Dream With Little Angels

by Michael Hiebert

  Uncle Henry shook his head and turned his palms upward. “I’m not encouragin’ nor discouragin’, I’m simply pointin’ out facts and connectin’ the dots.”

  “You’re encouragin’ them to keep stalkin’ the new neighbor.”

  “We ain’t stalkin’,” I said. Then I looked at Uncle Henry and asked, “Are we?”

  He rubbed his nose with his thumb. “I don’t reckon so. So far you’ve just been inquisitive from a distance. Not sure where the line between inquisitive and stalkin’ is, but I’m pretty sure you’re still on the winnin’ side at this point.”

  “Well, you’re encouragin’ them to be strange, then,” Carry said, making one of her new faces she only recently came up with.

  “You’re just ornery cuz you discovered boys,” I said, quoting my mother as best I could without really understanding what it was I was saying.

  “Oh, you got a boyfriend now?” Uncle Henry asked. “Anyone I know?”

  “He lives in Satsuma,” I said, before Carry could answer. This was the first time I connected the boy problem with an actual boy friend, but it made sense. It also made sense that any boy my sister was seeing was living in Satsuma on account of I hadn’t seen her with one here in Alvin. Of course, I was just hypothesizing.

  Uncle Henry’s eyebrows went up. “Satsuma? I thought all you young girls were after that farm boy.” He snapped his fingers, trying to recall who he was thinking of. “That Allen kid, what was his name?” The Allens had a soy and corn farm out along Highway Seventeen.

  “Jesse Allen?” Dewey asked.

  With another snap, Uncle Henry pointed at him. “Bingo.” He looked up to Carry. “Thought he was the dreamboat round these parts?”

  “Jesse James Allen,” I clarified. A half dozen years ago, the Allens’ farmhouse burned to the ground. Jesse James lost his mother, his father, and his grandma in that fire.

  I knew all this because, on the day after the fire, Jesse James Allen had become the most famous kid in Alvin when the Alvin Alerter ran a picture of him and his grandpa on the front page asking folks to do what they could to help with food and clothing. I’m not sure how old he was in that picture, probably around my age.

  He was still going to school back then, although he’d repeated a few grades. He wasn’t much good at school. I guess that’s why his grandpa pulled him out after the fire—because Jesse and school didn’t mix, and because he needed Jesse’s help on the farm.

  I didn’t know what all the fuss was about when it came to Jesse and girls, but they all seemed to like him. Especially during those years right after he dropped out of school. Maybe it was on account of him looking so much older than most of the boys his age, I didn’t know. Or maybe it had something to do with him not having to go to school. All I knew was that even Carry seemed to develop a crush on Jesse as she got older. I still remembered a conversation we had had not that long ago. Maybe just a little more than two and a half years.

  Carry had told me she reckoned Jesse looked like he should be in a band, either as a singer or a drummer. I wasn’t sure why she picked those two choices. “Why not a guitar player?” I asked her. “Or one of them guys who plays keyboards ?” We had just come home from school that day. I hadn’t even taken off my sneakers yet.

  “Nope,” she’d said, all dreamy-eyed. “Jesse James is definitely the singer or drummer type. Don’t you think he looks like Rick Springfield?”

  I didn’t rightly know what Rick Springfield looked like, but if he had a mess of black hair that hung down over his eyes so far he could barely see past it, and wore the same ripped denim jacket every single day of his life over top of a dirty white T-shirt, then I guessed she was right. “Isn’t Rick Springfield a singer, though?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” my sister said. “And an actor.”

  “So, why should Jesse be a drummer, too?”

  “Because drummers are cool. Maybe even cooler than singers.”

  “No, they’re not,” I said. “All they do is sit behind the band and hit stuff. They don’t even really make music.”

  She just gave me a look like I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was talking about, and maybe she was right. She walked off down the hall to her room, leaving me standing in the kitchen, where my mom was cooking soup.

  “That is what drummers do, ain’t it, Mom? Just sit around and hit stuff?”

  “Last time I checked, honey,” she said.

  “How is that cooler than playing a guitar?”

