Good Buddy

by Dori Ann Dupré

  For Eric

  “His life was gentle; and the elements

  So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up

  And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!”

  — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

  Raleigh, North Carolina

  Copyright© Dori Ann Dupré, 2019

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  English language rights published and retained by Dori Ann Dupré, LLC, DBA EJD Press.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author at www.DoriAnnDupre.com.

  Dumas, Alexandre, 1802-1870. The Count of Monte Cristo. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books, 2001.

  Whitman, Walt. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition.

  New York: Penguin Books, 2005. Print.

  Printed in the United States of America. First Printing, 2019.

  ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-54396-665-7

  ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54396-666-4

  Cover Design by Dionne Abouelela / HappyWriting.co

  Author Photo by Kelly Walker Photography

  Distribution and Printing by Book Baby

  Table of Contents

  Part I May 17th, 1975 The Middle of the Night

  New Mexico

  The Inn Between

  August 1996 Jonathan Cordova, Attorney-at-Law

  Loretta and Joe

  The Young Lady

  May 17th, 1975 Hector

  The Underground Railroad

  Coma

  August – October 1996 Joe’s Party

  Grandfather Mountain

  Wife, Interrupted

  Fall Festival

  February 1971 – May 1973 Second Chances

  Baby Brother

  Night Terrors

  Pain

  Cheerios

  October 1996 – July 1997 Bo

  Sad Stories

  Christmas Eve

  Johnnie Cochran Law

  Spelunking

  St. Patrick’s Day

  Gay Day

  Fireworks

  March - April 1975 Delta’s Hair Salon

  Mama’s Boy

  Han

  Part II June – November 1998 Gabrielle

  Hiking

  Soccer Dad

  September - October 1982 First Case

  Right to Die

  The Trouble with Girls

  Unrequited Love

  February - May 2001 The Rainbow Bridge

  Life, Interrupted

  Awkward Introductions

  Tammy Jo McVicar

  Transitions

  Unsolved in America

  Soda Cans

  A Day of Reckoning (Part One)

  Orphan

  June – September 2001 A Day of Reckoning (Part Two)

  The Good Lie

  Classical Music

  Nine Holes

  Social Studies

  September 12th, 2001 – March 2002 Grassy Knolls

  Scrapbooking

  Mail

  Visiting Day

  Flags

  Official

  May 15th, 1975

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  Other Published Works by Dori Ann Dupré

  Reviews for Scout’s Honor

  About the Author

  Part I

  “Who knows? Perhaps your love will make me forget all I wish not to remember.”

  —Alexandre Dumas,

  The Count of Monte Cristo

  Chapter 1

  May 17th, 1975

  The Middle of the Night

  Light flickered in-and-out and in-and-out in a rhythmic cadence through the dark finger-smudged window. The sound of the road passing underneath the hole in the floor board could have been the beat of a song. But Buddy didn’t know which song. He didn’t know that many songs.

  The car was otherwise quiet, his mother driving with both skin tight, bony hands on the big black steering wheel, street lights whirring by in the night. She made no noise, no movement – even the big dark curls in her hair stayed immobile, paralyzed in space, kind of how he felt in the back seat. He couldn’t remember her putting that spray stuff on her hair this morning, and he couldn’t remember coughing because of the fumes in the bathroom before he left for school. He was confused as to how she got her curls to stay so still, even with the car moving so fast.

  There was no noise around them as she drove along the highway, and he didn’t know what time it was. It seemed late. Maybe it was the morning – the dark time of the morning that everyone called “the middle of the night.” That never made much sense to Buddy – how it could be both morning and night at the same time.

  A thin white sheet covered him. It was full of Snoopy dogs, so he knew that it was from his bed at home. He spread out his body along the back seat with his spine facing the rear of the car. His hands were under his head, a real hand-made pillow. His new Adidas sneakers, a birthday gift from his parents, were still on his feet, and he was wearing the same blue and green striped shirt that he wore to school this morning. Or yesterday morning now, he guessed.

  Buddy moved his legs and saw his mother’s eyes quickly glance into the rearview mirror.

  “You up?” she asked, her voice quiet, breaking the sound of the silence in the car like a mumble in a dream.

  “I got to pee,” he answered, afraid to move, still feeling like he was suspended in time. The weight of the air was heavy in this car, and he felt like he was in some kind of trouble, like his mother would send him to his room the next chance she had with no ice cream or Lady Fingers cookies for dessert.

  She pulled the car off to the side of the highway, put it in park and turned her head. “Son, you run out in the bushes right there and go relieve yourself real quick.”

