Good Buddy

by Dori Ann Dupré

  Buddy looked up at her and waited. He waited for what she was going to say, how she was going to say it, and what it would mean for him and his mother and poor Molly. The air was thick with that unknown quantity, something that felt heavy and icky and even ugly. Buddy never was the kind of man who acted on impulse, so he figured in this case, he’d let Tammy Jo take the lead…and he would figure out how to react. What was she going to say? What would she do?

  Either she was going to out him from his twenty-six-year old hiding place and sound like a mature, rational human being who conducted a thorough investigation and solved an old mystery for the state of Texas…or she was going to start spouting off nonsense and sound like a crazy person. Please be the latter.

  “Go ahead, Mrs. McVicar,” her attorney groaned, probably not realizing what he was allowing. It appeared to Buddy that the guy’s inner voice was telling him that he needed to keep this woman on a leash, that she was her own worst enemy at times, that just by opening her mouth in a sensitive case like this, she might ruin the entire thing.

  Tammy Jo took a deep breath.

  “Jonathan Cordova is not who he says he is,” she stated firmly. And with that, the heavens parted and Mrs. McVicar showed, what she believed to be, her winning hand. She was not bluffing. At all.

  Classical Music

  A Texas criminal defense attorney by the name of Merle Patchett sat inside of the county prosecutor’s office in a large government building, which carried that constant hum of an overworked copy machine in the background. There were still too many trees being killed in the pursuit of justice, no matter the technological advances by the year 2001.

  Known as “Patchett the Hatchet,” Merle was the best criminal lawyer in Eastern Texas that Joe Horton could find, and then retain, for five-thousand dollars. After visiting with Loretta in North Carolina, Merle believed the woman had a sound claim for self-defense, especially due to the police recorded interviews with those who knew her, as well as with those who knew Kenneth Bellinger.

  However, there was still the pesky issue of convincing the District Attorney to either give her a lenient plea deal on the crimes she most likely committed in her escape and evasion or let her off the hook altogether due to lack of evidence. The Good Lord knows the woman paid enough of a price – her entire identity – for anything she ever did wrong in her life. But Texas prosecutors were their own breed of “tough on crime,” and it was up to him to convince the man that he would have done the same thing if he were in Loretta’s shoes.

  Not only did they not have enough evidence to charge and then convict Loretta – who was apparently born and baptized “Retta Sofia Scarpelli” – with murder, or really any kind of lesser offenses, Merle figured that the DA might try to charge her with all the small offenses associated with her disappearing act, including falsifying official government documents and theft of a firearm and obstruction of justice. She was not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination.

  Meanwhile, Buddy sat in the lobby of the Bell County government building, waiting to learn what was going to happen with his mother. He promised her that he would wait on what Patchett the Hatchet could work out with the DA. If was acceptable to him, he would honor her request to keep quiet about what he knew to be true.

  “The only reason I’m going along with this is because of my fight for Molly,” Buddy had declared to her, his voice heavy with fear and anxiety. He was not the kind of man to lie – except for this one huge thing that he has lied about almost his whole life.

  “If you lose Molly because of what happened in 1975, I would never be able to forgive myself,” Loretta cried though her tears. “The whole damn thing was my fault. You are not responsible for any of that mess. You were just a little boy!”

  “But the police do not have the truth, Mother. They don’t have the right information. All they have is what some crack pot PI thinks he found out, and none of it proves anything except that we’re still alive and living under different identities. For all they know, which ain’t much, some angry guy who Kenny pissed off during one his drunken rages could’ve come in the house and popped him.”

  “You are not to tell them the truth! You are not! I forbid it. So help me God, if you do, I will tell them you are lying just to save me. And they will believe it. Everyone knows that a boy will do anything to save his mother!” Loretta stood in her own kitchen, sobbing, Joe standing near her, ready to catch her if she fell over.

  Buddy found himself wondering what Joe must’ve been thinking about everything going on. Then it occurred to him that Joe probably figured everything out years ago.

  No one just shows up out of the blue onto your property, coming from nowhere with nothing but a paper bag and an enduring mystery. He likely determined that there was an ugly story behind the pretty face of young Loretta Cordova and her shy and studious son. But to him, it didn’t really matter what that story was. All people carried a past, whether it’s displayed out in the sunshine for all to see and celebrate…or buried in the silent echoes of their souls.

  As Patchett the Hatchet waited for the District Attorney to share his thoughts about the alleged crimes of a twenty-eight-year old battered mother, based on 1975 Texas law, a young woman in a business suit stormed in the office. The door flew open, and the force knocked over a glass vase resting on a small table.

  “Dang, Melissa, what in the world?” the District Attorney yelled out loud, dropping his files onto the desk.

  “You need to come. We’re all watching it in the break room. Two planes have flown into the Twin Towers, and the buildings are on fire. The news is saying we are under attack by terrorists!”

  Patchett the Hatchet and the District Attorney stood up and followed the young woman into the break room, which housed a refrigerator, a microwave, a bulletin board with employee news from Human Resources, and an old TV hoisting rabbit ears and sitting up on a stand. Seventeen prosecutors, legal assistants, investigators and administrative personnel stood in awe and horror at the national tragedy unfolding in New York City.

