by Anne George
“Sunshine?” He turned to the sheriff for confirmation. Sheriff Reuse nodded. Still no attack. “Sunshine’s gone?”
“She’s fine, Melvin. We’ll find her.”
Pawpaw seemed to think about this a moment, then announced, “I think I’m going to go take a nap now.”
“I’ll go with him, bless his heart,” Meemaw said.
“Good idea,” Sheriff Reuse agreed.
“What about us?” Sister asked him.
“You can go home. I’ll be in touch.” The sheriff headed back toward Meemaw’s trailer while the Turketts climbed out of the backseat of the Jaguar.
“Listen here, missy.” Meemaw stuck her head in the window. “I saw the way you were coming on to Pawpaw. I don’t care whose mother-in-law you are, the Pope’s or Jesus Christ’s. You just watch your step.”
Sister’s mouth fell open. “My God! The nerve of that woman!” she said as Meemaw walked away.
Oh, joy! Oh, celestial choirs! I had lived long enough to see Mary Alice Tate Sullivan Nachman Crane meet her match.
“And what fool kind of policing do you call this?” Sister jerked the car into reverse and backed up, narrowly missing the patrol car. “We fall over a dead body, and does the sheriff ask us a single question?” Sister whirled the car around, again almost hitting the sheriff’s car. “No. He just says, ‘Go on home, ladies. I’ll be in touch.’” We headed down the briar patch trail at a clip guaranteed to test the Jaguar’s whole suspension system. “I mean, does he think Sunshine’s been kidnapped and should I call Ray?”
“Don’t know.” Like Brer Rabbit, I know when to lay low.
“That’s what I’m talking about, Mouse. The man hasn’t got walking-around sense. None of those folks back there do.”
What happened next snapped me out of the fugue state I was still halfway caught in. We reached the highway, and Mary Alice dutifully almost stopped at the stop sign. She’s explained to a lot of cops that that’s what keeps her car’s transmission flexible. But just as she started to pull onto the highway, a car that seemed to appear from nowhere careened by, missing us by inches.
We both screamed.
“My God! Where did that come from?” Sister finally said. “Are you okay, Mouse? You’re not having an attack, are you?”
I realized that, like Pawpaw, I had my hands against my chest, holding my heart in.
The events of the day were suddenly clear and overwhelming, and this last fright was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I began to cry, groping for one of the tissues that I had mopped Meemaw’s tears up with.
“Are you okay? Why are you crying?”
“Because we almost got killed.”
Sister reached into her purse. “You need some aspirin.”
“No, I don’t. I’m tired and I just want to go home.” To Fred and Woofer and the big pots of red geraniums on the porch.
Sister turned onto the highway and we started back to Birmingham, down Old Highway 31 that parallels a swift creek, curving gently as the creek bed curves. The woods were green and tranquil.
I wiped my eyes. “I wonder if Chief Joseph was married.”
“Probably,” Mary Alice said. “His clothes matched.”
Made sense to me.
Five
Everything slows down in Birmingham in August. The streets are almost deserted; children take longer naps. Dogs dig deep holes in backyards and lie in them, grateful for the dark coolness of damp earth.
This was what Woofer had done. When I went out to check on him, he was snuggled in a hole he had dug under the privet hedge that we planted years ago as a screen between us and a new house that was being built behind us. The newlyweds who moved into that house now have grandchildren, and the hedge long ago outgrew our ability to control it.
I leaned down and patted his head. “Don’t you want to go get in your igloo doghouse?” He didn’t. Wagged his tail. “You want to come in the cool house?” He didn’t. A wide yawn.
“We’ll go for a walk after while, then, when it gets cooler.”
He couldn’t have been less interested. I rubbed my thumbs across his forehead toward his ears in a motion he loves. So much gray. Tears sprang to my eyes again. This would not do. I got up, went into the kitchen that still smelled freshly painted, and made Fred a lemon pie for supper with a four-egg-white meringue. The filling was compliments of Jell-O, Jiffy helped with the crust, but by damn, the meringue was mine. And it looked good.
