Burn What Will Burn

by C. B. McKenzie

  If I had not been the cautious driver that I am and slowed as instructed going over the narrow bridge and not just caught the red wink of a lit taillight through the kudzu vines draping the trees around South Slough, I would have missed seeing Tammy Fay’s truck altogether.

  But, as History instructs us, it’s what happens and not what doesn’t happen that’s History.

  * * *

  Halfway between South Slough and Doker I saw Warnell slowly walking toward town. His head was down but he was moving at a good pace.

  I drove past him like he was not even there.

  * * *

  I cut my lights and took a back way into Doker and on Elm Street parked for a moment behind the azalea bushes. There was one streetlight in the town but it was blinking so erratically it could not provide any sensible directions—red yellow green green yellow red red yellow green green … so I drove past it.

  The EAT sign above Miss Ollie’s café was off, the neon-like strips of dark tissue burned on the brick, like slave scars, dark and raised like keloid.

  The Old Lion was closed up and shut down, dark downstairs, but upstairs there were skittering shadows in a dim light like someone was in Tammy Fay’s apartment with a flashlight.

  With the Caddy’s lights cut I wended my way out of town and onto a deserted back road. I switched on the car lights and drove slowly toward Bertrandville, came out near the parking lot of the Motel 6. I steered onto the interstate, aimed south and didn’t stop until I was on the Lone Star side of Texarkana.

  CHAPTER 11

  I paid cash for a room at a new Motel 6 on Stateline Avenue near the interstate and did not leave the room for almost a week but to go to the liquor store and Waffle House. My room cost $14.95 a night.

  There is nothing much more to tell about those days.

  I watched TV incessantly since the motel had newly installed cable. I read newspapers. I drank. I slept. I tried not to worry as the newspapers and local and regional TV stations began to issue reports on the several deaths in the Doker, Arkansas, area.

  At one point I decided that I knew all I was ever going to know. And if I didn’t know everything, then there was likely nothing I wanted to know that I would ever be able or allowed, by Locals, to know.

  And sometimes that’s just the way it is: In strange lands, foreigners reach the limits of their Local Knowledge only as allowed by Locals and that is why foreigners are called Foreign and locals are called Local.

  * * *

  Early the next week I bought another Texarkana Gazette and a USA Today, watched the TV news about the ArkLaTex on KSLA and KSTB and watched the national news on all the several majors channels and even on CNN and since I did not hear much mentioned about the Doker deaths, I started to sober up.

  Wednesday I checked out of the Texarkana Motel 6, drove back toward “home” only as far as Hope, where I checked into the Dew Drop Inn Motel, where I watched more of local and regional and national news on TV on the Three Major Networks (no cable at the Dew Drop), and read the Arkansas Democrat from front to back.

  There was nothing about me in any of the reports, not about Randall Robert Reynolds or Bob Reynolds or “suspicious local man” or “wanted as a person of interest” so I continued toward my homeplace as far as Hot Springs.

  I checked into the most reasonably priced room at the Arlington Hotel, which is right in downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas, and in my small room I read The Sentinel-Record from front page to back page and watched all the TV I could stand but did not indulge in sulfur baths or steam cabinets or hot oil massages or alcohol rubs, etc.

  Still, nothing about me.

  The next day I phoned the Crow’s Nest for information, but Ladoris said Smarty Bell’s girlfriend was a finalist in a Best Boobs and Bootie contest in Memphis and my favorite barkeep was in Tennessee to lend moral support to his girlfriend.

  Doctor “Doc” Williams did not answer his home phone and there was only a machine at his office to answer my phone call, which machine I did not talk to.

  There was modest mention of Leonard “Buck” King and Joe Pickens Junior still in the Press, but not nearly as much as you’d suspect there should be.

  There was an article in the papers and on the newscasts about the drowning death of one Tammy Fay Smith, of Doker, Arkansas. Warnell Ames, of Doker, Arkansas, had been implicated in her death, the article said, and was under arrest.

  But still nothing about me.

