by Pat Spears
“Are you forgetting his stash of money? Miss Mary’s his wife and Hazel his lawful child. They’re entitled. Certainly not you.” William scoffed, his thin upper lip pulled over his teeth, and he wiped sweat from his face bright as a baboon’s ass.
It was Jodie’s turn at outrage and she shouted, “Money? What money? Everything he owns could be hauled away in a damn goat cart.” Since her arrival Maggie had delivered every bite of food. When she’d asked, Maggie made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t to stick her nose in what didn’t concern her.
“Don’t play innocent.” Hazel smirked as if she’d gained some moral high ground Jodie knew nothing about.
Red tugged on Buster’s collar and struggled to gain his feet. His body swayed and a grating sound ripped from his throat. “Get from here.” He raised his good arm and pointed toward the door. His eyes flashed with anger, leaving no doubt as to his meaning. He displayed more fight than Jodie had seen until now.
William leaped to his feet, a chair leg tangling in the worn rug, and declared, “He’s done things. We have proof. You’ll see. My wife’s God’s servant in this. Her mother’s interests will be protected.” He turned and stomped out of the house, Hazel following him down the rickety porch steps. They got into the Chevy and sped away.
Jodie turned to Red. “What the hell was that all about?”
Red waved her off, turned his back to her scrutiny, and made his labored way toward the bedroom. “Damnit, Red. Why won’t you tell me?”
She replayed the parting scene over and over in her mind, deciding that Red may have believed the scrimmage had gone his way. But the sharp echo of Hazel’s red pumps rang in Jodie’s ears as a warning to what surely lay ahead.
Forty-Four
Maxine’s letter arrived in the rusted mailbox on the road, and although she continued to lament the loss of Teddy and the family they’d had, she admitted that in Teddy’s absence, she and her kids were settling into a difficult new normal. Jodie worried that news of Teddy was certain to become even more scarce.
The letter also included a newspaper clipping, dated two weeks earlier. Jodie read through tears of grief and anger the blurred account of Elizabeth Stover, an employee at the jeans factory, who was reported to have fallen from her employer’s loading dock. Her substantial injuries required hospitalization. The plant’s spokesman claimed Stover had received prior warnings about her on-the-job drinking, declaring the unfortunate incident was her fault. The article further reported that there were no witnesses to the accident.
Jodie knew the accusation against Bitsy was a lie. She’d drunk her share of days and weekends, but never on company time. That miserable job was the one thing that stood between her and returning to the cotton fields. She’d never jeopardize that. A more likely story was that Bitsy had continued to gamble, and to lose.
Maxine wrote that local gossip held that after the woman checked out of the hospital, there was neither word of her whereabouts nor that of her young daughter, but that her son was serving time in a juvenile detention center for robbery and assault on an arresting officer. The plight of a drunkard and failed mother held little interest beyond finger-pointing, and her story had predictably given way to fresher gossip. Jodie didn’t want to think about how much Bitsy likely owed Snake, or where her daughter was if she’d run without her. If Bitsy had kept Silas’s number, she might call. Then, what good could she do for a desperate woman on the run? She had no vehicle, no cash, nothing. Bitsy came into this fucked world alone, and she was destined to go out the same.
Jodie laced up her high-tops, sprinted down the lane and onto the county road. She ran blindly, her rage driving her legs until they turned rubbery and her lungs burned. She dropped onto the shoulder of the road, among intermittent patches of sandspurs, and wept openly, ignoring the curious who slowed their vehicles to stare.
A week with no word from either William or Hazel, and Jodie had begun to consider that her earlier estimate of threat may have been overblown. Although Red’s speech was improving, he had grown quieter. He sat long hours, slumped in his porch rocker while he sipped whiskey, doing well to count the number of crows perched along the electrical wire. He stared in the direction of the road as if he awaited the arrival of an unwelcome messenger.
Concerned that Red’s health had taken a turn for the worse, Jodie flagged Silas, asking that he call Maggie about her worries.
