“There won’t be none.” Bill absently scratched his cheek, leaving a black smear of grease. “She’s done moved on to somebody else.”
“Who?”
“I ain’t tellin’. She may come back sniffing around again, and I don’t want to make her mad.”
“Even though what she has ain’t special?”
“It ain’t bad, neither.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Cody was already parked in front of Wade’s house and leaning against the El Camino when Ned pulled in behind. “What are we doing here?”
Ned jerked his head toward the house. “I didn’t tell you, because it didn’t make much difference until now, but Wade came by to talk to me and John…and O.C. the day they found Tommy Lee’s body. Wade said Karen Ann was running around on him, and Tommy Lee was one of them at one time or another’n.”
“I knew that. I see her at the Sportsman every now and then, or hear tell of her over at Pop’s club.”
“Joints. They’re joints, and why didn’t you tell me?”
“What difference does it make? There’s always folks he’n and she’n across the river. That’s the point of a honky-tonk to begin with, to sell beer and dancing.”
Ned reddened. “That’s why you need to get shut of that place.”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now out here in the sun. What I meant is Karen Ann’s been over there with more folks than you can shake a stick at. So we’re here because you figure Wade decided to kill Tommy Lee out of that whole crowd?”
“I won’t say he did, and I won’t say he didn’t, but he wouldn’t be the first man to kill a feller for fooling around with his wife.”
“I can see your point, but why Tommy Lee in particular?”
Ned started for the door. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
“Why am I here? Wade ain’t no dangerous man.”
“You need the practice.”
Wade must have been watching through the window, because the door opened as soon as they stepped up on the porch. He spoke softly. “Y’all come on in. Good to see you Cody, Mr. Ned.” He moved back to let them in. “What can I do for y’all?”
Both constables removed their hats when they stepped through the door. Ned glanced around the empty living room. The house was silent except for a clock ticking in the kitchen. “Karen Ann here?” He matched Wade’s soft voice.
Wade smiled. “Yessir, she’s in the bedroom.”
“Can you get her out here?” Cody asked.
“Why, she’s asleep, but I reckon I can wake her up.”
“Hang on a minute.” Ned held up his hand. “Let’s talk for a little bit, then we might let you go get her.”
Wade settled easily in a blue chair. “All righty. Y’all set.”
Ned placed his hat upside down on the coffee table and sat on the bedspread-covered couch. “Wade, you came by the courthouse to see me not too long ago.”
Wade continued to smile, but the corners slipped. “Yessir.”
The room was silent for a long moment. The ticking clock filled the emptiness.
Cody rested an elbow on his knee. “You had something to tell Ned that day?”
“Well, yeah, me and Karen Ann were having some troubles, but that’s all cleared up now.”
“How so?”
“Well, Mr. Ned, she stays home more than she did, and when she leaves, she usually goes over to her mama’s house, or spends the night with first one girlfriend and then another, you know, to talk girl talk, I suppose.”
It was all Ned could do not to shake his head. “She still spends a lot of time away from home like that?”
“Oh, it ain’t what you think. She’s not gone on the weekends anymore. We made up. She only goes when I have to work the third shift, ’cause she don’t like being home alone. See, we don’t have a television set, yet, so she gets kinda lonesome with nothin’ but the radio to keep her company.”
Ned and Cody exchanged looks.
“How often do you work third shift?”
“Oh, couple nights a week, I reckon, more if they want me to. See that’s why I do it, I work second, and when they offer third, why, I take it ’cause we’re saving for a color Zenith.”
Cody glanced around the living room and saw only a waist-high wooden Philco radio. He jerked a thumb toward the street. “You only have the one car?”
Wade smiled. “Right now. We’re saving up for that, too.”
“How does Karen Ann get around when you’re at work?”
“She usually drops me off. That way she can have the car. And the good thing about that gal is that she’s always waitin’ in the parking lot when I get off, or if she ain’t there, she has someone take her home and leaves the car with the keys. I’m working second and third again tonight, so she’ll take me then.”
“When did she settle down?” Ned asked, softly. He felt so sorry for Wade that his eyes were stinging.
“It wasn’t but a day or so after I came and talked to you, Mr. Ned. I kinda figured you had something to do with it, that maybe you talked to her and made her understand.”
It was so pitiful that Cody couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “Wade, you ever hear of Tommy Lee Stark?”
“No, why?”
The constables traded glances once again, knowing Wade was telling the truth.
“Do you get the paper?”
“No. It costs.”
Ned wondered how anyone could be so innocent, so simple when it came to women and the facts of life.
“How about Bill Adkins?”
“Sure, Cody. If it weren’t for Mack’s Garage, I wouldn’t be able to keep that car rolling. I’ve knowed Mack for years, and he cuts me a lot of deals. Shoot, he even gave me the set of tires out there, because he took ’em in trade, but said they didn’t have enough tread to sell, so one day I went by there and he put ’em on for me and all I had to do was clean up the shop for him.”
Ned stood and picked up his hat. “Why are you still up? You need to get some sleep or you won’t be able to work.”
