by Carolyn Hart
Slowly Gretchen hung up the receiver.
“Gretchen, what is wrong?” Grandmother reached her, gripped her arm. Her voice rose. “Is something wrong with your mother?”
“No. She’s coming home Saturday.” I know you’ll like him a lot. . . .
Grandmother’s eyes lighted. “But that is good. She is coming home.”
“She’s bringing someone with her.” Gretchen tried hard to keep her voice even. “Mother said we will like him a lot.”
. . . worst of all was knowing Daddy thought Mama made love with somebody else. Daddy was jealous about her dancing at the Blue Light but if he thought there was a man . . . When the chief said somebody told Daddy about a man going into our house late at night, I felt sick, like my insides were being torn to pieces. You thought I stayed at Amelia’s house that night. I didn’t. I went for awhile, but her mother made me mad. I told them I was going to your house, but I hid in the woods. . . .
CHAPTER 5
COULD HAVE, WOULD have, should have. Does everyone look back over life with aching regret? Oh, yes. If you live long enough, there will be sadness and hopeless longing for the mistakes, large and small, some well meant, some malicious. If you are lucky there will not be so much pain that your spirit creaks and breaks beneath the burden. If only I had . . . But what could I have done? Grandmother did her best. I did my best. We didn’t know a life hung in the balance. What would have happened if I had talked to Grandmother? I understand now that Grandmother had great courage. I see her as she was then, a woman of late middle age, her heart already weakening, daring to reach out with love from that great, good, and generous heart. Oh, yes, she displayed enormous courage because she was a woman with many fears, intimidated by authority, anxious to fill out paperwork correctly, trying always to please. In the timeless silence of the cemetery, I remembered her . . .
GRETCHEN LAY RIGID as a board. Night pressed against the window, dark as a highwayman’s cloak. Why did Mother have to bring someone home with her? It wouldn’t be the same. Why did she say that things change? Hadn’t everything changed enough with her mother gone to Tulsa to work in the war plant and Millard dead and Grandmother painting Victory Café on the plate glass because people didn’t like German names?
Gretchen felt the hot prick of tears. Millard, so sweet and funny and nice to her, her best friend in all the whole world. What good did it do to talk about him being a hero? He didn’t want to be a hero. He’d wanted to go to college and learn about the stars. When they were little kids, he’d point up at the Big Dipper and explain in his patient, kind way, “That’s in the constellation Ursa Major, Gretchen. That means the Greater Bear. Over there . . .”
It was too hot for covers, so hot the bed felt damp beneath her. She’d tossed the top sheet to one side. She grabbed the edge of the sheet, pressed it against her eyes. She barely heard the click of the door. The drone of the cicadas rose and fell, rose and fell. As the rasp diminished, she heard the floor creak. She lay still, the sheet gripped in her fingers, and peeked through half-closed eyes at the open door and the shaft of light spilling in from the hallway. Grandmother stood just outside Gretchen’s room, head bent as if listening.
Gretchen frowned. Grandmother wore a dark housedress and her sturdy, low-heeled work shoes. She held a wicker basket in one hand. Slowly, she stepped back into the hall and softly shut the door. The room was dark again.
Gretchen rolled over on her elbow, peered at the closed door. Why was Grandmother dressed? Gretchen slipped out of bed, hurried to the door. As she eased it open, she heard the unmistakable click of the front door lock. That was almost as startling as Grandmother slipping quietly out into the night. They never locked the doors to the house. Why would they? And where was Grandmother going?
Gretchen ran down the hall and looked out a living room window. Grandmother walked slowly down the front walk. Occasionally, like the flicker of fireflies, a light shone for an instant, then was gone. She was using a flashlight to find her way.
Gretchen raced back to her room, flung off her gown, pulled on a blouse and pedal pushers. She stepped barefoot into her loafers, not taking the time for anklets. She moved swiftly to her window, unlatched the screen, dropped to the ground. Last night a milky radiance had poured over Barb. Tonight the moon was hidden behind thick clouds and shadows bunched dark as crow feathers.
