“Whatcha gonna do with those bottles?”
“I hope we’re going to find a killer with them, Millie. How do you want to do this? Have Betty spray each one for you? Or,” he added quickly, “you can spray them yourself.”
“Good Lord, no. Room already smells like a hunting camp. Why do they put musk in every single man’s cologne? All they need is a bar of Lever’s 2000.”
“You’ve got a point, Millie, but how are you going to know which one is the right smell. You did say I caught the smell, right?”
“I don’t need a spray, it’s that one right here.”
“Now you didn’t go and say that because it’s number four, did you?”
I gave him a disgusted look as he picked up the bottle I indicated.
He held it out to me and I read the label. T-Y-P-H-O-O-N.
“You can spray if you want to, it’s your office, but that bottle is the right one. I can smell it from here.”
Wade Tate gave the bottle to Andy. “Well, Millie, good news is Typhoon is a very expensive cologne. Andy, call Columbus and see if they have any kind of customer list for this cologne.”
“What’s the bad news,” I asked.
“Happens that Columbus gave half the town a sample bottle at their Christmas party this year.” He yelled after Andy. “And Andy, get a list of who all they gave gift bottles to at their Christmas party.”
“So what are you going to do with all those pretty bottles,” I asked him.
“Millie, I would give them to you if I could. But some would say I had bribed you if I did that. So they will remain in the evidence room.” He seemed genuinely regretful.
“I understand,” I said. “But can I have the Columbus bag?”
NINE
I lay on the ground on my back, my head leaning against the right tree. The sneaker on my left foot rested on the raised knee of my right leg. My foot was aimed at the branches in the tree. In the summer I could do this barefoot. My ankle swerved in its socket as I used my toes to count the bare limbs into tens. Now you couldn’t do that in the summer. Not many leaves left on the trees. Winter was coming.
“Go away. I’m not hungry,” I yelled at a car that slowed at the curb. “Come back in ten days.”
“Yoo-hoo, Milicent. It’s me, Vinnie.”
Now if you had to go and have another name other than Milicent Le Sueur, who wouldn’t choose Vinnie Ledbetter? Sometimes I wish I had found her mailbox with her name on it before I found those cans of peas. It’s a name that stays with you long after you’ve said it. Ledbetter. You could try to say it fast, but it just came out long and slow.
I said it ten times before I got up off the ground.
I ambled over to the curb and leaned against Miss Vinnie Ledbetter’s black Mercedes. “How are you, Miss Vinnie Ledbetter? I haven’t seen you in a while. Thank you for the afghan.”
“Oh, Dick gave it to you? I left it with him because I didn’t see you before I left town. I worry so about you being cold.” God put the blue of the sky in Miss Vinnie Ledbetter’s eyes to show the space inside her head. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a smart woman, she just had so many empty places in her.
She had been the first one to call Wade Tate about me, sending him scurrying down to the place to find me. It was way before the rock and the KFC, so I was hungry and told her so. Big mistake. Oh, the food she brought was fine, but I ask you, was it worth talking to Miss Vinnie Ledbetter for a Subway sandwich? I didn’t think so, and after I’d taken it, I told her, “You can go home now.”
Did she do it? Oh, no. She wanted to talk.
“What is your name? Where do you live? Do you have any money? Are you a Christian?”
And after that, she got personal.
“Where do you go to the bathroom?”
How did I know that she was the richest lady in town?
“You can go away now,” I had told her again.
Would you believe she started crying?
“I just want to help you.”
“Okay, okay. You can go get me a Coke. Make it a big cup so I can pee in it.” I thought that would satisfy her that I wasn’t going to go on the ground, but oh, no, she just kept on crying.
That was long ago, before I got sick and before Wade Tate arranged for me to spend my second winter as a bag lady in the state mental hospital. With a thirty-day extension on a ninety-day commitment, I missed all of Portsmith’s icy, record-breaking cold last year.
It was when they finally had to release me for good that I made my way back to the place and the trees.
