I slumped down in my seat, really irritated that I’d gone to so much trouble just to get a ride on this bus, and then here they came when I didn’t need them. But I had, after all, told Mr. Root (and I bet he was with them, too) that I wanted a ride, and so they thought they were doing the right thing. Probably, they thought they were protecting me, too, watching over me. That anybody would want to protect me was a totally new idea, and I guess I felt grateful.
But what was I to do with them once we got there?
There was the Windy Run Diner. Ulub and Ubub loved the Rainbow, so I supposed they wouldn’t mind having coffee in the Windy Run. I recalled seeing big swirls of sweet rolls with butter icing on one of those domed cake plates on the counter. They’d love those.
What about Mr. Root? Probably he wouldn’t want to just sit—
And I sat up straight all of a sudden, as if the bus had hit a rut. I recalled that talk I’d had with Mr. Root on the bench outside Britten’s. He’d known a Queen, a woman named Sheba. And who was to say that this woman might not be the same as one of them who lived in that yellow-shuttered house? Who was to say she might not be this old friend of Mr. Root’s? As the bus bumped off the highway onto the Cold Flat Junction road, I thought about this.
Cold Flat Junction was as empty of people as before. The bus drove along the street that divided the town and turned left into Schoolhouse Road, where I saw the church steeple glaring white as one of my mother’s meringues. The two trucks pulled up to a curb a little distance away. As I stepped down from the bus, a few people grinned at me and patted me as if for encouragement, as if one more sinner saved, and I thanked them. Then I cut off towards the pickup trucks, both sitting there belching smoke out of their exhaust pipes. Mr. Root was in Ubub’s and they both seemed really excited, as if this were an adventure. I said I’d go get in the cab of Ulub’s truck and they could follow us to the Windy Run Diner. Ubub’s face split in a big grin the minute I said “diner.”
Ulub said something indecipherable as I slammed shut my door and directed him to the diner. He seemed even more pleased than Ubub had. As we drove onto the unpaved road that was Windy Run, Ulub started singing something weird. I really had to admire him for being made so happy by something as unimportant as the prospect of eating in a diner. I sighed and shook my head. I guess I was just too used to Ree-Jane wanting to be the Countess of Kent.
Louise Snell was cutting up with the two men who looked like truck drivers, but I still didn’t see any trucks out there, so maybe they lived in Cold Flat. It made me nervous going in there again, for Jude Stemple could well have mentioned that I’d said I knew her daughter, but when she saw me she came right over and, with a big smile, said, “Well, hello.”
“Is this your dad?” She was wiping down the counter in front of us and nodding towards Mr. Root. I thought he looked kind of old to be my dad, but maybe not. I explained that these people were my friends from La Porte.
Mr. Root seemed pleased to have been mistaken for my father and beamed as he pulled a menu out from between sugar shaker and napkin holder. Ulub and Ubub did the same, though I wondered if I should order for them, since they always were used to Maud just setting things in front of them. I told them the sweet rolls here were really good and Louise nodded hard.
“Homemade,” she said.
They looked at each other and nodded.
“You want coffee, I expect,” I said helpfully.
They nodded again.
Then I said to Mr. Root, after I got my Coke, that maybe the Queen he knew a long time ago might be one of the ones living here in Cold Flat. Oh, he doubted it, he said, and I said, well, but maybe. We went back and forth like this for a minute or two until I got him thinking and talking about how sad it was, time passing, and old friends being missed, and so forth, until Mr. Root was getting pretty sad. And to top it off, I said that these Queens might be related to the dead woman and might have something to do with Mary-Evelyn. Well, that convinced him, although I could tell he was pretty shy about just walking up to what might be a stranger’s door and announcing himself.
I insisted on paying, but Mr. Root told me my money was no good today, and we left the Woods happily munching their sweet rolls and said we’d be back in no time, there was someone Mr. Root wanted to visit.
He was still worried that either these weren’t the right Queens or no one would remember him, or other reasons for not doing this, as we walked out of the Windy Run Diner and down its few steps.