The phone rang while I was beating the eggs, and I didn’t bother to answer it. Let the machine get it; I was beginning to feel better.
I took a warm shower with freesia shower gel and put on green and white seersucker shorts and a white shirt. Definitely feeling better. I settled on the den sofa with a big glass of iced tea and listened to my messages.
“Mama,” Haley said. “Call me as soon as you get in. I’ve got exciting news. Bye.”
“Aunt Pat, sorry about hanging up on you. I’m feeling better and would love to hear how today turned out. Bye.” Well, I’d have to give myself a couple of hours to make that call to Debbie.
“The Hannah Home truck will be in your neighborhood picking up discards next Wednesday. If you have anything for us, please call.”
“Honey, I may be a few minutes late getting home. Love you.”
“Patricia Anne, Betty Sims here. The monthly AAUW reading group meets this Friday at ten o’clock at the Homewood library. Don’t forget.”
My eyes were beginning to get heavy. I had time for a nap. All we were having for supper was turkey sandwiches made from stress-free turkeys raised in the shade of pecan trees. I had seen the package with that advertisement at the Piggly Wiggly and couldn’t resist, though it was walking the line of getting a little too chummy with what I was chewing.
“Mouse, the police found Sunshine’s bloody nightgown. I’m calling Ray.”
Oh, Lord. I dialed Mary Alice’s number and after one ring got the answering machine. I knew from experience that this meant the line was busy. “It’s me,” I said. “Call me back.”
No sooner had I hung up than the phone rang, startling me. “Sister?” I said.
“No, Mama, it’s me. Wait until you hear my news.”
“I’ve got to hang up, Haley. Something terrible has happened to Sunshine.”
“Sunshine? What’s happened?”
“Nobody knows, honey. A man was killed in their trailer, and Sunshine’s disappeared. But your Aunt Sister just left a message that they’d found her bloody nightgown.”
“God, Mama!”
“I’ll call you back as soon as I talk to Sister.” I hung up and waited for Sister to call. I was grateful that I was not the one having to break the news to Ray and wondered how long it would take him to get home.
The phone rang almost immediately. “I can’t talk but a second,” Mary Alice said. “I’m waiting for Ray to call.”
“Who called about the bloody nightgown?”
“Meemaw. I was surprised. It doesn’t sound good, though, Mouse. She said the sheriff’s searching the woods around the trailers. Sounds like he thinks he’s going to find a body, doesn’t it?”
“What can we do?”
“Nothing right now that I know of. I’ll call you if I hear anything.”
I hung up the phone and forced myself to relax. I tried closing my eyes and saying my mantra. I tried the old imagining-the-penny-on-the-forehead trick. But it did no good. Images of Chief Joseph’s body impaled with a hog-butchering knife kept pushing forward.
“Think it’s the Mexican guy who chiefs at Crystal Caverns.” I could hear Jed Reuse’s voice. “Dresses up like an Indian and has his picture made with kids.”
His picture made with kids. Was it possible? I went to the closet and pulled down our most recent family album which has the pictures from the last five or so years. Fred and I are both terrible about taking pictures, even remembering our camera. And when we do, we forget to take the film to have it developed. We slink in
to Harco’s with rolls of film so old that we feel the necessity to apologize to the clerk. The pictures that manage to survive we stick into albums in the envelopes, swearing that someday we’ll arrange them. The only person in the family who is bothered by this is my daughter-in-law, Lisa. Her picture albums are perfect.
So she could have gone right to the pictures that I lucked into finding, pictures of her two sons, Charlie and Sam, taken about five years earlier at Crystal Caverns. Then about six and eight, they stood proudly, one on each side of an Indian chief. There were two other photographs, one of each child standing in front of the chief. Charlie held a drum in his picture, Sam a tomahawk. I remembered those souvenirs had cost us a fortune.
I sat on the sofa and studied the pictures. Was it Chief Joseph? I hadn’t gotten a good look at the face of the man on Meemaw’s floor. In fact, I had looked at him as little as possible. But he was small and dark like this man who peered straight at the camera, his feathered headdress pushed back just a fraction too far, giving him a slightly cocky look I hadn’t noticed when I first saw the pictures. “Sure,” he seemed to be saying. “I’m chiefing. But you’re the fools paying me ten bucks.”
