by Joe Derkacht
As an employee of the Calneh Bus Lines, Co., she could have made those phone calls in spare moments between the end of one duty and the beginning of another, but she was not one to do things that way. She was a good Christian and she would have felt guilty, like she was stealing time from the bus company, even if it didn’t show up on her time card. Accidentally taking home a bus company pencil, one of those yellow Ticonderoga #2s, would make her turn her rust bucket of a car around in heavy traffic to make it right, unless maybe it was an eraserless stub likely to be tossed away in the office trash.
She felt guilty enough making the phone calls on her lunch hour, while eating her sack lunch at her desk. Maybe she should use one of the payphones out in the hallway; every little use of the phone cost someone something, she supposed. And she didn’t want anyone thinking she was making long distance calls on the company dime. But then again management never thought anything of asking her to stay after work a few minutes--off the clock, of course. Minutes that pretty regularly worked themselves into a half hour or more.
About her phone calls, though. She was interested in finding out what she could about her intruder. Where was he lodged for the time being? Was he in the city jail? County lockup? Did the boy have a lawyer, perhaps some fancy name from Montgomery hired by his parents? That had been a nice car he drove into her porch. Or was he at the mercy of one of those public defenders, like Ioletta told her about? Was the boy well? Did he have a criminal record? Was he a drug dealer? Had he been to a psychiatrist?
Most people wouldn’t ask all those questions or even think to ask them, but they were questions she was interested in. Chance Odoms had told her a little, but by his hesitancy she knew something constrained him from coming right out and telling her everything she wanted to know. She assumed, rightly or wrongly, that he was under legal constraints not to say much. After all, he was a police official, and she was a citizen involved in a criminal affair, albeit the victim, as everyone well knew.
But she found out very quickly that no one seemed able to answer her questions. The Calneh Police Department was loath to answer their phones, and when they finally did so, she found herself shuttled from one precinct to another, from one office to another, from one desk sergeant to--well, not to another, but simply to a ringing, unanswered phone. No one at either the city courthouse or county courthouse was of any earthly help, either. Was she an attorney? Related to the accused? A reporter, perhaps? Then what was her legal interest in the matter? Her credentials?
Explaining accomplished nothing. She had expected to have her questions answered with one or two phone calls, certainly within the neat confines of one lunch hour, between bites on a chicken sandwich. But three lunch hours later, she still did not have her answers. In her own office at the bus company, the rule was to answer the phone by the second ring. If a girl went for a drink out of the water cooler from one of those paper Dixie cups, she had best return to her phone by the second ring. But officialdom, paid for by her hard-earned tax dollars, did not seem to have any such rule about answering phones promptly. By the time she learned these lessons in the school of real life, especially that some folks did not operate by the rules she knew and respected, and had wasted her three lunch hours without hope of ever having her questions answered, she was ready to cuss. People were right--you couldn’t fight City Hall. Especially when City Hall didn’t answer phones or simply shuffled you off to the next person, if they didn’t send you back to one you’d the misfortune of speaking to beforehand!
Her only alternative, which she told herself she should have thought of in the first place, was to visit City Hall or the County Courthouse, or maybe even one or other jail to find out things firsthand. Face-to-face, that was the way to do it.
Her heart quailed at the thought of visiting any of those places. The only time she went to the county courthouse was to pay her property taxes, and when she did, it always seemed like someone eyed her suspiciously or the police were dragging some poor, handcuffed soul to justice in one of the small rooms down a corridor that dwindled off into the distance. It never occurred to her that people often stare at an overly large woman who, in her personal distractions, has overlooked a stray hair roller or neglected here or there to properly secure a button, or whose slip is showing and threatens to fall around her ankles. As to the poor, handcuffed souls and the corridors they were led down, they subconsciously reminded her of the damned being led away to perdition.
That’s why her fourth lunch hour was spent in trying to screw up courage enough to go to the courthouse or to one or other jail. In any event, she needed a vacation from the phone calls. It was on a Monday she spoke with Chance Odoms and had begun her odyssey. So on Friday she visited the County Courthouse, which was only six blocks from the offices of the Calneh Bus Lines Co., Inc. Unfortunately, no one seemed able or willing to answer her questions in person, either, which explained why they would not answer them over the phone.
On Saturday, she spent a great deal of time weeding the portion of garden patch she allotted to herself and Angel out of her acre or so of property. For good measure she weeded and hoed in several of her neighbor’s garden patches, too. If any of them noticed a few lettuces or cabbages chopped and ready for salad, though not yet dug out of the ground, no one complained--for once.
Sunday, she was especially quiet in church. Even the new Rev. Johnny, as timid as he was and as disapproving of vociferous females as he thought St. Paul to be, noticed one of his most outspoken parishioners seemed troubled, and so he took it upon himself to ask if she was disturbed about something. Since she wasn’t one to spill the beans about every little trouble in her life and he wasn’t one to counsel his parishioners on anything that was not directly out of the pages of Scripture, he had chosen a good subject to experiment upon.
