Dream With Little Angels (5 page)

My mother set down a mug on the table in front of him and filled it. “Well, I'd say it's pretty near impossible to pretend you ain't here,” she said, smiling. She removed her apron and brought her own plate to the table. With one of his big arms set upon the table, Uncle Henry lifted his cup and sipped his coffee. Outside, the rain continued to fall. It wasn't near as bad as last night, but a dull gray shone in from the window. It mixed with the brown from the shade over the light hanging above the table, casting the black-and-white checkered floor in an ugly dirt color. A cold hollowness fell over me and I remembered lying awake in bed last night, waiting for my mother to return from the hunt for Mary Ann Dailey.

“Is everyone gonna go back out and look for Mary Ann again after church, Mom?” I asked.

Putting down her fork, she wiped her mouth, glancing at Uncle Henry. “I'm not sure yet, honey. I need to go to the station and meet with Ethan and Chris. You guys are gonna come back here and stay with Uncle Henry.”

I nodded. Carry said nothing. She was sitting with her elbow on the table, her head propped up on one hand while she watched the other poke her food with her fork. Her knotted hair hung forward over her shoulder, practically falling into her plate. I could tell my mother was on the verge of giving her heck for not sitting properly, but she took one look at the scowl on Carry's face and decided to just ignore her instead.

“Mom?” I asked.

“Yes, honey?”

“Did you know the Vickers used to have another girl? Someone named Ruby Mae?”

Once again, my mother looked at Uncle Henry, but this time the look was different. Almost like she was scared or something. I hoped I didn't say anythin' wrong.

“Who—” She started speaking, but her voice broke. After a second she tried again. “Who told you about Ruby Mae Vickers?”

“Mr. Garner,” I said. “He said somebody took her away and then they killed her and put her on the hill underneath that big willow on the other side of Skeeter Swamp. You don't reckon somebody took Mary Ann like that, do you?”

My mother very slowly swallowed, put down her knife and fork, and wiped her mouth. She looked at Uncle Henry, but he just turned his head away. I kept going back and forth between them, trying to figure out why she wasn't answering my question. Then my mother brought her elbow up and put her hand in front of her mouth while her eyes dropped to the table, as though she were thinking. I was about to ask if I said something wrong when she said, “I don't know where Mary Ann is yet, honey, but I'll find her.” She got up from the table and walked past Uncle Henry into the living room.

“Aren't you gonna finish eating?” I asked. She hadn't even touched her eggs.

Uncle Henry frowned. “I don't reckon your mama's that hungry anymore right now, son,” he said. Then he gave me a wink, but it wasn't his normal happy wink.

“Did I say somethin' wrong?” I asked.

With a big breath, he shook his head. “No, young soldier, you did not. Don't give it another thought, okay?”

Hesitantly, I agreed not to.

“Good,” he said, and followed after my mother.

I looked across at Carry. “Way to upset Mom, ass face,” she said. Despite the fact that this was probably the first thing she'd said directly to me in over five months, I ignored it and got off my chair. Quietly, I walked over and stood in front of the fridge, trying to listen to my mother and Uncle Henry talking.

“What are you doin'?” Carry asked.

But I shushed her. Surprisingly, she shushed.

My mother was trying to talk quiet, but she was having a hard time of it. It sounded like she was crying while she spoke to Uncle Henry. “Why would he tell them about Ruby Mae?” she asked.

“Well,” Uncle Henry said, “to most folk, Ruby Mae's ancient history.”

“But—” She stopped to take a breath.

“But not to
you,
right?” Uncle Henry asked.

“No,” my mother said. “Not to me.” I definitely heard tears in her voice.

“You have to let go of things, Leah. It's been twelve years.”

There was a pause and then, “I can't, Henry. I think about that little girl nearly every day of my life. I promised those folks I'd get their baby back to them. I
promised
them.”

“Leah, it was pretty near your first case. You can't blame yourself for what happened.”

My mother's voice rose, but stayed in a clipped whisper. “You know what I told Sally Vickers the day Ruby Mae went missing? I said, ‘Don't you worry, ma'am, I got myself a little girl, too. I ain't about to let anyone hurt Ruby Mae. I'll bring her back home safe and sound, you'll see. She's probably just out lost somewhere.' ” As she spoke, she became more and more anxious.

Uncle Henry cut her off. “You had no control over what happened.”

“Oh, I brought that little girl home all right. Three months later. After . . . after . . .”

“Oh, don't work yourself up, Leah. Come here.”

After that I heard soft, muffled sobbing.

“It's this Dailey girl,” Uncle Henry said, his voice still as calm and quiet as ever. “She's just knockin' at the door of old memories, that's all.”