  “Can’t help you there.” She had shrugged. “I lost track of what was cool many years ago, I’m afraid.”

  I related all this to my Uncle Henry, Dewey, and Carry as I remembered it, but as I said, this memory was from two and a half years ago, and Jesse James Allen’s popularity had diminished with time. These days, Jesse still lived on the farm with his grandpa, only in a new farmhouse they built the summer following the great Allen fire, with the help of the Mexicans who came up to work.

  Carry laughed sarcastically at Uncle Henry’s comment about Jesse being a dreamboat. I guess time had taken away her crush on him, too. She probably didn’t like Rick Springfield anymore, neither. “Maybe back when I was ten,” she said. “Now he’s just weird.” Then she sneered at me. “And you know nothin’ ’bout my life, so quit pretendin’ you do.” With that, she turned on her heel and stomped back to the kitchen.

  “At least she didn’t call you ass face,” Dewey said.

  “Hey,” Uncle Henry said, “language.”

  “Sorry,” Dewey said.

  But I kept thinking about what Uncle Henry had said, about there being maybe a connection between the roadkill disappearing and Mr. Farrow moving into the neighborhood. This thought continued long after Dewey had gone home for supper.

  My mother returned from work in time to cook dinner and, as she set a plate of fried chicken and mashed potatoes on the table in front of me, all sorts of possible connections still tumbled through my mind.

  “You’re awfully quiet there, soldier,” Uncle Henry said, picking up a drumstick.

  “Thinkin’ ’bout stuff,” I said.

  He nodded, chewing.

  Carry’s attitude had made a strange about-face since we picked her up at the bus stop, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, she almost felt like the old Carry again. She dove into her dinner without any complaining. She even said please and thank you just as polite as could be. Of course I was immediately suspicious. Then, a few minutes after my mother finished serving and had sat down herself, I heard Carry twice catch her breath, as though she were about to say something and then, at the last minute, thought better of it.

  “Mama?” she asked, finally. Now I was really suspicious. Carry never called my mother Mama unless she wanted something.

  “Yes, honey?”

  Carry hesitated slightly. Then when she spoke, she did so quickly, as though she wanted to get all the words out onto the table in a single breath. “This Saturday mornin’, a bunch of my friends are getting together in Satsuma for pizza and an afternoon movie.”

  My mother swallowed, but didn’t say nothing.

  Carry took the opportunity to continue. “I was wonderin’ if I could go along with ’em. You know, on the bus and all that.” Her words kept speeding up. Pretty soon, I thought, she’d sound like the channel six weather guy. “I won’t be late,” she promised. “I’ll be home before supper.”

  “Is Jessica going?” my mother asked. Jessica Thompson had been Carry’s best friend since seventh grade.

  Carry paused, and in that second, I saw the doubt in her eyes. Without question, my mother and Uncle Henry saw it, too. “Yeah, sure,” Carry said. “I think so.”

  My mother and Uncle Henry gave each other a quick look. “Let me think on it,” my mother said. Carry gave her plate a frustrated frown.

  “Oh!” I said. “Me and Dewey was wonderin’ if he could sleep over on Saturday. His mama already said it’s fine.”

  “I’m working the nigh
t shift on Saturday,” my mother said, “so I suppose it’s up to Uncle Henry.”

  Uncle Henry wiped his hands with his napkin. “Well, I guess if you soldiers promise to stay in line, I’m up to it.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Henry.”

  Carry tossed the chicken wing in her hand back onto her plate. “How come he always gets everythin’ he wants?”

  “He doesn’t get everythin’ he wants,” my mother said.

  “Whatever. I just asked to go to Satsuma and you have to ‘think on it.’ He asks for somethin’, and just poof, you say sure.” She made the poof motion with her hands. I thought she was getting a bit crazy.

  “Honey, it’s a bit different,” my mother said. “It’s not that I’m tryin’ to be mean or nothin’, it’s just . . . we still haven’t found Mary Ann Dailey, and until we do . . .”

  Carry burst from her seat. “What if you never find her, Mom? Do I never get to leave the house again? I am so sick of Mary Ann Dailey.” She stomped out of the kitchen. Her bedroom door slammed shut a few seconds later.