Problems? What problems?!? He sighed with relief as she walked away, mechanically forcing a smile that hid her roiling emotions from anyone else nosy enough and rude enough to question her about them.
#
Stella hacked away at five blue-white chicken carcasses with her broad-bladed cleaver like she was still hoeing in the garden, chopping thistles and dandelions to smithereens. Ioletta, one eye on her friend and one eye on the greens she was washing in the kitchen sink, could endure it no longer.
“What is wrong with you, girl?” She demanded. Even Angel, expertly whittling turnips into roses at the table, looked up from his work and squinted at his mother.
“Nothin’,” she answered, still chopping like the chickens were demons responsible for all the troubles she’d ever had in her whole life.
“Sure am glad I don’t have your nothin’ botherin’ me!” Ioletta retorted.
Stella abruptly shoved the chickens aside and threw her cleaver down on the counter. She might have thrown herself immediately into a kitchen chair and buried her face in her hands and bawled her eyes out, except that handling raw poultry was serious business requiring her to first wash her hands in the sink with soap and hot water. But even after that she didn’t throw herself into a chair; if she’d been one to throw herself into furniture, it would have been reduced to kindling long ago, heavy oak or otherwise.
Instinctively, Ioletta came and put an arm around her shoulders. Angel, from across the table, extended his hand to give her his own comforting touch. Ioletta knew better than to blurt her question again. Least not right away.
“What’s troublin’ you, honey?” She asked, no longer able to bridle her curiosity.
Stella blubbered away, not answering. Ioletta glanced questioningly at Angel, though she knew he couldn’t see more than an inch or two beyond his own face and wouldn’t, in any case, offer an opinion.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Stella sobbed, still hiding behind her hands. “Nothin’, I guess.”
“Well, it ain’t jist nothin’, so you may as well spill it, Stella Jo. You be drivin’ me crazy if you don’t, and you know it, too.”
> Stella quit her blubbering, and Ioletta sat down in a chair beside her to wait. Stella wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and then covered her face again, her fingers forming prison bars for her eyes to peer through.
“It’s about that boy!”
“What about the boy?” Ioletta said, knowing full well what boy Stella meant.
“I made phone calls and I went places, to try and find him, but nobody could tell me where he was!”
“Is that all, honey?” Ioletta cried. “You shoulda axed me, I coulda tol’ ya.”
Stella looked from behind her prison bars.
“You mean it?”
“Sure, they probably sent him on one of them road gangs, you know, breakin’ rock or somethin’. Jus’ ax Captain Odoms, he’ll tell ya.”
Stella wiped her eyes and sniffed loudly. She felt like a fool. “I called everywhere. I went to the county and city jails, to the courthouse. People laughed at me like it was all a joke!”
“Oh, don’t worry about some fool laughin’ at you. It’s just their way, them havin’ the upper hand an’ all, thinkin’ they’re superior to the rest of us. If you axed me beforehand, I coulda saved you all that trouble and heartache.”
“You think I should go back to Captain Odoms, ask how I can find the boy?”
“That’s the only way, honey. He be the police, so he knows the ins an’ he be knowin’ the outs.”
“I suppose,” Stella admitted. Sniffling, she returned to preparing the chickens, and Ioletta resumed washing her greens.
“I coulda tol’ ya the whole time,” Ioletta muttered, though whether Stella heard her over the running water was doubtful. But there was no arguing facts--there were things some people knew and some things other people just didn’t. It was all a matter of experience.
Stella, reflecting on her frustrating week of lunch hours, hated the thought of bothering Chance Odoms with her problems. She just wished she had asked Ioletta for advice a week ago. Sometimes there were answers for the asking right in front of your nose. But she hated asking for help from anyone, anyone except the Lord, and sometimes she felt like she was bothering even Him with her troubles.
“You just hafta trust the Lord,” Ioletta said, turning off the water and shaking out a handful of greens. She’d said it a hundred times to Stella Jo if she’d said it once, and Stella Jo had returned the favor just as often. This time, Stella took it as a sign from Heaven.
Of course Ioletta was right, both about Chance Odoms knowing the ins and outs of things in the criminal courts system and the boy’s probable whereabouts. With the trial coming up, Stella would have ample opportunity to speak with the boy, since the court would not want to embarrass itself by losing track of the accused.
****
Chapter 11
A beefy, gum-chewing guard, reeking of tobacco, nodded Stella to her seat in the visitation area of the county jail.
“I’m givin’ up the evil weed, ma’am,” he said, grinning and chewing at the same time. He ran one hand over his blond, flattop haircut glistening with Butchwax. “That’s the reason for the gum.”
The outline of a cigarette pack was clearly visible through the shirt pocket of his khaki-colored uniform. Tempted to tell him it would be easier to give up tobacco if he threw the cigarettes away, she let her frosty glare suffice. Sometimes that sort of tactic works wonders, especially if the one working it is a woman who tips the scales at over 200 pounds. The guard, still grinning, brushed aside her response and waved another visitor to a metal folding chair next to Stella’s.
“Just remember no kissing or touching the prisoner through the wire, ma’am.”
The idea! Stella Jo thought.
