Your Cheatin Heart mr-1

by Nancy Bartholomew

  "Hot dogs and milkshakes?" My stomach growled in agreement. I figured I owed him. I'd run out on him twice. It wasn't really that much of a choice anyway. If I got all snippy, then we'd end up downtown in his office. My stomach growled again, louder. I'd never get lunch at the police station.

  He didn't wait for my answer. He assumed and started walking toward his brown Taurus.

  "Where's the Jeep?" I said, following him.

  "Home." He walked around to his side of the car and unlocked the door. This was not a date. This was still, underneath the friendly exterior, business. A gentleman would've unlocked your door, Mama's voice said inside my head.

  He did wait for me to fasten my seat belt before he spun out of the parking lot and onto Elm Street. He picked up his radio, spoke into it briefly, then turned the volume down. He didn't say another word until we drove into the Yum-Yums parking lot.

  Even at three in the afternoon, business was booming. There were a lot of police vehicles there, which surprised me because Yum-Yums is right by the UNCG campus. I'd always assumed it was just a kid hangout.

  "Hungry?" he asked.

  "Starved!"

  He looked like he wanted to ask another one of his sharp-edged questions, but stopped himself. I hopped out of the car and followed his determined progress across the lot. Yum-Yums is a small storefront operation, with a few tables and stools outside and rows of hard plastic booths inside. It is old, settled in its grime, and full of good smells.

  "All the way," he said to the guy who ran up to take his order. "And a chocolate shake."

  "Just catsup, please," I said, "and a diet Coke."

  He turned then to look at me. "No shake?" he said. "They've got the best ice cream in town. That's why folks come here."

  "Not me," I said. "Gotta watch my figure."

  He didn't move his eyes from my face. "I don't see why you'd think that," he said. "Nothing wrong with your figure."

  I felt my face flush. I grabbed my hot dog and headed for the nearest booth, forgetting the soda, which he carried over. He slid in across from me and took a long sip of his milkshake.

  "You missed out," he said, "best shake in town."

  "You come here a lot?" I asked, studying him, trying to see a chink in his armor.

  "A right good bit." He wasn't going to give up one single detail about himself if he didn't have to.

  I stretched and took another shot at it.

  "You grow up here?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Where'd you graduate?"

  "Smith. In 1978, since you're gonna ask that next." His blue eyes were twinkling. He was enjoying himself.

  "I'm just making polite conversation! So you grew up over by the mill, huh?"

  Weathers was chewing, his gaze circling the room, sweeping the customers and always returning to watch the entrance. He was making me nervous, like maybe he expected an armed robber or something.

  "Your parents still live there?" I asked. The mill area had changed over the years, with older mill couples leaving and younger couples moving in. It was an innocent question, but instead his neck turned red and his jaw started to twitch.

  "How about another hot dog?" he asked, abruptly sliding out of the booth and standing where he could tower over me, keeping me boxed into my side of the booth.

  "No, thanks, I'm about done."

  "Uh-huh," he said, then leaned down close to me, his hands resting one on the table and one on my seat back, fencing me in tighter. "Maybe you can think up a few more questions for me while I'm gone'" he whispered. "Maybe you'll ask the ones you're afraid to ask."

  He turned around and left me sitting there. The questions I was afraid to ask. Are you married? Do you want me the same way I want you? Do you feel it, too? I could feel my face growing redder by the second. Damn him! How could he read me like that?

  He acted as if he'd never said a thing when he returned to the booth. We ate in relative silence. I kept waiting for him to start with his questions, but he seemed comfortable just to be sitting and eating. Plenty of police officers stopped at the table, saying hello, offering a friendly comment. Weathers mainly grunted, sometimes said a phrase or two, but didn't offer them a seat or try to draw them into conversation. It was clear he had other things on his mind.

  It all came to a crashing halt when he finished his meal. Suddenly he leaned forward, looked right in my eyes and started with the questions. Not the questions I expected either.

  "How'd you feel when you and Digger Bailey broke up?"

  I choked on my last bit of hot dog and felt my face flame. How in the hell had he found out about that?

