by Lois Ruby
Bonnie?
“Look, Tag, my boy. I know I did the right thing taking you away, because your mother wouldn’t of let me have you. But you see what’s happening here?”
“What, Cee Dubyah?”
“Well, they’re acting like I’m some kind of criminal, sending the police out for me and all. I’m gonna get caught. I can’t disappear forever and never get back to driving my truck, and when they find me, do you think a judge is gonna let you come live with a man who’s a kidnapper?”
“It’s not kidnapping when it’s your own kid,” Tag said.
“I know that and you know that, but your mother doesn’t, and those cops don’t, and a judge sure won’t, because—” he paused as if he were looking for just the right way to put what he had to say. “Your mother has the law on her side.”
“But nobody ever asked me who I want to live with,” Tag cried, and whatever else he said was muffled in his father’s chest.
After a while Cee Dubyah said, “Here’s what I got to do, son. I’m turning myself in, because I can’t keep you holed up here, and I can’t keep running, and there’s nowhere we can get to that they won’t find us.”
“We could go to Boston, Massachusetts,” Tag said in a tiny voice.
“No, son.”
“All right,” Tag said, back in command of himself. “What’s the plan? We gotta have a plan.”
“That’s my boy. I’ll just catch a few winks here. You think you can find a corner of that bed for me for an hour or two? Then I’ll head back to Wichita, and me and the lawyer will go to the police.”
“They gonna put you in the slammer, Cee Dubyah?”
“Naw,” he said, without much conviction. “Then the lawyer and me are gonna start building an airtight case for you to come live with me. If your mother won’t let me have you full-time, well then, we’ll work on half-time, or summer-time, or whatever we can wheedle outta her, because she sure knows now that you and I belong together. Now don’t you worry, we’ll work it out … it’ll be all right … we’ll be two peas in a pod again.” Cee Dubyah crooned it over and over, like a lullaby, and pretty soon I heard this little crinkling of bedsprings as Cee Dubyah put Tag down, then a ferocious groaning of the springs under Cee Dubyah.
I leaned my back against an oak tree out behind the cottages to wait for the sun, but even so I missed Cee Dubyah’s leaving. I hoped Tag had, too.
Tag never said a word about his middle-of-the-night visitor, but I had to tell Stephanie and Momma that the ax was about to fall. I went the long way around from the walk-in freezer to Tag’s shop that morning. There he was squeezing one of Johnny’s lemons into a can of Coke and telling some trucker that this was the refreshing new taste sensation from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He licked the lemon juice off his grubby fingers and puckered his whole face up.
“Real sanitary conditions here,” the trucker said, giving way to a big yawn.
“You look a little sleepy, sir,” Tag told the driver. “That’s the curse of being on the road.” Again, it sounded just like Cee Dubyah talking.
“I could use a package of No-Doz,” the driver conceded.
“Hey, forget No-Doz.” Tag fished around in his carton and pulled out a package of Bubble Yum. “Try this. I reckon nobody can fall asleep while he’s chewing and blowing bubbles.”
I smiled to myself as the man gave Tag a quarter for the gum and headed back to his truck with the refreshing new taste sensation sloshing around in the can.
“Hold it!” Tag said. He wrote something on a slip of paper.
“What’s this?” the trucker asked, stretching to get the kinks out of his long, lean body.
“It’s a receipt.”
“For twenty-five cents’ worth of gum?”
“Sure. It’s a tax-deductible business expense,” Tag assured him. “Just a little service I give my best customers.” The trucker stuffed the receipt in his shirt pocket, behind his cigarettes, and chuckled all the way back to his cab. I could just picture him blowing purple bubbles from Spinner to Oklahoma City.
Back in the Pig-Out, I couldn’t delay it any longer. I had to tell Momma about Cee Dubyah.
“Oh, that poor sweet child,” she said, while Stephanie gasped and added something to her fiction novel. “Did Cee Dubyah say anything about somebody coming for Tag, or are we to have him until Tag gets married?”
I hadn’t given it a thought, but it’s true that Cee Dubyah never did tell Tag exactly what was going to happen to him.
“He’ll come for Tag,” Stephanie said.
“How can he, if he’s in custody?” asked Momma.