The place is like this. It’s a full block of what used to be houses, but they were torn down. Only the original concrete retaining wall, going all away around the block, remained. The wall is about three feet tall and perfect for sitting on. No one ever wakes up in the mornings and thinks, Where is the bag lady going to sit today? so the wall was tailor-made for me. The big company across the street keeps the lot mowed, and so it is like a park, but with only two trees. It is their saving grace that they are big ones, spreading their arms full and wide over the property, decorating the sky with green leaves that hang on till the dog days of summer before turning yellow and orange. When they finally fade to brown, it’s all over, and winter’s coming on.
I looked up at the trees, and I looked at Miss Vinnie Ledbetter in her black Mercedes. “I’m going to spend the winter with you, Miss Vinnie Ledbetter.”
“I know. Wade told me. I’m so excited, Milicent. What an adventure we will have.”
Sad thing all her people were dead, but, Lord, wouldn’t you hate to know that all the excitement you were going to have in your life was a bag lady wintering with you?
“Milicent, would you like to come and see your room?”
“It’s not that cold yet,” I told her.
She looked disappointed. No wonder Tate Wade couldn’t say no to Miss Vinnie Ledbetter. She carries all her heart there in her blue eyes.
I changed the subject. “Did you hear about the girl who was killed?”
“Yes, I read it in the paper when I got home. That’s why I rushed right down here, Milicent. I am so afraid for you. I’ve told you how dangerous it is to be out on the streets. That poor girl. I didn’t know her, but I know her grandmother. I’m on my way over there now. Are you sure you don’t want me to come back on my way home and take you with me?”
“Not yet, thank you, but soon.”
“Are you going to the funeral?” she asked.
I thought of Titus Moore’s warning for me not to do so. Whoop-de-do. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Yes, I’m thinking on it,” I told her.
“Would you like me to pick you up and take you?”
“Do I have to wear a skirt?”
“Well, it would be respectful of you,” she said cautiously.
“I have a skirt. I can do respectful.”
“Good, that’s settled then. I’ll find out the exact time, and I’ll drop back by and tell you.” She reached through the car window and put a hand on mine. Not many people touch a bag lady. “Keep safe, Milicent.” And she drove away, saying, That poor girl, that poor girl. Miss Vinnie Ledbetter has all the makings of a first-class bag lady.
TEN
I sat looking at the sleeping K-A-R-E-N.
It hadn’t been hard to find her. I followed B Street on down to Twelfth, and there she was in this vacant lot, big feet sticking out of the bushes. Well, sure, I thought she was dead and was getting ready to go on my merry way when I heard her snore. I hadn’t heard a snore like that since Ricky and I went on a camp-out with Fred and Ethel.
Going to the other end of the bushes, I squatted down by her head and listened for a few minutes. How do they do that? If I snored like that, I’d wear a muffler to bed.
I poked her in the ear. “Hey, you, gypsy, wake up.”
“Holy jumpin
g Jehoshaphat.”
“Are you saying Christ’s name in vain?”
“Jesus Christ, woman, you scared the holy shit out of me.”
“Well, that does it then. I had this plan, but if you’re going to go around talking like that, you’re not part of it.”
K-A-R-E-N had jumped right up off the ground when I poked her and was towering over me. Lord, she was tall.
“Wait, Milicent, I wasn’t cursing. I was…praying.”
I thought for a second. “Like Jesus in the garden?”
“Sure, just like Him.”
“I don’t know.”
“Would I pull your leg?”
I laughed as she reached in the tapestry bag she had used as a pillow and pulled out a package of cigarettes. I declined the offer of one and watched as she lit up.
“How do you do that?”
“I know I should give them up, but there are so few pleasures in life. This is one of mine.” K-A-R-E-N blew out the first lungful high into the air.
“No, I mean the snoring. You’ll never have birds around here if you keep that up.”
She sat back down on the ground beside me. “Oh, that. Sorry. When I’m really tired, I really lose it, don’t I?”
