Previously Loved Treasures

by Bette Lee Crosby

  “Screw Stan!” Joe yelled. “Screw the window!” But by then the officer was dragging him out of the courtroom.

  ~ ~ ~

  Joe didn’t have the money to pay for Stan’s window so his fifteen days became three weeks of sitting in the Mackinaw jailhouse. For the first five days it was pure hell. His stomach convulsed every time he thought of food, and he couldn’t hold on to a cup of coffee because of his hands shaking. Twice he managed to slosh a few sips of the sludge, but both times he gagged and threw up more than he’d swallowed.

  After the first five days, the hell settled into a day in/day out misery. A misery he didn’t deserve. Getting drunk was a poor excuse for throwing a man in jail, he reasoned. On any given Friday, half the men in Mackinaw got drunk. Of course, those men went home and found their woman in bed where she belonged. Joe started thinking back on why he was in jail. That’s when he came to the conclusion it was Rowena’s fault.

  For the entire three weeks Joe cursed her. If not for her, he wouldn’t be here. If Rowena wasn’t playing a smart-ass cat-and-mouse game, he wouldn’t have had to search under the bed. He wouldn’t have fallen. He wouldn’t have needed a drink to nurse the pain in his head.

  “This is the thanks I get,” he muttered. “I take care of her and the kid, and this is how she pays me back?”

  After a while he could almost see Rowena lounging on the bed back at the motel, laughing at his predicament. “Nobody shits on Joe Mallory and gets away with it,” he vowed.

  That’s when he began to think of the various ways he could get even. When Rowena’s laughter began to haunt his sleep, Joe realized that no matter what the cost he had to get out of jail. He started banging on the bars and hollering until the guard on duty finally came.

  “Okay,” Joe said, “tell Stan I’ll give him my truck to pay for the broken window.”

  Two weeks earlier he’d remembered parking the truck at Easy Aces, but until now he’d said nothing about it. The truck with its bald tires and leaky radiator wasn’t much, but at least with it he had a way of getting around. With it, he had a way of hauling crap from one place to another and putting money in his pocket. Without it he was screwed, but giving it up was his only way of getting out of jail.

  It took another two days before Joe was released. As soon as he set foot on the sidewalk he headed for the motel figuring he’d find Rowena.

  When Maggie, the owner of the motel, saw Joe coming, she flagged him down. “Don’t bother going back there. I done cleaned out your room.”

  “Where’s Rowena?” Joe asked.

  “Gone.” Maggie twitched her mouth to one side. It was the same expression she used when she spoke of the drifters who ran out on their bill. “Seems kind of funny, her leaving the same time you did.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “Ha, like that’s gonna happen.”

  “Shit!”

  When Maggie started complaining about the fact that they still owed her twenty-three dollars for room rent, Joe came close to jamming one of his balled-up fists into her mouth. The only thing that stopped him was the thought of going back to jail.

  For the remainder of that day Joe went from place to place looking for Rowena. He tried the Food Mart, the gas station, the Laundromat, and the pool hall. He pulled the tattered picture of her and Sara from his wallet and asked if people had seen either the woman or the child. “Rowena’s kind of average height, blue eyes, long blonde hair,” he explained. But everyone he spoke with shook their head and said they’d not seen such a woman with or without a child.

  “Damn,” Joe grumbled.

  At the end of a long night, when he had no place to sleep and nothing to eat, he went back to Abe’s twenty-four-hour gas station and stood in front of the counter looking down at his feet.

  “I need a place to stay,” he said. “And I’m willing to work for it.”

  Abe, who pretty much ran the place by himself, agreed to give Joe a job. “Five dollars a day,” he said. “You can sleep in the back and help yourself to whatever food’s on the shelf.”

  Joe took the job and said he was mighty grateful. But gratitude was the last thing in the world he felt.

  Missing Things

  The day Joe Mallory was released from the Mackinaw jail was the same day Louie decided to build a playhouse in the backyard of the Sweetwater residence. By then over three weeks had passed, and while Rose was still concerned Joe might find them she’d become considerably more relaxed about it. She no longer jumped at the sound of the doorbell or turned wary when she heard footsteps in the hall.