  Buddy remained seated in the lobby on a stained tan leather seat, stomach in knots, waiting for his mother’s boisterous and borderline obnoxious attorney, while listening to the chirpy classical music coming from the receptionist’s bright pink CD player. He heard her scream, “Oh my God!” and watched her run from her desk and through the doors to where Patchett the Hatchet was discussing the Bellingers’ dark past.

  Nine Holes

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Jed said out loud, probably the only time the man was ever animated about anything. The tiny white dimpled ball, carrying a small black number four on it, flew through the air at a speed too fast for non-golfers to even notice where it eventually landed.

  “Damn, that thing is gone,” Dale, Jed’s long time golfing partner exclaimed as he leaned on the off-white golf cart with the green CWCC crest on the front. “Well hit. Must be the longest one you hit for quite a while. That’s a real beaut.”

  “Yes, sir, it’s about damn time. Been playing like ass for so many weeks, I was considering taking a break until all that custody mess is done with.”

  “Well, you got a lot going on. That kind of thing can be right emotional for people. When my daughter was in court with her ex over their kids, she lost about twenty pounds just in stress alone.”

  Jed stood back and tapped the head of his Taylormade driver on the tee marker twice, pulled his gray Crest Wood Country Club cap down over his forehead and walked toward his friend who was stepping inside the golf cart.

  “It’s tiring. I wish it was all over with,” he admitted, climbing into shotgun position, as Dale drove along the cart path toward the fairway where their golf balls rested comfortably on perfect patches of turf. “TJ is just out of her mind about everything. She’s crazier than ever. And that’s saying something. Doing things like decorating the spare bedroom in all of Julie’s old stuff that s
he had stored in the attic and meeting with a palm reader. A palm reader! She’s even trying to make us eat healthy all the time and bringing that sushi business into the house. And I’m afraid of what it’s all doing to Molly. I mean, can you imagine what she must be thinking?”

  “You think Molly would be better off living with that guy?”

  Jed sat back in the chair cushion and folded his arms. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a good man; I can just tell. He loved my daughter, and he does nothing but good for people who need his help. He has a respectable career and is obviously real close to Molly. And the whole way TJ went about bringing that man’s messy history to light was just plain ugly.”

  Jed began rubbing his chin with his left index finger and his voice lowered. “Cordova was just a little boy when his mother took him on the run. None of that had anything to do with him, and hell, if she was being beat up, like she claims, then she did nothing wrong in my book. That asshole deserved what he got. No man should be hittin’ on a woman like that. And she’s a tiny thing, too!”

  Jed paused again and stood up, adjusting his belt on his pants. His voice got a bit louder. “And no matter how many times TJ says it out loud – ‘that it’s the best thing for Molly – coming to live here with us’…well, that just don’t make it true.”

  “Why did she push so hard?” Dale asked, pulling the cart up to his ball resting in a crop of grass near a tree. He climbed out, grabbed his eight iron out of his bag, and took a couple practice swings.

  “Because she wants what she wants. That’s TJ. Stubborn as a mule her whole life. She thinks having Molly around will bring Julie back somehow. But it won’t. It’s only gonna hurt that little girl, not to mention that darlin’ baby grandchild of mine, and traumatize them both more than they already are.” He sighed. “I’m an old man. I’ve worked my whole life. I love my granddaughter, but I don’t really want to be raising another child if I don’t have to…if she’s fine where she is. Grandparents are supposed to step in when there’s no one to do the job. Cordova is perfectly capable.”

  Jed looked up into the sky, like he was searching for a sign. “And that’s what Julie would’ve wanted, I have no doubt.”

  Dale stood next to his ball and chipped it onto the far side of the green. “Goddamn it, that’s gonna be a par at best. I thought I’d get me a birdie with such a great tee shot.”

  They drove up to Jed’s ball, where he quickly chipped it up onto the green and about two inches from the pin.

  “Somethin’s gotta change,” he said. “I don’t know quite how to go about it, but all this pullin’ on that little girl and trying to take her away from those folks up there…when she’s already lost so much…” his voice trailed off.

  “Well, judging from that chip, it looks like your golf game might be changing…for the better, anyway.”

  After they finished up with the Ninth hole, Jed and Dale walked into the clubhouse for a beer. Through the glass window, Jed noticed several men with a plethora of colored golf shirts, seated around the bar. All of them had their attention firmly on the TV behind the lines of liquor bottles. Light music was being pumped into the background of the patio area, which held several empty tables and chairs. Normally, the patio was jammed with people, but it was early yet and the lunch crowd hadn’t showed up: golfers finishing up, wives waiting for their husbands, ladies lunching.

  Jed noticed something was slightly off about the scene inside the clubhouse. As Dale wiped his shoes on the brush mat outside of the door, Jed walked in, looked up at the television and could see smoke rising from the Twin Towers in the New York skyline.

  Time literally stood still, and Jed McVicar could not move any farther along the carpeted room floor.

