten by a snake,” I worried aloud.

  “Is Tad gonna die?” Cricket asked, looking at our long faces.

  “We don’t think so, sweetheart,” Martha told him, “but nobody knows where he is.”

  “God knows,” he reminded us. “Time to pray.”

  I don’t know how families get through rough times without praying together. We all felt better after we’d spent time asking Tad’s third parent to take special care of him that night. But when I asked God to help Tad find a dry place to sleep if he was outdoors, Cricket interrupted, his lower lip stuck out like a plate, “You mean Tad gets to camp, and I don’t?”

  “Camping without your parents can be scary, tiger,” his granddaddy reminded him.

  Cricket thought that over, then closed his eyes. “Don’t let him be scared, but don’t you let him have fun without me.” That ended the prayer.

  Joe Riddley stood up and headed for the phone. “It’s too early for a missing persons report, but I am gonna call Buster.” We heard him explain the situation and could tell that the sheriff was promising to alert all his deputies to watch for Tad and the horse.

  It was late when Joe Riddley and I finally admitted Tad might not be coming home, and left. He gave a little laugh as he walked me to our car. “I was sitting there,” he confided softly, “wondering why those folks didn’t go home so we could go up to bed.” His voice sounded a little wistful.

  “Do you miss this place?” I asked, keeping my voice down.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. He turned and I knew in spite of the darkness, he could see every inch of it in his head. He pulled me close to him under one arm and spoke into my hair. “We did the right thing, Little Bit, but it’s gonna take some getting used to.”

  I turned and threw my arms around his chest. “I’d rather get used to it with you than anybody else.” We stood there a minute, enjoying the closeness, then I pulled away. “This place smells awful. Let’s go home where we can breathe.”

  When we got there, I had so much smoke and soot in my hair, I had to wash and dry it before bed. Phyllis wouldn’t be open again until Tuesday, and I couldn’t lay my head on the pillow reeking of smoke. As I slid in beside Joe Riddley, he murmured sleepily, “Know what? That was Burlin Bullock admiring your roses this morning. I ran into him at Gusta’s party. If you’d known, you could have invited him in for coffee. He’s real nice.”

  I’d been enjoying the cool sheet beneath me. Now an unpleasant chill slid all the way up my body. I gave a quick little shiver. “You talked to him?”

  His voice grew drowsier and drowsier. “Just for a little while. Mostly about Georgia’s football team. He was at the university when we were, but he and I never—” He slid into sleep.

  I lay awake for ages, alternating between worrying about Tad and concocting reasons I could give for leaving town that week.

  Neither of us slept well until nearly dawn, then we both slept like dead people until Ridd called at nine. “Tad’s still not back. Martha’s got to work, but I’m going out looking for him and leaving Bethany here in case he comes home. One of Walker’s associates is coming, too, to assess the damage. Can you all eat on your own?” We usually went to their house for Sunday dinner.

  “We were eating on our own before you were born,” I reminded him. “We’ll go out somewhere.” Joe Riddley was still snoring beside me. He hadn’t even heard the phone. I hung up and closed my eyes, promising myself I’d snooze just one more minute. When I woke again, we barely had time to dress and sling the Sunday paper into the living room on our way to church.

  In the narthex, a friend greeted me. “That was a good picture in the paper, Mac.”

  “Thanks,” I told her. “We were all having a great time.” Of course, she was a little late with her compliments. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d been in the Statesman with a bunch of middle-school kids who were conducting a mock magistrate’s court.

  The woman gave me an odd look and walked away.

  Joe Riddley and I took our usual pew, with him on the center aisle. A lot of people turned around to look at us. They must have heard about the fire and wanted us to know they were sympathetic. It wasn’t our barn anymore, but it had been for thirty-five years.

  I was checking my bulletin to see what the first hymn would be when I heard a light wave of whispers coming from the back. About the time it slapped the back of my neck, I heard Joe Riddley offer, “Why don
’t you join us? There’s plenty of room.”

  I looked up to see Burlin Bullock hesitating by our pew. I wished he were somewhere else—Outer Mongolia, for example—but figured the two of them couldn’t come to much harm in church, so I slid down. I took Joe Riddley’s arm to pull him after me, though, so Burlin had to sit on the aisle.

  That was the most restless service I’ve ever attended. Maybe Burlin was used to it, being in politics all his life, but I was distracted by all that whispering and craning of necks toward our pew. In addition to praying for Tad, I added a special prayer of thanksgiving: “Thank you, Lord, for saving me from life in the political fishbowl.”

  I was scared to death Joe Riddley would ask Burlin to join us for dinner and relieved when Burlin turned to Joe Riddley during the last hymn, shook his hand, and slipped out before the benediction. He had ignored me the whole service, for which I was grateful.

  A lot of folks craned their necks to get a glimpse of the famous man as he left. We don’t often get worshipers who’ve appeared on national TV.

  Celebrity dust must have rubbed off on us, because when Joe Riddley and I came through the doors and started down the church steps, everybody down on the sidewalk stopped talking and stood looking up at us. When they saw we’d noticed, they quickly turned away.

  We stopped by the house on our way to the restaurant. My feet were still sore from the day before, and I wanted to put on some everyday shoes.

  As soon as we got in the door, Joe Riddley called Ridd’s—with me standing at his elbow so I could hear. Bethany said they still hadn’t heard from Tad, but added, “Mama told Daddy that if Tad hasn’t come home by night tonight, we have to call Uncle Walker and Aunt Cindy. They may have some idea where he would have gone.”