“Well, I’d say I’m friends—real friends—with maybe six or seven of ’em. And the same is true for everybody else in that gym if they’re honest about it. Don’t nobody feel like they belong in high school, Dovey, except maybe the cheerleaders and the football team, and they might be fakin’ it for all I know.”
He could see her hands trembling, so he wrapped his own around them. “Look, if you just flat out don’t want to go inside, that’s fine by me. I don’t give a rip about that dance. I just wanted to take you someplace besides church—and someplace where your whole family wasn’t standin’ over me with firearms.”
That brought her smile back. “So what are we gonna do?”
He thought for a minute. “Well, we’re gonna go dancin’ someplace else.” He gave her hands a little squeeze, then turned and cranked the Buick.
“But Daddy said—”
“He said we couldn’t go anyplace after. He didn’t say nothin’ about before. All we gotta do is stop back by here and run inside that gym for two seconds on the way home, and we can truthfully say that we went to the dance and no place after. And I hope you’ll do me the honor of singin’ at my funeral if your daddy ever finds out, because I’ve always thought you had a real pretty voice.”
Pete eased the Buick out of the parking lot and drove a few miles up the highway. He turned onto a side road next to the billboard that read “McAdoo’s” and followed it to a café on the bank of a crescent-shaped lake, which glowed in the soft rosy light of early sunset. He opened Dovey’s door for her and helped her out of the car, just as his mother had shown him, then offered her his arm as they walked across the gravel parking lot to the café.
“Evening, Mr. McAdoo,” Pete called to the man wiping tables with a dish towel on the far side of the café.
“Hey, Pete!” he called back, checking out his dinner jacket and tie. “Whoo-ee, son, look at you all gussied up! You must be preachin’ somewhere tonight.”
Pete laughed. “No, sir—just out on a date. This is Dovey.”
Mr. McAdoo came over and shook her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Dovey. You know, even a pretty girl like you could do a lot worse than ole Pete here. That scalawag’s been swimmin’ in my lake since he was yea high, and I can tell you right now, he’s good people.”
Dovey smiled. Pete could see that she already liked Mr. McAdoo.
“Pete, I don’t start openin’ the café for supper till next week—I’m just gettin’ things ready—but I’ll fix y’all a bite if you want me to. I’m guessin’ you’re on your way to the spring dance?”
“Yes, sir. We didn’t come to eat, but thank you for offerin’.”
“Well, what can I do for you?”
Pete cleared his throat so his voice wouldn’t crack and make him sound like a big baby. “Has your swimmin’ pier still got those speakers hooked up to the jukebox?” he asked, fidgeting with his bow tie.
“Sure does.” Mr. McAdoo frowned slightly as if he were trying to figure out where Pete was heading. “The kids love my jukebox,” he explained to Dovey, “but my wife hates it. Says the racket gets on her last nerve. So I had to run me some speakers out to the pier, where Mertis can’t hear the music from the kitchen, or else she throws a fit and won’t fry my hamburgers for me.”
“Well, we were on our way to the dance,” Pete told him, “but neither one of us has ever been to one before, so we chickened out a little when we got there. I thought maybe we could practice with a few songs out on the pier till we get our nerve up—if you don’t mind changin’ a dollar and lettin’ us play your jukebox for a little while?” He fished a dollar out of his wallet.
“Don’t mind it a bit,” Mr. McAdoo said, getting their change from the register. “I’ve got to run Mertis up to her mother’s in a few minutes. Won’t be gone long, but if y’all have to leave before I get back, there’s a spare key in a Mason jar underneath that flat-bottom boat that’s flipped over right out yonder. So lock up for me if you don’t mind. And be careful if it gets dark on you. The corner lights work on the pier, but all the others blowed down in a storm last summer and I haven’t got around to puttin’ ’em back up yet. If you want a Co-Cola or anything, just get you one out of the cooler.”
“We sure thank you,” Pete said. “And Mr. McAdoo, if we could . . . you know . . . keep this between us? See, we’re not supposed to go anywhere but the dance, and Dovey’s daddy’s a real good shot.”
“Haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in weeks.” Mr. McAdoo winked.
“I’ll leave our Coke money by the register,” Pete said.
“No need. I think I can spot y’all a couple of Co-Colas in honor of the occasion.” Mr. McAdoo shook Pete’s hand. “And Miss Dovey, I hope to see you again when we can visit longer.” He gave them a little wave as he went out the front door.
The café had a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows facing the lake. A door in the center led out to a deep porch, which ran the length of the café and connected to a pier that angled down slightly for a few yards then leveled off over the water. At the end of the pier, about ten yards from the bank of the lake, was a big square platform with a plank floor and a ladder attached to one side so swimmers could climb up and dry off in the sun. The platform rested on stilts, but right now the water was high enough to cover them, so it looked like it was just floating on the lake. As Dovey stepped onto it, Pete loaded the jukebox with nickels and selected as many of her favorite songs as he could find. If anybody could chase away her jitters, it was Patsy Cline.
He started outside to join her, then stopped for a minute on the porch just to look at her standing there with her back to him, silhouetted against the lake in her flowy blue-green dress. A slight breeze lifted her hair away from her face as she watched a mother duck swim by with her babies and nudge them into the shelter of the tall grass on the bank. Pete suddenly got a terrible feeling that Dovey was about to cry. Switching on the pier lights, he hurried out to her just as Patsy began to sing “Crazy.”
Pete took Dovey’s hand but didn’t say anything. She was still watching the ducks. “Do you ever feel just . . . lost?” she finally asked, looking up at him.
“About ninety percent of always,” he said.
She smiled. “Sometimes I think there’s just so much I don’t know, things you’re supposed to learn from your mother, maybe . . .”
“Or your daddy,” he said.
“I don’t know what to do at a dance, and I don’t know if Mama was still scared of things like that when she was as old as I am. I don’t know how she met Daddy. I don’t know if they ever got in trouble for stayin’ out late or what songs they liked to dance to. I don’t know how it was with them. Why don’t I know that?”
“Because you were still little when they were together,” Pete said. “And when you’re little, your parents aren’t real people—they’re just your mama and daddy. All that stuff you don’t know about ’em—that’s not your fault, Dovey. And it’s not theirs either. They didn’t have no way of knowin’ what was comin’. They just had a rug pulled out from under ’em.”
“Them—those girls at that gym—they all looked so . . . so sure,” she said.
“Sure of what?”
“I don’t know! That’s the problem.”
“Well then, what are you sure of?” Pete asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, are you sure you’d rather be out with me in Mama’s big ole Buick than sportin’ around with some hotshot like Judd Highland?”
Dovey rolled her eyes. “I’d rather be on a three-legged mule with you than sportin’ around with that silly Judd Highland.”
“Okay, then that’s something you’re sure of.” He smiled at her and took her other hand so they faced each other. “Are you sure . . . that I’d rather be out with you . . . than with Miss Thelma?”
She laughed. “Are you makin’ fun of me?”
“Just seein’ where I stand.” He grinned. “You know, when Miss Thelma’s wearin’ her good girdle, can’t you
nor anybody else hold a candle to her.”
“Hush!” Dovey laughed again.
“All I’m sayin’ is that if you’re sure about me and I’m sure about you, then maybe the rest of it we can just . . . kinda figure out together?”
She nodded.
“Think you might ever dance with me,” he asked, “or do I need to call Miss Thelma and see if she’s free?”
“Maybe if you get real lucky, she’ll wear her snake hat for you.”
The sun had slipped into the water like a scoop of vanilla ice cream sinking into a Co-Cola float, and a dark, misty twilight had fallen over the lake. Pete put his arm around Dovey’s waist and took her hand in his. Their dance began just as his mother had shown them, with Dovey’s “keep him at arm’s length” hand on Pete’s shoulder. But then Patsy began to work her magic. “Sweet Dreams” came on the jukebox, and the longer Patsy crooned, the closer Pete and Dovey drifted. Her hand inched across his shoulder and around his neck, and he lifted her other one up to join it so he could put both arms around her. She rested her head on his shoulder as he leaned his face against her hair and wished like everything that Patsy would keep on singing forever.
