He’d had a bad night—tossing and turning, the bed hard beneath him, Boss getting up and down, up and down, whining about some kind of disturbance outside. Wyatt had finally risen, crept to the living room, and parted the curtains of the picture window. He hadn’t been able to make sense of what he was seeing: a pack of men, perhaps half a dozen, walking along the street and shining flashlights at the homes on both sides of the road. As he watched, the men with the flashlights passed, and the street grew calm once more. He had returned to his bed and drawn the covers over his head, like a child afraid of monsters. At some point he slipped into a half sleep, a kind of anguished limbo in which the men with the flashlights kept coming back, he kept watching them approach, and then his conscious mind interceded just enough to remind him that they’d passed his door.
He spent most of the next morning trying to work up the courage to call Sarah and ask her why she had not come over as she’d promised. Her silence told him everything he needed to know—and yet, he wanted to hear her voice again. He thought that if he could speak to her, if he could tell her how much he needed her, she would at least let him explain his side of things. There was a story he had started to tell himself, a story that he was starting to believe. In it, the woman at Nancy’s, the one who’d helped pay his tab and given him the ride back to Roma, had admitted to him how unhappy she was. She hated her job, the sameness of it, the thanklessness. She hated her rental house. She hated the boyfriend she’d gotten into an argument with. I’ve had a rough night, she had said. Hell, I’ve had a rough life. In this story, she dropped him off at home, thanked him for the company, and told him that she’d finally had it—that she’d fantasized more than once about just getting on the road and driving and driving, leaving and never returning. He hadn’t believed her at the time. It was just one of those things people said to each other in the dead of night, when they’d been drinking and confiding in one another. But, looking back, there was something in her eyes. Determination. Recklessness. A part of his mind snagged on the fact of her car, but in the story, the story that he was telling himself, he navigated around the inconsistency the way the mind moves through inconsistencies in a dream, always improvising, accommodating, until enough of them pile up that the sleeper is forced to awaken. In the story, she drove off perched on her seat cushion, hand making little waves on the air rushing through her window, and she found happiness somewhere that wasn’t here. The story was for him as much as it was for Sarah, or the police. He needed it to be true. He couldn’t be the man he thought he was if it wasn’t.
At last he pulled the telephone book out of a drawer on the phone table, flipped to the number for the hospital, and dialed. He still rented a rotary phone from South Central Bell, had never seen the point in replacing it, and so each number took time; he had the length of those zeros and eights to listen to the tick of the dial as it rotated back into place, to wonder if he was doing the right thing. At last the other line started to ring, and an efficient female voice greeted him: “Roma Memorial, how may I direct your call?”
“The nurses’ station, please,” he said. His throat was so dry it came out as a whisper, and so he coughed and repeated himself, then added, “I need to talk to Sarah Baldwin.”
“Please hold.”
An automated voice picked up midsentence: “—choosing Roma Memorial, a proud member of the Tri-Health family of hospitals. At Roma Memorial, we understand that patient care means—”
Her voice cut in so abruptly that he nearly dropped the phone. “Sarah speaking.”
He opened his mouth but couldn’t produce a sound. His face crumpled, and he knuckled tears away as silently as he could.
“Hello?”
Those few words—Sarah speaking. Hello?—how they made him ache. He could hear in them her strength and smarts, her kindness and sensibility. Her head was on his chest, and he could feel the movement of her jaw as she spoke. Her head was on his shoulder, breath hitting his neck as they danced. He wanted her—but he wanted to do the right thing, too. Was it right to love her, to demand love from her in return? Had it been right to let things progress this far?
“Wyatt?” The quiver in her voice was unmistakable.
“Yes,” he said, the word coming from the back of his throat, choked by the swell in his sinuses.
“I can’t do this.” She was speaking lowly but with intensity, and he guessed that there was someone else in the room with her. “I’m so sorry. I want nothing but the best for you. But if you care about me at all, you’ll leave me be. I can’t get dragged into this. I’m sorry.”
