Under the cold Stones

by McNay, Dan

  “He’s in prison in Louisiana. He had never broken the law in his life, but the stress about the baby coming and how we were going to live was too much. I hadn’t gotten the call about my mother yet. He was a printer. His printing company went belly up. He and a buddy tried to rob a bookie in the French Quarter. He had just come home when the police showed up to arrest him. They took him out in handcuffs. I was so mad, I threw my wedding ring at him and it bounced somewhere and I never found it again. We were in this cheap place living off my money from waiting tables. There were cracks in the floor boards. I guess it fell into one of the cracks.”

  Was that too thick, Daydee wondered.

  “You poor thing.” Diane patted her hand. “Is this your first?”

  Daydee nodded.

  “I’m here to help. Anything you need at all.” Diane smiled. “Would you mind if a bunch of us throw you a baby shower? We’ve not had any new moms in four months. It will give you a chance to meet some of the ladies around town and maybe a couple that have toddlers.”

  Daydee was surprised. This was supposed to be about snooping her out, wasn’t it? What was she going to say to a group of women?

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll do it all, you just show up. Everybody loves new babies on the way.”

  “There will be silly games and stuff like that?” Daydee asked. She was suddenly that little girl that was never invited to birthday parties. Her mother had been white trash. She couldn’t recall being in another family’s home here.

  “It will help you with the things you need for the baby. And expert advice!”

  It was the expert advice part that worried her. What if this group decided she wasn’t fit to be a mother? She really didn’t know how to live up to anybody else’s expectations of her. It wasn’t anything she wanted to do anyway. Nobody here had ever been kind to her until she reached puberty. Who gives a fuck? This was new. These hormones, she guessed. She could almost feel her heart melt.

  “All right,” Daydee agreed.

  As she walked the woman out, Daydee mentioned the tagging, without telling her what the word was. Diane acted indignant.

  About an hour later, the sheriff rolled up in front of her door. Diane had called him.

  Daydee at first thought he was here to make a move on her, but when she found out he was here about the tagging, she invited him in. He wouldn’t sit. Taking out a pad, he took notes about when it happened and how.

  “Can’t say when we had this kind of problem, ma’am. A few years ago, right after the high school graduation there was some graffiti on the water tower. Try to get the license number on the car if it happens again. What did it say?”

  Daydee didn’t want to tell him.

  “Whore.”

  He scratched his head with his giant hand.

  “Ma’am, I’m really sorry. We must have somebody very disturbed. I’ll ask the night patrol to swing by here. That might help to scare them off. Sometimes, those teenagers out on the farms get crazy notions in their heads. I hope you don’t judge the town on the basis of one crazy person.”

  Why didn’t she want to show him the letter? She suddenly understood that the letter was from a second person. She didn’t want to let him know that two people were calling her a whore. It was all too close to the truth.

  “Thanks, I won’t.”

  He offered his hand and she shook it and he held on a little too long.

  “Jack said you came to church. You like it?”

  “It was all right, except for the echo.”

  He laughed.

  “Don’t know if there’s ever been a McIntire in a church here before. I go to the Baptist Church over on Wilson. If you’d like to visit some Sunday, I’d come to escort you.”

  This was probably the strangest request for a date she had ever gotten.

  “Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll keep that invitation for a couple of weeks if I could. I feel kind of overwhelmed right now.”

  “Rob.”

  “Sure, Rob. Thank you.”

  He departed. She knew he wasn’t going to forget the two-week put off. Andy of Mayberry was still alive, she thought, and waved from the door.

  * * *

  She went back to look for the crazy man early in the morning on the next day. She was dressed for action, expecting God knew what. Tennis shoes she’d picked up for the occasion, jeans and the flannel shirt she was falling in love with. No jewelry, with her hair back in a bandana. The crazy homeless people she knew in The French Quarter could go off now and then. The magic bead lady had a violent screaming fit outside a shop only a couple of months before she left. She didn’t want to have anything that he could grab at. She hoped she wouldn’t find him, that he had moved on. Then she could pretend that she had been mistaken. That it hadn’t really been him, but just her overactive imagination. She parked in front of the office and walked down. She didn’t want to scare him away and if he was still there, she didn’t want him expecting her.

  The day was overcast, with thick wooly clouds. Another summer thunder storm. The grass was high and wet. Had it rained in the night? She came back to the spot before the trees where she had found him two nights before. There was a flattened space in the grass where he had been sitting, but no sign of anything. Except an empty potato chip bag. She picked it up and folded it to slip it into her hip pocket. It would just blow up on the cemetery grounds.

  A trail led away in the grass. She followed. It was wide and wandered down across a meadow and toward a fence and another grove of trees. The fence was barbed wire and had been trampled down with one of the fence posts uprooted and laying across the wire to hold it down. The shopping cart was sitting on the other side, filled with bags and junk. She didn’t see him. He might have gone off to town for something to eat. He might not be back for hours. She wouldn’t wait.

  “Sos, youse come exploring,” a voice said.

  “Where are you?”

  “That’s for you to know.”

