The Opium Equation

by Lisa Wysocky

  After Sally had eaten about half her grain I left a long note for Jon. Then I made a quick run through the shower, swabbed on far more mascara than usual, and headed into Ashland City.

  13

  AS I PULLED INTO THE PARKING lot of the Ashland City Co-op, I saw Jim Ed holding court from a rocking chair on the porch. He didn’t look much the worse for wear due to his recent surgical ordeal. His thin body was clad, as usual, in an endless series of white undershirts, dark blue work pants, black suspenders, white tube socks, and black lace-up shoes with thick soles. As a concession to the cold weather, he had added a bright red coat that looked as if it might have once resided in his wife’s closet. The thinning hair on his scalp had been dyed bright yellow, and his full set of ill-fitting uppers and lowers had been scrubbed to an unnatural whiteness. Before he’d had all his teeth pulled, Jim Ed had looked something like Bugs Bunny, so this was a marked improvement.

  As I got out of the truck, Jim Ed greeted me as a long lost old friend. Not that I was either long lost or an old friend; Jim Ed greeted everyone that way.

  “Miss Enright, how very nice to see you on this cold morning,” he said, dismissing the two older men he had been speaking with. “I ain’t seen you, seems like, in a month of Sundays. Can I help you find something inside? There’s a new line of hay nets just come out, guaranteed for a year.”

  Listening to him, one might swear that Jim Ed was employed by the Co-op. But he wasn’t. Since his retirement ten years or so back, Jim Ed had hung out at the Co-op just about every day. Rain or shine. Good weather or bad. He once told me, in the strictest confidence of course, that as much as he loved his wife, they drove each other crazy. So he wandered down to the Coop every morning to keep his marriage intact. The fact was, Jim Ed was Cheatham County’s biggest gossip. He thrived on it. I think the Co-op figured out early on that having Jim Ed ensconced in a chair out front was the equivalent of several thousand dollars of advertising each week. With Jim Ed around, everyone came to the Co-op to find out what was happening. I was no different.

  “No, no, Jim Ed. No hay nets today. I came by to see you. Jon told me you were doing pretty well since you had your heart surgery and I just stopped by to say hi.”

  From prior experience I knew I wouldn’t be able to rush Jim Ed. Jim Ed freely peppered his gossip in Southern analogies so we’d have to sit around and b.s. for a while before I could get to the real reason for my visit. I hoped my extra coat of mascara would hurry him along.

  “Well, that’s mighty kind of you, Miss. Mighty kind,” he said, settling me on a bench next to the rocker. “Since my op-e-ration I’m finer than frog hair. In fact, if life gets any better, I’ll have to hire someone to help me enjoy it. Say, you don’t know how that old mare of Hello Holderman’s is doing, do you?”

  Hello was an elderly farmer who lived on Pond Creek Road. He was nicknamed for obvious reasons; he, like Jim Ed, had never met a stranger. Hello had never gotten around to modernizing enough to use a tractor and still plowed using a team of Belgian mares as ancient as he. Hello was older than dirt, but he still did all right. If he’d ever married, it was so long ago no one had ever heard about it. The same goes for any kids he might have had.

  “No, I haven’t heard a word. The mare had a bout of colic, didn’t she?”

  “Boy howdy, did she ever. Doc Giles said her gut was twisted tighter than a fiddle string. Didn’t know if he’d ever get the kinks out. Guess he did, though. Guess I’d have heard if she didn’t make it. Boy now, that’d be hard on old Hello, losing one of his team. That old boy is as tough as leather, but it’d plumb kill him to lose one of them.”

  I agreed, then said, “I think it would be even harder to lose a child. I wonder how Hill Henley is doing? You’ve heard Bubba is missing?”

  “Oh yeah. Yep, gotta be tough, but that young ’un is sorry as a two-dollar watch.”

  “You haven’t heard anything about where Bubba might be, have you, Jim Ed?”

  He looked surprised. “Ain’t you heard? That boy’s done gone off the deep end. He’s out hiding, made hisself as scarce as hen’s teeth. He’s going to be charged with murder. Turrible thing it turned out to be. Now I know you know the boy. Personal like. I warn’t even gonna bring all that up, with you finding the body and knowing Miss Dupree. But if you’re thinking of sticking up for that boy, I’d say don’t. Leave it to the sheriff. That boy is plumb dangerous.”