So I told him I’d do the talking. Which, of course, I didn’t intend to, as I wasn’t Sheba Queen’s old friend.
THIRTY-NINE
Mr. Root said it had been over ten years since he’d been to Cold Flat Junction, close as it was to Spirit Lake. But he remembered a lot of things as we walked along and seemed pleased at the remembrances. He said as we passed the general store that Elmer Fry, who’d once owned it, had been tossed in jail for having two wives. Mr. Root thought having two was punishment enough, and did the law have to go and add to Elmer’s suffering by giving him a jail sentence?
We passed the schoolhouse, and came to Dubois Road, and I asked him if he knew Jude Stemple. Yes, he did, but not very well. And then he asked me just what was it he was supposed to do at the Queens. I explained that he could just talk with them about anything, but preferably try to get them remembering. Remembering particularly about Rose Devereau.
“You think she knows something about that little girl, that Mary Ellen Devereau?”
“Mary-Evelyn. And my great-aunt Aurora says Ben Queen ran off with Rose Devereau.”
“Ah-ha!” he said, mashing his fist into his palm as if he’d just made all these important connections.
And there was the house, kind of springing up in our line of vision, old banana yellow shutters, and paint peeling all around the window moldings and off the porch railings.
Mr. Root paused on the weedy walk and slowly shook his head. “If it’s Sheba lives here, well, I ain’t seen her in—”
“Fifteen years, I know. Come on.” Afraid he was going to get droopy or even start crying, thinking about the old Bathsheba days, I wanted to get him inside.
Well, I needn’t have worried about people recalling people, for when the thin, sharp-featured woman dressed in a muslin print came to the screen door, her mouth dropped open and she fairly wailed: “Elijah ROOT! In all my born days—”
She never finished that, but slapped the door open, nearly hitting me in the face and just clapped her rough hands one on each of his shoulders and shook him a little. They were about the same height, but she was more sinewy.
“Sheba, you hardly changed a day!”
That was certainly a big lie, and I stood there and listened to a few more before Mr. Root (whose first name, I’d only just found out, was Elijah) kind of turned me to her and said, “This here’s a friend of mine from Spirit Lake said she’d always wanted to come to Cold Flat and never got the chance and would I bring her?”
Grown-ups could lie without turning a hair. But that was all right, for Sheba Queen acted like I was a special friend and invited us in and said she’d get me some of her home-baked molasses cookies and lemonade. I never looked forward to getting food in other people’s houses, knowing it just couldn’t compare in any way, shape, or form to my mother’s.
We stood in the cool dark hall papered with horrible brown-and-green vines or something as she whisked through a parlor calling to a man who’d been hidden by the big wing of his chair that he should take us out to the porch.
Which he did, introducing himself as George Queen, Sheba’s husband. He seemed nice enough, but kind of gloomy and sad. He had a soft, uncommanding voice, and we all trooped out to the porch. Mr. Queen and Mr. Root took two rockers, pulling a third over for Mrs. Queen. I sat on the wooden swing so that I was behind them. That was all right with me; I could listen better.
Mrs. Sheba Queen came back with a tray full of lemonade glasses and nearly black cookies that I held out little hope
for. All the while she kept telling lies about how young Elijah looked and how he still had that wonderful smile, and so forth. Mr. George Queen apparently had not known Mr. Root back then, so could neither confirm nor deny, but smiled pleasantly and nodded his head. Maybe his gloom and his faraway look was because of Fern Queen’s awful death. But Mrs. Sheba Queen was pretty cheerful; it struck me as strange that she was chattering brightly away, as if she didn’t know Ben Queen’s daughter, her own niece, had been murdered. But she must know. The Sheriff had been to Cold Flat about a missing person twice, and must have told the family of the tragedy.
Mr. Root brought it up. He did this by way of extending his sympathy to them in their hour of grief. I think George Queen was truly grieved, for he had to turn his face away. But she was just putting on. I could tell from the way she made so much of now what she hadn’t given a thought to before. I didn’t judge her for not being sad or even shocked over Fern’s murder. I only judged her for putting on this act.
