Cold Tea on a Hot Day (2 page)

It was Miss Porter running off into a new life who had caused this unrest, Marilee thought with annoyance, hiking her heavy leather tote up on her shoulder. The next instant, having the disconcerting impression that she was beginning to resemble Miss Porter, she dropped the bag to her hand.

“My computer is down,” Tammy Crawford said immediately when Marilee came down the large aisle of the main room.

“Call the repairman.” Marilee threw her bag on her already full desk and picked up the day’s edition of the
Voice.
She had not had time to read it at home. She had not had time for weeks.

“Mrs. Oklahoma is going to visit the high school this mornin’,” Reggie said. “Principal forgot to call us…I’m goin’ right over there.”

“’kay.” Marilee didn’t think everyone really needed to report to her.

Charlotte strode forward with a handful of notes. “Here’s the first morning complaints of late papers…and Roger, that new guy they’ve hired up at the printer, wants you to call him…and here’s a note from the mayor for tomorrow’s ‘About Town’ column. City hall has lost those flags they thought they had left.”

Marilee took the notes and sank into her chair.

June, who was now working on their ad layouts since their top ad layout person had quit last week, came over and said, “I can’t read this note Jewel put on this ad. Do you think that is supposed to be a two or a five?”

“Call the Ford dealer and ask. I don’t think they would appreciate us guessing.”

“Okay. I can do that.” June generally needed to convince herself of action.

Marilee, giving a large sigh, fell into her chair and flopped open the paper to see how it had come out, and if she would need to be making any retractions and groveling apologies. She thought she was learning to grovel quite well.

“Another day in paradise,” she said to no one in particular.

Looking in the Wrong Direction

“H
ow long has he been missing?” Principal Blankenship demanded of the teacher standing before her.

“Since lunch recess,” Imogene Reeves answered, wringing her hands. “I don’t care if he is retarded and looks like an angel. He knows how to slip away. He is not just wanderin’ off.”

The principal winced at the word
retarded
spoken out loud. There were so many unacceptable words and phrases these days that she couldn’t keep up, but she was fairly certain the term
retarded
fell in the unacceptable category. She checked her watch and saw it was going on one o’clock.

She headed at a good clip out of her office, asking as she went, “Has anyone spoken to Mr. Starr…checked the storerooms?”

It could very well be a repeat of that first time, she thought, calming herself. It had been Mr. Starr, the cus
todian, who had found Willie Lee the first time. That time the boy had been all along playing with a mouse in the janitor’s storeroom. This had been upsetting—a little fright that the mouse might bite and the boy get an infection—but it was better than the second time, when the boy had gotten off the school grounds and all the way down to the veterinarian’s place a half-mile away. That time Principal Blankenship had been forced to call the boy’s mother, because the veterinarian was a
friend
of the boy’s mother.

Oh, she did not want to have to tell the mother again. Marilee James wrote for the newspaper. This would get everywhere.

Imagining what her father, a principal before her, would have said, would have
yelled,
Principal Blankenship just about wet her pants.

The storeroom had been searched and the custodian Mr. Starr consulted; involved with changing out hot water heaters, he had not seen Willie Lee since the beginning of the school day. The closets were searched, and the storerooms a second time, and the boys’ bathrooms.

At last the principal resorted to telephoning down to the veterinarian’s office.

“I haven’t seen Willie Lee,” the young receptionist at the veterinarian’s told her. “And Doc Lindsey has been out inoculatin’ cattle since before noon.”

The principal, with a sinking feeling, went along the corridors of her small school, peeking into each classroom, searching faces, hoping, praying with hands clasping and unclasping, for Willie Lee to appear.

In her heart she knew that Willie Lee had escaped the
school grounds a second time, but she did not want to think of such a failure on the part of one of her teachers. Or herself. And truly, she didn’t want anything to happen to the child.

She did wish he could go to another school.

At last, with pointy shoulders slumping, she broke down and spoke over the school intercom: “Attention, teachers and students. Anyone who has seen Willie Lee James since lunch recess, please come to the office.”

In Ms. Norwood’s fourth-grade class, Corrine Pendley heard the announcement of her cousin’s name. Face jerking upward, she stared at the speaker above the classroom door. Then she saw all eyes turn to her.

Her face burned. Bending her head over her notebook, she focused her eyes on the lined paper in front of her and concentrated on being invisible.

