Jolene watched the truck pull out. She said, “Super-nice guy – always good on the deliveries. Very religious, too. If y’all ask me we could use a little more of that in this world.”
I couldn’t resist. “More nuts and candy?”
Jolene gave me a mock-angry stare. “Smart ass.”
I had already drawn too much attention in this town so I ignored my queasy stomach, bought a Slim-Jim on impulse, and headed out into the morning heat. I thought my business in Smithville was done, but I was sadly mistaken.
Chapter Nine
Understandably, everyone in Smithville was watching. I knew it was not only at me but the visage of Mr. Wainwright, the Crenshaw Apartments manager, seemed to be peeking out the window of the office every time I went to the ice machine, to Denny’s, or to Jolene’s Quik-Stop; no matter what the time of day (or night) it was. Twice I had seen one of Smithville’s four police cars do a slow, passing look as I strolled down the foundation road from the Highway 29 on-ramp and I half-expected the officer to stop me and check my I.D. or trump up some complaint about jay-walking so he could check me out more thoroughly. I whiled away most of the day in my room, rationing out a large sausage pizza and watching shows on the TV about celebrity divorces, stock-car races, and local news about the missing boy. All of them told me nothing that I didn’t already know. With the thought of leaving in the morning on my mind, I left my room at 9:00pm – hoping to catch Rolly’s promised two-for-Tuesday drink special, anxious to wash the Texas dust from my throat.
With daylight saving time in effect, the sky had just achieved darkness and Rolly’s parking lot was lit by a solitary floodlight that failed to provide much more than shadows for the most part. I was on foot; looking over my shoulder every few minutes and I could see that there were only a few cars in the lot. One Ford truck sat in the deepest shadows and as I approached Rolly’s front door, I could see on the far side of the truck silhouettes of three men barely outlined by the on-off, on-off pulse of the neon sign that announced that Rolly had Bud. A fight was in progress.
I recognized James Herndon’s truck. Smithville Signs.
At a sprint I rounded the Ford only to be way-laid by a hay-maker to my forehead and I quickly went down. Herndon was half-standing while one man pinned his arms. The other, who had hit me, was turning to watch a third man who was trying to connect with a stomach shot to Herndon, but Herndon was squirming just enough to make it a difficult task. My assailant appeared to have a lot of hair, a walrus mustache, and a bias against bathing regularly. From my position on the ground, all the assailants looked like giants.
I’m not a fighter, having long pursued education and the finer arts, but I had enough stored-up anger to want to get up and kick these shit-kicker’s asses into next Tuesday. I leaped up, the pain in my head forgotten, and climbed up on the back of the one who was swinging at Herndon – throwing every kind of wild punch I could think of, and inventing a few along the way. The two of us, barely visible to anyone else, must have resembled a dumb-ass bear fighting off a horde of bees around his head. The guy who hit me chose to watch from the sidelines, muttering under his breath “Beat his ass!” and “Kick him!” Still so pissed I was blind, I said to myself “screw this”, climbed down off of Haystack Calhoun, and drove his head into Herndon’s truck, putting a moon-pie size dent in the driver’s door. My sparring partner was seeing stars so I whirled to see Herndon, who had broken free of the other man, deliver a National-Conference-Certified forty-five-yard punt straight to the guy’s nether regions. He folded like a cheap tent and bit the dust – literally. I was about to attempt my own field goal on Yosemite Sam but he put up a hand signaling defeat. The cheer leader had already lit out for parts unknown. I was panting and the adrenaline was burning through my body but Herndon hauled his dance partner to his feet and shoved him in the direction of the other cars in the lot. My guy got unsteadily to his feet and joined his partner, stumbling towards a beat-up Chevy and muttering under his breath.
