by Joan Hess
I wiped baby seepage off my face. “I don’t know, but he appears to be unharmed. His clothing is intact. He sounded fine when he appeared.”
“From where?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. We searched pretty thoroughly.”
“Thank gawd he’s okay. That’s all that matters.”
I sucked in a lungful of air and exhaled it slowly. “I need to know what happened, Gwynnie.”
“I don’t know,” she said as she nuzzled the grimy lines across his neck. “All I was doing was shopping. Leona gave me the list this morning, along with some cash.” She flapped a piece of paper at me. “Tomato sauce, skim milk, low-fat ricotta cheese, white onions because they’re cheapest, bell peppers—”
Chip raised his wet, blotchy face to stare at the list, then began to howl as if he were mortally offended by the very premise of such a dietary regime. The noise evoked the image of an emaciated wolf dying on a distant hilltop, bereft of mayonnaise, cream, and a pat of good old-fashioned butter.
I sympathized.
“We might ought to go,” said Gwynnie. “Chip’s sort of upset. He gets like this when …”
“I need to ask you some questions,” I said, trying not to wince as Chip took it up another octave or two. “Why don’t you come by the PD later?”
She tightened her grasp on the child until he had no choice but to subside into hiccupy gasps. “I will when I can, but I got lots of chores waiting me and I’ll have to fix supper afterward. All he did was wander off and give us a scare. Maybe I got a little crazy on account of thinking I saw—” She clamped down on her lip.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Somehow or other he must have got outside. A passerby opened the door for him and he came back in. He’s fine, and all he needs is some animal crackers and a nap. I thank you kindly for coming like you did.”
She gave me a trembly smile over her shoulder as she went out into the parking lot. Millicent and Elsie nodded at her. Marjorie did not deign to turn her head.
I was trying to figure out what had happened, when Ruby Bee rushed into the store.
“A baby’s been kidnapped?” she said. “You got to do something, Arly!”
“He’s in his mother’s arms,” I told her gently.
“But Francine said Elsie said—”
“Gwynnie has taken him home. He got away from her and she became anxious. He came back of his own accord. No harm, no foul.”
“You sure of that?”
I felt an unpleasant tickle up my spine. “What do you mean, Ruby Bee?”
“I saw that man what calls himself Lazarus slinking around the corner of the building while I was coming across the road. If he had this poor innocent child for even a moment …”
“Exactly what did you see him do?” I demanded.
“He was acting like that sickly fox that skulked around Perkin’s pond, chewing on the ducks and coughing up so many white feathers all over his front yard that you’d think it was a Bing Crosby Christmas movie. He, meaning Lazarus, cut across the parking lot and went behind the Suds of Fun. I can’t tell you after that, but he looked mighty furtive, if you know what I mean. You ought to do something before he molests more children.”
I held up my hands. “As far as any of us know, he hasn’t molested anyone. You sound as if you’re ready to rally a lynch party, for pity’s sake.”
Ruby Bee had the decency to lower her eyes. “He just has that look about him.”
“What look?”
She rallied. “Well, he’s living in the trailer park, for starters. Why would anybody what didn’t have to choose to live there? What’s more, he doesn’t have a regular job or any visible means of support. He doesn’t get any disability checks from the government. Most everybody else out there does in some form or fashion.”
“Would that imply that Eula Lemoy is checking his mailbox on a daily basis?”
“She may have taken a gander now and then,” Ruby Bee admitted. “She has to be careful, you know. He’s living right across the road from her. What’s more, there’s another fellow that moved into the unit down by the back fence. Eula ain’t the ‘Welcome Wagon’ lady at the Pot O’ Gold, but she’s entitled to protect herself. She hinted pretty darkly that she’s doing just that.”
“What does that mean?” I asked grimly.
“How should I know?”
“Does she have some sort of weapon?”
“Reckon you ought to ask her yourself.”
