• • •
Walking along under leafy branches that splashed coin-shadows on the pavement, I suddenly realized that Mrs. Louderback hadn’t once treated me like a child to be talked down to. It was as if I had as much right to ask my one question as anyone in Spirit Lake or La Porte. Mrs. Louderback then would be grouped with Maud and Miss Flyte and Miss Flagler, with Dr. McComb and Mr. Root and the Woods. And the Sheriff, of course, but he made up a group of his own.
I thought again about my question. I stopped there on the walk with the leaves over my head shivering a little in the light wind and wondered if that was the real reason, not wanting to tell what Jude Stemple had made me promise I wouldn’t. Refusing to betray a promise sounded good. It even sounded noble. Prissy-good, more like. It was the sort of reason you’d come up with to cover up the real reasons that you didn’t want to admit. Or, to do myself justice (something I did far more often than being “cruelly honest”), maybe it was correct to say it was part of the reason, but not all of it. I walked on slowly, then stopped again outside Marge’s cottage, for I had this cloudy notion—it was very dim—that the real reason I didn’t tell anyone what Jude Stemple had said, or what Ulub had said about the Devereaus, and especially about the Girl, was . . .
I shook my head and chewed my lip, looking towards Marge’s windows with the sun on them making them shine as if she’d pulled down blinds of radiant light. The reason I didn’t tell anybody what I’d seen or heard was that I didn’t really want anyone to know. Was all of this like having a huge secret? If you give away a secret, even if it’s your own to give away as you like, would it rob the secret of its power? Or should I say, its magic? So I wouldn’t want to tell anyone, not even the Sheriff—
Especially the Sheriff, I should say. He was very smart. He’d investigate. He’d track down the Queens behind their yellow shutters. He could even find Her.
She would be in peril.
That sounded like a fancy way of saying it, but I felt it was true, though, again, I wasn’t sure why. I felt she should be allowed to go on looking for whatever she was looking for.
THIRTY-SIX
Even when I was doing the salads, I could not keep my mind from going back and forth, back and forth, between telling and not telling. Keeping silent I had always thought a good rule of thumb, but I hardly ever practiced it. I guess I was too much of a busybody. I know not keeping silent was what got me in hot water with Lola Davidow. I could not help returning her tongue lashings with one or two of my own, which sent her into a whirlwind of rage.
But keeping this particular silence was different. Although I was running them together in my mind—Fern Queen and the Girl—so that telling about one meant telling about the other, I had to admit that they weren’t necessarily connected. Not necessarily. But I knew they were. They didn’t have to be in the telling. If that was so, then I was left with a much lesser problem: how to tell the Sheriff about the Queen house and about the dead woman and her relationship to the Cold Flat Junction Queens—how to do this without telling him about Jude Stemple saying it.
I stared down at the rows of salads—sliced tomatoes tonight—and tried to bring back exactly what Jude Stemple had said. Exactly what. I frowned. This could be the way to a solution. I pictured us both back there, me and Jude Stemple, back in Flyback Hollow, listening. I would change from being back in the Hollow to being here in the kitchen, studying the salads and debating whether to put a slice of black olive atop the crumbled egg or to finish the salad off with some chopped parsley.
Walter had stopped his broom to look at the salads and kind of nod. Then he started sweeping again, unnecessary sweeping, since the floor was already as clean as a whistle, but since there were no dishes yet to wash, my mother had told him to sweep. Neither my mother nor Lola Davidow could stand it if Walter wasn’t working. It was like the end of everything, like their entire livelihood was being pulled out from under them, if Walter ever stopped to rest. It made me really mad.
