by Cash, Wiley
I stopped eating and looked at her, but she didn’t raise her eyes from her plate. “Just work mostly. The exciting world of home security.” I wiped my mouth and dropped my napkin back onto my lap.
“What’s it like working with Uncle Jim?” she asked. “I haven’t seen him in like two years.”
“I don’t really see him that much either,” I said. “We don’t really work together. It’s more like I work for him.”
“He’s your boss?”
“Yes,” I said. “I guess so.”
After we finished eating, the waitress came and cleared our plates and left the bill on the table. I slid my credit card into the sleeve, and she came back and picked it up.
“Did you hear about those two little girls? The ones who were kidnapped a couple days ago?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Was it on TV?”
“All over the news.”
“What happened to them?”
“Their father kidnapped them,” I said. “Took them from a foster home. I was their guardian.”
“Why do you say it like that: that you were their guardian? Do you stop just because they got kidnapped?”
“No,” I said. “Their dad took them down into South Carolina, and now the FBI’s getting involved. It’s a mess.”
“But that doesn’t mean you just stop,” she said.
“Stop what?”
“Guarding them, or whatever.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m still their guardian. And I’ll still be their guardian when they come home.”
The waitress came back with the receipt, and I left a tip and signed my name. And then I slid my credit card and the receipt into my wallet.
“How can a father kidnap his own kids?” Jessica asked.
“This guy gave up his parental rights a couple of years back. He broke the law by taking those girls.”
“But he’s their dad.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m your dad, but that doesn’t mean I can just carry you off somewhere without your mom’s consent. I’d be breaking the law if I did that.”
“What happened to their mom?”
“She’d dead,” I said.
“Then maybe it’s good that nobody’s found them,” she said. “Maybe they want to be with their dad. Maybe they feel safe.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t make it legal.” I folded my napkin and set it where my plate had been. “What would you do if you were me?” I asked.
“About what?”
“About these two little girls. Would you let them stay with their dad, or would you follow the law and make sure they got back where they’re supposed to be?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’d try to think about what they want. Nobody ever does that. Kids just want to be happy.”
“Were you happy?”
“I guess,” she said. “I don’t remember being unhappy.”
“Being happy and being unhappy are very different,” I said. “Those two little girls might not have been happy in foster care, but maybe they weren’t unhappy either. You know?”
“Yes,” she said. “Then I was happy.”
“Did you feel safe?”
“Of course I felt safe,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I have? My dad was a cop.”
“I know,” I said. “But that’s not what I mean. Did you feel secure, even after what happened?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I think so. But I don’t remember much about all that. I was just a little kid, and that was a long time ago.”
“You were ten, Jessica,” I said. “It was barely six years ago.”
“Yeah?” she said. “Then maybe I just forced myself to forget.”
“But you remember feeling safe?” I asked. “And happy?”
“Yes,” she said. “Safe and happy. I remember.”
“So, what would you do: leave them alone or bring them home?”
She sighed. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’m not a dad.”
Pruitt
C H A P T E R 20
Her neighborhood in North Charleston was made up of small houses surrounded by brown grass and scrubby pine trees. To the east, planes from the city’s airport and jets from the air force base beyond it rose over I-26 in the hazy morning. On the first pass by the house it looked almost identical to the homes on either side of it: a squat brick ranch with windows and a front door trimmed in green, a green garage door, black shingles on the roof already radiating heat.
I parallel-parked my truck on the side of the road five houses down from hers, and my eyes moved between my mirrors and the street in front of me, checking to see if anyone was passing on foot or looking out doors or windows to see who was sitting out in front of their house on a white-hot morning.
On my way up her driveway my eyes weren’t so much looking at her house as they were looking at the houses and yards around it, searching for an indication of who was at home and who was not. There were no cars in the driveways of the houses on either side of hers, and the front doors were closed and the shades were pulled.
There was no car in her driveway either, and through the garage door’s windows it was clear that there was also no car in the garage, meaning she was either not at home or did not drive and that someone may be coming by to check on her at any moment. Or perhaps Wade Chesterfield himself had already come by and picked her up or warned her about who or what may be coming, and she had left on her own, gone to stay with friends a few streets over or family members whose names and addresses I hadn’t yet discovered.
But then the curtain moved in the window by her front door. Someone had been watching me approach the house, and they pulled the curtain closed when they saw me come to a stop in the driveway. None of the other curtains stirred. My right hand moved instinctively to the handle of the Glock that was tucked into the back waistband of my shorts. I moved slowly up the driveway and stopped at the front door.
My hand left the Glock and raised itself to knock, but the door suddenly flew open, and she stood there, looking out from behind a thick pair of sunglasses with blacked-out lenses. She was tiny, barely five feet tall, her thinning white hair permed in frizzy, tight curls against her head, a white blouse tucked into a long tan skirt, and hose that ran into a pair of black lace-up shoes. She stood there looking at me for a few moments, and my fingers unfolded themselves from the gun and my hand came to rest at my side.
