Dairy Queen Days

by Robert Inman

  A car pulled into the parking lot, lights on, windshield wipers flapping furiously, and eased to a stop at the side of the lot near the picnic tables. The lights and wipers stayed on.

  “Your Aunt Alma,” Keats said.

  Trout peered out. A gray Buick. The rain was beating against the windshield so hard, the wipers couldn’t keep up with it. Then Aunt Alma rolled down the window about an inch and peered out. She and Joe Pike had the same eyes, he thought.

  “I think she wants you to come out,” Keats said.

  He was thoroughly soaked in the few seconds it took him to dash from the back door around the side of the building to the car, snatch open the door, slide into the front seat and slam the door behind him. The engine was running -- powering lights, wipers, air conditioner. Trout shivered as cold and wet collided with the confused knot in his belly. Aunt Alma didn’t seem to notice. Her face was puckered up in thought, lips set in a grim line, hands gripping the steering wheel. The wipers went thwock-thwock-thwock.. The rain was fierce, great driving sheets of it blowing against the car and making it shake. Trout stuck his hands between his legs and hunched forward, trying to stop the shivering, wondering what kind of craziness would bring Alma out in a driving rainstorm to the Dairy Queen. He doubted she had ever set foot on the Dairy Queen property before. It was not an Aunt Alma kind of place. Had she come to shanghai him and take him back to the shipping department?

  They sat there for a moment and then she said, “Trout, I’m sorry.”

  It was the very last thing on earth he expected. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. What is going on here?

  “I shouldn’t put pressure on you,” she went on. “I know you’ve had a tough time the past few months. Your mother, your father…” she shook her head. “It’s not fair to put any extra burden on you, and I just want you to know I regret that I did.”

  “Aunt Alma…” he shrugged, still at a loss -- in fact, astonished. This was Aunt Alma? Ten seconds ago, he would have doubted that she had ever apologized for anything in her whole life. And here she was, doing it as simply and easily as if she were ordering ice cream.

  “I want your summer to be nice. Relaxed, no pressure. Is there anything I can do?”

  He shivered again. “Could you turn off the air conditioner?”

  “Oh,” she said. She turned off the air but left the engine running. Trout looked out through the windshield, saw Keats inside the Dairy Queen, up on her crutches now, peering out the window, watching.

  “I didn’t mean to rush. There’s plenty of time for you to learn about the business.” She turned toward him in the seat and pressed her hands together. “This is all going to work out.” There was a bright snap to her eyes, something almost feverish. “It will work out just fine,” she said earnestly. “I’m sure of it.”

  Trout’s head spun. What on earth was she talking about? His future? Uncle Cicero’s business expansion? Joe Pike’s theological angst? Or was there more? Overpopulation? Holes in the ozone layer? HEADLINE: EVERYTHING TURNS OUT OKAY.

  “All of it.” She gave a little flip of her hand, bestowing all-rightness on the world.

  “Look, Aunt Alma, if you want me to work at the mill…”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I think you’ve made the right choice, Trout.” She waved at the Dairy Queen. “Enjoy yourself. No pressure. A little spending money in your pocket and nothing earthshaking to worry about.”

  No, nothing but a girl trying to take my clothes off.

  “That’s the Dubarry girl, isn’t it?” She was leaning over the steering wheel, looking at Keats.

  “Yes,” Trout said weakly.

  “Is she a friend?”

  She said it very casually, but Trout was suddenly alert and wary. “Not really,” he said.

  “Just somebody who rides on your motorcycle.”

  Trout shrugged. “I’ve taken her to work a couple of times, I guess.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Alma looked at him now, very directly. “Did you notice anything unusual over there?”

  “What kind of unusual?”

  “Activity. Anything out of the ordinary.”

  He wanted to be careful. But he wanted to be helpful, too. After all, Aunt Alma had come all the way out here to tell him she was sorry. And she had let him off the hook about the mill. And he darned sure didn’t owe weird Keats Dubarry anything.

  “There was a rental car parked in the Dubarry’s driveway,” he said. “Yesterday and again this morning. The same car.”

