Joe Riddley went to the nursery and I worked on taxes, but the whole time I was carrying on a private conversation with the Boss upstairs. “You know where Hubert was. Why won’t he tell us? If you’ll give me a hint, it could save his neck. He’s a stubborn old coot, but I don’t believe he killed anybody. At least, I hope he didn’t. Help!”
That’s the first time I ever knew the IRS to be an answer to a prayer. I was typing away on our tax returns when suddenly I put two and two together and got four.
I looked up the number for Wainwright Antiques. “Hey, Maynard,” I greeted him, “how’s business?”
“Just wonderful, Miss Mac. I got in the whole estate of a family from Macon, and they had some wonderful china you might want to stop by and see.”
“Call Georgia Bullock over at Annie Dale’s. She collects porcelain. I’m in the giving-away mode right now, not the adding-on mode. But listen, I called about your daddy.”
His sigh was so deep it engulfed me. “I’m plumb disgusted with him. If the old cuss would just say where he was for one half hour, he could clear himself. But he clams up and mutters about folks meddling in his ‘bidness.’ ”
“Well, I have an idea. Do you still have a key to the store?”
“Yeah, I had it when he was sick and I was running things, and I never bothered to give it back.”
“Good. After he leaves tonight, I want you to go look for a secret stash.”
“Drugs?” That was a preposterous idea, and we both knew it.
“No, money. Your daddy made a lot on that garage sale we had together last month, right?”
“More than six thousand dollars. I took anything of historic value, of course, but there wasn’t much of that. He and Mama preferred ugly modern stuff. They’d filled the whole place with it, and most of it sold. People thought they were getting treasures.”
“He also sold his tractors and mower and your mama’s old car, right? For cash?”
Maynard has always been smart. “You think he’s hidden all that cash somewhere? Why?”
“So he didn’t have to deposit it and pay taxes on it.”
He thought that over. “He’s ornery enough to do that, but he’s too smart to keep money lying around where it could burn up in a fire.”
“Yeah, but what if he had a good fireproof safe?”
“There’s no safe. Daddy took out the one in the store years ago and put up that sign, ‘Less than fifty dollars worth of cash on the premises.’ He runs back and forth to the bank all day long with little dribbles to deposit. You ought to know that.”
“Everybody in town knows it, which is why money would be safe in the store. I have an idea where he keeps it.” I told him where to look. “If there’s nothing there, you haven’t lost anything except a little time. If there is—well, I think he ran by the store that night to make a withdrawal from his private piggy bank before going out on the town.”
“That could be it,” Maynard admitted. “He never carries much cash for the same reason he won’t keep money on the premises—he doesn’t want to get robbed. And he claims credit cards are tools of the devil to make a man spend more than he has. But I heard that my old man was standing drinks for the house Monday night like he was buying votes. He’s gotten awful interested in politics lately. You don’t reckon he’s planning on running for office, do you?”
“I sure hope not. We’ve got enough problems in this state without your daddy helping to run things. Bye, now. Good luck.” I hadn’t mentioned that Hubert might have been trying to buy the goodwill of a man whose sister he was interested in. That would be between Hubert, Burlin, and Maynard, if it came to that.
Since there wasn’t another blessed thing I could do that day, I read the new Statesman, which had just been delivered. Gusta would be as happy as I that the Statesman’s pictures from her Saturday Do showed her house to advantage, included a lovely shot of her with Burlin and Georgia, and didn’t have one single picture of me.
Maynard called as I was winding up for the day. “Daddy shut early to dress for some political rally, so I came on over. You were absolutely right. That old chest freezer at the back is full of money in plastic bags. I didn’t touch it, just verified that it’s there. But it looks to me like Daddy has enough to take off for a South Seas island. Do you realize if he’d kicked the bucket, I’d have donated that old thing to a thrift store and probably never lifted the lid?”
“You’d have made somebody mighty happy.”
“I don’t know what to do now, though. I hate to go off and leave it unlocked, but I can’t find a key.”
