by Lisa Sandlin
The pictures continued, all types of sparrows. Species of sparrows. She ranged down and landed on a seaside sparrow and a swamp sparrow.
Opal loomed.
“What?”
“Starts on the page before,” she whispered. “See where it says ‘Genius’?”
Delpha flipped back to Genus Passer: True Sparrows and, sure enough, the very beginning of the sparrow pictures. A little red-headed pudge called an American tree sparrow. Then came…a gray-headed white-breast with brown wings.
Bell’s sparrow.
A mumble from behind her shoulder. “…check out that book for you?”
“Thank you, Opal.”
As her head lowered, the girl’s lips puckered into a pleased knot.
Almost eight o’clock. The book hugged against her side, Delpha hurried to the office and took the stairs two at a time. She locked the door behind her and seized the Brothers list, the baby boys born in 1898 and 1900, which she had typed up in alphabetical order.
She paused, sniffed the air around her desk. Then her blouse. What was the perfume she was smelling? Sure wasn’t Calvin’s Aqua Velva.
Sweet Honesty? No, wasn’t sugary. She leaned into Tom’s office where the perfume smell was strong. Mossy, a whiff of dirt-after-rain, and some dank tang that jolted her nose—like the nest of a cat, in the deep humid woods. Delpha went back and sat down. In her own chair.
Who’d been here?
Only one answer. Tom had to have brought a woman back from the bar with him. She turned to the piles of papers on her desk, but they no longer held mysterious potential—they were scraps in her hands. The image was set: Tom and a woman walking up the stairs, shoulders brushing. Arms—where were their arms? Tom and some woman twined together.
A minute ago, she’d been jogging over from the library, anticipating. How could she feel cast down now? She knew damn well why, and she didn’t like it.
OK, she’d admitted to herself she found Tom good-looking. He’d been kind to her. He’d hired Miles Blankenship, and for that she was a thousand times more grateful than she’d even told him. She had acknowledged all that to herself but passed over it. Boxed it up. Believed she’d kept barrier enough between her and her boss by sending away any thoughts that didn’t belong to Phelan Investigations. But the wrong idea had seeped through anyway—that because they spent every day together, her place with him was special. Some women in Gatesville only came alive during visits from boyfriends or husbands, forgetting their men were out in the world seeing a hundred people every day. Delpha refused to sucker herself like that.
But she already had. The evening she’d kissed Isaac’s postcard and put it away had been a restless one. She’d gone down to the kitchen, took a beer from the icebox, and left fifty cents for Oscar. Come back up, locked her door, sat on her tangled bedspread, drinking. After a while, she set the bottle down and pulled her t-shirt over her head. Stood and pressed her whole naked body against the wall. Eyes shut. Elbows bent and hands flat against the plaster, cheek flattened, breasts, belly. Reliving Isaac’s body. His white chest, his concave belly beneath ribs she could count, the tender skin on his hardness, the length of bone in his long legs. The center of her was lit and wet, and she pressed the wall till she shuddered, and she knew then, breath heaving, that Isaac’s boyish form had thickened, the shoulders had broadened, and that the hands clutching her waist belonged to Tom Phelan.
Stop making a fool of yourself with this jealousy. You had Isaac. Tom probably has dates, maybe has girlfriends, maybe a steady one, and that ain’t any more your business than the man in the moon.
Delpha had humiliated herself in front of herself. The thing she couldn’t afford. Not if she wanted to keep going, keep her nerve. Not if she wanted to make headway, whatever that meant.
Breathing deep, she remembered, finally, that she had work—not only the dirty kitchen but the lists to turn to. The lists she had thought of as a net to catch Rodney. And they’d caught him, while the older brother had slipped through. She forced herself to sit down and pick up the list of Brothers. Touched her finger to the paper. Ran down names of baby brothers until…her hands leapt to her head.
She saw it. The bad feelings she’d been having retreated as she fixed on the name: Passeri. Not Passer. The word from the bird book—Genus Passer. The word that meant “sparrows.”
Two brothers: Passeri, Ugo Filippo 1898. Rodolfo Antonio, 1900. Quickly, she shuffled the sheets of the list, looking for Sparrow baby brothers, though she was almost certain they were not there. She was right. No baby boy Sparrows at the turn of the century.
