The Search for Belle Prater

by White, Ruth

  It was then that I saw in Joseph’s dark eyes the grief that he had so carefully concealed from us until this moment.

  “Mama died the last of October,” he said in a quivering voice.

  I felt a hot stinging behind my own eyelids.

  “Oh, I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Joseph,” said Miz Lincoln as she touched his arm. “How did she die?”

  “Heart attack.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Joseph told his story with lots of feeling, specially when he came to the part where Ethan dumped him at the home of a man he hardly knew.

  “Your father first, then Ethan abandoned you, too,” his aunt said softly.

  “Ethan and me, we coulda made it together,” Joseph said. “But I couldn’t make it by myself.”

  “Course not,” Miz Lincoln said sympathetically. “But you and me, Joseph? I’m sure we’ll do just fine.”

  For a minute there was no sound except for the crackling of wood in the fire and the ticking of a miniature grandfather clock on the mantel. The rain had slowed.

  “I don’t want to be a burden to you, Aunt Carlotta,” Joseph said.

  “A burden?” his aunt said with a funny, strangled sound that was a cross between a laugh and a sob. “My boy, you couldn’t be a burden to me if you worked at it. Don’t you know the years I spent caring for your father were my happiest? Having you here will be like having him with me again. It will give my life new meaning. Besides, I have a bedroom all ready for you.”

  “A bedroom?” Joseph said. “For me?”

  “Yes, I had it papered with cowboys and Indians for you and Ethan. I was hoping you two would come looking for your daddy or me someday. Now you, at least, are here to stay.”

  Joseph glanced around the living room. I wondered what he thought of his new home. Was he thinking he was safe at last? Was he imagining what it would be like to live here, and maybe see his father someday?

  “I’m sure Reeve will contact me eventually, Joseph,” Miz Lincoln said, “and we can tell him you’re here. You can decide if you want to see him or not. Whatever you decide, you will always have a home with me.”

  Woodrow went to the window and looked out. The rain was still pouring down. He glanced at his watch, then resettled himself beside me in front of the fire. I was relieved he did not suggest going out into the weather again.

  Miz Lincoln invited us to have an early supper with her, and presently we found ourselves seated around her table, enjoying a pot of navy beans, with cole slaw, corn bread, and butter. Woodrow, Cassie, and I made pure tee pigs of ourselves, but I noticed that Joseph merely picked at his food. I imagined he had too much emotion in him to taste anything proper. He didn’t say much at all, but he hung on to every word his aunt said.

  “So why did you kids come into Bluefield today?” Miz Lincoln finally turned her attention to me and Woodrow and Cassie.

  Woodrow began his story once more. As we sat around the table listening to my cousin again recalling the mysterious disappearance of his mother, it occurred to me that he was able to speak about the whole episode now like he was talking about somebody else. In the beginning, when Woodrow’s hurt was still fresh, he had been as pained as Joseph had been in describing his mother’s death.

  “And that’s why we are here,” Woodrow finished. “We thought it shouldn’t be so hard to find her in a small place like this, but we haven’t had any luck.”

  Then he brought out the photograph of his mama and handed it to Miz Lincoln. She pulled a pair of glasses from her apron pocket, placed them on her nose, and studied Aunt Belle’s face. All was quiet for a moment as we watched her heavy brows go into a frown.

  “She looks familiar,” she said at last, and it was like a mild explosion in the quiet room.

  “No kidding?” Woodrow said breathlessly.

  Miz Lincoln propped the picture up beside her water glass and scrutinized it carefully.

  “You said the story was big news at the time?” Miz Lincoln asked.

  “Yeah, it was in all the papers,” Woodrow said.

  “Then it’s possible that I saw her picture in the paper,” Miz Lincoln said thoughtfully. “But I don’t always read the newspaper, and I’ll declare, I can’t recall reading about this. I am sure I would remember such a story.”

  Woodrow moved quietly from his chair and went to stand behind Miz Lincoln to look over her shoulder, but he didn’t breathe for fear of disturbing her concentration.

  “It’s also possible that I saw her somewhere,” the woman mumbled at last, then turned to Woodrow and said, “Could you leave the photo with me?”

