"No matter," he said. “Thieves have one motive. His billfold and watch were taken. There you have it. Highwaymen. I’ll telegraph the office tomorrow.”
Millie didn’t believe any of this horseshit about highwaymen and thieves, didn’t believe he believed it either. This brought some heat to her cheeks. She locked her arms in a fold across her chest, stood rigid. Without warning, she tromped through the grass to him, swooped down for the flask, threw it high and far into the darkness.
He studied her but said nothing. In fact, he showed no trace of an emotion at all, which just boiled her red.
*
The girl knows something, alright, Sterno thought.
He resumed his search in the long grass. He walked in straight lines while swinging the torch to and fro like a pendulum. His feet kicked up and pushed around the soil, in case it had been buried. Whatever "it" might be—he still didn't know what he was looking for out here. The girl's throwing of his flask got him to thinking, though: the same thing could have been done that night—with something of Tommy's, his wallet maybe, flung out by someone to be lost in the dirt and forgotten. He'd seen it before—panic in the moment. Sterno broadened his search. Once in a while, he cast an eye to the car, where the girl stood silhouetted by the beams of light from the headlamps.
She must have seen him, because she yelled to him over a gust of wind, "What makes you so sure I know something, anyway?"
Sterno spat. The blood was coming less now but the pain was back. About a hundred paces from the woods he turned and like a farmer behind the plow he started back in a straight line towards the road.
"He didn’t go around blabbing about his life to just anyone, you know!" This came from the girl. She was standing next to the car yelling with both hands around her mouth. “He was a sneak too, just like the rest of you!”
Sterno stepped on his flask. He lifted it up to show it to her before he pocketed it. He resumed his search. His flask was not what he had been looking for. He made it nearly to the road when a dead tree stump surrounded by weeds caught his eye. In the daytime, from the road, the high grass hid the rotten cottonwood stump; he had not noticed it. He stopped. The battery on the torch was beginning to fail, so he clicked it off.
"Just because you come here to help me find out who killed Tommy, that don't mean I have to tell you everything—anything!"
He approached the stump. He studied it. He took another long look around him--the road, the woods, the field. He shook his head. The plow would bring it up, or one of those mutts, if it was the field. If it was near the road then someone else made off with it like old man Donnan said.
"A person makes a promise, it's a promise. It's as simple as that! Maybe you folks over in Missouri aint heard of such a thing as a promise, huh?"
His chin fell to his chest; he was looking at the stump again. Come on now, he thought, only a halfwit would hide something in such a perfect hidey-hole as that.
A halfwit.
Sterno clicked on the torch. He got down on one knee and began to push the long weeds grown up around the stump to one side or another. They were thick as jungle weeds.
"What in all of hell's fires are you doing over there! You aint chucking up all that whisky, are you?"
He heard the girl tromping through the weeds towards him. "I might know something," the girl said. She spoke in a normal tone of voice now, for she stood right next to him. "Might. But I aint going to tell you till you tell me what's going on with this investigation."
Sterno took off his jacket. He rolled up his sleeve. He got way down so he could root around in the rotted away cavity of the stump.
"I want to be a part of this investigation too, you hear? Mind a rattler don't take your hand off. If you let me be a part of it, then maybe I'll tell you some of the things I know. I'm the one made Pa come after you in the first place."
The innards of the stump were like coffee grounds. There were maggots and there was fungus. There wasn't anything else.
"Did you know that?"
Sterno pulled his arm out, stayed on his knees as he shifted around to another small opening in the stump, this one facing due south, towards town.
"So it's agreed then. Partners from here on out. Goddamnit, sonbitch, don't you hear me talking to you? What are you looking for in there?"
"Hold this," he said. He handed her the torch.
After a few seconds of searching blindly with his fingers, Sterno pulled his hand free from a root that was under the ground. In the position in which they had been resting, the chain had been wound around the wallet, as if to bind it. Now it slid off and dangled like Chinese noodles from his dirty hand. The wallet was in good shape but caked in soil, slightly wet.
Sterno unwound the silver watch chain from around the billfold, shook some of the dirt off, then laid the billfold down so he could use his other hand to wipe off enough of the dirt to let the metal shine through. He showed it to her but she did not move. He opened the billfold up to the cash compartment first, which was empty. He then opened the compartment that held folded pieces of paper. There were letters and some hand-written receipts. Then he came up with a photograph.
Sterno stood, nearly fell backwards, drunkenly found his balance, focused with all his might on the photo. When finished, he flicked it around to show it to her like it was the ace of spades.
“Ish there anything you want to temme now, Mish Donnan?”
*
Mr. Sterno passed out in his car, his head on his shoulder with his arm straight out the window. Millie was getting on her bicycle to go get Junior when she saw Junior walking to get her. “He’s drunk as a skunk,” she said. “And he got beat up, I don’t know by who.” For a minute Junior stood next to the car just looking at Mr. Sterno. She was going to say something to him, but looking at his face, she forgot what it was.
“Junior?” she said quietly.
Junior opened the door to let Mr. Sterno fall to the ground. He stood over him, looking down, then finally bent down to pick him up.
