“You okay?” asked Sadie.
“How can you live where snakes come out of nowhere and try to kill you?” he asked. “And by the way, what was that comment about your being glad I didn't kill it?”
Sadie thought for a moment before explaining. “To make the story short, the old ones used to say if you killed a rattlesnake, his family would come back, hunt you down, and kill you.”
“And you believe that?”
“Well, not really. But you never know. Indians are smarter than most white people give them credit for. I've lived around here all my life and I've never been bitten. I've seen plenty, but I just leave them alone…give them a wide berth. You know, they don't like you any more than you like them. After all, you were in his blackberry bush.”
“I can't believe you're taking sides with the snake.”
Sadie laughed.
“You don't see me laughing, do you?
“I'm sorry.” Sadie took the plastic bowl and placed it on the bedstand, clearing a place for her to sit on the edge of his bed. She fussed with his pillow and offered him a wet washcloth.
“The nurse says you're going to make it,” she said. “What did the doc say?”
“He said it could have been a lot worse but I don't know how. I guess the little devil gave me a pretty good dose. The doctor said I might have black marks on my hand for a long time—even after it's healed. That is, if the swelling ever goes down. And I can't say I'm too crazy about the initials you carved in my hand even if they did work wonders. Along with whatever that…he and the nurse were both carrying on about my homemade remedy. They actually think it may have helped.”
“It's been known to save the life of more than one good Indian—including my great-grandfather. You could at least thank me for that.”
“You're right. Thank you, Sadie.” Jaycee stuck out his chin begging for a kiss and Sadie obliged. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said. “It wasn't very smart for me to be sniffing around in the woods without my guide.” Jaycee smiled and squeezed her hand. “And if it hadn't been for you…you are amazing.”
“The pleasure was all mine, I'm sure.” Sadie ran her hand across his forehead.
“What was that awful stuff?” Jaycee screwed up his face and gently licked his lips as if he could still taste the plant.
“Snakeweed,” she said. “I've never tasted it personally, but my grandmother—”
“Man, that was awful.”
“Well, you're alive. So quit complaining.”
“Oh, okay. Can I buy you dinner for saving my life? You turned out to be a knight in shining armor, and I'm jealous because I wanted that scene.”
“I'll take a rain check.” Sadie stood and combed the top of her hair with her fingers. “I've got to go. Daylight's burning.”
“Why?”
“Poor Joe's still got a saddle attached to his back. And I thought I'd see if I could find your camera.”
“No. Please, forget it, Sadie. I can get another one.”
“We'll see. Talk to you later.”
And with that, Sadie slipped through the door and disappeared. The hospital hallway bustled with activity and as Sadie headed for the front doors, she thought she heard someone call her name. She turned and saw Soda Pop and her mother sitting against the wall in the waiting room.
“Hi, Sadie,” said the little girl as she waved her hand at her friend.
“My goodness,” said Sadie as she moved to join the two. “What are you doing here?”
Soda Pop's mother spoke up first. “She had a reaction to some new medicine and about scared me to death. I rushed her down here and now she seems to be fine.” Mrs. Andover shook her head. “We're just waiting a few minutes to make sure she's okay.”
“Why are you here?” asked Soda Pop. “Are you sick, too?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that,” said Sadie. “Joe and I had to rescue a friend of mine who got in an argument with a rattlesnake and lost.”
“Oh, my. That's terrible,” said Soda Pop's mother.
“I hate snakes,” said Soda Pop and then added, “Who is Joe?”
“Joe is my horse. He's my buddy, too.”
“Can I ride your horse?” asked Soda Pop.
“Agatha Gertrude,” scolded her mother. “It's not polite to ask for things like that. And it is ‘may I,’ not ‘can I.’”
Sadie laughed. “Of course you may. In fact, he's already saddled up if you want to follow me home.”
“We had better pass today,” answered Mrs. Andover. “Maybe we can come some other day.”
“Call me anytime,” said Sadie. “Or you can always find me at the bank.”
“We'll see you at the bank then.”
Mrs. Andover and Soda Pop waved as Sadie left the hospital.
Chapter 13
Sadie felt strangely uncomfortable in her new office. She fingered the supple arms of the mahogany leather chair and studied her surroundings. A thick pane of glass topped the immense, dark-cherry desktop. Two armchairs, covered in brocade fabric, burgundy and navy paisley designs, stared at her from the other side of the desk. The hutch above the credenza stood against the wall, a trail of green silk ivy spilling off the top. On the wall behind her, a large painting burst with pink, purple, red, and green dollops of color in an abstract bouquet of flowers.
Looking through the office window, she could see down three stories to the covered parking provided for the senior officers of the bank. The Sycamore Springs Parkway ran diagonally on the east side of the building and Sadie could see tiny sailboats as they floated in the distance on Blue Lake.
So, this was it, Sadie thought. This was her reward for twelve years of hard and loyal service to the bank. She'd heard rumors that her promotion had come about in part to help meet the bank's requirements for a certain percentage of minority officers. The fact that Sadie was not just a woman but an Indian woman provided a double credit for the minority-employee numbers.