Herndon was stooped with his hands on his knees but he managed to turn his head in the direction of the Chevy and yell, “You stupid piece of shit! How stupid can you possibly be? You think I wouldn’t recognize your wife’s car? I saw you, Bobby Dee! You hear me? The next time you come at me you’d better bring four assholes because that one hits like my fourteen-year old cousin…”
Some of the anger blinding me was dissipating and I saw the Chevy spin out of Rolly’s parking lot, throwing dust and gravel in a rooster-tail till they hit pavement.
My first – and hopefully last test by combat was over.
Herndon finally straightened, dusted off his clothing, and said, “I’m temporarily unemployed but – buy you a drink?”
“Is it still two-for-Tuesdays?”
“It must be. Let me ask you: were you planning on riding that guy all the way out of the parking lot?”
I felt my forehead where the cretin had connected with me. I didn’t feel any blood, but there was the small beginnings of a goose-egg doing the Mambo. I looked Herndon in the face and said, “Never been in a fight before.”
He spat at the ground and took my elbow, guiding it towards Rolly’s. He said, “I got news for you: that wasn’t no fight.”
*
“If that wasn’t a fight, what was it?” I was nursing a Bushmills in a booth in the back while holding a cold bar-rag against my head. Rolly was keeping a close watch on us out of one eye.
With a look of disgust James Herndon took a swallow of beer and said, “That was a message.”
“A message?”
Herndon’s cheek had a small laceration, small enough that an occasional swipe of a cocktail napkin sufficiently stemmed the flow of blood. From the way Herndon protected his right side with his arm, there must have been some kicking involved before I showed up. I had offered to take him to a hospital in case there were broken ribs involved but he had waved me off.
He said, “A message. It’s get out of town. No ‘I don’t like you’, no ‘you cut me off in traffic’, just – get out of town. The sum-bitches.” Herndon winced as he squirmed to find a more comfortable angle in his seat.
I didn’t understand. “Jesus Christ, what’s the matter with these people? Haven’t you got enough on your plate without some numbskulls that don’t even know you thinking you’ve got something to do with… with… the crime?” I still couldn’t say “kidnapping” in front of James Herndon.
He sighed, a sound that was part exasperation and part defeat. “Look man, you’re not from around here. You don’t know how it is. Those assholes know me, all right? The big one, Bobby Dee, is my god-damn brother-in-law!”
“What!?”
Herndon took another swallow. “That’s right. As if I didn’t have my hands full with my wife, now I got her brother and probably half her family thinking I’m some kind of child abuser. My own son! That was their little way of delivering the message. Get out of town. He won’t say as much, but every time I talk to that shitbird Craig he’s looking at me as if I’m guilty as sin. It’s no secret around here that my wife and I separated before Josh was…” Herndon’s despondency overcame his painful ribs and tears flooded his eyes. “…taken, and Craig and my wife’s family are all making noises like I took Josh to pressure my wife Francine into calling off the divorce. Freakin’ idiots! I want a divorce. You think I’d put my boy through something like this just for a better deal on a divorce? Idiots!” He signaled Rolly for another round.
I said, “Look, you don’t know me from Adam, but it’s going to get worse. Have the police given you any new information? Do they say they have any leads?”
“Not a thing. They’re spending all their time looking into me. My employers, the neighbors… I got a call from Josh’s teachers telling me they’ve all been interviewed about my mood. Have I seemed depressed lately? Was I a drug user? Alcoholic? Shit!” He held up his beer bottle and ruefully shook it in front of my face. “I’ve been to the coach’s home after a league game and seen him
put down a case of beer like it was dinner.” Herndon’s eyes looked lost. “I’m just playing into their hands with this shit but… I can’t take going home. It’s not home anymore, you know?”
Of course I know.