  Jim Ed apparently had Bubba tried, convicted, and sentenced.

  “What makes you think Bubba is guilty?”

  “Well, the murder weapon belonged to the boy, didn’t it? Well didn’t it?”

  I nodded my head.

  “It was found there on your land, but the weapon belonged to that boy. I mean it don’t take no genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep. It’s very simple. Miss Dupree’s done been murdered horrible-like and Bubba’s implicated you and gone missing. That’s why I know Big Jim Burns is on the right track.”

  It sounded to me more like Sheriff Burns and Jim Ed had breakfast together. Sheriff Big Jim knew Jim Ed’s visible location on the porch of the co-op, combined with his propensity for gossip, could do a lot to sway voters his way so he made it a point to cultivate the older man. But my big question was: why did our lofty sheriff implicate Bubba––and not me––to Jim Ed when he’d told his deputy the opposite?

  “So tell me now, Miss Enright,” Jim Ed said, leaning in close, “you having found the body and all. Were she in purty bad shape? I mean, I’ve heard different things from different people.” Jim Ed’s old eyes glittered and he licked his lips in anticipation of my answer. When I didn’t say anything, he continued, “You having found her, well, I’d like to know, so’s I can put to rest all them nasty rumors that’re floating about, if you understand my drift.”

  Oh, I understood completely. I knew Jim Ed spread rumors quicker than horses stomped flies, to use one of Jim Ed’s own analogies. He lived for gossip, the more outrageous the better, and I took a bit of perverse pleasure in telling him briefly and factually about the body.

  “There wasn’t much to see,” I said. “There was some blood and it was obvious that she was dead.”

  “I see.” Jim Ed tried his best to look satisfied with my answer, but he didn’t quite pull it off. Eventually curiosity got the better of him. “So now, what did you do when you found her?”

  “What did I do? Well, Jim Ed, I puked. Right there on Glenda’s precious antebellum floor.”

  Jim Ed had the presence of mind to choke on that last bit. When he stopped gasping for air and the tears cleared from his eyes, he asked eagerly if there was anything else I could remember.

  “No, that’s about it, Jim Ed,” I said as his face fell. He looked like a kid whose last piece of candy had rolled into the gutter. “If people start any rumors about this, you tell them you talked to me and that’s the way it was,” I said as I rose to leave. “Oh, and I am so glad you’re feeling better.”

  “Me, too,” he said sadly. “Me, too.”

  Cat’s Horse Tip #6

  “When a horse backs up, she moves her legs in a reverse trot with the diagonal pairs of legs moving together.”

  14

  I WENT THOUGHTFULLY FROM THE CO-OP to the Cheatham County Rest Home, driving over the “new bridge” across the Cumberland River. The new bridge had been in place for a while and was a nice, safe, generic structure, but I’d liked the old one better. If you discounted the fact that pieces of its roadway regularly fell into the Cumberland and that it was so narrow that two trucks couldn’t pass, causing a lot of traffic to stop and back up, the old bridge had character.

  I am of the opinion that planning commissions ought to include a hefty dose of character along with their so-called progress. Guess it comes from my small town upbringing, but I’m not convinced that progress is always what we need.

  And speaking of truth, it still bothered me that Sheriff Big Jim told Deputy Giles that I was a suspect, and then turned around and told Jim Ed t
hat he was going to arrest Bubba. Maybe we were both suspects, or maybe he was just testing the water. Dipping his toe, so to speak. As I parked in the shady lot, I dismissed such thoughts from my mind. I didn’t have enough information to figure out the sheriff’s motives, and besides, I had a different problem facing me.

  I could hear Opal before I even got to her room.

  “I took one of those an hour ago,” she said loudly, and she clamped her lips together as I entered.

  Physically, her private room at the home was only a few miles from Fairbanks, but culturally it might have been worlds away.

  “That was yesterday. Remember, Gran? These pills are the ones the nurse gave you to take today. See?” Adam’s voice was a smooth mix of persuasion and determination as he set three pills on a tray in front of Opal Dupree.