  Max came to supper most every evening, but with late nights and heavy drinking he’d given up on breakfast and lunch. When he was not at the table the sound of laughter echoed through the hallways; when he made an appearance smelling of whiskey and needing a shave, little was said. The lack of conversation was noticeable, and the difference didn’t escape Max’s attention. Silverware clanked against plates and someone might mention a television show worth watching, but that was it.

  This, of course, infuriated Max even more. Now certain they were plotting against him, he moved silently through the rooms and remained in the shadows, listening and watching. When he did catch the sound of voices, he pressed his back to the wall and inched closer to the doorway. Several times he thought he heard words like “gun” and “prisoner.” And on one occasion he definitely heard Laricka say “poison.” It came through loud and clear. But moments later her grandsons came barreling through the hallway, and Max had to move on. He missed knowing she had spoken of a weed pulled from the garden.

  To Max each day seemed blacker than the one before. His eyes grew narrower and the set of his mouth harder. A ball of suspicion settled in his chest and grew to a size that could no longer be ignored. The anger that was once merely resentment took on the bright red glow of hatred, and Max began plotting his revenge.

  He watched and waited. One afternoon when he saw Harriett leave the house, he slipped inside her room and searched for something to give warning as to what they were planning. Evidence of a sort. Of course he found nothing, but when he spied her silver cigarette lighter on the nightstand he picked it up and slid it into his pocket. Two days later he drove to Harrington and sold it for eight dollars.

  “Smart-ass bitch,” he’d grumbled. “Serves her right.”

  The lighter was the first of a number of things that went missing.

  ~ ~ ~

  Harriet searched for the lighter for several days. It had been a gift from her first husband and was something she treasured. After she looked through the house, she called the beauty parlor to ask if perchance she’d left it there.

  “Sorry, hon,” Greta said. “Nothing like that’s been found.”

  “Can you keep an eye out?” Harriet asked. “Silver with a gold heart on the front and my initials on the back. H-L-T. The T’s for Thomas,” she said, then wistfully added, “I got that lighter when I was married to Buck Thomas.”

  Greta said she’d be on the lookout, but Harriet had a feeling the lighter wouldn’t turn up at the beauty shop nor at the bank. The last she remembered it had been laying on the nightstand in her bedroom.

  When the residents gathered for supper, Harriet asked if anyone had seen it. Several people shook their head, others offered up a sad, “Sorry, no.”

  Max did neither.

  Her dislike of him became obvious when she asked pointedly, “What about you, Max? Did my lighter happen to accidently fall into your pocket?”

  Odd as it was for her to choose those particular words, it was purely coincidental.

  Max railed in a way that only the guilty are capable of. “You’ve got one hell of a nerve accusing me of stealing!”

  Not one to back off, Harriet answered, “Well, did you?”

  “Screw you!” Max swiped his arm across the table sending his plate and a bowl of mashed potatoes to the floor. While the sound of dishes shattering still hung in the air, Max left the table and stomp
ed back to his room.

  “Oh, dear,” Caroline said. “I hope this isn’t going to mean trouble.”

  No one else said anything.

  ~ ~ ~

  When the stack of lumber Louie ordered arrived in the backyard, Max’s imagination ran wild. Convinced the residents were plotting some sort of revenge, he envisioned the possibility of them boarding his room up; locking him out or, even worse, locking him in. If they did it while he slept, he’d be trapped. Max had heard stories about people being held prisoner in their own houses, and, paranoid as he’d become, such an action seemed possible. If it did happen, there would be no way out. No way of getting food or water.

  Max decided to take action. First he went out and bought two crowbars. One he hid under his bed, the other he hid behind the garage. If they boarded up his room, he’d un-board it.

  That same day he began to prepare for any and all emergencies. He waited until the house was dark and quiet, then crept into the kitchen and snatched a full pitcher of orange juice along with the remaining half of a roast Caroline had planned to use for sandwiches.

