About that time my ruminations were interrupted by Joey busting into my study. He pulled up short when he saw my face. “Sumpin wrong?”
“No, Buddy. Nothing wrong. Things are looking up again.”
“Good. Can we play some catch? Arlie just rode up.”
Arlie had our tube caddy with him. Even in the face of the previous day’s carnage, his obsession with our business had led him to recover our working stock from the man’s house. After setting the caddy on the front porch, he caught me up on the events following my departure.
His daddy had loaded the man’s body into the Packard’s trunk, washed the blood into the ground with a garden hose, then raked up the scattered head parts and thrown them into the house before torching it just before he drove away. Back home he had Arlie load two shovels into the back seat. After dinner they drove way back behind the house and by the light of a kerosene lantern dug a deep grave. They dumped the body in, filled the hole, and smoothed it out before spreading leaves and pine straw over the whole area. Arlie had just an hour before finally managed to clean the Packard’s trunk of the coagulated blood before it started drawing flies. Arlie and “Daddy” were, it seemed, quite a team. A team I owed my life to. Perhaps Joey’s as well.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you, Arlie. You were right. We should have just left the man’s five bucks on the porch and gotten out of there.” But those were just words for Arlie’s benefit. There was no way I could let him know the real reason I went out there. “I’ve still got a goose egg on my head where he hit me. And a cut on my leg from the broken window glass. I told Mom I got them falling off my bike. You didn’t get hurt did you?”
“Just some scrapes and bruises. And nightmares last night about running through that house with him right behind me. Good thing you busted that window out. He tried to grab me after he hit you, but I dove through that window like a circus lion jumping through a fire hoop and rolled off the porch running. He chased me across the field for a while but since you and I had been running two miles a day, he never even got close. I ran all the way home without stopping. I think I could have run all the way to Texas.”
So, it was done. But I couldn’t help but wonder where the bodies of those missing children Aunt Cealie had mentioned were hidden. Or had they already found those kids? Or did Aunt Cealie even know what she was talking about. Maybe the little bodies were buried out on the man’s property at the edge of town. But I couldn’t tell the police of my suspicions. That would get Mr. Quintin involved in the whole thing. It was only his irrevocable action that had brought the terrible business to a most-welcomed and permanent end. Except for those missing children.
Maybe it was time for another trip to the library. We had to go back into Pensacola to buy more vacuum tubes anyway. Plus we each had another hundred bucks saved for investing in Holiday Inn stock.
The librarian, a pallid, thirtyish woman with jet-black hair and crimson lipstick, was thoroughly familiar with the history of missing children in the area. Her nephew was one of them.
“It’s been going on for years now,” she said as she guided us with a slender arm over to a table. “One every three months or so. Many of them at the beginning of the school year like maybe a teacher is involved.” We all slid onto the hard, wooden chairs. Arlie and I leaned in to catch her hushed library-voice. “Or maybe the culprit is taking advantage of kids off guard with all the excitement of starting a new school year. About half were first graders but there were a few older ones as well.”
“How old?” I asked just above a whisper.
Her quick, brown eyes darted toward me uneasily. “Has someone tried to grab you off of the street?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. We’ve just heard stories and wanted to find out if they were true or not.”
The librarian relaxed a little. “Unfortunately the stories are true. None of the missing children were ever found. They just vanished.”
“Any from Stubbinville?” Arlie asked. “That’s where we live.”
“I don’t recall any from there. Atmore and Brewton just across the state line and a few south of there. Walnut Hill and Cantonment. No particular pattern according to the sheriff and FBI. They don’t even know if it’s one person or several. The sheriff here lost the election last year because he couldn’t make any headway in the disappearances. The new guy hasn’t had any luck, either.” She forced a grim smile indicating that was all she knew. We thanked her before heading down Palafox Street to the stockbroker’s office.
We bought our stock then crossed the street to Kress’s drugstore for burgers before pressing on to Pittman’s Electronics for more tubes. Mom drove up as we were coming out of Pittman’s. On the way home Arlie asked Mom if she had heard about the missing kids.
“Where did you boys hear about that?”
“Everybody knows,” I said, elbowing Arlie to keep his mouth shut as his daddy had directed.
“Yes. I try not to think about it but it scares me to death. I worry the whole time you boys are outside. Your dad must be worried too, Arlie.”
“Yes, ma’am. I expect he is.”
I wanted to put Mom’s mind at ease but I didn’t dare tell her about our experience with the Cadillac man. There was no telling how the future might unfold after Mom went wampuss cat-ballistic and ricocheted through the sheriff’s office like a cartoon bullet. Finally I just said, “There have never been any missing Stubbinville kids, though.”
“That’s not true. Two years ago this September a boy went missing over on the east side of town. He was riding his bicycle out there on a Saturday. They found his bike with a flat tire by the side of the road, but they never found him.” Mom turned around and glanced into the back at me. “So you need to pay attention to what’s going on around you, Cager. You too, Arlie.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we chorused in unison.