But none of that was important; Mr. Root had got them—or at least her—talking about the Devereaus. For she started sniffing in that prim way, that self-righteous way some women do when speaking of those they don’t like.
And she did not like Rose Devereau.
“We told him he shouldn’t ought to marry a Devereau girl. Crazy, every one of them!”
I had stopped creaking the swing and held it at a slant with my feet on the porch floor. Frozen there.
Mr. George Queen spoke: “Now, now. Ben was pretty wild, Sheba, we both know—”
“We know nothing of the kind, George Queen! That’s all gossip.” Whipping her face around like a rattlesnake, she said to Mr. Root: “Ben just ought not to have married that girl, he’d ought to have kept on with Lou, that’s what!” Helpfully, for Mr. Root’s sake (they’d forgotten I was here), she added, “Louise Landis. Did you know Louise? Well, she was Ben’s girl, and even then when she was no more’n eighteen, nineteen, you could see she had sense. Real growed-up for her age, and she’d’ve settled Ben right down. But no, he had to have that crazy Rose Devereau.”
George said, thoughtfully, “Real beautiful, Rose was. Just as pretty . . .” His voice trailed off.
I was glad he’d defended her. Even though I thought Rose Devereau should never have left Mary-Evelyn like she did.
“And that little sister of hers, one that drownded . . .” Sheba frowned in an effort to recall her.
I sat right up to listen, but her voice fell again to a whisper. I strained to hear.
“. . . Can’t remember her name . . . Mary something—”
“Mary-Evelyn.” I said it out loud without even thinking.
They all looked at me, Bathsheba turning to peer around the back of the tall rocker.
“Well, for heaven’s sakes, child, how’d you ever know that? It’s been forty, fifty years back.” Turning back, she said grimly to the two men, “Less said about that business, the better.” She gave a quick nod back in my direction, adding, “Little pitchers . . .”
I stuck my tongue out at her back. You could almost see the self-righteousness sprouting like wings from her narrow, muslin-covered shoulder blades.
“Poor, poor Fern,” she whined. She had taken the handkerchief she’d tucked into her sleeve band and was blowing her nose as if she’d been crying. Which she hadn’t. There was more low-voiced talk and I heard, “It was no more’n she deserved!”
I sat forward. What was? Than who deserved? Did she mean Rose? Or Fern?
Mr. Root slid me a glance. “Now, what was that, Sheba? What do you mean, there?”
Oh, bless Mr. Root! I wanted to clap.
“Well, Elijah, you living in Spirit Lake, so near and all, surely you must’ve heard about Rose. It was all over the papers.”
“No, I never did. See, I might not’ve put two and two together, not knowing all this history you’re telling.”
George broke in, “Telling wrong, too.” He sounded disgusted.
“No I am not. It’s just you always sided with Rose Devereau against your own brother!”
“You know that ain’t true, Sheba! That ain’t the way it was.” He slapped the arm of his rocker. “Anyways, siding with Rose was siding with Ben. You just don’t want to believe that. Only thing they ever didn’t see eye to eye on was Fern.”
That set Sheba Queen off again with her “Poor Fern”s.
George Queen just flapped his hand at her in a “be quiet” gesture. “Poor Fern my eye.” He said it so soft I wondered if anyone heard it except me.
“You always sided with Rose about what to do about Fern. Rose was against Fern, her own daughter! She wanted to send her to some institution . . . ’cause she was too lazy to care for her.”
“You don’t know nothin’ about it, woman.” George sounded angry enough to spit. “Ben Queen never sided against any member of his family, Sheba.” He lowered his head, rested it in his hand, and shook his head slowly back and forth, as if he’d rid it of some old misery. “How you can think either of them was against Fern, I don’t know. It’s as well she’s dead. Finally.” His voice was heavy with sadness.
Sheba was halfway out of her chair with rage. “Your very own niece, you say that about your own blood!” And just for something to add to his crime, she pointed at me. “De-nounce your own kin before strangers!”
