by Scott Pratt
“Joey, you’ve never had a kind word to say about your uncle. What did Raymond ever do to you?”
I shook my head, not wanting to get into it. She hadn’t mentioned him in years. “He wasn’t a good person.”
“He just needed-“
“Ma, could we please not talk about Raymond? You’re entitled to your opinion, I’m entitled to mine.”
I wanted to tell her what my opinion was based on but I didn’t see the point. It had happened so long ago, and Ma was dying. I didn’t see the sense in sullying whatever pleasant memories she had of her only brother.
I managed to get her mind off of Raymond and onto my son Jack’s baseball prospects for a little while, but then, like a sudden change in the weather, she looked at me as though she’d never seen me before.
“What are you doing here?” she said. “Who are you?” It was a fast transformation, even for her, like some inner switch had been flipped. Even the pitch in her voice changed.
“It’s me, Ma. I’m Joe. Your son.”
“Why are you wearing that tie? You some kind of big cheese or something?”
“No, Ma. I’m not a big cheese.”
“Where’s Raymond?”
“Raymond’s dead.”
She let out a long sigh and stared at the ceiling.
“Ma? Can you hear me?”
She didn’t respond. She lay motionless, almost catatonic. I looked over at the bedside dresser. On top of it were several photos of our fractured family. There was one of my grandfather, wearing bib overalls and following a plow pulled by a mule through a cornfield. There was a framed photograph of me walking across the stage at my law school graduation ceremony. Next to it, in a smaller frame, was a black-and-white of Sarah and me when I was seven years old. We were standing on a plank raft in the middle of a half-acre pond out back of my grandparents’ home. Both of us were grinning from ear to ear. Two of my front teeth were missing.
Just to the right of that photo was a slightly larger one of Uncle Raymond, taken about six months before he died. He was seventeen years old, standing next to a doe that had been shot, hung from a tree limb, and gutted. He held a rifle in his left hand and a cigarette in his right. I walked over and picked up the photo. I looked at it for a minute, then turned back toward the bed. Ma was still staring at the ceiling.
“Can you hear me?” I said.
Nothing.
I sat back down on the chair next to the bed and began to dismantle the picture frame. I pried the small staples loose on the back of the frame, pulled the photo out, and tore it into little pieces.
“Hope you don’t mind too much, Ma, but I’m going to put Raymond where he belongs.” I walked to the bathroom, dropped the pieces in the toilet, flushed it, and watched them swirl around the bowl and disappear.
I went to her bedside and sat down again. I leaned back, closed my eyes, and tried to compose myself, the mention of Raymond’s name still ringing in my ears. Finally, I sat up straight.
“Since you can’t hear me anyway, I’m going to tell you what he did,” I said. “At least it’ll give me the chance to finally get it off my chest.”
I leaned forward, rested my elbows on my knees, and clasped my hands.
“I was eight years old. Sarah was nine. You and Grandma and Grandpa had gone out — it was a Friday evening — and you left Sarah and me at Grandma’s house with Raymond. He was sixteen, I think.
“I remember watching a baseball game on TV. I must have dozed off, because when I woke up, it was dark. The only light in the house was from the television screen. I remember sitting up and rubbing my eyes, and then I heard this noise. It scared me, because it sounded like a cry for help, but I got up off of the couch and started walking toward the noise, more scared every step I took. I was tiptoeing.
“As I got closer, I could make out some words, something like ‘No! Stop it!’ I knew it was Sarah’s voice, coming from Uncle Raymond’s bedroom. I pushed the door open just a little and I could make out Uncle Raymond in the lamplight. He was naked on his knees in the bed with his back to me. Sarah’s voice was coming from underneath him.”
I stopped and took a deep breath, the image of my naked uncle looming over my sister burning in my mind’s eye. “Can you hear me, Ma?” I said. “Are you getting this?” I noticed my voice was shaky. Ma was still staring at the ceiling.