“Sarah—” he started. If only she’d let him explain, but his mouth was stupid and numb, and he couldn’t figure out where to begin. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.
There was a click. After a moment, the dial tone sounded.
He had barely placed the receiver back in its cradle when the phone rang in his hand, and his chest swelled up painfully with hope. He snatched it back to his ear. “Yes, hello?”
“May I speak to Wyatt Powell, please?” The voice was smoothly southern, male.
He said, out of reflex, “This is Wyatt.”
“Wyatt, my name is Johnny Burke,” the man said. The name registered with Wyatt as vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “I hope you’ll forgive this intrusion on your time. I understand you’re not in your best health right at the moment.”
“If you’re selling something, I’m not interested,” Wyatt said.
Johnny Burke laughed. “No, I’m not selling anything. Please don’t hang up. I have a very serious matter to discuss with you.”
Wyatt wasn’t sure why he kept listening. There was something slick and false about the way the man talked, and it reminded Wyatt of every car salesman he’d ever haggled with. But the name tickled him like an itch that needed scratching, so he hesitated. “What is it?”
“I’m a lawyer in town, Wyatt. I have an office on the square—you’ve probably seen it?”
“By the bank?” He thought he remembered now: the old two-story storefront with the hanging wooden sign that creaked when a strong breeze hit it.
“That’s right, Wyatt. That’s it, indeed. Now, I’m going to say what follows as delicately as I can, and I want you to remember when I say it that I’m on your side. Can you do that, Wyatt?”
He was too confused to even brace himself. “What? What is it?”
“First, I’m going to tell you the most serious thing. I tell you this so you’ll pay attention when I say the rest of it.”
Wyatt was going to punch a hole in the wall if this guy didn’t make his point. “What?”
“I have it on excellent authority that the police found a body out in the woods off Hill Street. Well, let me rephrase that. I’m being a bit too delicate. I have it on excellent authority that the police found bits and pieces of a body out in the woods off Hill Street. These earthly remains were, in fact, divided among three different Hefty bags and left in a hole to rot. Does that sound about right?”
Wyatt flushed with heat. Nothing, he thought. It was all for nothing. Finally, he muttered, “I—I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Good!” Johnny Burke said. “That’s good. I hoped you didn’t.”
“I’m hanging up now,” Wyatt said, but he held on to the phone.
“I wish you wouldn’t. I started with the worst news, but I promised you something else. Will you listen to it?”
He sat very still, breathing raggedly into the phone.
“You there? It sounds like you’re there. So here I go, Wyatt. Here’s my spiel. I hope if you find yourself in need of the services of an attorney sometime in the future, you’ll consider me for the job. I’m very good at what I do. I think you’ll find that I’m just the man you want on your side in a difficult time.”
“I don’t have any money for a lawyer,” Wyatt said.
“Don’t you worry about that. Each according to his ability and needs, that’s my motto. If you believe in the justice
system, you believe that a man’s entitled to a good defense, and that’s what I’m offering you, Mr. Powell. If there are particulars to work out, we’ll work them out later.”
Wyatt looked at Boss stretched out on the floor across the room and remembered how it had been not so long ago, him on the couch, Boss lying down beside him so that Wyatt could rest his hand on the dog’s warm side. It occurred to him for the first time that maybe the dog didn’t avoid him now for what it smelled on him or sensed about him, because he didn’t think that a dog knew that much about a person. Not really. Maybe Boss avoided him because Wyatt came home that night a different person than the one who’d left, and this new Wyatt had done a piss-poor job of taking care of him. Of treating him like he was loved.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wyatt said again.
“That’s OK,” Johnny Burke said. “That’s quite all right. Just holler if you need me. The number’s in the phone book.”
Wyatt put his finger on the hook switch, then replaced the handset before he could hear the dial tone sound.