  He was sitting on a tree branch above her. It was dark up there under the leaves. She couldn’t see his face.

  “You hungry?”

  “You have posse possum?”

  “Not me. You want lunch? You want to come down and have lunch with me?”

  This was not planned well.

  “You can have it right there,” he told her.

  “I have to go get it. You’ll be here when I get back?”

  “No.”

  “You like McDonald’s?”

  “He had a cow?”

  “And hamburgers.”

  “No.”

  “You used to like strawberry shakes.”

  “No.”

  She headed back up to the cemetery, trying to recall where she had seen a McDonald’s. There had to be one. This was stupid. He was obviously nuts. She was kidding herself. Her father was in the ground. She drove to the main highway. There had to be one out near the Wal-Mart. Finding it, she drove through and sat the bags in the passenger seat. It didn’t smell bad. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten this stuff. There was so much cheap food in the Quarter better than this. She wished she was sitting in Ruby Red’s right now, with her heels in the peanut shells on the floor. With a real hamburger that you would cut in half to take the second half home for later.

  He was sitting on the front steps of the office when she got back. He wasn’t that crazy. And it was her father. The face she recalled was there, almost buried in old age and wrinkles. God. He was looking past the truck somewhere. He watched the sky as she got out. If she looked away, she felt his gaze on her.

  “He was such a porcupine that he was porcupining all the time and they had to give a haircut. Snip. Snip. Snip.”

  When she approached him with the bag, he leapt up. She stopped, sat it down on the sidewalk and backed away. He grabbed it and took it back to the steps. Sitting back down, he pulled out the food and began stuffing it into his mouth. The lid was off the shake and he gulped it, some of it dribbling
down his chin. Daydee sat down cross-legged on the concrete and took out her hamburger.

  “So,” she asked. “How have you been?”

  He nodded his head to a tree off to the right of them.

  “I was in New Orleans all these years.”

  Nodding, like he was autistic.

  “Mama died. That was the reason I came back.”

  He was licking the inside of his paper cup. His nose was in his bag looking for more. She got up and approached him, offering her French fries. It was like trying to get close to a squirrel or a bird. His hand was out, but his face was screwed away like she was causing him pain. His smell was terrible. He accepted the fries and she retreated and sat down again.

  “You’re crazy, aren’t you?”

  “They snipped and snipped and his pants fell down.”

  “Do you know how long you have been living down there?”

  “When hell freezes over!”

  “I don’t suppose I could talk you into a bath and a warm bed.”

  “Deedee knows. Lots and lots. It came out of her bear!”

  He jumped up and ran back down the hill towards his hideout.

  * * *

  She would go out every day at lunch time with bags from McDonald’s, bringing him two lunches so that she wouldn’t feel guilty about not bringing him dinner as well. She didn’t want to be out here at night with a crazy old man while there was still some mystery tagger out and about. Her father never came back up to the office again which required her to go to him. For a few days she didn’t see him at all. The bags were left on his grocery cart and the next day they were gone. She’d carry out trash if she spotted it. It was random. He had made an odd little bush decorated with drink lids and straws. She left that alone. Then he would be sitting there on the ground waiting for her. He wouldn’t look at her, but greet the bags like they were long lost friends. She could feel him looking at her when her eyes were diverted, but try as she might she could never catch his direct gaze. Occasionally he would make a mention of Deedee, in the midst of his odd talk. She wanted to believe he understood who she was. His tears on the first day with lunch had told her so. Most of what he said made hardly any sense. There were troubling mentions of people snipping him or poisoning him. And he would pop about. He would suddenly leap up and then settle in another spot. Over and over. She never went too close, he would move off. She told him things about her life. Nothing made an impression on him.

  She would ramble on about New Orleans. How she had grown to love the city and all of its excesses. She left out the part about how she made money. She talked about Saturday afternoon strolls through the humid run-down neighborhoods. The old black men were forever gentle and kind. The food. The rain that came for just a half hour every summer afternoon just after lunch. Mardi Gras. The church bells, the streetcars and the music. The way everyone talked so slowly and patiently. The alcohol that could make an evening glow like a real romance. The snails on the sidewalk after a heavy rain. The big porches and the windows you could walk through. How leather would turn green if you left it in a drawer too long. The hurricanes that always seem to miss the city. The antiques you could find everywhere. The odd little places you could live that were sheltered by moss-covered trees. And you could be a lady twenty-four hours a day no matter what you did for a living because it was the south. The old white men with their moustaches and white hair and suits the color of ice cream. And their canes. They might even call you missy, if they were sweet on you. How she learned to love being attractive because it meant daily little gifts, a door held, a twinkle of an old man’s eye. The nervousness of a sweet teenage boy. An old woman’s smile and pat on the hand. It was the south after all and it had been created solely for her to erase all the pain and loneliness and loathing she had been taught as a child. She was confessing, but she doubted he heard any of it. He was too far gone, he had been long ago.

