Cold Tea on a Hot Day (3 page)

A man who was roofing a house said, “Yeah, Marilee, I saw him over there on the corner. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize him as your boy. And I didn’t see what direction he went.”

At least when the man had seen him, Willie Lee hadn’t been dead yet, Corrine thought.

Aunt Marilee drove the rest of the way home, where she went immediately to the backyard and checked to see if Willie Lee might be there with his rabbits or up in his tree fort. Corrine climbed the ladder to look in the fort, even though no one answered when they called. “He’s not here,” she called back to her aunt.

Aunt Marilee went to the front yard and hollered, “Willie Lee! Willie Lee!”

There was no answer.

Aunt Marilee unlocked the front door and went inside and straight to the answering machine on her desk in the corner of the living room. There were no messages. Aunt Marilee immediately picked up the telephone and called the school, asking if Willie Lee had been found there. He had not. Next Aunt Marilee telephoned the sheriff’s office to ask for help.

Afterward, she snapped the receiver back on the hook and looked at Corrine. “He’s all right. God watches over all of us, and most especially little ones like Willie Lee.”

Corrine, who had reason to doubt God watched over her, thought her Aunt Marilee was speaking to calm herself. She felt guilty for the thought.

“Well, we’ve done all we can,” Aunt Marilee said, rising straight up. “We’ll wait here and let God handle it.”

Aunt Marilee let God handle it for about the length of
time it took to make a pot of tea and fix a cup with lots of sugar for Corrine, and search for a pack of cigarettes, which she didn’t find, and then she went to telephoning people.

From the chair at the table, where she could look clear through the house to the front and watch her aunt hold the phone to her ear while pacing in long strides that pushed out her brown skirt, Corrine felt helpless and desperate.

Your Life Is Now

T
ate Holloway drove into Valentine from the east along small, bumpy roads because he had taken a wrong turn and gotten lost. He never had been very good at directions. A couple of his city desk editors used to say they hated to send him out to an emergency, because he might miss it by ending up in a different state.

He slowed his yellow BMW convertible when he came into the edge of town. He passed the feed and grain with its tall elevator, and the car wash, and the IGA grocery. Anticipation tightened in his chest. Right there on the IGA was a sign that proclaimed it the Hometown Grocery Store.

This was going to be his own hometown.

Driving on, he entered the Main Street area and spied
The Valentine Voice
building. He allowed it only a glance and drove slowly, taking in everything on the left side of the street, turned around at the far edge of town and took in everything on the opposite side of the street.

He had seen the town as a child of nine, and surprisingly, it looked almost as he remembered. There were the cars parked head-in on the wide street. There was the bank, modernized nicely with new windows and a thorough sandblasting job. There was the theater—it had become something called The Little Opry. There was the florist…and the drugstore, with the air conditioner that dripped. The air conditioner was still there, although he could not tell if it dripped, as it was too cool in April to need it. He imagined it still dripped, though.

There were various flags flying outside the storefronts: the U.S. flags, the state flag of Oklahoma, what appeared to be the Valentine City flag, and a couple of Confederate flags, which surprised him a bit and reminded him that people in the west tended to be truly individualistic. There was a flag with flowers on it at the florist, and at least one person was a Texan, because there was a Texas flag flying proudly.

Tate thought the flags gave a friendly touch. He noted the benches placed at intervals. One thing the town needed, he thought, was trees. He liked a town with trees along the sidewalks to give shade when a person walked along.

Back once again to
The Valentine Voice
building, he turned and parked the BMW head-in to the curb. Slowly he removed his sunglasses and sat there looking at the building for some minutes. It sat like a grand cornerstone of the town, two-story red brick, with grey stone-cased windows and The Valentine Voice etched in a granite slab beside the double doors.

Emotion rose in his chest. Tears even burned in his eyes.

There it was—his
own
newspaper.

It was the dream of many a big-city news desk editor to become publisher of his own paper, and Tate had held this dream a long time. A place where he could express his own ideas, unencumbered by the hesitancies and prejudices of others less inclined to personal responsibility and more concerned with being politically correct and watching the bottom line dollar. Newspaper publishing as it once was, with editors who spoke their fire and light, drank whiskey from pint bottles in their desk drawers and smoked big stogies, with no thought of the fate of their jobs or pensions, only the single-minded intent to speak the truth.