He told himself the story again, the story of that night with the nice woman from Nancy’s. That woman, so filled up with sadness and anger, who had needed a friend that night as much as Wyatt had needed one. He told himself again about how she dropped him off and what she said: I’ve finally had it with Roma. I might just get on that road out of town and never come back. And how he hadn’t believed her, but he believed it now, and perhaps she was finally happy wherever she was, or getting to wherever she was going, perhaps she was—
—divided among three different Hefty bags and left in a hole to rot.
That was when he had risen and gone to the kitchen. He refilled the dog’s water dish to the brim, dumped out a big scoopful of Ol’ Roy. There was some sausage left in the refrigerator, gray but not yet stinking, and he unpeeled what was left of the tube into the cast-iron skillet, set the burner to high, and broke the meat up with a fork until it was cooked through and the grease was smoking. He added all of this to Boss’s kibble, and the dog, bribed, allowed Wyatt to stroke his back as he ate. He felt for a moment almost happy, almost like himself. His eyes watered with the tang of red pepper. Then he opened the back door and let Boss out to do his business. It had only been a couple of hours since the last time, so the dog wandered a bit, circled, urinated on a fallen branch. Finally he stood staring at Wyatt, as if waiting for another instruction.
“Are you coming back inside?” Wyatt asked. He was huddled in the doorway, arms crossed for warmth.
The dog backed down on his haunches and stretched his forepaws out.
“That’s all right, then,” he had said, retreating to the kitchen. He let the storm door slam, gazing lovingly through it at his dog: the drooping, mournful eyes, the rust-colored fur that had been, in Boss’s prime, brilliant as satin. “That’s OK. You can be wherever you want.”
2.
A horn sounded, signaling shift change. Wyatt shook himself alert, started his truck, and fixed his gaze on a red Dodge Ram pickup near the door. Its owner had parked it, as always, so that it took up two spaces instead of one.
He’d gotten cold with the engine off, and the cold had made him sleepy. He rubbed his hands briskly across his face and turned up the sound on the radio. The station was still set to AM WRKY, and it sounded like he’d caught the second half of Open Air with Spencer Downs, the part where people could call in to request or advertise an item for sale.
“I was hunting through my basement for some old pictures, and I came across a box of postcards of my father’s. These are real pretty postcards from the war. Real pretty colors. I would say you could call them antiques. They have stamps from England, Germany, and Italy. You could say they’re a real piece of history.”
“That’s a neat find, Mary Sue! What are you asking for them?”
“I’ll take five dollars for the box.”
The door opened, and the first shift started streaming out; There they all were: Morris and Jusef, Daniel Stone, Gene Lawson; Mitchell O’Leery, who came on just two years after Wyatt and had moved up long ago to shift manager; Becky Wilkinson, who was always sweet to him, and brought him peanut brittle in a tin each Christmas; Meg Stevens, who was not, and glowered at him every time he crossed the floor for a bathroom break, as though she were keeping notes on the minutes he spent away from his station. There was Enrique Ramirez, who let you call him Ricky and had taught him a few Spanish words. “Pendejo,” he would say, grinning, wagging his thumb at Mitchell as he passed, and Wyatt couldn’t help but like him for it, though he clung to suspiciousness about Mexicans more generally. And Franklin Hardin, seventy-five and still not retired; he claimed that he’d keep going until he dropped, that he’d wring every thin dime he could out of Price Electric. “You’ll be rolling me in and out of here in a wheelchair one of these days,” he had told Wyatt more than once.
Wyatt felt a little left out, watching them. The best time of day was leaving. Everyone’s mood improved; everyone was capable of kindness, or at least neutrality. Wyatt had never been asked to come home with Morris for supper or out to the VFW with Franklin, but he’d always been warmed by the thought of the people he knew in those places, gathered around tables with their children or clinking beer glasses with friends. Maybe it was sad, taking pleasure in imagining the happiness of others. But imagining it had been safer than seeking out happiness of his own.