Midmorning, Maggie’s truck pulled into the yard. She stopped on the porch and took the rocker next to Red. She leaned in close, and he whispered.
Maggie came into the house, walked straight to the phonograph, and began searching among the old record jackets. When she was done, she asked, “That first day you were here, I noticed these old records scattered about. Do you remember me asking you if you’d messed with them?”
“And you remember I told you I found them that way.”
“Is that still your story?” Maggie’s tone was firm, her gaze steady.
“Why would I need to change what I said?”
“You wouldn’t. But somebody did.”
“What does any of that mean?”
“Can’t say exactly. But I can tell you it’s not good.” Maggie walked back onto the porch. Red listened and slowly nodded, his weak arm resting on the rocker, his hand trembling.
Jodie overheard Maggie say, “Yeah, of course, I’ll look into it. But how many times did I try telling you?”
Red raised a hand, hushing her.
“Damn, Red Dozier, you’re one stubborn fool.” Maggie walked off the porch, got into her truck, and sped away.
Jodie went onto the porch and Red looked up at her.
“I worry … she got me cornered … this go ‘round.”
“Is this about you and me?” She tasted the bitterness of righteous anger between her teeth.
Red struggled to come to his feet. “Was always about that … and more. What it’ll take this time .…” His body swayed, and he caught to a porch post.
“Damn you, Red. Maybe you thought bringing me here settled any debt you felt you owed my mama. But even before that time with the comic books, you knew what went on in your absence. Did you ever care?”
He clung to the post and said, “I’m tired. Think … I’ll lie down.” He made his clumsy way across the porch and upon reaching the door, he turned back, her name on his lips, but he said no more.
Jodie borrowed Maggie’s truck and drove to Silas’s station. She parked beneath the oak and walked to where he leaned into the hood of a ’56 Ford Falcon. Tapping him on the shoulder, she whispered her question.
He straightened, and without as much as a greeting, he guided her away from the piqued interest of his helper.
“That’s got to be the second dumbest thing I’ve ever heard out of your mouth.” He took an oily rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands; she knew him to be stalling.
“I’m not playing, Silas. Tell me what you know.”
He looked at the ground between his boots. The skin at his temples furrowed, and he said, “You’re asking me what I know about Red breaking the law in some of his political shenanigans.”
“Screw you. I’m wasting my damn time.” She turned to leave.
“Hold up there, will you?” He closed the distance. “What’s got you so fired up?”
“Maggie came straight over like I asked. The two talked out of earshot, and whatever passed between them had both plenty stirred up.”
“That’s nothing. They’ve got decades of secrets between them.” A duplicitous smile broke across his face as if he meant to dismiss her concerns, until she told him about Maggie’s questioning.
He stared in the direction of the empty street, and when he looked back, he was clearly worried.
“Hell, Jodie, as far as I know, backstabbing and double-crossing among politicians aren’t crimes unless weapons are involved.”
She continued on toward the truck.
Silas jogged alongside. “Why’s trying to talk sense to you got to be like butt
ing a damn stump?”
She slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine.
“Wait.” He placed his hand on the door frame. “With all your damn rearing, I nearly forgot about that gal friend’s call.”
“What call? What gal friend?”
“I’ve got it here. Somewhere.” He patted down his coverall pockets and came up empty. “Must’ve left it in the wrecker. Was headed out just before I took the call.” He trotted to the wrecker, sorted through a stack of papers on the dash, and returned, handing her a name and number scratched on a Dixie cup.
“You sure you got this right?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. She wasn’t the sweetest woman I’ve ever talked to, still she kept saying ‘urgent.”’ He paused, tilting his head to one side. “Then, she didn’t really seem all that upset. Whispered through most of what was a one-sided conversation.”
Jodie shifted the truck into gear and he stepped back a ways.
“Don’t you want to use the phone?” He motioned toward the office.
“You still keep the key behind the kerosene tank?”
He nodded, his confusion obvious.
“I’ll come back later, if that’s all right.”