  Woodrow glanced toward the window again, and said, “I guess so. It seems like the rain is never gonna let up, so I won’t need it anymore today. And I got plenty more at home.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Miz Lincoln produced a pencil from the drawer of a nearby sideboard and asked Woodrow to write down the number where he could be reached. Woodrow scribbled Grandpa’s phone number on the back of the snapshot.

  “If you remember anything,” he said to Miz Lincoln, “call and let me know. Be sure and call collect. Grandpa will be happy to pay.”

  Shortly after four o’clock Woodrow, Cassie, and I pulled on our coats, preparing to walk to the bus station. Miz Lincoln, however, insisted on calling a taxi for us and paying the fare herself. She said children shouldn’t be running around in freezing rain, in near darkness, in a strange place, and I sure was glad she felt that way.

  When the taxi arrived, Joseph thanked us for helping him, and we were all kinda awkward and tongue-tied saying goodbye to him and Miz Lincoln.

  “I want to come searching again next Saturday,” Woodrow told them as we were going out the door. “Maybe I’ll see you then.”

  “What do you mean, ‘maybe’?” Miz Lincoln said. “If you come to Bluefield, you better come by and see us, or we’ll be mad, won’t we, Joseph?”

  “That’s right!” Joseph called after us. “We’ll be mad!”

  Then we waved at the two of them standing in the doorway together, as Cassie climbed into the taxi, with me following her, and Woodrow behind me.

  We were quiet on the way to the bus station. Woodrow turned his eyes toward the soggy town with its big oaks and cozy houses all in neat rows. Darkness was creeping over everything, and you could see lights burning behind the windows, and you knew it was warm and dry inside. You could probably smell supper in there, and you could hear children laughing or bickering, singing or whining.

  Woodrow was whispering, more to himself than to us. “Maybe she is here somewhere, behind one of these doors.”

  11

  Several of the same people we had traveled with in the morning were on the bus going home. There was the big old woman with the pipe and June Honaker with her baby. When the Luckys got on the bus, I could see that their mama had been crying, and the kids didn’t look too happy, either. The toothless man must have stayed on in Bluefield with his sister, Tulip.

  There were also some newcomers, including two pretty ladies we knew as Tootsie and Ruby, who lived in Coal Station, and a young man named Chester.

  Again Woodrow and I grabbed the wide seat at the end of the bus, and once we were on the road, Cassie joined us. There was a strong smell of fumes from the fuel of that old black-and-white bus, but right then it felt and smelled like home. It was warm and cozy in there ’cause it had a real good heater, while outside freezing rain was falling.

  It was pitch black by the time the bus pulled out of the Bluefield terminal heading toward Deep Vale, and we were too give out to talk. Besides, there seemed nothing left to say.

  Then, right on the outskirts of town, we saw some people huddled beside the road in the headlights, flagging the bus, and we came to life.

  “They got git-tars!” Woodrow cried out. “And fiddles!”

  “Oh, goody!” Cassie said. “It’s the Bluegrass Blues!”

  She hurried up front to welcome the musician
s aboard, collect their fares, and guide them to the seats right in front of ours. There was a man and three women, which was not your ordinary bluegrass band. They were usually all men. Pap turned on the inside lights in the bus while Cassie helped the musicians store their instruments in the rack over the seats.

  “What are they doing out’cheer on a night like this?” Woodrow said to Cassie when she returned to us.

  “It’s Saturday, and they’re going to Deep Vale to play at a honky-tonk,” she whispered. “We’ll let them rest and warm up a bit. Then we’ll ask them to play us some music. They’re always glad to oblige.”

  Woodrow and I were squirming with excitement.

  Pap had left the lights on, probably because he knew what was coming. Sure enough, about ten minutes later the one man in the band peeped around the side of his seat and said to Cassie, “Well, okay, my gal, I’ll wager you wanna hear a tune, don’tcha?”

  “I do!” Cassie said. “I wanna hear a tune, Billy Blue!”

