by Lois Ruby
The Army came for its usual weekly siege. There were only eighteen of them this time wanting cheeseburgers and fries and shakes on the double. But one of them was destined to be the new Wayne Firestone.
Oh, I’d come far since the first invasion. I could carry plates of cheeseburgers all the way up my arm, four at a time, and I could do milkshakes without needing to be hosed down afterwards. Stephanie was no help at all, though. She latched on to the youngest guy in the group and delivered one-on-one waitress service. He got his order first, of course, and then she surrounded his burger plate with a whole detail of regular mustard, hot mustard, ketchup, barbecue sauce, and steak sauce. I came by to grab a couple of the bottles for the other customers and recognized this guy, mostly because he seemed so young and so unmilitary, sitting on a stool two away from the nearest soldier. “You’re the guy who left the retainer a few weeks ago, aren’t you?” I asked. It was funny to see the kid blush almost purple. “I’ve got it under here somewhere. I stuck it in a cottage cheese container.” I groped around under the counter.
“Oh, it’s okay. I don’t need it anymore. The orthodontist says I’m good as done.” He pulled his lips back and showed us his new, improved bite, like a cocker spaniel’s. Stephanie was awed. I thought, here’s a guy she could really sink her teeth into.
I flew around the cafe, taking care of all the customers and making snide remarks at Stephanie. “If it’s not too much trouble, cut the apple pie, will you?” and “Never hire a waitress from the city if you expect the coffeepot to stay filled.” She paid no attention because she was zeroing in on the guy, who turned out to be a buck private in basic training named Eddie Perini. I overheard scraps of their conversation as I dashed around attending to the guys who were already on seconds and thirds.
“How come you’re in the Army?” I heard her ask, and I leaned over to catch the answer.
Eddie turned his pockets inside out. “No money for college,” he said. “Uncle Sam will pull me through.”
About six cheeseburgers later I heard, “Do you play baseball, Eddie?”
“Do I play baseball!” I glanced over and saw him eating his milkshake with a fork. Stephanie must have put in about nine scoops of ice cream.
The last thing I caught was Eddie asking her if she’d lived in Spinner long, and her replying that she’s just moved there, and him saying he hoped she’d be staying a long time, and her saying, well, she was still in high school, so it looked like she had a few years to go, and him saying, well, he’d be finishing up his radio training in a couple of weeks, and he didn’t know where he’d be shipped, and her saying she was thinking of moving back to Wichita at the end of the summer anyway.
Boy, I had a lot to learn about male-female give-and-take. From the juke box, Elvis pleaded Eddie’s case: “Love me tender, love me true.”
Then Tag came in, wearing Stephanie’s cutoffs and his alligator shirt. He climbed onto the stool next to Eddie’s.
“I might join the Army,” he said.
A guy down at the end of the counter said, “Don’t say it too loud. They’ll sign you up.”
“Maybe the Air Force is better,” said Tag.
“Anything’s better,” one of the soldiers said with a laugh. Only Eddie seemed to be taking Tag seriously.
“What do you want with the Army?” he asked.
Tag shrugged. “Travel.”
“So far I’ve been to Kansas,” Eddie said, “which is where I started from.”
“A place to lay your head at night,” Tag said.
“Just don’t sign up too early,” Eddie warned him. “You want your hair cut short like this?” He pulled Tag’s hand up to feel the stubble at the back of his head. “You want to take a shower every day? You want to mop floors and make your bed at five-thirty every morning?”
Tag looked confused. “Is that all there is to it?”
“Naw, that’s just the good stuff,” one of the soldiers laughed.
“Well, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“You got time,” said Eddie, offering Tag some of his fries.
“Hey, listen, guys,” Tag said, “any of you need a shoe shine? I’ve got my kit outside. Drop by after lunch. That’s one thing you won’t have to do back at the base. Just bring me all your shoes. I work cheap, and I don’t just use spit, either.”
“He uses real polish, man!” one guy said, taking off his shoes. “Here, do mine!”
Tag shook his head. “Sorry, I’m on my lunch hour.”