When the music stopped, they both stood very still, holding each other and gazing into each other’s eyes. Pete didn’t even hear the next song begin as he slowly bent down to kiss Dovey for the very first time. And the miracle of it was—she kissed him back.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Patsy Cline.
Ned Ballard sat at his usual booth at the Tomahawk Café, having a cup of black coffee with his strawberry pie. The waitress had put some of that canned whipped cream on his pie, which he didn’t care for, but she was so jittery that he didn’t complain. Instead, he just raked it onto the saucer with his fork. He had seen some of the young people come in for a hamburger on their way to the dance and wondered if Pete and Dovey were having a good time.
On the table in front of him was a thin binder that contained the latest report from the private detective he had hired out of Atlanta. Even though two years had passed since Isaac disappeared, the detective, who was a former FBI man, had already discovered a lot more than the county sheriff did back when all the evidence was fresh. And it was a good thing too, because that detective didn’t come cheap. He would be worth every penny, though, if Hattie and Pete could finally put Isaac to rest. He knew Hattie had made Pete promise to stop looking for Isaac—and that she and Aunt Babe kept a sharp eye out for any signs that he might go back on that promise. But Ned also knew how much it still ate at the boy, even after all this time. He promised Pete he would share all the detective’s reports with him, and he meant to do exactly that. Might give him a little peace to know that somebody was at least trying.
He thumbed through the report. They still didn’t know who had killed Isaac, but they knew who didn’t do it—everybody’s prime suspect, Reuben. The detective had paid Lucius Hays, one of Isaac’s card-playing buddies, enough money to get the names of everybody around that poker table the night Isaac vanished.
According to Lucius, Reuben was there, but he was in no shape to kill anybody. He couldn’t even stand up. A few hours before the card game started, he had met up with some of his Talladega cousins, who were even meaner than he was. They had spiked his cheap whiskey with some drug. Nobody knew what it was exactly, but it was bad news, Lucius said, because when they dumped Reuben out at the poker shed, he had stumbled into a corner and curled up like a baby, humming to himself and occasionally hollering for his mama.
Isaac wasn’t having a good night either and had folded early, almost broke except for whatever cut of his pay he had already given to his mother. That meant nobody could accuse him of cheating—the usual cause of bad blood at the shed.
Still, the detective had retraced the footsteps of every last one of the card players till he was sure they hadn’t followed Isaac up the road that night. And they all confirmed what Lucius had said about Reuben, which they had no reason to do, since clearing him might hang the blame on one of them.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?” the waitress asked just before she knocked over his water glass with her ticket pad. “Oh! I’m so sorry, Mr. Ballard! It is Mr. Ballard, ain’t it? Lemme get that right up!”
He grabbed the report before it could get wet. “No harm done,” he said. She wiped all the ice cubes back into the glass and blotted up a small puddle of water before backing into a customer and knocking over a dishpan full of silverware on her way back to the kitchen.
Ned opened the report again and swore under his breath at what he read. A Chevrolet dealer from Huntsville had stopped to use the pay phone at the Sinclair station in town the night Isaac disappeared. He had been in Phenix City for a sales meeting, which was followed by an awards dinner that hadn’t wrapped up till almost eight. On his way back to Huntsville, he had stopped in Glory to call his wife and let her know he was tired and had decided to look for a motel.
For miles before he found the Sinclair, he had kept his eyes peeled for a phone. Just outside of town, he spotted bright lights on a side road and turned onto it to see if there might be a filling station with a pay phone there. It turned out to be floodlights at the lot where the county road crew left their equipment on weekends, so he had pulled into the short driveway at the gate to turn around. That was when he saw a pickup and a car pulled over to the side of the road.
They were parked facing each other, with both hoods up, and a colored man was fiddling with jumper cables running between the two. That was around nine thirty or ten o’clock. He hadn’t paid it much attention until he read a newspaper story about the FBI’s investigation of a disappearance in Glory and saw the picture of Isaac’s truck. It was the same one he had seen that night.