The teacher had called her name several times before Corrine was jolted into hearing by Christy Grace poking her in the back with a pencil. “She’s callin’ you.”

Corrine looked up at the teacher, who asked if Corrine had seen Willie Lee. Corrine said, “No, ma’am.” She wondered at the question. Maybe the teacher thought she was a little deaf. Or else she thought Corrine would lie.

Why didn’t everybody mind their own business and quit looking at her?

Bending her head over her math problems, she made the numbers carefully, trying to concentrate on them, but thinking about her cousin. Willie Lee was only eight, and little for his age.

He was slow, but this did not mean he didn’t know
about some things.
One thing he seemed to know was how to get away when he wanted to.
Corrine wished she had gone with him.

Her anxiety increased. She felt responsible. She should have been looking out for him. She was older, and he didn’t have any brothers or sisters, just like she didn’t.

All manner of dark fantasies paraded through her mind. She hoped he didn’t get run over. Or fall in a muddy creek and drown. Or get picked up by a stranger.

Her pencil point broke, startling her.

Carefully, she laid the pencil down, got up and walked as quietly as possible, so as not to become too visible, to the teacher’s desk to ask in a hurried whisper to go to the rest room.

In the tiled room that smelled strongly of bleach, she used the toilet and then she washed her hands. She kept thinking about the front doors. When she came out of the rest room, she turned left instead of right and walked down the hall and right out the double doors. She did this without thinking at all, just following an urge inside.

All the way down the front walk, she felt certain a yell was going to hit her in the back. But it didn’t. Then she was running free, running from school and then running from herself, scared to death to have done something that was very wrong and would make everyone mad at her.

She would have to find Willie Lee, she thought. If she found him, no one would be mad at her. The sun felt warm on her head and the breeze cool to her face.

At that very instant, when finding her cousin and being a hero seemed totally possible, she looked down the street
and saw her Aunt Marilee’s brilliant white Jeep Cherokee coming.

The Jeep’s chrome shone so brightly, Corrine had to squint. Still, she saw Aunt Marilee behind the wheel. Corrine stopped in her tracks, and her life seemed to drain right out her toes.

Likely she was going to get it now. And she deserved it. She never could seem to do things right.

The vehicle pulled up beside her, and the tinted window slid down. Aunt Marilee said, “Where are you goin’?”

Corrine, who could not read her aunt’s even tone or blank expression, said slowly, “They announced ‘bout Willie Lee being missin’. I was goin’ to find him.”

Her aunt said, “Well, that makes two of us. Get in. I have to go see the principal first.”

Corrine opened the door and slipped into the seat in a manner as if to disappear. Carefully, she closed the door beside her. In the short drive to the school parking lot, she tried to read her aunt’s attitude but could not. She had never seen her aunt look like this. She thought desperately of what her aunt might be thinking, in order to be ready for what to say or do.

But all Aunt Marilee said to her when they got to the school was, “Come on back in with me. You’ll need to get your stuff from class.”

Aunt Marilee went to Corrine’s class with her and told Ms. Norwood that she was taking Corrine home early. Corrine, who was used to moving from an entire apartment in just a few minutes and therefore was not in the habit of accumulating needless trifles, stuffed all her
books and notebooks from her desk into her backpack in scarcely a minute. As she lugged it to the classroom door, she could feel everyone looking at her, but it didn’t matter. She was leaving, at least for today.

The heels of Aunt Marilee’s Western boots echoed sharply on the corridor floor all the way back to the principal’s office, where Aunt Marilee said to her, “Sit right here. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Without a word, Corrine sat. Aunt Marilee disappeared into the principal’s office.

The secretary, who had bleached blond hair teased up to amazing heights, looked at her. Corrine looked around the room and swung her feet that only brushed the floor.

Aunt Marilee had not fully closed the door, but even if she had, the voices would probably have been heard. Aunt Marilee had the furious tone she used when she and Corrine’s mother got into their fights. Corrine imagined her aunt was standing how she did when she meant business: feet slightly apart and eyes like laser rays.

Aunt Marilee wanted to know how people supposedly educated in child development could not manage to keep track of one little boy who was diagnosed as learning disabled and not able to think above five years old. The principal answered that the school was not a prison and did not have guards.

“We are trying to mainstream Willie Lee to the best of our ability,” the principal said. “We do not lose normal children, who are taught to participate.”