Tag adopted a dog—unless he traded somebody’s grandmother for it. I was afraid to ask. The scruffy-looking mongrel slept in the shade next to Tag’s roadside stand/shoe shine parlor and ate candy bars with Tag. I don’t know where he slept at night, but I have an idea.
“What’s your friend’s name?” I asked, heading to Yellow Cabin 6 after the lunch rush one day.
“Fenway,” he said.
“What kind of a ridiculous name is Fenway?”
“He’s named after my favorite ballpark, over there in Boston, Massachusetts.”
“Have you ever been to Boston?” I asked.
“Me and Cee Dubyah are going there for a baseball game. Maybe next summer.”
“Tag, when do you figure Cee Dubyah’s coming back?”
“It won’t be long,” he said.
“It’s already been long.”
“So? You don’t have a father, what do you know?”
“I do too have a a father. He’s coming home Friday. You’ll meet him. By the way, I was wondering, where’s your mother?”
“I’m not supposed to answer that,” Tag said softly.
“How come you’re not living with her?”
“You’re the nosiest girl I ever met,” said Tag, waving to a trucker who was pulling in for a late-afternoon breather. Fenway raised his lazy head for a second to bark absently at the driver, then settled back into his coil at Tag’s feet.
“You going to be out here long?” I asked.
“Until the sun goes down. By then everybody’s in for the night.”
“Oh. Well, see you later.” Now was my opportunity. Stephanie was taking a nap and Tag was peddling, so I grabbed the keys from the hook in the kitchen and stole over to Tag’s cottage. I’d made a couple of attempts to find Cee Dubyah’s note, but Tag had done one thorough job of hiding it—or maybe he carried it with him all the time.
Tag’s cottage was looking pretty good; he’d probably have done all right in an Army barracks. I rummaged through the papers and comic books on Tag’s desk; even found odd dollars between the pages of a Sports Illustrated, and about seventy-five dollars more scattered around in his drawers, which were mostly empty. No sign of the note. It was deadly hot in the room. I thought I’d do Tag a favor and turn on the air conditioning so he could come back to a cool cabin when he was through work. Flipping open the control box of the window unit, I found it—Cee Dubyah’s note folded into a tiny square.
Dear Tag, my boy,
I got to do this, so we can be together someday. You and me are like two peas in a pod, and she’s got no business keeping us apart.
Listen, I checked these people out real good, and they’re okay. They’re Quakers. Did ya ever read in school about the Quakers who kept the escaped slaves, so no one could find them? They’ll watch out for you. But you understand I have to stay away, because the cops’ll be looking for me until this all blows over and she forgets all about it.
You’re just like a cat who jumps out of a tree and lands on his feet every time. You’ll do all right, son. Here’s a few dollars to start your business with. I’ll be back to get you as soon as I can. I swear, we’re going to Fenway Park before the summer’s out.
Your dad,
C.W.
I folded the letter back up the way it was. I wished I hadn’t found it. My chest felt tight and sore because the letter was so sad, and I was disgusted with myself for invading what little bit of privacy Tag had. Once, when we were in our Doctor Zhivago stage, Ste
phanie and I found some love letters my father and mother had written back and forth, and we devoured the first two, giggling and practically panting through every line. But I felt sort of sick afterwards, and I never admitted to Momma that I even knew where the letters were stored. Momma and Dad never looked quite the same to me after that. I wondered if I was going to be able to treat Tag just the same. The last thing I wanted was to feel sorry for the kid, but even with the air conditioner blowing in my face at full blast I couldn’t shake the hot heavy feeling of sadness that gripped my chest.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell Stephanie about the letter. She’d always lived in a regular three-bedroom, two-story house with her mother and father and two brothers, and there were very old apple trees in the yard, and they’d never once had to submit a change-of-address card at the Post Office. She wouldn’t understand about the Laytons of the world.
I turned off the air conditioner and put the note, folded no bigger than a postage stamp, back where I’d found it.