The street was quiet. Nothing but the noise of a dog barking a few houses down and the soft sounds of the airplanes taking off and landing in the distance.
“Come in, come in,” she finally said, backing away from the door and then turning, waving over her shoulder for me to follow. “Let me get my coat and my umbrella. I know what it looks like and feels like out there right now, but this is summertime in Charleston, and you can’t ever tell about the summertime in this godforsaken city. And don’t get me started on how cold that office is.”
I closed the door behind me, and my hand reached back and locked it quietly.
“Leave it unlocked,” she said. “We’re going to be heading right back out.” She disappeared down a hallway, and my eyes scanned what must have been the living room. It was tidy and clean, and looked as if nothing had changed since the house had been built. Brown shag carpet covered the floors, and a mint-green sofa sat beneath windows that looked out on the front yard behind heavy curtains. There were two cream-colored sitting chairs opposite the sofa, a coffee table in front of them. There was no television. The room, and maybe the entire house, smelled like something I couldn’t quite place, but it was something that seemed familiar, something on the front end of a memory.
I heard her open and close a closet door somewhere down the hall. When she walked back into the living room she wore a jacket and carried a small umbrella, her purse slung over her shoulder, the blacked-out sunglasses still on.
“Are you ready?” she asked. She stood there as if waiting for an answer. When none came, she le
aned forward as if trying to smell me, and then she leaned away as if she’d discovered something she didn’t want to know. “Well,” she said. “You can say something.” She waited. My eyes followed her purse as it slid slowly down her right arm, stopping at the bend in her elbow. She held her umbrella in front of her with both hands. Her posture made her seem like someone who was used to waiting and was willing to wait forever.
“Where do you think we’re going?” I asked.
As soon as the words were out she dropped her purse at her feet and her right hand shot up and spread itself out across the bridge of my nose, pushing my sunglasses up against my eyes. The touch of her hand was shocking, and I pulled away from it, but her hand moved too, and her fingers kneaded my lips and cheeks, slowly working themselves up to the bill of my hat.
I realized that she couldn’t see me. The muscles in my body relaxed, and my face leaned heavily toward her.
“Who are you?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
“A friend of your son’s. Of Wade’s.”
“What’s your name?”
“Pruitt.”
“I’ve never known him to mention you,” she said.
“He wouldn’t have. He hasn’t seen me in a long time.” Her hand came to a rest on my left shoulder, and she left it there for just a second before touching my chest, right above my heart.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” she said. She took her hand from my chest and lifted up her glasses so that her eyes could be seen; they were both covered in a murky blue film. “These don’t let me see as well as my hands do.” She smiled and dropped the glasses back into place. “I thought you were someone I’d already arranged to take me to an appointment on Friday morning, but I knew today is Thursday, and I was confused because of that.” She bent down and felt along the floor until her hand closed around the strap of her pocketbook. She stood again and put the strap over her shoulder, and then she turned away and walked back toward the middle of the room before stopping. “It is Thursday, right?”
“Yes. It’s Thursday.”
“Humph,” she said as if she’d discovered something. “Then my doctor’s appointment is tomorrow. They will come tomorrow, and they will pick me up then.” She gestured toward the sofa. “Please sit down. Be comfortable.” She walked through the living room and into the hallway back to the room she’d been in earlier.
Dust motes floated up from the sofa cushions and drifted through a shaft of sunlight shining through a gap in the curtained windows behind me. The light disappeared as the curtains were pulled tight. My body sunk down into the old cushions, and the gun dislodged itself from my waistband. My back leaned against it so that it rested nose down behind me.
She walked out of the hallway and stood in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips. “Let me get us some tea,” she said. “And then I want to hear all about how you know my Wade.” She turned to walk into the kitchen that was off the right side of the living room, but she stopped and turned back. “Is sweet tea okay with you?” she asked.
“Yes. But this won’t take long.”
She waved her hand as if dismissing my words. “Nonsense,” she said. “You stay as long as you’d like. I have nowhere to be; we’ve already decided that.” Her shoes squeaked over the linoleum in the kitchen, followed by the sound of her opening cabinets and getting down glasses, opening and closing the refrigerator and getting ice out of the freezer. “Would you like coffee instead?” she asked, her voice curving around the half wall that separated her from me.
“No.” But her question made clear the smell in her house, and a memory forced itself into my mind. It was not the smell of freshly brewed coffee but the stale scent of coffee after it has permeated everything. And it is there in my mother’s kitchen, the smell of stale coffee in a hot room with the windows closed. My mother has dropped the glass coffeepot and the sound of its shattering has made me cry. And the smell of that memory lived here in this house now.
When she walked back into the living room she carried a small wooden tray with both hands; on it sat two tall glasses of tea and a small stack of napkins.
“I was confused when I heard you at the door because my appointment is on Friday,” she said. “And I knew today is Thursday, so I couldn’t understand why someone would be at the door.” She laughed to herself. “Even when I’m right I think I’m wrong. Old age can be a very good prankster.” She stopped walking when her knees brushed against the coffee table. “You’ll have to set this down for me,” she said. “There are some things I cannot trust myself to do.”