  My mother and Uncle Henry continued eating in silence, as though nothing had happened. I kept looking from one to the other, waiting for them to say something.

  Finally my mother did. “I don’t know what to do with her anymore, Hank.”

  Uncle Henry finished chewing and swallowed. “You askin’ my advice?”

  “I always want your advice.”

  “Well, I would never assume to know better at parentin’ than a mother, especially when that mother is you.”

  “Yeah, but you managed to raise them two boys of yours, and they turned into fine adults,” my mother replied. “Somehow you made it through okay. So, yes, I’m askin’ your advice, because I don’t think I’m gonna be so okay if this goes on much longer.”

  “Well,” Uncle Henry said, “first, you gotta remember mine were boys.” He nodded across the table at me. “This fine fellow here? He ain’t gonna give you near the troubles that girl down the hall is. And if I had to place a bet, I don’t think your troubles with her have nearly even started yet.”

  My mother pressed her palm over her eyes. “Oh, don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”

  Uncle Henry touched her arm. “She’s a girl turnin’ into a woman. You gotta expect some upheaval through that. And you can survive it if you learn how to roll with it. But I don’t think you’re gonna have any luck at tryin’ to avoid it.”

  “So you think I should let her go to Satsuma on Saturday?”

  Behind his glasses, Uncle Henry’s blue eyes gleamed. “She was rude and out of place, but what she said had some truth in it. You can’t stop her life because of one missing girl. Eventually everyone has to—”

  My mother cut him off. “We’re gonna find her,” she said curtly, staring intensely back at him.

  I didn’t quite understand her reaction, but Uncle Henry just nodded solemnly and looked down at the table. “I reckon you will, sooner or later,” he said.

  “It’ll be sooner,” my mother said. She sounded almost angry.

  Uncle Henry nodded again, but said nothing in reply. I had noticed my mother growing progressively more anxious with each passing day since Mary Ann Dailey went missing. She didn’t talk about it much in front of me, but what little I heard made it sound like there wasn’t a lot of progress in the case. There was a frustrating lack of clues and she was quickly running out of people to question. She had even made at least two trips I knew of down to Satsuma to talk to kids and teachers at Mary Ann’s school.

  She let out a sigh. “Okay, so I let her go to Satsuma. Now my second question: How much of what she’s tellin’ us that she’s going to Satsuma for do I trust? You saw her face when I asked about Jessica Thompson. She ain’t goin’.”

  “Ah,” Uncle Henry said, obviously happy to have moved to a new part in the conversation. “Now that’s a different question entirely. I reckon the spirit of what she’s sayin’ is true. I reckon she is goin’ for pizza and a movie, but it’s with a friend. Singular.”

  One eyebrow lifted on my mother’s face. “So, you’re thinkin’ the same as me, then.”

  “Probably. And you’re right. The Thompson girl ain’t goin’. Caroline’s hopin’ you won’t call and check up. She’s hopin’ you won’t call her bluff.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What are y’all talkin’ ’bout?”

  “Mind your business,” my mother said, and turned back to Uncle Henry. “So do I still let her go?”

  “As I said, I can’t assume to offer better parentin’ advice than—”

  “Just tell me, damn it.”

  Uncle Henry shot me a glance. “Gets a mite testy, don’t she?”

  I laughed.

  “Leah,” he said, “she’s headin’ into an age where you’re about to lose pretty near all control you ever had over her. Right now, she’s still askin’, and that’s a good thing. You wanna keep that up as long as possible. So, yes, I say you let her go, and you trust that you’ve done a good enough job these last fourteen odd years that she’s got enough judgment to stay on the good side of stupid. And you don’t check up on her story, no matter how much you’ll want to. That’ll just put her on the spot. That’s the cop in you thinking—not the parent. She’ll be fifteen in a couple months. That’s only two years younger than you were when you had her.”

  “Well, that’s exactly my point,” my mother said.

  Uncle Henry shrugged. “You turned out okay. Everything happens for a reason.”

