“We have to get your mother’s headache prescription filled, she’s having another migraine.”
I peeked into the bedroom. One of her palms was next to her head, curled at the fingertips like a dead person’s. A small fan next to the bed was making her hair tremble.
By now it was almost dark.
Pop assumed a curious position whenever he drove, twisted slightly to the left. He would fold his right arm over the wheel and bring his head so close to it you almost expected him to rest his chin. Garbage was piled up in the passenger-side footwell, and paper bags and paper cups and balled-up napkins brushed against my flip-flops. Whenever Pop took a turn cans rattled in the back of the car.
“This guy Reedy figures he’s got your brother cornered. He’s this patrol cop playing detective and he thinks if he breaks this case he’ll get a promotion. Man’s gonna do everything in his power to pin this thing on Stan.”
“He doesn’t seem so bad.”
Pop gave me a look. “You’re getting awfully smart. What makes you think you been around long enough to know more than I do?”
I shrugged.
“Why don’t you take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth. I want you to listen to me for a change.”
We rode along for a while without speaking, and then I said, “Okay, I’m listening.”
“I don’t want you talking to Reedy. Don’t say a word to the man. He shouldn’t be asking so many questions anyway. If he asks you anything you tell him you ain’t saying a word without an attorney present. That’ll shut him up, he knows the law.”
“Pop, if Stan didn’t do anything—”
“He didn’t, but that’s not enough for these cats. Stan is exactly the type of guy they like to pin stuff on. He ain’t one of your refined Kellners or Joyners. Plus he run his mouth about killing Gaylord, which was his own damn fault.”
“He’s got a violent streak a mile wide.”
“The kid ain’t nothing but trouble, but we’re sticking by him, hear?”
“Yes sir. But what if we found out he did do something?”
“We ain’t gonna find that out.”
“I’m asking, that’s all. What if he did something and you found out. What would you do?”
Pop thought about it.
“All I know is I wouldn’t turn him in. Wouldn’t be my place to do so. Probably I would talk to him, convince him to turn his own self in.”
“Witchers ain’t snitchers.”
“There you go.”
“I don’t guess we have to worry, Anya says he was with her the whole night.”
“That’s right, Stan couldn’t have done anything. But we still have to say he left Anya at ten ’cause that’s what we told Deputy Dawg.”
To get the prescription refilled we had to go to the all-night People’s on Main, because that’s the only place that was open.
Pop ran in while I sat in the car and stared at the people passing in and out of the store. A black man in a porkpie hat strolled past and gave me a curt nod through the windshield.
When Pop came out he was beside a fat man, laughing hilariously over some ribald pleasantry. They parted with loud hollers and wholehearted waves. I’d yet to see Pop leave a store without making at least one new friend.
During the ride home he started up on Gladstein. “How come you visit that man so often?”
“I don’t know, he was telling me how to make Myra my girlfriend. He sold me a ring real cheap, for fifty cents, and then he said I should try and kiss her.”
“He said that, he told you to kiss her? That’s a little weird.”
“What’s so weird, I did kiss her.”
“You kissed that girl?”
Pop reached over and backhanded me. I gave him a grin and we rode along together, feeling warm. “A Witcher seducing a Joyner, I like that. You’re gonna be a heartbreaker, kid.”
I kept grinning.
“And now they think your brother offed her brother, that’s too bad.”
Which pretty effectively ended our warm moment.
“Listen, I want you to cool it with Gladstein, something ain’t right about the cat.”
I didn’t say a word. I’d been expecting this ever since I heard him and Snead talking outside my window.
“He just came to this town to make trouble. Moving to Jefferson Ward, that’s the craziest thing I ever heard. Black people don’t want him, they don’t want white people no more than white people want them.”
He went on in this vein, and I let him talk. I stared out the window until the lights of the town began to dwindle and we were winding along the curves of Cherokee Road.
Pop was on a different tack by then. “You ever been in that back room of his?”
“Who, Gladstein’s? No, I hang around out front, he never takes me in the back.”
“Snead says he keeps his dogs in the back room.”
“They’re always whimpering behind the door. He’s got three of ’em.”
“Which is another weird thing, those fluffy dogs. You know who he reminds me of? Your mother had a cousin, Johnny Lee, I don’t know if you met him, he only come to the house once or twice. Probably you were too small. He used to own a fluffy little Maltese and he’d put ribbons and bows on the thing and take it out for a walk. A man walking a dog that had ribbons and bows! I used to think, Man, this cat is cruising for a bruising. He was queer as a three-dollar bill, but he was all right, he wasn’t too bad. He died of cancer two or three years ago. Your mother thought the world of him. Women always like queers.”
Pop fell to musing and then he said, “I wonder what happened to the dog.”
“I don’t think Mr. Gladstein’s a queer, he was married for twenty-five years.”
“That don’t say a thing. Man next door might be a queer for all we know.”
“We don’t have a man next door.”
We were coming up on Lewis Street. As soon as we made the turn we’d be going past the Joyners’, and my stomach got all fluttery, anticipating it.
