by Anne George
“I had to open up the club before dawn this morning to get that stuff,” Henry said when I mentioned the Evian was a good idea. Like I said, sometimes my sister is a scary person. But all of us stomping through the woods on a manhunt armed with bottles of Evian was just one more surreal facet of the morning.
“Meemaw said they had a perfectly good well, thank you, ma’am,” Mary Alice said when she caught up with us. “That woman’s got a burr up her butt.” She pulled the blue silk of her jumpsuit away from her legs. “I may have made a mistake wearing this. But I didn’t have anything else decent, did I, Tiffany?”
“No ma’am.” The girl knew which side her bread was buttered on.
A young deputy came over to us and pointed to the woods. “Straight through there, arm’s width apart. When you get to the river, turn, move to the right, and come back. Then move to the left and back to the river. Got it?” He handed Fred a whistle. “Y’all take your time; look under bushes and dead trees.”
“I hope we don’t find anything,” Mary Alice said.
We all agreed fervently and stepped into the woods.
Seven
The woods were lovely, dark, and deep and it was at least ten degrees cooler in the heavy shade for which I was grateful. I rubbed the cold bottle of Evian against my aching head.
“Y’all go ahead,” Mary Alice said. “I’ll wait right here for you on this stump.” She took a handkerchief from her pocket, spread it on a stump and sat, blue silk jumpsuit packed with Mary Alice butt hanging over the sides. We all looked at her.
“What do you mean us go ahead?” I asked.
“Well, you heard the weatherman. It’s really not healthy for people to be out in this heat.”
I nodded. “You’re right, he particularly said the elderly. So I guess you’d better stay here.”
“Why don’t we all sit down a minute and drink some of our water,” Henry, the peacemaker, suggested.
“Good idea,” Fred agreed. “Those sausage biscuits are heating up my belly.”
I reached into my ultralight fanny pack I’d ordered from L.L. Bean and passed around a package of Tums. Everybody took one.
“I told Blenda”—Mary Alice chewed on her Tum—“I said, Blenda, sausage biscuits are a mite heavy on an August morning with an inversion going on. And she said she thought so, too, but it was what Eddie Turkett said to bring, that it was turkey sausage.”
“You didn’t order them?” I asked.
“Sausage biscuits? Lord, no. I didn’t even know the woman’s phone number. How could I have ordered them?”
I shrugged.
“Drink your water, everybody,” Tiffany reminded us. “We really need to get going.”
Mary Alice got up, grumbling. “We’re not going to find a damn thing in here.”
She was wrong. We found huge thornbushes and vines so heavy that Tarzan, Cheetah, and Jane could have swung together. When we reached the river, we found plastic milk cartons and a few dead fish.
“Look,” Henry said. He pointed across the stream where two red foxes were looking at us in surprise.
We sat down for a moment and drank some more water. Sister reached in her pocket and pulled out a tiny phone. “Gotta check my voice mail.”
The rest of us laughed. There was something so incongruous about struggling through the woods and then checking your voice mail.
“Let’s sit on that rock and put our feet in the water,” Fred said. It sounded good to me. To Henry and Tiffany, too. But we hadn’t made it to the rock when Sister screeched, “Shit! Blow the whistle, Fred!”
“What?” all four of us asked.
Sister was doing a dance, thrusting the phone out first to one of us and then the other. “Come here. Listen. You’re not going to believe this. Blow the whistle, Fred.”
Henry got there first. “Punch four,” Sister said, handing him the phone. He listened and began to grin. “I’ll be damned.”
“Let me hear.” I took the phone from him and punched four.
“Mother Crane.” Sunshine’s voice came over the phone clearly. “I’m all right. Tell Ray I’m all right.”
“What is it?” Fred and Tiffany were standing by me.
“It’s Sunshine.” I handed the phone to Fred. “She’s okay.”
“Where is she?” Tiffany asked.
“She didn’t say. She just said to tell Ray she was all right.” Tears of relief sprang to my eyes. I brushed them away and grinned.