I smiled at Walter and sprinkled one salad with parsley. I looked at another on which I’d put a slice of black olive on top of the crumbled egg. I was looking from one to the other when Vera turned up behind me like a black specter. Her high, thin voice made me jump. Walter jumped too, I noticed (and it was hard to make Walter react). Vera was holding her empty aluminum tray up on the tips of her fingers, trying, I guess, to make the point that all she had was an empty tray and why weren’t the salads fixed? She wanted to know, what did I think I was doing, putting that crumbled egg on them, anyway? I thought for a moment and then calmly told her that I’d read this whole article in an old Ladies’ Home Journal saying that hard-boiled egg, especially mixed with either olives or parsley, was wonderful for clearing out impurities of the blood. I added that Harold (he was her husband) should probably try it. I knew it irritated the life out of Vera for me to refer to Harold by his first name, which is why I always did that. It also irritated her that everybody knew Harold was just an old geezer of an alcoholic and a hypochondriac to boot, not really sick at all, except for whatever “impurities” got into his blood by way of Wild Turkey, and that he was not really sick at all. So while Vera had to go out and wait tables, Harold just stayed in bed complaining to the four walls. It was my guess he probably jumped out of bed and made straight for the Wild Turkey the minute Vera left.
Vera was trying to think up a good retort to this Ladies’ Home Journal article, but she couldn’t, so she settled for frosty looks and starchy movements as she clattered six salads onto her tray.
Walter was now leaning on his broom and laughing his weird laugh, like someone just rescued from smoke and fire or from near-drowning, sucking air into his lungs and letting it out in a har-har-har way. Walter never said anything mean about anyone, but you could tell he despised Vera, and told me he thought my salads were “purty,” and I rewarded him by asking which decoration he liked, olive or parsley. “Both,” he said, so I sprinkled paprika on one and lay the olive on top of it. I agreed with him that the colors looked good.
• • •
After dinner and after dark, I was down in the Pink Elephant, still trying to call up just what Jude Stemple had made me promise. I thought hard. Had Jude said, “Don’t tell anybody about Fern Queen,” or had he said, “Don’t tell anybody I told you about Fern Queen”? Those were two entirely different things. I thought it was the second, but I wasn’t sure. I tried to work it out logically: it wouldn’t really make any difference to Jude if someone told the authorities that the dead woman was Fern Queen, would it? And someone must have finally reported the missing woman, or the Sheriff wouldn’t have gone hightailing it to Cold Flat Junction. Wasn’t what worried Jude that he’d be dragged into it? I fussed with the collection in my Whitman’s box as I thought this over. Surely, the important thing was to understand the intent of what a person said, rather than just his words. Being perfectly honest, I had to admit that Jude Stemple’s intent was for me to keep my mouth shut. Well, I didn’t see how I could. But I wondered why, if he felt so free to say that in public, he’d wanted me to promise not to tell where I heard it. It must be that he’d told me a lot of other stuff, too. All that about the Queens.
I yawned. I doubled my fists, one atop the other, and leaned my chin on them. My eyelids kept shutting, and I must have slept just for a moment until a little snore jerked me awake. My chin was still on my balled-up fists, but I raised my eyes to look over at my rented library picture of the bridge across a pond full of lovely flowers. I told myself that it was like Spirit Lake, but of course it wasn’t. It didn’t look haunted.
• • •
Difficulties. Pain. Blame. Mentally, I pictured the Hanged Man and the orphans-in-the-storm card. And I decided these cards don’t tell your future at all; I think they tell you What Is, or maybe I should say, What You Are. They do not tell you what to do. They do not tell you where Aurora Paradise has her money buried, or where Lola Davidow has the crate of whisky hid. They do not tell you if Ree-Jane will di
e a miserable death, though you can hope so.
Difficulties. Pain. Blame.
But I was resolute, Mrs. Louderback had said.
Resolute. I wouldn’t give up. That was a comforting thought, even if I wasn’t getting any good advice from those cards of hers. But then I thought: there would be no reason to be resolute if all you had to do was ask the cards for advice, and they would give it. Maybe I only thought I wanted help or advice in making up my mind. Probably, when it came down to it, I didn’t want advice at all. For I always hated being told what to do, even by orphans or the Hanged Man.
Life was hard, but I was resolute.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The next morning I called Axel’s Taxis and was told that Axel himself might be coming out my way to deliver some goods and that if he did, he’d pick me up. I knew of course that Axel would do no such thing and that it would be Delbert driving. When the dispatcher asked me where I wanted to be dropped off, I told her the courthouse. I had made up my mind.