“It’s been unlocked since the garage sale,” I pointed out. “Nobody knows the money is there but Hubert, you, and me, and while I might be tempted to rob the old fool—after all, he couldn’t report the theft, could he?—I am in a wheelchair this week. Lock up the store and go on home.”
He laughed. “Okay. I guess I lived in New York too long. But I can’t wait for Daddy to get home tonight. He and I are going to have a delightful little chat.”
I was shutting down my computer when Burlin poked his head in my door. “Hello. About to go home?”
Why couldn’t the man leave me alone? I would have snapped off a reply if I hadn’t been raised by a mother who sent me daily into the world with that Southern mother’s mantra, “Be sweet now.” I stifled a sigh. “I’m waiting for Joe Riddley. Did you drown at the barbeque last night?”
“No, but there’s always tonight. Looks like there’s going to be another shower, and we have a meeting over in Louisville. Before we go, Georgia and Binky asked me to stop by and see how you are feeling.”
“I’m feeling better. Still a bit confined, but a sprained ankle isn’t life threatening.”
“That’s good.” He looked around to be sure nobody was there, then came to my desk and leaned over to murmur, “I also wanted to say thanks for yesterday afternoon. I enjoyed it, but I hope I didn’t get you into trouble.”
He was too close, and I couldn’t run away.
I put both hands on his arms to push him away.
A flash went off at my office door.
“Wha—?” We spoke in unison and saw a camera poised for another shot.
“Stop it!” Burlin commanded. He hurried to the door with his hands in front of his face.
“He’s in here,” somebody shouted in the parking lot. In another second, the back door to the store opened and pandemonium broke loose. From the noise, there were four or five reporters out there, shouting questions at Burlin and sounding exactly like Joe Riddley’s hounds at feeding time. Burlin called over one shoulder, “I’m sorry,” as he hurried out.
He had pulled the door closed behind him. Through it, I heard his muffled voice. “Let’s go to the parking lot, folks. This is no place for an interview.”
Through the window, I saw them press around him asking questions. I saw him grow still, then shake his head. For once, he seemed to have nothing to say. One of the reporters got right in his face to ask something. Burlin shoved him out of the way and headed out of the parking lot, walking fast. They scurried along behind him like a stream of ants heading to the sugar bowl.
How did the reporters know Burlin was at my office? Why were they more interested in him today than yesterday? And would that dreadful picture appear in the paper, as well?
18
I was still shaking and nauseated when Joe Riddley arrived to take me home. “Is something the matter? You look like you’ve been wrung out and hung to dry.”
I took deep breaths to keep from losing my afternoon candy bar. “Burlin Bullock dropped by to see how I was doing, and a bunch of reporters—they—” I couldn’t go on.
“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” He held out a hand to help me into the wheelchair.
I flung myself at his chest. “No, but they scared the living daylights out of me. They’re vampires.”
He stroked my hair. “They’ll leave as soon as the Bullocks do, and we can all get back to normal.”
At the house, he again fixed supper—which, thanks to Clarinda, entailed nothing more than heating up homemade vegetable soup and corn bread and dishing up a congealed salad. During the meal Tad was no longer sullen and defiant, but he was wary—watching each minute to see if he’d done anything else that might make us mad.
I could tell he wished he was at home, where his mama would hug him and tell him it wasn’t really his fault the barn got burned—it was an old, dry wood building—and he was a real hero for saving Starfire. Then his daddy—having already pounded things in New York City and gotten over the worst of his anger—would say something like, “I wish you hadn’t done it, but I did pretty bad things when I was a kid myself, so just don’t do anything like that again.” Then Tad could forget the whole thing.
Except he wouldn’t forget it. Every time he saw a lighted match, he’d flinch somewhere deep inside, knowing he had burned down his uncle’s barn.
Joe Riddley had a meeting that evening, so I let Tad paint his horse for half an hour while I read; then I asked him to fetch us both some lime sherbet and sent up a prayer for help.