Corrine held her breath, afraid that her Aunt Marilee was going to reveal finding Corrine halfway down the block. And maybe, since she had gotten away—since she
had even
attempted
to leave—maybe she was not quite normal.

“We are doing the best we can with your children, Mrs. James,” the principal said in a low tone.

Corrine saw the big-haired secretary’s eyes cut to her, as if thinking, You’re one of those troublemakers. Corrine swung her feet and looked at the wall, feeling the empty hole in her chest grow until it seemed to swallow her.

“Arguing will not find Willie Lee. I apologize. Now, tell me when and where my son was last seen.” Aunt Marilee’s voice, sounding so very calm and firm, enabled Corrine to draw a breath.

“I’ll tell you,” Aunt Marilee said when they got back in the Cherokee, Aunt Marilee slamming the door so hard the entire vehicle rattled. “Willie Lee knew exactly what he was doin’. I don’t care how dumb people think he is.”

“He is only dumb in some things,” Corrine said.

Aunt Marilee didn’t seem to hear her. She started off fast, gazing hard out the window. “Oh, Willie Lee,” she said under her breath, and for an instant Corrine thought her aunt might cry. This was very unnerving to Corrine, who instantly turned her eyes out the window, looking hard, thinking that she just had to find Willie Lee. She had to make everything all right again for her aunt.

They drove slowly down to the veterinary clinic, looking into yards as they went. They went into the veterinarian’s office, where two people waited with their dogs, a yippy little terrier and a trembling Labrador.

The girl behind the counter told them that Doc Lindsey had been out most of the day, was at that moment tending
a sick horse at some ranch but was expected back any moment.

Dr. Lindsey was Aunt Marilee’s boyfriend. Parker Lindsey, which Corrine thought was a lovely name. He was so handsome, too. Clean and neat, and he smiled at her and Willie Lee. He smiled at just about everyone, and had very white, even teeth. Sometimes, although she never would have told anyone on this earth, Corrine imagined having a boyfriend just like Parker Lindsey.

Aunt Marilee did not want to take the office girl’s word that Willie Lee wasn’t there. Corrine, who never took anyone’s word for anything, was glad to accompany her aunt and search along the outside dog runs and look into the cattle chutes and pens. Corrine even called Willie Lee’s name softly. He might come to her first, she thought, because Aunt Marilee was getting pretty mad now.

They got back inside the Cherokee and drove around a couple of streets surrounding the school. Aunt Marilee said that they should be able to spot Willie Lee’s blond hair, because it shone in the sun. They stopped and asked a couple of people they saw in yards if they had seen Willie Lee. At one falling-down house, a man sat in his undershirt on the front step, drinking a beer. Aunt Marilee got right out of the car and went up to ask him about Willie Lee, but Corrine stayed rooted in the seat, watching sharply. She made it a point not to talk to men with beers in their hands.

Then Aunt Marilee headed in the direction of home, saying out loud, “Maybe he’s on his way home.”

Corrine, who was beginning to get really scared for her
cousin and for her aunt and for her whole life, scooted up until she was sitting on the edge of the seat, looking as hard as she was able.

It was a long walk to home, but only about a five-minute drive. Maybe Willie Lee knew the way, and he wouldn’t have to cross the highway or anything. Still, no telling where he might go, and again all sorts of fearful images began to race across her mind, such as cars running over her cousin’s little body, and snakes slithering out to bite him, or maybe a black widow spider like in the movies, or maybe a bad man would get him, or a bunch of big, mean boys.

At one point she said, “Willie Lee doesn’t like school. Some of the kids tease him and call him dumb and stupid, and it’s hard for him to sit still all day.” She didn’t want her aunt to make Willie Lee go back to school.

Aunt Marilee said, “I know.”

“I don’t like school, either,” Corrine said, quietly, in the manner a child uses when she has to speak her feelings but does so in a way and time that she believes the adult might not hear. Then her throat got all thick, and she hated herself for being so stupid as to risk making Aunt Marilee mad. She would die if Aunt Marilee got mad at her.

Aunt Marilee, her gaze focused out the windshield, said, “We’ll talk about it later.” And a moment later, she whispered, “God, help us find Willie Lee.”

They searched the streets on the way home, following the route Aunt Marilee took when driving them to and from school. Again Aunt Marilee questioned several people who were outside.