I had decided that it really wasn’t right to keep information “vital to the investigation” (which was the way I’d heard such things described) to myself. Although I knew the Sheriff had gone to Cold Flat Junction two days before, and I bet it was about the dead woman, there was still no telling whether it was the Queens who called the police, or someone else, who didn’t know much, maybe even the First Union Tabernacle preacher. So it would certainly save the Sheriff time if I were to tell him what I’d learned from what Jude Stemple had said.
I was not bound to tell the Sheriff about the Girl, though. That would save me a lot of explaining about my first visit to Cold Flat, and going with the Woods to the Devereau house. There was no earthly reason to drag in Mr. Root and the Wood boys and take the chance that somebody in the Sheriff’s office would come out here and grill them. It would probably be Donny throwing his weight around and pretending they were all suspicious characters for going over to the Devereau place. He’d pretty much try and leave me out of it, though, even though I was the ringleader, because the Sheriff would not take kindly to Donny’s treating a child like a possible criminal, especially me. There were advantages to being a child. The police didn’t think you had anything to do with a murder case, and also you could get into the Orion for half-price.
I ordered the taxi for ten a.m., which would allow me time to wait on anyone coming in late for breakfast. Breakfast is supposed to be from seven-thirty to nine, but my mother will still cook if some guest wants to be served. This annoys me. Dinner is the same way, but Vera and Anna Paugh go home around nine p.m. If guests show up for a room and want a late dinner, my mother obliges, which means I have to oblige too, as there isn’t anyone else to wait tables. Except Ree-Jane, and God forbid anyone would have the nerve to ask her to oblige.
So this morning would have to be the one morning Miss Bertha decided to be late for her breakfast. You could have set a clock by her and Mrs. Fulbright, usually. Still, “late” for them was just a little after nine, and that was all right; not even Miss Bertha could take more than a half-hour or forty-five minutes to eat her breakfast and complain.
Which, of course, she did. The orange juice was watery, the corn cakes soaked up too much syrup, the sausage wasn’t spicy enough. This really irritated me, for usually she squawked about just the opposite: my mother put much too much pepper and spice in things. It was all so ridiculous; they were the same corn cakes and sausage as she’d always had, year after year. Mrs. Fulbright told her to stop making trouble for people, but Miss Bertha just sat rigid, her arms lapped around her like a little gray mummy, shaking her head. I took the plate she’d pushed away back to the kitchen and banged it down on the serving counter. My mother said just to send her in another plate of cakes and sausage and tell her they were made specially. There were sausage patties sizzling on the black griddle, sending up gray threads of smoke. My mother was taking off her apron, unwinding the ties, which she usually wrapped twice around her waist, the apron being so big. She told me she had to go out to the front desk and talk with Mrs. Davidow about the linen delivery and that in two minutes I was to turn the patties over and cook them on the other side. I could grease the other griddle and use the batter in the bowl. “You know how,” she said. “Just take her in fresh cakes and she’ll think I made them especially, the old fool.” Then she strode off through the side screen door and along the little wooden walk towards the office.
I was pleased to cook the breakfast; I liked being put in charge. While the sausage grease popped, I rooted in the icebox for the can of green chilies I knew was there, and which my mother used sparingly in a hot sauce for some Italian dish. I removed one to the chopping board, took the big knife from an earthenware bowl and chopped the chili in tiny bits. I pressed some of these into two sausage patties before turning them over. Humming away, I carried the batter bowl to the griddle and spooned out the corn cakes. The batter was thick and grainy. My mother’s corn cakes would have been my favorite if it hadn’t been for those buckwheat cakes. Or the waffles onto which she would drizzle fresh fruit syrup.
The sausage was done and when the corn cakes bubbled up I quickly turned them over with a spatula and let them cook just a minute on the other side. I reached down a plate from the ledge above the stove where they sat warming and slid the cakes onto the plate with two patties. The rest of the patties I carefully lined up on a paper towel to drain off the grease, as my mother always did.
Then I carried Miss Bertha’s plate into the dining room. It was nine-thirty-five by now.