  Social Studies

  Molly filled in the letter B on her last multiple choice question of her first full test in Seventh Grade Social Studies. Mr. Davies sat up in front of the classroom and started collecting a small pile of tests on the right-hand corner of his desk. Kaitlin Finney stood up, flung her long blond hair over her shoulder, and then carried her test up to him, walking with a confidence that Molly craved in areas of her life other than on the soccer field. She wished she had that long blond hair too. Her mother had blond hair, and while she loved her father and missed him dearly, she wished she had been gifted by God to be a tall and clear skinned blond instead of a skinny fully freckled girl with straight mousy brown hair and bony elbows and knobby knees.

  The boys in her class seemed to like the girls who looked like Kaitlin instead of the girls who looked like Molly…except for the boys who played with Pokemon cards and read graphic novels on the concrete barrier near the carpool lane outside. Those boys liked the girls like Molly.

  Someone knocked on Mr. Davies’ door. He slowly rose from his chair as the simultaneous cadence of heads flew up from their testing induced quiet. He cracked the door open, mumbling ensued, and he closed it.

  “Class, I have to step out for a moment. Please continue to take your test and do not speak or… Can I trust you all?” he asked. The students just sat there rather dumbfounded. That was kind of a stupid question, Molly thought to herself. Of course, he can’t trust a bunch of Seventh graders taking a test with no adult supervision. But Mr. Davies didn’t wait around for an answer. He just walked out the door. And he didn’t come back for almost twenty minutes.

  Molly watched her classmates as several talked quietly among themselves after about five minutes of silence. A few kept to themselves, like Molly did. As she waited for her teacher to come back, she fell into her head again, into all the chaos surrounding her young life.

  At first, it took a good three weeks for Molly to grasp everything that was happening and her role in it. The Guardian ad Litem assigned to her case was a nice lady name Cate DeLuca. When she wasn’t Guardian ad Litem-ing, she worked in a lawyer’s office transcribing videotaped depositions part time. She told Molly, when she first met her, that transcribing testimony was awfully boring, but it paid the bills. She enjoyed being a Guardian ad Litem because it kept her involved with her real passion – helping the children who existed in the in-between and in the cracks of society – kids in an unfortunate bind not of their own making.

  Kids like Molly.

  When she met with Cate to discuss Buddy, her little sister, her life, and her own wishes, Molly shared with Cate her own feelings: she wanted to know her grandparents and wouldn’t mind visiting them from time to time, but she didn’t want to live with them. She told Cate that she wanted to live with Buddy and her baby sister in Fayetteville and remain with her friends and her school and her soccer team.

  When the Temporary Custody Hearing came up on the calendar, Cate reported to the Judge, who presided over the case, that Molly wanted to stay where she was…with her stepfather. Then there would be a mediation session to see if a deal could be worked out, rather than go to a custody trial. But before they could make any headway in the mediation, there was a whole big blow up about Buddy not really being Buddy, and his mother not really being named Loretta and some man down in Texas who died a long time ago because Loretta shot him and ran away.

  Buddy explained to her what he could but swore that even though he was born with the name “Daniel Kaspar Junior,” he was still the same person she has always known. He never lied to her – he just kept certain secrets to himself to protect his mother. So, Cate explained to Molly that the final custody wouldn’t be determined until they had a mediation or a trial. And she had no idea how this new mess would play into it all.

  Since it was all so confusing to Molly, Cate just promised her that she would keep fighting for what Molly wanted.

  At first, when Buddy and her grandparents went to Court for the Temporary Custody Hearing, to talk about where she would stay until the mediation or custody trial, the Judge ruled that Molly could stay in Buddy’s custody temporarily, until final custody was decided. Then later, when her
grandparents’ lawyer tried to get custody because of what they discovered about Buddy, Judge Starks thankfully let his original Order stand…that all the sordid business down in Texas with his mother Loretta had nothing to do with him and his fitness as a temporary guardian for her.

  Molly would never forget that day.

  She came home from school and walked toward the front door with more anxiety wailing around inside of her than she ever recalled experiencing before. Somehow, she got through the day okay, and somehow, she made it off the bus without falling down the steps from the lightheadedness that dogged her. She could see the front door cracked open and so she knew Buddy was back from the Courthouse. She was so scared to go inside, to find out what went on, to know the truth about what would happen to her for the near future and then maybe for the rest of her childhood.

  Buddy had warned her that he could lose. He warned her that he wasn’t sure what would happen, which way it would go, especially with all the crazy stuff about his mother and their life before they came to North Carolina. He said he wouldn’t lie to her just to make her feel better. He wouldn’t give her false hope. He would treat her like a young lady because it was also her life being decided for her. He promised that if he lost this first round, he wouldn’t give up on keeping her home for good. He would keep fighting through the custody trial, and if he lost that, he’d keep on appealing until he won. That no matter what happened with his own mother, he would never stop fighting for her so she could stay home, where she belonged.

  Molly had slowly opened the door, her stomach in knots, revealing Cate and Buddy standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. They were talking. Cate wore a form fitting business suit, and her wild black and gray hair looked like it needed a good brushing. But it always looked like that. And when Buddy turned his head toward Molly, she knew. She knew that she could stay. At least for now. The first round went to Buddy.