Mattie stood at the back-door screen. “Come on in, Sheriff,” she said.
“Mrs. Rigsbee, this car has been reported as stolen. Is Wesley Benfield here?”
“Yes, but I wadn’t expecting him. Come on in. Maybe you’d like a little bite to eat.”
“A stolen car?” said Alora. “Mattie?”
“We been on this wild goose chase all morning,” said the sheriff, stepping inside, “as you know.”
“He went back there,” said Robert to the sheriff. “He’s got on my shirt and tie.”
“You never met him before?” Laurie asked Robert.
“He might have left out the front. I don’t know,” said Mattie.
“No, I never met him,” said Robert.
“We got the front covered,” said the sheriff. “And the back and both sides.”
“What did he do?” Laurie asked the sheriff.
“Auto theft,” said the sheriff. “Escape from the RC. That’s the most recent thing anyway. He’s not armed as anyone knows, is he?”
“Oh no,” said Mattie, who was moving toward the food on the counter and taking up a serving dish, “he ain’t armed. You-all sit down. I’ll get him. Have you had dinner, Sheriff?”
“No ma’am, but—”
“Get you a plate up there. Robert, get him a plate. You got time to eat a bite. Wesley needs to eat a bite before he goes with y’all. I’ll get him. I got a bowl of beef stew I can warm up in no time at all.”
Mattie walked to the front door and opened it. “Wesley didn’t come out here, did he?” she asked the deputy.
“No ma’am. Ain’t he in there?”
“I think he might be in the bathroom. Don’t you want a bite to eat? You must be hungry; it’s almost one o’clock.”
“I’m supposed to stay out here.”
Mattie walked down the hall to check the bathroom. The door was open. He wasn’t in there. She opened the door to the bedroom. There he was, in bed, covered up, face down, the pillow over his head. He was crying. Mattie closed the door behind her, sat down on the other single bed. “Son, come on and finish your dinner. It’ll be all right.”
Wesley said into the bed: “I’m not going back to the goddamned RC.”
“Son, I’ve asked you not to cuss in this house.”
Wesley removed the pillow, rolled over on his back. His face was splotched red and white. “I just wanted something to eat.”
“You come on. You can get something to eat.”
Mattie looked out the window. A highway patrol car was pulling up.
Wesley raised up on his elbow and looked out the window.
The sheriff knocked on the bedroom door. “Mrs. Rigsbee? Is the suspect in there?”
“Yes. He’ll be out in a minute.”
The door opened. Robert stood behind the sheriff.
“He’s right here,” said Mattie. “Now, if you-all will wait a minute we’ll be right out to finish eating. Then you can go.”
“Mrs. Rigsbee, I need to arrest this man.”
“Well, just tell him he’s arrested.”
“You’re under arrest.” The sheriff took a step forward, and hitched up his belt.
“Now, go back to the kitchen and get some food on your plate. We’ll be right out. He’s just a boy.”
“Boy, my foot, Mama,” said Robert.
“Robert, go sit down at the table and start eating.”
“I’m sick,” said Wesley to the sheriff. “I got heart trouble and if you move me from here I can sue you for malpractice.”
“Malpractice?” said the sheriff to himself, squinting his eyes and showing his teeth slightly. “Malpractice? Son, I ought to put you in jail for being silly. Get dressed and let’s go.”
“We’ll be right out,” said Mattie. “You’ve got my word.”
“Don’t you try anything,” said the sheriff to Wesley. He and Robert went back to the kitchen.
“They got me,” said Wesley.
“Yes, they do. Get up now and put your clothes on.”
Wesley uncovered himself, swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He looked over his shoulder out the window and saw the sheriff’s car and the highway patrol car. He slowly toppled onto his side on the bed.
“You got to go, son,” said Mattie.
“Are you my grandma? Lamar said you won’t.”