  Pushing the Snoopy sheet off, he scooted out the side of the back seat and into the thin grass off the shoulder of the road. There was a light coming up, but not a soul to be found on this road, other than Buddy and his mother. He walked over to the bushes, unzipped his fly and a long overdue stream began the process of killing anything that was still living on that spot. He breathed in the cool early morning air and felt it fill his lungs with fresh life. There was a sudden pause in his heart beat as he heard some rustling in a nearby bush. Rather than wait to find out what it was, he hopped back into the car again, only this time, he rode shotgun.

  “Where we goin’?” Buddy asked his mother, watching her hands again, tighter than ever on the steering wheel, like she was holding on as if her life depended on it.

  “Somewhere far away.”

  He had heard her say that several times before when she had him locked inside of the car and they had been driving for a long while. But this time – unlike those other times – it seemed true. He had no idea where they were, or where they were going, but he knew it was late. Would Kenny be mad at them for not going back home?

  “Was today my last at school?” he asked her, already certain of the answer.

  “Yes, son.”

  Buddy sank down into the seat, the vinyl hard, slippery and uncomfortable. His mother lit a cigarette and rolled down her window. He rolled down his window, too. The smoke
hurt his nose sometimes, and he wanted to be able to stick his head out with the wind in his face like a dog when the smoke got too bad inside.

  In the distance, off to the side of the highway, he could see one of those big metal monsters that go up-and-down, supposedly drilling for oil. They were scary looking, and there were times when he thought that they could pull themselves from their spots and start walking over toward them. They were so big – maybe they would be able to stomp on his mother’s car, crushing them both inside. Or maybe his mother would pull him out before it got to them and protect him from their huge metal feet…because that’s what mothers do. They protect their sons from monsters.

  Looking out at the headlight-lined empty road, Buddy tried to figure out what was going on with his mother. And, in order to put the big oil drilling monsters out of his head, he started to think about yesterday…or maybe the day before…he wasn’t sure.

  He woke up like normal and got dressed for school. He had Rice Krispies for breakfast that did not snap, crackle or pop for very long at all. Not like the commercial says it does. He watched Bugs Bunny on the little black and white TV on the kitchen counter. Kenny, his stepfather, was sleeping on the couch in the living room, and he could hear him snoring that big deep, loud snore – the one he made when his mother said, “Kenny is sleeping it off.”

  Kenny was not wearing a shirt or socks, and his jeans hung loose and low on his waist, almost like they were too big for him. His right arm was touching the floor. Buddy’s mother was ironing her light pink skirt in her bedroom, and when she heard Buddy shut off the TV, she came out and kissed him goodbye. Buddy had picked up his lunchbox, a small metal one with comics on it that was all scratched up but had managed to last him the whole school year anyway. Then he swung open the screen door, heard it bang shut behind him, walked down the two wooden steps that needed fixing for the whole time they lived in this small house, and then down the sidewalk toward James Street.

  He saw Mr. Sogg sitting out front of his house on the steps reading the morning paper.

  “Hey, Buddy boy,” he grunted at him with a salute.

  Buddy waved and replied politely, “Good morning, sir,” as he walked by.

  Crossing James Street, he took the usual way to school: a path through a back alleyway in between two houses, then ran through an empty field leading all the way to John Morrow Primary School, where Buddy was finishing up the second grade. And other than seeing his best friend Gary ride up to the school playground on his silver Schwinn, his teacher Miss Clemmons taking the roll in her nasal voice – “Daniel Kaspar Junior” – and some kind of light pink blur in front of his eyes, Buddy couldn’t remember anything else from the whole entire day. Not lunch or recess or art class or even the spelling test that he knew he must’ve taken because of how his mother quizzed him on the words the night before.

  The last thing Buddy recalled was waking up in his mother’s car in the dead of night with the Snoopy sheet over his waist, feeling like the life he had was over…forever.

  Buddy’s stomach growled. His mother puffed.

  “Where are we?” he asked her, breaking the thick fog of quiet. His mother wasn’t a real talkative woman even in the daytime, but he could feel something horrible coming from her, all the way through her pores. Her hair wasn’t messy or anything, and he didn’t remember ever seeing the shirt she was wearing before now. But the light pink skirt she wore while driving was the same one she had been ironing before he went to school.

  “Still in Texas,” she said.

  “Are we leaving Texas?” Buddy asked, slightly confused. He had never been out of Texas before that he could remember.

  “Yes,” she responded and then flicked her cigarette out of the window, the tiny orange light flying solo onto the black road behind them.

  New Mexico

  Retta had been driving west on I-20 and then I-10 since Abilene, and she still didn’t know where in the world she was going. She had never been west of Killeen. But after driving for more than a day and operating on about two hours of broken, anxiety-ridden sleep while huddled with Buddy in the back corner of a parking lot in a gas station a few hours ago, Retta realized that soon daylight would start to color the sky on their second day of this peculiar liberation. She knew she needed to get off this highway and start taking smaller, less traveled roads. Part of the problem was – to where?