I caught her arm before she could turn away. “Does she have a gun? The last thing we need in Maggody are pistol-packin’ mamas in housedresses and pink sponge curlers. We’re not in some urban ghetto with rampaging street gangs. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Ruby Bee gave me a mulish look. “Then ask her yourself. Now if you’ll kindly remove your hand, I need to get back before the dumplings turn tough. Unlike some folks that feel free to spend their days reading travel magazines, I have a living to make.”
She darted off, leaving me to eye the checkers, who were heading toward their cash registers. Customers were returning into the store. Muzak was lulling us with a saccharine version of a Beatles hit. If there’d been a crisis of monumental significance, it had dissipated like morning fog.
I decided it might be time to have a word or two with the mysterious new resident at the trailer park. Afterward, I would have several words with Eula, who was likely to be as dangerous to herself as anyone else, if she was, as Ruby Bee had implied, armed.
My car squeaked in protest as it bumped across the cattle guard at the entrance to the Pot O’ Gold. I had no idea if the embedded bars were meant to keep cows in or keep them out, having rarely encountered livestock within the city limits. Since there was no adjoining fence on either side of the gate, it seemed to me that just about any animal could enter or leave as it wished. Looking at the rows of rusty, mud-splattered trailers, I knew which I would have preferred.
Eula’s homestead was easily identified by the clothesline laden with dingy underwear and thin cotton blouses. Her blinds were drawn, but I had little doubt at least one of her eyeballs was glued to the glass.
I parked in front of the trailer across from hers and sat for a minute to figure out what I thought I was doing. When nothing came to mind, I got out of the car and knocked on the flimsy storm door. “Mr. Lazarus!” I called. “I’d like to speak to you.”
“Come around back, then, unless you want to conduct this in public,” said a churlish voice. “Might entertain my neighbors, and gawd knows they could stand it. They’ve been keeping track of my farts and belches for more than a month. Let’s give ’em something with substance.”
I went around the trailer and found my would-be perp hosing down a very large motorcycle. He was wearing threadbare jeans, a camouflage jacket with bulging pockets, and leather boots with steel-tipped toes. All in all, he was dressed for a brawl.
I was not in the mood to oblige him.
“Lazarus?” I said, although Estelle’s description had been on the button: greasy, shoulder-length hair, disturbingly intense eyes, and the overall ambience of someone long off his medication. Just what Maggody needed, I thought, wondering if I myself needed something more along the lines of backup.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Chief of Police Arly Hanks.” I stopped as I heard giggles from the road. Darla Jean McIlhaney and Heather Riley, two of Maggody’s less intellectually endowed high school girls, came around the corner of the trailer and stumbled into each other in their haste to catch themselves.
“Arly,” breathed Darla Jean. “What are you doin’ here?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Heather licked her lips. “Selling ads for the yearbook. For only ten dollars, you can buy a space to congratulate the graduating class. You want to buy one? Your ma always does.”
Darla Jean backed away. “Come on, Heather, Arly’s probably arresting him or something. Let’s try Miz Lemoy across the road.
She bought one last year.”
Once they’d scuttled out of sight, I said, “Nice to see you’re becoming a valued member of the community. Before too long, you’ll be taking covered dishes to the Wednesday night potlucks and volunteering to mow the grass at the county old folks’ home.”
“Be still, my heart. I’ve been thinking ever since I got here is that the only thing missing from my life was a cop. Now it seems I got myself a right cute one.”
“Lucky you,” I murmured. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really.” I sat down on a concrete block below the back door. “You were over at the SuperSaver a few minutes ago, right?”
He dropped the hose. “My comin’s and goin’s any business of yours, Chief Hanks?”
“This is a small town, in case you hadn’t noticed. Everybody’s business is my business. I’m not keeping track of your bodily functions, but there was an incident at the SuperSaver. You were seen in the vicinity.”
“Doin’ what?”
I made an attempt to lighten up, although something about him was making me edgy. “Nothing serious. A witness mentioned that you came around to the parking lot from the back of the building. I’d like to know what you were doing and if you saw anyone else.”
