It was cooler in Paris in the springtime than I thought it would be.
SEVEN
I didn’t ever hear another word about Elly Ross, the little girl who was up on the mountain with her father when Billy Roy was killed.
That’s a lie.
If I’m going to tell this right, tell it like it really happened, then I’ve got to say the lie.
I knew every new dress that little girl had. Compliments of Mary Abbott, saleswoman at Souk’s Tot and Teen Exclusive Togs of Fayetteville and Patsy’s cousin. And I knew the results of every report card she ever received from Fayetteville Westside Elementary, Washington Irving Junior High and Fayetteville High Schools. Compliments of Homer Shipman, assistant school superintendent and Mary’s son-in-law.
Through them I knew when red was Elly’s favorite color and when she switched to blue. Whether she and her mom were buying satin bows for her blonde pigtails or headbands for a bob.
I sighed over Elly’s math grades. I understood the problem. But from multiplication tables to high school geometry she hung in there and passed through her school years with grades on the plus side.
Oh, it cost me a pretty penny for all that confidential information. But I had the insurance money at first, and then the income from my business venture. It was worth it to me to know exactly when Elly was going to summer horse camp in Siloam Springs and when she was first fitted for braces by the local orthodontist.
I have all her school pictures. Sometimes I would just line them up in a row, all those little two by one and a half color photos and marvel at the miracle of her unfolding. I spent hours squinting at those colorful little pieces, trying to see beyond the photographic paper, trying to see if Elly was happy, trying to recognize a real person inside the pictures, trying to see if she had a soul.
There were insignificant gaps, but I knew most everything I needed to know about the kind of life she led with her adoptive parents. How spoiled she was, but sweet and appreciative. She was a good and loving daughter to the professor and his wife, the only child they ever had.
She was about seventeen when I met her in person. Almost seventeen. Two months and three days before she became seventeen.
I was invited to an administrators’ wives tea at the University. Harmon was lecturing to the University Law School on Criminology and the Law at a big legal seminar and the spouses who attended were entertained by the wife of the University’s president. I suggested it. Thought it would be nice if some of the professors’ wives and their families socialized with the seminar’s participants. Wasn’t like they hadn’t done it before.
And I helped make out the guest list, seeing as how I was the liaison between the seminar lecturers and the school.
“I’ll bet you’re a cheerleader,” I said to Elly. The first words I ever said to her felt dumb and inadequate.
“How did you know?” she asked. Lord, she looked beautiful. Her hair was shiny and fluffed out like a movie star’s. She was tall and graceful and athletic and stylish looking. Her blue eyes were clear and intelligent. She had on a turquoise cotton shirtwaist dress that I didn’t know she had. Since she had passed on from the Tots and Teens shop, I didn’t know where she bought her clothes. I’d have to find out.
“Oh, it was a wild guess,” I said. “What else are you interested in?”
Like I didn’t know.
“Reading, tennis.”
How’s that for well-rounded?
“But mostly music, the theatre.” Elly was answering me, holding a cut glass cup full of pink punch, but there was a slight introspective quality about her answer. Like she was making a list for herself as well as for me.
“Any special kind of music?”
“Mozart. I play the piano.” Didn’t I know that? Didn’t I have tapes of her practicing and playing? And years of recitals?
“I like Mozart, too,” I said. “I have a tape of some music played on his own pianoforte by a famous Austrian musician. I bought it at Mozart’s house, well, it’s really a museum now in Salzburg. I’ll send it to you if you like.”
“Do you? Would you?” Elly really looked at me for the first time. I wasn’t just another face in the University’s parlor any longer. As I became more real, her eyes narrowed and for the first time, focused on me, Bonita Faye Adams. The years had been kind to me. I’d softened and rounded a bit. Not as much as now, but it was a flattering effect. About that time I was probably the prettiest I ever would be.