*
Lieutenant Perez, having gone through the motions of putting out APBs and checking hospitals and shelters, began running a fine-toothed comb through every aspect of my and Jeanie’s life – before and after we were married. In addition to Wheeler at the college and administration at Murray, Sloan, and Associates where Jeanie did the books part-time, Perez and his deputies tracked down every landscaper, paper-boy, mailman, and video store clerk that we had ever so-much-as-said-boo to. We got concerned calls from relatives I didn’t even know we had, some with honest expressions of concern; some with barely concealed questions about my mental status. Not Jeanie’s and my mental health. My mental health. As hard as I tried, nothing seemed to stop me from finally crumbling. Jeanie was worse. As month after month went by, the sleepless nights and the tear-filled days piled up until I came home one night and found Jeanie balled up in a fetal position on the kitchen floor. Months of drug therapy followed: anti-depressants for Jeanie; bourbon for me. One final last insult was seeing a parked green Ford outside of our local pharmacy as I refilled Jeanie’s prescription for Cymbalta – Perez sitting unmoving inside.
It’s not a home anymore, you know?
Predictably, something had to give. Surrounded by our drug/booze haze, Jeanie and I began to pull apart. When I tired from putting up “missing” posters and attending City Council meetings to protest the police’s focus in the search for Lucas, I ignored work and began squatting at police headquarters, demanding updates on the search. Amazingly, a scant six months ago, Jeanie began parroting Lieutenant Perez’s words:
“Benjamin, you have to face the facts of the situation. They’re doing all that they can. You have to find a place – a way that you can move forward. There’s only so much that’s possible…”
I exploded.
“Situation!? Situation? Have you lost your mind! We don’t have a goddamn situation, we have a lost boy and they’re… you’re treating it like we lost a kitten!”
God help me: for the first, and the last time ever, I raised my hand as if to strike.
Seeing my hand raised in the air, everything went into slow motion and it hung there. It hung there and the look in Jeanie’s eyes told me that I was now in this alone. Perhaps forever. I remember lowering my voice until it was almost undetectable.
I said, “Listen to me and listen really well, Jeanie. I’ll move forward when the man who took my Lucas from me is dead. Dead and rotting.”
When I said my Lucas Jeanie’s head reacted like I had struck her and I grabbed a bottle of scotch, stormed off to the guest bedroom, and silently called her every name that I could think of.
It’s not a home anymore, you know?
No shit.
*
“What am I going to do?”
The blood had stopped flowing from James Herndon’s cheek and the ice Rolly had added to the bar-rag had tempered the pain in my forehead down to a dull train wreck. Several rounds of painkiller had helped, too. I listened to Herndon’s question and gave the only answer I was capable of giving.
I said, “I don’t know. You just have to hang in there.” Empty. Meaningless. Ben Cain – you ought to know better.
“Hey man,” His eyes welled up again. “I can’t afford no private investigator. I don’t think anybody in this town does that kind of work anyway – and if they did, I don’t think they’d work for me.” His eyes sadly studied his drink.
Jeanie and I had at first contemplated finding a private detective but those were the days when we believed in the police and Perez’s words of assurance that “everything that can be done, is being done.”
I said, “There’s not a lot that a private guy could add, I think. You just have to be the ‘squeaky wheel’ – keep making enough noise to the cops so that they’ll keep working on it.” Again, meaningless platitudes because I have been hounding Perez and his detectives for a year and all my efforts seem to have driven the cops into a permanent state of ennui.
“The candies – the candy wrapper. Have the cops told you if they found your son’s fingerprints on it?” In my mind’s eye I could see the cop pull the Keeley’s wrapper from its place in the park grass.
“No, but they’ve fingerprinted my wife, me, and practically everybody in the neighborhood. I can’t tell you how that went over! My neighbors go out of their way to avoid me if I even so much as take out the trash – you know?”
James Herndon was preaching to the choir on that one. I lamely said, “Yes, I know.”
Herndon caught me eyeing the door. He said, “Don’t worry about those three. They won’t be coming back. Bobby’ll probably sit real close to me next Sunday in church and pretend the whole thing was somebody else.” He shook his head, “Prick.”
We sat for a long time, listening to the distorted jukebox playing Willie in the corner; watching Rolly make lazy circles with a rag on the bar countertop. When there was nothing more to say, Herndon stood up and said, “I might as well go…” He looked around. “I might as well… get out of here. Do you want a lift?”