  He spoke to me in a stage whisper that Opal could hear only too clearly. “It’s good that you came now. She’s not what she was before she heard about Aunt Glenda’s … ah … passing. I thought I’d start coming by twice a day. Don’t take too much notice of her ramblings, will you?”

  Adam poured liquid the color of aged port into a small shot glass. “Here’s your morning tonic, Gran. The pills on the tray are your blood pressure pill, muscle relaxer, glucosamine, and your vitamins.” He lined up the capsules in a row while Opal sat in her custom wheelchair in a lavender designer robe.

  I could see why Opal Dupree looked as delicate as the china in her late daughter’s dining room. If she took all the pills on the tray she’d be too full to eat lunch.

  Opal grumbled a few unintelligible words as she eyed the medicine suspiciously from under wrinkled lids. Then, with a resigned glance at her handsome grandson, she began to dutifully swallow the pills, her gnarled hands creeping slowly from the tray to the creases that made up her mouth and back again.

  The hospital bed to her right was industrial, as was the metal stand beside it. But the room itself had been painted a warm beige and had generous accents of deep green at the window and door. The floor was a uniform tile that spread throughout the home, but it was well polished and shone where the sun peeped in through the window. The room itself was quiet, yet there was a comforting buzz of activity out in the hall. I got the sense that the activity could have included this room, had the occupant wished.

  “That’s great, Gran,” said Adam, as Opal slowly swallowed the last pill. “And now you have a nice visitor. Cat Enright is here. You remember our neighbor, Cat.”

  The heavy lids glanced in my direction. She gave another unintelligible muttering and waved her shot glass to emphasize her point.

  I molded myself to a tan plastic chair that looked as if it belonged in the dining hall, or maybe the rec room. I wondered if the choice of chair was Opal’s and, if not, why Glenda hadn’t brought her something more comfortable. Surely cost was not an object here.

  While Opal studied me wordlessly, I studied the multitude of paintings that hung on the walls. They were quite good and ranged in subject matter from delicate portraiture to exquisite still lifes.

  Adam, meanwhile, shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “That’s Colonel Samuel Henley. He’s the one who built Aunt Glenda’s house, Fairbanks,” he said as he saw me studying the portrait of an elder statesman in a long frock coat and stiff white collar. White muttonchops matched his shirt, and his flowing head of hair meant either that the artist took exceptional license with his subject, or that Hill’s balding head did not come from Col. Sam. This was the man that Jim Ed claimed made his fortune smuggling during the Civil War. Just what, I wondered, was it that he smuggled?

  “Well,” said Adam nervously, his eyes on his watch. “I’m not due on Music Row until this afternoon. You two don’t mind if I sit here with you for a few minutes, do you?”

  His eyes, sea blue today, gave his grandmother an inquiring glance. Sensing no opposition, he perched on a corner of her bed. In the hall, I heard the tinkling of laughter followed by the almost silent hum of a wheelchair as it passed by.

  “You’re not her,” Opal conceded brusquely.

  I looked at Adam, not sure what Opal meant.

  “No, Gran. This is Cat Enright. With the horses. Remember?” He turned to me. “She thought you might be the physical therapist who comes several times a week. Gran, well, let’s just say Gran doesn’t think much of her.”

  There was another unintelligible grumble from Opal. “All you young girls look the same. And I’m just as glad that you aren’t her. Aren’t you?”

  I said that, yes, I certainly was glad I wasn’t her, although I was still not certain who “her” was.

  “I get confused sometimes,” said Opal, her creased mouth quivering, her eyes misting.

  I said that it was all right. That I sometimes got confused, too. I looked again at Adam, who was now swinging his left leg back and forth in a charmingly distracting way. He gave me an encouraging smile and I turned back to Opal.

  Opal took a big gulp of her “tonic,” the glass gripped vice-like in her clawed hands. “Damned pills make my mouth dry.”

  I nodded again, not knowing what to say. I’d come to see Opal to pay my condolences on the death of her daughter, but the change in her since I’d last visited a few weeks ago was disturbing. At her eighty-fifth birthday party in early January she’d been a lively, striking woman, handicapped only by the arthritis that crippled her limbs.