She also had her own theory regarding her sudden promotion. The words had come from Stan himself as he and Adam exited the elevator one day: “…Give her enough rope and she'll hang herself. Hell, it's all just a game.” Even though Stan had not reprimanded Sadie formally after the robbery, he had openly criticized her, blaming her for Gordy's death. Now she believed her promotion was his way of setting her up so he could turn around and tear her down. He could withhold management support from her in her new position and then blame her for the first thing that went wrong. Down the corporate ladder she would fall. She had seen him do it to other employees before.
But she refused to be distracted by anything right now. With a new title and a new office, her workload had more than doubled. Her new title of security training officer made her responsible for instructing personnel in six branches about security procedures, which was going to be quite a feat since she had so little in the way of written guidelines to work with. She would have to start from the ground up, do the research, write the procedures, and create and implement the program.
Old Mr. Clarke had stammered when he presented her with the promotion. “We chose you for this position, Sadie, because you know what it feels like to be robbed.”
Frail, with deteriorating health, Mr. Clarke served mostly as a figurehead for the bank. He left all the operational issues to the younger, more aggressive Stan Blackton. The older man kept a bottle of gin in a brown paper sack hidden in his bottom drawer, bringing it out from time to time when he thought no one could see him take a swig.
The poor man hadn't even realized the inappropriateness of his comment to Sadie. Thelma, representing the personnel department, had quickly offered her congratulations, stating she knew how hard Sadie had worked for the promotion and pointing out the dire need for security training. Sadie had acknowledged Thelma's comments with a smile and a nod.
Sadie agreed it was none too soon to start worrying about security at Mercury Savings. A few months after her own branch had been robbed, the Farmers Bank branch down the street ha
d been hit. It had been horrific. Two young men, customers of the bank, had returned to the bank after being turned down for a loan and killed five people. Earlier, they had overheard one of the young tellers make what they mistakenly thought were derogatory comments about them. The two men went home, loaded three shotguns, and returned to the bank. In a crazed frenzy, they shot as many people as they could, including customers—a farmer standing in line to cash a social security check, a young woman pregnant with her first child, and an elderly man who could barely hear.
It had all happened so fast, no one even got a chance to set off the alarm. The killers had emptied the cash drawers into their pockets and made a quick getaway, leaving the victims to be discovered by the next customer who walked in on the bloody mess. Shortly thereafter, the two assassins ended up in a suicide shoot-out with police, bringing a violent end to everything. Sadie was thankful those robbers had not been customers of Mercury.
And although everyone agreed security was a good thing, Sadie just wished she had a little more experience in that area. In her estimation, being caught off-guard, watching her co-worker be killed, and then being tied up on the floor didn't exactly qualify her for the position. But she wasn't going to argue. It didn't matter how she got the job; she would make a difference and be successful doing it. She knew no other way.
Her first project, she decided, would be to push for armed guards at all of the branches. She didn't think guards were the only answer, but the employees might feel safer opening the branches if they were escorted by someone wearing a uniform and carrying a gun. Stan had already told her expensive perimeter alarms were out of the question. The budget simply would not allow it.
She called Sergeant McCord and asked him to help her compile a few statistics. Charlie was happy to help Sadie and together they submitted a ten-page report demonstrating the need for armed security. The request met with surprisingly little opposition, except when it came to the cost of hiring off-duty police officers. In typical fashion, Blackton substituted a cheaper alternative, and the bank was stuck with rent-a-cops.
Sadie always tried to look at the positive side of everything, and believing something was better than nothing, she withheld judgment until she could meet security guard Melvin Crump. He was being sent out by the Safety First Security Company to work in Sadie's old branch. Eager to meet him, Sadie left her new office and headed toward the Harvest Street branch.
As she drove through Collier Circle and turned south toward the branch on MLK, she felt good about her first accomplishment as security officer of the bank. She visualized a tall, young man in a starched uniform standing at the front door of every Mercury branch. For a moment, she wondered if Gordy would still be alive if they had hired guards in the past, but it was too late to wonder about that now.
She parked in her old parking space, walked across the lot, and entered through the south doors. When she first saw Melvin, she could hardly believe her eyes and struggled between feelings of disgust and outright laughter. He looked to be a little past his prime, at least mid-sixties, maybe early seventies. An obvious toupee sat on his wrinkled forehead. It looked like it might slide off at any moment. He wore high-water pants, a pair of brand-new black tennis shoes, and a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson low on his left hip. Sadie walked past Melvin and straight into Tom Duncan's office. She let the door close behind her before she slid weakly into a chair. Tom stood leaning against a wall, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. They both looked at each other and broke out in hysterical laughter.
“What on earth will he do if he comes face-to-face with a real robber?” asked Sadie between howls.
Tom continued to chuckle as he sat down across from Sadie. “I don't know,” he said. “I'm actually afraid he may be more of a liability than an asset.”
They sat for a few minutes, both weighing the pros and cons of the situation in silence.
“Well, I guess it's worth it just to have someone else check out the building before the employees have to go in,” said Sadie, remembering her own situation. “At least he'll get killed instead of one of us.”
“Sadie, you're awful.”
