Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

by Jackie Lynn

  The sheriff shifted his weight from side to side. He slid his hand over his chin and then readjusted his hat.

  “Mother does have a way, doesn’t she?” Rhonda smiled.

  Montgomery was still standing a bit away from the two women. They noticed his stance and walked to the desk, giving him back his personal space, which seemed to calm him.

  “Are you here for a while?” Montgomery asked Lucas.

  Lucas nodded. “I think I’m going to work a little on the sites near the woods,” he replied. “I’ve been having a little trouble with the outlets over there.”

  “Oh,” the sheriff noted. “You want me to take a look?” he asked. “I’d like to put those courses in electrical wiring we took at the community college to good use.”

  Rose and Rhonda shouted in unison, “No!” They knew that Chariot was camped at one of the sites that needed fixing.

  Sheriff Montgomery turned in their direction.

  “This is something Lucas needs to figure out for himself.” Rhonda recovered as quickly as possible. “He needs to work on the wiring more than you,” she added.

  “That’s real fine of you, Leon,” Lucas said, taking his wife’s lead. “But Rhonda’s right. I took those classes to be able to take care of some of these projects around here and I need to practice on my own.”

  Montgomery nodded. “All right,” he responded. “I’ll just save my newfound skills for the next housing project we do on the Gulf Coast.”

  The three others nodded.

  “Why don’t I walk you over to Mother’s cabin?” Rhonda asked. She had decided that this visit had gone on long enough. “I was going out and if we meet her outside that would save her a few extra steps,” she explained.

  Sheriff Montgomery turned to her and nodded. “Okay,” he agreed.

  The two of them moved toward the door. He picked up the clipboard he had left on the counter. “We’ll see you, Rose,” he said.

  “Yes, Sheriff, glad you stopped by,” she said with a smile that seemed a little too big to the officer.

  Rhonda opened the door and the sheriff suddenly turned back around to face the three of them.

  “By the way,” he said. “Jimmy Novack mentioned that a woman driving a car with South Dakota license plates was looking for your place. He said she acted real strange, jumpy, nervous-like.”

  Rose looked at Rhonda. Her eyes were as big as saucers.

  “Seems I need to find her,” he continued. “Jimmy has a surveillance camera so I can get the number of the plate from that and have a go at trying to locate her. But I just figured I’d ask you if she was here before I went to all that work.” He paused, watching the reaction of the three in the office. “You all know anything about her?”

  It was a good few minutes before anyone could answer.

  TEN

  It turned out that Chariot had taken out her purse while she pumped her gas and then left it on the trunk of the car. When she took off, she had forgotten where she had placed it, and even though she had kept her wallet with her, her pocketbook had gone flying in the air when she exited. Jimmy was trying to locate her to return the missing piece of property.

  Rose, calm and deliberate, told the sheriff that the girl had stopped by, but that she had left for the afternoon. She informed him that she or Rhonda would go by the station and pick up the purse to give to the girl if she came back or if she was gone, Rose had lied, someone would make sure it was mailed to her home in South Dakota.

  Sheriff Montgomery appeared to have bought the solution and that was the end of the conversation. He left the office with Rhonda and picked up his tickets from Ms. Lou Ellen and departed Shady Grove. They all watched him leave, driving out past the campers, past the tents. Rose hoped he didn’t see Chariot’s campsite.

  Rhonda and Lucas went to their trailer to take care of some errands and to let Chariot know about her purse at Jimmy’s service station. Rose finished her work for the day.

  She closed the office late in the afternoon, booking two more sites and answering a lot of questions from campers before she taped a credit card receipt and site directions on the door for the man who had called and made a reservation, but had said that he wouldn’t arrive until after-hours.

  Before she left the office, a family from Michigan was traveling south and wanted a corner site near the river since they were planning to stay a few days, and a couple from Georgia was heading west, just stopping over to rest before getting up early to try and make it to Amarillo, Texas, by evening the next day. They didn’t care where they parked, just as long as it was quiet and easy to pull out of in the morning. Rose took care of the campers and assisted them in finding their sites.

  She left in the golf cart and headed over from the office to clean the showers and laundry room; she was late with her errands, way past the designated time for that task. When Mary was working, the facilities were cleaned every day from 1:00 to 2:00 P.M. The signs on the buildings noted the times they were closed. There was never alteration to that schedule. Once Rose started filling in, she often didn’t get to them in the specified time. She frequently found herself running behind schedule because she spent too much time talking to folks, hearing their stories, helping them settle in. She hoped no one would complain about the late hour of the maintenance.

  She checked the laundry room first, cleaning out the filters in the dryers, straightening up the magazine rack, placing the chairs under the table, dusting off the shelves, and putting the hangers back on the drying rod. She collected the trash and vacuumed, wiped off the appliances, and finally turned off the light. And then she went behind the building to work on the rest-rooms and showers.

  She went in the men’s room first, propped open the door with the big yellow folding marker to let all the male campers know she was inside. She put on her rubber gloves and started wiping mirrors and faucets and shower walls. She scrubbed the toilets and the urinal and mopped the floor. She changed the plastic bags in the trash cans and sprayed a deodorant spray before finally leaving.