I laid the photographs on the coffee table. I didn’t want the body I had seen today to be this man who had posed with my grandchildren. Maybe that’s why I’m terrible about pictures. When you look back at them, you already know too much about how the story will turn out.
I put the album back in the closet and tried to call Haley. She had sounded excited, and I had cut her off. Her line was busy, though. I couldn’t call Debbie. She would know in a second that something was wrong by the tone of my voice. It’s one of the things that makes her a good lawyer. So I tried TV. Rosie O’Donnell, one of my favorites, was interviewing Debbie Reynolds, also a favorite. I freshened my iced tea and willed myself to sit back and relax.
Might as well have willed myself to fly. I had to stay busy. Which is why I was in the middle of vacuuming the whole house when Haley arrived. I saw her car pull into the driveway, watched her go pat Woofer who was still curled in his cave. Such a pretty woman, her strawberry-blonde hair gleaming in the late August sun. She had once thought that she would have a long, happy life with her husband, Tom Buchanan. She would have his children, his love. A drunk driver put an end to that dream three years ago. For a long time, Fred and I thought we would never see our daughter happy again. And we know now that we’ll never see the Haley we knew before Tom’s death. But the lovely, confident woman crossing our backyard had accepted and moved beyond her grief. In fact, she looked radiant. I opened the door and hugged her.
“Any news?” she asked.
“No. Nothing except what I told you.” I led the way into the den. “You want a Coke?”
“A beer.” Haley got one from the refrigerator and followed me. She pointed to the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the floor. “Your recipe for nerves.”
I wound the cord around it and put it in the closet. “Yep.”
“Tell me what happened.”
So I told the story of the day’s events, ending by passing the photographs to Haley.
“Lord!” she said. “You think this was the man?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“And Meemaw didn’t know him?”
“Said she didn’t. I believed her.”
Haley placed the pictures back on the coffee table. “So she’s gone for twenty minutes and when she gets home there’s a murdered man she’s never seen before in her trailer and her granddaughter’s missing.”
I shivered. “Or worse.”
The phone rang. Haley answered it. “Wait a minute, Aunt Sister. I’ll ask her.” She turned to me. “What are you having for supper, Mama?”
“What?”
“She wants to know what you’re having for supper, Mama.”
“Turkey sandwiches and lemon meringue pie. Has she talked to Ray?”
“Turkey sandwiches and lemon meringue pie, Aunt Sister. And have you talked to Ray?” Haley listened for a moment. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell her. Okay. Bye.”
“She’s coming over. She says she’s starving, and Tiffany, the Magic Maid, brought her some home-grown tomatoes and she’ll bring some for the sandwiches. She hasn’t talked to Ray, but she’s got call forwarding.”
“Blood, death, and guts, and that woman wants to eat?”
“It’s her reaction to stress, Mama.” Haley placed the phone back on the end table. “By the way, Philip and I are getting married Saturday. It’s what I came to tell you.”
Penney’s was having a white sale, too. We could use another light cotton blanket. I wondered how their prices compared to Sears’.
“What I can’t figure out is why the woman doesn’t ask Gabriel where Sunshine is.” Mary Alice picked up her second turkey sandwich and took a bite. She, Haley, and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating supper. Fred had called again saying he would be later than he had originally thought. Haley had talked to him and hadn’t mentioned Sunshine’s disappearance or her own wedding on Saturday. A little job for Mama; Fred would have a fit.
“Did you ask her?” Haley asked.
“I can’t remember. Did I, Patricia Anne?”
I shrugged. I sure as hell didn’t know.
“I mean, what good is a channeler if he can’t do useful things like finding people?” Mary Alice looked at her sandwich. “Didn’t I have a turkey sandwich for lunch?”
I looked at my own sandwich. So far I had managed to take one bite. “I don’t remember. The waitress’s name was Blenda, though.”
“Blenda. That’s a cute name.” Mary Alice turned to Haley. “You’re sure you’re not pregnant, sweetie?”