We talked about it off and on while we got ready for the lunch crowd, and before the first onslaught I took Tag’s lunch out to him. We’d started doing that so Tag wouldn’t miss any of the business he stole away from us. Stephanie and I packed him up a couple of pieces of fried chicken—Johnny had become a master of fried chicken that was light and crisp on the outside, but you had to eat it carefully because you might bite into a grease pocket that would spurt hot stuff into somebody else’s hair. Along with the chicken we brought him a cup of cole slaw, a nectarine, and a piece of pecan pie. Momma said this was the $1.50 Blue Plate Special, which cost everyone else $4.25.
“Chicken again?” Tag said, wrinkling up his nose. “I was hoping for a peanut butter and jelly.”
I almost yelled, “You’re the most ungrateful child!” But then I flashed on Tag curled around Cee Dubyah’s waist, and I bit my lip to hold back the words. Instead I said, “What have you conned Johnny out of this morning?” I noticed Tag had added a line of potato chips and Fritos in little twenty-five-cent bags. I remembered Johnny asking me to order these, but come to think of it, we’d never sold them in the Pig-Out.
“I buy them from Johnny at cost,” Tag said simply. Fenway stood on his hind legs, lapping water from the ice bucket, raising his leg to let it go, then lapping more water, like a perfectly efficient waterworks system.
“Gross, Fenway!” I said.
“Aw, leave him alone.”
Trucks were pulling up behind the restaurant, and soon Stephanie leaned out the door and signaled for me to get to work. The Pig-Out was jumping with truckers anxious to get back on the road and collect for their long hauls.
The hours flew by—noon, one o’clock, two—until finally the place cleared out and we could start mopping up for dinner.
Just then Tag came to the door carrying Fenway, like a hunter with a deer draped across his arms, only Tag’s face was chalk white, and his eyes were huge and sunken.
“A car hit him,” Tag said.
“Momma, come quick! Fenway got run over!” The dog hung limply, overflowing Tag’s arms. Momma felt for a pulse and shook her head.
“Oh—my—Lord!” Stephanie cried. Tag just stood there like a statue.
Johnny came out front and quickly sized up the situation. Without a word he lifted Fenway from Tag’s arms and took the pup out back somewhere. Momma pulled Tag to her and stroked his head, not saying much.
Tag didn’t make a sound either, just shook a little, and when Momma shifted him around the top of her apron was soaked gray. “Maybe it’s time for you to go home,” Momma said softly.
Something was sizzling on the grill and Stephanie went to the kitchen, leaving the doors to swing back and forth with a lonesome swoosh.
With Johnny out back taking care of Fenway and Stephanie busy in the kitchen and Momma holding Tag, I’d never felt more useless in my life.
THIRTEEN
I knew who she was as soon as she walked in that night, wearing a crisp yellow jump suit and a raspberry-and-lemon-sherbet shirt rolled up at the cuffs. The freckles gave her away. She had long plum nails, and her right pinkie was gold-speckled. Her hair was feathered back and layered to her shoulders. I was pretty sure she wasn’t a natural blonde. She warmed the air around her with delicate driver-sweat and some perfume that smelled like baby powder.
There was this little round girl with h
er, about five, wearing a snug halter top and shorts and carrying a stuffed Snoopy with sunglasses.
The one lone truck driver left after dinner looked the woman over good and hard, until his eyes fell on the little dumpling of a girl and then trailed back to his newspaper.
“Who’s in charge here?” the woman asked. She had a voice deeper than I’d expected for such pastel fluff clothes.
Momma stood up.
“You?” the woman said. Maybe she’d been expecting a big farm hand kind of woman. “I’m Rosie McFee,” she said finally. “Taggert’s mother.”
“Mommy,” the little girl said, “is this where Tag’s living, in a restrawnt?” It was Tag’s voice all over again—a growl, almost.
“Quiet, baby, hmm?” She turned back to Momma. “You’re the owner?”
Momma nodded. “Marilyn Chandler,” she said, putting out her hand, which just hung there because the woman was shaking her head back and forth and saying, “My God, Cee Dubyah didn’t even know your name. Where is he, Mrs. Chandler? Where’s my son?”
“Dovi, go get him,” Momma said.