  She then moved over to the women’s side and began the same ritual. Rose, a registered nurse by profession and a woman used to keeping things clean, did not mind the menial labor she did at Shady Grove. Since she was a little girl, she had always enjoyed the work of cleaning a room. It was the event of order that she liked, tasks that had a beginning and an ending and always achieved the desired results. What was filthy and messy became clean and tidy. What was chaotic and disorderly was suddenly made right. It had been the only means for surviving her childhood, her only way to get through her mother’s death and her father’s violence.

  As a child, she cleaned because the chores were designated to her, being the only female in the home. She cleaned because she knew her father hated disorder and filth and she was always hopeful that if the house was clean enough, he wouldn’t want to drink, wouldn’t be driven to violence. It was, in fact, the only time her father ever seemed pleased with Rose. He usually found things she had not done correctly or completely, but on occasion, he would congratulate her for how well she polished a piece of silver or swept out a corner. Rose lived for those moments.

  When she married she brought into her home the same sort of domestic drive she had developed as a young girl. Everything in her house was neat and ordered and her husband, like her father, would once in a while call attention to how neat Rose kept things. Having a clean and well-kept house was a great source of pride for her.

  Rose sprayed cleaner on the mirror in front of the sinks and began wiping. She moved quickly, her hand spread across the paper towel, covering corner to corner, top to bottom. She stopped only once her reflection became clear. Her need for cleanliness and order was one of the reasons Rose had not wanted to have children when she was younger. She had heard lots of friends and acquaintances talking about the disarray and the disorder that were a natural result of motherhood and she knew that if she had children she would never be able to maintain the kind of order to which she had
become accustomed.

  There were other reasons for not being a parent, of course. She knew that she was afraid that somehow her own childhood would be repeated, a life of loss and disappointment handed down to a next generation. She was afraid that she would become either the absent mother or the heavy-handed parent she had been left with. She had chosen not to give birth because she was afraid of the kind of parent she would be. And then there was her marriage with Rip. It had only taken a few years of living with him before she understood that their relationship was tenuous enough on its own, and bringing in another person might stretch and ultimately break the fragile bond that they shared.

  Rose looked closely at herself in the mirror, recognizing that as the years had passed the idea of having a child had just been pushed farther and farther away. Until Ms. Lou Ellen had spoken of Rose having a baby, Rose had not considered motherhood in a very long time. And yet, as she stared at her reflection there at Shady Grove, she knew that it hadn’t taken much conversation about the idea of parenting to make her look again at her decision not to have a child. She couldn’t say in complete confidence that she never wanted to be a mother. She couldn’t look at herself and say truthfully that she wasn’t at least a little curious about the idea, a little interested in what it would mean to be a mother. Ms. Lou Ellen had found a nerve, and now that it was struck, Rose was going to have to rethink the choice she had made. She finished cleaning the sinks and moved to the toilets and then the shower stalls.

  Rose was wiping down the walls in the rear shower when she heard the main door open and close. She realized that she had not moved the cleaning sign over to the women’s side. It was leaning against the wall outside. She finished the stall she was in and walked out of the shower area.

  “Hey, I’m just about done,” Rose said, shaking off her thoughts of Ms. Lou Ellen’s predictions as she glanced up. She caught Chariot standing in front of the mirror in a blast of tears. “Oh, my.” Rose dropped her bucket and went over to her. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  The young girl wept and nodded. She reached over and pulled a piece of paper towel from the dispenser. “I didn’t know anybody was in here,” she said, trying to hold back her emotion.

  “Just me,” Rose responded. “Here”—she walked over and pulled some toilet tissue from the holder—“this is softer. I make sure we use the good stuff.”

  Chariot smiled and wiped her eyes and nose. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I just needed to have a moment. I’m in such a mess.”

  “Messes are just fine here,” Rose announced.

  The young woman nodded gratefully as she wiped her face. “Rhonda told you about Jason?”

  Rose nodded. She waited.

  “Have you made dinner plans for the evening?” she asked.

  “Rhonda and Lucas are going to church,” Chariot replied, smoothing her hair back with her fingers. “They invited me, but I just didn’t feel like being in a group. They said that they would check on me when they got back. I thought maybe I’d just go into town and get a burger.”

  Rose knew that Rhonda and Lucas went to an evening Bible study at their church when they were in town. She also knew that they could be very late getting back.

  “Well, look, why don’t you come over to my boyfriend’s place with me?” Rose asked. “He’s fixing me dinner and I know there will be enough for an extra person.”

  Chariot shook her head. “I don’t want to be any trouble,” she said.

  “No trouble,” Rose responded, thinking about that word trouble again and how often it had been used that day. “I’ll just finish my work and then change my clothes and we’ll walk over together. Were you going to take a shower?” she asked, noticing the towel and other belongings the young girl had placed on the bench by the bathroom door.

  Chariot nodded. “I fell asleep this afternoon after putting up the tent and now I’m just a grimy mess. I can’t wait to clean up.”

