by Anne George
“I declare,” Sister said, mulling over wedding plans and suddenly remembering something that might interfere. “I hope Sunshine’s all right.”
So did I. I could hear Meemaw declaring, “She’s my heart. Always has been.” I could only imagine her pain. It made my worry over being separated from Haley for six months seem trivial.
Still talking wedding, Mary Alice and Haley left about nine o’clock. They were hardly out of the house when the phone rang. Probably Fred again. Dammit, he shouldn’t be working these long hours. The whole point of merging his Metal Fab with a large Atlanta firm had been to make his job easier. I picked up the phone and said hello impatiently.
“Mrs. Crane?” a man asked.
“No, this is Mrs. Hollowell, her sister. She had her phone forwarded here, but she’s left.”
“Well, you can take the message, Mrs. Hollowell. This is Eddie Turkett, Sunshine’s uncle.”
I sat down on the sofa, my knees suddenly weak. “Yes, Mr. Turkett. What’s happened?”
“Junior Reuse has had to call off the search tonight because it’s dark. But he wants to start again in the morning, said to get volunteers. I’m out at the compound with Mama and Papa calling people. Do you think maybe you and Mrs. Crane could come help us?”
“Of course we can. Do you want us to bring some other people?”
“If you can. The sheriff’s going to divide the area between here and the river into sections and then organize groups for each section.”
“What time?”
“First light and before it gets too hot. Four-thirty?”
“We’ll be there.” I paused. “Mr. Turkett, how’s your mother?”
“Holding up pretty good, everything considered. My sister and brother should be getting in from Atlanta in a little while, and she’s baking them a pound cake. I told her to go on to bed, but she won’t listen. Says they’ve got to have a pound cake.”
“Let her stay busy if she wants to.”
“Guess I don’t have a choice.”
I was sure he didn’t. “We’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Okay. And Mrs. Hollowell? If you’ve got any boots, you might want to wear them.”
“Boots?”
“For snakes.”
Oh! I said I would definitely wear boots, that we would all wear boots.
After he hung up, I tried to call Mary Alice. She wasn’t home yet, and I couldn’t remember her car phone number. Damn.
The kitchen door opened and Fred came in, looking mighty chipper for someone who had been at work since seven that morning. “Hi, sweetie,” he said, looking into the den where I was sitting with the phone in my hand. “What’s happening?”
“You want the good news first or the bad news?”
“The good news.”
But I couldn’t think of any.
Six
We were late getting to the Turkett Compound the next morning. It was all of five o’clock and I had a rip-roaring headache when we turned onto the dirt road that ran through the briar patch.
“You sure this is it?” Fred asked.
“Of course it is.” I answered crossly, but Fred didn’t seem to notice. He was busy trying to keep the car in the deep ruts formed by years of drivers avoiding briar scratches. A small cloud of red dust hung in the air above the trail; a larger one billowed behind us.
“And Mary Alice drove her Jaguar down here?”
“Very carefully. She kept saying ‘shit’ a lot.” The first rays of the sun popped up over the horizon and hit me in the eye; I cringed.
The whole night had been surreal. First I had had to explain everything to Fred, everything from the chief’s body impaled on Meemaw’s linoleum to Sunshine’s disappearance and the bloody nightgown. And then—I don’t think you’d call it the icing on the cake—I had to tell him about Haley and Philip Nachman, their imminent wedding and departure for Warsaw.
He sat in his recliner, leaning toward me, listening intently, not interrupting. I related the day’s events, beginning with running into Meemaw at the restaurant and ending, I believe, with the two-tier wedding cake, the top tier to be kept in the freezer and to be eaten on anniversaries. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and waited for his reaction. Nothing. After almost a minute of silence, I opened my eyes. He was still leaning forward; there was a slightly puzzled look on his face.
“Say what?” he said.
So I had to go through the whole thing again. This time I got the questions such as “What were y’all doing out there in the first place?” which you would have to be pretty dense not to figure out, to “Warsaw? The place where they sell insurance?”