Wade shrugged. “I don’t want to go in and wake her up. I was just ginnin’ around for a little bit, and I’ll lay down on the couch there in a while. She says it sleeps pretty good. Y’all still want to talk to Karen Ann?”
Cody waited for Ned to answer. “Naw, we wanted to drop by and make sure everything was all right for you, after you came by that day and talked….” He drifted off to allow Wade to answer.
“We’re good now, Mr. Ned. Thanks for listening, and for what you’ve done for me.”
They shook hands, and left.
Outside by the cars, Cody looked back at the house. “You didn’t have much to ask.”
“Didn’t need to. That poor feller didn’t kill Tommy Lee.”
“I’m not so sure. He said things quieted down, and that was right after Tommy Lee died. He might-a done it.”
“Nope. You have to learn to look in a man’s eyes to see the truth. I’god, I wouldn’t be surprised if someday they come up with a way to tell when somebody’s lying by looking at their eyes, or the way they act. I know for a fact that man wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Why didn’t you drag Karen Ann’s ass out of the bed and question her?”
“Because I got no reason to suspect she killed Tommy Lee, either, and things are good for Wade right now. It won’t last for long. He oughta be happy for as long as he can, and besides, you’re gonna question her the next time she rolls into your…club.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Like I mentioned a ways back, Miss Becky always said some of us Parkers had what she called a Poisoned Gift, the ability to dream what was going to happen in the future. I always thought it was me, then one day Uncle Cody said that he dreamed about things that came true, too.
The
problem is that the dreams aren’t so clear that we know what’s going to happen. Sometimes I have to see something and then it reminds me of the dream. I had nightmares about the Rock Hole for months before that night came true. The only thing that saved me and Pepper when it did was that I’d talked to Grandpa and Miss Becky about ’em.
Uncle Cody had nightmares about the Cotton Exchange until it happened, and after that night, they shut off like somebody had throwed a switch. Then he started dreaming about snowstorms and Mexico.
I couldn’t get it out of my head that Miss Becky said Grandpa had The Poisoned Gift, too. He was always pretty close-mouthed about everything, especially law work. But she said when they were first married he dreamed of horses, Model A cars, and a little girl named Pickles, until it all came true. She quit talking about it after that one time. I knew better than to ask Grandpa, so all I could do was keep rolling it around in my head.
That’s what Miss Becky called “borrowing trouble.” There were a lot of folks in Center Springs who worried all the time about things that didn’t need worrying on, but they went right ahead, spinning these gray ideas over and over in their minds until it about drove ’em crazy.
I tried not to do the same, but then my own dreams started again, and it was the same one, might-near once a week. I was sitting on the hub of a giant wagon wheel laying on the ground. The spokes stretched out in all directions, almost disappearing into the distance. One led up into Oklahoma and the thick grasslands there. Another one went west, through the yucca and prickly pear, until it disappeared in the desert full of cactus that looked like “The High Chaparral,” that new television show.
Then each one of them spokes became a road, and people I knew and people I didn’t know were walking toward me. Some were laughing. Some were crying. Some were mad, and others looked like they had the weight of the world on their shoulders.
I told Miss Becky one Saturday morning after breakfast. She was sitting in her rocker beside the open window, sewing a rip in one knee of my jeans. She stopped, her sewing forgotten in her lap. “Do you recognize them people?”
I was laying on the cool linoleum floor with the funny papers open in front of me. Snoopy was on his doghouse again, chasing the Red Baron.
“No ma’am.”
“What else, besides the wagon wheel and roads?”
“Stars. Stars up in the sky that I see from Mama and Daddy’s old house in Dallas. I’m standing in the yard, looking up and see ’em bright and clear. Then they start to swirl and get into formations, and then spaceships come across the sky and trumpets and angels and Mama’s standing there with tears running down her face and she’s normal.”
Miss Becky looked so sad then. “Your mama is normal now, because she’s in Heaven with your daddy. Is what you see the Lord coming down and Gabriel blowing his horn?”
I flipped the page to see what was showing at the movies. “I don’t know. I think it might be, but then the air is full of thunder and flashes and screams, and falling stars shoot down toward the house, like those tracer bullets in war movies.”
“That’s in Revelations.”
Brother Ross at the Holiness church across the pasture liked to preach about once a month out of Revelations, and it always scared me to death. Sometimes, especially after church on Wednesday nights, I’d go to bed listening to the whippoorwills outside the house and wonder if the world was going to end before I got up the next morning.
“I don’t think I’m dreaming of the Bible. I’m only dreaming. I remembered, sometimes there are three black birds that show up and land on top of the house, and there are three more circling in the distance, all high up in the sky and not much more than pinpricks.”
“You need to get right with the Lord about all that.”
“Yessum.” I figured I was as right as I was gonna get with Him, but I knew that short answers would get me out of the conversation I’d gotten myself into.
She went back to her sewing. “Well, you need to pray every night when you go to bed that you don’t have any more of them dreams. I’ll have them pray for you at church, too.”
We let it go, though I imagine she studied on it long and hard. Later that day, Uncle James brought Pepper by and she spent the night with us.
