“What?” Maude asked in a high-pitched tone. “Are you serious?”
Unsure of what to do or say now, Miriam did nothing other than hang her head and sigh.
“He’s having an affair?” Frank asked. “Poor Grace.”
“Who’s the other woman?” Maude asked, leaning in as if she was about to get a juicy piece of gossip. Which in a way, she was. Miriam knew it wasn’t gossip, but she also knew that it wasn’t the business of anyone except for Bob, Grace, and the whore.
From the looks on their faces, especially that on Maude’s face, Miriam knew they weren’t going to let her leave without telling them who the other woman was. She rationalized it all in her mind, deciding that maybe it was high time to let it out. Time to let all of Sweetwater know what that woman was doing. Time to let them know that good old Bob Greeley wasn’t the person people thought he was. It wasn’t that he had any high standing in the community, but no one thought badly of him. At least not yet.
“Go on,” urged Maude. “Tell us. Who is she?”
“Is it Sara?” Frank asked shyly, glancing quickly at Maude.
Maude nodded and pursed her lips. “Yeah. I bet it is. I bet it’s that Sara Miller. Is that who it is, Miriam? Is it Sara?” Without waiting for an answer to confirm that it was Sara, Maude turned to Frank and continued. “You know, that girl’s been on a steady decline for quite some time now. It’s a shame that she’s stooped to such a low level as to sleep with another man. A married man, at that.” Maude made a clicking sound with her tongue as she shook her head. “Poor Henry. I wonder if he knows.”
Frank pushed his glasses up his nose and nodded his agreement with Maude as she quickly rambled on.
“How could he not know,” she continued. “He has eyes. He sees the same thing we all see. He knows how she dresses, how she acts. And you know he knows that she likes to drink his merchandise. You just know he knows about this too.”
“No, no. It’s not Sara Miller,” Miriam said, hoping to silence Maude.
“It’s not?” cried Maude. “Then why did you tell us that it was?”
“I didn’t tell you that it was. You just decided that it was her. But it’s not.”
“Oh.” Maude looked at her milkshake, then back at Miriam. “Then who is it?”
Having come too far to stop now, Miriam took a deep breath and prepared to tell all she knew. But before she could mutter a single word, the bell above the door chimed to signal that someone was entering the pharmacy.
Chapter 12
Leroy Russell stepped through the door of the pharmacy, eager to drink his cold sodas and get back to work. He was surprised to see Miriam Lawson sitting at the soda counter. He wasn’t surprised however, to see Maude Wilson sitting there. It seemed that she was there almost as much as Frank.
“How ya doin’, Leroy?” asked Frank as he prepared Leroy’s first Coke.
“I’m doing alright. Be doing better if it wasn’t so damn hot.” Immediately, Leroy blushed and looked at the two women seated at the counter. “Sorry, ladies.”
Maude waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it.” She smiled broadly as Leroy walked across the store and sat at the soda counter, leaving two empty stools between them. She noticed his grease-stained uniform with the dirty rag hanging out of his back pocket, as well as the dirt caked thick under his fingernails. It was the price he paid for working with vehicles every day.
Looking at him, ignoring the work-related filth, it was a mystery why he was still single. He was a handsome man, tall and muscular. Always polite, he never had a bad word to say about anybody. On top of all that, he ran his own business and was successful at it. Yet, he remained unwed. Maude couldn’t figure it out.
Frank set the Coca-Cola on the counter in front of Leroy, who snatched it up and took a long drink of it. He then pulled a napkin from the holder on the counter and wiped his chin, causing Maude to add good manners to the list of reasons a woman would want him.
“So what’s happening?”
“Not much,” Frank replied. “Just chatting with these lovely gals.”
Leroy glanced at Maude and Miriam and nodded. “Interesting conversation?” he asked.
“Of course,” replied Frank.
An awkward silence fell over the four. Then, out of the blue, Maude turned around on her stool to face Leroy.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Doesn’t that Bob Greeley work for you?”
Leroy nodded. “He sure does. Why?”
“Well we were just talking about him and about Grace. We’ve noticed that he doesn’t buy her much.”
“Is that right?” he asked before taking another gulp of soda.
“That’s right. And he says it’s because he can’t afford it. You pay him pretty good over there, don’t you?”
“Now I can’t just go around telling you what I pay my guys.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that? Of course I know that. But you could just tell me this. You pay him enough to buy her a refrigerator? Maybe a washer?”
Leroy was reluctant to say anything about the subject. He didn’t feel right talking about Bob’s business with other people. “I can’t say.”
“Well then tell me this,” Maude said in a huff. “Can the man afford to buy his wife a Coke?”
Leroy looked confused. He stared at Maude for a moment before saying, “Well I’m sure he could.”
Maude nodded and turned on her stool to face forward, toward Frank who stood with his arms folded over his chest behind the counter.
Leroy looked to Frank for answers. Since none were offered, he asked, “What’s this all about?”
Frank shook his head, but Maude jumped in before he could say anything.
“Miriam went to see Grace this morning. She said Grace is living in a shack.”
“But she keeps it clean,” Miriam added in Grace’s defense, suddenly feeling bad that everyone was discussing her issues.