After that, it was downhill all the way, ending with a call from Sister around two-thirty in the morning asking me if I had her big straw hat, the one she had gotten at Kmart for fifty cents last winter. She had been planning on wearing a safari hat, but that might not be enough. And did I have any Deep-Woods Off? God knows we didn’t want to come down with Lyme disease and Henry said those woods were crawling with ticks. He was going with her, incidentally, as was Tiffany, the Magic Maid. And someone should bring some food, shouldn’t they? Maybe the restaurant up there would deliver, considering it was an emergency.
Fred rolled over. “Mary Alice?”
I nodded. He took the phone from me, said into it, “Go to sleep,” hung it up, and then took it from its cradle. “There.”
“That was rude.”
“I know.”
In a few minutes, I could hear him snoring lightly. But I was wide awake. I got up, went to the den, and lay down on the sofa. I read for a while and had just dropped off to sleep when Fred came to tell me it was time to get up.
The dirt road widened and we were at the Turkett Compound.
“Hey, look at those trailers in a circle,” Fred said. “That’s neat.”
“They’re manufactured homes,” I snapped.
“You need some more coffee, don’t you, honey?”
A uniformed man pointed toward a field on the left which had been turned into a makeshift parking lot. At one time it must have been a cotton field. We bounced over the rows, past ten or twelve cars, including Mary Alice’s. One of her best traits is her punctuality. If she says she’ll be somewhere at a certain time, then by damn, she’ll be there. Fred says it’s because she’s scared she’ll miss something. Whatever. I think it’s admirable.
“Looks like there are quite a few people here,” Fred said. “Did Haley have any idea when she could make it?”
“She said they had a couple of bypasses this morning and it depended on how they went.” Haley is a scrub nurse with a cardiac surgical unit. I wondered how she was going to work it out with them, leaving so suddenly. “Philip had a full schedule today. Trying to get everybody’s sinuses unstopped before he leaves, I guess.”
“I looked up Poland in the atlas last night. It’s not so far. You can probably get direct flights from Atlanta.”
“Uh huh.”
Fred turned off the ignition. “Listen, honey. Chances are this thing today isn’t going to turn out very well. I want you to be prepared and not get too upset. Okay?”
“Well, at least it’s not the wrong time of the month for me.” I smiled sweetly and got out of the car. I knew which one of us would have to be resuscitated if things didn’t turn out well, a nice way of saying if we found Sunshine’s body.
Fred caught up with me and took my hand. “I know you’re just tired and need something to eat.”
How can my feelings for this man, after all these years, be so wildly vacillating? One minute I’m furious, and the next minute I’m mushy. Go figure.
About forty people were gathered in the circle that the trailers formed. Apparently no instructions had been given by the sheriff as everyone was milling around aimlessly. I spotted Mary Alice, Henry, and Tiffany sitting on the steps of Pawpaw’s trailer and waved to them.
“You’re late,” Sister greeted us.
“Doesn’t look li
ke we missed much.” I looked around. “Is there any coffee?”
“I’ll get y’all some,” Tiffany volunteered. She turned and banged on Pawpaw’s door. When he stuck his head out, she held up her Styrofoam cup and two fingers.
“Cream and sugar?” Pawpaw asked.
“I want cream and sugar,” I said.
Tiffany held up one finger; Pawpaw nodded and disappeared.
“Y’all sit down.” Henry moved over to make room for us on the steps. “We’re waiting for the sheriff. He’s over in that trailer”—Henry pointed toward Kerrigan’s—“talking to Sunshine’s mother.”
“Doing something to Sunshine’s mother,” Sister said. “He’s been in there a half hour.”
“Where’s Meemaw?”
“She went over to Howard’s trailer while ago. Probably cooking him breakfast. I keep smelling bacon.”
I sat on the narrow metal step and wished for some bacon. For some more aspirin. For coffee. Fortunately the last wish was granted as Pawpaw opened the door and handed Tiffany two Styrofoam cups which she handed down to us. We thanked him profusely.
“You want some more, pretty lady?” he asked Mary Alice.
“No, but I’d like to use your bathroom.”
“What?”
Mary Alice stood up and pointed toward the open trailer door. “I have to pee,” she said loudly and bluntly.
Pawpaw smiled broadly. “You just come right on in.”