When she reached the front yard, she saw Grandmother at the end of the street, walking away from town. Grandmother walked slowly, so she was easy to follow. Gretchen slipped from shadow to shadow. Grandmother turned to the right at Maguire Road. There were occasional farmhouses set back from the road, which ended in a couple of miles at Hunter Lake. Gretchen followed cautiously, ducking behind trees when Grandmother paused to look around her. They passed the Turner farmhouse. No lights shone. A pickup truck was parked in the side yard. Two chained dogs howled. Grandmother scuttled faster but around the bend she stopped and leaned against the trunk of a big sycamore, her breath coming in short, quick gasps. Finally, wearily, she trudged forward.
They walked for another ten minutes and came over a rise. Grandmother stopped once again to look around, then she turned off the road, taking a path that plunged into a thicket of shrubbery.
Gretchen lost sight of Grandmother. She ran lightly to the path. She hesitated, looking into darkness, but she heard a rustle ahead of her. She wished she had a light, but she took slow, careful steps and gradually her eyes adjusted to the velvet thick gloom. Suddenly there was a flicker of light. Gretchen edged behind a tree trunk. Only a few feet ahead, Grandmother played the light of the flash across the weathered wood of a ramshackle cabin. Once there might have been a clearing. Now grass had grown waist high like a meadow. Shrubbery and a tangle of vines pressed against the cabin walls. A huge tree loomed over the rotting roof.
The door creaked open. A big man in a crumpled khaki uniform was outlined in a dim glow of light. “Mrs. Pfizer.” His voice was eager, uncertain. “I wasn’t sure you’d come after what they’ve been saying on the radio. They said the police are looking for me. I thought you might believe what they’re saying.”
Grandmother placed a hand against her chest. “I know what they have said.” She spoke quietly, her voice low and sad. “And I have remembered how you came to my house and the little boy who was so good a friend to my Lorraine. And I receive the call from the young woman who would not say who she was but she said you needed for me to come, that you were innocent. And I listen to my heart and it tells me you did not do this awful thing. So I have come and I have brought you food.” She held up the basket.
He came down the steps, took the basket. Grandmother’s breathing was quick and fast. “Are you all right, Mrs. Pfizer?” He gripped her arm, helped her up the steps.
She clicked off the flashlight. “I will be fine.” The words were labored. “I have walked fast and I am not used to coming so long a way.”
They stepped inside. When the door was closed, once again the cabin was featureless, dark, an abandoned, decrepit structure. Gretchen thought the old place belonged to the Purdys. She was almost sure this was part of their land and once a tenant farmer had lived here. There was a stream that wound through bottomland on the other side of the cabin.
Gretchen crept up the steps. She eased along the porch, her fingers touching the wooden boards. Suddenly, she felt emptiness, then wool. Kneeling, she brushed her fingers across the material. A blanket! There was a blanket spread across a window. Cautiously, slowly, Gretchen pulled the covering away from the frame, peered inside.
Most of the tiny room was jammed with discarded furniture, a tabletop leaning against the wall, old straight chairs stacked one atop the other, an easy chair with its stuffing oozing from cracked imitation leather, a harp with most of the strings missing. Smudges on the floor marked where boxes and castoffs had been moved to make room for two chairs on either side of a scarred maple table. A kerosene lantern sat atop a dingy iron range. The wick blazed, casting a fitful orange glow. Bar
b’s father hunched over the basket and flipped open its lid, pulling out a drumstick and a wedge of corn bread, and eating and talking, his mouth full. “God, I’m so hungry. . . . I haven’t eaten since yesterday . . . lunch, I guess. . . . Got water from the creek and boiled it . . . a wood-burning stove. I found the lantern half full of oil. It stinks”—he gestured with one bare arm, the gnawed drumstick pointing at the coil of smoke—“but it still works.” He looked dirty, tired, disreputable, like the hoboes who huddled in winter at one end of the freight yard, waiting to sneak aboard a train to take them somewhere, anywhere, nowhere. Clyde’s black hair was cut so short it looked like sheared bristles on a hairbrush.