I flew out the back door, tripping over Stephanie and Eddie, who were plastered together on a lawn chair near the walk-in.
First I knocked on Johnny’s door. “She’s here for him,” I whispered. My heart was thumping like an Indian war drum as I reached Tag’s cottage. There wasn’t a light shining anywhere. I knocked softly, and thought I heard him say come in. He lay in his jeans in the center of the bed, barely taking up any space at all, and with his arms folded under his neck. The room smelled of Fenway and felt heavy with emptiness, like a load you could carry on your back.
“Your momma’s here, Tag. Bonnie too.” He turned over onto his stomach. “She seems very nice. She’s so pretty.” Tag sat up, reached under his pillow for his Red Sox shirt, and slipped it over his head. It fell around him like a tent—not like a shirt at all, just a rag that didn’t remember anybody’s shape. He stood up and turned away to tuck the shirt in. Even tucked in, it seemed sad the way the top gaped open over his scrawny neck. I thought maybe it was Cee Dubyah’s shirt. The little gold cross lay flat on the ribbing.
He picked up a backpack stuffed with clothes and probably all the merchandise from his shop that he could ram into it. There was also a shopping bag, which I grabbed before he could start his macho act and try to carry it all.
“Whatever’s left belongs to you anyway,” he said. He slapped his leg once—to call Fenway?—then remembered.
We trooped over to the restaurant. Anybody driving by would have thought we were a couple of scouts heading for a camp-out in the woods.
From the kitchen we heard murmurs of mothertalk, an easy give-and-take, which made me feel a little better about this McFee woman whose house Tag would be sleeping in later that night.
Johnny came in behind us and put his arm around Tag. “What the hey are you doing in here this hour of the night?” he teased Tag.
“I gotta get up early to get ahead of you,” Tag shot back as Johnny pushed something—I couldn’t see what—into his pocket.
Bonnie spotted his face first, above the swinging door. “Mommy, look!” Tag pushed his way into the dining room. Bonnie ran toward him, stopping shyly just short of his feet. Mrs. McFee encircled them both with her sherbet arms.
“We’re going home, Taggert,” she said. No scolding, no questions, no hysterics. Just “We’re going home.”
“And you know what? Mommy says we can stop in El Dorado for a ice cream. And you know what else? She says I can stay up till midnight if I want, and I’m not supposed to be a pest. Isn’t that what you said, Mommy? I’m not supposed to be a pest till tomorrow, so you won’t want to leave again.”
It’s funny. I expected some sign from Tag that he hated his mother, or was afraid of her, or some sign from her that she was hateful or scary, but it simply wasn’t like that. He let her kiss his forehead, as embarrassed as most kids are when their parents slobber over them, and then he said proudly, “Guess what. I’ve been selling stuff again. I’ve got over fifty dollars.”
“Ooooh, Taggert, one day you’re going to be a rich, rich man,” his mother beamed. “Will you buy us a house by the ocean? How about Malibu Beach, over in California?”
Tag shook his head. “Boston, Massachusetts,” he said, and I was proud of his mother for not asking why Boston. Or maybe she already knew about Tag and Cee Dubyah’s plans at Fenway Park.
Now Mrs. McFee shook Momma’s hand and said, “Thank you for looking after Taggert.”
“He doesn’t need looking after. He takes good care of himself,” Momma said, smiling toward Tag.
“Well.” Mrs. McFee held her children tightly by the hand. It was as if she’d never be able to let either of them out of her sight again. And they were gone.
The next day dragged by. More than once I found myself looking for Tag out by the road, or trying to see what was missing that he might be selling out from under us. At lunchtime I automatically started fixing a plate for him, and when Stephanie asked what I was doing I said something like, “What is it, a big sin if I want to have a decent lunch for a change, instead of a bite of this and a bite of that?” But Stephanie knew, I think.
We had a pretty steady dinner bunch in and out. Some customers were even stopping at the Pig-Out instead of the Star Cafe twenty miles up the highway, because it was Wednesday, meatloaf day, and Johnny’s meatloaf was becoming a legend in its own time. I had to remember to save an end piece for Pawnee.