I was lazy that next morning and stayed in bed with a good book. Grandpa was up at the store and Miss Becky was humming a sacred song to herself in the kitchen because she didn’t go to church on account of she didn’t like the visiting preacher. Pepper was in there with her, talking about making cookies. I hoped they’d make chocolate chip.
Miss Becky and Grandpa always hit the floor at daylight, ’cause that’s what farmers do. It was second nature to wake up at daylight, even on Sunday mornings.
Covered with nothing more than a sheet, I was propped with my head against the footboard, reading a good book called Henry Reed’s Journey. We slept with our heads at the foot of the bed, to catch whatever breezes came through the screens.
It’s funny, the book covered Henry’s travel from California to New Jersey, and the parts where they followed Route 66 reminded me of a trip I took with Mama and Daddy a year before she started losing her mind. While we were on that trip, Daddy stopped a couple of times to visit museums. I was fascinated by the dusty old Indian stuff in the glass cases.
The book got me to thinking I might find some artifacts like those in Center Springs. I especially remembered one dusty case full of baskets, moccasins, arrowheads, and a little baby Indian mummy. I guess that started me wanting to be an archaeologist, especially after Pepper and I found some arrowheads and spear points down on Center Springs Branch. I found a stone knife the night we ran into The Skinner.
Uncle Cody stopped us once when we were headed toward what we thought was a burial mound with shovels in hand. When we told him where we were going, he explained how we’d be digging up our kinfolk, so we gave up on that idea, but I never gave up on finding Indian stuff.
Up at the store, I overheard a couple of men talking about a new house that was going up on the far west side of Center Springs. They were hauling fill dirt for the foundation from a deep draw south of Forest Chapel, down near where the new lake would be. Back in the olden days, the draw was fed by a spring, and one of the workers said they’d found Indian burial mounds full of tools, skeletons, and artifacts.
They were finished with the foundation and didn’t need any more sand. I had an idea me and Pepper could talk Mr. John Washington into taking us with him the next time he visited Miss Rachel. The draw was across the pasture behind her house and I hoped there might be a few relics left.
Artifacts and relics. I liked those words and decided right there in bed to be an archaeologist when I grew up. Someday, after I dug up all the artifacts and relics in Lamar County, I’d head out on Route 66 and dig for dinosaurs in the desert.
The screen door slammed and through the bedroom window I saw Miss Becky and Pepper walk across the yard toward the barn. Hootie followed, walking slow and sticking his nose into every clump of grass.
I’d tell Pepper my idea when they got back. I knew she’d figure out a way to get us to Miss Rachel’s. The phone rang and I answered. Minutes later I dressed, grabbed the .22, and rode my bike to finish the wild dog problem for good.
Chapter Thirty-six
Miss Becky slowly eased herself down until she rested on a small stool beside Mary. Every milk cow she’d ever owned was named Mary. She set a galvanized bucket of warm water under the cow’s teats and washed them one by one.
Pepper draped herself like a lazy cat across the hay barn’s pipe gate. Hootie sniffed around a mound of dusty ’toe sacks. Satisfied by whatever he smelled, he turned around three times and laid down with a sigh, keeping an eye on Miss Becky.
“Girl, I expected you to be off somewhere with Top by now.”
Pepper studied her grandmother’s Fundamentalist bun tightly wrapped on t
he back of her head. She knew that when it was free from all the bobby pins and net, Miss Becky’s hair reached to the old woman’s waist. “He’s being lazy. I ’spect that when he gets up, he’ll go off killing dogs again.”
The Jersey shifted restlessly while eating sweet creep feed from a metal trough. Miss Becky grunted. “I hope not. It’s bad enough we didn’t go to church this morning. I wish he’d be done with killin’.”
Pepper frowned. “He’s a drag. Hootie’s all right, so I don’t know why he thinks he has to kill every stray in the county.”
Finished washing, Miss Becky poured the water through the litter of hay on the floor and traded for a large bucket.
The barn immediately filled with the metallic, almost musical sound of milk shooting into the bottom of the empty bucket. “He ain’t after ’em all. Just the ones that hurt Hootie. The truth is, he’s probably doing most of ’em a favor. They’ll starve come winter, or someone else will shoot them later on after they kill a calf. I’d have your grandpa shoot one if it came around the chicken house. I can’t stand an egg-sucking dog.”
“But is it right for him to go off killing like that? Y’all always said that we only kill what we eat.”
The tinny sound of milk softened as the bucket filled. Soon each squirt was deeper and thick as the warm stream shot through foam. “Sometimes right and wrong can be confusing. I believe in this case, though, it ain’t right, or wrong, it just is.”
“That don’t make no sense.”
“It will one of these days.”
“When Uncle Wilbert gave him that rifle, he said ‘vengeance is mine.’ That’s from the Bible.”
“It sure is. But the good Lord means that He’ll settle up in his own way when the time comes.”
Pepper snickered. “Uncle Cody told me the same thing, but then he said the Lord let us invent rifles, so we could settle up ourselves and He wouldn’t have to bother with all the little bitty things.”
Vengeance is Mine Page 18