He settled into the chair across from me and we ate in silence a few minutes. Finally, I asked, “Do you know the hardest thing to do in the whole world—and the bravest?”
He looked uncertainly at me, waiting for me to give him the answer. I didn’t say a word. I wanted him to think about it. He took a bite of sherbet and rolled it around on his tongue. “Climbing a really steep cliff?”
“No.”
“Saving somebody’s life when it’s really dangerous?”
“No.”
“I give up. What?”
“Taking all your courage in your hands, going to somebody you have done something wrong to, and saying, ‘It was my fault. I did it. There is nothing I can do to take away the fact that I did it, but I am really, really sorry. Will you forgive me? And what do you want me to do about it?’ ”
He squirmed. “That’s not hard.” He bent back over his bowl, presenting me with the top of his head.
“Don’t you believe it. It’s so hard that big, strong men have a hard time doing it. But they need to. You know why?”
He shook his head without looking up.
“Because there’s a program written into the universe—sort of a computer game—”
He flicked a glance my way, so I could tell he was interested even though he was pretending his bowl of sherbet was the most fascinating thing in the world.
“What kind of game?” he finally asked, when I hadn’t said anything for several bites.
“Well, it works like this. When somebody does something wrong to somebody else, the person who did it starts collecting points for guilt, and the person who was wronged starts collecting points for blame. As the game goes on, each of them gets more and more points, until one person has a whole lot of guilt and the other one a whole lot of blame. As they collect points, they get fatter and fatter.”
“Do they get stronger, too?”
“Not at all. Getting bigger is a problem, because at the very end of the game, there’s a tiny door they have to go through. Only skinny people can win.”
“So does anybody ever win?”
“Yep. There’s a built-in eraser, a magic formula that erases points. The person who did the bad thing has to say two secret words: ‘I’m sorry.’ The other person has to say three secret words back: ‘I forgive you.’ Then all their points disappear.”
“They don’t get to fight?” I could tell he was disappointed.
“All brave things don’t require fighting, honey. It takes a very brave person to use those magic words, because the other person may turn and walk away. However, if either person says his or her words, their own points get erased, even if the other person doesn’t say their secret words back. Those words are the only thing that can make anybody thin enough to get through the door at the end of the game and win.”
Parents and grandparents are such fools. We continue to hope that by teaching children the right things, they will immediately jump up like children in soppy stories and say, “Oh, let me do the right thing right now!”
Tad stood up. “I want some more sherbet.” As he left the room, I heard him mutter, “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Horsefeathers,” I called after him. “Of course it was your fault. You were smoking in the barn and your match set it on fire.” I tried not to sound mad, but I wanted to shake the child until his teeth rattled. “Come here,” I told him. Sullenly, he came to stand in the kitchen doorway. “Look, let me spell it out for you. You burned the barn. It was a bad thing to do. But you don’t have to live the rest of your life carrying that extra weight around. You need to be brave enough to tell Uncle Ridd and your daddy you’re sorry. They may get very angry, fuss for a few days—”
“Especially Daddy,” he muttered, scuffing one toe on the threshold.
That’s when I got the inspiration I’d been hoping for. “When you tell your daddy, I want you to start by saying, ‘Daddy, do you remember when you borrowed Pop’s car after he told you not to?’ Wait just a minute for him to remember, then say, ‘And remember how sorry you were? Well, I’m real sorry that I burned down Uncle Ridd’s barn, too, and I’ll do whatever you want me to, to show I’m sorry.”
“He’ll put me on restriction for a month. No television, no video games—”
“Don’t you deserve that, for burning down the barn?”
“No! I didn’t mean to do it, Me-mama. I told you. It was Lulu!” He ran back into the kitchen and I heard him open the freezer door.
In a few minutes he carried back another bowl of sherbet and asked, like nothing had happened in between, “What happened with Daddy and the car?”
