Angel at Troublesome Creek

by Ballard, Mignon F.

  I told him about Sam. “Miss P—Mrs. Butler doesn’t remember him,” I said. “And I don’t even know his last name. Do you have any idea what happened to him? He would have been about ten or eleven when he left there eighteen years ago.”

  “Goodness, that’s been a while. Sam. Sounds familiar, but I can’t place him, and of course you know our records were destroyed.”

  “He had brown hair that wouldn’t stay down if you glued it … and freckles, I think. I’m almost sure about the freckles. His eyes were sort of a greenish gray … and he liked turtles.”

  Mr. Mac laughed. “That description would fit several of our boys, but I think I know which one you mean. I just can’t come up with a name. Sam was a nickname, I believe. Do you remember him being called by anything other than that?”

  “Just Sam,” I said.

  “And you say he was several years older than you?”

  “Three,” I said. “He was in the fifth grade when he left.”

  “Well, there you are,” the reverend said. “The elementary school over in Hughes would have those records. In fact, I believe Geraldine Thompson’s still on the faculty there. She’s taught fifth grade about as long as I can remember. I’ll give her a call if you’d like, see if she has time to see you.”

  “That would be great,” I said. Now, why didn’t I think of that?

  I stood guard by the pay phone pretending to look up a number until the minister called back. Mrs. Thompson would be glad to speak with me, he said. She was just finishing with her early session of summer school, and if I could get there by three, I’d find her still there. “You do remember where the school is?” Mr. Mac asked.

  That was one thing I wasn’t likely to forget, I assured him.

  “It’s a shame that camp thing didn’t work out,” he said. “They lost their funding from the church, and I’m afraid they’ll have to close.”

  “What happened?”

  “Several people wanted to run Summerwood as a year-round camp for disadvantaged children. They depended on private funding, but just couldn’t seem to get the support they needed. Right now I think they have a skeleton summer staff with less than twenty campers. Wish it could’ve worked out for them.”

  “That must have been some of the campers we saw in the garden back at Summerwood,” I said to Augusta as we drove back the way we had come.

  She mumbled happily and started on another wedge of pizza—a first for her. I’d introduced her to tacos the week before. “Rooshrwreenabnfahlud,” she said, glancing in the mirror beside her.

  “What?”

  “I said, are you sure we’re not being followed? That old gray car’s not still behind us, is it?” Augusta patted her dainty mouth with a paper napkin.

  I looked over my shoulder but didn’t see anything there. In my excitement at meeting Sam’s teacher I’d completely forgotten about the car that had trailed us earlier. Anyway, it was probably just a coincidence.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mrs. Thompson’s hair was the same color it had been twenty years ago—Mercurochrome orange. And her classroom was still the second door on the left down the long, tiled hall. In spite of a bright new coat of yellow paint, the school smelled as it always did of chalk, musty raincoats, and the stuff they use to mop the floor, but the old place had shrunk. Still, I experienced a smattering of eight-year-old jitters in my twenty-six-year-old stomach as I waited to be recognized. The children condemned to summer school had gone home for the day, and Hughes Elementary, home of the Battling Baby Bruins, echoed every little sound.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. It’s Mary George, isn’t it? Mr. Mac called about you.” Geraldine Thompson smiled at me as she gathered a sheaf of lined papers and anchored them with a brightly painted rock. “Please sit down, and excuse the dust. If I saved what they brought in on their shoes from the playground, I could sell real estate.”

  I laughed. This was the same teacher who caught me running in the hall and made me walk the length of it six times. But now we were equals. Sort of.

  “Tell me about yourself. Don’t sit there—sun’s in my face. I want to be able to see you. Mr. Mac says you were a Summerwood child. When were you in school here?”

  I cleared my throat. “I only went to Hughes for three years—kindergarten through second grade. Mrs. Thompson, I came to ask you about—”

  “And who was your teacher then?”

  “In the second grade? Miss Lewis. Her name was Miss Lewis.” I loved my second grade teacher. She was young and pretty and let us make papier-mâché puppets.