“Sarah kept saying, ‘It hurts. Stop it!’ I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know anything about sex. But there was so much pain, so much fear in Sarah’s voice that I knew it was bad. I finally managed to say, ‘What’s going on?’ I remember being surprised that my voice worked.
“Raymond’s head snapped around and he looked at me like he was going to kill me. He said, ‘Get out of here, you little twerp.’ I asked him what he was doing to Sarah. And then, Ma, right then, Sarah said something that haunts me to this day. I’ll never forget that little voice. She said, ‘Get him off of me, Joey. He’s hurting me.’”
I had to stop for a minute. The rape of my sister had haunted me, and her, for more than three decades. When I started talking to Ma, I thought it might somehow help to finally describe to another human being — even a human being who couldn’t take it in — what had happened to Sarah. But talking about it was transporting me back to that tiny bedroom. I could feel my heart pounding inside my chest and my hands had become cold and clammy.
“I stood there like an idiot for a second trying to figure out what to do, but Raymond didn’t give me a chance. He jumped off the bed and grabbed me by the throat. He slammed my head so hard against the wall that it made me dizzy. Then he picked me up by the collar and threw me out the door. I remember skidding along down the hallway on my stomach. He slammed the door, and I froze. I thought about going out to the garage to get a baseball bat or a shovel or an axe, anything. I could hear Sarah crying on the other side of the door, but it was like one of those nightmares where your arms and legs won’t work. I was too scared to move.
“Finally, after what seemed like forever, they came out of the room. I remember Sarah sniffling and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Raymond grabbed both of us by the back of the neck, dragged us into the living room, and pushed us onto the couch. He bent down close to us and pointed his finger within an inch of my nose. And then your brother, the one you loved so much, said to me, ‘If you say one word about this to anybody, I’ll kill your sister.’ Then he turns to Sarah and says, ‘And if you say anything, I’ll kill your brother. Got it?’
“Neither one of us ever said a word to anyone, including each other. When that sorry piece of trash drowned a year later, it was one of the best days of my life. I tried to get him out of my mind after that, but I couldn’t do it. Obviously, neither could Sarah.”
I sat back in the chair and let out a deep sigh. “So now you know.”
She hadn’t moved since I started talking. She lay there, barely breathing, staring at nothing, blinking occasionally.
“I can’t believe you didn’t notice the changes after that day. I can’t believe you never even bothered to ask what was wrong. I might have told you about it, and maybe you could have done something to help Sarah. But you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve spent your whole life being miserable, and now it’s over.”
I looked for some telltale sign that she understood. Nothing.
“Did you hear a word I just said? Did you hear? Ma? ”
There was a knock and the door opened. A nurse’s aide stepped tentatively into the room.
“Is everything all right?” she said. “I thought I heard someone shouting.”
It took a few seconds before I understood what she was saying. I suddenly realized where I was, like I’d just been awakened from a deep sleep.
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Please close the door.”
She turned and left. I got up from the chair and looked down at Ma.
“I guess I better go now,” I said. “I’m glad we had this little talk.”
April 12
4:00 p.m.
Erlene Barlowe missed Gus more than ever. He’d have been better than her at handling the TBI agent. As soon as she got away from him in the parking lot, she sat down at the bar and asked herself what Gus would do. She was worried. The TBI man didn’t strike her as the type she could hold off for long. She knew he’d be back, and she knew it would probably be soon.
Like she told the agent, Gus had been elected high sheriff of McNairy County when he was only twenty-six years old. It was nearly thirty years ago. Erlene wasn’t much more than a baby, only twenty-two and didn’t know the first thing about the world. Her uncle on the McNairy County Commission helped her get a job as a dispatcher at the sheriff’s department. She and Gus were sweet on each other right from the get-go.
What she hadn’t told the agent was that Gus was married to another woman at the time, and his wife Bashie caught Erlene and Gus in a motel room in Gatlinburg on a Friday night. Bashie divorced Gus a few months later and he resigned from the sheriff’s department. There was also some talk that Gus was selling protection to gamblers and marijuana smugglers, but Erlene didn’t believe a word of it.