“I don’t know.” Mattie searched for a way, an excuse, a reason to say yes. This boy was in need and, well, he deserved a grandma, everybody did, and she might as well be it. It had been an unusual day. “Maybe I am.”
“I thought so.” He sat up. “Well, could I come live here? If I had a place to live they might let me out. They were going to one time.”
“Son, I’m slowing down. I can’t just up and keep somebody here.”
Wesley fell back onto his side.
“Mattie?” Alora stuck her head in the door. “They sent me back here to get y’all.”
“Alora, get back in the kitchen; we’ll be right out.”
“Well,” said Wesley, lying on the bed, his feet hanging over the side. “I’m going to kill myself then.”
Alora heard, rushed back up the hall to the kitchen. “He’s fixing to commit sideways!” she said.
“What?” said the sheriff.
“Commit sideways—kill hisself.”
“You mean suicide?” said Laurie.
“Right. Whatever.”
“He’s armed?” asked the sheriff.
“Good gracious,” said Finner. “I’ll go get my gun.”
“No.” The sheriff held out his hand, as if stopping traffic. “Don’t go get your gun. I knew I should have got him,” said the sheriff. He started down the hall to the bedroom. He met Mattie. “Where is he?”
“He’s fixing to take a bath.”
“Oh, no. We got to get him out of here.” The sheriff heard water running in the tub. He stepped to the closed bathroom door, opened it, and faced the back of a naked boy.
Wesley was pouring shampoo into the water.
“Let’s go, son.” He don’t look like he’s about to kill hisself, thought the sheriff—all them suds.
“I just want to take a bath.” Wesley looked over his shoulder. “I should be allowed one bath. Look, look at them suds. Just one bath, man. One little bath. I’ll be five minutes.”
“No way; let’s go. I’m gonna wait for you to eat. That’s all I can do for you. You better be happy for that.”
“Look at them suds.”
“I know. Let’s go now. Don’t make me handcuff you.”
“Shit.” Wesley turned off the water, stepped into his pajama bottoms, walked past the sheriff, standing in the bathroom door, and into the bedroom. He dressed in his jeans, loafers, and Robert’s shirt and tie. This was it. It was all over. They had him.
The sheriff watched Wesley dress, then followed him to the kitchen.
Mattie was getting the potatoes from the stove. Robert, Laurie, and Wesley sat at the dinner table. The sheriff called the choir deputy, Larry Hollins, inside and told the other deputy and the highway patrolman they could leave. Larry positioned himself in the kitchen near the back porch door. As he passed the dinner table, he looked at Wesley twice. There was something familiar . . . Wesley’s back was to him as he stood by the back porch door.
The sheriff stood in the den, where Alora and Finner sat.
“You sure you-all don’t want something to eat?” asked Mattie, setting the pot of creamed potatoes on the table.
“No thanks,” said the sheriff. “We just got a cheeseburger at Hardee’s.”
“The chicken filet at Hardee’s is good,” said Alora. “More meat.”
“Now, let’s see,” said Laurie to Mattie, “where did you and Wesley meet?” I wonder if I can get all this straight, she thought.
“At the RC.”
“My Sunday school class visited out there one time,” said Laurie. “It’s an interesting place, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, it i
s,” said Mattie, standing at the stove. “Let’s say the blessing so we can eat.”
“I said it once,” said Robert.
“Well, I’m going to say it again. Lord bless this food to the nourishment. . .”
Wesley looked around over his shoulder. The choir deputy was staring at him.
“. . . we pray in Thy blessed name. Amen.”
Robert, Laurie, and Wesley started passing food. Peas and corn, creamed potatoes, pork chops, a pickle plate, string beans, sliced tomatoes, biscuits. Robert would not hand food directly to Wesley but instead set it on the table for Wesley to pick up. On the stove was beef stew, turnip salet, potato salad, and cornbread. “Let me have your plates,” said Mattie. “I’ll get you a little of this over here on the stove.”
In the den, Finner stood up, bent over and turned on the television. “Let’s see if the ball game is on.”