  The following day Louie’s Atlanta Braves hat disappeared, along with the radio from the living room end table.

  “Blast it,” Louie grumped, “that’s my lucky hat. I need it for building Sara’s playhouse.”

  “Maybe it’ll turn up,” Caroline suggested.

  Of course it didn’t. Before Louie had the framing of the playhouse in place, he slammed a hammer down on his thumb instead of the nail he’d been aiming for. He gave a loud holler, then let go of a string of expletives that would make a sailor blush. Within minutes the thumb swelled to three times its normal size and turned the color of a storm cloud. Louie blamed the accident on the missing hat, and as he sat at the kitchen table with the damaged thumb submerged in a bowl of ice he warned what he’d do when he found the culprit responsible.

  By then Max had already begun to enjoy the thrill of his nightly raids. He would slip through the dark rooms and, like a mischievous ferret, grab whatever treasures he found and carry them back to his lair. Now standing with his ear pressed against the wooden door of his room, Max heard the shouting. He heard Louie’s threats and thought back on the way Wilbur’s watch had mysteriously reappeared after he’d sold it in Harrington.

  Although Harriet’s lighter had made no such reappearance, he began to wonder if maybe Harrington was too close. He had a good thing going, so why chance it? Wilbur was a pushover and Harriet was no problem, but Louie could be trouble. Max listened as Louie raged. That’s when he decided to bypass Harrington and sell the latest of his ill-gotten goods to the pawnshop in Blue Neck.

  Blue Neck was fifteen miles east of Harrington, twenty-five miles from Rose Hill. It was closer to Route 95, more transients, less questions. Blue Neck was definitely a better choice.

  That evening as the residents gathered around the dining room table, Max tiptoed from his room and slipped out the door with a package tucked under his arm. It took a half-hour to drive to Blue Neck and another twenty minutes to find the pawnshop located in an alleyway next to a tattoo parlor.

  “Shit,” Max grumbled when he saw the narrow storefront with a display of knives in the window. For a moment he considered going elsewhere, but the only elsewhere was either back to Harrington or on to Mackinaw. “What the hell,” he said and walked in.

  With its low-watt light bulbs and dirty windows, Max knew the pawnshop wasn’t a place where questions would be asked. He pulled out the bag and dumped the contents onto the counter: the small radio, a silver-rimmed ashtray, the Atlanta Braves baseball cap, and a tortoise shell comb Laricka had forgotten to put away.

  “What’ll you give me?”

  A Buddha-shaped man sat behind the counter and moved nothing but his eyes. He glanced down then said, “Six bucks for the lot.”

  “Six bucks? This stuff is worth way more than—”

  “Six bucks,” Buddha repeated.

  Max narrowed his eyes and leaned across the counter. “You can do better than that.”

  “Five bucks,” Buddha said, “and you’ve got ten seconds to either take it or get your crap out of my store.”

  Max didn’t like being pushed around, but he couldn’t make it to Mackinaw before the pawnshop closed and going back to Harrington was too risky. “I’ll take it.”

  Without moving from the stool he sat on, Buddha reached beneath the counter and pulled out a five-dollar bill. He handed it to Max and said, “Now get out of here.”

  For a moment Max stood there, on the verge of saying or doing something. It was unlike him to walk away from a fight, but this one did not look promising. Buddha was four hundred pounds if he was an ounce and on home turf. Max turned and walked toward the door. He was just inches from the street when he turned back and said, “Lousy dump you got—”

  Before he finished the sentence, Max felt the bullet whiz past his ear.

  “Keep going,” Buddha said, “and don’t come back.”

  The Maggie Sue Issue

  When Max left the pawnshop he sizzled with rage. It was bad enough to be cheated out of a fair price for his goods and worse yet to be told to get out and not come back. Were it not for the gun, Max would have gone back and tossed a brick though Buddha’s front window. Maybe he should do it anyway, he thought. He could drive by, toss a brick from the car window, and keep on moving.

