The Do-Right

by Lisa Sandlin

  “Call her,” Delpha said.

  His undershot chin moved back into his neck. He made a production out of returning the quarter to his pocket. Then he flipped a switch and picked up a microphone on a short gooseneck. “Will the mother of the little girl out on our hobbyhorse please come get her at the Customer Service Booth?”

  Delpha stretched tiptoe over the counter to get into the vicinity of the microphone. Raised her voice.

  “Before another pervert tries to lure her off, you stupid bitch.”

  Rung out good.

  The checkers and shoppers snapped around. Depha strode out the door again, snatched up her groceries by the riderless horse. The crown of her head was afire. Her mind was burning. Not just with the old man back at the bayou, but—how’s she sposed to not see this stuff? People preying on kids, preying on other people. Others of them act surprised, act scandalized. Oh, that’s just terrible, that’s a shame, and then they go their way. The girls at Gatesville would agree with the terrible, with the shame, but surprise—c’mon. Who hadn’t been messed with there, who hadn’t been broke?

  Car smelled like a dead whale.

  She carried in Calinda’s groceries, filled the refrigerator. Leaned over the sink and gutted the fish, went out the hotel’s alley door and dropped the slimy mess on yesterday’s newspaper. Cats already galloping, necks stretched, as she turned to go back in, the tan ones that would have been white if they got a scrub, the one-eyed tom.

  What was she going to do about that old man? She had meditated on that question since she was eighteen years old. Each answer had been handled and put back tattered. The first answer, move away from Beaumont, move up north or to California and never come back—she’d blown that one. Now she knew he was still alive, knew where he worked.

  Forgive, like the chaplain explained to her?

  “I’m just advising you to let it go. Not to turn the other cheek.”

  Good he wasn’t because those two made sure Delpha had done that.

  “Your problem is a conundrum.”

  Several chaplains rotated through Gatesville, but Delpha cared to see only this one. His harelip repair looked to have been sewn with twine. His shirt was pressed even if the collar had creases ironed in it. He’d shaved, his nails were clean; he didn’t come through the gates like this was some backyard crawdad-boil. Delpha credited him for that. During her next visit to the prison library, she lingered over that word, conundrum, in the donated Webster’s Dictionary with the loose spine. She credited the chaplain for that too, because of how it made her feel—changing the sound co-nun-drum—into a word, into a meaning that stopped, for a while, every noise and movement around her while it told her a secret about her life.

  The chaplain said, “Miss Wade.” That’s what he called her. Not Wade. Not Delpha right-off, before he’d been invited to. “Miss Wade, the forgiveness is not for his sake, it’s for yours. As long as you allow yourself to harbor hate, you’re the one it hurts.”

  She’d flared at him. “That hate was rammed into me.”

  He held up his hand. “Far be it from me to argue. But here is the point. That man doesn’t have the hate now, does he?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “Who does?”

  “Me. So.”

  “It is poisoning you. Not him. You.”

  She’d understood that, but had not been able to use it.

  Some of the cops had been on her side. She remembered that well. Fontenot. Merriweather. They couldn’t do anything. Her word against the old man she had cut, father of a murdered son. Sat up in the court alongside the deceased’s drooping mother and a little sister attached like a tick to the mother’s side, that was how it’d been. A crime long judged, bought and paid for.

  Delpha took Calinda’s paring knife and scraped silver scales from the gutted fish. Always came down to the one thing, always did.

  She could kill him.

  XV

  PHELAN HAD IT in mind to score some tacos al carbon and watch baseball on the couch. Atlanta was scheduled to play, and Hank might just smack another homerun. Phelan’s ’69 Chevelle though, that car suffered from steering issues. It passed the taco place and meandered him out to the refinery part of town, where he located Daughtry Petrochemical at the edge of the industrial zone. Welders, pavers, concrete guys bordering the refineries themselves: great gray cities of pipe, tanks, burning flares like flags flying, acres of cars and pickups in the lots fronting the office building. Blacktop in summer was gummy tar, heat from the operations combining to offer a hundred-twenty degree blast coming at you up down and sideways.