“She’s living in a clean shack,” continued Maude. “She has a wash tub and an icebox out there. Can you believe that? It’s 1952 for crying out loud. She should have the luxuries that come with living in such a time when luxuries are readily available. Wouldn’t you say?”
Leroy nodded slowly and said, “Well I reckon it would be nice to have those things. It sure makes it easier to do the housework.”
“That’s right,” Maude said, slapping her chubby palm down on the counter and sending a ripple up her arm that jiggled all the way to her shoulder. “She should have them, and that Bob Greeley ought to buy them for her. But he doesn’t. Says he can’t afford it. Then when she mentions stopping in here for a cold soda after walking all the way to town to get groceries, he tells her they can’t afford that either. The nerve.”
In her worked up state, Maude gulped at her milkshake.
Turning to a more level head, Leroy calmly said to Frank, “I wonder why he doesn’t buy her things like that. Especially a soda. That doesn’t cost much at all.”
“I don’t know. I can’t say that I know Bob all that well. I don’t know what goes on in his head,” Frank said. He looked from Leroy to the floor, where he tried to imagine not having bought Caroline the things she wanted. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t imagine denying her the things that made her life easier, or denying her the little things in life she enjoyed.
“If you’re not paying him enough to buy her a soda, then you need to give him a raise,” Maude said.
“Believe me, he gets paid enough to buy those things.”
“He does?” Maude asked, looking at Leroy.
“Yeah. He gets paid plenty. I’m not a skinflint. I pay my workers well.”
As Leroy downed the rest of his first Coke, he wondered about Bob Greeley. He’d grown to think of Bob as more than just an employee. He considered him a friend. They’d gone fishing together several times, and on Friday nights, they went into Miller’s Tavern for a few drinks. He never thought of Bob as a bad ma
n, but then again he didn’t have to live with him.
“I just don’t get it then,” Maude said shaking her head. “Of course, it’s not like she has to haul the dirty clothes down to the creek and beat them against a rock to wash them. And at least she does have an icebox. That beats nothing. So I guess if living in a shack of a house with outdated appliances and being denied a soda is as bad as she’s got it, then I suppose she’s still got it good.”
Breaking the silence that fell in the wake of Maude’s speech, Miriam quietly said, “That’s not as bad as she’s got it.” As soon as she said it, she felt all the eyes in the room turn to her.
“What do you mean?” Frank asked, stepping closer to Miriam and putting his hands on the counter, palms flat.
Miriam looked into each of their faces, wondering what they were thinking, what they were going to be thinking when she told them what she knew. Finally, while looking into Leroy’s eyes, she said, “He beats her.”
Leroy immediately shook his head, denying it. “No. No way.”
Maude gasped. “No! You’re kidding.”
Frank took a step backward and buried his face in his hands, putting his fingers behind the lenses of his glasses.
“It’s true.”
“I can’t believe that,” Leroy said. “I just can’t believe that.”
“But it’s true.”
“How do you know?” asked Maude.
“When I was there this morning, I saw her face. There was a bruise forming on her cheek, around her eye. I asked her about it and she said she fell off the porch.”
“There you have it then. She fell off the porch. I knew there was an explanation for it. I knew Bob wouldn’t do something like that. Not the Bob I know and work with.”
“Well he did it,” Miriam said, jumping off the stool. She stepped closer to Leroy. “I saw it myself. When she told me she fell off the porch, I asked if Bob was around when it happened.”
“And what’d she say?” Leroy asked sarcastically.
“She looked funny and asked why Bob would’ve been there when it happened.”
Leroy shook his head and looked at his empty glass.
Miriam looked away from him to Frank, who was pushing his glasses farther up on his nose. When his eyes met hers, she said, “I’m telling you, he beats her.”
“What’d you do then? After you asked her about it?”
Turning to Maude, Miriam replied, “It was obvious that she was embarrassed about it and didn’t want to talk about it, so I let it go. But it made me furious. Absolutely furious. I left soon after. I stopped at my house and cried. I’m not ashamed to say it. I cried. I cried because that sweet woman is married to such a brute of a man, and it makes me angry.” Noticing she had started getting loud and a little carried away, she lowered her voice. “Bruce told me to come here and cool off.”
Leroy pushed his empty glass toward Frank. “I think that’s a good idea,” he said. He shot her a strange look and added, “Clearly this heat’s gone to your head.”
Leroy thought about Bob at work, focused on the task at hand and eager to get the job done. He rarely made a mistake, and when he did, he fixed it promptly. He joked and carried on, and was genuinely pleasant to work with. Leroy had assumed he was the same way at home, but maybe he was wrong. Perhaps when Bob went home in the evenings, he was a completely different person.
Over the years, Leroy had often wondered why he’d never been invited over to the Greeley’s house for dinner. He’d always figured it was because he was single. Married people tend to keep married company, and since Leroy was without a wife, he would be the odd man out. Now he was thinking maybe it was some other reason that had kept Bob from inviting him to his house. Like the fear that if Leroy saw him at home, the way he was with his wife, things would be different between them at work. If it was bad enough, he might’ve even been afraid of losing his job.