We all moved so Mary Alice could get up the steps. She was courting disaster if Meemaw happened to be looking out of Howard’s window.
“How was Debbie this morning?” I asked Henry.
“She was still asleep when I left. In fact, she was asleep when I went to bed last night. I called several people to see if they could come out here today and I had to explain to all of them what had happened. Some of them are coming, though. Dwayne, the guy who was at Mary Alice’s the other night, the one who walked out, is already here. I think that’s some of his buddies he’s with over there by the trailer with the Christmas tree lights.”
“That’s Eddie Turkett’s trailer,” I explained. “Meemaw says he works at the chicken plant in Trussville.”
Henry looked up, surprised. “Eddie Turkett? Hell, he owns the chicken plant in Trussville. And one in Cullman. And a turkey plant in south Alabama.”
“Are his turkeys by any chance the stress-free ones, raised in the shade of pecan trees?”
Henry grinned. “I don’t know about that, but the man’s made millions on them.”
Hmmm. A millionaire and a movie star. Now if Howard Turkett were by any chance a professor…
Fred interrupted my casting of Gilligan’s Island by standing up. “I’m going to walk around some. Has anybody heard anything new this morning?”
“Not that we know of.” Tiffany ran inch-long acrylic nails through her blonde curls. “I wish they’d get the show on the road, though. I’m already sweating.”
So was I. My jeans were tucked into my old rubber rain boots, the only boots I owned, to protect against snakes and ticks, and I had on a long-sleeved shirt and a sun hat so large I had had to pull it off so the raveling straw edges wouldn’t blind one of my fellow step-sitters. Fred was similarly decked out in his fishing boots and hat. Fair-skinned Southerners, we are still paying for our youthful fun in the sun. Literally. The demands for the services of Alabama dermatologists run a close second to that of ENTs. Henry and Tiffany were also adequately covered. Tiffany’s hat, which she held on her lap, was larger than mine. I was glad to see they had learned from their parents’ mistakes.
Several cars had come up since Fred and I had arrived. Dust rose and settled as the drivers were ushered into the cotton field. A white pickup, however, was directed into the space between Meemaw’s and Pawpaw’s trailer. When a woman got out, I recognized Blenda from the Starlight Cafe. She waved. “I’ve got sausage biscuits and coffee.”
She was talking to the three of us on Pawpaw’s steps, but it was amazing how many people heard her and descended on the truck. I watched her handing out the food and wondered aloud if Mary Alice had called her at two-thirty this morning.
My question was answered by Sister who opened Pawpaw’s door and said, “Oh, good. Blenda’s here. I wonder what she brought.”
Tiffany moved over so Sister could come down the steps. “She said sausage biscuits.”
“Good. We’re all going to need our energy. I’ll go help her.” Sister swished by me. Her go-hunt-for-a-dead-daughter-in-law’s-body-in-the-woods-in-August outfit was one I had seen her wear line-dancing, a blue silk jumpsuit and rhinestone-studded boots. The woman wouldn’t make it as far as the cotton patch. And how on God’s earth had she been able to locate Blenda in the middle of the night?
“That woman is scary,” I said. Henry and Tiffany both laughed. For some reason they thought I was joking.
Lady Bountiful and Blenda were handing out biscuits and little packets of grape jelly when the door to Kerrigan’s trailer opened, and the sheriff and a woman so beautiful that Henry said, “Wow!” came out.
“Okay, everybody,” Sheriff Reuse said loudly. “Gather ’round.”
“He reminds me of a P.E. teacher I had once,” Tiffany said, getting up. “We better go or he’ll start blowing a whistle.”
I looked around for Fred. He was gathering ’round just like the sheriff had requested. Right up at the front of the crowd by Kerrigan Dabbs at whom he was smiling. My head hurt too much to bother; let the old fool enjoy himself.
“You want a sausage biscuit with grape jelly, Sheriff?” Mary Alice called. That made me feel better. I followed Henry and Tiffany and stood at the back of the crowd awaiting instructions. I was already discovering I wouldn’t be able to wear the rubber boots very long. Given the certainty of my feet feeling like they were on fire and the uncertainty of a snake bite, I’d have to opt for the snake.