“You’ve been to Salzburg?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. You ought to go. Especially for the Festival. It’s beautiful. The city’s so old and the streets are so narrow. At Festival time, there’s music everywhere and flowers. Ten thousand tulips alone in the garden of the main public building. But the music is king during Festival.” I stopped and looked directly at Elly. I didn’t want to bore her or worse, have her thinking I was putting on airs. I had added Salzburg to my last year’s summer European itinerary only when I found out Mozart was her favorite composer. I’d loved it, too. All I had ever known of Salzburg before my trip was that was where they had filmed “The Sound of Music.” Now I’d been to Mozart’s home and my appreciation of his wonderful music I owed to this teenager.
“Where are you from again?” she asked. Elly became interested in me and bent her head forward. The movement framed us together and set us apart from the others. I relished the intimacy.
“Oklahoma City. My husband’s the new head of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. He’s one of the lecturers at the seminar.” If I didn’t have my own respectable credentials, I wasn’t above using Harmon’s.
“And you’ve been to Austria? To Europe?”
That was credentials enough for my Elly.
“Did you go in a group or just you and your husband?” Something in my eyes must have communicated to her because she half-started and exclaimed in an excited voice. “Oh, I know. You went by yourself. I want to do that, too.”
“Well, almost by myself. I have an adopted French son about your age. I accompany him back to Paris every year and then, yes, I do travel on through Europe on my own. And sometimes with friends.”
Elly reached out and grabbed the elbow of a passing woman. “Mommy, I want you to meet my new friend, Mrs. Adams. And Mommy, guess what? Mrs. Adams has been to Europe and she knows Mozart.”
“Not personally, I hope,” said the small, well-groomed woman with the laughing gray eyes.
And that was my introduction to Elly, the only daughter I’ll ever have. You can see what I did later, I did ‘cause I owed her.
EIGHT
Patsy always knew that I had killed Billy Roy Burnett up on Cavanal Hill.
Oh, she never said, “Bonita Faye, I know you killed Billy Roy up on Cavanal Hill,” or anything like that.
Just like she never said, “Bonita Faye, I know you climbed that mountain road at night to confront Billy Roy about trying to make you sleep with the Judge and you got mad when he laughed at you, and you took his new shotgun and blew the laughter out of his eyes.”
Patsy never challenged me with “I know you had a double dose of poison ivy ‘cause you got the first case scrambling up that trail in the dark, grabbing every foothold and clinging to every vine you could to keep from falling down. You made Harmon take you back up there that night ‘cause you knew when you started itching that Sunday afternoon, somebody was going to put two and two together and figure out that you had been up there with Billy Roy.”
Patsy didn’t go on about the life insurance money. Not even when she could of. She could of said, “Bonita Faye, what about Billy Roy bragging to you about a month before he died about how he had screwed that obnoxious insurance fellow out of a big policy on himself in exchange for a gambling debt? And while that wasn’t foremost on your mind when you left the house after dark on Saturday night…it was floating around there in that head of you
rs…floating right up there with the anger you felt when you started to add seventy-two cents to your orange Fiestaware pitcher for your trip to Paris. And you found the money you had saved was gone. Every penny. It was mostly pennies in there anyway, but they had added up so that you were only forty-two dollars short of a one-way ticket to France.
“Forty-two dollars short of getting away from Poteau. Just forty-two dollars short of getting shut of Billy Roy and the meanness in him that had grown as he started to get cocky about his success of being the biggest con man that ever set foot in Leflore County, Oklahoma.
“And, Bonita Faye, you were the only one Billy Roy trusted to show who he really was. You watched day by day, week by week, month by month as his real self was exposed.
“It was just like watching a rose unfold its petals in the sun on a hot afternoon in June. Where you thought there would be beauty in the unveiling, you were surprised by the corrupt deformity that curled the fresh petals, first at the edges and then throughout the veined perfection of the bloom.
“Where there should have been the fragrance of sweet perfume, there was the putrid odor of dormant corruption released from its lethargic condition by a set of bizarre circumstances.