“But what if this
is
another Ruby Mae?” my mother asked. “What if it
is,
Hank? I . . . I don't think I can go through that again. What if—”

“What if a twister hits Alvin and wipes us off the map tomorrow ?” Uncle Henry asked back. “You're gonna
what if
yourself to death. Take it one step at a time. Right now, all you know is you got yourself a missin' girl.”

“But we searched everywhere yesterday. She's not in Alvin, at least not anywhere outside.”

“Well, maybe you missed a spot. Or maybe she don't wanna be found. Maybe she left town. Or maybe it
is
somethin' worse, but let me tell you somethin' right now. You're not the same person you were twelve years ago. You're a
good
cop. You're a
detective,
for Christ's sake.”

My mother laughed sarcastically at this. “You know damn well why I'm detective. It's got nothing to do with my detectin' skills.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But it does have somethin' to do with you being good at what you do. Your daddy'd be awfully proud of you. He
was
awfully proud of you.” There was a sniffle or two from my mother. “Now you need to get some control,” Uncle Henry continued. “And you need to separate your emotions from your job.”

“I . . . I can't. You know what I told Mrs. Dailey two days ago? I told her I'd find her daughter. I promised her I'd find her. And the minute I said it, it was like a rock fell straight into my stomach, because it all came back to me, and right then I knew I was gonna end up breakin' my promise just like I did with the Vickers. I
still
can't look Sally Vickers in the eye. When I see her at church, I . . .” She drifted off, then: “And this is gonna be just the same. Just like—”

Uncle Henry shushed her. “You need to take a step back. If you really wanna find this girl, you can't do it with Ruby Mae lyin' there in your head. You have to focus. Right now you ain't no good to nobody. You're not bein' fair to the Daileys and you sure as hell ain't bein' fair to yourself.”

My mother stifled back another tear.

“Leah, I know you don't need me to tell you how to run your life. God knows you've managed to get this far on your own. But I remember how you were those first few years after the Ruby Mae case, and I don't wanna ever see you like that ever again. And, if having another girl now missing barely a day's already got you like this? Well—I don't know how you're gonna do it, but you need to put what happened twelve years ago into a box and squirrel it away somewhere for now so you can concentrate on doin' what needs doin' today,” Uncle Henry said. “You think you can do that?”

I didn't hear any more crying, and a few seconds later Uncle Henry said, “Good. That's good. Now, don't you worry 'bout those kids of yours none, I'll keep a close eye on 'em. You just worry 'bout findin' that girl. And don't you dare give up on her already. You hear me? Don't you goddamn dare.”

A
fter that Sunday, my and Dewey's walks to school came to an abrupt end. My mother drove us, picking up Dewey along the way, even though it wasn't along the way at all. It was, in fact, exactly eight houses down Cottonwood Lane the complete wrong direction, but my mother insisted on Dewey not walking even that far by himself first thing in the morning.

“It's only eight houses,” I said. “What can happen in eight houses?”

Even Dewey's own mother thought he could manage eight houses and stay alive. When my mother called her and offered to drive, she thanked my mother and said she'd make sure Dewey was at our house in plenty of time so I wouldn't be late. “No, Francine,” my mother said, “I think it best if I just come pick your boy up. Until this Mary Ann Dailey affair is behind us, I feel we should make a point of knowin' exactly where our kids are at all times.” I didn't actually hear the call, but I heard my mother tell Uncle Henry about it afterward.

You probably think being driven to school got us there a lot faster, but it actually had the opposite effect, resulting in us being late more often than not.

Because my mother was a police officer and because all of Alvin was kind of sitting on red-alert status due to Mary Ann Dailey disappearing, my mother's cell phone was going off like Lady Fingers on the Fourth of July. And just like not letting Dewey walk eight houses, my mother refused to talk on her phone and drive at the same time. So, many mornings found us just a half block from where Hunter Road met Pine Street (which put us maybe a block away from the school) sitting on the side of the road, listening while my mother chattered away, and watching all the other kids walk past us carrying their knapsacks and their lunch pails. Their numbers would slowly thin until finally we'd hear the bell ring and still my mother would go on talking. I would look at Dewey and Dewey would look at me and we would both just shrug. It made no sense to us. Then there were the days when my mother forced us to leave early because she had “just one quick stop at the station to make” before dropping us off. Her “quick stops” were
never
quick stops. The only times I knew we would make it to class on time were those when my mother had to go into work really early and so arranged for Uncle Henry to give us a lift. My mother once told me Uncle Henry was as reliable as the Union Pacific.