The family had not yet taken that American name.
She set down Brothers and jumped up. Pulled open the file cabinet and snatched out the folder that contained the original thick pile of babies mailed to them from Louisiana Archives. The pages she’d judged a waste of time.
Passeri. There would be parents’ names. There would be a seventy-five-year-old address. There would be a profession.
She sat and tapped the pages on their edges and laid them flat. Traced her finger down the first page, then set aside that page as she scanned the next one. She snapped on her desk lamp, brought it close, and hunted through a quarter of the original Archive stack before she found them. Her head throbbed. Jealousy had flown away. She read and reread the names.
The kitchen was still waiting. It would wait.
XXXVIII
THE LITTLE FINGERNAIL moon had got fatter and golder. Delpha called from a pay phone a couple blocks away from Kirk Properties, hoping Mrs. Kirk would answer, but she got her granddaughter.
“Hi. Aileen. This is Delpha Wade. I ‘magine you’ll remember me. I’m the one lied to your grandmother when I asked her for a list of sold houses.”
“Oh yeah. One with the trouble. And that car. What do you want now?”
“Wanna talk to you, but I want to ask your grandmother’s permission first.”
“Why? I’m not a little kid.”
“She’s watchin’ out for you, and I just think she’d ruther I do it that way.”
“Too bad.” Aileen gave a gloating laugh. “It’s bridge night. They just left, and they won’t be home until ten or ten thirty. C’mon anyway, and I’ll talk to you if you give me something.”
“Give you what?”
The laugh turned gleeful. “Lemme drive your car!”
“Not really my car, so that’s not a good idea.”
“I don’t care. C’mon, just lemme drive it up and down the street, c’mon!”
Delpha felt stymied. Given her criminal record, and operating on the principle of CYA, she’d rather have a supervised conversation with Aileen. On the other hand, Tom was going to see Sparrow tomorrow, so whatever she found out tonight might help Phelan Investigations. And, she reminded herself, Mrs. Kirk hadn’t recognized Delpha’s name the only time they’d met, so either she didn’t remember or hadn’t read the stories in the newspaper. Had to hope she wouldn’t recognize it later.
“Ten minutes, Aileen.”
“Yippee! Hurry then.”
The remodeled garage that was the office of Kirk Properties was dark, glow of lights behind curtains in the house. Aileen wasn’t in there, though. She leapt out of a porch swing and left it rocking.
Delpha had to show her how to move up the bucket seat. The girl proved she could drive the stick-shift by carefully making four right turns, stopping well in advance of each stop sign, braking for a squirrel.
“Why don’t you get this car fixed, lady? The outside of it’s a piece of shit.”
“Owner had a lot of wrecks. Son-in-law doesn’t want to give it back to him.”
“Oh, got it. If you make it look nice, he’ll want it back.” She nodded in agreement, then snuck a look at Delpha as she turned gently left in the direction that led out of the neighborhood. She drove like she was tiptoeing the tires over the road.
“Just lemme go a little ways out 105, OK? 105’s straight. Not all the way, I’ll turn around. But
Nana hadn’t let me go anywhere yet. Please?”
Hour and a half before the Kirks finished their bridge game. The wind teasing at Delpha’s hair felt good. Cool. Cicadas still in harmony, and she’d just read some information in the Archives that stood to unravel this case. Her heart eased up toward Aileen. Delpha didn’t often dwell on her teenage years but tonight Aileen, pill though she was, made her remember learning to drive. Thirteen years old. In a 1939 Ford coupe, green and round-topped as a terrapin, three on the tree. Nineteen years later, and her right arm remembered pushing out and up into second then, like you were making a good decision, pulling straight down into third.
The Dart passed under the freeway heading west, past the grocery store and a gas station, past a lawnmower repair and a donut shop. Not a lot of traffic. Highway 105 rolled out.
Aileen upped the speed to fifty-five. Her chortling laugh cut through the rush of air.