  Max climbed into the car and gunned the motor. The problem was he didn’t have a brick. He didn’t have squat. He should have had the house in Rose Hill, but he didn’t. Caroline had cheated him out of the house, just as Buddha had cheated him. The unfairness of such a life roiled through his stomach and rose in his throat. Max slammed his foot on the accelerator and went roaring down the street, heedless of anything or anybody who might be in his way.

  Tom Osborne was working the evening patrol shift. He was the father of a new baby, a colicky baby who’d cried through the night. For hours on end he’d walked the floor trying to quiet the infant, but she would not be quieted. Thankfully it had been a slow evening, and in less than an hour he’d be off duty.

  With the patrol car parked on a darkened side street at the far end of Blue Neck Road, Tom leaned back in the seat waiting for his shift to end. He heard the roar of the car’s motor before he saw it fly past. Max had not yet reached the end of the street when Tom clicked on the siren and gave chase. Max heard the siren’s scream and stomped down on the gas pedal. With the patrol car in hot pursuit they traveled almost nine miles before Tom could pull ahead and force Max to the side of the road.

  Believing a man who would try to outrun a patrol car capable of most anything, Tom climbed out with his gun drawn. “Get out of the car!”

  Max did nothing.

  “Get out of the car NOW!” Tom repeated. He stood to one side, not in front of the headlights but close enough for Max to see the gun in his hand.

  “All right, all right,” Max grumbled. He opened the car door and stepped out.

  Still keeping his distance, Tom shouted, “Hands in the air!”

  Max obligingly lifted his hands. “What’s the problem?”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” Tom replied. “You went through town doing ninety.”

  “Speeding? That’s what this is about?”

  “And failure to stop,” Tom said. “Why didn’t you pull over when you heard the siren?”

  “I had the radio on,” Max lied, “I didn’t hear no siren.”

  “You didn’t see my lights flashing?”

  Max claimed he had his eyes focused on the road ahead and swore the only reason for not stopping was that he neither heard nor saw the patrol car giving chase.

  “I was trying to put some distance between me and that crazy pawnshop owner.” He explained how he’d been shot at. Acting as if he were the one wronged, he added the sound of earnestness to his words.

  “That don’t give you the right to be endangering other people,” Tom said. He holstered the gun, then asked for Max’s licen
se and registration. When everything checked out he handed them back to Max. “The pawnshop owner’s harmless. He’s just overly cautious about being robbed again.”

  “Overly cautious?” Max repeated. “He was trying to kill me! You wanna arrest me for speeding, and you’re gonna let him get away with attempted murder?”

  After a good half-hour of back and forth, Tom regretted he’d given chase. Max was a fired up nut-ball, and arresting him would mean hours of paperwork on a night that couldn’t end quickly enough.

  “Look,” he said, “all this is getting us nowhere. What happened at the pawn shop is just gonna be your word against his, so how about I’ll cut you a break on the speeding and failure to stop violation, and you just move on?”

  Although the thought of getting even with Buddha was already set in his mind, right now Max wanted his freedom more. “Yeah, okay,” he said and climbed back into his car. Even as he drove off Max was already thinking about payback.

  ~ ~ ~

  After the night he’d had, Max wanted some relaxation and his first thought was of Maggie Sue Somers. Maggie Sue was the kind of woman who was always up for a good time. She knew how to make a man relax, and right now she was exactly what he needed. He made a left on Elm and headed for the Owl’s Nest.

  When Max pushed through the door he’d hoped to find her draped over the bar, but the place was near empty. A young couple snuggled in a back booth, and behind the bar Freddie washed glasses.

  “You seen Maggie Sue tonight?” Max asked.

  Freddie shook his head. “Not tonight.”

  Max fumbled in his pocket for change, then headed to the pay phone.

  After a single ring, she answered with a drawl so thick it made a man feel antsy just listening to the sound.

  “Hey, baby,” Max said. “I’m at the Owl’s Nest. If you ain’t doing nothing come on down, and I’ll buy you a drink.”