“Your daddy had just gotten his license and wasn’t an expert driver yet. One night when Pop and I went to a meeting in my car, Walker took Pop’s car to go see a friend. The friend’s road had a deep drainage ditch on each side, and Walker backed into one of the ditches. His back wheels were a good three feet lower than his front ones.” I saw a flicker of a smile on Tad’s lips. “It’s funny now, but it was-n’t then. To make things worse, his friend’s daddy went and got his truck and a chain to pull him out, but the roads were slippery from a shower, and the truck slid into the ditch on the other side. In the process, it pulled your granddaddy’s bumper off. Poor Walker had to call Pop to come with his tractor to pull out both the car and the truck.”
“Did Pop kill him?”
“You’re here, aren’t you? But Pop got real mad at Walker because Walker kept trying to give us all kinds of excuses for what he’d done—he needed to go over to that boy’s house, the bank was slippery, the family didn’t have enough light to see the ditches. Pop finally told him to hush, that he didn’t want to hear another word out of him until he was ready to say ‘It’s my fault. I did it, and I’m real sorry. What do you want me to do about it?’ I thought Walker was going to live in silence forever. He didn’t say a word for three days. But one day Pop came into the kitchen just as Walker was coming in from the hall, and Walker started to cry.”
“Daddy cried? He never cries.”
“He did that day. And he said, ‘I can’t stand this, Daddy. I’m sorry. I’m real sorry. It was all my fault. What do you want me to do?’ Do you know what Pop did?”
“Took him out and beat him with a belt?”
I was horrified. “Does your daddy hit with a belt?” I couldn’t believe it, but mothers don’t always know their sons.
Tad shook his head. “No, ma’am, but my friend’s daddy does.”
“What Pop did was hold out his arms and give your daddy a hug. Then they went out to look at the car, and Pop told Walker he had to keep it clean for the next three months. Cars get real dusty going up and down that gravel road.”
“That’s all Pop did to punish him? Daddy would have grounded me for life.” He set his bowl on the table. “Well, I need to go do some homework.”
“Carry that bowl to
the sink and rinse it out,” I told him. “And while you’re going, take mine, too.” After he’d gone, I lay there and muttered, “Sorry, Boss. I blew that one.”
The phone rang in a few minutes, and it was Walker. “I heard Tad’s staying at your place a few days. Can I talk to him?”
I wanted to beg, “Be nice,” but I made a rule years ago not to tell my children how to raise their children unless they ask. What makes me think I’m such an expert, anyway?
“Tad,” I called. “Your daddy’s on the phone.”
We didn’t have an extension in the guest room, and he must not have known about the one in our bedroom, because he went to the kitchen. I heard him answer tentatively, “Hello, Daddy.” Then his voice went real soft. In a few minutes I heard him laugh, then hang up.
He came back to the room. “Daddy laughed when I asked him about getting Pop’s car in the ditch. He said that now, every time he asks to borrow Pop’s car, Pop laughs and tells him not to drive it in a ditch.”
“Yeah. I forgot to tell you about that part of the game. When you use the magic formulas, not only do your points get erased, but your memories do, too. Even if you remember the bad thing that was done, it seems funny or unimportant. Did you tell your daddy about the barn?”
He got real interested in a wart. “I started to, but he said we wouldn’t talk about it now, that it was done and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.” His shoulders bowed under the weight of that.
I wanted to “smack Walker upside the head,” as Clarinda or Hector would say. Tad stood. “I guess I better go back to my homework. They give us too much, Mama says.”
The phone rang again as he walked toward the door. “Answer that for me,” I requested.
He picked up the receiver and his eyes grew wary. “Yessir? Oh. Yessir, I know. That’s what Me-mama said.” Long pause. I was about to gesture for him to hand me the phone when he took a big breath and words tumbled out. “I am sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to burn down Uncle Ridd’s barn or cost you all that money, but I did it.” Tears streamed down his face. He grabbed a tissue and swabbed them, but kept talking. “I wish I hadn’t. Can you—uh—uh—” He slid his eyes my way, pleading for help.
When Will the Dead Lady Sing? Page 18