  "How'd you find out?"

  "Hard work," he answered, a small, smirky grin playing across his face. He was pleased with himself.

  "Hard work and nosiness!" I stormed. "What right have you to go hunting up my past? Who did you talk to? How did you…?" I lost my voice, my throat closed in, and I couldn't speak. How did the sonofabitch find out about Digger?

  "I'm just doing my job," Weathers said, his voice calm, his face never betraying the kind of emotions I knew were written across mine.

  "Digger doesn't have a thing to do with this!" I could feel the people behind us listening. They'd stopped talking and hadn't moved in their booth for minutes.

  "Digger hurt you," he said softly. "I just wondered how you felt about it."

  No two ways about it, Digger had hurt me. Digger hurt me publicly and in ways that I could not put words to because I was ashamed. Ashamed at my foolishness and ashamed at my stupid youthful belief that I was invincible.

  "You must've been angry at him," he said.

  "Angry?" Yes, I had been, but only later, years later. "No, I wasn't angry."

  "Then what?" He was watching me with a sad look on his face. I couldn't stand that. I didn't want someone to feel sorry for me.

  "Maggie, he left you and the whole town knew about it. He married someone else while you were off buying a wedding gown. Why weren't you mad?" Tears flooded my eyes and I couldn't see. "Come on," he said, standing up. "Let's go outside and sit in my car."

  Why had I ever agreed to eat lunch with this man? Why did I agree to answer his questions? Maybe because I was still chasing the cowboy who'd come and smiled encouragement as I did my audition. Marshall Weathers was not that man. Oh, he lived in the same body, but he was not the same man.

  I climbed into the front seat and tried to pull myself together. Digger was years ago. It just hurt me to know that Weathers had been nosing around in my hometown and had managed to find out the one thing I'd hoped everyone would've forgotten by now. Someone, probably more than one someone, remembered me for being left behind.

  "I figure Digger was a real creep," Weathers said. "If I'd been your big brother, I'd have set him straight on a couple of counts'"

  I ignored him. I didn't want to talk about Digger anymore, even if Weathers was on my side.

  "Why are you following me?" I asked, wiping at my eyes and blowing my nose.

  "Because it's my job."

  There was no smile to accompany that answer. He was stating a fact. He had a job to do and that's all he could see, his job. I was a case number, a suspect.

  "Why don't you look for the real killer? Why do you keep hounding me?"

  Weathers turned in his seat and looked at me. "Maggie, I haven't accused you of anything."

  "Oh, come on, you might as well have!" How could the man stay so calm? And why did I keep staring into his eyes?

  "You're all I've got to go on right now, Maggie. I haven't accused you of anything. I haven't called you a suspect, have I? I'm just covering all my bases."

  "Then why aren't you haunting Jimmy's widow? And why haven't you checked up on anyone else the way you've done me?"

  "What makes you think I haven't?" he asked.

  I didn't have a thing to add to that. We just sat there for a few minutes, watching people come in and out of Yum-Yums. Eventually, he leaned forward and started the car. The interview was a
lmost at an end. I could make it back to Jack's place without anymore forays into my past.

  We drove in relative silence and I relaxed a little. When we pulled into Jack's parking lot, I had my hand on the door handle and was almost out the door before he could roll to a stop.

  "Thanks for lunch, I guess," I said, jumping out of the car and leaning down to look in on him. I was pushing the door closed when I heard him, and by then it was too late to stop the door from flying out of my fingers and slamming on his last words.

  "Maybe we'll talk about Union Grove sometime," he said. The car began to roll and I was left standing in the broken gravel parking lot, staring after him. Now how in the hell had he found out about Union Grove?

  Chapter Eleven

  Don't fish with a skunk, Mama used to say, it'll only raise a stink and you'll come home empty-handed. Mama was right. There I stood, empty-handed and staring after a Grade A skunk. Union Grove! "Ask me what you really want to ask me, Maggie." The words kept circling around in my head like buzzards. If Weathers had his way, I was done for. I just knew it But then, Marshall Weathers didn't know what I was capable of doing. And if I had my way, he wouldn't find out until I was ready.