  “Did you get a good look at it?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Green. A Ford, I think. It had a rental car sticker on the back bumper. Alamo.”

  “You didn’t happen to get a tag number, did you?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Are you taking the girl home after work?”

  “I guess so.”

  “If the car is still there, get the tag number.”

  “Okay.”

  The rain was letting up now. Aunt Alma turned off the windshield wipers. A few drops splattered on the glass, streaking it as they dribbled off. “I need you to keep an eye on things for me, Trout.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said. “I will.”

  * * * * *

  When Trout dropped Keats off at home, the rental car was gone. “I see your company’s left,” he said as she struggled off the back of the motorcycle.

  “Are you working tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  She shrugged, turned and started toward the house.

  “Would you rather I didn’t?” Trout asked.

  “I don’t care what you do,” she said over her shoulder.

  “I turned down two other jobs,” Trout said.

  That stopped her. She turned and looked back at him. “What?”

  “Uncle Cicero’s hardware store and Aunt Alma’s shipping department.”

  “So what.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask why?”

  “I don’t care why. Maybe you’re going through a late adolescence, Trout.” She turned again and headed back toward the house, bouncing along on the crutches across the grass. Then she froze suddenly, stayed stock-still for a moment, and turned back to him. To his great surprise, she looked sad. Small and sad and a little vulnerable. “I don’t like being angry, Trout,” she said quietly. “I see what it does to Daddy. Sometimes I can’t help it.”

  “Does my working at the Dairy Queen make you angry?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “Up to now, it’s been just mine. But it’s okay.” She paused, then added, “You’re okay.” And she gave him a tiny smile. She had a nice smile when she let herself, he thought.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She turned again toward the house. “Maybe I’ll come to work naked tomorrow,” he called out. She didn’t act like she heard him.

  * * * * *

  As Trout headed home, he saw a fair-sized crowd gathered at the edge of the vacant lot downtown, the parking spaces along both sides of Broadus Street filled with cars. Among them, a Georgia State Trooper cruiser, a county Sheriff’s Department car, and a plain blue sedan with an official-looking antenna on the back. As he got closer he saw a length of yellow tape stretched across the front of the vacant lot, holding the crowd back. Over their heads, out in the middle of the lot, he could see the big orange bulk of the bulldozer.

  He wheeled the motorcycle around and came back and parked in front of the hardware store. The front door was shut and a sign hung behind the glass: CLOSED. Trout walked quickly down the sidewalk to where the crowd edged up against the yellow tape. It was the biggest assembly Trout had witnessed since he arrived in Moseley -- far bigger, for sure, than the Sunday morning congregation at Moseley Memorial Methodist. And it was abuzz with excited murmuring and gesticulating.

  About half of the lot was scraped bare, down to red clay soil, puddled here and there by th
e afternoon downpour. There were several mounds of piled-up debris -- chunks of concrete, twisted pieces of rusty pipe, charred timbers. The back side of the lot was still weed-grown and the bulldozer was stopped at the edge of it -- engine silent, seat empty, blade down. A knot of men stood around the front of the machine -- a couple in uniform, two others in shirtsleeves. They were looking at something on the ground and one of the men in shirtsleeves was snapping pictures with a big boxy camera. An accident? Trout thought with a rush of alarm of Joe Pike up on the bulldozer seat.

  “What is it?” he asked a man standing next to him.

  “Skeletal remains,” the man said somberly.

  “It’s probably Cash Potter,” said a woman, nodding knowingly.

  “What makes you think that?” the man asked.

  “Cash disappeared about the time the furniture store burned down,” the woman answered.

  “Naw,” another man said. “Cash turned up in Chicago with a waitress from Augusta.”

  “Well,” the woman huffed, “folks said Cash was in Chicago, but nobody I’d consider reliable has laid eyes on him.”

  Another woman spoke up. “Anyhow, what’s to say it’s somebody that burned up in the fire? Coulda been somebody that was murdered and buried over yonder.”

  “Best place in town to hide a body,” the first man agreed.

  “There was a bunch of gypsies come through a couple of years ago,” the other man said. “Coulda been one of them.”