Fred handed the phone to Tiffany and blew the whistle several times. “I hope everybody stops hunting when they hear that,” he said.
“They’ll probably think we’ve found the body,” Mary Alice said happily.
She was right. Sheriff Reuse, followed by a deputy, was running across the cotton patch as we exited from the pines.
“Sunshine’s okay,” Mary Alice called.
The sheriff slowed to a walk. “You found her?”
Mary Alice held up the phone. “Got a message.”
By this time, the sheriff had reached us. He leaned over, breathing raspily with his hands on his legs. And this was the man we didn’t think sweated.
I held out my bottle of Evian. “You want some water?” I asked. “Pour some on your wrists and then splash some behind your neck.”
“I’m fine,” he said. He obviously wasn’t, but if he wanted to pass out in a cotton patch being macho it was his business. “What did she say?”
“Said she’s fine. Here.” Mary Alice handed him the phone. “Punch four.”
He straightened up and took the phone. In a minute, he nodded his head and said, “Blow your whistle, Leroy.”
Leroy, redheaded with the beginnings of a sunburn across his nose, asked how many times he should blow it. What signals had they decided on?
“We didn’t decide on any, though we should have.” Mary Alice took the phone from the sheriff. “Look, y’all. Here come the Turketts. Jump up and down and look happy so they’ll know it’s good news.”
“Lord,” Fred grumbled.
“You can just wave and smile, Fred.” To my amazement, he did what Sister said.
Kerrigan was the first to arrive. Our message had gotten through because, hand on her heart, she said, “It’s good news, isn’t it?”
“The best,” Sister assured her.
Kerrigan turned to Eddie, Howard, and Meemaw who was making surprisingly good time across the cotton rows. “It’s good news!”
“Oh, thank the Lord.” Meemaw caught up to the group. “Howard, honey, run tell your papa we’ve found Sunshine. He’s worried sick.”
“Where is she?” Howard Turkett asked.
The sheriff mopped his face with a handkerchief. “We don’t know. Mrs. Crane got a message on her voice mail from Sunshine saying she’s okay. It was made about an hour ago. That’s all we know.”
“Here.” Mary Alice handed the phone to Kerrigan. “Punch four.”
Kerrigan beamed when she heard the message and handed the phone to Meemaw.
“You still want me to blow the whistle, Sheriff?” Leroy asked. “You never did say how many times.”
“Just blow it a bunch of times. They’ll get the idea. And let’s go get in some shade.”
By the time we got back to the Compound, other groups were emerging from the woods, most of them expecting the worst. Pawpaw, however, alerted by Howard, emerged from his trailer smiling. He looked, I realized, exactly like a prospector in the movies, one who’s been down by the creek too long. He made a beeline for Mary Alice and hugged her. “Our baby’s all right,” he said.
Fred had realized the same thing I had about Pawpaw. “He reminds me of Gabby Hayes,” he whispered.
Mary Alice seemed to think so, too. She was looking around rather wildly, perhaps as fearful that Meemaw would see what was going on as anything else. But Meemaw had disappeared into her trailer.
“Old fool.” Kerrigan went over and tapped her father on the shoulder. A very sound tap. “Behave yourself, Paw.”
He turned and Mary Alice seized the opportunity to move away faster than I thought she could move. So fast it made me right proud.
Leroy was still blowing the whistle though the sound was getting weaker, more like a chirp. Sheriff Reuse told him he could quit which he did and went to sit by Kerrigan’s trailer fanning himself with his hat. Henry took him another bottle of Evian.
“Are we going home now?” Tiffany asked. Some of the cars were already leaving the cotton field.
“I don’t see why not.” Fred looked around. “Where did Mary Alice go?”
“Probably hiding from Pawpaw.” I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes after seven. Lord! I had thought it was at least noon.
Meemaw came out of her trailer holding a large pitcher and a stack of Styrofoam cups. “Hawaiian Punch!” The crowd surged forward.
There was such a feeling of relief in the air, it was almost palpable. Given the circumstances of Sunshine’s disappearance, there wasn’t a person there who hadn’t feared what he would find with his next step into the woods.
