Dream With Little Angels (10 page)

“You was showin' off for a girl?” my mother asked.

My eyes widened. “No.”

My mother looked to Dewey. He was looking at his feet.

“Yes,” she said. “You were. You were doing tricks, trying to impress Tiffany Michelle Yates.”

I glanced away, wondering out loud: “Was that racist?”

My mother smiled slightly, shaking her head. “You really are clueless. Good thing you're cute. No, Abe, that was completely
not
racist. Just surprisin', is all. Didn't think you and Dewey noticed girls.”

I considered this as we got back into the car. “I didn't, neither.”

Dewey continued being unusually quiet.

 

My mother radioed Officer Chris Jackson at the station and told him about Tiffany Michelle Yates. She told him it was too early to tell if this had anything to do with Mary Ann Dailey. Then she said she was dropping me and Dewey at home and going to have a quick bite before coming in. “That is, providin' my daughter's back from her field trip to Satsuma.”

I noticed the clock on her dash read 5:11. Carry should've walked in the door eleven minutes ago, but Uncle Henry hadn't called my mother's car phone, so I wondered if maybe she hadn't.

“Oh, and, Chris,” my mother said, “one last thing. What do you think about the idea of a curfew?”

He thought it wasn't a bad idea and they ended up deciding that, until Mary Ann Dailey and Tiffany Michelle Yates were found, everyone younger than eighteen had to be off the streets by seven o'clock.

“Get Montgomery to clear it with the mayor,” my mother said. “Then get the local television and radios to put it out. And I think you'd do well to suggest they consider canceling the Harvest Fair.” The Alvin Harvest Fair was probably the biggest event our town had all year. I couldn't believe my mother was considering canceling it. I couldn't believe she even had the
ability
to cancel it.

“You're canceling the fair?” I asked after she finished talking. Even Dewey found that surprising.

“Well, puttin' it on hold for now,” she said. “We just can't have something like the fair going on when there's potentially people taking young girls; it's just too risky.”

“I think a lot of people might be upset to hear there'll be no fair this year,” I said.

“Well, those people should be more upset that there's little girls missing,” my mother said.

I thought that over and decided it made sense. Then I asked, “What good's a seven o'clock curfew if Tiffany Michelle went missing at two o'clock in the afternoon?”

My mother picked at her teeth as she drove. I thought she either didn't hear me or was ignoring my question, but it turned out she was thinking it over. “It doesn't really do much good at all, I suspect,” she finally replied. “But sometimes it's not about trying to keep kids safe. Sometimes it's about sending out a message.”

She checked the clock on the dash. “And it's nearly quarter past five, so if your sister isn't home when we get there, the curfew won't do her much good either, because she'll be grounded forever.”

A
pparently Carry would be grounded forever. She wasn't home yet. It was half past five and she had promised to be back from Satsuma
inside the door
(as my mom specified) by five.

Uncle Henry made his “world famous” jambalaya for dinner that night. I don't think it was famous outside of my mother, Carry, me, and maybe Dewey, but he claimed it was. He claimed lots of things. Growing up, I always assumed everything he said was true, but now that I had started questioning things, I was beginning to see a lot of it was likely him just pulling my leg or seeing how far he could go in making me believe things.

My mother was only home for a quick bite. With Tiffany Michelle Yates missing, she now had two girls to look for. Well, maybe three, counting her own daughter.

“I'm gonna wring her neck,” my mother said as she began cleaning up the pots Uncle Henry used to cook with. “I cannot believe that girl's not home. I'm gonna
kill
her.”

She was talking like she was mad, but I could hear more worry than anger in her voice.
Real
worry. Uncle Henry heard it too, I could tell. He kept saying to her that Carry was fine and that she was probably just waiting for a bus or testing out her limits by a half hour here or there.

“I'll show her limits,” my mother said. I was thinking tonight would've been a better day for her to cook on account of it would've given her something to do. As it was, she just sort of followed Uncle Henry aimlessly around the kitchen.

“Why don't you go sit down and relax?” he asked.

“Because I don't relax.”

He nodded. “You think about all the bad things in the world. You need to fix that.”

“Hank, my daughter is
missing
.”

Uncle Henry stopped stirring at the stove, turned, and grabbed her by the shoulders. “No, Leah, she is
not
. Your daughter is
late
. It's important that you distinguish the two in your head. Find somethin' to do while I finish up here.”

She began shaking her head when Dewey offered help. “You could show me your gun!” he said.

I could see she was about to tell him no when Uncle Henry said, “That's a good idea, Leah. Show the boys your gun. Give them a lesson in weapon safety.”

As she considered this, I saw it flash across her face: She was going to give in. Dewey saw it, too. His face lit up like a lightnin' bug. “Okay, fine,” my mother said. “But we're learning gun
safety,
not how to shoot up a liquor store gangland style.”

“Really?” asked Dewey, his grin widening into a broad smile. “I used to have an air rifle, but I ain't never held a
real
gun before. Is yours like them ones in the movies?” I saw excitement glimmer in his green eyes. This even filled me with anticipation. My mother rarely liked to discuss that aspect of her job, especially not specifics about her gun, and
never
had she given any sort of actual demonstration of how it worked.

My mother kept her gun in the drawer beside her bed. It had a device on the end called a gunlock that stuck down the barrel, making it impossible to shoot unless you had the key. “You have to unlock it like that every time?” Dewey asked. “Doesn't that take a long while if you're chasing someone?”

I rolled my eyes. “She just keeps it like that at home.”

With a nod, my mother added, “So as I don't accidentally take it out and shoot Carry.”