“You think I was doing something illegal?” he said as he went over to the faucet and turned off the water. “I am a simple man, Ms. Hanks. I have turned away from worldly desires, and abandoned carnal indulgences. I’m merely an itinerant poet, a scribe of humanity’s foibles, an historian of the inevitable decline of civilization as the rain forests are decimated and the skies befouled by noxious fumes. Our bodies have been tainted by polluted water and chemically sullied food. I write what I see, but I send my words into the stratosphere so that I can never be accused of allying myself with the parties destined to destroy the planet through the wanton waste of wood pulp.”
He’d lost me, for the most part, although I did stand up in case I needed to restrain him. “Look, Lazarus,” I said evenly, “all I’m asking is if you were behind the SuperSaver a few minutes ago. Save your sermons for Sundays.”
“A day of rest for the myopic.”
“We’re talking about today. Were you there?”
“Why do you want to know?”
I wondered if I could take him. He was a good three inches taller than I, but pound for pound, we were about equal. His face was pasty and his eyes were bloodshot. Despite his bold posture, he was having trouble holding my gaze, and his hands were so trembly that he couldn’t have held much else.
“I want to know if you were there,” I said. “Answer the question.”
“What if I was?”
“A little boy disappeared about an hour ago. He’s safe and sound now, but I need to find out if anyone might have entered the supermarket through the back doors. We tolerate a lot of eccentric people here in Maggody, but no one—and I mean no one—endangers a child. Why don’t you show me some proper identification?”
“I have cast away all vestiges of the police state,” he said, sidling away from me. “I ask for nothing, and therefore require nothing from Big Brother and his confederates. There is no longer any record of my birth, nor will there be of my death. My only legacy will be my poetry swirling into the sky like embers from a bonfire. That which you call God will embrace it.”
Maggody has a remarkably high percentage of weirdos per capita, due for the most part to the Buchanon clan. Diesel still lives in a cave on Cotter’s Ridge, surviving on squirrels and rabbits. Amber Waves has not come down from her treehouse in over sixteen years; the number of sightseers (or voyeurs, if you will) dwindled after she took to dumping her chamber pot without warning. Peteet, as I’d been reminded, shelters his privates with aluminum foil, although it was hard to imagine what superior life forms might want with his sperm. Buchanons were not the only contributors to the statistics. Merle Hardcock, who is thought to be at least eighty years old, had gone through a phase wherein he fancied himself to be Evel Knievel and built a ramp to jump Boone Creek on his motorcycle. Wet dreams, so to speak. Although she’d recanted afterward, Dahlia had declared she had been impregnated by almond-eyed aliens and cried for the better part of a week. Brother Verber remains perpetually obsessed with the notion that satanists are performing perverse sexual rituals somewhere within his self-ordained diocese. Not even Ruby Bee and Estelle could cut the mustard, so to speak, if tested by psychologists in starchy white jackets. And, okay, maybe I’d seen Elvis a few months back.
Definitely time to test the drinking water.
I turned on my less-than-charming cop persona. “If you can’t show me proper identification, then I have no choice but to take you to the sheriff’s office, where you’ll be detained until we can track down your record. I hear the food’s okay but the mattresses are thinner than tortillas. It’s up to you.”
“Are you accusing me of something?”
I was exasperated enough to accuse him of provoking earthquakes, sinking the Titanic, and anything else that came to mind. “Just show me a driver’s license, a canceled check, a birth certificate, or a damn magazine with an address label. Work with me, Lazarus. I have no desire to spend the afternoon at the Stump County jail. Sheriff Dorfer will start asking about reports that are overdue, and I’ll be almost as miserable as you will. Then again, eventually I’ll leave. You’ll spend quality time with Big Brother’s less-evolved kin. Trust me—they work there.”
He sat down on the worn leather seat of his bike. “All I want is to be left alone so that I can walk in the woods and explore my intrinsic spirituality. The cash I’ve saved pays for rent and utilities. There’s nothing left over for luxuries like food.”
I realized where we were going. “And the Dumpster behind the SuperSaver provides that?”