Mr. Sterno up-chucked when Junior draped him over the hood of the engine compartment of the car. Then Junior cranked the engine, got in—the car sinking to its tires around him. He drove home slowly, a hand out the window to hold Mr. Sterno’s wrist, Millie leading the way on the bicycle. She helped Junior through the house, Sterno draped over his shoulder with his arms hanging straight down, then up the stairs and into Tommy’s bedroom. He flopped him moaning onto the bed, while Millie took his shoes off. Mother, who had come awake while they’d been mounting the stairs, brought in a rag of cool water for Sterno’s chin and neck—the blood, the dust, the alcohol vomit.
When this was all done Millie went directly to the mow of the barn. She lit her lantern. Stood with the letters at her feet, thinking. The cricket noise of night was the only sound. She was glad to be alone, but the silence was too much for her, and it took only seconds for something dark and mean to boil up inside her.
She felt her face go red-hot, then the wetness came to her cheeks and eyes. “Shit-fire-hell-goddamnit-shit-blasted-fuck-it-all!” she suddenly let loose into the darkness of the mow, loudly and with froth from her mouth. Wildly she kicked and stomped at the letters, missing more than connecting, spinning her body and flinging her legs about, having very little effect on the letters staring blankly up at her from the candlelit floor. “Shit-blasted-sonbitches!”
At last, she was empty. She allowed tears to come quietly for another minute before snorting and spitting the last of them into the bales. Then she stood truly empty.
The watch and billfold.
She’d let herself forget them. She never thought she’d see them again, then there they were, and right there by the side of the road. Right where someone had taken them from Tommy, from Tommy’s dead body. Could it have been highwaymen after all? Bandits? Thieves? It didn’t feel right: bandits. Tommy was better than that, getting killed by a couple drifters. Who could catch Tommy in his buggy? Nobody. And with Sonnet pulling it? Noth
ing.
And something else was eating at her: the way Mr. Sterno looked at that picture.
He’d seen Miss Flora before. Where? How did he know about Miss Flora? That look on his face. He had not just looked at the picture like it was any old picture; he had looked at it like it was important. Like he was connecting something in the picture the way Millie connected her letters—but what something?
Millie sat on the floor, found the letters she was looking for—March to April—knelt over them. There weren’t many left. The rain had ruined the letters on the bottom of the bound stack, while still in the back of the buggy. On top of that, as the spring of 1922 came, the letter writing had slowed down to a stop. The lovers had had no way of getting the letters to each other since their midnight meetings had ended. They’d had to resort, Millie imagined, to letting the letters stack up in threes and fours, and leaving them at the cabin for the other to find when he or she could. The letters they had managed to exchange during these weeks of spring showed their suspicion, their fear and their growing desperation. These letters read like they had been written in a hurry, looking over their shoulders—such was the way with sneaks, she guessed.
Darling, March, ‘22
It’s gotten worse here. Junior is now sleeping in the stables with the horses, so that there is no way for me to leave. I have to drop these by the cabin in hopes he won’t find them and you will.
Oh my Darling, my Darling, I am falling apart without you. Secretly watching you at the schoolhouse, a glimpse of you in town, the sound of your voice in the hotel café, or the general store—it is torture, my Darling. And I do not how much longer I will last against it.
Forever Your Love, Tommy
*
My Sweet Love, April 11, 1922
I write these letters now knowing there is no way for you to receive them. I write them anyway, hoping that although it is impossible for you to read these words, perhaps you can feel them.
Tomorrow is Saturday. I will be going to the schoolhouse in hopes of meeting you there. If I don’t see you tomorrow, then I will try the Saturday after that, and the one after that. There is something very important I must tell you. Please, Sweet Love, come to the schoolhouse tomorrow.
Love, Florella
Millie stared into the candlelight, thinking.
By this time they’d been forced to live their love through their letters, intimate letters, so there must have been a very good reason for her not to tell him her secret in writing, whatever this secret was. What was it? She wondered. If it weren’t in a letter, then Millie would never know. This April 11 letter was the last letter. This meant Millie had no more help in telling her story. She would have to depend on Mr. Sterno to find all the facts, then someday, maybe, when she herself knew all that had happened, and could understand it, she herself would be able to tell the story.
Until then, it was not her story to tell anymore—maybe it had never been her story to tell. It was the lovers’ story, no one but Tommy and Flora’s. One who was killed on May 1, the other who vanished the same day, and hadn’t been seen since.
Part II
19.
Saturday, April 12, 1922 found the lovers lying giggling across the top of Flora's desk in the schoolhouse. The desk was bare except for them. They had flushed cheeks and dabs of sweat at their temples and above their upper lips. Tommy was still breathing hard in between giggles, but Flora had calmed down some and turned into him, so that her head rested on his shoulder and her eyes were pointed at nothing else in the world but the face of her Sweet Love. On the floor to the side of the desk were scattered the desk pad, books, ink bottle, pens and homework that had been on the desk before she had seen him through the window and opened the door to him.
"You don't think your derriere left any imprints on any of the kids' lessons, do you?" he said, still breathing.