“Sounded like elephants in heat under the bushes.”
“Got it from my grandmother’s side of the family. Used to scare the bejesus out of me when I was a kid. Oh, sorry. I mean scared the crap out of me.”
“Well, you need help with it. One night you’ll be snoring away and take one of those deep breaths, and it won’t come, and you will die. And then where will you be?’
“Dead, I guess. What did you say about a plan?”
I pulled two boxes of fruit juice out of the green bag and gave her one. “Save me the straw,” I told her. “I have this plan, and I think, after we fix the name thing, that you can help me with it.”
“Name thing?”
“You are not a K-A-R-E-N to me. You are Gypsy. If I have to go around being focused on the plan, I can’t be spelling your name every time it pops in my mind.”
She ground out the cigarette in the dirt and stuck the straw in the juice box. “Gypsy. Gypsy. Okay, I like the sound of it. What’s the plan?”
“The Police Chief Wade Tate is a friend of mine. He used to be no friend of mine, but now that I love him, he’s my best friend. I had this plan to help him out with solving a murder that I saw, but now that I have to wear a skirt and go to the funeral with Miss Vinnie Ledbetter, I’ve had to change the plan. And I need your help.”
Gypsy sucked the juice outta that box in one long slurp. “And what do I get for helping you? No policemen are friends of mine.”
“I’ll give you my good word.”
“Your good word? What does that mean?”
“One of these days you’re gonna be pulled in downtown and given a police sheet. When that happens, I’ll drop by and give you a good word that will go on your sheet. I have lots of good words on mine. Miss Vinnie Ledbetter was the first. Then the night manager of KFC added his good word. You get ten good words, and they put a flag on your police sheet. I have a flag on mine. Every time they take me in, someone says, ‘Whoop-de-do, this woman is flagged. Better call the chief.’”
Gypsy crumpled her juice box and threw it on the ground. “And this chief helps you? You got a thing going with him?”
“Don’t do that.” I jumped up and picked up the discarded box. “That’s the first thing that gets you pulled in. Littering. And no, I don’t have anything going with Tate Wade.” I took the box and put it in the black bag with the plastic lining. “What I am afraid of is that, what with this murder and all, things are going to get nervous around here. And when that happens, the bag lady is the first to go.”
“Okay,” said Gypsy. “Supposing I buy into all this bag-lady theory of survival. What does my helping you with a plan have to do with it? And what is the plan, and who do I have to kill?”
“Don’t say kill.”
Gypsy laughed. “It’s a figure of speech, Milicent. Tell me what I have to do, and I’ll think on it.”
“Well, it starts with these bags,” I said.
Gypsy and I huddled together on the ground by the bushes, and I gave her the lessons on the bags.
“This is how I do my bags. I use them like drawers in a chest. Only instead of being in a house, I carry them around with me. First, they have to be clean, so I have to recycle them often.
“The green one is for the food and money. Always carry rolls for the mockingbirds. The orange one is for clean underwear and the Lever 2000. And if I can afford them, Handi Wipes.
“The pink one is for my straws, knitting needles, and Scotch tape. I don’t knit, but I remembered that in my first dream about the bag lady, way back when, she was always sitting and knitting. So one day I went to Michael’s and bought these two purple metal knitting needles and the pink bag for them to go into. I call it my office bag.
“The black one is for trash, of course. The blue bag holds crossword puzzles. I find them every day in old newspapers and keep them until I need to feel smart. I keep my meds in the red bag so when Wade Tate asks, ‘Millie, are you taking your meds?’ I can honestly say yes. I take them everywhere I go!
“The yellow bag has nature things in it. Flowers that I wished I hadn’t picked but couldn’t resist and can never throw away. Ten fresh leaves every season. A little rock shaped like my money rock so I can remember when it’s the first of the month. Some dirt from my place, so I can always find it again.
