by Terry Shames
I get over to Bryan–College Station often, usually to consult somebody at the vet school about one of my cows. So I take Marybeth to lunch or dinner every couple of months. It’s barely an hour’s drive.
My wife, Jeanne, and Marybeth were not particularly good friends, but Jeanne felt bad about whatever demons drove Marybeth to leave her husband and son. Jeanne thought people should make the effort to be kind to her.
While Marybeth gets dressed, I wander around her front room, longing for a cup of coffee. But I remember that she doesn’t drink it, so I’m out of luck. She has lived here for many years, but she could easily move out tomorrow without any fuss. She’s not an accumulator. The furniture is strictly utilitarian: a glass-top table with two iron chairs near the kitchen, a boxy sofa, and two matching armchairs facing the world’s smallest TV. I wonder what drives Marybeth to take up as little room as possible in the world.
She has a small bookcase that holds stacks of old People magazines and a few romance novels. A vase with some pale plastic flowers sits on top of the bookcase. She has a few pictures on the walls; the kind you can purchase at Walmart—unfocused pictures of Paris and some generic landscapes.
Finally she emerges from her bedroom, wearing a dress that hangs shapeless on her tiny frame. Her hair, a quiet brown streaked with gray, is pushed back with a hair band. “What can I get you?” she says, skittering to the kitchen area. “I’m just going to have a cup of tea.”
“Marybeth, come on over here and sit down.”
“Just a cup of tea. I’ll just . . .” She looks over at me, and my solemn face. “Okay, I’ll get it later.”
I sit down on one of the armchairs and she perches on the arm of the sofa, like a sparrow. Her smile twitches on and off. I wonder, not for the first time, if she takes some kind of medication.
I tell her about Jack, and for a few minutes I’m not sure she’s taking it in. She nods vigorously, chewing on the side of her mouth like a school child struggling with a perplexing math problem. People react in different ways to news of a death, but Marybeth doesn’t seem to understand my words. Her eyes flit from me to the TV and back. Finally she jumps up and paces around the room, hugging herself. “Thank you for coming all this way to tell me.” She stops in the kitchen long enough to set the kettle on to boil, then starts moving again. “Does Curtis know?”
“I reached him in Dallas. He said he’ll be at the house sometime tomorrow.”
“Curtis hates Jackie,” she says, in an off-hand way, as if talking to herself. She takes shuddering breaths.
“I doubt that.”
“Oh, he does. He hates me, too. He’s not a very nice man.” Suddenly she stops in front of me. She has peculiar look on her face. Defiant? That’s a first. “And you know what? I never liked Curtis. That’s a horrible thing for a mother to say, but from the minute he came out, I didn’t like him.”
I’m jolted by a flash of anger at Marybeth. I think about how my brother, Horace, could never do anything right in our mamma’s eyes. She had no patience for boys or men in general. But she singled out Horace for her wrath. Horace and my daddy took to the bottle to soothe the hurts she inflicted. Being the younger son, I was cushioned a bit.
Maybe Marybeth did the right thing by leaving Bob and Jack. Maybe my brother and I and our daddy might have been better off if my mother had realized that she wasn’t suited to the job and left.
“Listen, you don’t need to open those old wounds.”
It’s like she didn’t hear me. “Jack made me feel the opposite. The second he was born, I said, ‘He’s mine.’ That’s why I had to leave after he was hurt in that war. My heart just plain cracked in two every time I looked at him.” She paces back to the window. “It was selfish, I know that. But better than me there crying all day, every day. And I knew Bob could handle it. He was like a mule. You put him in a harness and he just plodded along getting the job done. Me? I’m . . .” She stands wringing her hands. “Oh Samuel, how could someone have hurt my sweet boy?”
I feel trapped in her tiny place. “Let’s go get something to eat.” I walk over and turn off the kettle.
“Eat?” As if it’s a foreign concept. “Yes, that would be okay.”