“Who’s playing?” asked the sheriff.
“Braves.”
“Did you see that game last week?”
“Yeah. Good one, won’t it?”
“Sure was.”
With a pot holder, Mattie picked up the frying pan holding the cornbread and held it in front of Larry, the deputy, still standing by the back door. “Don’t you at least want a piece of this cornbread?”
“Well, I reckon I can take a little piece.”
“It sure is good,” said Laurie.
The sheriff is watching television, thought Wesley. If she’d hit the deputy in the head with that frying pan, then I could. . . No, she wouldn’t do it. It’s over. I’m back in. But she didn’t tell the deputy or anybody in church. She seen me in the choir. She was on my side. Pulling for me through the whole thing. She’s got to be my grandma. If I could get some kind of letter of proof or something, I could live here. Then I could even maybe do something to get some of them medals. Get in some clubs; go back to high school. Hell, I could even go back to high school—if I could live here and do it.
“Don’t you want a little bite to eat?” Mattie asked Larry. “There’s plenty of room for you to sit down.”
“I reckon I could eat a little bit,” said Larry. “All right if I eat a bite, Sheriff?” he asked.
The sheriff, sitting on the edge of a footstool watching the game, looked up. “What?”
“Okay if I sit down for a bite to eat.”
“Yeah. Watch the prisoner. You had a cheeseburger.”
“I know it, but it just was a little one.”
Larry sat down beside Wesley and stared at him. “Won’t you in the choir this morning? Was that . . . ?”
“Was that you up there?” Mattie asked Larry. “Came in late? It was too far for me to see. Here, have a pork chop.”
“Yeah, I was up there. We were planning to apprehend the suspect there in the church. But he was already. . .” Larry looked at Wesley again. “I swear the guy went in right before me looked exactly like you.”
“Could I have another piece of cornbread?” Wesley asked Mattie.
Mattie stood to get the cornbread.
“He can get it,” said Robert.
“I can get it.”
“So you two know each other,” said Laurie, looking first at Larry, then at Wesley. This is just so unusual, she thought.
“No, we don’t,” said Larry. “I just—”
“To tell the truth,” said Wesley. “That was me. That was really me. I can just about be anywhere I want to at anytime I want to. I’m just that way.” He took a bite of cornbread. “I like the dangerous life. I court excitement.”
“Well, I declare,” said Mattie. “I saw two men come in late, but I couldn’t make out who they were. I told the sheriff you were gone.”
“Did you sing anything?” Laurie asked Larry.
“Naw. I got signaled from the sheriff to meet him at the car.”
“Then I left,” said Wesley, “after he left. You didn’t know that first song either, did you?”
“I don’t remember.” Larry looked at the sheriff watching the ball game in the dining room, then said in a low voice, “Would y’all do me a favor and don’t mention to the sheriff about us both being up there in the choir at the same time? I can’t believe that.”
“Don’t worry about it, man,” said Wesley. “It’s part of my nature to outfox the law.”
“You must have had an interesting life,” said Laurie to Wesley.
“Yeah. I have.”
“What’s it like at the RC?”
“Pretty weird.” Wesley remembered the dining room at the RC. Plain green plastered walls. Plastic dishes, bland foods. He’d be there tonight with Ted, Mex, Terry, Blake. He’d tell them he’d been in Las Vegas; he’d caught a plane, won fifty, no, eighty thousand dollars and then lost it all, but not before buying a Trans Am and cruising the town with two women who’d followed him around until he’d asked them what they wanted and they’d told him they wanted him, that they’d seen him in the movies they thought; they went to a motel and he made it with both of them; then the law got after him and there was a nine-hour chase across Nevada until they finally caught him after a car crash and a long foot chase—finally put a German shepherd on him and he’d had to take his jacket off and wrap it around his arm and stick it in the dog’s mouth.