  Rose smiled. “I understand,” she noted. “Why don’t I just meet you at your campsite in about thirty minutes?”

  Chariot nodded, agreeing that would give her enough time to get cleaned up. They said good-bye and Rose left the facility. By the time she returned the cleaning supplies back in the closet at the office, parked the golf cart, and walked to her travel trailer, she only had fifteen minutes to change her clothes and call Thomas to make sure it was okay that Chariot joined them. When she flipped open her cell phone she noticed that she had a message.

  It was Thomas. He had called while she was cleaning to say that he had been called away. Rose understood that to mean that the recovering alcoholic that he was sponsoring had contacted him and needed Thomas’s support. She had become used to those kinds of phone calls and interruptions in their plans. She never really minded though because she understood how helpful her boyfriend was to so many people. Thomas had also said that the dinner was ready and waiting in the oven and that all she would need to do was warm things up. He had suggested that she go ahead and eat without him.

  “Perfect,” she said to herself, realizing that would give her time to ask Chariot all of the questions she wanted to ask. She could find out for herself what had happened back in Pierre.

  She dressed and walked over to the tent, where she noticed a lantern shining inside. “Knock, knock,” she said, since there wasn’t really any other way to let the girl know that she was outside.

  “Hey, Rose, come on in,” she said, opening the flap to the tent. “I just need to put on my shoes,” she said.

  Rose bent down and walked in. She glanced around at the setup. She noticed the duffel bag of clothes, the Coleman lantern, and a picture in a small frame on a metal fold-up table, the sleeping bag unrolled and blankets and a pillow on top placed along the rear of the tent. It appeared as if Chariot had everything that she needed for her camping comfort.

  “Looks like you have all the right stuff for tent camping,” Rose noted with a smile.

  Chariot was pulling on her sneakers. “Yeah, Jason had packed the car with all of this before he woke me up,” she said. “We camp a lot in the summer.” She hesitated. “We used to camp a lot,” she corrected herself.

  Rose nodded. She studied the young woman as she tied her shoelaces.

  “Where were you going?” Rose asked, trying not to pry too much so soon, but curious about what the couple had been planning before the murder occurred.

  Chariot finished, stood up, and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Jason woke me up in the middle of the night, pulled me out of bed, and told me to get ready. I had been asleep maybe two or three hours. I don’t think he had even gotten into bed. We hadn’t planned to go anywhere.”

  She threw on a light jacket and then walked over to the door of the tent. She held open the flap and Rose walked out first.

  “I’ve tried and tried to figure out what he was thinking or where he was going to take us,” she explained. She bent down to zip the flap, closed it, and then stood up.

  “Which way?” she asked Rose.

  Rose pointed in the direction of Thomas’s place and they began walking past the campground.

  “He was involved with some guys,” Chariot said. She was hesitant to speak, but appeared glad to finally have someone to talk to. “He got a phone call a couple of weeks ago. And he started acting strange after that.”

  Rose waited for more.

  “Anyway, he didn’t seem to like them very much and he had told me that he just had to do this one thing with them and then he’d never have to see them again.”

  The two women walked down the path. The sun was setting and Rose glanced over to see the colors as they fell across the river. She loved the Mississippi at this time in the evening.

  “You don’t know what the one thing was?” Rose asked.

  Chariot shook her head. There was a pause.

  “I think it was a robbery, though.”

  “What makes you think that?” The idea surprised Rose.

  The girl shr
ugged. “Jason had done some time for breaking and entering a few years ago. He was good at picking safes and I think he had to pull this last job to get these guys to leave us alone,” she explained. “I sometimes overheard their conversations.”

  “Do you know what they stole?” Rose asked, thinking that might have something to do with the murder.

  Chariot shook her head. “I just think they found somebody rich,” she said. “I heard him say something about ‘the president,’” she added. “And I think it was just cash, easy cash, I heard him say once.”

  Rose looked confused. “The president?” she asked. “Why would they call somebody that?”

  Chariot shrugged. “Pierre is the state capital,” she said. “I think it was somebody in politics. They have all the money in South Dakota,” she added. “Them and the ranchers. I just think they were breaking into a house of some rich politician and I think Jason opened the safe. I think that he must have found out something about the other guys or maybe he took something he shouldn’t have and they killed him.”

  “This is it,” Rose said as she pointed to the driveway of Thomas’s trailer.

  They headed to the front door. It was unlocked and they walked inside. The lights were on and there was a note on the table that read, “Enjoy! I’ll be back as soon as I can.” And then he had signed his name. Rose noticed that there were two place settings and she decided just to let Chariot sit at the place Thomas had set for himself.

  She gestured for the young woman to sit at the table and Rose began making the preparations for their dinner. Like he had said in his message, everything was already done. She just turned on the stove to heat up the garden peas. The roast was still warm as she pulled it out of the oven and placed it on the trivet on the table. She put the potatoes in the microwave and fixed the glasses with ice and tea. She found some bread already in a basket and she put everything in front of Chariot.

  “This looks so good,” Chariot said. “I haven’t had a real meal to eat in a while.”