Gretchen searched for the handsome, dapper man she and Barb used to watch tinkering with the engine of his Ford and dancing cheek to cheek with Barb’s mom to music playing on the Victrola. It was almost the face Gretchen remembered, curved high forehead and straight nose and square chin. Mother once said he looked like Tyrone Power. Not tonight. His puffy face, blurred by a spiky growth of beard, looked beaten and drained, his hollow eyes wild and glazed. Creases marred the stiff cotton of his short-sleeve uniform shirt.
Grandmother folded her hands. “I packed bread and dried fruit and cheese and pecans. There is food for several days. But, Clyde, you must come home.” She looked around the dusty room. “You cannot stay here. This will not help you. And Barb needs her father.”
He put down the drumstick, half eaten. “They’re hunting for me. For me.” His face puckered in disbelief. “They think I hurt Faye.” His lips began to tremble. He buried his face in his hands.
Gretchen gripped the windowsill.
Grandmother struggled to her feet. She came around the table, touched his shoulder. “Do not think about it, Clyde. It does no good—”
He slammed his hands on the table, his stricken face twisting in sorrow. And in fury. “I got to think about it. Don’t you see? They’re all wrong. They think I hurt Faye. I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t. I was mad at her but that’s because it broke my heart to think about her and another man. But if I’d gone home last night . . . oh, God, she would be all right. And now she’s dead. If I’d gone home . . .” He stared at Grandmother with tear-filled eyes. “I shouted at Faye and she shouted back, said it was all a lie. Maybe it was. But then who hurt her? Did some guy hear us quarrel, follow her home? Or was there somebody else and she told him she was through because it was me she really loved?” He touched a silver identification bracelet on his left wrist. “Faye gave me this before I left for basic training. I took it off last night. I was going to throw it away. But I couldn’t.” He held tight to the silver links. “Faye loved me.” His voice shook. “I know she did. The way she came to me . . .” He lifted his hands to his face, massive hands with broad wrists and thick forearms.
Gretchen shuddered. His hands were so big, the skin on his arms smooth and taut over muscles strong enough to crush a woman’s throat. She pushed away the thought of Faye Tatum’s dead face. Gretchen didn’t want to think about the hands that had choked her life away.
Grandmother walked heavily around the table, sank into the chair. “The young woman who called me . . .” Grandmother’s eyes fell away from Clyde. “If she can tell the police that you were with her . . .”
Clyde dropped his hands, shaking his head. “I can’t tell the police about her. See, her husband’s overseas and his folks would be wild if they even knew she’d been at the Blue Light. If they ever knew I’d come home with her, God, they’d probably try to take the kids away and he’s a jealous . . .” His voice trailed away. He gave a crooked smile. “Kind of like me. But there wasn’t anything to this. We were friends a long time ago, like me and Lorraine. Just friends. She felt sorry for me when I got tossed out of the Blue Light. She came out after me. I was pretty drunk.” He touched his head, winced. “We took a drive. She had a little extra gas. We didn’t go far. Just out to Hunter Lake. And she said Faye danced with everybody, that there wasn’t a special guy, same as with her. She said she’d never seen Faye leave with anybody or anybody go out after her. Anyway, I fell asleep in the car and she drove home. She brought out a blanket to me and that’s all I knew until this morning. She came running out and shook me awake and said I had to leave. She’d heard on the radio that somebody had killed Faye and the police were looking for me. She said I had to get away from her place. She begged me not to tell anybody I’d been there. I promised her I wouldn’t. But I made her promise me she’d call you. I was thinking pretty fast by then. I knew I couldn’t go home. The police would arrest me first thing. If they arrested me, nobody would be looking for the man who killed Faye. I thought of this place and I told her how to tell you to find me. I said if she’d keep quiet about me, I’d never tell anybody I’d been with her, no matter what. Because I’d figured it out by then. My being in her car didn’t prove anything. The police would just say I went home and killed Faye and came back to Su—to her car.” He clenched his hands. “This morning I could see in her eyes that she was scared of me, that she thought maybe that’s what I’d done. She kept backing away from me. She said she knew the county attorney and she’d call him for me, that he was a nice guy and she could set it up for me to meet him, tell him I was innocent. But she kept backing away. You’d think she could have looked at me and known I hadn’t gone anywhere. How could a man go and kill his wife and come back and lie down in a car and go to sleep? I can’t sleep now thinking of what’s happened to Faye. If I’d gone home . . .”
