The Quiet Streets of Winslow

by Judy Troy

  Alice didn’t disagree.

  “And the symbol indicated the burial plot?”

  She nodded.

  “Explain the symbol to me,” I said, and she went inside again and was gone for a few minutes. She returned with a high school English textbook.

  “It’s from a poem Wes liked in high school,” she said. She showed me the poem.

  Western wind, when will thou blow,

  The small rain down can rain?

  Christ, if my love were in my arms

  And I in my bed again!

  “What I was trying to draw was small rain,” Alice said, “but how would you draw that? I didn’t know. I’m not an artist. I told Jody what it was supposed to be. I told her that the symbol was on Hannah’s gravestone, done by somebody else, better than I could have.”

  A cool wind was blowing, and Alice buttoned her sweater. She took her time before speaking.

  “Jody came to see me after she moved back, and I drew it for her,” she said. “She knew the child was dead. She knew the day it happened. Wes went to her house, took her for a drive, and told her. How many of the details got through to her, he didn’t know. But she heard it, Wes said. She wasn’t going to tell her mother. Her mother couldn’t handle it, she told Wes, but we didn’t feel as if we could trust anything Jody said.

  “Jody looked and seemed different when she came to see me. That was a relief. We talked for a few minutes. She told me she had been in Chino Valley, and she talked about her mother being sick, and that in her opinion drugs were going to kill her mother before long. Then she thanked me for the map, and a month later I read about her death in the newspaper.”

  Alice put her coffee cup on the tray and set the tray on the floor.

  “Do you know whether she visited the cemetery?” I asked.

  “I’m hoping she did.”

  THE HOLBROOK COURT Trailer Park was on Nelson Avenue, not far from the railroad tracks. There were seventeen trailers in all, lined up more or less parallel to each other, with a space of about twenty-five feet between them; no trees, no landscaping of any kind. The windows of two were boarded up; three looked empty. Kevin lived in the green-and-white trailer two from the back. His vehicle was parked in front, but there was no answer to my knock.

  The trailer, I had learned, was rented to an Ida Rainey Spencer, in Show Low, now deceased. She was Kevin’s grandmother—Paulette Hebson’s mother. The owner of the trailer park had told me that Kevin Rainey paid him in cash, each month. “I don’t care whose name is on the lease so long as the rent in paid,” he told me. The station wagon Kevin drove had been given to him by his grandmother; the outdated plates on it were in her name.

  I parked at a distance and waited half an hour or so before Kevin walked up, carrying a paper sack—toilet paper, it turned out to be. He was close in size to Nate Aspenall, but with a more muscular frame. Light hair, green eyes, nice looking at first glance, then a hint of something else on the second. Tarnished somehow. Damaged. Somebody you might not trust if you were a perceptive female. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt.

  “Why don’t we go inside and talk?” I said.

  He turned the door knob—with his left hand, I noticed—and reluctantly let me in. I had expected dismal, but it wasn’t in that category. It was serviceable, uncluttered, and clean, although he didn’t have much. A brown sofa, a small television. The bedroom door was open, and I could see a made bed and a small dresser. We sat on kitchen stools across from each other at the counter.

  “Tell me about your relationship with Jody Farnell,” I said.

  “The girl who died? I didn’t know her very well.”

  “You’d talk to her at PT’s, am I right?”

  “I would see her there, sure.”

  He put one elbow on the counter and rested his chin in his hand.

  “As I understand it, you knew where she lived, you’d been over a few times. How did that come about?”

  He changed position, then fingered the glass salt and pepper shakers on the counter.

  “I was doing yard work down the street,” he said. “I saw her move in and asked if she needed help. I didn’t realize it was against the law.”

  “Come on, Kevin. You had a relationship with her. You had feelings for her. I respect that. I’m just asking how things were between you two.”

  His green eyes wandered from me to his plain, clean living room, which is what he looked at as he spoke.

  “We fooled around a little is all that happened. That was twice, maybe, at her house. Then at PT’s, well, we were friends. I liked talking to her. She was a nice girl.”

  “Fooled around as in had sex?”

  “We didn’t have sex. We did . . . other things.”

  “Why only twice?” I said. “You didn’t want to anymore, or she didn’t?”

  “She had a boyfriend, by then.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Nate something. He was from before. She had lived with him somewhere. She told me about him at PT’s.”

  “Where was this Nate from?”

  “I can’t recall.”

  “What else did she tell you about him?”

  “That he knew about me,” Kevin said. “How’s that? He knew my name.”

  “She told him about you?”

  “That’s what she said. She told him my name and where I lived, and I asked her why, and she said she didn’t know, that it just came out. And that he was a good person and I would like him. I don’t know where that came from. I mean, it wasn’t like I wanted to hear about him, and I told her that.”

  “You were angry then.”

  “No. Not angry. Sorry.”

  He followed a crack in his counter with his finger.

  “Hard to be sorry and not also angry. Under the circumstances, I mean. Not only does she dump you, she tells you about her boyfriend.”

  He shrugged. It seemed an unnatural movement for him, a little staged.