  No mention of Bob Reynolds as part of that summer crime spree in Doker, Arkansas.

  Thank you, Jesus, Rising Star.

  I felt so much better about my current situation and the likelihood of my safely escaping it that I actually gave some thought to my abandoned chickens.

  At least I thought about that poultry to the extent that I wondered if my chickens were faring well in the wide world or if they would be stinking dead on the porch by the time I returned since my chicken caretaker, Malcolm, now had probably cashed his thousand-dollar “inheritance” check and wouldn’t need my ten dollars per week for taking care of my chickens.

  But chickens die all the time, tens of thousands of chickens die every day, actually, by slaughter as well as by natural causes.

  I bought a modest and reasonably priced bathing suit at a downtown drugstore and enjoyed the two-tiered swimming pool of the Arlington Hotel even though I did not get in the water. Friday and Saturday nights I had two drinks per night at the bar in the lobby. I listened to the jazz trio and watched a few couples dance, but I didn’t ask anyone to dance and no one asked me to dance. In fact there was a lot more music that night than there was dancing.

  * * *

  I slept most of Sunday and then Monday bright and early I headed to Doker. Back to Doker.

  I pulled off the interstate at the Bertrandville/Doker/Danielles exit and took a right. The Old Lion tow rig was parked outside RW King’s Tire Palace, just a stone’s throw from the near empty parking lot of the Motel 6.

  I parked my Caddy beside her truck, went inside the tire store.

  My heart was in my throat, as it will be when you think something that can’t possibly happen might could happen. When the very strange notion becomes, for a moment of suspended disbelief, altogether probable. Maybe she was still alive.

  There was a couple in the tool aisle of the Tire Palace Auto parts and Tire Store arguing over the merits of spark plugs balanced in the man’s hands. The woman was pretty in an overdone way and wanted the best plugs. The man was unattractive and out of shape and did not want to spend a penny more than he had to. His necktie was silk, yellow and covered in a neat pattern with smears of red and it swung like a long pendulum over his short little pot belly. His bald head gleamed under fluorescent tube lights that crackled and hissed as if they were frying themselves.

  I realized the man part of this couple looked very much like I must look in the world.

  Behind the long counter at the back of the store a myopic old man flipped through a thick parts book, intent on its study as a divinity student studying the lineages in the Old Testament.

  Nearby his elbow radiator hose coiled on itself like a snake.

  I cleared my throat.

  The man flipped another tissue-thin page.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “You know the woman that owns that tow truck parked out front?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t know her?”

  “That girl never owned that rig. Dick King loaned it to her for decoration and tax purposes. She owed us money.”

  “You’re not Dick King?” I asked.

  “I’m not any kind of King. I just work here,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “I was just a client of hers. Over in Doker. She worked on my truck.”

  He flipped another page in his catalog.

  “She worked on your truck,” he repeated.

  He sounded acutely skeptical. He had not looked at me yet, but then he did.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She wasn’t
a mechanic.”

  “No. She wasn’t a very good mechanic,” I admitted.

  He squinted at me.

  “You’re serious,” he said, repeated himself. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged.

  “You actually paid her,” he asked, “to work on your vehicle?”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head before he nodded.

  “Well, you’re the one she got the parts for then, so I guess you can pay Dick King for those parts she ordered.”

  “How much?”

  He told me and I handed over my credit card.

  “You knew she was … a working girl, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t know anything about her,” I lied.

  He assayed me, nodded.

  “Well, if she ever serviced more than your vehicle, I’d have a blood test pretty quick. When they autopsied her she was positive for everything in the book, I heard. Half the sporting fellows in the Arkansas River Valley are tearing their hair out right about now.”

  “I don’t need it,” I lied. “But I appreciate the advice.”

  I guess I should have registered her death more, just for form’s sake. But it was not really news to me and I didn’t feel like making a show of grief about her, so I didn’t do it.

  “Just a word to the wise.” The old man looked at my credit card. “Mister Reynolds.”