  Now Opal’s eyes were dull and vague, her disposition peevish. I forced myself to remember that she’d lost her younger daughter, Adam’s mother, in a tragic car accident many years ago and now she’d lost her one remaining child in a brutal murder. Hardships aside, the change in Opal was extreme all the same.

  “I need some money,” she said, leaning imperceptibly toward me in a confidential manner. “That’s why there’s no furniture in here. I had to sell it to pay off the nurse. She wants to kill me but as long as I keep giving her money, she’ll leave me alone.”

  It was utter nonsense of course. Wasn’t it? Adam agreed calmly that it was.

  “Now, Gran,” he said. “Don’t you remember you wanted all the furniture moved out? You said it was hard for you to move your wheelchair around with it in here and you never used the furniture anyway. Remember?”

  Opal ignored her grandson. “My dear,” she continued, “you must try the pâté. It’s wonderful.” She held her empty shot glass toward me and with a nod from Adam I accepted it and pretended to sample its contents.

  I was at a loss. The Opal Dupree I knew had been a shrewd, dynamic businesswoman. She had encouraged her two daughters in their quest for Hollywood stardom, even to the point of negotiating Glenda’s first movie deal herself. Many said Opal Dupree made Glenda the big star she was, continually planting stories in the trades and arranging numerous publicity stunts. Not bad for a widow from Nashville.

  As I watched, Opal dug among the many folds of her robe and produced a stylish gold lighter and a very crumpled pack of cigarettes. She withdrew one, examined it thoroughly for some time and finally, with shaking hands, lit it.

  “I’m not supposed to have these,” she said, her chin raised. “So. Why are you here, Cat?”

  Once the cigarette was lit, Opal’s mind seemed to come back to her. She was once more the domineering mother, the revered matriarch of the Dupree family.

  “I just stopped by to say how sorry I am for your loss.”

  “What loss? You mean Glenda? You didn’t murder her, did you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then what do you have to be sorry about? She’s gone. It’s my loss, not yours.”

  Even though her words were harsh, this was the woman I had expected to see. I was infinitely more comfortable with the abruptness, the coldness, than I was with her vague wanderings, because this was the Opal Dupree that I knew.

  “Is there anything I can do to help you? Funeral arrangements, anything like that?”

  “No. Adam is supposed to be taking care of all the details. You are taking care of that, a
ren’t you?” she asked him. He nodded.

  “Well you’d never know it by me. He hasn’t told me a damned thing.” Her head nodded on her thin, wrinkled neck, and for a minute I thought she was going to drift off to sleep. Instead, she heaved a big sigh and frowned at the portrait.

  “Col. Sam Henley,” Opal said. The words came out slurred. “All he tried to do was better his place in life and help those soldiers. After the war no one gave him the time of day.”

  “I see.” I tried to look intelligent, look as if I knew what she was talking about, but to my dismay, I saw Opal had slipped back into vagueness. I realized that I couldn’t tell how coherent she was from sentence to sentence. It was proving to be a difficult visit.

  “He gave those soldiers exactly what they needed,” Opal said fiercely. “And they should have thanked him. But no. Them Northerners all run off home when the war was over and not a how-de-do from them. Not even a remembrance on the day he died.”

  She glared at me, and this time even Adam looked uncomfortable.

  “Was the war his fault?” demanded Opal, her pasty cheeks finally acquiring some color. “Can you blame a man who was too old to fight for wanting to do his part? Oh, my. Did you think he was a real colonel? No ma’am, he was not. He never fought a day in his life. He just give himself the title because he figured he helped the war effort to that level.”

  She ended her short tirade abruptly, pointing her knobby finger at me to make sure I understood.

  “You must have a great interest in the Civil War,” I said.

  “My mother died when I was ten.”

  Not sure where this train of thought was leading, I said, “That must have been hard for you.”

  “It built character. That’s what it did.” Her eyes were once more sharp and focused. Her voice strong. “We lived in town. In Nashville. Of course Nashville was much smaller then. Still a city, but it had a small town feel. My father passed shortly before I was born. Run over in Atlanta by a bunch of drunken hooligans during a business trip. I was sent to live with friends of my mother’s when she passed. Good people they were. Kind. My mother was from here, from Cheatham County, and I remember the stories she told me about old Col. Sam. Even then he was a legend out here.”