Lazarus shrugged. “I can usually find some bruised fruit and vegetables. That broad that owns Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill, as in your mother, sets out packages wrapped in foil every now and then. She’s gonna give everybody in town a coronary if she doesn’t cut back on the grease. High cholesterol is a primary cause of heart disease, you know. Lard’s more dangerous than a gun.”
“I’ll mention it,” I said dryly. “The Salvation Army has a shelter and a soup kitchen in Farberville. They’re nice people who can help you get into a substance abuse program and then arrange some kind of vocational training. Don’t you think you might be better off—”
“I do not abuse drugs, Ms. Hanks. You may not approve of my current lifestyle, but, frankly, I don’t approve of yours.”
“Mine?” I echoed, surprised. “You don’t know anything about me, buddy boy. What’s more, it’s none of your damn business.”
“My position exactly.”
I felt my face turn warm as I glared at him. “Then just answer my questions and I’ll leave you in peace. Were you behind the SuperSaver earlier this afternoon, and did you see anyone approach a blond-haired toddler?”
“Certain interpretations are beyond my control.”
At some level, I knew I was losing the skirmish, if not the whole damn war, but I advanced on him. “It’s a straightforward question that requires little more than a simple answer. As I said earlier, I don’t want to haul you over to the sheriff’s department in Farberville and destroy the rest of what might otherwise have been a perfectly agreeable day. Take a moment to commune with the woodland deities or whomever, then describe your actions over the last two hours. If you don’t cooperate, you may find yourself with a boyfriend tonight.”
Lazarus shook his head. “I’ve never been accused of doing loathsome things to children. All I want is to be left alone. I’ll admit I was pawing through the discarded produce behind the supermarket. I found some salvageable lettuce and a particularly fine potato that I intend to have for dinner. I have broken no laws. You may believe I’m certifiable simply because I have repudiated certain societal norms in order to seek a more quixotic overview of reality. Frankly,
my dear Ms. Hanks, I don’t give a damn.”
5
Mrs. Jim Bob sat at the dinette in the rectory of the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall (which may have sounded more swanky than a silver trailer parked under a clump of sycamore trees, but that’s all it was), chewing on a pencil as she envisioned what might be necessary to insure success in an arena fraught with the potential for unseemly behavior. Her posture was erect, her eyes atwitch with calculation, her lips curled with humble awareness of her talent for fastidious attention to detail, along with her uncanny organizational skills. She was not president of the Missionary Society for no reason. “I have a very nice punch bowl and more than enough cups and plates,” she said, “but I’m sorry to say I see no way around the necessity of using paper napkins.”
Brother Verber himself could have used one at the moment. His forehead was damp, and his hands were so clammy that he was battling the urge to wipe them on his knees as she stared at him. He took a subtle swipe with a handkerchief, then beamed at her as befitting his position as her spiritual guidance counselor, if not her assistant caterer. “No one’s gonna complain about paper napkins,” he said encouragingly. “We use plastic knives and forks every Wednesday night at the potluck dinners, and nobody’s ever said a word. The Lord blessed us with all varieties of synthetics, from polyester to things like Styrofoam and paper cups and balloons and …”
He was perilously near mentioning condoms, when—praise the Lord—Mrs. Jim Bob cut him off. “The way I see it is that I’ll acknowledge Lottie’s involvement, then invite you to say a prayer to protect our youth from the corrupting influence of pornography. After that, we’ll all have coffee and cookies while we get better acquainted.”
“That sounds mighty fine,” Brother Verber said, wondering if he should pull out his lime green leisure suit to prove to her how much the Lord loved plastics. He was loath to preen, but he knew he cut a fine figure in it. Why, when he’d put it on and gone strutting into dens of iniquity in case members of his congregation were sliding into sin, several of the ladies had been real complimentary about his taste, one going so far as to describe him as a “margarita pinup boy.” The aerosol hair had been less successful, what with the ladies thinking they might run their fingers through his tresses. A goodly portion of said tresses had ended up between their fingers, creating the unfortunate impression he had a nest of spiders on his head. It seemed several of the ladies had a thing about spiders.