As soon as he read the article, he called the county sheriff’s office and gave a detailed description of the other car—he had gotten only a glimpse of it, but that was all he needed. Both the car and the pickup were Chevys, which he had been selling for almost twenty years. And the floodlights on the nearby lot were bright enough so that he could even tell what color they were.
The sheriff didn’t include the salesman in his report because he said he had lost the notes his secretary made when she took the call, and he apparently didn’t think Isaac was worth the trouble it would take to gather that information again. Or maybe he was just plain lazy. But the secretary remembered it, and now that she had found a better job and didn’t have to put up with that worthless sheriff anymore, she didn’t hesitate to tell the private detective all about it.
She remembered every last detail of the call—the salesman’s name, where he worked, why he was passing through Glory, even what awards he had won at that dinner down in Phenix City. She remembered absolutely everything except his description of the car, which she said “just had a bunch of numbers and car talk in it.” The salesman’s name, she was certain, was Frank Wheeler. But there was no Frank Wheeler in the Huntsville phone book, and the detective was still calling Chevrolet dealerships in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, trying to find him.
Ned checked his watch. It was already eight thirty. He left a generous tip for the nervous waitress, tucked the report under his arm, and paid his ticket at the register. Outside he heard the distant rumble of thunder, and a cool wind was beginning to blow. Pete and Dovey might get rained on before the night was over with, but he hoped not.
Pete drove the Buick into Dovey’s yard just as the rain began to fall. A quarter to nine—they had made it home with time to spare. Every light in the house was on.
“Gee, I wonder if he’s still up,” Pete said with a weak smile. “Ready to make a run for it?”
“Guess so,” Dovey said. “Are you sure you wanna do this?”
“I’m sure I don’t want to,” he said. “But I think I have to. Maybe he won’t get too mad. Go on and pick out my funeral music, though, just in case.”
He took off his jacket as he went around the car to open Dovey’s door. Holding it over he
r with one arm, he helped her out of the Buick, and they ran for the front porch, where Dovey’s father held the screen door open. He brought them both a towel as they sat down on the edge of the couch. Her father took a seat in the armchair across from them, his shotgun propped in the corner.
“Mr. Pickett,” Pete began with a glance at the Remington, “I think I need to tell you something.”
“I’m listenin’,” Dovey’s father said.
“We didn’t go anywhere after the dance, but we went somewhere before.”
John Pickett said nothing, and his expression gave Pete no clue what he was thinking.
“When we got to the gym, we got a little nervous about going inside—”
“Daddy, that’s not true,” Dovey interrupted. “Pete wasn’t scared at all. I was. When we got to that gym and I saw all those girls with their teased-up hair and the boys smokin’ their cigarettes, and they all knew each other and I didn’t know any of them, it just—I felt like I didn’t—well, I just couldn’t see myself in there. And all I could think about was how hard Aunt Lydia worked on this dress and how much time Pete’s mother spent teachin’ us to dance, and you bought me these shoes and this pretty hair clasp, and it was all gonna be wasted because of me bein’ so silly and scared.”
Dovey’s father was looking down, running his hand over a small tear in the arm of his chair.
“Mr. Pickett, I never cared anything about that dance,” Pete continued. “I just wanted to take Dovey out. And she really wanted to go dancin’ in her new dress, but that gym was just makin’ her so unhappy. So we drove up to Mr. McAdoo’s café and played the jukebox and danced for a little while.” He decided not to mention that he and Dovey had been alone at McAdoo’s. There was such a thing as honesty, and there was such a thing as suicide.
“After we left the café,” Pete went on, “we stopped back by the gym and stayed for one song just so we could truthfully tell you we had been to the dance and no place after. But then on the way home, I got to thinkin’ about how that was kinda lyin’. And Dovey would hate lyin’ to you. So would I. I mean, you trusted me with her and I didn’t do what I said I’d do. Anyway, I just felt like I owed you the truth, and please don’t blame Dovey or Mr. McAdoo because this was all my doin’.”
Missing Isaac Page 11