  The address he had matched a long low brick building, probably twenty, thirty years old. A faded red on white sign reading Daughtry Petrochemical hung half off its uprights, two workmen lowering it down. Out of business?

  He knew it. Enroco killed Daughtry, and they just didn’t say so in the paper.

  He parked the Chevelle a fair distance away from the only two cars in the blacktop parking lot. Both Ramblers. What were the odds? One was a plain old two-door, but the other was a ’58 wagon with braided chrome trim, be flashy if it’d been washed within the last decade. Maybe employees were inside cleaning out their desks. Or their lockers or lab or shop, whatever was left of Daughtry.

  Phelan thought he caught a glimpse of someone by the Rambler wagon, but when he turned to get a good look, there was nobody.

  He entered to find an office, wooden counter running across the front. Framed pictures of the place hung on the wall leading up to it. A stout, late-middle-aged woman behind the counter leaned over a desk, setting file folders in towering piles. Boxes sat on the floor around her. Cleaning out her desk sure enough. Daughtry Petrochemical was finished. Mentally, Phelan bent his right hand fingers, blew on them, and buffed his lapel.

  She looked up and frowned. “Oh, I wasn’t ’sposed to unlock that door. But I’m so used to unlocking it every morning, I forgot. I’m sorry. We’re closed today.” The woman wore a black suit, sheened polyester, over a white blouse tied at the neck in a floppy bow. Black patent leather shoes with gold buckles. Pretty formal outfit for packing up.

  “Closed,” Phelan echoed.

  She wrenched open a sticky desk drawer, rummaged. The motion unbalanced a precarious stack of folders, which began to slide. “Oh no. No, don’t you dare.” She threw her hands out, rescuing the top one while the ones below splatted onto the floor, spilling out sheets of paper.

  “Oh, my goodness.” She started to kneel down.

  Two seconds, and Phelan was through a little gate and behind the counter. “Lemme help you,” he said. “You’ll get yourself dirty.” He squatted and stuffed pages back into the manila sleeves, handed them up to her. He smiled while noting file titles—lengthy, nonsense words that might be names of chemicals.

  “Aren’t you sweet? Wait, let me get a box.” She took the folders as he handed them to her and set them in the box. “Should of done it this way in the first place, Margaret, you goose,” she said.

  “That your name, Margaret?”

  “Margaret Hanski, yes.”

  Phelan stuck out his hand. “I’m Tom.”

  “Nice to meet you, Tom. You didn’t come to see Mr. Daughtry, did you? Cause he’s not here.”

  “No, just intended to check out your products for my company. Maybe meet some personnel. We’re branching out down this way.”

  Margaret scalded him with a glance. “You from New Jersey? You don’t sound Yankee.”

  A crash came from somewhere beyond the wall, glass breaking, some muffled exclamation. Phelan turned toward the sounds, but Margaret didn’t.

  “No, ma’am. Beaumont boy.”

  “Thought so. It’s just lotsa the big companies have headquarters up north, and they just barge down here and tell people what to do. Mr. Daughtry would never have let anyone tell him what to do with his company.”

  “You sound sad about Daughtry’s closing.”

  “Oh, just the lab’s
closing. Not the office. We’re moving the office over to Broadway. Old house that’s been restored—my lord, the woodwork! Oh, I meant to give you this.” She plucked a card from the drawer.

  “Then, would you say…business is booming?”

  Her chin turned. “Yes, moving. I already said that.”

  “Booming,” Phelan said, louder.

  “The business is doing very well,” she said stiffly. “We’re becoming more financially-orientated. It’s just that it’s happening so fast.”

  Phelan unpatted his own head. Daughtry not slaughtered. Moving. Figure that.

  The folders were boxed. Phelan stood up. “Can I help you with anything else?”

  “Oh no, thank you. I’ll be leaving soon for the reception. Let me give your card to Mr. Daughtry. I’ll make sure he gets it,” she said. “And I’ll tell him how helpful you were.” She smiled.

  “Thank you, but I’ll just catch him at your new…place,” Phelan said, tucking the card into his jacket pocket.

  “No, please. I’ll be glad to do it.” Her hand was out.

  Phelan tried a charming smile. “Don’t bother, ma’am.”