Aw, let her, Delpha thought, glancing at the girl’s excited profile. She sat back in the seat. They drove on, hair blowing now, tangling around their faces. A semi heading east into Beaumont laid on his air horn, and Aileen bounced in her seat and waved at the driver. Clouds sailing easy past the scratch of moon, failing to catch on its sharp ends.
Behind them, a pickup pulled out to pass. It held speed as it came even, and a boy hanging out the passenger side lobbed a can at their car. A hoot, and the pickup swerved into their lane ahead of them.
The can barely missed Aileen’s open window and thumped against the door. She squealed at the spray of liquid. The boy by the window and a girl squeezed next to him in the middle of the seat scrutinized them through the truck’s back window, crouching their heads down so the shotgun in the rack wouldn’t cover their grinning view.
“Shitasses!” Aileen shrieked.
Delpha put her hand on the dash. “You know them?”
“Shelton Trotter from my homeroom. He threw a can at me!” She wiped the left side of her hairline and cheek and sniffed her fingers. “And it was a beer can!”
“Listen, want you to stop and turn around now.”
“It coulda made me have a wreck. I wanna call the cops on ‘em! Write down their license plate.”
“Look up there ahead for a place to turn around.”
“No way!”
Delpha raised her voice. “We’re not messin’ with these fools, Aileen. Turn it around.”
“I got my learner’s permit! I can drive legal with a licensed driver.” The pickup was still pacing ahead of them, not taking off. Aileen leaned out the window and screamed at the kids in it.
“I ain’t one, so turn it around.”
Aileen slacked off on the gas only a little as she threw a glance at Delpha. “You mean…you don’t got a driver’s license?”
“I do not, and keep your eyes on the road.”
Delpha couldn’t see the green of Aileen’s eyes, but she could feel herself getting bored into.
“Aw right. Sure.”
Aileen tightened her hold on the wheel. Then she charged out into the left lane and stomped the gas. The Dart roared past the pickup like it was a flat raccoon on the center line, Aileen thrusting out her middle finger.
Delpha grabbed one hand on the console and the other on the door handle. The Dodge ate up Texas 105. Wind beat into the car like a hurricane. Her heart was beating the breath out of her as she scanned for cop cars, hair whipping her face when she twisted to search behind the Dart for the red flashing lights. Two miles, three, a feeble glimmer ahead marked a filling station.
Aileen braked, skidding the car through its oyster shell lot and onto the concrete pad next to the station’s office. She quick-stopped it, throwing both of them forward and then back. There was one light on inside. A Closed sign hung crookedly on the door.
“Aw, man, I wanted a Coke.” The girl peered at the pink watch on her wrist and slumped. She was still whining when Delpha slammed out of her side, stalked around, and yanked Aileen out of the driver’s seat, out to the front of the car.
Delpha was crackling with anger—that a Texas highway patrolman and this smart-aleck kid might have got her busted back to prison set the crown of her head afire. God, was she sick of girls like this. The ones that shot their mouths off, flung around, showing off to power until power turned its blank gaze on them and instantly, on the spot—or day-by-day, hour-by-hour—reduced them. That at least once she’d been one of those girls—that made her sicker.
Aileen’s green eyes were hateful little slits. “I’m on tell Nana you hurt me! She’s gonna call your boss and get you fired! You—”
Delpha clamped her other hand onto Aileen’s spindly wrist and slung the girl full force so that she careened across the concrete. Then Delpha jerked her hard enough to snap her teeth together, reeled her back in, and crowded the girl’s shocked face.
“Your grandmother’s a real nice woman, but she’s so busy feeling sorry for you she hadn’t taught you a lick of manners. That’s already working against you. Old Shelton and his friends are out there in a pickup truck chunking beers at you. I’m betting you’re not the most popular girl on the block, and I tell you what—before long somebody’s gonna tie a big knot in your tail.”
“Why’d I be nice to Shelton Trotter—he never ever once in his white trash life been nice to me!” A small smile perched itself below Aileen’s narrowed eyes. “He peed his pants in our fifth grade class.”
Delpha squeezed the girl by her shoulders, inserted both her thumbs into the soft spaces below Aileen’s collarbone and dug. Aileen yelped and lost her mean squint.