“Y’all know what happened here yesterday,” the sheriff said, “and we appreciate your coming.” Kerrigan began to cry. My Fred handed her a tissue.
“How did Uncle Fred get up there?” Henry murmured. I gave him a hard look.
Sheriff Reuse continued, “We can’t leave any rock unturned until we find Sunshine.”
“Well, she crawled out from under one. Maybe she crawled back.” A whisper in my ear. Grape-jelly breath. For a moment, the remark didn’t register. By the time it did, and I whirled around, there was no one close enough to pinpoint as the whisperer. A redheaded girl moving away was a possibility.
I grabbed Henry’s arm. “Who was behind me?”
He was startled. “What?”
“Did you just see anybody right behind me?”
“I wasn’t paying any attention. Why?”
Tiffany turned. “What’s the matter?” Several people were looking our way.
Sheriff Reuse, pulling an old schoolteacher trick that I knew well, hushed talking and simply looked our way.
“Nothing,” I whispered. “I’ll tell you after while.”
“We’re going to divide into groups of five and walk toward the river. I want you to stay an arm’s length from each other and walk slowly. If you see anything that looks suspicious, don’t touch it. I’ve got some whistles here, one for each group. Blow it, and we’ll come.”
“I told you,” Tiffany said. “I could just look at him and tell he was a whistle blower.”
“Suspicious like what?” a man asked.
“A shoe, anything.”
“Sunshine was barefooted,” Meemaw called. I didn’t realize she had come out of the trailer until I heard her voice. She stood to the right of the group between two very large bearded men who looked like the Smith cough-drop brothers and must be Eddie and Howard.
“Good morning, Meemaw,” the sheriff acknowledged her, then turned back to the crowd. “Like I said, anything at all. Just use your common sense.”
Tiffany grinned. “Big order.”
“How come he doesn’t have dogs out here?” Henry
murmured. “Wouldn’t that be simpler?”
I shrugged. “Ask him.”
“Sheriff,” Henry called. “How come you aren’t using dogs?”
“We’d have to borrow them from Jefferson County and mainly what they’ve got is drug-sniffing dogs. Dogs can’t do as good as people, anyway.” He slapped his hands together. “Okay, divide up into groups of five. Remember how hot it is today. If you’ve got any health problems, don’t try it.”
There was instant confusion as the group tried to sort itself out.
“Wait for me,” I told Henry and Tiffany. “I’m going to go get Fred.”
He was still consoling Kerrigan who, at closer glance, was even more beautiful than she had appeared from a distance.
“Hey, honey,” Fred said, and the beautiful Kerrigan, who by this time had her face burrowed against his arm, looked up. Elizabeth Taylor eyes brimmed with tears and were framed with eyelashes like those most women have to buy at cosmetic counters. But not Kerrigan. Her pale skin was slightly flushed, and her shiny brown hair was pulled back in a barrette and cascaded to her waist.
“This is Kerrigan,” he continued, looking a little sheepish. “Patricia Anne is Ray’s aunt, Kerrigan.”
I’ve always laughed at novels where one tear slides down the heroine’s face. But damned if that isn’t what happened. One big tear plopped over the bottom of Kerrigan’s left eye and glided down her cheek. I was amazed.
“Oh, Patricia Anne. What’s happened to my Sunshine?”
“She’s fine. We’ll find her,” I lied.
The tear reached a dimple. Kerrigan flicked it out with her thumb. Amazing.
“It’s all so bizarre, an Indian none of us knew getting killed in Mama’s trailer and Sunshine disappearing. And”—she leaned her head toward Sheriff Reuse—“I don’t think Junior knows what the hell he’s doing.”
“Of course he does.” Fred lied, too. “We’re going to get organized here in a few minutes.”
And we did, somehow, in spite of Sheriff Reuse. Small groups formed and were conducted by deputies across the cotton field and to the edge of the woods. Our group was the last one because I had to stop by the car and swap the rain boots for tennis shoes. Plus, we had to wait for Mary Alice who insisted on giving everyone a bottle of Evian to take with them to ward off dehydration.