We go to a cafe and I order a hamburger. Sitting there with Marybeth is a hard slog, with her picking at a salad and starting sentences she doesn’t finish. But what little food she gets inside her brings some color back to her face, and she sits a little quieter.
“Marybeth, somebody needs to go over to the house and figure out what to do with Jack’s and Bob’s things, find out if there’s a will, and make funeral arrangements.”
She puts her fork down and shrinks back in her seat. “Curtis will do all that.”
“Isn’t there anything you’d like to have from the house? Photos? Anything?”
She chews her lip. “There might be pictures of Jackie, from before. I might like those.”
“If you want, I can take you over there. The house probably belongs to you now.”
She puts a hand to her mouth and starts to shake. “I think I have to go back to my apartment.”
When we get to her apartment, she goes into the bathroom and I hear pills rattle from a plastic container and water running. When she comes out, she sinks onto the sofa and stares at the wall. Eventually she rouses herself. “I want to ask you something. Do you think Curtis could have killed Jack?”
That’s exactly what I think, but I don’t need to go into it with her. “Marybeth, what would make you say such a thing?”
She moves forward to the edge of the sofa. “Curtis was always out for what he could get. He never had any interest in other people.”
“I don’t know what he’d get out of it. Seems like you’re the one who would inherit the house and anything Jack left.”
Marybeth shakes her head. “I signed over the house to Bob when I left. I told him I didn’t want anything. If he left a will, I expect he left everything to the boys. Which means with Jack dead, Curtis will get it all.”
“Do you know if Bob left a will?
She shakes her head. “After the funeral, I got out of there.”
“Did you talk to Jack?”
Her lips are trembling, and there’s such longing on her face that I can’t look at her. “I didn’t know what to say to him. What do you say when you’ve abandoned your son? If I’d been a good person, I’d have told him that I’d come back home and take over where Bob left off.”
“Marybeth, I’m sure he didn’t expect that of you. He knows you’ve struggled.” Would things have been better if she had stayed in Jarrett Creek? I expect Bob would have ended up with two people to take care of.
“Still, I should have told him I’d try.”
I wish like anything that Jeanne were with me. She’d know what to say. All I can think of is practical details. “You and Bob never got a divorce, am I right?”
“I never thought about it, and I guess Bob didn’t either.”
I’m wondering if Bob left a will. Not that it is any of my business, but things get talked about in a small town, and Loretta surely would have told me if she’d heard.
“I know a lawyer you can talk to about legal matters.”
“Oh, legal matters.” She waves a hand. “I’m not going to fight with Curtis.”
“Still, it would be good for you to talk to my friend Jenny Sandstone. Besides being a good lawyer, she has a lot of sense. There may be things you have to do legally, even if you want to turn everything over to Curtis. Jenny can help you with that.” I write down Jenny’s phone number and lay it on the coffee table. Then I stand up.
“Marybeth, do you have a friend who could come over here and spend some time with you?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want anybody around right now.” She looks up at me. “Oh, Samuel, you don’t need to worry about me. I don’t have the courage to kill myself. If I did, I would have done it a long time ago.”
I pat her shoulder. “Listen, don’t dwell o
n Curtis. I’ll grant you, he’s a different kind of person, but there’s no reason to think he killed Jack. You should leave all that to the authorities.” Even as I say it, I’m damned sure if it were my son who had been murdered I wouldn’t leave it to Rodell to investigate.
“If Curtis killed Jack, they’ll never figure it out anyway. He’s smooth.” She pushes herself off the sofa gingerly, like she’s afraid she’ll break if she moves too fast. “I guess you’re right. Maybe I should go over and take a look at the house. Even though everybody will think I’m a vulture.”
“Marybeth, it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. It’s nobody’s business but yours.”
Marybeth says she’ll drive over tomorrow. “You think Curtis is going to be there?”
“I don’t know.” I’m hoping he’ll show up in Jarrett Creek tomorrow, but for my own reasons.
I’m in Waco by ten o’clock and manage to find the Starbucks Taylor suggested we meet at. We don’t have anything like it in Jarrett Creek. But I’ve been to a Starbucks in Houston, and I like it fine, even though I’m the only person in line who orders plain old coffee.