Robert was thinking about the symptoms. What condition was his mother entering? Was it a phase of some sort? Was she having some of those tiny strokes they talk about? Or Alzheimer’s? What would they say about all this at the church? Wesley was singing in the choir for some reason? And his mother watching him? And the sheriff? It sounded like her reputation could be in some danger. Maybe she needed a long rest. She was slowing down. She was right about that. But she wouldn’t let you do anything. And how did she manage to get to know this young . . . young . . . thief. Of all people. He was one—or just like one—of those guys who traveled around in a pickup truck asking old people if they’d like their roof fixed for three hundred dollars, in advance. That’s the type he was, all right. And his own mother had bought it all—which supported the small-stroke theory because it was not like her to be taken in by anything—or to take in anything: not a dog, not a cat, much less a character like this. “Could I have my tie back, please?” Robert asked Wesley.
“What?” Wesley’s fork-stuck cucumber slice stopped halfway to his mouth.
“My tie. Could I have it back now?”
Mattie spoke: “He might need it at the RC, son.”
“He might need it? It’s my tie. I might need it.”
“Do you have a tie at the RC?” Mattie asked Wesley.
“Nope.”
“You might need it for a church service. Don’t they have church services?”
“Something like that,” said Wesley chewing.
“Well, you could wear it then.”
“But it’s my tie,” said Robert.
“You’ve got at least twenty ties, Robert.”
“Why don’t you just adopt him?”
“Robert!”
“He’s wearing my clothes! I could press charges. There’s the sheriff right there.”
“Son, he’s never had what you’ve had.” Mattie stood to organize the desserts.
“No, no, he hasn’t, but he’s slowly getting it.”
“You won’t miss those clothes, Robert.”
“I already miss them.”
“I’ll buy you a new shirt and tie.” Mattie looked up from the desserts. “I got apple pie, ice cream, and pound cake for dessert. Who wants what?”
“I’ll take a little of all three,” said Wesley, eyeing the hot apple pie.
Robert asked for pound cake. Well, he thought, the little jerk would be put away in an hour or two, and sometime during the next day or two he could have a heart-to-heart talk with his mother. It had been a long time since they’d had one, anyway. She would always talk heart-to-heart to him, about some Sunday school lesson, Billy Graham, or something in the Bible. But this time he’d ask her if she’d been feeling funny. He’d better
call Elaine and tell her what all was going on. She might be able to do something. If there were some agency that could help out, Elaine’d know about it. If worse came to worst he could move in with his mother—sell the condo. And maybe she’d slow down so much that their conversations could even out a bit—she’d slow down enough to listen for a while.
Mattie asked Finner, Alora, and the sheriff if they wanted some dessert. They all said yes, came to get it, and took it back to the den. Alora almost sat down at the dinner table, but she was worried that the prisoner might take her hostage. You don’t have to be young to get raped these days, she reminded herself. You’d think after you got a little husky, and older, they wouldn’t rape you, but they would. Didn’t a day pass but you read about it in the newspaper: some woman, raped. She picked up her purse off the floor and put it in her lap. Anything could happen right here. That boy might jump that deputy, steal his gun, and there might be a gun-fight. Somebody could be shot dead, and if a gunfight did start she would pull out her new .22. Nobody knew she had it. She’d shoot that boy right in the head. He’d be aiming at the sheriff. They’d put her picture in the paper. If she didn’t shoot him, he’d probably rape her. He might take her hostage and drive her all over the United States and do no telling what to her. And even if she got to see the Grand Canyon it wouldn’t be worth it. It would be humiliating. She would just die. And even if he did take her hostage he would never suspect that she had a gun in her purse and as soon as he wasn’t looking she could pull it out and shoot him. They’d put her picture in the paper and she’d let them go ahead and do one of those tests to show that she had not been raped so that they could print that information along with her picture, to dispel rumors. Sometimes you could never be quite sure about some of those younger women that got raped. You always wondered a tiny little bit.
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