by Chris Fabry
I tried to make it look like I hadn’t been crying by rubbing cold water on my face, but my eyes were still red.
Daddy’s hands were brown and strong, and he cupped my face in them from behind and kissed the top of my head. “You look great. Come on.”
The old woman wiped her hands on her apron and smiled like I was her grandbaby. She shook my dad’s hand and told him she was proud to meet him. Then she hugged me so tight I thought I wasn’t going to be able to breathe for a day.
She showed me my place at the table while she turned down the TV volume. I couldn’t believe all the food she’d prepared for only two people, and I wondered if she’d pulled out more stuff just for us. A big plate held a mound of meat that she called her special recipe meat loaf. There were green beans in a bowl, still steaming, and a dish of red things that I found out were beets. She had baked four of the biggest potatoes I had ever seen—they were almost bigger than me—and she cut mine open and put a slice of butter on there and it melted.
“That’s cow butter,” she said. “And there’s homemade apple butter for your biscuit. Try some.”
Her face was kindly, with more lines than the map we kept in the RV, and she had a way of talking that her husband didn’t. She’d talk and talk and ask questions, and the old man would just sit there like he was watching a ball game. Then, on the off chance that he got a word in, she’d correct him and he’d go back to eating.
“Warren tells me you knew Margaret and her boy. Served with him over in Afghanistan.”
“That’s right,” Dad said. “I was through here a few years ago to see her after Calvin died.”
She shook her head. “Her life’s changed a bit since then. We’ll call her after supper.”
Dad looked at me. “And if it’s okay, I need to make another call. Long distance.”
She flung a withered hand in the air. “Call as much as you like. And park your RV by the barn tonight. You two are staying here.”
“We couldn’t do that,” Dad said.
“Nonsense. This little thing needs some meat on her bones. Least we can do is fatten you up a little and give you a good breakfast.”
“Can we stay?” I said, mashing the potato down with my fork and getting the butter mixed in until it turned yellow.
“We’ll talk about it,” he said.
I’d never tasted anything better in my life. The meat loaf had a red sauce like ketchup on top of it, but it was sweeter. Part of it was that I was starving after all that time eating next to nothing in the RV, and part of it was the freedom I felt now that I had my secret out. It felt like the pack off the back of that guy in the Pilgrim’s Progress story. Daddy started reading it to me but it got a little hard to understand and we moved on to something else.
“And what’s your name, young lady?” the woman said to me.
“It’s Natalie, but everybody calls me June Bug.”
She covered her mouth with the paper towel in her lap and put her head back to laugh. “If that don’t beat all. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a name that fit a person any better. We had a boy who lived down in the hollow, went to high school with him . . .”
Her husband smiled and nodded as if the man were sitting right in front of him.
“Cow Pie Reynolds,” she said, tapping her husband on the shoulder. “You remember Cow Pie?”
“I do.”
“I don’t know where he got it, but everybody called him that all through school, at least until he dropped out and started working at the plant. His mama had the pleurisy and his daddy died years before that and he basically took care of her the rest of her life. He was one to tip back the bottle, if you know what I mean, and that did him in.” She shook her head, and the gray hair waved like a lion’s mane.
“He sat in a cow pie once,” her husband said.
“That’s how it got started?”
He nodded. “Sat in a cow pie.”
She took a bite of a biscuit with apple butter on the edge and wiped at some sweat on her forehead. “I think he was sweet on me, to tell you the truth. Spent his days just filled with regret that I wouldn’t marry him.” She stole a glance at her husband, and he gave a sheepish grin. “Warren here stole my heart.”
“I married her for her meat loaf.”
Daddy pushed back from the table. “Then I’d say you made a good decision. That was the best meal I’ve had in years.”
I wanted to ask if that was a criticism of Sheila’s cooking because of the good food she’d made, but I didn’t get the chance because Dad went for the phone. The black one hanging on the kitchen wall looked like it had survived a war. I pointed it out, but the woman seemed to know he needed privacy and showed him the one in the living room, around the corner and into the dust.
“Where are you two headed?” the woman said when he’d gone. “Do you go to school anywhere? You must be in about the third grade, right?”
“I don’t really go to a regular school. My dad teaches me in the RV.”
“Homeschooled. That’s what they call it.”
“RV schooled,” I said.
“What’s that?” She leaned closer.
I repeated it, and she covered her mouth with the paper towel again. And then she started in on another story.
Pretty soon Daddy came back in and sat down at the table.
“Did you make your call?” the woman said.
“There was nobody home. I’ll call again later, if that’s okay.”
The woman was up like a flash. “You call as many times as it takes. You want some coffee?”
“Love some.”
“Get me a cup too,” the old man said.
She picked up a small towel and uncovered a pie on the desk in the corner. “And I baked this cherry pie this afternoon. Let me heat it a little in the oven so it’ll be nice and toasty when I put the ice cream on it.”