  Know where your enemy keeps his dirty underwear and you'll have won the war, Mama said. It was time to follow the smell. I ran inside Jack's place and called Bonnie down at the Curley-Que.

  "Maggie?" she said, all breathless and worried. "Are you all right?"

  "No, Bonnie, I'm not," I said, "but I'm sure gonna be! Listen, didn't you go to Smith High School?"

  "What?" Bonnie hadn't expected this.

  "Smith. Did you go to Smith?"

  I was pacing around Jack's living room, staring out the window, unable to sit still.

  "Yes, I went to Smith. Graduated in '80. Why?"

  "Good," I said, "then you're just the help I need."

  "Maggie, I don't see what this has to do with…"

  "Did you know a Marshall Weathers?" I demanded.

  Bonnie sighed. "Know him? Know him! Just about every girl in the school knew him! Driving a sixty-eight Mustang convertible, football, track, softball, and women! That boy was a hundred miles of fast, bad road. Liked to kill his poor ole mama with worry! You know she goes to my church, don't you?"

  I leaned back against the wall facing the window and stared out at the parking lot, a smile edging its way across my face.

  "He's come a long way, that ole boy has," Bonnie sighed, "He's a big detective now, down at the… Hey, he isn't the…? Aw, Maggie…"

  I could hear the beauty parlor sounds in the background, the whoosh of blow dryers, the chatter of the customers, but above it all I heard a tiny little giggle.

  "Maggie, you watch out now, girl! He ain't like Vernell, not at all!"

  "Bonnie," I said, "how's about me and you going to church Sunday?"

  Bonnie sucked in her breath. "You are a wicked woman!" she said. "I'll meet you there about quarter to eleven."

  "Thanks, Bon, I owe you. Big time!"

  I hung up the phone and started humming a little. Okay, so he knew more about me than almost anyone, but the tables were turning. Soon I was gonna be sitting in the catbird seat. Union Grove! How in the hell had he found out about that?

  It was years ago. We'd sworn ourselves to secrecy. Which one of them had talked? Well, they were weak. A bunch of girls, women now, mothers, bored, with too much time on their hands and too little attention. I could easily see them giving in the face of Weathers's thousand-watt charm. Hell, if I stayed around him too long, I'd give, too. But that was never going to be an option. I'd see to that. I hoped.

  Women, girls really, Boone's Farm apple wine, and the feel of a spring night our senior year of high school. That's what was really responsible for Union Grove. We were just young girls, with the sense of power that comes from blossoming bodies and not enough freedom to know a risky situation. And it was all my fault, as usual.

  It was before the Digger Bailey fiasco, before I knew how badly the world could wound you. I wasn't scared of nothing, not my alcoholic father, not his wild-assed family, not my teachers, and certainly not boys. That's how come when we heard the senior boys had rolled toilet paper around the statue of Robert E. Lee that stood in front of our high school, we knew we had to show them the proper way to pull a senior prank. I was the organizer.

  "That was a pitiful display," I said to my girlfriends the next day. "How juvenile. How immature!" The others were nodding right along. We were all piled up in my VW, down at the end of Shannon Abie's driveway, smoking cigarettes and drinking Boone's Farm apple wine. "They're just little boys. We're women!"

  "Yeah," they chorused. "Women!" Evella Lynn threw back her head and uttered a long rebel yell, and the rest of us whooped and tossed our cigarettes out the open windows.

  "Let's do something really, really bad. Something that'll let them boys know that we're women!"

  Well, the more we drank, the more the idea of besting the boys appealed to us. No idea was too outrageous for us! Finally a plan gelled. We would leave our mark on Union Grove High School, all right!

  The next night, Friday, actually early Saturday morning, the six of us met at Evella Lynn's place.

  "Evella, you got the paint?"

  "Yes, ma'am!" she cried, brandishing a bucket of bright blue latex.

  "Darnelle, you got gloves?"

  "Check!"