At last Sam Austen emerged. He was always near the back of the pack because he never left Price in his work boots; he would go to the break room, change into cowboy boots, and then stop in the bathroom to fuss with his hair and reapply cologne. Everyone knew it, everyone snickered about it behind his back. No one ribbed him to his face. It amazed Wyatt that he had been—well, he might as well admit it to himself—scared of this boy. Intimidated by him. Worried about what Sam thought of him, worried what he might say in front of others. He remembered what Morris had told him on the day of his heart attack, after Sam and his gang had been teasing him by the vending machines: They’re not your friends. They’re not good people . . . You don’t want this guy and his buddies jumping you in the parking lot. Wyatt laughed out loud. What a chill he’d felt! Even after Ronnie, after what he’d learned he was capable of, he had quaked at the thought of Sam confronting him, threatening to use his fists. Now, Sam was sidling up to Sue Petty, who had a plump little body but an achingly pretty face; he dropped his arm flirtatiously around her neck, letting the hand drift down just a bit too far so that his fingertips were within grazing distance of her right breast. Wyatt could see from here her flush of cautious pleasure and Sam’s look of amused good cheer. This was the kind of girl, Wyatt thought, that Sam would flirt with for the sake of his own ego, talk into sleeping with him, and never once take out on a real date. She was too smart to fall for it, but she would—they all did. Sam was too charming, too suffused with life. He had a way of making his attention feel like a gift, and Wyatt knew that firsthand.
Sue twisted out of his embrace, beaming despite the no-nonsense set of her lips, and crossed her arms. Sam dropped his head to the right in an imitation of disappointment and wounded pride. He put his hands out, palms up: Aw, come on. You’re not busy, are you? It’ll be fun. I promise. That is what he’d said to Wyatt. Sue laughed and shook her head. He reached out and stroked her upper arm almost tenderly, and her chin drooped shyly, and then she was nodding. Wyatt’s sigh was more like a hiss.
“I’m looking for a photograph of slaves picking cotton, somewhere right here in Wilke County. I’ll know if you try to pass off somewhere else as here.”
“That’s awfully specific. What are you offering?”
“Depends on the picture, but upwards of ten dollars.”
They split at her car, a Nissan Sentra. Sam, grinning, shoved his hands into his pockets and strutted toward his truck. Wyatt’s heartbeat picked up a bit.
“Thanks for having me on, Spencer. I’m selling an ’87 Ford Tempo with only sixty-five th
ousand miles on it. Automatic transmission, windows, shoulder straps—it practically drives itself. And if you call right now, we’ll—”
“All right, all right. Mister, you know we don’t let dealerships on here. Sorry, listeners. This happens when you’re your own producer. Just a reminder, folks, if you’re a business owner, you can talk to the nice folks in WRMA’s advertising office, and they’ll fix you up at a reasonable price. OK, let’s try this again. You’re at the Swap Meet, caller, what are you swapping?”
Sam peeled out of his parking spot with a rev and a squeal, tooted his horn at Sue, who hadn’t even started her car yet, and pulled into the line of exiting vehicles. He passed behind Wyatt, and Wyatt watched him in the rearview mirror. He didn’t duck. He knew that Sam wouldn’t notice him. When the truck had passed, Wyatt backed smoothly out of his spot, pulling into the line before anyone else could intercept, and followed.
Chapter Thirty
1.
In fifth period, the bell signaling an address over the PA system sounded, and Wally Burton’s nasal tones of reassurance echoed in classrooms across Roma Middle:
“Faculty, staff, and students, I’m pleased to be able to tell you that Emily Houchens has been found. She has been admitted at Roma Memorial Hospital for the night for observation, but she’s expected to make a full recovery. I want to thank you all for your cooperation and sensitivity on this difficult day. We’ll be distributing ‘get well soon’ cards in each of the classes for you to sign, so that Emily knows we’re thinking of her. We will also follow through today and tomorrow with the new safety procedures, at least until we have more information from the police department.”
Susanna exhaled shakily. She did not realize how tightly clenched she had been all afternoon until she relaxed, and an almost pleasant soreness crept into her neck and back.
The Next Time You See Me Page 31