“There is nothing in the striped bag. It’s my obligatory bag. Miss Vinnie Ledbetter gave it to me when I came back from the hospital last spring, and I hate it, hate it, hate it. But I carry it around, because I am obliged to her for so many things. When she drives up in her black Mercedes, I hold up the bag with stripes and smile. And then I hide it away in my Columbus bag. Columbus bags are what I carry most of the other bags in. Otherwise I’d just be all bags and no lady.
“The tenth bag is a small paper bag. I have my weight limits, but I need ten bags to be safe, and I fold it very small and keep it in the bottom of the Columbus bag in case anyone ever asks if I have ten bags. No one ever has, but they are sure to do so one day, and I don’t want to be caught short.”
I put the small paper bag back at the bottom of the Columbus bag. “Got it?”
“Got it,” she said. “Milicent, it’s a true art form.”
“You’re a quick learner, Gypsy. Bet you do crosswords. Okay, now here’s the plan. As I reached for the pink bag, I asked, “You ever smelled T-Y-P-H-O-O-N?”
ELEVEN
It was girls day out when Gypsy and I went shopping at the mall.
First of course, we had to buy our Columbus bags at the front entrance. Then we moseyed onto the black-and-white squares. I told Gypsy she could take the white squares, as I was always black. After she got the hang of it, we danced on over to the men’s cologne department.
I had to yell at the saleslady a couple of times, but she finally produced a countertop sample of T-Y-P-H-O-O-N for us to smell.
“Now don’t go spraying yourself with it, Gypsy. Just spray it in the air and run your hand through it. No. The wrist. The wrist. It’s all in the wrist.”
She did it okay for a beginner, hitting only three customers with the direct shower before getting it right.
We had collected quite a retinue by the time we hit the hosiery department: four kids on their lunch break from the high school, two security guards, and one floor manager. “Whatcha lookin at? I’m a paying customer. I already spent twenty-five cents for this bag, so don’t go getting your tail feathers in a ruffle. Now I need some, God forbid, pantyhose.”
Gypsy whispered “Walmart” in my ear, but I told her I liked to patronize local businesses with my money, although you couldn’t beat the prices for sweats at Wal
mart. Real girl talk. Especially when we got to finding the right size for my pantyhose. I hadn’t bought any pantyhose since I met Ricky that last time down at the Copa.
Gypsy insisted I was a B, but I told her I had to start with A.
After that, I treated her for lunch at the Garden. I sure hoped the rock knew how much money I’d been spending. At that rate, I would need a transfusion of cash by the tenth.
As we finished our coffee, Gypsy asked, “Now, what are you going to wear to the funeral?”
So that necessitated a visit to the junkyard, where I introduced her to Tag. “Give him a bite of that chicken salad croissant you brought from the Garden. He never bites the hand that feeds her.”
When I popped the trunk to my red Nissan, Gypsy was amazed at the amount of stuff I had stashed there, but my theory is that if you’re going to be a bag lady, don’t carry more than you can carry. And my personal opinion is that shopping carts are tacky.
“What would make life really good is if my red Nissan was parked down at my place, but you can’t have it all,” I told her.
We selected a long blue-denim skirt for me to wear to Angel’s funeral, discarding the green one with the idea that silk was too dressy for a daytime funeral. It was a little wrinkled, but I spread it over the hood of the red Nissan. “What with the day being so damp and all, it’ll iron out real quick,” I assured Gypsy.
“What’s that spot on the back?” she asked.
“I have no idea, but just ignore it. If it’s behind me, it’s forgotten.”
All in all, we had a great time. I had to reassess my first opinions of Gypsy now that she wasn’t a K-A-R-E-N. She wasn’t half-bad.
It was a really cold, gray day, and I wrapped my afghan around me, and we sat and talked for a while. I felt real bad I couldn’t ask her to sit in the Nissan, but she was smoking like a chimney, and I didn’t want her to smell up my bedroom.
She wanted to know about being a bag lady. Why I was one. Where I had come from. About Ricky.
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