EIGHT
“Your father wrote us a letter,” Momma said as Tag slurped up a bowl full of sweet cereal milk, spoon by spoon. He didn’t even look up, but Stephanie and I could tell he was listening by the way his shoulders grew stiff and alert.
Momma continued, “He says he’ll get back just as soon as he can.”
“We’re supposed to look after you,” I added.
“Did he say that?” Tag asked Momma.
“Well, not in so many words.”
“Thought so.” He slumped back over his cereal bowl. He held his spoon with his whole hand folded over it the way every kid does, the way I used to until Momma said it was unladylike, with gorgeous hands like mine, and she taught me to hold a fork just like a pencil. Tag kept up a steady rhythm with the spoon and never lost a drop of the milk. You didn’t even have to wipe the counter after Tag was done eating.
Stephanie munched one of Johnny’s lead biscuits, gold-soaked with honey, and said, “Your dad thought you’d grow on us.”
“I’m growing, I’m growing,” Tag said with a faint smile into his cereal bowl.
“You’re growing, all right. You’re growing rich,” I yelled.
By now his bowl was bone-dry, and he’d eaten his toast down to thin little V’s of crust and had a tomato juice moustache. He jumped down from the stool. “Put it on my tab.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, saluting. But subtlety was lost on Tag, because now his mind was strictly on business. He effortlessly hoisted a carton of goods onto his shoulder and backed out the door. It was the perfect time to set up shop; the sun was still way behind the building, and there was a fifty-fifty chance for a decent breeze until about noon.
Stephanie curled into the sunniest booth with her notebook open on the table and six freshly sharpened pencils stacked like Lincoln Logs in front of her. She was on page one of her fiction novel, she said, but it looked more like she was staring into thin air and scratching mosquito bites a lot.
Out in the back I heard the water going as Johnny chased the wind-blown dirt away from our door with the hose. Momma was back in her cottage washing her hair, and she was going to sit with her feet up on a hassock and let her hair dry naturally while she read one of her library books.
“If anybody comes in, you’re going to have to cook,” I warned Stephanie.
“Shhh, I’m thinking hard.” She was also chewing hard, chewing on ice, and the crunch-crunch, plus the thought of that freezing feeling on my teeth, was starting to get to me.
“Wait, wait, it’s coming to me.” Stephanie had this dreamy look washing over her. Even her wrists went limp, kind of like the androids you see on Star Trek reruns that get messages inside their heads. “Listen to my opening sentence, and tell me honestly, is—it—not—great? ‘On a sun-blistered afternoon deep in picturesque suburban—no, rural—Kansas, a desperately handsome and sinewy Army lieutenant named Ernie Polini—is that too close to his real name?—named Andy Marini walked through the door of an oasis on the prairie to behold the face of the—no, of his one true destined love, Honorée.’ That—is—a—grabber! What do you think, Dov?”
I wasn’t thinking. What I was doing was watching this highway patrol car pull into our lot. Two officers rolled down their windows and got out of the car. I could hear the cracking, fuzzy sound of the police radio, clearer now that the officers were opening our door.
“Morning, ladies. Mind if we leave this open a wedge so we can catch the dispatcher?”
Stephanie flipped her notebook shut, as if the policemen cared one bit about her corny story, and she dashed over next to me and started stuffing napkins into the smudgy metal holders.
The officers ordered a couple of Dr. Peppers.
“Do we charge them?” Stephanie whispered hot in my ear.
“Of course. You think we’re bribing the police?” I replied as I stuck two sweet rolls in the microwave. Half a minute later the pats of butter had melted all over the sweet rolls, and I gave one to each of the patrolmen. “On the house,” I said. Stephanie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.
“Whose place is this?” asked Office Somebody—Bodeker, his name tag said.
“Mine. I mean my parents’.” I was suddenly very sweaty under the arms; I knew what they wanted.
“Do you sell Coors here?” the other officer, whose name was Geary, asked casually.
“Well, I don’t actually sell it myself.”
“Me either,” Stephanie quickly added.