Gus met some people while he was sheriff who helped him get into the adult entertainment business in Hamilton County after he resigned. He asked Erlene to go with him, and she did. She was love-struck, and it went deep down. Gus was big and strong and handsome, a real man’s man. He treated her like a princess. They weren’t able to have children — a botched abortion at the age of sixteen had left Erlene barren — but they had a wonderful life together for almost thirty years. She and Gus owned four clubs in four different counties during their marriage. They’d either buy a club that wasn’t making a profit or build one on the cheap and start up. Gus ran the business and dealt with the customers, Erlene handled the girls. They’d make the club profitable, ride it for a while, then sell it. They took in tons of money. Along they way, they helped a lot of young girls who were in bad situations.
Erlene and Gus were planning to run the Mouse’s Tail for another five years and then move to the South Carolina coast and retire. But late last September, he’d been mowing the yard on a Sunday afternoon, keeled over, and was already dead of a coronary when Erlene found him. Her heart broke into a million tiny pieces. Her sweet Gus. He was there one minute, smiling and waving on the riding mower when she looked out the kitchen window, and then… poof! Just like that. Gone. The only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that the two of them would be together again someday. Her Gus would be waiting on the other side.
After the TBI agent left and she thought for a while, she called the bartender and all of the girls who worked the night before and told them to meet her at the bar at four o’clock, an hour before the place opened. Ronnie was the bartender. Mitzi, Elizabeth, Julie, Trisha, Heather, and Debbie were dancers. The other two were waitresses, April and Alexandra. They were all beautiful, with wonderful bodies. The older Erlene got, the more she loved being around them. She tried to teach them to respect themselves and to stay away from bad men and drugs. It was a challenge, but she did the best she could.
Angel had also waited tables the night the man was killed, but Erlene didn’t want Angel to be at the meeting. The man who was killed had behaved shamefully toward Angel, and Erlene was afraid that if the TBI man found out about it, he might suspect Angel of something. Besides, Erlene felt guilty for even having Angel working at the club. She didn’t have any way of knowing it when they first met, but Angel wasn’t the type of girl who could handle herself in a place like the Mouse’s Tail. She was just too tender.
Erlene knew some of the girls thought it was a little strange that Erlene took such a shine to Angel right from the beginning, but they didn’t understand. A lot of it was because of Gus. He had a daughter from his first marriage, a beautiful brunette named Alyse. After Gus and Erlene ran off together, Gus’s ex-wife Bashie hated him so much that he never got to see Alyse again, but he talked about wanting to see her all the time and he sent money for her every month. He’d always tell Erlene, “She’ll come some day. You wait and see.”
Sure enough, about a week after Alyse’s seventeenth birthday, Gus got a framed photograph of his daughter in the mail. There was a little note with it that said, “I miss you, daddy. I’ll see you next year after I turn eighteen.” Gus hung the photograph up right next to the kitchen door, and every time he left the house, he blew a kiss at it.
Then the most terrible thing happened. Alyse and two other teenagers were killed in a car accident on New Year’s Eve, just a few months after Gus got the picture in the mail. Gus went to her funeral, but Erlene stayed home. She didn’t think it would be proper for her to go. Gus was the saddest man Erlene had ever seen for the next few months, though he eventually came out of it and got back to being his old self again. But he never took the picture down, and he never stopped blowing kisses to Alyse. After he died, Erlene left the photograph hanging right where it was. She even started blowing kisses herself.
When Angel showed up on the bus with Julie Hayes, Erlene’s teeth near fell out of her mouth. Angel looked so much like Alyse that Erlene swore they could’ve been sisters, maybe even twins. When she first laid eyes on Angel, she heard Gus’s voice: “She’ll come some day. You wait and see. ” Erlene knew she had to take Angel home with her. It was like having a piece of Gus back in the house all over again, like Gus himself had sent Angel to comfort her. And doing things for Angel, helping her, did comfort Erlene. It was healing, that’s what it was, it helped heal some of the pain of losing Gus and a lot of what she’d carried around ever since the doctor told her she’d never be a mother.