Taylor rushes in a half hour late. “I’m sorry. The woman who usually stays with my girls was late. Do I have time to get a cappuccino?” She’s dressed conservatively in a dark skirt that covers her knees, low heels, and a white blouse buttoned all the way up. I took care with my own clothes this morning, copying what I’ve seen Curtis wear, although I feel like I’m ready for a game of golf rather than a foray into enemy territory.
“Sure, you have time. We need to strategize, so get your coffee.”
When she comes back with her foamy drink and a muffin, I see that her make-up can’t hide her swollen eyes or the dark circles under them.
“I still can’t wrap my head around Jack being dead,” she says. “I knew him from the time we were babies.” Her eyes well up. “I called Woody after I talked to you. He hadn’t heard about it, and he was all torn up.”
“He told you about his plans to have Jack come and live with them?”
“I already knew about it from Laurel. She wanted me to talk to Woody. I told her I was the last person he’d listen to.”
“Turns out it wouldn’t have come to anything anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know Lurleen, the waitress down at Town Café?”
She nods. “Couple of years behind me in school.”
“She and Jack were going to get married.”
“Really?” She gives me a rueful smile. “Well, that’s good. He had something to look forward to. I’ll go by and see Lurleen. This is going to be hard on her.” Then she frowns. “When did they decide to get married?”
“Walter Dunn told me he found out a couple of days before Jack died. Apparently Lurleen had never gotten a divorce from her first husband, and she liked things the way they were, so she and Jack had no plans to marry. But when Jack’s dad died, she changed her mind.”
“Oh.” She nods her head slowly. “That makes sense.”
“What does?”
“Mmm, something Jack said.” She gets up abruptly and dumps her muffin and empty coffee cup in the wastebasket. When she sits back down, she says, “We should talk about what we’re doing here. Have you found out where this cult is located?”
“No, I thought we’d drop by the police department. They usually keep tabs on cults, and the Waco police aren’t strangers to that kind of thing.”
The cop behind the front desk has a long, bony face and steel gray hair. He leans on his forearms and nods when we tell him what we’re looking for. “The True Marcus Ministry,” he says with a sigh. “That’s what they call it, but it’s just an excuse to hide out and collect guns. Ever since that David Koresh firestorm, this town has been a magnet for nutty groups. Gives us a lot of trouble.”
“Can you tell me how to get out to their place?”
He looks us over. “I wouldn’t waste my time. They’re not going to give you any satisfaction.”
“You don’t even know what we’re after,” Taylor says.
His smile is patronizing. “I know they’re going to take one look at you and think you’re not welcome there. Their women wear those long dresses like something out of Little House on the Prairie. Hair long, no make-up. Not to be disrespectful of you, ma’am.”
Taylor sighs. “I’m trying to see my sister.”
“Oh, it’s like that,” he says sympathetically. He stands up straight. “Let me get somebody to drive you out there. They don’t want to get crossways with the law, so they usually cooperate with us to a certain extent.”
Officer Redmond, who is barely dry behind the ears, drives us out in a squad car. “Let me do the talking,” he says. “They probably won’t let us go inside, but maybe they’ll bring your sister to you.”
We drive northeast for about thirty minutes through increasingly dense woods. Taylor is quiet, but there’s no need for either of us to say much because Redmond is a one-man advertisement for the wonders of Waco. He tells us he was born here, went to school at Baylor, and the only time he’s spent outside the area was in the Texas Department of Public Safety training. And there is not a better place in the great state of Texas. In other circumstances I might argue the matter with him, but I need him on our side.
Eventually the trees give way to high, dense scrub brush. Everything is hot and dusty and forlorn. We turn onto an unpaved road. Dust rises behind us as we barrel along parallel with a high chain link fence that looks like it means business. At the end of the road, we stop in front of a little shed next to a gate. A large man carrying a rifle in his left hand steps out to greet us. He’s dressed in khaki pants and shirt with an emblem of crossed guns with an eye in the middle of it. He introduces himself as Brother Dan. He’s wearing sunglasses, so I can’t see his eyes.