Momma and Johnny were in the kitchen putting up salads, and Johnny was swearing at the lettuce—which, the best we could tell out in the diner, seemed to have rusty brown spots all the way through it. “Holy shee, what did the farmer do, grow this stuff at the county dump? Hogs would turn up their snouts at it.”
“Shh, Johnny,” we heard Momma whisper, while the customers all had a good chuckle and said no, thank you to the salads that came with the meatloaf.
Emile Joe Hunter said his stomach was a little squeamish. He couldn’t face anything with gravy, so he’d just have a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. “But, uh,” Emile Joe said, “you know.”
I shouted through the pass-through, “BLT, burn the bacon, heavy on the mayo, fry the tomato, and hold the lettuce.”
“You need a God-blessed computer back here when you feed me orders like that,” Johnny muttered, and I heard the cold bacon slap the grill, then the forgiving sizzle.
Palmer came in just then looking for Tag. “Where is that kid? He’s always over at my station by six to mop up.”
“He’s gone home,” I said, flying by with a couple of burgers crowding each other off a plate. “Want something to eat, Palm?”
“I don’t want anything to eat. I want my clean-up boy.”
Stephanie had just picked up a plate with a dense hunk of meatloaf dominating a little hill of mashed potatoes and a few scrawny gray-green beans. She waved the steam away from Palmer’s face. “You see,” she began explaining like a teacher with a class full of students who aren’t too quick, “Tag is a victim of contemporary divorce statistics. It’s a question of maternal or paternal custody.”
Palmer looked from Stephanie to me. “What’s she talking about?” He tore into a package of saltines on the counter and stuffed a whole cracker into his mouth.
“Is that my dinner?” some guy at the end of the counter asked. The steam had died off by the time Stephanie got it to him. “I love cold meatloaf,” the trucker said. “Sits there in my gut like somebody poured me full of lead.”
“What she means, Palmer, is that Tag wants to live with his father, but the law’s got him living with his mother, so that’s where he is now.”
“Well, why didn’t she say that?” Palmer asked.
I gave him a glass of ice water to wash down the cracker crumbs hanging from his mouth. “Because she’s a city girl, Palm. In the city things look much more complicated.”
“Oh, good grief,” Stephanie snorted, “Wichita is
n’t exactly New York City, you know.”
“It’s not even Philly,” one of the customers said. “Or New Orleans,” which he pronounced “Nawlins.”
“But it is Oklahoma City,” one of the other guys, Jenkins, said. “Same town, in two different states.”
“Am I thickheaded today?” asked Palmer. “Nobody’s making any sense. Hand me a toothpick, would you, Dovi?”
“Anything else we can get you for free?” I retorted. “Want to use the phone?”
“Now why would I do that when I’ve got my own phone just across the road? Well, I’d better get over there since there’s nobody else to mop up.”
“Aren’t you having your usual bowl of chili?” asked Stephanie. “Johnny made it fresh just last Monday.” She’d learned to hold three glasses in the flat of her hand, and now she was filling them with ice, dropping only every other piece on the floor.
“I don’t need no chili today. The wife’s visiting her sister up in Iowa, so I’m going to a real restaurant for dinner. Well, see you girls tomorrow.”
Scurrying around the diner, we caught a glimpse of him dashing between cars to the Gas Fast across the highway. Stephanie turned to the audience at large. “Gentlemen, wouldn’t you agree that that was, without a doubt, the rudest thing in the world? Imagine him sitting here”—she twirled around, hands extended, to take in the entire piggish kingdom—“and telling us he’s going to be dining at a real restaurant tonight. What does he think you guys are doing here?”
“We’re eating, but we ain’t dining,” Emile Joe said.
I posed the corker: “Let’s face it, Steph. If you had your choice of all the restaurants in the world, would you pick the Pig-Out Inn?”
“Well, I, of course, would pick Maxim’s, in Gay Paree.” She slid a pickle wafer off someone’s cheeseburger platter and sucked on it dreamily. “I guess my second choice would be Steak and Ale, where these gorgeous hunks bring you a menu engraved on a meat cleaver—can you believe it, a meat cleaver! I mean, this is a classy place on a four-lane divided road running right through Wichita.”
“Steak and Ale? They got the same thing in Oklahoma City,” Jenkins said. From the juke box, Willie and Julio crooned, “For all the girls we’ve loved before …”