  Trout edged away from the debate and looked out across the vacant lot again at the crowd around the bulldozer. Then he spotted Uncle Cicero, hunkering next to the blade with another man, pointing, his finger making a wide circle. Grady Fulton, the bulldozer operator, was standing next to him, hand jammed in the rear pocket of his jeans.

  “Uncle Cicero,” Trout called out. Cicero looked back and saw him. Cicero waved to him to come over. Trout hesitated, but Cicero kept waving, so he ducked under the yellow tape and started across the bare earth of the vacant lot, stepping around the puddles. He could hear the low irritated buzz of the crowd behind him. The freshly-scraped dirt had a sour smell to it, like a stomach turned inside out.

  Cicero met him at the rear of the bulldozer. “What is it, Uncle Cicero?” Trout asked.

  “Skeletal remains,” Cicero said. He sounded very official. His color was high. He took a hitch in his gun belt.

  Trout looked back at the crowd. “A woman over there said it might be somebody named Cash Potter.”

  “No, I talked to Cash Potter on the phone last week. He’s living in Chicago with a waitress from Augusta. Afraid to come home ’cause Emma Jean might kill him.”

  Trout peered around Cicero toward the front of the bulldozer. “Can I see?”

  “Well, I don’t want you to have no nightmares,” Cicero said.

  “Is it, like, gory?”

  “Well, not exactly.”

  And it wasn’t. It was just some bones sticking out of the dirt. The bulldozer had unearthed a large slab of concrete, and as one end of it angled up out of the dirt, it had exposed what was clearly the bones of a foot, mottled and yellow but quite intact.

  “This here’s Trout,” Uncle Cicero introduced him to the circle of men in front of the bulldozer. “Joe Pike’s boy.” In addition to Grady Fulton, there was a state trooper, a deputy sheriff, two men from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (one of them the man with the camera). They all seemed to know Joe Pike.

  Trout stared at the foot. “Ever seen skeletal remains before, Trout?” the deputy asked.

  “Yes sir,” Trout said. “Biology class.” The skeleton in biology class at Ohatchee High School had dangled from a wire contraption and was affectionately referred to as “Lubert,” after the skin-and-bones principal of the school. But this -- this bony foot poking through freshly-turned earth, rudely disturbed from long, dark, quiet rest -- there was something sad, even embarassing about it. Like stumbling onto some terribly private act. Trout had a sudden urge to cover the foot with something -- a sheet, a shirt, Grady Fulton’s Nok-A-Homa baseball cap, anything.

  “Is it a man or a woman?” he asked.

  The deputy raised one foot, balanced on the other, placed the sole of his shoe next to the sole of the skeletal foot. “Man, I’d say. Size ten.” The deputy lowered his foot and they all stood there for a moment, considering that.

  Then Grady Fulton pulled his hands out of his back pocket, turned his head and sent an expertly-aimed stream of tobacco juice at the ground next to the bulldozer. “Well, God rest his soul and all that. But I got work to do if we gonna finish this up by dark, Cicero.”

  “You can’t move the bulldozer, Grady,” Uncle Cicero said.

  “What do you mean, I can’t move the bulldozer?”

  Uncle Cicero stuck his thumbs into his gun belt. “It’s part of the crime scene.”

  “What do you mean, crime scene,” Grady said, waving his hand at the foot. “It’s just some poor old dead sonofabitch.”

  “Skeletal remains,” Cicero said evenly. “Of unknown origin. Until I know who it is and how he got here, I have to make a presumption of homicide. And I’d appreciate it if you’d have a little more respect for the deceased.”

  “Awright, awright,” Grady said, his voice rising. “Get Joe Pike down here and let him mumble a few words over the sonof…the deceased. But I got dirt to move.”

  Grady turned toward the bulldozer.

  “If you get up on that bulldozer, Grady, I’ll arrest you,” Cicero said.

  Grady turned slowly back to Cicero and stared at him for a moment, his jaw working like crazy on the chew. Then Grady looked at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation man, the one without the camera.

  “Don’t look at me,” the man said. “This is Cicero’s jurisdiction. But he’s right – this is, for now, a crime scene.”