Dad drank his coffee black, which I could never understand because I tried it once and it tasted like drinking week-old rainwater out of a shoe. The four of us sat around the table listening to the old woman talk about her pains and ailments and how doctors didn’t care about people anymore.
I focused on the TV and the news stories that were flying by. There was something on about the economy and the words Economic Crisis flashed up there with a jagged arrow pointing down. I finished all but the skin on my potato and the green beans, which I am not as thrilled about as old people seem to be.
She got the cherry pie out of the oven and pulled a plastic tub of vanilla ice cream from the freezer, all the while talking about her diverticulitis and how she couldn’t go to the bathroom—if you can believe that. I glanced at the TV again and saw a reporter holding a microphone in front of a police station. He was older, with gray hair and a face like a mole. The words in the corner of the screen said Dogwood, WV.
I tapped Daddy on the shoulder and pointed. He asked the man if he would turn the sound up but the woman beat him to it and she turned it up about as loud as it would go.
“. . . being described by local police as a person of interest in this baffling case that has scarred this West Virginia community like a strip mine,” the reporter said.
While the reporter talked, a skinny fellow in a white T-shirt was being led inside the building. When he saw the camera he put his hands over his face and looked the other way.
“Though national attention has been drawn to this small West Virginia hollow, the residents here still speculate about what happened to a young girl who went missing seven years ago.”
The camera showed a tree with some flowers surrounding a picture. Underneath it said Natalie Anne Edwards, and it just about made me sick to my stomach.
The old man shook his head. “It’s a shame what this world is coming to.”
Daddy got up and turned down the volume just as the reporter showed an older woman with white hair talking and waving her hands. Daddy stood in front of the TV and leaned back against the table. “That’s the town I’m from. Didn’t
ever think it would make the national news.”
“Well, I hope they caught the fellow who kidnapped that poor little girl,” the woman said as she put a bowl of pie and ice cream in front of me.
“Why can’t we watch the rest?” I whined, trying to move and see.
“There are some things little girls shouldn’t have to worry about,” Dad said.
“You got that right,” the old man said.
The woman put her hand on my back and patted it. “Your daddy’s going to take care of you. He’s not going to let anything happen. Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“No,” I said quickly, and from the reaction in the room I guessed I said it a little too loud and angry. “I mean, I’m interested in what’s happening there.”
Daddy spooned in a few bites of pie and ice cream. “Maybe I ought to call Mrs. Linderman and find out if she’ll see me. Then we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Now you’re no problem; you know that,” the woman said, rustling through some papers and finding a yellow address book. She wrote a number down on the edge of an old newspaper and tore it off.
He walked into the living room, and I moved my ice cream around until it made a little ice cream pond on the pie. Cherry is one of my favorites, though I like the turtle pie at Denny’s the best. But I just couldn’t eat anything after what I’d seen on TV, and it made the whole thing jumble in my head.
Dad laughed in the other room as he talked on the phone, and the old woman asked if I wanted to take a piece of pie with me. I shook my head because I wasn’t really hungry anymore.
“She said to come right over,” Daddy said. “I suppose we ought to head out.”
The woman said something about keeping rooms open for us, but I think she knew we weren’t coming back. I walked over and hugged her and she hugged me back. I did the same to the old man who was standing like a statue by the door. He hugged me and said, “You take good care of your dad.”
The two were standing on the porch waving as we drove away. Dad turned around in their driveway and headed up the road.
13
Sheriff Hadley Preston was not pleased at the media’s knowledge of the arrest of Graham Walker. He asked Mike why he had ignored his pleas not to discuss the case. The young man’s face had turned redder than the Ohio State practice shirt he wore under his uniform. There was a cute young thing from Channel 13 who had camped out by the cruiser, a young lady with a short skirt and long eyelashes, and Preston figured she had pried the information from him.
“You beat all; you know that?” he said.
“I didn’t tell her much, Sheriff.”
“You told her all she needed and now look at it out there.”
Walker was in the same interview room where Dana had been, fiddling with a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He wasn’t much to look at, just skin and bones and hair that reached his shoulders and covered one eye. The man had a severely pockmarked face, scars from unattended acne, Preston guessed. From the looks of him, the 165 pounds was being generous. Preston could see the man’s ribs through his tight T-shirt. His arms were small and spindly like broomsticks. Either a drug addiction or a metabolism that was higher than he deserved.
“You want a lawyer?” Preston said as he pulled a chair back and sat, plopping his hat on the table.
“What do I need a lawyer for?”
“You don’t. They just make me ask that.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“For how long?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not true that you haven’t done anything wrong. I took a look at your record.”
“That was a long time ago, Sheriff. You can’t hold that against me. I’ve changed.”
Preston nodded. “That’s good to hear. You still working at the Tire Works?”
“I quit a couple months ago. Still looking around for something.”
“You quit or you were fired?”