  What would she do with him? She could have him committed somewhere, but then he would hate her. She kept thinking about somehow coaxing him into her truck and taking him home and giving him a bath. That once inside he might be more relaxed and less crazed and get lazy about being schizophrenic. It was a long shot, but if he was willing, she’d give it a try. Fat chance. What would winter bring? Was he going to be huddled out here in the snow? He probably would be, he had survived twenty years without her. She would go to a thrift store and bring him back better clothes at least. The owner of this pasture is eventually going to realize someone was living out here. Then the sheriff would be called. She wouldn’t be able to fix that scenario. It just couldn’t go on forever this way.

  * * *

  The day of the shower arrived. The women seemed to be overjoyed at putting this on. On two separate occasions, women had come over to introduce themselves at the grocery and had told her how they were looking forward to the shower. The red-haired one seemed really ecstatic. She was new to town as well and this was her first invitation to anything. Diane came early with a couple of trays of hors d’oeuvres. Daydee had just had the heaves about an hour before and had lost all of her breakfast. Somehow the bacon and cream cheese aroma wasn’t too bothersome. Diane helped tidy up the place and arrange chairs in the living room. She had even brought a bag of cardboard baby shower decorations, which she taped up on the walls and across the front window. Everything was pastel yellow, pink and blue. All really silly. They reminded her of babies that came straight out of those Dick and Jane readers she knew from first grade, except that there were no babies in those. But if there had been babies, this was what they would look like. Some foreign world that she was told about as a child, but never really saw. Another woman came with a cake and baby shower paper plates. Sarah brought a couple bottles of Champagne. Daydee didn’t know everyone, but it soon became apparent they were all from Jack’s church. Hanna, the stringy-haired boy-lady that she had met on the bus coming into town, came with a big smile and a pie she had baked.

  “The clock is out at the cemetery office,” she blurted out. She had forgotten it completely.

  “Really?”

  “Come and get it anytime. I can meet you if you want.”

  “That would be great. Tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure.”

  Hanna was one of those persons you knew would be a great friend, even though she didn’t talk and you were sure she was probably as quiet and as crazy as hell.

  Another woman came with her three-month-old baby. Daydee watched her like a hawk. There were things to learn here. The woman barely was there. She seemed totally wrapped around the child, a little boy, and would look up and smile from time to time. She would steal time for cake and drinks and to watch, but she was perpetually rocking, cooing and then breastfeeding and burping and maintaining a quiet repose as the child slept. This was exactly what she thought it would be. She had to get ready and arrange her life.

  There were ten women there. The red-haired lady came and Daydee was introduced. Her present looked like the biggest one. They had all brought presents for her. She was lost at sea, paddling to keep her head above the waves.

  “So how did it go with the bank?” Sarah asked her.

  “They gave me a three-month grace period. No payments, nothing.” Daydee looked at her. She wanted to kiss her. “I didn’t think banks acted that way.”

  “John said he hadn’t seen Edward that angry in a long time,” said a friend of Sarah’s whose husband was apparently on the board. “He walked out of the meeting and slammed the door after him.”

  “Thank your husband for me,” Daydee said. “Thanks, everyone. For everything.”

  Sarah opened the Champagne. Diane passed out pieces of yarn to everyone.

  “Okay, the idea is to tie a knot at the right length to fit around Deidre’s tummy. Deidre, you can do it too, but you aren’t allowed to win.”

  They were all holding up their pieces of yarn, eyeing her waist. She had gotten larger in the last two weeks, but she had just been telling herself that she was g
etting fat and it was too early to show. But she really was showing and they were happy about it. She had to stand so each woman could try her length of yarn around her waist. Her own was much too short. There were two that were very close, so they had to re-measure both to decide the winner. It was Hanna, the sharecropper’s wife. She won a box of chocolates. This prompted stories about when they started to show. One woman claimed she didn’t until the last three months. And that she hadn’t realized she was pregnant until then. Daydee wished for that – no morning sickness. Somehow the conversation got on to how odd people would just come up and touch your belly. As if it was good luck or something. They all seemed to agree that they didn’t like it, but that it was expected and so a few resigned themselves to it. Daydee didn’t think she had ever seen anyone do that. Maybe it was a Midwest thing. But then she wasn’t around any pregnant women in the French Quarter. She didn’t think she wanted that to happen. She would swat hands.

  The next game was a ‘who’s got the needle’ with a diaper pin. Daydee had to leave the room and when she returned, all the women had their hands together like they were praying. Daydee’s job was to go from one to the next and ask them by name if they had the safety pin. They were supposed to answer her by replying with her name and telling her yes or no. Daydee was supposed to find the pin by reading their faces. The use of each other’s names was to add some sort of psychological lever to it, but it just seemed stupid. Daydee had to ask their names again as she went around the room. She was embarrassed by her lack of recall. The ladies seemed to take it in stride. The Champagne was being sipped freely and the group was getting tipsy. There were a couple women who tried to act as if they were lying when they said they didn’t have it. The rolling of their eyes and the giggling was just silly. She knew before she got to Sarah that she was the one that had the pin between her hands. She tried not to let on that the game was too easy. They were having fun trying to tell her the truth. When she made her guess some of the women were indignant about her guess being correct. There was collusion! Daydee was certain that some of them would never know the right answer to this game.