I felt Herndon’s assessment of Bobby Dee and his companions was probably correct.
“Nah. I’m walking distance and the jaunt will probably clear my head. Listen…” I pulled my card from my pocket. “…I want to give you my Austin number. If something important comes up, or you just want to talk, give me a call.” I handed it to him.
I knew it looked as foreign to him as a communiqué from Mars:
Benjamin E. Cain PhD.
Psychology Department
Austin Community College Resources
Office: 512-555-2300
He turned it over.
I said, “That’s my home phone and cell. I meant what I said: if you need to talk, for any reason, just call.”
He rubbed the card between thumb and finger. “ Psychology. That means you should understand the kind of man that took my little Joshie, right?” His voice took a hard edge and he achingly said, “So tell me ‘Professor’…” His eyes captured mine. “What kind of a man does something like that? How does someone like that think?”
He was right – I should know how the man thinks. I was ashamed. Ashamed to admit, “I don’t know.” My head began pounding again. “But I’m going figure it out.”
Suddenly sickened by our conversation, I left before Herndon. I was sick of Smithville, sick of Detective Craig, sick of standing in a dingy old bar with another lost father who will go to sleep tonight not knowing if the next day brings renewal or oblivion.
*
The manager at the Crenshaw Apartments didn’t even try to disguise his relief as I checked out the next morning. As he took a final credit card imprint, his words held more than a casual interest when he asked, “Headed back to Austin, then?”
I assured him I was and drove the 500 feet it takes to get to the Quik-Stop for a cup of coffee for the road. The lot was empty. It was early but the sun was already making its imprint on the day – the “missing” poster for Josh Herndon was already taking on a washed-out appearance and a hazy heat was rising up off the dust and gravel in Jolene’s parking lot. As I came through the door Jolene was firing up a fresh cigarette and tapping her scarlet nails on the counter to some vague disco/pop song issuing from a small radio she had playing in the background. Before entering I had pulled my usual mop of brown hair over my forehead to hopefully cover the small abraded knot there, the bump courtesy of Herndon’s brother-in-law’s friend Sasquatch.
Hearing the door’s bells jingle, she looked up and said, “Moving on, huh?”
Either she was psychic or I was right: everyone in this small town is watching everyone else.
I said, remembering my poor choice of a cover story: “Yeah… looks like I’m going to have to postpone my fishing. My mother-in-law
has taken a turn-for-the-worse and I guess I’m going to have to fly up there and see her.”
“Seattle, right? I hope your wife’s mom will be alright – I mean, it’s not critical, is it?”
I thought of Ma and Pa Kettle up in Seattle. It would take the Ebola virus and nuclear explosions to bring about their demise. They’re going to freakin’ out-live Cher. I said, “We don’t think so but my wife will feel better with a little support. I’ll probably just be in the way, though.” I shrugged sheepishly.
“You men! Where would you men be without us women?” Jolene blew out a perfect smoke-ring as if that one act verified everything she had just said. I busied myself with the coffee and selected at random a bag of sunflower seeds to while away the short trip back to Austin. Coffee and sunflower seeds: breakfast of champions.
Placing the items on the counter I waved away some of Jolene’s smoke and said, “That stuff will kill you, you know.” I withdrew my wallet.
Jolene snorted and nodded her head at the windowed door. “With all the trouble out there you think I’m worried about a little smoke?” To show me she was serious she took a huge lung buster. “This is the least of my worries, Bubba.”
“I suppose. I haven’t made the trip up here before – usually go fishing in Lake Buchanan. Think there’ll be much traffic between here and Austin?”
“This time of day? Not hardly. Back before the interstate, when the corridor was just ‘29’ and the only way to go, it used to be pretty hairy but now…” She exhaled her smoke loudly, “…we get half the traffic as before.”
Jolene handed me back my change and said, “Safe trip and all, watch your temp gauge… it’s going to be a hot one.”
Candy from a Stranger Page 5