  Billy was a short, friendly, almost bald-headed feller with a bushy beard, and he had crinkly blue eyes that laughed when he talked. He looked for all the world like the cowboy Gabby Hayes.

  “Will you read my palm for me?” Billy said to Cassie.

  “I will for shore!” she said. “I wanna hear ‘In the Pines.’”

  “All right, then!” I heard a woman’s voice there beside Billy. “Toss down my mandolin, honey chile, and hand me my rum, Billy Blue.”

  “Your rum?” Billy said. “Now, Bonnie Blue, didn’t you promise me you’d never drink another drop?”

  “Heck no, Billy! I promised never to drop another drink! So hand it to me careful.”

  We laughed louder and longer than the joke was worth, ’cause we knew it was only part of their act, and Bonnie was not really going to drink rum.

  The other two Blues women, who were introduced as Nancy Lou Blue and Nancy Too Blue, got up in the aisle to retrieve their instruments. There was no telling how old anybody was in this group. They all had on bright colors, lots of fringe, rhinestones, and cowboy boots and hats. I suspected the women were wearing wigs, ’cause nobody could naturally have that much blond hair.

  Bonnie Blue said to Cassie, “Who you got there wid’ja?”

  “This is Gypsy and Woodrow,” Cassie introduced us.

  We said hey, then Cassie said to us, “Let’s give the band our seat so they can spread out and have room for all their stuff.”

  It was agreed, and with much bustle and jostling, we changed places with Billy and Bonnie. The two Nancys joined them.

  Billy played the guitar, Bonnie the mandolin, Nancy Lou the banjo, and Nancy Too the fiddle. They were fooling around with the strings to get tuned up, and I settled between Woodrow and Cassie. The three of us were on our knees looking back.

  “Are they all in the same family?” I asked Cassie.

  “Naw, they’re not even related,” Cassie said. “They take the name of Blue when they’re performing.”

  Suddenly the band cut loose with “In the Pines” as pretty as you please, and their music just filled me up. We started keeping time by clapping, and in some places where we knew the words, we sang along. The Luckys, who now occupied the seat where the two Nancys had been, imitated every move we made. Their faces were shining. The other passengers patted their feet and craned their necks to see the band.

  Then pretty Ruby started dancing in the aisle up near the front, and she could dance good. In a minute Tootsie started dancing with her.

  The first song ended, and everybody whooped and clapped.

  “‘Bury Me Beneath the Willow’!” came a holler. “You know that one?”

  “Do de queen speak English?” Billy said.

  And off they went into “Bury Me Beneath the Willow,” followed by “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and a man got up and danced slow with Tootsie, while Ruby sat down and sang along with the band. She had a sweet voice.

  When they were finished with that one, Nancy Lou said, “‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.’ Everybody knows that one.”

  That song was a real tearjerker, and we crooned pitifully, milking it for all it was worth. When it was over, Woodrow said, “Now do something jolly.”

  “Okay, just one more,” Billy Blue said. “We have to rest up for Deep Vale.”

  Then the band twanged a lively rendition of “Ain’t We Crazy?” Ruby got up and danced again, and the young man named Chester danced with her. After that we gave the Bluegrass Blues a huge round of applause and helped them put their instruments away again.

  We could hear Cassie murmuring behind us as she read Billy Blue’s palm.

  Woodrow whispered to me, “Running into the band was another sign.”

  “How do you figure that?” I said.

  “I dunno why exactly,” he said. “But we keep coming across the word blue. There’s the name of the band, Bluegrass Blues, and their last name is Blue, and they play bluegrass music. They played ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain’ while we were coming home from Bluefield!”

  I didn’t say anything, but I figured that was stretching it a bit. You could run this sign thing into the ground.

  “The first midget we ever saw had on a blue dress!” he went on excitedly. “And the Lucky girls have blue flowers on their dresses.”

  “Don’t forget the sky,” I said sarcastically. “It was blue until we got to Bluefield.”

  Woodrow looked at me doubtfully and said no more about signs.

  The band left us in Deep Vale, and we reclaimed our seat. As we left that town, our mood began to list toward the dark side. We were in total blackness because Pap did not turn the inside lights on for us this time. The temperature had dropped considerable, and in the headlights you could see the sleet coming down fast and thick, making sharp pinging sounds as the pellets hit the windows.