Haley grinned. “Not yet, Aunt Sister.”
“So the hurry-up wedding really is for convenience?”
If I had said that, Haley would have been on me like a chicken on a June bug. Coming from Sister, it didn’t bother her.
“Well, we were going to do it eventually. So when Philip got the invitation to teach a semester at the medical school in Warsaw, we figured it would be a wonderful honeymoon.”
I had already said, “But it’s so sudden,” at least a dozen times. This time I kept quiet; Mary Alice said it.
“I know, Aunt Sister. We’ll have a big party when we get back, maybe even have another wedding. But this Saturday, Judge Bennett is going to meet us in his chambers at ten o’clock. Just Philip and me and you and Mama and Papa and Philip’s kids if they can make it.”
Dr. Philip Nachman’s grown kids. I’d known this was coming for several months, but the over twenty-year age difference still bothered me. Not so Mary Alice whose three husbands had all been twenty-eight years her senior. And so rich.
“Well, I think it’s grand. My niece and nephew getting married.” Mary Alice chomped down on her sandwich. “I hope they’ve found Sunshine by then.”
“I hope so, too,” Haley agreed. “Maybe Ray will be home by then and they can come to the wedding.”
I was eating supper with two absolute dingbats. How much sense did it take to add up a dead body, a missing girl, and a bloody nightgown to realize you were probably going to be minus a wedding guest on Saturday?
“My niece and nephew married. That’s nice. I’ll bet that doesn’t happen often,” Sister said.
“Depends on which part of the state you live in.” I got up and poured each of us more tea. Actually, Dr. Philip Nachman, an ENT, ear, nose, and throat specialist, was the nephew of Mary Alice’s second husband, Philip Nachman. He and Haley had met at their cousin Debbie’s wedding where Dr. Philip (the nephew, the uncle having long been dead) had given the bride away. “It’s just downright cozy,” Mary Alice says. Most people find it confusing.
The phone rang and I answered it.
“Hey, Aunt Pat. Have you met my Sunshine yet?” Ray sounded as if he were in the next room.
“I have, and she’s darling. Here’s your mother, honey.” I handed the phone to Mary Alice quick as a
hot potato and walked toward the bedroom. I didn’t want to hear this conversation. In a moment, Haley followed me.
“You’ve had a god-awful day, haven’t you, Mama?”
“Pretty bad.”
We sat on the bed and looked at each other.
“Maybe you and Papa can come over for Christmas. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? I think it snows a lot in Warsaw.”
I swallowed hard. “What are you wearing Saturday?”
“My peach linen suit, I think.”
She wouldn’t make it to the courthouse without it being so wrinkled it’d look like she’d slept in it. But I just nodded. I wondered if Mary Alice was telling Ray everything that had happened or was sparing him some of the details.
“Haley,” I said, “I think Sunshine’s dead.”
“I know,” she said.
We were sitting on the bed holding hands when Mary Alice came to the door. “It’s a twenty-hour flight,” she said. “He’ll be here tomorrow.” She sat down on the bed beside us. “He sounded upset.”
“Did you by any chance mention the bloody nightgown?”
Sister nodded.
“That just might have done it then.”
“I guess so.” Mary Alice took Haley’s other hand. “What are you wearing Saturday?”
“My peach linen suit.”
“Well, put it on in the restroom at the courthouse and don’t sit down or you’ll look all wrinkled in your pictures.”
“We hadn’t planned on any pictures. Maybe Papa can bring his camera.”
“You have to have wedding pictures.” Mary Alice patted Haley’s hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
Haley looked up and started to say something, but Mary Alice was on a roll.
“And I think you ought to change the time to noon. That way I could give you a wedding luncheon, maybe at the Tutwiler.”
“Ten o’clock was the only time the judge could work us in on Saturday.”
“Then we’ll make it a champagne breakfast. That’ll be nice, too. And you’ll have to have a wedding cake. Two tiers so you can freeze the top one.”
Haley turned and looked at me. I smiled innocently. I’ve lived with Sister a lot longer than she has.