She didn’t wait for his answer, but pulled the truck onto the street, working through the gears and trying to come up with any explanation for Teddy’s urgency—anything that blunted her memory of Teddy’s last narrow escape.
Jodie parked the truck behind the shop, shut off the headlights, and ran a zigzag pattern across the lot, avoiding rain puddles, thunder shaking the ground beneath her feet. Reaching the station’s overhang, she was drenched, and she stomped her feet, shedding water soaked into her shoes and jeans. She retrieved the key and let herself into the office. It felt no bigger than a Buster Brown shoebox and smelled like an old toolbox. The pay phone hung on a back wall.
She shivered, her gut cramping, and she wished for easier, but there was no preparing for what she might hear. There was only doing it or giving up. She gave the operator the number, dropped six dimes into the slot, and asked to know when three minutes were up.
Teddy answered on the third ring, and she was sucking air as though she’d been running.
“Teddy, what’s the urgency? Are you all right?”
“Jodie girl, you’re gonna want to come here to Mobile.” Her voice was excited, in the way she’d spoken of Maxine’s boy’s base hits.
“Mobile? What the hell are you talking about?” Maxine had written that Teddy was renting an extra room from Crystal Ann. Or maybe it was a couch.
“Something good here. Real good.” Teddy gulped, and Jodie figured Teddy was drinking. But she’d never known Teddy to drink heavily. It was too risky for her. “That bat-brained bitch Brenda pulled out of here three days ago. And damned if she didn’t steal Crystal Ann’s car. She won’t make it to Kentucky in that piece of junk. Hope her whoring ass is stranded on some mountain road in the company of half-wits with their dicks out.”
Jodie’s throat had seized, and whatever else she’d thought to say stuck in her throat. She eased her butt along the wall and sat on the floor with its decades of ground-in boot filth.
“Jodie, did you hear what I said?”
“I did, and how’s this different from all the other times?”
“Trust me. Crystal Ann is done with Brenda.”
“And you know this how?” She’d need to hear it from Crystal Ann, and she’d still hold her suspicions. She wasn’t about to set herself up for that kind of emotional tumble.
“Okay, so maybe she does need a bit more time to figure her next move. But that’s where you come in.” Teddy took another big swig from whatever she was drinking.
Jodie teetered back and forth, struggling to stay on top of all that pulled her down. She only needed to remember how her time since the morning Crystal Ann drove from the clearing had done little more than drag—empty time. She stayed half-crazy with loneliness and was so horny Maggie had teased she’d likely be blind by the time she left Catawba.
“Jodie, trust me.”
“Go to hell, Teddy.”
Jodie sat, her forehead resting against her forearms She trusted no emotion that made her feel so excruciatingly vulnerable.
Forty-Five
The silence between Jodie and Red stayed, neither seeming to know how to open a door to the other, and Jodie wasn’t surprised when Maggie set about her remedy for what both she and Maggie knew to be much more than a family squabble. Still, she called Silas, and on the following Saturday they gathered for the conciliatory supper Maggie had fussed over.
Silas stepped through the door smelling of his familiar splash of aftershave and wearing pressed jeans and a blue dress shirt with the sleeves turned back two neat turns. He hugged Jodie and followed her into the kitchen. He stepped to the table where Red had stationed himself and took Red’s hand in a two-hand grip.
Maggie looked up from chipping ice and smiled. Silas leaned and kissed her on the cheek, and she blushed, popping him a quick one on his behind. He took the ice pick and finished chipping ice for tea.
“All right, we’re not strangers, here. Everyone get to the table. Food won’t be good cold.”
Her optimism rang a bit hollow, but it was clear Maggie meant to take aim at the awkward silence that hovered over the table. She set about picking bones from the fried catfish on Red’s plate, coaxing him to eat the way she might a picky child.
They were well into the meal, a fragile ease displacing their earlier discomfort, when Silas turned to Maggie. “I do believe you’ve outdone yourself.” His praise was genuine enough, but his tone carried a tinge of some disagreeable matter yet unspoken. He took a deep breath, his features pinched, and still he hesitated.