"You're vulgar!" Flora said. She limply slapped his rising and falling chest. It was only seconds, however, before the image sparked another round of quiet but uncontrollable laughter.
"Should we get down? Out of sight?"
"Down where? The floor is freezing." She snuggled into him, closed her eyes. "It's Saturday, Sweet Love. Everyone is downtown."
“Not everyone,” Tommy said. He quickly lifted his head to peek out the window, but gave up on it just as quickly.
“Oh, Millie came again. My goodness. You shouldn’t leave her out there alone so long.”
“Well, it’s not like that took too long.”
She slapped him again. "But what if she comes knocking?"
"She spied on us at the cabin all winter. I don't think she's interested in what we're doing in here."
"A twelve year old girl not interested. That'd be the day."
He gave her a reproving glare. "You mean to tell me, O First Daughter of Price, that you've been harboring dirty and sinful curiosities since you were twelve years old?"
“Not your affair, kind sir.”
"Florella Greentree, I'm shocked, disgusted, and titillated."
A few slight trembles took them again. Before long, however, a true empty calm descended upon them. Except their calm was not so empty.
When he spoke again, it was with a different tone. "No. She's just keeping an eye out on me."
"That is so precious. I wish I had a sister. Why does she worry about you so much?"
He turned to her so that they made symmetrical fetal poses, facing one another. "Because she's never seen me in love."
"Oh, Thomas Andrew Donnan, kiss me."
For nearly a full minute the silence within the interior of the schoolhouse was complete. When the lovers disengaged they continued to stare into the other’s eyes, through them, until the blue of hers and the green of his washed out into a single quiet storm of brightness.
She was serious when she spoke to him now. "I have something for you," she said. From her side pocket she brought out a patty-shaped roll of fancy tissue paper. It had a gold sticker on the flat top of it, keeping the paper in place. "Open it."
Tommy kept his eyes on hers until the timepiece he had just unwrapped came between them. "Flora," he said. He sat up now, holding the timepiece close to his eyes.
"My grandmother gave it to me. She said to save it for when I have found the love of my life, then it will be a symbol of eternity."
He opened it and closed it. It was of a silver clean enough to reflect his gaze. Except for the thin Roman numerals and the hands barely wider than straight black hairs, the face was largely blank, a cream color, only slightly revealing the embossed coat of arms of the watchmaker where the watch hands met. "Flora, I don't know what to say," he said.
"Don't say anything, just love me forever."
Tears welled in his eyes, and they could only be stopped by kissing her again.
"There's something else, darling. There’s something I have to tell you,” she said. She took his face in between the palms of her hands, turned his face to hers. "It is very serious," she said.
The lovers heard a sound outside the schoolhouse. Tommy lifted and tilted his head, listening.
"That was just your horse nickering," Miss Flora said.
"I know. But I think I heard the saddle too—" he rose sharply to his knees, his neck craned. "What on—? What is Millie doing with Sonnet?"
They looked outside the windows of the schoolhouse and saw Millie and Sonnet walking across the playground, one window pane at a time. She kept the horse at a slow pace, which allowed Tommy time to fasten his pants and approach the window. Something made him stay back a few feet from the glass pane. The way Millie was holding her face.
"Something's wrong," he said.
Miss Flora joined him. She stood off his shoulder righting her hair. "What is she looking at?"
Tommy noticed too. Millie’s neck was wrenched as far as it was able. He could see that through the locks of hair covering her eyes that she was looking directly at something behind her. He followed her gaze, but it was Flora who got there fir
st.
"God help us, it's Gomer.” She dropped to the floor, skittered on her hands and knees to the corner of the room. Tommy ducked and followed her there. He got down on one knee before her. On the face of his lover was a look he had not seen before. "Did he see us?" she asked.
"No, I don't think..." Tommy said, his head lifted up to the windows; but all he could see was the rump of his filly disappearing around the hardware store, fifty yards away. "I don't know, darling."
"We have to hide."
"Hide?"
She took his wrist, pulled him closer to her hard enough that he fell. "Tommy, he can't see us. We can't let him see us. Get down, Tommy!"
"Hush, darling," Tommy said bravely. He looked around the room. "The coat closet," he said. Miss Flora nodded her head. "Did you lock the back door?" She nodded but was too scared to speak. "Okay. It's okay," he said, "Let's go. Walk quietly."
The wardrobe door squawked at them when it came open. He opened it just wide enough to let them slide through. Inside, they had to stand on children's galoshes; forgotten coats and rain slickers enveloped them. Tommy hooked a finger on the outside of the door, pulled it in until it was open only an inch.
They waited.
They could see the light changing in the room—a fanning shadow moving across the wall opposite of the windows they had looked out to see Millie and Sonnet. They imagined Gomer stopping at each window, cupping his hands, looking in, moving to the next window.
"He saw us," Flora said.
"Hush, Darling."
They heard the knob on the back door rattling, rattling, rattling harder. The door shook against the jamb, hard enough to move the entire structure. A few seconds after this effort was abandoned, they could hear Gomer's boot being dragged across the ground behind the schoolhouse. Shortly, they saw the fanning shadows again, this time on the opposite wall as before.
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