  * * *

  I headed for Doker, switched on the eight-track player in the Caddy, inserted an old tape my wife had given me.

  John Lee Hooker was having some troubles of his own. But, in the end, he was a peace-loving man and would rather leave and just say good-bye.

  Good-bye.

  CHAPTER 12

  I steered the Cadillac beside the pumps of the Doker Exxon station. The attendant strolled over, ran an appreciative hand over the hood of the car.

  “Fill it, please. And she’s low on oil,” I said. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  I passed by a fellow sitting up under a tarpaulin sunshade selling watermelons off a flatbed and we traded quick comments on the heat, said how dry it was lately, how abnormal it was to be so dry in this part of the country where humidity was the most usual rule of the day.

  I didn’t stop more than that to talk to the watermelon seller, but kept on walking down the street until I got to the Old Lion Filling Station, which had been Tammy’s Tune-ups and Towing.

  The CLOSED sign was hanging on the inside of the office door. The work bay of the garage was empty. I walked around the building; half circled it slowly, climbed up the back stairs and peeked into the apartment through a torn curtain.

  From what little I could see Tammy Fay’s place had been overturned thoroughly.

  I guessed somebody had been looking for her photograph collection.

  The door was fastened tight.

  I felt eyes on me and when I looked around I saw Miss Ollie watching me through her diner’s front picture window.

  I descended the stairs and walked across the road that was a State Highway in general but our Main Street in particular, and stepped into EAT, stepped inside the cold café, sat in my regular booth, which gave the best view of the Main Street, the crossroads signal light, the Old Lion, of Doker, Arkansas.

  Nobody local was there but me; but there was a table at the far end of the room filled with tourists, the men and the women all dressed in more or less the same outfit, in golf shirts and khaki short pants, all wearing walking shoes as ordinary and sensible as mine if less expensive than mine.

  They talked in low voices and occasionally looked my way from behind raised-up menus as if they knew me or knew something about me.

  The women were all shaking their heads “no” and the men were all nodding “yes.”

  But I doubt those tourists did know me or know anything about me.

  Miss Ollie Ames put a cup of coffee with cream and sugar in front of me, though I prefer my coffee black and unsweet and always have.

  “Hello, Mr. Reynolds.”

  “Miss Ollie,” I said politely.

  “A blue plate, Mr. Reynolds? Chipped beef today. Your favorite.”

  “That would be fine, Miss Ollie,” I said, though chipped beef was not my favorite by any longshot.

  But she made no move to serve that meal.

  “I saw you over at the Old Lion, Mr. Reynolds,” Miss Ollie said. “Just now,” she said. “I guess you don’t know, do you, Mr. Reynolds? That they arrested my son.”

  I looked out the front picture window, where Warnell was usually sitting on his stool looking out for his mistress and waving at every passer-by.

  “I read it in the Hot Springs paper, Miss Ollie. Her death was recorded in The Sentinel-Record, though there weren’t many details except that Warnell had been arrested for her murder.”

  Miss Ollie looked past me into the day beyond the dusty plate glass of her front window.

  “I haven’t been to Hot Springs in a long time, Mr. Reynolds,” she told me. “A very long time,” she added. “How is Hot Springs these days?”

  “Fine, Miss Ollie,” I said. “Crowded, though. Lots of tourists. And it’s hot this time of year. Very hot.”

  “But I should get down there again, shouldn’t I, Mr. Reynolds?”

  “Hot Springs is worth the trip, Miss Ollie,” I said. “But not this time of year.”

  “Autumn is such a nice time to go to Hot Springs, though, isn’t it, Mr. Reynolds?” Miss Ollie asked me. “When the fall foliage is out.”

  “The foliage,” I said, “is beautiful then, Miss Ollie. Around Hot Springs in the fall is like being in a painter’s palette.”

  Miss Ollie sighed, a little overdramatically, I thought.

  “I guess I should plan on seeing that then, Mr. Reynolds? Hot Springs in the fall?”

  “I guess you should, Miss Ollie,” I said.