We were sitting on the edge of my mother's bed, with her closest to the drawer and Dewey in the middle. “Well, that's not exactly the reason,” she said. “It's just safer if it's locked.”

“Can't you just hide the bullets?” Dewey asked.

“Oh, I do that, too,” she said. “You can't be too safe when it comes to guns.”

“What kind of gun is it?” Dewey asked.

“It's a Smith and Wesson,” my mother answered. “Thirty-six caliber.”

“What does thirty-six caliber mean?” Dewey asked. I realized he asked a lot of questions sometimes. Obviously, we had left the unusually quiet version of Dewey behind somewhere on Main Street.

“It's the size of bullets it takes.”

“Where are the bullets?” Dewey asked.

“That's a secret,” she said.

“How big are they?” Dewey asked.

She held her fingers apart maybe the size of a quarter. “About that long. You sure are interested in guns, Dewey. Hopefully that'll evolve into a career in law enforcement and not slide the other direction.” My mother finished unlocking the gun and handed it across Dewey's lap to me. I looked at her eagerly. She nodded. “Go ahead, Abe. Hold it.”

My eyes widened as I took it in my hand. I stretched out my arm and pointed it at the closet beside the bed. She pushed my arm, swinging it in the other direction, back toward the door. I looked at her, puzzled. “Why does it matter if there's no bullets?”

“You just don't take chances.”

I didn't see what sort of chance you could take without bullets. “Can I pull the trigger?”

“You could try, but first you need to click this.” She showed me something just above the handle. “It's the safety. When it's on, you can't shoot. It's another way to avoid accidents.”

“Wow, there's lots of them. Ways to stop accidents, I mean.”

She shook her head. “No, there's not nearly enough.”

I pretended to take some shots at the hallway through the open bedroom door. The gun felt solid in my hand, the grip comfortable. “It's not very heavy,” I said.

“It's a lot heavier when it's loaded.”

“Can I have a turn?” Dewey asked.

“Sure,” my mother said. Then to me: “First, click on the safety, then pass it to him handle first. Always facing away from people.”

I did. Dewey took it, immediately clicked off the safety, turned his hand sideways, and started shooting at the door with the barrel pointing slightly downward, making
kapow!
sounds with each pull of the trigger.

My mother reached across and grabbed the gun. “Stop,” she said, turning it right way up. “First, we don't shoot sideways. Gangsters, drug dealers, and other bad guys shoot sideways. Second, you don't just fire off shots like you're in
Scarface
. You carefully aim and make sure every time you pull that trigger you've thought through exactly what you're doing. Remember you might be killing people. Especially if you don't know what you're doing. And, unfortunately, most people with guns have no idea what they're doing.”

“Who's Scarface?” Dewey asked. He carefully lined up and took two shots, still making the
kapow!
sound.

“One of those guys who probably holds the gun sideways,” my mother said. She took the gun back.

Dewey's face fell. “Can we see you load it?”

“No.”

It fell further.

“Tell you what. If you guys are really interested, I'll take you to the shooting range for Abe's birthday when he turns fourteen. That's how old I was when my dad took me.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? That'll be awesome!”

“Where's the shooting range?” Dewey asked. I could tell as soon as he did it had been a mistake. We had almost made my mother forget about Carry.

“Satsuma,” she said. “Now go wash up for dinner. It's going to be an early night for you two.”

 

That night after the dishes had been cleared away, me and Dewey were sent to my room for an early night. We lay in my bed and I listened as my mother called into the station to tell them she'd be staying at home and they should consider her “on call” because of Carry still being gone. She told whoever was on the other end (I assumed it was Officer Jackson) that she didn't want to leave the house other than for an emergency until she knew her daughter was safe. She hung up and I heard her keys jingle as she told Uncle Henry she was going to drive around and look for Carry. “Call my car phone immediately, Hank, if she comes home, or phones, or . . . or
anything
.”

“Of course,” Uncle Henry said. He didn't try talking her out of going. Carry was near on four hours late, and I think even
he
was starting to get worried something bad had happened.

It was a clear night and my bedroom curtains were open. Me and Dewey lay there while the purples and violets of twilight painted my room, turning gradually to dark blue and then to black. Beside me, Dewey held his arm straight out with his index finger and thumb forming a gun. He pretended to shoot out first my light fixture and then the speckles sprayed across my ceiling. His utter lack of worry was starting to annoy me. “What if my mom's right?” I asked him. “What if something horrible
has
happened to Carry?”

“She's likely fine,” Dewey said, taking a shot at my chest of drawers. “What could possibly happen?”

I was stunned; it's like he thought it was a real gun he was forming with his hand and that he now had the power to protect the world from all its problems. “Have you suddenly developed amnesia?” I asked. “Two girls are missing, and right across the road—maybe a couple hundred yards away—we have Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow making Roadkill Frankenstein. You was terrified about it yesterday. Now we're just idly lying here doing nothin' while Carry's out there alone, possibly being attacked by one of his garage creations. Well,
I'm
doing nothin', you're doing as close to nothin' as someone can without actually doing nothin'. That's not a
real
gun, you know. Nothin's goin' to die if you
kapow!
them to death with your finger.”

“I'm sure your sister's fine,” he said. “She's scary enough that nothin's gonna go near her.”

I laughed, but still I wasn't so sure. Then I heard something outside.

Awkwardly, I climbed up over top of Dewey and peered out my window, through the scattered branches of the trees growing on the other side. What I saw in that broken light of stars and streetlamps made my heart come to a complete stop in my chest: two bright golden eyes stared straight back into mine, only inches from the other side.

I knew immediately it could be one thing and one thing only.

I was staring straight into the eyes of Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow's Roadkill Frankenstein.