  “No bother at all.” Mock-sternly, she said, “Just give me that card, boy.”

  Fake cards. Damn, he should have thought of this situation before.

  Her hand kept reaching toward him.

  “You know, that’s a handsome suit. Elegant.”

  She looked down, spanked on a piece of skirt that covered her thigh. “Thank you. There’s the reception this afternoon. Plato and I’re going—”

  “Plato?”

  “Plato Willis is our assistant chemist. Little smart aleck’s somewhere round here.” Focusing on the black suit darkened Margaret’s chipper mood. “You know, they say bad things happen in threes. We lost our head chemist, Mr. Robbins. Terrible. Been expecting it for some time. Then my daughter-in-law just up and lost her baby, like to cried her eyes out and me with her. I swear. They got all boys, and they just knew this one would be a little girl. Samantha, they were going to call her.”

  “I’m so sorry. Was there a third sorrow?”

  “Well, yes. Mr. Daughtry’s been under the weather, and a few days ago, just like that, he’s gone. You hadn’t heard that?”

  Phelan hadn’t. “My condolences, ma’am. What was it that…what did Mr. Daughtry die from?”

  “Oh, he’s not dead, he’s in Arizona. With his daughter. I would’ve heard if he’d died, why, John Daughtry and I have worked together thirty-four years. He’s always suffered from sugar diabetes, and when he got this awful bug that swam out of his stomach into his bloodstream, his daughter moved him out there. John’s wife’s passed, you know. His son—” Flick of her eyelashes. “And with us so depending on foreign oil. This gas crisis we have. You know how much oil this country is importing now? Thirty-six percent from foreign countries and Mr. Daughtry—”

  “And Mr. Daughtry sick, you say. Must be tough for him.”

  “After forty-two years in his business, business he built with his own two hands, well, I shouldn’t say this, but he handled it better when Marjorie died. That was his wife. Having to leave the business broke his heart in two.”

  “Since the company is relocating, you said”—he didn’t want to bring up the card again—“who’s taken over for him? Not that anyone could fill his shoes but…”

  “You don’t know? Mr. Wallace Daughtry.” A hitch of her upper lip. “He restored that place on Broadway to live in, piled it full of pricey antiques. Now he’s decided it’s going to be his office. And his father’s chair still warm.” Margaret shook her head. “Excuse me, that was uncalled for. Now, I know I was about to do something, wasn’t I?” She narrowed her eyes.

  Before she could remember his card, Phelan formed a sandwich of the secretary’s hand between his. “Thank you for your time. Privilege to meet you, Margaret.”

  She was responding “And you too,” when a car braked hard outside, making her startle toward the window.

  The man appeared in the office so fast he might have Star Trek-teleported. Lanky guy, 30s. Bolo tie with a hunk of turquoise. Western-cut suit, tight to the butt and a flare to the trousers. Looked like he was sewed in it.

  “I thought I told you to keep the office locked today.”

  Margaret blinked rapidly, her lips parted. Her jaw moved a couple times before she said, “I’m sorry, Wallace. I just forgot for a minute.”

  “A minute. Only takes a minute to lock the damn door. The files are sensitive stuff.”

  “I am really sorry.” Her miserable expression lightened momentarily. “Oh. Oh, I forgot. I had copies cut of your new office keys, like you asked me to. Didn’t know exactly how many you wanted, so I had Sears cut—”

  “You keep saying forgot, Margaret.”

  “Only twice,” Phelan put in quietly.

  “Who’s this joker?” Wallace hooked his thumb at Phelan, who smiled and stuck out his hand, murmured an indecipherable company name.

  “This is a salesman happened by—” Margaret trailed off.

  “And waltzed right in the front door. A salesman.” Wallace Daughtry had eyes like black ball bearings. He head-butted the air. “Hit it, buddy. Plato back there?”

  “Yes, he’s in the lab. I do apologize, Mr. Daughtry, for forgetting to—”

  “You still have all our keys, don’t you?”

  “Course I do. In my purse like always. Including those spare keys for the new office, like I just said. Or wait, maybe I put those ones in my top desk drawer. Surely not. Oh dear, I know it’s one or the other. Let me look—”

  “No.”