“Does Gladstein have a burglar alarm?”
“He does, but it isn’t hooked up. He told me he never got around to fixing it.”
“He told you that?”
Pop searched my face, and I realized what I had said. I’d just sold Mr. Gladstein down the river.
“Well I don’t know, it could be I’m wrong.”
“You said that’s what he told you.”
“Well—yeah.”
I couldn’t think of a convincing way to take it back, so I went on the offensive. “Why, you planning on robbing his store?”
“Of course not,” Pop said, laughing.
He made the turn on Lewis and sailed down the road as fast as he could. I guess he didn’t want anyone to notice us.
The cars were thick in front of the Joyners’ house, probably people attending a vigil for Gaylord. All the lights were on and a few folks were standing in the yard smoking cigarettes. I could see the silhouettes of their heads as they turned to watch our battered car go past.
Pop’s jaw tensed and he kept his eyes straight ahead. I craned my head to search for Myra, but I don’t think she was in the yard.
When we got home I ran the headache pills to Mom.
I didn’t switch on the light, because she couldn’t bear it when one of her headaches was on. I brought her a glass of water and two pills and held her head while she drank. I knew from long experience that she wouldn’t remember this the next day. When she woke up from her headaches she always had amnesia about the night before. My great-aunt Norma who lived in Lakeside used to tell me that Mom’s not being able to remember was God’s mercy at work. One time I challenged her and said, “Mom doesn’t believe in God,” and Aunt Norma said, “Do you really think that would stop God from being merciful?”
“If He’s so merciful,” I said, “why does He let her get headaches in the first place?”
She didn’t have a good answer, and three days later she died. I alway
s wondered if it was because of my question.
30
REEDY TRACKED ME DOWN the next day, just as I was stepping into the woods next to Anya’s house to do some solitary meditation. His cruiser turned onto Clark Lane and he tapped the horn.
He rolled down the window.
“This Joyner boy’s disappearance is all over the news. You been watching the TV?”
“Yes sir.”
“You aren’t going in the woods to smoke cigarettes, are you?”
“No sir,” I said.
He grinned to show he was only funning. “Those woods run up to the Taylors’ property, don’t they?”
“Yes sir.”
He began to work his jaw. “This thing with the Joyner boy is a tragedy, ain’t it? We still haven’t heard a word from the kid.”
I didn’t say anything, I felt too much anxiety.
“I’m trying to remember,” he went on, “where was it you said you were Wednesday night?”
“I don’t think I should answer any questions. Pop told me I should have an attorney present if you start asking questions.”
Reedy seemed surprised. “Hey kid, I’m just making conversation. More information I have better I’ll be able to track the boy down.”
“I was home Wednesday night, you can ask Mom and Pop.”
“I don’t need to ask them. Your brother was home too, right?”
“He was at the Taylors’.”
“I thought your father said he was home.”
“No, he was at the Taylors’ earlier and then he came home at ten.”
“You sure it was ten?”
What if the cop had gathered intelligence that Stan wasn’t home at that time? I was afraid I might be walking into a trap, so I said, “Maybe it was later. It might have been ten but I don’t remember exactly.”
“That’s funny, ’cause your father was dead certain your brother was home by ten. Said he was in the living room watching TV.”
“I don’t know, I went to bed early.”
“So why did you just say it was later?”
“I said maybe. I was asleep, I don’t really know what time it was.”
I was getting hot from the exhaust of the cruiser. It was idling gently, rocking slightly while Reedy thought over what I said.
“You usually wake up when your brother comes in the room?”
“Most of the time.”
“So you must have woke up that night.”
“I don’t remember, I was sound asleep. I mean, I don’t know for sure. You probably should ask other people.”
“So maybe he never came in that night. You’d have woke up if he came in, right?”
I looked down into the woods.
“I have to go, there’s something I need to do.”
“What, you have an important meeting in the woods?” Reedy winked. “Okay pal, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
He put the cruiser in drive. Just before he coasted away he said, “Your zipper’s down.”
I dashed into the trees tugging the thing up.
The moment I was out of sight I whipped out a pack of Winstons. My hands were shaking so much I could barely scrape the match.
I moved down to the creek with the cigarette smoke puffing behind me like a locomotive. At the stream I jumped and kept going. I heard splashing in the Taylors’ pool and the golden retriever barking. Probably someone was throwing the stick; but it wouldn’t be Stan, because they had called him in to the Safeway store that morning to help with the inventory.
I sat at the edge of the woods and looked towards the pool.
After a while the gate creaked open: Anya was coming out with a towel around her shoulders. I called her name and she picked her way carefully to me in her bare feet.
“What are you doing?”
“Reedy was just asking me questions up on the road. I ain’t that good at lying and I don’t see why I have to say Stan was home at ten when I know he was here the whole time. Pop is crazy, he’s messing everything up.”
She glanced towards the house.
“Let me get my sandals, we’ll take a walk.”