The good parts of the old days were what Tate intended to resurrect. Here, in this small place in the world, he would pursue his mission to speak his mind and spread courage, and to enjoy on occasion the damn straight wildness for the sake of being wild.

Yes, sir, by golly, he was on his way.

Tate alighted from the BMW, slammed the door and took the sidewalk in one long stride. A bell tinkled above as he opened the heavy glass front door and strode through, removing his hat and taking in the interior with one eager glance: brick wall down the left side, desks, high ceiling with lights and fans suspended. Old, dim, deteriorating…but promising. A city room, by golly.

“Can I help you?”

It was a woman at the front reception desk, bathed in the daylight from the wide windows. A no-nonsense sort of woman, with deep-brown hair in a Buster Brown cut and steady black eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses. Cheyenne, he thought.

“Hello, there. I’m Tate Holloway.” He sent her his most charming grin.

“You’re not.”

That response set him back.

“Why, yes, ma’am, I believe I am.” He chuckled and tapped his hat against his thigh.

She was standing now. She had unfolded from her chair, and Tate, who was five foot eleven, saw with a bit of surprise that he was eye to eye with her.

“You aren’t supposed to be here until Saturday.”

“Well, that’s true.” He tugged at his ear. He had expected to be
welcomed.
He had expected there to be people here, too, and the big room was empty.

“But here I am.” He stuck out his hand. “And who might you be, ma’am?” he drawled in an intimate manner. It had been said that Tate Holloway could charm the spots off a bobcat.

This long, tall woman was made of stern stuff. She looked at his hand for a full three heartbeats before offering her own, which was thin but sturdy. “Charlotte Nation.”

“Well, now…nice to meet you, Miss Charlotte.”

She blinked. “Yes…a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Holloway.” She wet her lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t say that right away. It’s just that Marilee said you weren’t coming until Saturday.” There again was the note of accusation in her voice. “We aren’t prepared. We are…” She looked around behind her at the room and seemed to search for words. “Well, everyone is busy working for the paper, just not here.”

“I’m glad to see that,” Tate said. “I didn’t expect a welcoming committee.”

A spark of suspicion about that statement shone in her eyes, before she blinked and said, “I’m assuming you know that Chet Harmon, Harlan Buckles and Jewel Luttrell have all quit in the last month. June Redman has taken on the layout, and she’s out gettin’ her mammogram this afternoon. She used to just work part-time, anyway. Imperia is out on some sales calls. Leo and Reggie and Tammy are on stories, and Marilee’s had to go find her little boy.” She paused, then added, “Zona’s here, of course.”

“Marilee James? Her little boy is missing?” He recalled the woman’s voice on the phone, deep and soft, like warm butter. He had been anticipating seeing her and felt a bit of disappointment that she wasn’t here. Actually, saying that he didn’t want a welcoming committee was a fib, as this woman recognized. Tate had anticipated being greatly welcomed…at least, he had expected to be received with some enthusiasm.

The woman nodded. “Willie Lee. He’s wandered off from school again. He’s eight years old but learning disabled.”

“I see.”

“He is sweet as the day is long, but he tends to drift away. And he is not afraid of anybody in this world. That’s the worry…so many strangers come down here these days from the city.”

He felt vaguely guilty, since he had just driven in from a city. “Well, I’ll just have a look around.”

The woman blinked, as if surprised.

Just then a door from an office down on the left opened. A person—a small woman—appeared, saw Tate,
and stepped back and shut the door. It happened so quickly that the only impression Tate had was of a small, grey-haired mouse of a woman. The office had window glass, but dark shades were drawn.

Tate looked at the brown-haired woman, who said, “That is Zona Porter—no relation—our comptroller.”

Tate waited several seconds to hear more, to possibly be introduced to this woman, but just then the phone on the desk rang, and the brown-haired woman immediately snatched it up.

“
Valentine Voice,
Charlotte speaking.” She gripped the telephone receiver. After several seconds, she told whoever was on the other end, “I’ll have Marilee call you back about that. She’s had to go out after Willie Lee. He’s wandered off from school again.” Her eyes lit on Tate. “Oh, wait! Mr. Holloway, the new publisher, is here. You can talk to him. Hold on a minute while I switch you over to another line…yes, he’s the new owner, Ms. Porter’s cousin…. I know it isn’t Saturday, he came early. Now I’m switching.”

She said to Tate, “It’s the mayor. They’ve landed the detention center after all, and he wants to give you the story.”