Sadie balanced her elbow on the corner of Tom's desk and rubbed her forehead with her fingers while she thought. “Seriously, Tom, what if some robber comes blaring in here in the middle of the day and this guy gets somebody killed?”
Tom raised his eyebrows and wrinkled his forehead in a don't-ask-me look.
“Surely,” Sadie continued, “they wouldn't give him a gun if he wasn't officially certified or something.”
“With my luck, it's probably the ‘something,’” said Tom. “I thought you were getting us real cops. What happened to that?”
“Stan nixed it. Cost too much,” said Sadie. “If we spend too much money on guards, the execs might not have enough extra dough to keep their memberships going at the country club.” Sadie's voice dripped with sarcasm. “We wouldn't want that to happen, now would we?”
“Yeah, all you guys are sitting over there in your ivory tower on the parkway while the rest of us peons are out here on the front lines like sitting ducks. Did you hear about those maniacs over at Farmers?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I wouldn't have given you that promotion if I didn't think you could do us some good,” said Tom and then winked at Sadie. They both knew he had nothing to do with her becoming the security officer of the bank.
“Okay,” she said. “Give me some time. I'll see what I can do. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. I'm new at this officer game-playing crap.”
“Okay, so what do we do for now?” asked Tom. “And don't forget, I'm leaving early today.”
Sadie let out a long sigh and looked at the door. “For right now?” she asked. “I guess we go meet him…and show him around.” Laughter contained, she opened the door, strode across the lobby, and offered her hand to security guard Crump.
A man sat in the front corner booth of the Blue Dumpling Café sipping coffee and thumbing through the Sycamore Springs Gazette. From his seat, he could look past the top of his paper and have an unobstructed view of the bank across the street. He chewed on a plastic coffee stirrer and watched as Sadie and Tom directed Melvin Crump around the outside of the branch. He could see Sadie and the two men disappear and then reappear by the ATM as they encircled the entire building.
The man rolled up his paper, stuck it under his arm, and laid a dollar bill on the table before walking outside.
“That's what I like,” he muttered to himself. “A woman who can take charge. Makes life more interesting.”
After showing Melvin Crump around, Sadie decided to stay at the branch for a while in an effort to get him off on the right foot. Somehow, she thought if she got to know him better, she would discover he had numerous marksmanship trophies somewhere at home in his closet. Or even better, maybe he was retired from the military or some foreign legion. She secretly hoped to find out he purposely dressed in his eccentric manner to confuse any would-be robber. As hard as she could, she scratched for a simple straw of hope. By the end of the day, she had found none.
Excited customers flocked to Sadie's side when they saw her standing near her old desk and Sadie received each one with a handshake or a light hug. Although many begged her to return to the branch permanently, she assured them she was in a better position and welcomed their congratulations.
The best part of the day came when Soda Pop arrived. Tom had called Soda Pop's mother and told her Sadie was in the branch. Soda Pop came in all dressed up, wearing her new wig created from Sadie's hair, and surprised Sadie. The little girl sported her trademark slicked-down bangs, with the rest of her hair falling to just above her shoulders.
“Look,” said Soda Pop as she approached Sadie. She held out her hair on each side of her head and smiled. “I have hair like yours now.”
Sadie swallowed hard and kneeled down for a hug. “And it is beautiful, Soda Pop, just beautiful.” Sadie couldn't help but notice that the chi
ld seemed to be even more frail than the last time she had seen her. Tom handed Sadie a balloon and she blew it up for Soda Pop and gave it to her. She had a sinking feeling there wouldn't be too many more balloons for Soda Pop.
As Soda Pop and her mother left, the last of the procrastinators made a mad dash for the door before closing time. Sadie waved as the little girl and her mother drove off. Just then, an old gray Chevrolet with dark tinted windows turned and crept into the parking lot. The unusual movement of the car gave Sadie an uneasy feeling, and she glanced at Melvin standing in the middle of the lobby, feet apart, at parade rest. He faced the teller line, guarding it as if he thought it might get away.
The car parked near the front door and sat motionless. Realizing Tom had already left for the day, Sadie looked at her watch and counted the minutes until the doors would be locked. Only two more minutes…maybe I should call the police…that's stupid, what am I going to say—there's a car in the parking lot…who would just sit there like that…damn, why couldn't we get real police officers…
Sadie picked up the new set of keys she had been saving to present to Melvin and walked toward the door. The passenger-side door of the car opened and a man got out. He wore army fatigue pants, a black T-shirt, and black tennis shoes. There was something familiar about the man and Sadie hesitated before walking through the first set of double doors. Oh, please don't let it be him. Her mounting fears were realized when he turned and looked straight at her.
“Melvin, you had better come here.”
Melvin Crump almost tripped on the carpet when he heard his name called, but caught his balance and hurried to Sadie's side.
“Melvin, I don't know what this man wants, but I want you to stand here while I talk to him.”
Melvin didn't say a word. He threw his shoulders back, stuck out his lower lip, and gave Sadie an affirmative nod, as if they had some unknown understanding. Sadie felt queasy and her hands shook a little as she pushed through the double set of doors. “What do you want, Michael?” She bluffed her nonexistent confidence. “We're closed.”
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