“A black rose that never should have blossomed.”
Patsy never said those words because, bless her heart, she didn’t have them in her word-stock. And I didn’t either…then.
If she had spoken at all of Billy Roy’s murder she would have said, “Bonita Faye, honey, I don’t blame you one little bit for blowing Billy Roy away. After all, wasn’t he coming home every night, sitting at the kitchen table, holding you tight by one wrist to keep you in place and telling you about all the nasty things he had done all day?
“Like hanging around Miss Dorothy’s red-brick office building after lunchtimes ‘til the poor woman finally shut down the switchboard and closed the post office to give your husband a hot, wet screw on the mildewed army cot in her back room? And didn’t he tell you that night and every night how it was? The sweat. Her wanting it so bad. How excited she got, slippery even, when Sheriff Hoyle beat on the locked door to see if Miss Dorothy was all right in there.
“How she came then with him holding his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming with the joy of it. How she bit and then sucked those dirty, oil-stained fingers. How with sweat and mascara running down her face, she had unlocked the door and peered around it to tell the sheriff that she was okay. Just taking a little nap in the back room and that she’d be back on duty as soon as she got woke up good.
“And then Billy Roy would get all excited himself telling you about it. He would twist your wrist tighter and pull you up on your kitchen table, the very same one where you and Harmon ate the chicken, and he would stand at the end of it and push himself into you, his head arched back, his eyes closed and a thin smile on his lips. And when he finally pulled away with a wet sucking sound, he’d tell you that you wasn’t as good as Miss Dorothy.
“But that you were probably good enough for the Judge. ‘The Judge has been making noises about you, Bonita Faye.’ Only Billy Roy called you ‘Belle, baby,’ like he always done.
“You lay on the table with your legs still up and your dress clean up to your boobs and your apron still over your eyes and he told you what he had set up for the Judge and you. That the Judge had gone wild when Billy Roy had told him about your real Paris nightgown and you was to wear it when Billy Roy took you to the Judge’s cabin next month. Everyone was supposed to think it was another fishing trip. The Judge was going to give you twenty-five dollars for your orange Fiestaware pitcher. ‘Just think on that, Belle, baby.’
“Bonita Faye, I know that when you didn’t go to that fishing lodge with the Judge that Billy Roy took your one-way-ticket-to-France money and bought himself a new shotgun. And that you realized that when you was putting your seventy-two cents in the pitcher after he’d gone hunting for the weekend.
“I understand the red haze that exploded in your head. I understand the way you arched your own back, threw back your own head and smiled your own thin little smile.
“You tore out of that kitchen. Out of that house. It was dark by then. Way past sunset. You headed for that mountain top and Billy Roy Burnett.
“There were no cars on the road as you stalked up that road. You walked fast, almost ran. You weren’t even sweating none when you come to the base of the mountain. Only a slight sheen of moisture all over your body, but mostly on your upper lip. Your breathing was easy. Only a guttural-like snort every dozen breaths or so even gave lie to how the pace had got to you. Like a horse after a race.
“You sure surprised Billy Roy some when you walked into the light of his campfire. He was right prideful of how he was a natural woodsman and he hadn’t heard you coming at all. He was sprawled on the ground, his head on one of the rocks that he had pulled away from those that circled the fire. A bottle of booze was in his hands, almost cradled in his arms. He’d lifted the bottle to take a drink when you burst into the light. He dropped the bottle and it hit the rock, splattering glass and booze all around. Enough to make the fire sizzle and burn blue for a second.
“Billy Roy grabbed his shotgun. The new one you had bought him without your knowing. He’d leveled it at you afore he recognized it was his own wife he was aiming at. When he did know it was you, he’d been mad…mean mad. He started yelling at you.