“If you do,” he said, adding insult to injury, “I’ll have to haul you out pronto.”
“I suppose that means I’m not allowed to pass a metal file to the prisoner through the wire, then?” She retorted.
“Not funny, ma’am,” he said, losing his grin. “I’ll have to write that in my daily report.”
“See that you do, young man, and make sure you include in there how rude you were. I’m sure some of my friends in high places would be interested in how you run things here.”
She turned away, satisfied to have quenched his smart-alecky attitude. He stared for a moment, his mouth open, gum poised on his tongue in surprise, then had to chuckle. If the lady in the blue-and-white, flower-print dress had friends in high places, he was brother to the governor of the great state of Alabama.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Gathering up his clipboard and ballpoint pen from his desk, he noted the time from the large, round wall clock. He made a phone call, and seconds later the door on the other side of the room opened, allowing in five prisoners dressed in the faded orange coveralls of county detainees. One of them, a man as tall as Ioletta’s Lamarr but not nearly as trim, was in shackles and had to shuffle his way to his seat. Mark John Davies hesitated, waiting until the others sat down. He was in the minority here, the only white face among them.
As the man in shackles dropped into his chair with a rattle, Stella Jo’s eyes wandered to her neighbor, a woman she figured near 300 pounds and perhaps 30 years of age. The man’s girlfriend? wife? sister? It was difficult not to stare. Bright red lipstick smeared the poor girl’s mouth like a bleeding wound, and her hairdo, in a vain stab at a fashionably oval Afro, had parted in the middle to form broad, woolly horns. Stella Jo itched to get to work on her with a hairbrush. There was a package of tissues in her purse, too, that could fix her lipstick.
“Don’t be lookin’ at me, you white b--”
“Whoa there!” The guard interrupted, grasping his clipboard like he might swat her with it, before she could finish. For parity’s sake, he should have unsnapped the leather strap that would allow him to draw his gun from its holster. “Y’all better not be talkin’ like that in here, lady, unless you wanna leave the room right now.”
“And you, lady,” he said to Stella, not waiting for the other woman’s response, “you seem to be a troublemaker. I’m of a mind to see you escorted out right now, ’less you promise to change your ways?”
She nodded, smiling faintly, which was all she could muster, what with her chin quivering like it was. It seemed every nightmare she could imagine about visiting the county jail was coming to pass before her very eyes.
Mark John Davies had found his seat and stared through the wire mesh that separated the visitors from the prisoners, smiling at this unexpected bit of entertainment.
Struggling to regain her sense of composure, she stared back, feeling at a loss for words. She had laid down her pink patent leather purse on the white, painted countertop between the two of them, and found it difficult not to rest her elbows on it, too, like everyone else, whether prisoners or visitors, seemed to be doing. But that would have been too much like having her elbows on the table at dinnertime, when she was unfailingly careful about such courtesies.
Looking at the boy through the wire mesh disconcerted her. She could not help but notice that it was exactly like chicken wire, which sent all sorts of crazy thoughts through her head, none of them about prisons and their prisoners. Meanwhile the woman next to her, the one with woolly horns, leaned closer and closer to the wire, with the man on the other side doing the same. Suddenly, Stella noticed the wire was smudged with red, that the color exactly matched the woman’s lipstick. There was a reason the guard had warned about kissing!
“Enough of that!” He bellowed from his desk. “I will run you out of here, ma’am. You know there’s absolutely no kissing or touching at any time.”
The man and woman slumped back in their chairs, both of them muttering profanities under their breath.
“I can’t wait ’til they install the dadgummed glass instead of that fool chicken wire,” the guard said. “There’ll be no more of your messin’ around.”
“What did ya want, lady?” Mark John Davies asked.
“What do I
want?” Stella Jo spluttered. “Don’t you know who I am, young man?”
“Naw, they just said some lady visitor wanted to talk. I was hoping you would be a lot younger.”
Stella Jo searched his eyes, looking for the faintest sign of recognition in them. She knew he had wanted to say and a lot prettier, which she ignored. Did his restraint say something about him, though? Was there at least some fragment of courtesy buried in his personality? Or was there something more calculating there?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He asked.
“Y-you look like somebody I know,” she said. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”
“Naw,” he said, shaking his head. “Up north a ways, quite a bit north. Montana.”
That explained why he didn’t have a southern accent, which surprised her, because she had expected he would. But just because he looked so much like her Angel, she should not have assumed he would talk like everyone else.
“And you don’t recognize me?” She asked, finding it hard to believe him. It had only been five or so months, not all that long, to her way of thinking, since he had broken her door down and almost killed her and Angel and Lamarr. Had he been on drugs, which Chance Odoms had told her was likely, or maybe awfully drunk? Or did criminals forget their victims that easily?
“Well, maybe a little,” he said, leaning closer and squinting faintly. “But a lot of folks look like a lot of other folks.”
“You don’t remember crashing your car through my fence and breaking into my house?” She didn’t add anything about a knife.
“Oh, that,” he said, untroubled and staring. “Not really.”
“And you don’t have anything to say for yourself?”