  Even though a part of her had planned for this moment for a couple years now, she never realized it would come to fruition. And not like this: sudden and unplanned, sprung on her like the worst kind of surprise party or like a scary, pointy-toothed Jack-in-the-Box clown. She was a planner and not the kind of girl who was good on the fly.

  Retta and her sweet son Buddy had nothing with them but this Duster – which she needed to get rid of, the gun in the trunk – which she also needed to get rid of, and $76 left of the $88 she had in her hidden stash – which used to be tucked deep down into her panty drawer and was now stuffed inside of her bra. No clothes, no food, and no clue. She couldn’t contact her mother or older brother or even her best friend May Ellen. Buddy and Retta had to disappear and never be found again. That was the only thing she knew for sure.

  Whenever she would think about taking Buddy and running away from Kenny, Retta figured she’d go stay with her brother Frank and his wife Nikki in Maryland, just until they got back on their feet. Frank had always told her that she’d have a home with him. He was, after all, the father she never really had.

  In her plan, the one that had been percolating inside of her head for quite a while, she’d pack up Buddy’s clothes and toys, her clothes and photo albums, and they would go hide out with Frank and Nikki until Kenny got the message that she was done with him and long gone and never coming back.

  But this? This was not really something she had thought about before. And now it’s four o’clock in the morning, many hours removed from the event that changed everything, and she still hadn’t figured out a damn thing. And she needed to. Buddy was relying on her. She was all he had in this world now. And he was all she had, too.

  Retta knew that I-10 led into El Paso and that El Paso led into New Mexico, so she figured she’d just get there, stop someplace off the road to get their bearings, maybe attempt to take another nap, and then try to figure out where they’d go next. She didn’t know how much time she had before someone would come searching for them. But first, she needed to get rid of the Duster or at least trade license plates with somebody before trying to get rid of it.

  Isn’t that what the bad guys do on TV? Trade plates with some unsuspecting farmer? Is she a bad guy now? And other than stealing a pack of cigarettes from her best friend Chrissy’s house once and some penny gum from Neal’s General Store when she was twelve, all on a dare from that ass who lived in the room above her family, Retta Bellinger had never stolen anything in her life.

  Looking over at Buddy, who was sitting with his buzzed head resting on the window, she could just make out the subtle moonlight reflecting through the length of his beautiful eyelashes. She thought about the gravity of everything that was going on. What did Buddy know? What did he remember? He’d been sleeping for the past nine hours, and they hadn’t talked the entire time since she rushed him out of the house, into the car and down the road. She didn’t even know how to break the ice with him. She thought, My God, my baby boy is only nine years old. What will become of him if I can’t get us away from all this? By marrying Kenny Bellinger, she knew she had unintentionally put him through enough suffering to last him another nine years. But that was ending. Right now.

  The flat desolate parts of Texas lent a clarity to the world that she didn’t think East Coast people understood. Dry, bare, naked, the end – and yet endless at the same time. Quiet, lonely, desperate – kind of like what death must be. Or what a lot of her life had been so far, except for the brief peaks of relief with normal things like falling in love with Buddy�
��s father, having her firstborn child, and even falling in love again later…with Kenny.

  Growing up, Retta’s family was desperately poor, and her father had died from a heart attack on her third birthday. She had no specific memory of that day, or even of her father, but she always saw a strong man’s hand holding the hand of a small girl within the depths of her dreams.

  Since her mother had no employable skills, other than the kind that every woman possesses at even a basic level, she moved Retta and Frank into a room on top of an old tavern sitting in a military town nearby. Apparently, she made a deal with the owner of the tavern: she’d work as a bar maid in exchange for the free room. And the owner would allow her to earn additional money by letting it be known…quietly…that she was available for “entertaining” or “keeping men company.” Since soldiers and mill workers were always around, she had no problem finding opportunities to do either.

  The day Retta learned that her mother was a prostitute had started out like any other day. Frank, who was three years older than she was but forced to grow up much faster than his peers, woke her up from a deep sleep. He tried to move her along, to get her out of their room before their mother returned from her night out “entertaining” and “keeping men company.” Frank knew what his mother did to put food on the table and was embarrassed about it. The other boys at school knew, too, and they would give him a hard time. He even got into a few fist fights in the woods near the school over the things they’d say about her.

  “C’mon Retta. Get up. We got to go,” Frank was poking her bony side with his fingers. He had her dress spread out on the bed, the one with the puffy sleeves that the lady from the Children’s Society gave her, as well as her saddle shoes, all worn out with a big hole in the bottom of the left one, sitting on the floor underneath. Retta figured that if Frank had been a girl, he would’ve made a good mother someday because he did the kinds of things for her that her friend Chrissy’s mother did for Chrissy. But Retta was so sleepy that morning, it took her longer than usual to get up and moving.