“I’m going to go get some punch,” Tiffany said. “Y’all want some?”
“Sure. I’ll go with you.” Fred turned to me. “Honey?”
“Bring me some.” I sat down on an old wheelbarrow that was turned upside down and looked around. The gathering was turning into a party, with laughing and joking, celebrating the fact that Sunshine was all right. But—a tiredness settled over me—something terrible had happened here yesterday, and Sunshine’s disappearance was part of it. Her body might not be in the woods, but she was definitely not all right.
Kerrigan sat down on the ground beside me. “You want some punch?” She held up a Styrofoam cup.
I shook my head no. “Fred’s bringing me some.”
We sat silently for a moment. Then Kerrigan said what I’d been thinking. “My baby’s in terrible trouble, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what’s going on.”
“Will you tell me about yesterday? I’ve heard Mama’s version a dozen times, but none of it makes sense. None of us even knew the guy who got killed. He just showed up murdered in Mama’s trailer and Sunshine was gone. Plus, everything in my trailer was messed up.”
“I’ll tell you all I know.” I went through the sequence of events starting with us running into Meemaw at the restaurant (I didn’t tell her how we happened to be at the restaurant) and ending with us nearly getting killed at the highway.
Kerrigan listened quietly, sipping her Hawaiian Punch, not interrupting a single time.
“And that’s it,” I finished.
She nodded. “That’s pretty much Mama’s story. It’s just crazy, though.”
What could I say? The circumstances had made no sense; the violence had been obscene.
“Mrs. Hollowell, I know he’s your nephew, but I have to ask you if there’s any chance Ray could be involved in any way. I mean, I know he’s not here, but could something be going on that he’s part of? Something that Sunshine’s gotten caught in?”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Ray’s not involved in this. He’s the sweetest, nicest one of all our children.” He was also the only one who had ever been arrested, but I didn’t think that his and some of his fraternity buddies’ plot of marijuana in the Bankhead National Forest was part of the problem here. He had gotten off with a fine and 100 hours of community service. His main punishment had come from his mother who had urged the whole family to hold up our heads in spite of what Ray had done. “No,” I said again. “This has nothing to do with Ray. Sunshine can count her blessings with him.”
“That’s good to hear.” Kerrigan smiled up at me. Perfect teeth, skin that glowed, those violet eyes. I thought of Meemaw and Pawpaw. Lord, there’s no accounting for genes.
Sheriff Reuse came up, red in the face. “Kerrigan, I need to talk to you.” He motioned toward her trailer and walked toward it.
“Shit.” Kerrigan got up in one graceful movement. “That man drives me nuts. Thinks he’s Sunshine’s daddy.”
“Is he?” It just popped out.
“I hope not.”
Fred and Tiffany came up with the Hawaiian Punch. Kerrigan gave them a little wave and left.
“Why is your mouth open, honey?” Fred asked.
The crowd, having received their cups of Hawaiian Punch, began to disperse quickly. There was still no sign of Mary Alice, and Henry, also, had disappeared.
“I’ll just go on with you,” Tiffany said. “They’ll show up.”
“She always does,” Fred agreed.
I was ready to go, too, but first I wanted to go tell Meemaw that if there was anything else we could do to help her, we were available. After all, it was only polite.
Meemaw had gone back inside her trailer to mix some more punch, and though I could see her through the door, I knocked.
“Come in,” she said when she looked up. “Just don’t step on the man. I swear, he’s right in the middle of everything.”
I already had the door open when she said that about the man, or I wouldn’t have set foot in there. What she was talking about, I saw immediately, was a chalk outline of Chief Joseph, the kind you see in the movies. He had been stepped on several times. Stepped on and tracked into the kitchen.
“What the hell is this?” I asked. “Why didn’t they put up some of those yellow ribbons and not let anybody in here?”
“Junior Reuse wanted to, but I told him I couldn’t sleep anywhere but in my own bed and Kerrigan told him that was true. So he just drew that picture. Did a whole bunch of scraping on the floor after they got the body out. Sprayed stuff around. It was okay after I got everything aired out, though.” Meemaw pointed to the floor. “You can come in long as you don’t step on the chalk lines.”