“And you’d yelled back. You never had before and this confused him. There was all fire shadows of moving bodies and leafy tree limbs. And you said right out, but in a low voice, ‘Billy Roy Burnett, did you take my one-way-ticket-to-France money out of my orange Fiestaware pitcher and buy yourself that shotgun?’
“Billy Roy just doubled up and laughed. Laughed so hard, he dropped the shotgun. Laughed so hard all you could hear was him snorting out loud and choking. ‘Belle, Belle, Belle.’ Then lower, he’d snickered, ‘Is that what that money was for? Is that what you been saving your pennies for? To go to France? To Paris, firkin’ France?’
“You said, yes, you was going to France. That you was going to get away from him. That he had changed or maybe he was now what he’d always meant to be. Mean and bad and nasty. Your mama had been right when she’d said you’d have some bad times with Billy Roy Burnett and she’d been wrong, too. You wouldn’t ‘get by’ with Billy Roy. You hissed at him, spluttering spit through your teeth while you told him you was going to France to get away from him. You was going to go where people were gentle, refined and said ‘s’il vous plaît’ instead of ‘gimme’ and ‘merci’ instead of ‘fuck you’ and ‘ooh-la-la’ instead of ‘bullshit.’
“Billy Roy quit laughing and grabbed both your wrists and shook you ‘til your teeth rattled and your eyes ached in your head. Then he twisted you around with one hand and hit you across the shoulders hard with the other. Not on your face where bruises would show. And he thrown you down on the rocks around the fire.
“He said, ‘Now listen here to me, Belle, baby, you ain’t going nowhere. Ever. You are going to stay right here with me. And you are going to do what I say…and only what I say from now on. I’m tired of being nice to you. You and your high and mighty airs. I swear, Belle, baby, I don’t know where you get your fancy ideas, you ain’t ever been nothing but dirt yourself. You come from dirt and you’re going to stay dirt all your life. The next time I set you up with the Judge…or any jack-leg that comes down the pike…you’re going to drop your jeans or raise your skirt and fuck like a bunny. That’s all you’re good for anyways. Forget about your Paris, France. It’s all a big lie anyhow. Real people, Belle, baby, don’t ever say no ‘ooh-la-la.’
“They was still sparks swirling from the fire where your tumble had shifted the burning logs. You noticed them as your head cleared enough so your eyes could focus. The firm hardness under your body was not just rocks. You had fallen on Billy Roy’s shotgun.
“Bonita Faye, I know what hap
pened next. As you reached under your body your finger found the trigger on that shotgun. Billy Roy was looking in his pack for another bottle of booze when you said quiet like, ‘Maybe they don’t say no ‘ooh-la-la,’ Billy Roy. But I do know one thing they really say.’
“Like always when Billy Roy had spent his temper, he was in a good mood. He found his bottle, clutched it by the neck and turned to share a swig with you. As long as you were here he’d have some fun with you. His eyes were laughing when he asked, ‘What’s that, Belle, baby? What do they really say?’
“Bonita Faye, you leveled that new shotgun right at his eyes and said, ‘They really say ‘au revoir’ for good-bye.’
“Then you pulled the trigger.”
Now my friend Patsy didn’t say any of that. She didn’t even know to say how it all happened. But Patsy always knew that I had killed Billy Roy Burnett up on Cavanal Hill.
Patsy is the best friend I ever had.
NINE
I worried about Elly’s soul…searching for signs of it in every school picture ‘cause I spent so much time looking in my own bathroom mirror…searching for signs of my own.
Now, of course, I know souls don’t look back out of eyes and say, “Hey, you, I’m in here and all’s right with the world.”
I know that.
But a soul’s something that looks out of an eye and lets you know it’s there. It’s a glint of awareness that keeps the blankness out of a stareback. It ain’t God though some say it is. It’s an awareness that there is a God and an indication of your personal relationship with Him…It…Her…
Don’t go getting worried any that I’m going to go religious on you. What you do with your glint in your eye is between you and your eye and is no business of mine.
Bonita Faye Page 4