  “Ah, yes.” Mrs. Thompson removed her glasses. “She married soon after that, I think. Moved away.” She squinted at the glasses and then at me. “And after that?”

  “Well, I would’ve had Mrs. Goldman, but I went to live in Troublesome Creek with—”

  Geraldine Thompson jammed on her glasses and nodded. She’d heard enough about me. “Mr. Mac tells me you’re looking for a friend of yours, someone you knew back at Summerwood.”

  I smiled. It occurred to me I was being tested. This teacher wasn’t about to give information on one of her students to just any old riffraff off the street. Behind her, neatly written essays stapled to bright construction paper lined the bulletin board; laminated pictures of every American president marched along the wall. Mrs. Thompson meant business. Or, to use an expression of my aunt’s, “She seen her duty and she done it!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “His name was Sam, and he would’ve been in your class when he left. It happened all of a sudden: one day he was here, and then he wasn’t.”

  I remembered Sam telling me good-bye. He wasn’t in his usual place at supper, and I wondered if he was sick. We had spaghetti that night and I was trying to see how big a wad I could twist around my fork when he slid into his chair beside me.

  “Stop playing with your food and listen,” he said. “And promise you won’t cry. My dad’s come for me and I’ve gotta go, but I’ll write … . Listen, Mary George, I won’t forget you. Look, I’m gonna let you keep my good-luck rock—see, it looks just like a frog. You can have it, Mary G—aw, dam it, now, don’t cry!”

  And now, years later, to my surprise and disgust, I felt the tears begin. “But he never wrote,” I said. “I guess he forgot all about me.” Oh Lord, what a silly thing to do! This woman would think I was a complete fool.

  A box of tissues appeared under my nose and a worn old hand patted my arm. “He didn’t forget you,” Geraldine Thompson said.

  “How do you know?” Under her watchful eye, I blew my nose and took another tissue.

  “Because I happen to know your Sam, and if he didn’t get in touch, he must’ve had a good reason.” Her blue eyes sparkled with humor. Was this woman teasing me?

  “Do you know where Sam is? Will you help me find him?” I had to sit on my hands to keep from vaulting over the desk. “Are you sure it’s the same one?”

  She stood and adjusted a window blind, inspected a cactus plant on the shelf below. “In the first place, Sam’s only a nickname, a combination of initials. But then, I imagine you knew that.”

  “Not until Mr. Mac mentioned it. We always just called him Sam.” Was I going to be denied because I didn’t have the correct information? I had an awful feeling I’d failed the exam. “We were sort of like a family then; I guess last names weren’t important.” Oh, please tell me where he is! I would beg if I had to.

  “If you’d come by this morning, you’d have found him right down the road. Sam volunteers his time several mornings a week at Camp Summerwood.” She looked at the clock. “I expect he’s left by now, but we can call if you like.”

  Now that I knew where I could find him, a spell of shyness came over me. What if Sam didn’t want to see me? What if he’d changed? I took a couple of steps backward. “That’s all right … don’t want to trouble you. I’ll try to get in touch tomorrow if you’ll just give me a number where I can reach him.”

  But Mrs. Thompson wasn’t
letting me off the hook that easily. With a hand at my elbow, she propelled me out the door and down the hall. “Nonsense. No trouble at all! We can use the phone in the office. Maybe we’ll catch him if we hurry!”

  And hurry we did, but Sam, we were told, had left for the day. His former teacher seemed as disappointed as I was relieved. What was the matter with me?

  For future reference, Mrs. Thompson told me, Sam’s full name was Solomon Abel Maguire, and he left her class in March of his fifth grade year to live with his father who was in the military.

  “As I understand it, when the boy’s mother died, his father just wasn’t financially or emotionally prepared to assume full-time care,” the teacher said. “But as soon as he felt he could look after Sam, his dad came back for him.”

  She walked me to the door of the school where years before we’d lined up to wait for the bright yellow bus. The children from Summerwood always sat together.