After Angel had been with Erlene only a little while, during some of those moments when they’d curl up on the couch in front of the fireplace and watch a movie, Angel started to open up a little and told Erlene some of the terrible things that had happened to her. That’s when Erlene knew she was right. She knew Gus — or God — had sent Angel to her. She didn’t really care which. Angel was the daughter Erlene never had. She was meant to take care of her.
The girls and Ronnie showed up between four and four-fifteen. Erlene told them to sit at the bar. As soon as Julie dragged in — late, as usual — Erlene stood on the other side of the bar and gave them a little speech.
“There was a detective from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation here around noon,” she said. “He was asking about a murder. He had a picture of the man who was killed, and he thinks the man was here last night. He may even think one of us had something to do with it.”
Erlene paused for a skinny minute and looked at their faces. She set such high standards for her girls. They had to dress a certain way when they came into the club and Erlene was real particular about their makeup and the way they wore their hair. When Erlene mentioned murder, the girls’ mouths dropped open and they started looking at one another.
“Is that the murder they’ve been talking about on the radio?” Heather said. “They’re saying the man was a preacher. It made me think of that guy last night who was spouting- ”
Erlene held up her hand.
“I haven’t heard anything on the radio,” she said, “but I want all of you to forget about that man last night. He wasn’t here. I want every one of you to look at me, right now, and listen real careful to what I’m saying. He wasn’t here. When the TBI man comes back here or if he comes to your place and starts asking you questions, he’s going to show you a picture. And you’re going to tell him that the man in the picture was not here. Do all of you understand that?”
Everybody but Julie nodded. Julie looked at Erlene and said, “So you’re telling us to lie to a cop about a murder? Isn’t that illegal or something?”
Julie had become a problem again. A gorgeous, green-eyed redhead with a perfect body was great for business, but she was back on the cocaine and she was getting worse by the day. She was always late, always distracted, and she did outrageous, vulgar things sometimes when
she danced.
Julie had also had a huge crush on Gus, even though he was old enough to be her granddaddy, and she was jealous of Erlene. Erlene finally had to fire her last year after she caught her snorting cocaine in one of the storage rooms. Julie made a huge, ugly scene and was hollering at the top of her lungs when she stormed out of the club. Erlene didn’t hear a word from her for eight months, and then maybe two months ago she called Erlene up, all sweet and apologetic. Julie told Erlene how sorry she was about Gus and said she was clean as a whistle and wanted to come back to work. She was in Texas at the time, and Erlene’s head told her to let Julie stay in Texas, but her heart said Julie was just a lost young girl who needed a job. The fact that she was good for business didn’t hurt, either.
“Nothing will happen if we stick together,” Erlene said, continuing her speech. “Do you girls have any idea what getting caught up in a big murder would do to this business? People would stay away from this place in droves. We’d all wind up on the street, including you, Miss Julie. All that money you’ve been making? Gone. Besides, I’m sure nobody in this room killed that gentleman, and I doubt very seriously if any of you has any information that would help the police. The man was a drunken fool. Every one of you saw the way he acted. He probably went somewhere else after he left here and ran into somebody who wasn’t as tolerant of his behavior as we were. So why do we need to get involved in it? If the detective asks you, just tell him the man wasn’t here and let him move on to people who might be able to help.”
“Where’s Angel?” Julie said. “She’s the one who waited on him.”
“Angel’s at home. She and I have decided that she’s not really cut out for this business. Don’t worry about Angel. She won’t say a word.” Erlene paused for a minute and looked at all of them again. “Girls, are we all on the same page?” She knew Ronnie was on the same page. She didn’t even look at him.
They all sat quietly, but they were nodding. Erlene knew mentioning the money they were making would get their attention, and besides, she treated them good. She expected a little loyalty in return.