  “You bought her a drink one night, the bartender said. She didn’t want it. Didn’t drink it. What was that about, Kevin?”

  “She was just trying to tell me it was over between us, that’s all.”

  “She hadn’t already told you that?”

  “She had. But I thought we could be friends, you know. So what if there was this other guy? I don’t get that about girls. If she had liked me enough to . . . well, you’d have to still feel something. I didn’t see why we couldn’t still talk to each other.”

  “And she didn’t want that.”

  “No. I guess she didn’t.”

  “Boy,” I said. “That’s a harsh way to tell you, if you ask me. Humiliating. You buy a girl a drink, and it sits on the bar all night. There must be nicer ways to get that point across.”

  “It’s not how I would have done it,” he said.

  “How would you have done it?”

  “Said yes to the drink but please don’t buy me more. Something polite like that.”

  “So what she did was impolite.”

  “She could have had that one drink and thanked me for it.”

  “So here she hurts you, tells you she has another boyfriend, and then she does this. Hurt on top of hurt.”

  Kevin moved his hand across the counter—his right hand—and scooped up crumbs I couldn’t see.

  “This was a few weeks or so before she was killed, I understand.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Did you see her again after that?”

  “At PT’s once or twice.”

  “You didn’t want to talk to her about it? Have your say?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “What good would it have done?”

  “So you considered it,” I said.

  “Not really.”

  He got off the stool and opened his refrigerator. I could see a six-pack of Budweiser from where I sat.

  “Go ahead and have a beer if you want,” I said.

  He seemed to think about it. �
��No,” he said, and moved to the sink and drew himself a glass of water before sitting back down.

  “The night she was killed, Kevin,” I said, “April 24—it was a Thursday. Where were you that night? You understand that I have to ask.”

  “That was weeks ago,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I was probably here, alone at home. That’s where I usually am.”

  “Well, the bartender remembers you at PT’s,” I said. “He says you talked to Jody that night. In fact you left your station wagon in the parking lot.”

  “Did I?” Kevin said. “Well, I might have. I go there enough.”

  “How is it you get a ride home when you leave your vehicle there?”

  “Usually I don’t,” he said. “I sleep in the back seat.”

  “Your mother ever come get you?”

  “A few times,” Kevin said. “Sure. I’ll call her if it’s cold enough out.”

  “What did you and Jody talk about that night?” I said.

  He glanced up at me, then down at his glass of water. He took a quick drink.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “Maybe I drank too much. When I drink too much I don’t remember. I turn into an old person.”

  “Most guys your age get fired up, drinking. That’s how I was. Quick to lose my temper and so forth.”

  “I’m not that way,” he said.

  I stood up, stretched my back, and took in as much of the trailer as I could. Nothing in view was incriminating or even interesting. Kevin stood as well, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

  “Why was it you moved to Holbrook?” I asked. “To be closer to your mother?”

  “There’s more work here,” he said, “here and in Winslow. I worked at a mining operation for a while, until it shut down. For a while I was really making money. I thought that . . .”

  “What?”

  “That my life was going to get better,” he said.

  “But it didn’t.”

  “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

  I was looking out the window at the scraggly area in front of the trailer, beyond which was a chain-link fence; a broad, empty street; and a view of Bucket of Blood Drive. It was clearly visible from his window. I debated whether or not to ask if the name of that street had significance for him and decided against it. It was probably no secret in Holbrook that that was where Jody’s car had been found.

  “Was losing that job when you got yourself in a bit of trouble?” I said. “You have that DUI on your record, and that assault charge. What was that about?”

  “That was stupid,” he said. “A friend and I got into it. He was drunk and called the police. He was sorry about it later and apologized, told the police it was his screwup. He felt bad about it, and he should have.”

  “That apology was important to you, it sounds like.”

  “It’s how people are supposed to treat you when they make a mistake.”

  “Did Jody ever say she was sorry for how she had treated you?”

  “No.” I had the feeling he said it more sharply than he had meant to. “But she didn’t owe me that. I mean, all she did really was move on, like girls do.”

  After I left his trailer I drove in the direction of Bucket of Blood Drive. Would Kevin have been smart enough to clean Jody’s car of prints, inside and out? Well, people watched television. I resented police shows for the unrealistic aspects and the realistic, both—more so for the latter. And unlike a lot of single men his age, Kevin cleaned up after himself, as did Nate, for that matter. And both of them were left-handed, although Kevin seemed to be ambidextrous.

  On Bucket of Blood Drive I parked where Jody’s car had been found and got out of my SUV. Let Kevin Rainey see me there, I thought. I imagined he would be watching.

  chapter forty

  NATE ASPENALL

  I WAITED AT THE Painted Desert Overlook for half an hour. I sat in my truck with the windows down, listening to the wind as it swept across the plateaus with their muted colors and the blue of the sky reaching down to them. It was after four by then, and the light was changing. To the west there was a quilted pattern of thin, white clouds that trailed off into wisps at either end.