Jodie laid her fork down and braced for whatever she was about to hear; it wasn’t going to be one of Silas’s funny stories. Red leaned in, but since the stroke, reading his facial expressions wasn’t easy.
“Boy, damned if you ain’t wearing me out.”
“Scuttlebutt about town is that William and Hazel have hired that new lawyer friend of Walker Junior’s. Something to do with Red needing their help managing his affairs.”
Quick, weighted glances passed between Red and Maggie.
“Then we know Tubby Slatmore favors idle gossip over the dull truth any day of the week,” Silas quickly countered.
“Yeah, but his gossipy mama’s right there in the thick of it,” Maggie quipped.
Red’s face flashed with color, his spastic hand flinging about, overturning his tea glass. His garbled words spit from his slack mouth.
“‘Damn her rotten heart’ is right,” Maggie repeated, coming to her feet. “But hold still, before your rearing brings on another stroke.” She reached for a dishtowel and soaked up the spill. Red’s rant made him visibly weaker, and he leaned against Maggie’s hip.
Silas fussed with righting the tipped salt shaker and scraping spilled salt into his hand. He seemed confused as to what he should do but then tossed the salt over his shoulder.
Maggie’s hard gaze fixed on Silas. “It’s not that we don’t know the law can go contrary to everything that’s right.”
“Aw, come on, Maggie. Why don’t we finish this fine meal and leave lawyering to lawyers? It’s likely no more than loose talk.”
“Silas, you of all people should know any chance of Red tangling with Judge Walker can’t be taken lightly. He’ll be on Red like a buzzard on road kill.”
“What the hell are you three not telling me?” Jodie felt they were playing a game of blind man’s bluff. She’d watched Silas’s anguished face, and was convinced he wouldn’t have risked upsetting Red on the strength of gossip alone, but something had backed him off.
Red nodded toward Silas, demanding that he tell what it was they alone shared.
“Hell, Mr. Red. Why stir an old stink?” He looked to Maggie against Red’s insistence.
Maggie’s chin jutted forward and she, too, pinned Silas to the truth.
Cornered, he looked toward the door as if he suddenly remembered a hundred places he’d rather be.
“All right. Clara Lee and me messed around some after she married Walker Junior. But it sure didn’t seem to matter to her.”
Now it was Jodie’s turn to wish she was someplace other than sitting across the table from the eyes that watched her chest rise and fall, her shock nearly taking her wind.
“Sheriff Walker was in a tight reelection primary, and everything turned to shit when his opponent paid the motel clerk a couple of bills to rat us out.”
Once again he looked to Maggie, but she pressed him for more.
“Walker had Junior rush Clara Lee out of town before she could decide to tell the truth. Then the sonofabitch threw my surprised ass in jail.” He blushed deeply, bowed his head, avoiding eye contact.
“Sonofabitch is right,” Maggie echoed. “And would you believe on charges of kidnapping and rape?”
Jodie gasped. “No, no, how could he?” Had Clara Lee been forced to give a statement accusing Silas? Against all she knew, she still didn’t want to believe Clara Lee was capable of such a selfish act.
“You’re forgetting Walker is the law.” The sound of Maggie gritting her teeth against such an injustice was audible.
The very thought of Silas as a rapist left a foul taste in Jodie’s mouth, and while she knew him to be a habitually unfaithful husband, she was just as certain he could never be a rapist. He’d pressed her for sex after she turned fourteen, but he’d never attempted to force her.
Maggie glanced at Silas, and maybe out of pity she took up the story.
“Walker figured less damage if voters believed his daughter-in-law was raped. Lucky for Silas, Walker’s race for reelection heated up, forcing him to bargain dropping charges against Silas if Red agreed to double-cross his opponent. Deliver votes to him instead.
“Red didn’t trust Walker. Instead he took Walker’s money and double-crossed him. To this day, he holds a fierce grudge.”
Jodie winced.
Red didn’t speak, only nodded, conceding his guilt.