“If a cop had caught us, you’d a got a speeding ticket and another ticket for driving without a real license. And you’d a got me in trouble. You never ever once thought about causing me trouble. Did you, Aileen? That thought didn’t even enter your pea-brain. You reckon that boy gives a good goddamn about whatever shitty reason your mama dumped you? Hell no, and neither does anybody else. This is just the littlest baby knot I’m kinking in your tail tonight, you hear? Just to get your attention. Keep on like you are, and when the big knot comes, your head’ll spin clear off. Get in the passenger seat.”
Delpha released her, wrenched open the car door, and climbed behind the wheel. Aileen banged shut the passenger door, swollen with saying nothing. But when the dome light switched on, the girl cringed back.
“I let you drive. Now here’s your part, Aileen. If you’re up to it.” Delpha held out the Louisiana Archive page.
Aileen’s eyes tracked to Delpha and down to the paper, where they stayed. “I’m not holding that. You hold it.”
Delpha stretched over until the teenager finally pinched hold and bent her head to read. Red-orange strands and stray hairs fanned out around her head in the yellow light. What hair was still gathered into pigtails swung forward. Her head bent farther as she read. Then she snatched back her hand and shook it off in the air. Delpha caught the page before it drifted onto the floorboard.
Had she stopped at the lines Delpha meant her to see?
Ugo Passeri, 1898, Rodolfo Passeri, 1900, Amalia Passeri, 1906.
“Why’d you bother me?” Aileen shrank back. “You coulda asked her. I told you. I told you this car was fast, and I told you about that little girl.”
Delpha bit off the words, “I cain’t see her, Aileen.” She blew out an exasperated breath. “If you’re so red hot at seeing stuff other folks can’t, then prove it. Gimme some idea what happened with these children. Or maybe you’re just a bunch of bullshit, like Shelton thinks.”
Aileen scraped together a threatening glare. But her knob of a chin hiked up. The challenge had snared her vanity.
The girl stared into the paper and her lips curled back.
She made a digging motion. She scooped over and over and over, maybe ten or a dozen times before she opened her hand and patted. She was gazing past Delpha. The black beauty marks were prominent. Then she angled her head away, out her car window toward the single dim light in the gas station.
> There was a lull in the car, stark after the tussle outside of it, after the rushing wind.
“She was a little thing,” Aileen said finally, “and he…he buried her. In sand. Not a beach…a pile. One of those two boys did. Hard to tell which.” The girl turned back. She touched her thumbnail to the page Delpha held and punched it through the paper between the brothers’ names.
“See, they were both there.”
XXXIX
JIM ANDERSON OPENED the door, but Raffie had him captured. The younger man was letting out hoots, tugging on the old guy’s arm, trying to tow him somewhere. Walking backward, Anderson told Phelan to come back after ten thirty because the babysitter lady showed up around then. Otherwise—he cut his head toward Raffie—hullabaloo.
At eleven o’clock, Phelan said hello again and waited while the two men and a middle-aged woman in elastic pants and a nurse’s white shoes shuffled down the hall, headed for the screen porch and the back yard. Phelan insinuated himself at the dinette table and took note.
Basically one big room. Galley-type kitchen to his right, and living room to his far left. Saggy floral couch that would take concentrated thigh-power to rise from. Two brown armchairs, an end table, a cabinet TV—all of which might have been purchased at Lester’s Pre-Owned Furniture. No knickknacks. The grand features here were directly across from Phelan in the designated dining area: two cages, one big as a double wardrobe, full of green and blue and yellow parakeets and a few black finches that chirped, fluttered, whistled, and flitted to colorful toys. Next to the grand cage was another, smaller cage, about four feet by three feet with its own tenant. Its wire door stood open, a fringe of seed husks on the floor below.
Phelan laid his chin in his hand and wondered at the constant commotion of the parakeet world. Chirping overlapped trilling and filled the air, though he couldn’t tell which ones made the noise. A whole line of them were jerkily contorting to peck at their own feathers, a couple kicking themselves in the beak. A blue one, stealthy and deliberate amid all the singing, hopping, and flapping, crept across a perch toward a silent yellow.