“That’s okay. I just wanted to tell you we were leaving, but you have our phone number. If you need us for anything, call.”
“Is your sister leaving, too?”
“Probably in a little while. I don’t know where she is.”
“She’s over in Howard’s trailer. I saw her and that son-in-law of hers sneaking in while ago.”
“Sneaking in?”
“Well, I guess not. Howard was holding the door open.”
“I’ll get her,” I said. “Where’s Pawpaw?”
“Taking a nap back yonder.” She pointed toward the bedroom end of the trailer. “Hold the door open for me, will you?”
I don’t know much about anatomy, but I figure Meemaw stepped right on Chief Joseph’s bladder as she came through the door with the pitcher. I motioned to Fred that I was going over to Howard’s trailer. He seemed to be happy with Tiffany and the Hawaiian Punch.
There is no one on earth with a laugh like Mary Alice’s. It’s a bellow, I swear. And that’s what I heard when I got near Howard’s trailer. Henry saw me coming up the steps and opened the door. “Come in, Aunt Pat. Howard’s telling us a story you’re going to love.”
I smiled at Howard. He was the Turkett I had seen the least of. Probably under all that facial hair, I decided, was a handsome man.
“He’s telling us how Pawpaw lost his hearing,” Mary Alice said. She had made herself at home, I noticed. Boots off, she was leaning back in a recliner with the air-conditioning unit blowing right on her. “Start over, Howard. I don’t want Patricia Anne to miss any of this.”
Howard offered me the stool he was sitting on and leaned against the kitchen counter, grinning.
“Well, you know Papa worked for NASA. He was a rocket scientist, a damn good one, too, so I understand. One of Wernher von Braun’s right-hand men. When we were little, I remember he was gone all the time.
“Anyway, they all went to Cape Canaveral to see Apollo 11 launched. I mean, this is what they had been working for years for, right? A man on the moon?”
We nodded.
“Well, they took the guys from Huntsville out to see their handiwork, got them front-row seats for the launch. I mean those guys were
in rocket scientist heaven.
“The only problem was that Paw made one little mistake. He decided to use one of the Port-o-Johns out by the launchpad and he got locked in. Can you imagine? The man designs spaceships to go to the moon and he can’t get himself out of a Port-o-John. In all the excitement, nobody missed him, and he says he finally got so tired, he just propped his head over on the toilet paper and went to sleep. And then the rocket launched.”
“One giant leap,” Mary Alice bellowed. Henry was laughing so hard, he was gasping. And, I’ll have to admit, I was laughing as hard as they were. I had this cartoon image of Pawpaw, hair on end, arms and legs stretched to the corners of the Port-o-John while man blasted to the moon.
“He came out of there a changed man,” Howard continued when we were quiet enough. “Said he wasn’t ever going to do anything again but fish. And that’s when we moved down here close to the river. Started out with two trailers.”
Howard was a good storyteller. He paused. “We ate a lot of catfish.”
Mary Alice and Henry continued to laugh, but there was a slight change of tone in Howard’s voice that, old schoolteacher that I am, I caught.
“What’s Pawpaw’s name, Howard?” I asked.
“Melvin. His name is Melvin.”
In a few minutes, I was back with Fred and Tiffany.
“Are you laughing, honey, or crying?” Fred asked.
“I’m not sure.” And that was the truth.
Eight
As we were leaving the Compound, Eddie Turkett came over to thank us for coming. One thing about these Turkett men—they could grow hair. Eddie was as fully bearded as Howard, and, like Howard, was probably a handsome man under that mop. Eddie’s beard, I noticed, was sprinkled with gray.
“You’re very welcome.” Fred shook Eddie’s hand. “Sunshine’s our family, too, now.”
What a nice man.
“Anything we can do to help, just call.” Tiffany reached over and put one of her Magic Maid business cards in Eddie’s shirt pocket. I frowned at her as he walked away.