He thought of Grace, who’d stopped in to see Bob at work a couple of times. She was a small, petite woman who didn’t say much. From what Leroy could tell, she was very polite, though quite shy. He’d thought she was a real looker and had joked with Bob after she left about how in the world a guy like him ended up with a woman like her. If it was true what these women were saying about him, Leroy now worried that his innocent banter had caused trouble for Grace. If Bob truly was a violent person toward her, he may have gone straight home and smacked around on her. And all because Leroy made a couple of jokes.
His stomach tightened, and he hoped with all his might that it hadn’t happened. In fact, he hoped the women were wrong about the whole thing.
Frank took Leroy’s glass and filled it once again with cold soda, knowing now that he was right. Miriam had been crying when she first arrived. Since that part of her story was true, the rest of it must surely be as well.
Maude drank some of her milkshake, though she was upset and it didn’t taste as good as it did at first.
Miriam continued to stand between the two empty stools that separated Leroy and Maude. She didn’t care that they didn’t believe her. She wanted them to, she just didn’t care whether they did or not. She knew the truth. She knew what she’d seen that morning. If she lived a hundred years, she’d never forget it.
When Frank placed the soda on the counter in front of Leroy, Miriam asked, “How can you be so sure he wouldn’t do that?”
“Because I work with him every day of the week. We fish together. We go down to Miller’s on Fridays and drink together.”
“What does that prove?” Miriam asked.
“I’m just saying that I’ve spent a lot of time with Bob Greeley, and I’ve never known him to be violent. He’s never hit me. Never even raised his voice.”
“Of course not,” said Frank. “Not only are you his boss, but you’re a man. You’re a big man, and Grace is a little woman. If you were going to hit somebody, wouldn’t you rather it be someone who won’t fight back?” He put one hand on his hip and the other on the counter while he waited for Leroy’s response.
Leroy slowly spun the glass in his hand on the counter while rolling Frank’s words around in his mind.
Having never hit a woman — having never even wanted to hit a woman — Leroy had a hard time imagining what would go through Bob’s mind, if in fact he did beat Grace. But Frank probably had a point. To a man who wanted to abuse someone, it made sense that he would pick someone would couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back. A real man would never pick a defenseless person to hit, but then again, a real man would never choose to hit a woman.
Struggling to imagine Bob hitting Grace, wondering if that was even possible, Leroy remembered something from his past, something he’d spent his whole life trying to ignore.
He was seven. He remembered it well because it was his birthday. After the party, after all of his friends had left and he’d gone to bed, he got back up to go to the kitchen for a drink. As he came down the stairs, he saw his father shaking his mother. Then, young Leroy watched in horror as the man who played ball with him on the weekends slapped the woman who made the best pancakes in the world. He slapped her hard. His mother fell to the floor in a flash, clutching her face and crying. He looked to his father, who stood over her with a clenched fist, demanding that she get up and fight back.
The next day, all was normal. His father smiled and joked just like always, even asking Leroy if he wanted to play ball. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, Leroy would’ve never known what had happened. Would’ve never even suspected it. His mother never said a word. When the sun rose the morning after, it was as if the events of the night before were washed away, forgotten, never to be spoken of again.
No one outside of the household ever suspected a thing. If someone would’ve told them it happened, they would’ve thought there was no way a man like that could do such a horrible thing. Which was precisely what Leroy was thinking now.
He turned on his stool to face Miriam, who looked at him with sad eyes.
“Are you sure? Ab
solutely sure?”
“I’m positive,” she answered firmly and without hesitation.
Leroy sighed deeply. “Then what are we gonna do about it?”
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Frank.
“What do you mean?” Maude asked.
“I mean it’s not our business.”
“A woman is being beaten by her husband,” Miriam argued.
“That’s right. Her husband. What goes on behind closed doors is none of our concern.”
Miriam could tell that Frank’s resolve was weak. The look in his eyes and the tone of his voice told her that he wanted to help Grace, wanted to do something to stop Bob, but he was almost eighty years old. He came from a time when you minded your own business no matter what was happening.
Praying on his weakness, she asked, “Frank, if your daughter’s husband was beating her, wouldn’t you want someone to stop it?”
“Of course I would.”
“Well Grace is someone’s daughter. She’s in no position out there to help herself. It’s up to us to stop him.”
“I don’t know,” Frank said after a moment’s thought. “I just don’t know.”
“Miriam, you never did tell us who the whore is,” said Maude after slurping the last of her milkshake through the straw.
“There’s a whore?” asked Leroy.
Maude looked at him and snidely asked, “Isn’t there always?”
Chapter 13
The third time his stomach grumbled, Ollie walked around to the side of the church, where Gerald was up on the ladder painting the trim around a window.
“I’m getting mighty hungry, Gerald. How about you?”
“Yes, I suppose it’s about that time. I’m getting pretty hungry myself.” Gerald looked at his wrist watch and nodded. “Actually, it’s a little past that time. It’s nearly half past twelve.”
“Guess we ought to knock off and grab a bite to eat then. Quiet this ruckus in my belly.”
The Day Bob Greeley Died Page 7