Walker paused. “I’d say the parting was mutual. I wanted different hours, and my boss wouldn’t give it to me.”
Preston poured himself a cup of coffee. “From what he said, you didn’t want to show up on time. Ever.”
Walker didn’t answer.
Preston stood by the door, leaning against it with one arm. “There’re a few things in that report and a few things I’ve heard that made me bring you down here. You remember working at the mini golf?”
Walker shifted in his chair. “Yeah.” He looked away and then back at the sheriff. “What about it?”
“You got fired from that job too.”
“It was a dead end. Just something I did to make some spending money.”
“I hear you made advances on a young girl and the manager got wind of it. Is that fair to say?”
Walker opened his mouth, ready to speak. But nothing came out.
“She was thirteen,” Preston said.
“Sheriff, that girl did not look thirteen. I can guarantee you that. And all we did was talk.”
“In your car?”
“Look, I don’t know what that has to do with me now. Is that girl accusing?”
“Just trying to put the pieces together.” Preston stared at the man. “It was about that time you moved away to Ohio. Akron, wasn’t it?”
“I have a brother who lived up there. Worked for Goodyear. He let me stay with him and his wife.”
“And you were in Hartville about a month when the neighbors started complaining.”
“How did you . . . ? Is this what the fuss is about? Something that happened in Ohio?” Walker’s face was a sunken mixture of neglect and incomprehension.
“Not really.” Preston moved back to the chair and sat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I just like to get things in order. It helps to know the whole story. Where a person has come from. Know where they sit before you find out where they stand.”
Walker scrunched up his face, as if the sheriff were speaking a foreign language.
“I’d encourage you to level with me on what you say. Shoot straight.”
“I am being straight.” His eyes shifted away from Preston, like a dog ashamed of something he did on the carpet.
“From what I hear, you agreed to leave that area because they caught you looking in windows, scaring people. Young women.”
Walker shrugged. “I liked to take walks at night. I wasn’t a Peeping Tom, if that’s what you mean.”
“The search warrant we have for your home covers anything electronic, like computers. We found a laptop there.”
Walker locked eyes with Preston, his arms tensing. He finally leaned back with a nervous smile.
“We going to find anything we don’t want to see on that hard drive?”
“Nothing that’s probably not on every one of your computers here,” Walker said.
“We’ll see about that,” Preston said, picking up his hat and rolling it. “You like looking at pictures?”
Walker stared at the sheriff’s hand. “You been married how long, Sheriff?”
“Almost thirty years to the same woman.”
Walker shook his head. “Thirty years. It’s been thirty years since you dated a woman. Let me tell you something. Things are different now.”
“I suspect they are.”
“No. There’s no way you could understand. Women today . . . it’s like they’re waiting for you to make some mistake. Say one thing wrong. Do something that hacks them off. Then they get up and walk away. That’s pressure, especially if you have to pay for both dinners.”
“You tried those online dating things?”
Walker scoffed and pointed at his own face. “No matter which side I take of this, it always looks like a mug shot. They take one look and keep clicking the mouse. I saw this one guy the other day in a pool next to a dolphin. Said he was a nature lover and liked to read books and take long walks. And he had this baby face that made him look like some retired Backstreet Boy.”
Preston laughed. The guy wa
s weird, but at least he had a sense of humor.
Walker leaned forward and jabbed a finger at the tabletop. “Women today don’t even give you a chance to make an impression. They’re looking for guys with looks and the six-figure income. Last thing they’re looking for is a guy like me. I got a good heart, Sheriff.”
Preston nodded and stared at him. “Is that why you favor the young ones?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Some of the pictures we found on the computer. We haven’t gone through it all, but Mike found some stuff that’s not good for your public image. And some conversations you had in chat rooms. You want to explain that?”
“First of all, there’s nothing illegal about talking with people on the computer. How am I supposed to know how old they are?”
“When they say they’re twelve, that’s a pretty good indication —don’t you think?”
“Maybe so, but people lie. You know that.”
Preston nodded. “True, but pictures don’t lie.”
Walker put up his hands. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. Honest. I had a friend staying with me a couple of weeks, and when I found out he was downloading stuff, I told him to delete it and he said he did.”
“You might not want to blame other people, Gray. Be straight with me.”
Walker sat back and pulled his hair into a ponytail. “I admit I’m a little stuck. Back in high school or whatever. I don’t get along with older women. I’ve tried. The younger ones don’t have all that resentment and pain. You know?” He cursed. “I didn’t know this was going to be a counseling session.”
Preston tried hard to make it seem like he was just a good old boy sheriff who was uncovering rocks to see what he’d find, but there was a method to his approach. When he was talking with some slick lawyer from Charleston or a media hound from New York, he could say the things they wanted to hear. But he felt most at home with his own people. Those whose faces had been slapped time and again by life. People like Walker.
“You had that mini golf job back in 2001. Is that right?”