A week later the paper ran a story about a realtor who had gone missing. His red Cadillac was found in a stand of trees several hundred yards behind his recently burned home. The sheriff suspected foul play. Well, no shit, Sherlock, I muttered to myself. I read further. His name was Presley Poole and he had been a big donor to various children’s charities and was a deacon in the Olivette Methodist Church. A well-respected cornerstone of society, the paper said. Indeed.
Chapter 22
After my summer of solitary camping trips and stew pot runs to Aunt Cealie’s, Arlie’s daddy for some reason finally agreed to Arlie going camping with me. Maybe he figured our sharing in the killing of Presley Poole had forged us into one big, happy family.
Arlie quivered with excitement as we packed up the tan duffle bag with all of Dad’s Boy Scout camping gear. August being barely over, I gladly gave the sleeping bag to Arlie because I suspected he had coveted the old bag ever since he had laid eyes on it his first time across the river. I mean, a sleeping bag is the first thing a kid thinks of after a tent when the subject of camping comes up.
“Pack it on top in case you get the duffle bag wet crossing the river,” I advised.
Joey sat quietly watching us, captivated by the preparations. It was Labor Day weekend just before the coming first day of school. The day Joey had vanished on my first time through. I reminded myself that by coming back I had corrected the future. That Joey was now safe. That everything had changed.
“Can I go camping with you?” Joey finally asked in his quiet way.
I sat back and studied the mixture of plea and hope in his solemn, gray eyes. And in his intentness, I thought I detected a hint of hero worship.
“Sure, buddy. If it’s okay with Mom.”
Joey tore out of my study and down the stairs. I followed after him and we both cornered Mom in the backyard tending her geraniums. After assuring her I would watch out for him and bring him back before dark, she relented. She took Joey by both shoulders. “Will you do what Cager tells you?”
“Oh, yes,” he promised gravely. Yet his eyes were alight. He would have promised anything. Then Mo
m turned to me. “Okay, Cager. No shenanigans out there. And I want Joey back in time for dinner.”
Before it was all said and done, Mom had put her bathing suit on and joined us on the river bank. “Don’t you trust me, Mom?” I teased. But she was all business.
“You’ll understand someday when you’re a parent, Cager.” But I did understand. Finally.
So we all four joined hands and forded the cold Perdido in one unwieldy, stumbling gaggle of humanity. It must have been a scene played out many times in earth’s prehistory. A mother shepherding her young over perilous waters toward a safe shore. That image brought home to me in a way I had not before appreciated that I was actually living that enduring dream which ever stirs in the deepest caverns of our minds. The foundation of myths reaching back to ancient Sumer. Even into Eden. The dream of going home again.
As we waded ashore, Mom took my hand and reminded me for the second time to watch over Joey. Then she stepped back into the river leaving me aghast at her prescience. On the distant shore she paused to wave. We all three waved back then Joey and Arlie turned to me.
“Which way, Cager?” Joey asked.
I snapped back to the moment and pointed downriver toward the campsite.
I had never seen Joey so animated. He watched my every move as we set up camp and leaped to help whenever I asked for a hand. An hour later we were all three winding our way down the swamp trail to Aunt Cealie’s. Joey had insisted on carrying the frozen stew pot but after a few hundred yards, I realized it was freezing his hands, and worse, preventing him from taking in the wildness unfolding around him. He was relieved to hand it back to me as we pushed farther into the swamp.
Everywhere Joey looked things never seen before detained him on the trail, and in our wilderness solitude his silvery laughter echoed across the dark waters making everything brighter. I knew from that day on he and I would be inseparable. And that was all he had ever wanted from me. It was worth the life I had given up with Ell to come back and undo my standoffishness, and worse, my thoughtlessness of leaving Joey standing on the side of the road by himself that terrible day.
Aunt Cealie’s swamp telegraph had apparently announced the arrival of three spirits from the east because she had four jars of mint tea sitting on the porch rail by the time we crossed the bridge.
“You boys is right on time.” She leaned forward in her chair to peer around behind us. “And you must be Joey. Am I right?”
“Yes, ma’am, Aunt Cealie.”
Her single eye lit up. “So, you know who I am. Maybe you’d like to sit here next to me so I can get a good look at you ‘cause the las’ time I seed you, you was only as big as a teddy bear. And not a very big teddy bear at that. Now you all growed up.” Aunt Cealie knew how to compliment a young boy. Joey ran over and gave her a hug and climbed up into the chair next to her. All the while, she eyed Arlie with obvious suspicion.
After we finished our mint tea, Aunt Cealie suggested Arlie take Joey out on the bridge and count the bluegills for her. She gave them a piece of stale bread. “Jus’ pull off a little piece and ball it up ‘fore you throws it in the water. That’ll bring them fishes arunnin’. That’s for sure.”
While Arlie and Joey hung over the rail counting fish, Aunt Cealie turned to me with an uneasy look. “This is Labor Day weekend, Micajah.”
I nodded. “It’s all right, though. The man who was taking those kids tried to take Arlie and me a few weeks ago. He got caught. He’s dead now.”
A flicker of alarm stirred her features at that bit of news, but she had no further response except to look grimly off to one side for a time before speaking. “What kind of car did he have? Do you know that?” She caught my eye again, concerned, anxious for the answer.