  I did not look at Mike Early’s SUV or Jody’s car directly but held them in my peripheral sight. I believe it’s human to not want to know too much. Instead I took myself back to the day before, after we had had drinks at La Posada and Jody drove me to my pickup. I did not leave at once, as she had imagined. I drove down the windswept streets of her neighborhood, past the small houses, the small yards, the fenced-in dogs, the kids playing, the out-of-work men congregated in the short alleys, the quiet streets of Winslow, where Jody said not much happened and not much changed.

  People were coming home from work, and a train was going by on the Santa Fe rail line. Beyond the railroad tracks was flat, empty land as far as you could see, all the way to the horizon. I drove past Walmart and a liquor store, past a pawn shop and a Super 8 and a Burger King. Then I circled back to Jody’s part of town and drove past her house, and her car was parked there and nobody else’s, and I caught a glimpse of her through the small window, talking on her cell phone. Who was she talking to? Of course I couldn’t know. She was talking to her mother, I told myself. She was saying, I’m just going to stop for groceries, Mom, and I’ll be over.

  Only then did I leave Winslow for Flagstaff.

  AT THE OVERLOOK the plateaus were becoming inflamed with the approach of evening, and a photo album in my head opened onto Delia Lane and myself on my bicycle, with Sandra running alongside, when my dog Philly ran out into Nightfall Street. Before we could shout her back we heard the squeal of tires. However long ago you lose something the original pain comes back. It did then at the overlook. It was deep and overwhelming—the emotion of a dream that had somehow come into my waking life, then subsided. You could go back and forth between waking and dreaming, I saw, but it wasn’t an ordinary occurrence.

  A minute or two after that, Mike Early drove out of the parking lot. I saw Jody get into her Toyota, and she sat there a minute, brushing her hair as she looked at herself in the rearview mirror. That was when I started my truck and pulled up next to her, where Mike Early’s pickup had been. She was shocked to see me. She looked twice, as if not believing it, and tears came to her eyes. Her expression was a confusion of anger and hurt, and I had not expected that. I had thought she would be defensive, embarrassed, ready to offer an explanation.

  I got into the passenger seat of her car. She wore jeans and a close-fitting, gray sweater I had not seen before, made out of a thin material. Her face hardened into stubbornness. It was as if she had decided: this is what I will do.

  “How could you spy on me?” she said.

  “Spy on you doing what?” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means what were you doing in Mike Early’s truck?”

  “What are you doing here, at the overlook?” she said.

  Her eyes were cold, and I found myself explaining that I had stayed in Flagstaff in order to go on the Reservation and sightsee. That was what I had done, and now I was on my way back. It was the truth, or mostly the truth.

  “I bet you stayed in Winslow last night,” she said. “Then you parked near my house today and saw Mike Early drive up. He was on his way to visit his sister, by the way. He was just visiting. Then you ended up following us here.”

  I dug in my pocket and showed her the receipt from the motel in Flagstaff. She wouldn’t touch it and I set it in the small compartment between the seats.

  “So what?” Jody said. “So big deal. You stayed fifty miles away.”

  “What were you and Mike doing?” I said. “That’s all I’m asking you.”

  “Talking.”

  “About what?”

  “Nothing special,” she said. “This and that, same as always. What difference does it make?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I was wondering.”

  “What did you think we were
doing?” Jody said.

  “I couldn’t see you at all. I could only see Mike.”

  “He’s taller than I am.”

  “I know that.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jody said. “What’s happening to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s like you’re turning into another person.”

  “I’m fifty different people. Everybody is.”

  “There’s only one of me,” Jody said.

  “There’s you with me,” I said. “Then there’s you with Mike Early.”

  I didn’t mention that there were undoubtedly others. Already her face was crumpling. But before that, something else flew across it, and I was certain of what she had done.

  “I don’t want your ring anymore,” she said.

  She took it off and held it out to me. I could see the indentation it had left on her finger.

  “No,” I said. “It’s yours, even if you’re saying forget about all the rest.”

  “The answer to marrying you is now no,” Jody said. “Is that what all the rest means? You can’t even say the word, Nate. I don’t think you would have married me. You don’t live in the world at all. You don’t know what reality is. There’s always been something off about you.”

  “Like your head is on straight.”

  “It’s straighter than yours.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I keep trying,” Jody said.

  “That’s what you call it?”

  “Now you’re being mean,” she said. “Mean and ugly and jealous, like most men. I didn’t think you would be like that, Nate. I didn’t think you would spy on me.”

  “I wasn’t following you, and I wasn’t spying on you. I told you that. And here’s what I’d like to know, Jody. What difference would it make, anyway, if you and Mike were just talking?”

  “Don’t put this on me.”

  “But you were here with him.”

  “Take the ring back,” Jody said.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “I would never marry you now,” she said.

  “As if you would have before.”

  When I got out of her car, she called after me, “I was going to, Nate. I was going to say yes.”

  She drove out to Highway 87 in the direction of Winslow, and I watched her go, watched her Toyota until I couldn’t see it anymore. Then I drove toward Winslow myself.