  “I knew several days before Sam did that his father was coming for him, but I was told not to say anything.” Geraldine Thompson gave me a slip of paper with my old friend’s name and address. “As happy as I was for Sam, I hated to lose him. Such curiosity! And he was never, never bored.” She sighed. “You can’t say that about many.”

  “Where did he go? Did you hear from him after he left?”

  “Somewhere out West—California, I think. His dad had arranged for a housekeeper to help look after him. And no, I didn’t see or hear from Sam again until a couple of years ago. Came by here right after Summerwood burned. Of course I had no idea who he was at first.” Mrs. Thompson smiled. “He’s a teacher himself now. Junior high over near Salisbury. Biology.”

  “That figures,” I said, and told her about the turtle named Imogene, the lightning-bug stunt. “I wonder if that’s who we—I—saw in the garden at Summerwood this morning.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised. He’s over there a good bit, and I doubt if they pay him a cent.” She shook her head. “Good idea, that camp. I’ve helped out over there a few times myself, but it’s going to take more than the little trickle they’ve got coming in to keep it going. Too many Indians, and not enough chiefs—if you know what I mean.”

  Augusta sat on a bench in the shade of a sycamore with her face toward the road and didn’t look up as I approached.

  “I’ve found him!” I said, but not loud enough for Mrs. Thompson to hear. I’m sure she already thought I was peculiar. I turned to wave good-bye to her, but the teacher’s Raggedy Ann hair was already disappearing down the long hallway.

  Still Augusta didn’t budge.

  “What are you doing?” I said. “Didn’t you hear me? She told me where to find Sam.”

  I turned my back on her and walked to the car, leaving the driver’s door open as I started the engine to give the air conditioning a chance to do its thing. The next thing I knew she was sitting beside me. “Sorry.” Augusta said. “Guess I wasn’t listening. I was watching for our friend in the gray car with the funny name.”

  “What? Damn! Is he following us again?” I slammed and locked my car door. “When did you see him?”

  “Not since we lost him back at that little country store this morning, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.” Augusta did something with her hair, and in about two seconds, arranged it in sort of a pouf on top of her head. If she used any pins, I didn’t see them. “And it really isn’t necessary to use profanity, Mary George. There are other ways to express yourself.”

  I glared at her as we drove out of the parking lot and began the long drive home. It was the middle of June and at least ninety degrees, yet she looked as if she’d stepped out of one of those meadow-flower commercials for underarm deodorant. “Don’t you ever get hot?” I said. How dare she sit there all cool and collected without even a “dew drop,” as Aunt Caroline called it, on her forehead. “Why is it you never seem rumpled or sticky? Don’t you ever sweat?”

  Even her smile was refreshing. “I’m sorry if it annoys you, Mary George, but angels don’t wilt.”

  “I didn’t say ‘wilt.’” I shoved a clump of hair from my face with a moist palm.

  “Very well. We don’t sweat,” she said, and I felt her penetrating green-eyed gaze. “If you’d like, Mary George, when we get home, I believe I can do something with your hair.”

  “Just leave my hair out of it!” I took a curve a little faster than I should’ve and gritted my teeth when the tires squealed.

  “Reckless driving isn’t going to get you anywhere unless you’re in a hurry to join your parents,” my pious passenger reminded me. “If you’re upset about something, I do wish you’d tell me about it. I should think you’d be happy about finding your friend.” She glanced in the rearview mirror—to see, I guess, if we were being chased by the police. “You did say you knew where he was? Is that where you’re going in such a rush?”

  I didn’t answer. It wasn’t Augusta’s fault I was afraid of meeting Sam, and I knew she only meant to help. But it can really be a pain in the ass having somebody around who is always right.

  Augusta must’ve guessed my thoughts because suddenly she just wasn’t there.