I wondered if Redmond was old enough and trained enough to deal with the Marcus Ministry folks, but he eases my doubts right away. He gets out of the car to talk to Brother Dan. His voice projects authority, yet he maintains a relaxed stance.
“In the car here I have Samuel Craddock and Taylor Venable. Mrs. Venable says her sister is married to one of your members, and she’s having trouble getting in touch with her. She’s a little worried. I imagine you can sympathize with that. She’d like a chance to talk to her sister if you can arrange it.”
“What’s Craddock’s interest in this?”
“He’s a lawman from Jarrett Creek. Mrs. Venable asked him to accompany her.”
Brother Dan slaps at a mosquito on his arm. If he’s sympathetic to Taylor’s situation, he sure doesn’t show it. “I’m sorry she’s having trouble, but we don’t keep people from talking to their families. If they want to, that is. A lot of our members prefer not to be involved with their former family members.”
“Mmm, mmm. That may be, but Mrs. Venable would like to see firsthand if that’s the case. It would set her mind at ease, and it would go a long way to keeping your ministry’s relationship with our department on friendly terms.”
The man takes off his sunglasses. His blue eyes are hard as ice. “I see no reason for threats. We haven’t broken any laws.”
“I’m sorry if you thought that’s what I was implying. What I meant to say was, the chief gets nervous if an outsider, somebody who doesn’t understand how things work in Waco, gets upset and thinks the police don’t run a tight ship.” Redmond has been standing at attention, but now he leans back against his car and folds his arms as if they’re discussing the price of land in the area.
“There’s no need for the lady to be upset. We treat our women just fine.”
“I’m sure you do. But I hope you understand Chief Kolecek’s position. He wouldn’t like somebody like Mrs. Venable here, a perfectly nice, respectable woman, to complain to state authorities that we’re letting a group keep officers from carrying out their duties properly. Our job is to keep citizens safe and sound, and sometimes we need to assure ourselves that we’re doing the
job right.” If he sounded any friendlier, he’d be wagging his tail.
Brother Dan’s expression is patient, but I notice his fist clenching and unclenching. “Just a minute,” he says. He goes inside his hut. I don’t see any wires, so he must have a walkie-talkie of some kind. After a few seconds, he comes out. “What’s the sister’s name?”
“Sarah. Sarah Harbin.” Taylor’s voice quivers.
Brother Dan disappears back inside. The temperature inside the car has become unbearable. Taylor unbuttons the top button of her blouse and fans herself with a brochure she dug out of her purse. I feel sweat trickling down my back.
It’s a good ten minutes before Brother Dan comes back to the car. He avoids making eye contact with Taylor, but speaks loud enough for us to hear him. “Brother Kittredge will bring Sister Sarah here. He consulted with her and she said she’d be willing to show herself. You should be appreciative. Not everyone wants contact with outsiders.”
At the word “outsider,” Taylor’s cheeks flush and she grabs my hand, but she just nods.
“Thank you kindly,” Redmond says. “It really helps when you folks are so forthcoming.” I guess it’s partly the heat that makes me want to say a few choice words on the matter. But that would probably mean the end of Taylor’s chance to see her sister.
A golf cart with two people in it comes into view, bumping along the rutted road through the brush. Taylor sits forward and says, “Officer Redmond, would it be all right if I got out of the car?”
He sticks his head inside and says quietly. “Wait until your sister gets close, then step out. But keep your distance unless she makes a move.”
“I hate this,” Taylor breathes to me.
I hate it as much as she does. Jarrett Creek has several churches, but they’re all some version of regular religious establishments: Baptists and Methodists, Catholics and Lutherans and Church of Christ. I don’t know that we even have any Mormons or Christian Scientists. About the most exotic congregation we have around there is a little nest of Seventh Day Adventists out near Bobtail.