  “Can you guarantee that, Mr. Reynolds?”

  Miss Ollie ran a dishtowel over a tiny puddle of water that was on the booth table nearby my hand.

  She had painted her fingernails, inexpertly, blood red.

  My appetite disappeared much as the water under her dishtowel had disappeared.

  “She owed me almost three hundred dollars in food tabs, Mr. Reynolds,” Miss Ollie told me. “Does that seem right to you? To owe somebody what you never intended on paying, like she did?”

  “Put what she owed you on my tab, Miss Ollie. Whatever it is.”

  “I couldn’t do that, Mr. Reynolds.”

  “I’ve got plenty of money, Miss Ollie,” I told her, repeated myself so that she would understand me. “I’ve got plenty of money for the right things, Miss Ollie.”

  “All right then, Mr. Reynolds.”

  I sat very still.

  Miss Ollie made no move either. I could see the pulse in an artery in one of her dishwater hands that clutched a dishrag fiercely. I looked out the window at the Old Lion.

  “Did you know her well or long?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure anyone ever knew her well, Mr. Reynolds. But I have known her or known of her since she was a child.” Miss Ollie raised a vague hand over her shoulder. “She was raised over in Danielles though. Raised in Danielles, in those trailer houses behind the Piggly Wiggly. Did you ever shop over there, Mr. Reynolds, at that Piggly Wiggly in Danielles? A lot of men do, I hear.”

  I lied, shook my head firmly against that even being a remote possibility.

  “I try to stay as local as possible, Miss Ollie,” I said, though truthfully I had visited Piggly Wiggly in Danielles on a few occasions.

  Miss Ollie nodded, but slightly as if I were not particularly convincing.

  “Her foster parents in Danielles or Social Service or whoever was in charge of her at that time used to send her away for the summers, over here to that Osage Camp, as they called it. Leave her over here all summer.”

  “Tammy Fay?” I asked, though I knew who she was talking about. “Was sent by her foster parents or Social Service or wh
oever was in charge of her, to Camp Osage, which was the project of Dr. Williams’s wife? The kids’ camp that Melissa Williams ran?”

  “Yes, Mr. Reynolds. In fact, she often lived summers with the doctor and his wife and then lived in Danielles the rest of the year with various foster parents and this went on for many years.”

  “Tammy Fay,” I said, since Miss Ollie seemed unwilling to say the young woman’s name.

  “Yessir, her.” Miss Ollie brushed a fly away from her face. “And then the doctor gave her the Old Lion to stay in when she turned twenty-one and she moved in there permanently, more or less. That was about five or six years ago, Mr. Reynolds. Right after the doctor’s wife passed on.”

  I tried to position all the players in this longstanding local drama.

  “So Warnell knew Tammy Fay from Camp Osage?”

  “My poor son, Mr. Reynolds,” Miss Ollie said. “His head was twirled like a top until it was spun off by that girl. Like all the rest, but Warnell was the worst smitten. Followed her around like a puppy dog, whining after her affection. He would do anything for her. She made him eat dog poo once in front of a bunch of other kids from camp.”

  “Why?” I asked, even though I did not need to ask.

  “Just because she could,” said Miss Ollie. “You know that as well as I do, Mr. Reynolds. It was pathetic.”

  I looked at Miss Ollie in the face and she blushed.

  “And now Tammy Fay is dead,” I said.

  “She was a force of nature of sorts, Mr. Reynolds. Like a terrible storm. But even a tornado blows itself out eventually.”

  I said nothing as this seemed to sum things up pretty well, save for the aftermath.

  “I couldn’t blame anybody?” Miss Ollie asked me. “Could you, Mr. Reynolds?”

  “What do you mean, Miss Ollie?”

  “Could you blame anybody in this business, Mr. Reynolds?”

  After a pause, I said, “No, I couldn’t, Miss Ollie.”

  But somebody had to take the fall for all this business.

  “I am really sorry for your own troubles in all this, Miss Ollie.”