  When we started up the mountain toward Lucky Ridge, where the Luckys would be getting off the bus, I thought of those steep drop-offs over the edge of the road. In the dark you couldn’t see the bottom of the deep hollows below. You could see nothing but this big, yawning murkiness over there. I shivered.

  The Luckys snuck back in the dark to eavesdrop on us, but there was nothing to hear. So they snuggled together at one end of our wide seat.

  The rhythm of the wheels had almost lulled me to sleep when I heard Woodrow say to the kids, “Where do y’all live?”

  “Right now we’re stayin’ wid Granddaddy in the Lucky Ridge Coal Camp,” the boy said.

  “What were you doin’ in Bluefield?”

  “Went to see our daddy,” one of the girls said.

  “Your daddy? Don’t he live with y’all?”

  “He’s in the jailhouse,” the other girl said.

  “What for?”

  “Moonshinin’,” the boy said. “He was just trying to give us young’uns some Christmas. But they throwed him in jail, and now we’re on relief.”

  Lucky Ridge was the coal camp I had seen that morning. That seemed like such a long time ago. What an awful place to have to go home to! I snuggled deeper into my seat and thought of Mama and Porter waiting for me in our cozy, sheltered ranch house on Residence Street. And it occurred to me that Lucky should be my name.

  “I got me a dawg,” the Lucky boy said. “He’s a good old coon dawg.”

  “What’s his name?” Woodrow said drowsily.

  “Blue.”

  12

  When I got home, Mama had supper ready, but I was almost too tired to eat. I managed to swallow a few bites between sentences as I told her and Porter about Joseph and Miz Lincoln. Then I stumbled off to bed, tossed my dirty clothes into a pile on the floor, wrapped myself in a clean flannel nightgown, and crawled between crisp sheets. I was asleep in a jiffy.

  Mama did not make me get up and go to church the next morning. I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, and it felt good to sleep in. When I heard her and Porter go out the front door, I turned over and listened to the rain spattering ag
ainst my window.

  I couldn’t sleep anymore, but I wasn’t ready to get up. I lifted the curtain and peeped out at the gray weeping world and the dripping orchard. It was hard to imagine spring, when the apple trees would be all decked out in their white lace.

  I turned on my radio, which had been a Christmas present from Porter. Most of the stations had nothing but preaching on Sunday morning, but there was this one station out of Richlands that played the latest music all the time, and told good jokes, too. So that’s where I turned the dial. Kitty Wells’s voice filled my room, and I sank again into the pillows.

  My mind went to all the people I had been with yesterday. It seemed sad and strange to me that so many of them had lost one or both parents. Miz Lincoln’s parents had given her away like she was a puppy or a kitten. Then her adopted parents had died. Cassie’s mama and grandma had both died. The Luckys’ daddy was in jail. Joseph’s daddy had abandoned him. And my own daddy? He had taken his own life.

  Then, of course, there was Woodrow’s mama. I had actually seen Aunt Belle only a few times in my life, but through Woodrow I felt that I knew her well. Who woulda thought she could ever abandon him? The idea must seem even more incredible to him, and that was why it was so hard for him to let go.

  I felt sure she had loved him with all her heart. They had made plans to get Woodrow’s crossed eyes fixed. They had shared special moments together. Aunt Belle believed Woodrow had visited her from a far-off place in the moment before he was born. How could she possibly have left him?

  Then I set aside my thoughts to listen to a joke on the radio. Oh yeah, this was a good one. I found a piece of paper and a pencil in my nightstand drawer and wrote it down before I could forget it.

  After a while I managed to drag myself out of bed and fix a bowl of cornflakes. The house seemed awful cold and empty without Mama and Porter. I chucked some wood on the coals smoldering in the grate, and before long I had me a big old fire.

  Mama and Porter found me all curled up on the couch in front of the fireplace, reading Nancy Drew, when they got home from church. It was all that I had promised myself yesterday during the cold rain in Bluefield.