For heaven’s sakes! I wanted to say. Sheba was one of those grown-ups who liked to drag kith and kin and blood ties across your path like dead skunks. It was to make you sit up and take notice and clap your hand over your heart. That’s my kin! I spent a moment wondering what “kith” was.
But George Queen wasn’t having any of that. “You know what trouble that child was! Must’ve gone with every man in Cold—”
Now Sheba was all the way up, waggling her finger at him. “Don’t you never say that, George Queen! Not now she’s dead. Murdered is what po-lice are saying.”
In a low voice, George said, “Chickens come home to roost.”
I should have been working out in my mind what all of this meant instead of sitting there enjoying hearing grown-ups fight. Sheba yelled at him again, but he didn’t answer.
I was sitting so far on the edge of the swing I was tilted nearly to the porch floor. But then Sheba’s voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned herself nearly right into Mr. Root’s face and kind of grabbed at his forearm with clawlike fingers, and then I could hear nothing clearly, only this savage whispering. Then I thought: the scandal. This is the scandal Aurora spoke of. I watched Mr. Root, who was sitting forward too, and could tell he was really concentrating on what she was saying, probably trying to memorize it to tell me later. I was so pleased with myself for bringing him along I could hardly sit still. I never would have got this information by myself, for it was obviously thought to be unfit for childish ears.
But Mr. George Queen apparently wasn’t worried about my ears, for he was getting more and more impatient with her telling this story and finally broke right in and said: “It’s neither one of them to blame! Neither one. Ben never would’ve done that!”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you defend your poor brother for once,” she said primly.
“It was somebody else. I always did say it was somebody else.”
“Don’t be silly. There wasn’t no one else that’d have reason to. She drove him—”
“Oh, stop saying that, woman! You don’t know what you’re talking about. He loved her and that’s a fact. And there was too somebody else could’ve done it.”
“Stop it—just you stop it now!” What he’d just muttered seemed to get her madder than anything. She nearly got out of her chair to say something back, but thought better of it and sat down again. Rocked, rocked as if she wanted to rock all the way to perdition. I wondered if she was in that line of women Aurora said stretched “all the way to perdition and back,” the ones that had a case on Ben Queen. It sure sounded like it.
In the silence that followed, Mr. Root finally cleared his throat, th
en, with a kind of exaggerated look at his watch and at me, said, “You best be gettin’ back to the Hotel Paradise, I guess.”
I could have hit him. Everybody was just getting down to business, and he had to interrupt. But then I felt ashamed of myself, for I saw by my watch it was much later than I’d thought. “Yes, I do have to get back.”
The Queens seemed surprised I was still here, for Mr. Queen started a little, and said, kindly, “It’s nice seeing you, young lady. I know your mother. Used to take my produce truck over there to the Hotel Paradise. Me and Ben. Years, that’s been.”
And he looked out over the porch railing and into the sun, casting deep shadows across the dusty road. He must have been remembering better days, days when he was happy with his brother. I concentrated hard, willing Mr. Root to ask, “Where is Ben?”
But he didn’t, so I did, taking my roundabout way. “Well, I’m sure my mother remembers you and your brother, too. Where’d he go? Is he here?” I looked around, trying to sound as if I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ben Queen step through the screen door at any moment.
George Queen opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off from doing it by his wife. “Now, never you mind, dear.” She gave me a maddening, unmeant smile and him a hard and warning look.
So irritated I could have spit, I said, politely, “Thank you for the lemonade. And cookies.” I had bit into one and sunk the rest in my pocket to throw away later on.
Mr. Root rose and hitched up his pants the way men do and shot out his hand to George. He said goodbye to Sheba, who was still steaming from what George had said. But she tried to be polite and told Mr. Root not to wait so long between visits, for heaven’s sakes.
We left them standing there on their porch, waving.
As soon as we got out of their sight, I stopped, pulled at Mr. Root’s sleeve, and demanded, “Well? What’d they say?”
Hotel Paradise Page 36