Miss Bertha didn’t hang around the dining room long after she got a mouthful of that sausage, which was fine by me, for my taxi would be arriving in twenty minutes or so. I was careful to remove the plate to where Walter was slowly wiping a platter and scraped the sausage into the garbage. I did this in case anyone decided to investigate. Walter was grinning, for he knew something was going on. Who wouldn’t, with Miss Bertha yelling someone was trying to kill her? I told Walter I’d tell him all about it when I got back from town, but right now I was in a big hurry, and also, I could hear my mother walking through the dining room. She had an unmistakable way of walking, and I recognized her footstep. I quickly told Walter I’d appreciate it if he didn’t happen to mention I cleaned Miss Bertha’s plate. That just made him grin more, his flat smile nearly splitting his face in two. Walter just loved to be in on a secret.
My mother marched into the kitchen saying that Miss Bertha was throwing a fit, the old fool, because the sausage was poisoned. She had a way of banging pots and pans around when she was annoyed, the way an artist would probably throw his brushes against the wall if he didn’t like the way his picture was going. Then she picked up one of the remaining sausage patties from the paper towel and bit off a piece.
“It tastes perfectly all right to me; it tastes exactly the same as yesterday’s. Here—” She broke another patty in two, walked over to the dishwasher, and handed me and Walter the halves. “Doesn’t it taste the same?”
We both chewed and considered. I said, “Of course it does.”
Walter said, “Uh-huh, same as always. Real good.”
My mother threw up her arms. “If all three of us think so, then she’s obviously loony.”
My mother was very democratic that way.
“And she says she’s not going to eat one more meal in this place. Which should be good news for you.” She smiled at me. “You won’t have to wait tables at lunch.”
A bonus! All I’d wanted was to get my ten o’clock taxi. I never expected a bonus.
Then Walter said, giving us his slow smile, “I guess she thinks only her patties was poisoned.” He gave his sucked-in laugh. I glared at him. “Too bad I went and throwed the rest of her breakfast away,” he said, winking at me. “The old fool.”
• • •
As I climbed into the cab, Delbert squinted his eyes, as if that would help him hear better. He asked me what in tarnation people was yelling about in the hotel and I said I hadn’t t
he least idea and I’d like to go to the courthouse, please. I ignored his comment about having taken me there just a couple of days ago and was I in any trouble? He thought this was hysterical.
Just to see what the answer would be, I asked him what happened to Axel. Didn’t he have things to deliver somewhere in Spirit Lake? “Oh, Axel done that,” he said. “Early on this morning. He would of come got you, only he had an emergency call from up there at Buena Vista.”
I wasn’t really interested in any emergency the people who owned Buena Vista might have; they were all falling down drunk most of the time and having to be taken to the hospital. As Delbert talked on, I looked out of my window at the open field where some of the older La Porte kids came to race their ancient, beat-up cars. Bronze in the sharp sunlight, the dirt showed old slicks of oil and grease in between the puffballs and straggling black-eyed Susans that managed to sprout where there was grass left to do it. It made me mad to think that whole field would be covered with wildflowers and grass if it weren’t for the boys with their ugly shrieking cars. I also saw tire-sized patches of grape hyacinths and I wondered if Nature wasn’t stronger than I gave it credit for being. I remembered the woods around the lake, the way the underbrush, the stout vines, and the thick-trunked trees had taken over the road where a person used to be able to drive a car, and the flat paths that had once been a way through. The Devereau house, which had once seemed to be the very center of that side of Spirit Lake, looked as if in a few years’ time it might be invisible to the eye, where the heavy-leaved branches would overlap and cover it like dark green water, and it would sink.
I was thinking these thoughts all the way into town, with an added thought for God as we passed St. Michael’s on the right. I was jolted out of my thoughts when the taxi pulled up to the side of the courthouse, and Delbert told me, Here you are! as if it was pretty clever of him to know where it was. I got out and paid him the fare, plus a quarter tip, which pleased him. Then I ran on into the building. Having made this decision, I could hardly wait to get everything off my chest.
Hotel Paradise Page 34