“It was a red Cadillac. New. A convertible.”
“You sure?”
“I suppose he could have had another car, too, but both times I saw him he was in the red Cadillac. Why?”
She shook her head. “It don’t make no sense a man like that driving such a fine car. Prob’ly ain’t two red Cadillacs in the whole county.” Her hands flew about nervously as if trying to frame her concern. “Why would he draw attention to hisself like that?”
“Maybe he used the red Cadillac all the time so people would associate him with that car. Maybe he had another one he used when he was up to no good.”
“Maybe so. Maybe so,” she muttered. “I only got one good eye but I still sees things.” Her attention turned toward the swamp. “Like that thing over your house that night. I seed an’ heared other things too. Things didn’t make no sense at the time. Not ‘til you tol’ me about Joey disappearin’ in a couple more days.”
“That won’t happen now, Aunt Cealie. Like I said, the man that took him is dead.”
But Aunt Cealie had doubt written all over her face.
“Do you think there’s something else going on?” I asked.
She sighed and folded her restive hands away in her lap and grew calm. “I ‘spose not. It’s jus’….” She looked out at Arlie and Joey on the bridge and fell quiet.
“Just what?” I asked after a too-long silence.
A sudden shiver brought her out of her ruminations. “Oh. Jus’ that sometimes late at night when I’m wandering down along the river a car come speedin’ by.” She turned her attention back to me. “It’s always the same car, Micajah. I can’t see it but I knows it’s the same car ‘cause somethin’s loose and it rattle like a marble in a jar. Whoever drivin’ it can’t be up to no good after midnight. Thas all. Prob’ly nothin’ to it. But you might see me around,” she tilted her head toward town, “’cross the river sometimes. Don’t pay me no mind. I’m jus’ a crazy ole lady doing what us crazy ole ladies do.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy at all, Aunt Cealie.”
“Well, you a smart boy then, ‘cause you right. I ain’t crazy. I been ‘round a long time an’ me an’ trouble done tangled more’n once.” She laid a withered finger along her nose. “I gots to where I can smell him comin’, Micajah. An’ he smell ‘jus like this.”
***
Back in camp I showed Joey how to set up a campfire and let him put the match to it. While we watched it catch, I asked Joey if he knew not to ever get into a car with a stranger.
“Sure. Mom’s always telling me that,” The growing flames cast an angelic light across his warm face as he knelt beside them studying their leaping, relentless spread through the kindling.
“I figured as much.”
After lunch we followed animal tracks along the river bank until Joey caught a little box turtle he named Speedy. We hauled Speedy back to camp before realizing he wasn’t all that much fun. Joey put him back on the bank before we explored up river to an old log jam where we spent a lazy hour pulling out silvered driftwood twisted into fantastical shapes. I wanted to go swimming to escape the heat but knew better than to risk taking Joey into the swiftly moving current before he knew how to do more than dogpaddle. We finally headed back toward camp and spied Mom standing up on the road waving to us. Arlie and I escorted Joey back across and exchanged him for a small bag of chocolate chip cookies not an hour out of the oven.
We played a little catch before dinner then relaxed by the dying fire as a languid, summer evening spread out across our day. Arlie asked me about bears and alligators and other things that might come out at night. I assured him I had never been bothered by such things on my previous camping trips alone but that if anything did show up it was now two against one.
“Yeah. Hadn’t thought of it that way.” Then he changed the subject to the coming school year. And baseball. “Do you think I’ll ever not be the last one picked?”
I had read once that a wolf pack has not only alpha and beta males and females but also an omega wolf. The bottom wolf. Never allowed to feed on a kill until the others were sated. Snapped at and run off from the comfortable resting spots. The omega wolves led a miserable existence at the edges of the pack. But it was how nature worked. O
f course I didn’t tell Arlie any of this. I just looked him in the eye and outright lied. “It won’t last. You’re too good at baseball now. No one will ever forget that homer you hit last year. It’ll be someone else’s turn to be picked last.”
Arlie settled back against the log and sighed wistfully. “It would be nice not to always be last. I just hate that someone else will have to take my place.”
As night fell around us, the fire mellowed out into softly guttering embers. Clouds had settled in, shrouding the evening stars and running the humidity up another ten percent. The heat had become oppressive. I stood up and stripped off my clothes.
“What are you doing, Cage?” A trace of concern edged Arlie’s voice.
“Going for a swim to cool off before turning in. Come on.” I turned and picked my way through the darkness down toward the river. Though there was a waxing half-moon that September evening, the heavy overcast left the night as black as any I’d ever seen. Glancing back toward the camp, I barely made out Arlie still leaning against the log looking my way. “You coming?” I called out. Then I leaped off into the cold water and swam out toward the middle of the river.
A few minutes later Arlie called out from the bank.
“Where are you, Cage? I can’t see a thing.”
I wanted to say I was over by the alligator but I was pretty sure Arlie would believe it and miss out on a nice swim. “Out here in the middle.”
A Gift of Time Page 11