  Grady stood there awhile longer, then took off his Nok-A-Homa cap and scratched his head, put the cap back on, looked down at the ground and scratched at the dirt with the toe of a boot. Finally he looked up at Cicero again and said, “How long?”

  “Could be a couple of days,” Cicero said.

  “Shit,” Grady said quietly.

  “We got to get the Crime Scene Unit over here and,” Cicero waved his hand over the general area, “process the crime scene. It’ll be at least tomorrow because they’re tied up in Thomson. After that, it depends on them. Meantime, I intend to secure the crime scene, which includes any…” he waved at the bulldozer, “object in the general proximity which might have a bearing…”

  “Shit,” Grady said again, not so quietly this time. “So in the meantime, you’re just gonna hold up my bulldozer.”

  “And you.”

  “Me?” Grady’s voice rose a couple of octaves.

  “To give a statement.”

  “I was running my dozer and I dug up a skeleton. That’s my statement.” Grady was yelling now.

  “Tomorrow,” Cicero said patiently. “I want you here when the Crime Scene unit arrives. About eight should do it.”

  Trout marveled, mouth slightly ajar. Cicero was…what? Cool, that’s what. In charge, unflappable, professional. Talking law enforcement lingo. Just like a real police chief. Aunt Alma should see him now. They all should see him.

  Grady Fulton threw up his arms. “What am I gonna tell Wal-Mart?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned with a jerk and stalked away toward the crowd on the sidewalk behind the yellow tape.

  “I’ll write you an excuse,” Cicero called out.

  Then he looked at Trout. And winked.

  TEN

  “Tell me about Cicero,” Uncle Phinizy said.

  “He was terrific,” Trout said. “He just took charge of things. Like a…”

  “Police chief,” Phinizy finished. He took a long last drag from his cigarette, held the smoke inside while he stubbed the butt in an overflowing ashtray, then finally exhaled, aiming at the open window. He picked up the whiskey and water from the table at his elbow, held the g
lass up to the light and swirled its contents with a shake of his wrist, tinkling ice against the rim, admiring the amber color. Then he took a sip, swished it around in his mouth, swallowed, and made a satisfied clicking sound with his tongue against his palate. It was an art form, like his smoking.

  Phinizy looked awful -- the furrowed skin of his face gray, stretched tight and dry like parchment around his skull, white hair thin and wispy. He seemed to have shrunk in the stifling heat of the upstairs garage apartment. It was an oven, even here in the shank of the day with the sun disappearing toward Atlanta over the tops of the pecan trees at the edge of Aunt Alma’s yard. The place had baked all morning and then steamed in the wake of the afternoon thunderstorm. A good bit of the storm seemed to have made its way inside through the leaky roof. Phinizy had placed a few pots and pans around to catch the worst of the drips, but there were puddles here and there on the floor. The thick heat assaulted Trout when he opened the screen door and stepped inside to find Phinizy reared back in his recliner, drink at hand, cigarette smoke curling about his head, reading a book: Hugo Black and the Bill of Rights. Phinizy paid him no attention. Trout hesitated in the open doorway.

  “Damn a fellow who can’t make up his mind whether to come in or stay out,” Phinizy said from behind his book.

  Trout stepped inside, navigated amongst the pots and puddles to the sofa, sat down, waited, sweated. Aunt Alma should fix the place up, Trout thought, at least put on a new roof and an air conditioner in the window. It was wretched -- dingy, leaky, permeated with the smells of mildew and rotting wallpaper and the rank odor of gasoline and motor oil from the garage below. Alma might not be able to kick him out, but she wouldn’t lift a finger to improve the accomodations, either. Phinizy could fix up the place himself, but he wouldn’t give Alma the satisfaction. A Moseley standoff. Industrial strength stubbornness. It seemed to run in the family.

  After awhile, Phinizy turned the book face-down in his lap. “Well, tell me about the ruckus.” And Trout told him about Cicero and the skeleton in the vacant lot.

  “You seem surprised about Cicero,” Phinizy said. “How do you think he got to be police chief in the first place?”