  The snapped order stilled Margaret.

  “Later. You know, Margaret, your game needs upping. You—” Wallace Daughtry glared at her. “Oh, never mind.” He spun on a boot heel and went out the door again, passed in front of the window. There was the sound of a door opening and some voices.

  Once Phelan had determined that he couldn’t make out the men’s conversation, he turned to Margaret, who stood precisely as she had when Daughtry, Jr. had spoken to her, pale, her neck above the floppy white bow beginning to blotch in squarish red patches. He said a quiet “Thank you again, ma’am,” lightly touching Margaret Hanski on the shoulder, and navigated his way outside, where he cut around, taking a last survey. The Daughtry Petrochemical sign lay prone in the parking lot. But out front of a house on Broadway Avenue, there’d be a new sign.

  A side door was propped open, and Wallace in his tight Western suit was haranguing into it in a low tone, index finger out, arm chopping. Phelan slipped into the Chevelle and started it. Messed with the visor and a polishing rag on the inside windshield until young Daughtry slammed himself into a shiny Datsun 240Z, metallic blue, and did as he’d advised Phelan to do—hit it.

  Phelan climbed out of his car and walked over to the side door. A small man with his arms around a cardboard box was backing out. He turned, breeze scattering his pale, flyaway hair, and Phelan caught a startled glint behind the wire-rimmed glasses before the man scuttled back over the threshold.

  Janitor, mover, assistant chemist, first name Plato? Phelan shaded his eyes to peer in at the man hugging the box. Wallace must have scared all the blood south to this guy’s Earth shoes because he had the chalkiest face Phelan had seen outside of a Johnny Winter album. Sweating too.

  He offered his hand. “Good afternoon. Plato Willis? Assistant chemist, right?”

  “You are?”

  “Salesman. I was sorry to learn John Daughtry was sick, but my time’s not lost if I make a few contacts. That was Mr. Daughtry’s son that just left, I take it? Man in a hurry.”

  “Yeah, that was Moondark the Soulless.” The guy studied Phelan’s hand, looked him up and down and said, “Salesman? And I’m John Carter, Warlord of Mars.” He kicked loose the doorstop and pulled the metal door shut.

  Phelan slipped his spurned hand into his pocket and walked back out to the Chevelle which, surely now, would agree to stop at t
he sabroso Tacos La Bamba. He just might get home in time to watch Hank hammer number 690.

  XVI

  DELPHA, SHOWERED AND dressed for Mrs. Spier’s house, met Mr. Rabey slogging up the stairs. He stretched out a hand to peck her arm. As this right hand spent its day caressing his pants’ zipper, she took her arm back while lowering her ear to him.

  “Today’s Hettie’s birthday,” he said direly. His eyebrows perked with significance.

  She understood she was tipped. “Well. All right.”

  “Delpha! Delpha, come here.” Mrs. Bibbo was waving from the sofa by the television. Delpha swerved from her route to the kitchen and went over to her.

  “Evening. How’s the hearings?”

  Mrs. Bibbo was the New Rosemont’s Watergate expert. Banks of men in suits filled the screen. A young man with a steep forehead was bending his neck to a microphone.

  “Nothing new. But…thirty-five times,” said the old lady, shaking her head tightly.

  “What?”

  “That’s what he said all last week—thirty five times that young man there talked with the President about covering up the Watergate break-in. That Nixon says he never heard of even once. Not even Al Capone’s mob was as bad as this gang. Capone was just bootlegging liquor. This is not whiskey. This is America the brave! These men lie, and they cheat, and they show no shame. Just so they can have all the power. Every one of them will tell you they deserve what they have. But when they’re alone in the dark”—Mrs. Bibbo tapped her own chest, the gentle slope above the magnificent breasts at her waist—“they know.”

  The young man’s top lip glistened in the TV camera.

  “Oh, and,”—now her finger wagged like a teacher’s—“it’s Hettie’s birthday.”

  Delpha nodded gravely.

  Mr. Finn and Mr. Nystrom, at the game table, had already put aside their playing cards and were waiting, bright-eyed and courteous, for Delpha to draw even with them. They both cleared their throats, then glanced at each other with irritation.