“You see, my mother’s here all the time.” Of course, she was nowhere in sight, and I knew, now that the hose was off, that Johnny would be out back on a lettuce crate, smoking a cigar and reading the National Enquirer, before he had to get lunch going. “Anyway, I know you guys were only kidding me, because a Kansas highway patrolman wouldn’t drink even a drop while he was on duty, right?”
The two officers laughed and drew on their Dr. Pepper straws awhile. Finally Bodeker said, “We’d like to ask you a few questions, ladies. You know a guy name C.W. Layton?”
I stayed cool, of course, but Stephanie dropped the box of napkins, and they snowed all over the floor.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “He’s a big burly truck driver who stops by here from time to time. I think he drives out of Denver. That, or St. Louis, I’m not sure which.”
“Has he been in today?” asked Geary.
“No, sir.”
“When was the last time he was here?”
“Cee Dubyah?” I knew the day, even the hour, but I dallied, scratching my head. “Well now, let’s see. Stephanie’s been here a couple of weeks, and it seems like—you’ve never met Cee Dubyah, have you, Steph?”
“Never once, in my whole life, I swear,” she swore.
“So he must not have been in here for about two weeks. Fifteen, sixteen days, maybe.”
Bodeker asked, “Was there anybody with him?”
“You mean, did he have anybody with him, like when he left here last time?” I asked.
“I mean, was there a kid with him?”
“I don’t think he was hauling goats,” I replied sweetly.
“A child, a boy,” Geary explained, patiently. “About eight or ten years old.”
Well now, I knew for a fact that Tag was exactly nine, so I could easily say without lying, “No, no boy eight or ten came in here with Cee Dubyah.” Stephanie flashed me an admiring smile. I practically twisted my neck out of its socket, checking to be sure Tag wasn’t out there making a liar of me. Nothing was out there—not his orange-crate roadside stand, not Fenway, not a clue that Taggert Layton had even been alive, let alone living at the Pig-Out Inn.
“We get a lot of guys from Fort Riley in here,” I added, “but the youngest one is probably eighteen.”
Stephanie was shaking her head No! No! as if I were turning her baby doll Eddie over to the cops.
“We’re interested in a child traveling with Layton,” Geary said firmly.
And again I could answer honestly, “Aw, there’s no
boy traveling with Cee Dubyah.”
Stephanie moved in closer. “What’s Cee Dubyah done, something illegally criminal?” she asked.
“Just some mess over in Wichita, and they’re having us check on him up and down the road. Nothing for you to worry about, ladies.”
“Nothing, nothing at all,” Officer Geary assured us, sucking air at the bottom of his glass. Then he pulled a small school picture out from behind his identification card, and there Tag lay on our counter, looking shined up and greased down in a blue striped button-down shirt and a denim vest. I could imagine his mother fussing over him that morning, getting every hair in place, and tucking his shirt in just so, and making sure breakfast didn’t show anywhere on his freckly face.
“If this kid turns up with Layton, you let us know, hear?” Bodeker said, and he made it sound like a threat. He wrote the Kansas highway patrol number down on a napkin, which I was sure I’d lose soon. Then he handed me a couple of dollars for the Dr. Peppers and sweet rolls. “Keep the change.”
“Just who’s doing the bribing?” I whispered to Stephanie as we heard their car doors slam.
“I swear, I’ve held my breath for the last twelve minutes,” Stephanie said, gasping like a sprinter. “Why exactly are they looking for Cee Dubyah? Did he steal something, or is he a smuggler, or a Russian spy?”
No, I didn’t think he was a smuggler or a spy. What I thought, way in the back of my mind, was that Cee Dubyah was some kind of kidnapper—only Tag wanted, with all his heart, to be kidnapped.
In a little while Fenway came strolling out and plopped down in his sleepy spot, and then Tag came out and got his shop set up as quickly as an umbrella snapping up, or a carnival tent over in the Safeway parking lot.
I left Stephanie waiting on a P.I.E. trucker who wanted scrambled eggs, grits, hash browns—the whole works—and went out to check on Tag.
“Lay low,” I warned the shrimp. “They’ve got a picture of you.”
“Which one?”