  “Look, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings,” I said. “You can come on back if you want.” I waved my arm in the space where she’d been, and if anyone had seen me, they’d think I had lost my wits completely. Maybe they’d be right. “I know you’re here somewhere, Augusta Goodnight. You might as well make yourself known.”

  She didn’t reappear, but suddenly the radio came on, and when I heard the music, I had to laugh. The vocalist was singing “Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread.”

  I was still smiling when I turned into the rutted gravel drive to my apartment. My stomach reminded me it was after six o’clock. I hurried inside to let out the dog. Robbie, the little boy who lived behind us, had promised to take Hairy out at noon, but I knew the puppy would be scratching at the door after being cooped up.

  But Hairy Brown wasn’t there. I knew he wasn’t there before I opened the door because he usually whimpers as soon as he hears my key, then throws himself upon me as I step inside.

  “Hairy?” I stood in the living room and called his name, hoping he’d come bounding out of the kitchen or the bedroom with his usual ecstatic doggy face. Where else could he be? I made myself check the other rooms, dreading what I might find, but the puppy wasn’t there. The dog’s bowl was half filled with food and the sack of puppy chow sat on the kitchen counter where Robbie had left it.

  I clapped my hands, feeling a cast-iron weight plunge to the pit of my stomach. “Here, Hairy! Come on, boy!” But I knew I was wasting my time. Maybe Robbie had taken the dog home with him, or Hairy had gotten away from him. But the leash hung in its customary place by the kitchen door.

  I was on my way to telephone when I noticed the books on my coffee table weren’t exactly as I’d left them; the drawer to the end table sagged partially open. And there, behind my uncle’s ugly old leather chair, the little needlepoint footstool with the wobbly leg lay on its side. Someone had ripped off the backing and torn away the trim. Whoever had been here was looking for something, and I didn’t think they had found it.

  But they would be back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “But Hairy was there when I left!” Robbie said. “I let him out just like you told me, and we played fetch for a while, then I fed him.”

  The boy had been practicing shots at a basketball hoop above the family’s garage, and sweat trickled down his red face as he bounced the ball on the asphalt. “Hairy—he minds me real good. I wouldn’t let him get away.”

  “I know that, Robbie. You take good care of him. But think about it—did you remember to lock the door?” I tried not to sound accusing, but somebody had ransacked my apartment, and it didn’t look as if the lock had been forced.

  He shrugged. “Twisted that knob thing the way you showed me—tried it too. That door was locked sure as I’m standing here.” The ball bounced feebly, then rolle
d away into the grass. “I don’t know how he got out.”

  “I believe you, Robbie, but I had to ask. You understand, don’t you?” I paid him the three dollars we had agreed on, plus whatever change I had, and he stuffed it into his pocket. He didn’t answer me, didn’t look up.

  “If you see Hairy, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

  He nodded, still not meeting my eyes. I wasn’t forgiven yet. “Old Hairy, he’ll come if you call him I reckon. Always does,” Robbie said.

  But I had called until my throat hurt. I called some more.

  The police, when I phoned, weren’t unduly concerned about a missing pet.

  “Ma’am, are you sure you had the door shut good? Dogs can be right smart, you know. Why, I’ve heard of—”

  “Look, somebody searched my apartment,” I said. “They were looking for something.”

  “Anything missing?” Did I detect a smidgen of interest in his voice?

  “I told you—my dog—and who knows what else!”

  “Somebody will be right over. That address again?”

  I sat down to wait.

  It didn’t take long. The young policeman who showed up at my door looked familiar, so familiar I guess I must have stared.

  “Dennis Henderson,” I said finally.

  He gave me a puzzled look.

  “Miss Arnold’s social studies. Eighth grade.”

  “Oh … yeah … right.” I could tell he didn’t remember me.

  “Didn’t you sing in the choir for a while? Aunt Caroline used to brag on your tenor.”

  Now he smiled. “Right! She’s the one got me to liking music. In fact, I’m taking voice training now. Sure hated to hear about her accident. Your aunt was some nice lady!” He stood in the living room looking about as if he expected a guided tour.