When the tray was out of her hands and had been set down, she moved around the coffee table and sat in one of the armchairs. She reached forward and picked up her glass from the tray and brought it toward her. Her hand shook and the ice cubes clinked together softly. She took a drink from her tea and picked up a napkin and wrapped it around the glass. She crossed her legs and smoothed out her skirt.
“So, Mr. Pruitt,” she said, “you know Wade.”
“We played baseball together.”
“If I were a betting woman, I’d bet you played first,” she said, smiling. “You’re tall. Most first basemen are tall and right-handed, and usually very strong. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make it to the majors, Mr. Pruitt?”
My fingers had closed around one of the napkins on the tray, and now it was balled up in my hand. “No.”
“That’s too bad,” she said. “I’m sure you wanted to become a professional ballplayer. I’m sure you worked very hard.”
“Very hard.” The napkin had become rock-hard from my squeezing it, hard enough to be thrown through the glass window behind me or tucked into a fist to make the fist heavier and more solid. The memory wasn’t of me crying after all, but of my mother crying instead. Her forehead is bleeding from where the coffeepot has been shattered across her face, splattering me and the walls and the floor with cold, stale coffee. The old man has slammed the door behind him, and now the lawn mower is sputtering, finally catching and firing. My mother doesn’t look up from where she cleans the floor, but each time the lawn mower passes the windows it kicks up gravel and sticks against the glass, and my mother ducks lower as if my father has aimed those things at her.
“Well,” she said, reaching out and setting her glass on the tray. “Sometimes you need a little luck. Wade didn’t have the career he wanted to have either, certainly not the career I wanted him to have. Especially not considering his talent.”
“That’s too bad.” But those were just words, and she knew it. She leaned forward as if preparing to ask something or say something that no one else should ever hear, even though there was no one else in the house and there probably hadn’t been for a long time.
“Does he owe you money, Mr. Pruitt?”
“Money?”
“Does Wade owe you money?” she asked. “Is that why you’re here?”
“No. He doesn’t owe me money.”
“Well,” she said, smiling, “good for you, because he sure owes me money.” She leaned away and opened the palm of her left hand, showing that she’d balled up her napkin too, and she tossed it onto the table before picking up her glass from the tray. “I ask you that question because he owes a lot of people money,” she said. “They’ve come here looking for him over the years.”
“That’s not what this visit is about.”
“What’s it about?” she asked, before saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to ask you so many questions. I don’t get very many visitors, and I forget how to act.” She smiled. “Forgive me.”
“Business. This is just about business.”
“Well, I won’t ask you what kind of business you’re in,” she said. “I’ve asked enough questions.”
The room grew quiet, and the ice cubes popped and resettled themselves in the glasses. She stared at the table before lifting her eyes toward me. “I have to tell you that I haven’t seen my son in years, Mr. Pruitt. I honestly can’
t remember the last time I even spoke with him.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Why?” she asked. “In case your business takes you there as well?”
“Perhaps it will.”
“That doesn’t sound good to me, Mr. Pruitt,” she said. “It seems that you want to find my son to do more than catch up and talk about baseball. But it doesn’t matter what it seems like to me. I’ve already told you I don’t know where he is, and I have no idea how to contact him.”
“It’s just old baseball stuff. That’s all.”
“Old baseball stuff,” she said. “Of course.” She looked down at her glass as if trying to remember what it was she was drinking. “Would you like to see something, Mr. Pruitt? I think it will bring back good memories of ‘old baseball stuff.’ ” She set her glass back on the tray and stood. “Come on,” she said, turning toward the hallway. “Follow me.”
After standing with her and stepping around the coffee table, I stopped before walking down the hallway. The Glock had been left behind, stuffed down behind the cushion. She must have heard my feet turning away from her.
“No,” she said. “Leave it. I’ll get the glasses later. Follow me.”
She shuffled past what must’ve been her bedroom with its made bed and framed photographs on the dresser, past a small, dark bathroom to the end of the hall where two closed doors faced each other. She went to the door on the left and ran her hand along it until her fingers closed around the doorknob. She looked back toward me without saying anything, and then she opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was hot and bright from the sun that poured through the windows in the far corner of the room. It was a boy’s room, clearly the room Wade Chesterfield had grown up in, and it hadn’t changed since he was a boy. Posters of baseball players from the 1970s covered the walls: Jim Kaat, Ron Guidry, Tommy John before his elbow surgery, and Steve Carlton—all of them lefties like Wade had been. Trophies sat on every flat surface, most of them crowned with tiny gold figurines either poised with bats on their shoulders or in the middle of their windups, their knees raised against their chests and the ball tucked into their mitts. The bed was made neatly and the burgundy carpet showed the tracks left by a vacuum cleaner. It smelled old and closed off like places smell when no one visits them for a long time.