“But Clyde,” Grandmother said patiently, “don’t you see? It is that you have not come home. That is why the police hunt for you. If you were to tell the police what you have told me, then they would know to look for someone else.”
“Tell them I got drunk and fell asleep in somebody’s car? Do you think they’d believe me?” His tone was bitter.
Grandmother said eagerly, “But the young woman who called me—”
“I promised her I wouldn’t ever tell anybody. It could ruin her life. And all she did was be nice to me.” He shook his head. “No, I got to find out what happened. It’s up to me.” He pushed back his chair, stood, and his big dark shadow fell across Grandmother. “No matter what happens, no one will ever know you came here tonight. I promise.”
Slowly Grandmother rose. “Clyde, I pray you will be careful. I am afraid you are in great danger.”
“Danger? Oh. You think they’d shoot at me?” He spoke the words as if they were strange. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “I’ll be careful. I just need to talk to some people.” He gave a little snort of laughter. “Maybe they’ll be scared too, like Su—like this morning. Anyway, I don’t have any time to waste. I’ve only got three days until my leave is up. But I’ve got some ideas. And if I find out who hurt Faye . . .” He broke off, his face crumpling.
Grandmother came around the table, put her arms around him.
His face bent forward. He rested his forehead against the top of Grandmother’s head. His racking sobs hurt Gretchen deep inside.
“Clyde, please, let us pray.” Grandmother’s voice trembled. “Our Father who art in Heaven . . .”
He pulled away. “I can’t pray.” He shook his head, his eyes glittering. “No.”
Gretchen felt frozen. What did he mean?
Grandmother reached out, clung to one big hand. “We are called upon to forgive so that we may be forgiven.”
“Forgive?” Clyde’s face hardened. “How can I forgive?”
Grandmother squeezed his hand, let it go. “To step into heaven, Faye has forgiven all that she suffered. We must do the same.”
Clyde’s big head sank forward. He jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. “But it’s my fault. If I’d gone home . . .”
Grandmother sighed. “And you must forgive yourself.”
He didn’t answer.
Grandmother turned toward the door.
He called after her, his voice soft. “I’ll always be grateful that you came. And I prom
ise I’ll come home when I find out who hurt Faye.”
Gretchen whirled and hurried to the steps. She slipped into the darkness.
THE SOUND OF the shot exploded in Gretchen’s mind. She knew it was the crack of a gun. One shot. Not like when she and Millard used to go into the woods with Jimmy and Mike and watch while their big brothers used old cans perched on a fence for target practice. One shot . . . and then shouts.
Gretchen rolled out of bed, ran to her window. She pushed out the screen. Up the street, a flashlight swept across the Tatum yard. “Kenny? Rosa?” Chief Fraser’s deep voice boomed. The light swung up and down as he ran heavily toward the house.
Once again Gretchen dressed quickly. She was almost to the window when her door opened and the light came on.
Grandmother’s hair was tousled, her face puffy from sleep, her eyes wide with fear. “Gretchen, what is happening? Where are you going?”
Gretchen poked her head out the window. She held up a hand for quiet as she listened to barking dogs and a woman’s cry, “Kenny, Kenny, answer me.” Lights flared on in the houses on either side of the Tatum place. Mr. Kaufman stood on his front porch in white boxer underwear and no top, his pink belly poking out, yelling, “What’s going on out there?”
The woman yelled, “Chief, I can’t find him.”
Gretchen pushed out the screen.