It took her nearly half an hour. When she returned she was dressed in jeans and a peasant smock and sandals. Her hair stuck limply at her cheeks.
“Sorry, I jumped in the shower to wash off the pool.”
We walked along the line of the woods and turned left.
The year before, Clark Lane ended at the turn, but then bulldozers and tarring machines came along and plowed an extension through the woods clean up to Cherokee. I’d always wondered who gave the order to do so, but none of the adults I asked knew. Now, as Anya and I walked up the extension road, we kept seeing ribbons and chalk marks on the trees indicating where the borders of the new yards would be. One lot had already been cleared so a house could be built.
“Wow,” Anya said. “I guess ours was the first.”
We walked along almost to Cherokee.
“So Deputy Dawg’s been hounding you,” she said, smiling at herself for putting it that way.
“That’s because Pop is making me say Stan came home at ten. Reedy’s getting suspicious and I don’t see why it should be so important anyway.”
“Your father’s weird. I don’t think he likes to be proved wrong.”
That impressed me. Up to now Anya hadn’t struck me as particularly bright. I wouldn’t have thought to put it that way, but now that she said it I saw it was true.
“It makes me feel funny to say Stan came home at ten when I know it’s a lie. And Reedy can see right through it. Why don’t we go to Pop together, you and me, and get him to talk to Reedy and say he’s been thinking it over and now he realizes he had his evenings wrong. I’d prefer saying Stan was at your house if that’s where he was.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Anya sighed.
“Don’t know about what?”
Why was she sighing; why was she wistful?
She leapt up at an overhanging branch, tore away a leaf and held it to her nose. “What a drag, you can’t even smell it, it doesn’t have a scent.”
“What were you getting ready to say?”
She smiled and shook her head, scolding my inquisitiveness. She dropped the leaf and resumed walking.
I fell in beside her, not taking my eyes away. Her changeability confused me, alarmed me. Who was this weird girl?
“This whole thing has been a comedy of errors from the beginning. I’ll bet you didn’t see Blow-Up, I guess you’d be too young to get in. That movie is so far-out! It’s about this photographer that accidentally takes a picture of a murder, only he doesn’t realize what he’s got on film until he’s in his darkroom that night developing his pictures. He’d been taking pictures of Vanessa Redgrave while the murder was happening, see, but it was happening in the background and they were in a park and he didn’t realize what was going on until later when he’s blowing up the pictures and he sees what he’s got on film and it blows his mind in like a million pieces. It’s like he filmed this murder and he didn’t even know it, he was just out buying antiques or something. No, wait, that happens later, after he wrestles with two chicks that don’t have their clothes on…. I don’t know, I might be telling it wrong. Anyway, the point is, he sees this murder that he has on film.”
I had the feeling she was trying to tell me something pertinent. It was a parable maybe, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“And then later when he goes back to the murder scene to find the body it’s been moved, which means maybe it was never really there, you don’t know. And then this troupe of mimes comes along and they’re playing tennis with invisible rackets and this invisible ball goes flying through the air and falls to the ground and the camera keeps following it even though it’s invisible and you have to imagine that you’re seeing it, which is the best part of the whole movie because it’s like you can see the ball even though it’s not there, I mean, you know it’s not there but you can still see it and it�
�s like if you’re high it’s so groovy because you’re thinking, What’s going on, man, this is so mind-blowing!”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.”
“Well, the point the movie is making is that you can’t always trust what you think you see. Sometimes the things you see aren’t really there, and then other times you don’t see what’s right before your eyes.”
“Does that mean you saw something or didn’t see something ?”
She turned with a confused smile. “I didn’t see anything, what are you getting at? I’m just telling you about a movie.” Then she burst into a laugh that echoed up and down the doomed verdure of Clark Lane.
“Oh God, you must think—”
She dashed ahead and slapped at some overhanging leaves and tossed them to the road. When I caught up with her she shrieked and flung herself at me. Then she seized my shoulders; she stared at me severely and pushed me back at arm’s length. “I’m gonna tell you something that you can’t repeat to a soul. You promise? Not a word.”
“What are you gonna tell me?”
I was too full of dread to hear more.
“I’m not telling unless you promise me first.”
“Maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Okay, so maybe you’d be better off not knowing. That’s groovy, I can dig that.”
“No, tell me.”
“You haven’t promised.”
“Okay, I promise.”
“You can’t say it like that. A promise is sacred, you have to mean it.”
I gave it a few seconds and then I said, “Okay, I promise, I mean it.”
Anya peered into the depths of my eyes. “You swear?”
And then she sighed, and we began to walk. “The truth is, Stan wasn’t with me the whole night, he went out in my car for a while.”
“For how long?”
“Well like, there was this guy going to sell him a nickel bag and I let him use my car. He went downtown so he could meet the guy.”
“He went downtown to buy grass?”
“Yes.”
“Oh great, and here we’ve been telling Reedy—”
“Don’t forget, you promised.”
“What time was it when he left the house?”
“Around six-thirty, seven.”
“But that’s when—”
If Jack's in Love Page 17