He stood there staring at her, and she stared back. Then a ringing sounded from a room behind Ms. Nation.

“Go on and get it in Ms. Porter’s office,” the woman ordered, shooing him with her hand. “I have to keep this phone clear in case anyone calls about Willie Lee.”

Tate turned and strode down the wide reception area to the opened doorway, the office he remembered as his uncle’s. Two long strides and he reached the enormous old
walnut desk. Almost in a single motion, he tossed aside his hat and answered the phone, at the same time pulling a pad and pen from the breast pocket of his brown denim sport coat.

His journalist’s instincts had kicked in. He was a newspaper owner, by golly.

The mayor, a meek but earnest man with extremely thin fingers and hair, drove Tate out to see the site for the new detention center that would employ a hundred people right off the bat.

There was a lot of controversy over the center, the mayor admitted. He stuttered over the word
controversy.
Tate listened to the man’s explanations and read a bit between the diplomatic lines. Many people didn’t want what they thought of as a prison in their midst.

The mayor drove him all around, giving him a guided tour of the town and surrounding area. He took him into the Main Street Café and introduced him around, and then over to Blaine’s Drugstore and introduced him to Mr. Blaine, the only person in the store at the time and who seemed reticent to break away from his television. His only comment on the detention center was, “They’ll need a pharmacy, those boys.”

After that Tate walked with the mayor, who shyly requested being called Walter, up and down both sides of the street, the mayor introducing him to various shop owners, who all said more or less, “Hey, Walter,” and slapped the mayor’s back fondly and got a warm backslapping in return. The mayor was generally beloved, Tate saw.

When he finally begged off from a supper invitation by the mayor and returned to the newspaper offices, Miss Charlotte was on her feet.

“I’m glad you are back. It’s after five o’clock, and time for me to go home. Leo took the disks for the mornin’ edition up to the printer. We didn’t think we could wait for you,” she added in the faintly critical tone Tate was beginning to recognize. “Harlan used to handle it. Since he quit, we’re all just sort of filling in for the time being.” There was an air of expectancy in that comment, too.

“That’s just fine. I didn’t realize it was after five. I’m sorry to hold you up.”

“I waited because I wasn’t sure you had keys. I didn’t want to lock you out.” She pulled a purse as big as a suitcase from beneath the desk.

Tate felt a little embarrassed to tell her that he didn’t have any keys. She strode out from behind her desk, and he stepped out of her way, having a sense she might walk right over him. She continued on into his cousin’s—
his
—office, reached into the middle drawer of the desk and pulled out keys that she handed over to him.

She was through the front door when he thought to ask, “Did they find Marilee James’s little boy?”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “No. I’m going over to her house now and take some fried chicken.”

The door closed behind her, and Tate watched through the big plate glass window as she walked away down the sidewalk and turned the corner. Miss Charlotte wore an amazingly short skirt and high heels for a prim-and-proper woman. And she didn’t walk; she marched.

He went out to the BMW that he’d left right there with the top down, his computer in full sight. He had figured a person could do that in Valentine.

Making a number of trips, he carted the computer, monitor and then a few boxes into his new office. After he’d set the things down, he stood smoothing the back of his hair. That he ought to be doing something to help in the search for little Willie Lee James tugged at him. He felt helpless on that score. There didn’t seem anything he, not knowing either the child or the town, could do.

He left the boxes in a stack and started to connect up his computer, but then decided he was too impatient to see his new home. He wanted to get a look around while the light was still good. He locked the front doors and was one step away when he stopped, remembering the small grey woman he had earlier seen appear. Was she still in there?

He didn’t think she could be, since Miss Charlotte hadn’t said anything about her. Still, the thought caused him to go back inside to check.

On the door glass of the office was printed: Zona Porter, No Relation, Comptroller. He did not hear sound from beyond the walls. He knocked. No answer. Very carefully he turned the knob and stuck his head in the door. The office, very small and neat, even stark, was empty.

Well, good. He felt better to have made certain.

Back at the front door again, he locked the door of
his
newspaper, wondering if one even needed to bother in such a town. Whistling, he strode to his BMW, where he jumped
over the door and slid down into the seat. He backed the BMW out of its place and had to drive the length of town and turn around and come back to the intersection of Main and Church Streets. His cousin Muriel’s house, which he had bought sight unseen since he was nine years old, was on the second block up Church Street, on the corner. He heard Muriel’s clipped tone of voice giving him the directions.