  We went through the list, swigging our Boone's Farm at record speed, then heading out in Evella Lynn's brother's pickup, bound for the school. Lacy was the only one who had doubts. She always was the sissy, and as I thought on it now, would be the most likely to have ratted us all out to Weathers. She was just sure we'd be caught.

  Evella killed the headlights when we were still a mile from the school, throwing the truck down into second gear and forcing it along almost at a crawl.

  "Shush, y'all!" she said. "Listen out!"

  We all shut up and listened, little thrills of anxiety gnawing at us all. We heard nothing. Union Grove, home of the Blue and White Lions, stood in the middle of a cow pasture, surrounded by a small football stadium and an Olympic-sized pool that served in the summer as the community swimming hole.

  We ran the truck up around back of the school, then up over the curve to the northeast corner of the old brick building, right under the principal's window. Evella killed the engine and handed me a roll of masking tape.

  "Knock it out, big girl!" she cried softly.

  I taped the window, and then, just like in the I Spy TV show, I knocked the pane out with a gloved fist and pulled the taped pieces out of the frame. No jagged edges. No clinking sounds. No mess. In a few moments the six of us were inside Mr. Slovenick's office, painting away and drinking our sweet summer wine.

  We painted his floor, his desk, his chair, his phone, his papers, even his flag, bright Lion blue. We covered the walls and the ceiling and when at last we were finished, we had almost as much paint on ourselves as we did the room.

  "I know what let's do," I said. "Let's go swimming! Naked!"

  That was our mistake.

  We ran old Evella's truck right down to the chain-link fence and used the roof of the cab as our ladder to scale over. We didn't plan how we'd get back out from behind the fence. We didn't consider that the swim team would meet on Saturday. We just knew the pleasure of swimming alone and naked in the school pool. The untouchables.

  The water turned bright blue from the paint, just like the pictures you see of the Carribean. The sun began to slowly edge its way up over the southern Virginia hills, and there we were, on top of the world. We were laying out on top of the concrete, drying off, when we heard the car in the distance and knew it was headed for the school. After all, where else would a car be going at six A.M. on a late spring Saturday, down the one road that led only to the high school?

  "I told y'all!" Lacy shrieked. "I told you!"

  We jumped up, the naked six of us, all running in different directions, all panicked except for Evell
a, who calmly started to scale the fence, butt naked, her fingers and toes grabbing hold of the mesh as she worked her way up and over the fence. By the time we'd come to our senses enough to start climbing, she'd crawled into the car and cranked the engine. We dropped down into the cab like fat, overripe apples hitting the ground, and in an instant Evella had popped the clutch and was skidding her way across the pasture.

  There was only one way out. We were going to pass the car and sure as shooting, we'd be recognized.

  "Hide, y'all," Evella screamed. "Lie flat in the bed!"

  We squished ourselves flat against the bedliner of the old truck, huddling in one blue-tinged mass of naked girl flesh. Evella was gonna take the fall. She couldn't drive and hunch down under the windshield. So, she went out like Evella.

  "It's Dickie!" she screamed back through the cab window. Dickie was the president of Beta Club, the smart kid club, and manager of the swim team. Towel Boy, they called him.

  Evella pushed the accelerator to the floor and sat up straight, blue and naked, her big breasts pushed up against the steering wheel. As she passed Dickie, Evella let out a mighty Indian war whoop and kept on going. Evella really wasn't afraid of nothing or nobody.

  We hightailed it back to Evella's, borrowed her clothes and took showers, hoping to clean up before the cops came to arrest us. For surely they were hot on our tails. But the cops didn't come that day. Or the next. It wasn't that our crime went unnoticed. It was more the way little Dickie related it to the police and the press.

  "Oh, my gawd! Oh, Lord," he moaned to the reporter who wrote up the big front page story, "Union Grove High School Mauled By Blue Man."

  "It was the biggest, meanest-looking man I ever did see!"

  "Man!" Evella raved after school on Monday. "I ain't no man!" But of course she couldn't say it out loud.

  "We were robbed!" I said. "They think a man did it!"

  "But what about our clothes, back at the pool?" asked Lacy, who I believe trembled the rest of her senior year.