  She laughed. “I was the other side of stupid, that was the reason. The bad side.”

  “That could be.”

  We all laughed then and went back to eating. My thoughts returned to Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow and something new occurred to me. “Mom? Do you think maybe Mr. Farrow might have snatched up Mary Ann Dailey?”

  Confusion fell over her face. “Now, where in the world would you get an idea like that?”

  “Well, he’s just suspicious, is all,” I said. “He’s doin’ somethin’ sneaky.”

  “Why do you think he’s doin’ somethin’ sneaky?” she asked.

  I looked across at Uncle Henry for backup, but he wasn’t even looking at me. “Well, me and Dewey . . . we’ve sorta been watchin’ him, and there’s some disturbin’ things we’ve noticed. You know, he never leaves that garage, not even to go to the bathroom?”

  My mother wiped her mouth and set down her napkin. “How in the Lord’s name would you boys know anythin’ ’bout that man’s bathroom schedule?”

  “We watch from the lawn. The lights never come on in the rest of the house. Dewey thinks maybe he goes to the toilet in the dark, though.”

  She shook her head. Her eyes were full of disbelief. “Do you boys go to the bathroom while you’re spyin’ on the neighbor ?”

  I furrowed my brow, thinking about this, and realized that we didn’t. Then I realized if we could go that long without going, probably so could Mr. Farrow. My mother noticed the revelation on my face. “Stop thinkin’ bad things about the neighbors. It ain’t neighborly,” she said.

  Uncle Henry still refused to offer even a smidgeon of support. “But, Mama, he never leaves that house. Ever.”

  “What does he eat?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He told us he works nights. And I’ve seen him walkin’ in the early mornings many times. I think he goes for walks after finishing workin’ all night and then comes back and sleeps all day. But for cryin’ out loud, Abe, he has to buy groceries. You should be able to figure out for yourself that he must leave the house sometimes. Just not the times you boys are stakin’ it out.”

  All this made perfect sense when she laid it out like that. I couldn’t figure out why Uncle Henry was keeping so quiet, though. Only a couple hours earlier he had been telling me and Dewey that we were on to something. Even in light of this new information, I still knew we were. In fact, it was all starting to add up and make some kind of sense in my head. When we finally
finished dinner and I helped clean up and dry the dishes, I phoned Dewey and quietly told him my new theory.

  “I figured it all out,” I said. “Mr. Farrow goes out every mornin’ and collects all the roadkill. My mom’s even seen him leavin’ many times.”

  I could sense Dewey’s excitement even through the telephone line. “What does he do with it?” he asked. “You reckon he eats it like old Newt Parker?”

  “Nah, Mr. Farrow buys groceries to eat,” I said. Then I looked around to make sure my mother and Uncle Henry weren’t in listening distance and said, “I reckon Mr. Farrow is using that roadkill to make himself some sort of monster.”

  Dewey gasped. “Like Frankenstein.”

  “Exactly like Frankenstein,” I said. “Only Roadkill Frankenstein.”

  I think we both knew then we had hit the hammer straight down onto the spike. A moment of silent awe transpired.

  “Oh,” I said, before hanging up, “and I asked my mom about Saturday. She said it would be fine if you slept over.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Alvin Police Station was a small brick building pretty much indistinguishable among the rest of the buildings along Main Street. The only two structures downtown that really stood out as being impressive were the library and the courthouse. They stood at opposite ends and opposite sides of the street. Towering a good story above everything else, they both had white marbled columns and expansive steps that led up to huge wooden doors. The courthouse even had a couple of marble lions sitting on brick platforms out front of it.

  But the police station where my mother worked was just a one-story building set slightly back from the street. Inside were two gray desks separated by a partition. The desks belonged to my mother and Officer Christopher Jackson. A computer and a telephone sat on each one. My mother’s desk had a stuffed dog with a blue ribbon wrapped around its neck sitting beside her computer screen. I bought her that dog two years ago for Mother’s Day. She gave me the money, but I went downtown and bought it myself. Carry gave her a cactus, but it died.

  On the back wall was a locked door that led to the jail.