This not-being-allowed-to-walk-anywhere-on-our-own-thing was fine with me and Dewey. Heck, other than going to school, we never really went anywhere anyway. Before this, sometimes we would ride our bicycles downtown along Main Street, but only because there wasn't anything else we could think of doing. Mostly, these days we just stuck around my yard, suspiciously watching Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow's house across the street, and pondering the disappearance of all the roadkill. I didn't even miss our school walks overly much.

Carry, on the other hand, was a different case entirely, but that was to be expected. This new Carry—the one who recently “shifted her interests to boys”—turned everything into a federal case, and my mother's rule about not walking alone was no exception.

“I'm almost fifteen, Mother,” Carry snapped. “I think I can walk a half mile to the bus stop by myself.”

“You're just making my case for me,” my mother replied. “Mary Ann Dailey is a month
older
than you, and look what happened to
her
.”

“I'm
not
Mary Ann Dailey,” Carry said. “And I happen to
like
walking. And besides, do you really want to get up at four thirty every morning?”

A brief silence fell into the kitchen and I thought I was on the verge of witnessing a rare phenomenon. My sister actually had a chance of winning this particular argument on account of her having to be on Main Street by five in the morning and my mother not usually getting up until just after six.

But I was wrong.

Uncle Henry picked that minute to come in from the living room. “I'll get up and walk with you,” he said to Carry. “How does that sound?”

I saw relief on my mother's face. I saw consternation on Carry's. She knew she was licked. As I said before, we both really liked Uncle Henry, and so her argument's sails ran completely out of wind.

“Thank you, Hank,” my mother said.

“That okay with you, my little sugarplum?” he asked my sister.

Carry looked up, sighed, and said, “Fine. As long as you promise not to call me that in front of anybody I know.”

Uncle Henry nodded. “It's a deal.”

On account of our house having only three bedrooms, Uncle Henry had to spend his nights sleeping on the sofa in our living room. He didn't seem to mind, though. He told my mother and me that we had possibly the most comfortable sofa in Alabama and that it was far more comfortable than his own bed back home in Mobile. I doubted the honesty of this statement. Our sofa was a very worn piece of furniture that probably should have been replaced years ago. My mother had even patched it in places with silver duct tape.

Most days, it was Uncle Henry who picked us up from school. This was good because it was one thing to be waiting around for my mother, wasting time that would otherwise be spent sitting at my desk learning, and another thing entirely to be wasting time that belonged to me. Even if I didn't use it for much, I valued my personal time. I think that's important.

Later on when Carry's bus was due home, Uncle Henry would go get her. Although they would walk in the mornings, he would usually drive in the afternoons, and I never heard Carry once complain about not getting in the second part of her daily walk. If my mother wasn't home, Uncle Henry gave me and Dewey a choice. We could go inside, lock the doors, and wait thirty minutes until he got back, or we could come with. Usually we came with and spent the whole trip talking or listening to Uncle Henry's stories. He had a lot of them, and most were funny, although I am not certain how much stock I put in their validity. I asked my mother about this once.

“Well,” she asked, “do you enjoy them?”

I told her I most certainly did. Dewey, too.

“Then why does it matter how much truth are in them?”

I thought of this awhile and finally figured Uncle Henry's stories were a little like a magic show. When you're really little, you just think it's real magic you're watching, and you're amazed. Then, when you get older, you realize there's tricks to everything, only you don't see the tricks, so you're
still
amazed, just for a different reason than before. It's only when you figure out the tricks that the show stops being amazing.

After that, I quit worrying about how much of Uncle Henry's stories were based on his real-life experiences and how much of them were just pulled out of a secret lining in his sleeve and just enjoyed listening instead.

Rarely was Carry in a good disposition after school. During the ride back home, me and Dewey and Uncle Henry knew enough to just leave her be and continue discussing stuff amongst ourselves, but one afternoon her mood was particularly foul. Rain had been pounding Alvin to varying degrees nonstop since those first few drops fell onto our heads during the search for Mary Ann Dailey, but it hit its worst on Wednesday. Carry's bus dropped her off early that day, and we arrived to find her standing there under a steel gray sky full of thunderheads, with her pants soaking wet from nearly the waist down. Apparently due to our tardiness, she became the victim of a drive-by puddle splash. By the looks of things, it must have been a tsunami.

She sat in the backseat, her arms tightly crossed, her lips pressed hard together, staring out at the smudgy wet streets. Nobody had said a word once she got in the car. Her wet bangs hung limply on either side of her face, and she looked ready to kill someone. I think even Uncle Henry was afraid of her. Poor Dewey was stuck beside her in the backseat. I was sure thankful it was him though, and not me.

I decided the tension needed breaking. “I bet you got a good deal on this car, Uncle Henry, workin' at the plant an' all.” Uncle Henry had spent the better part of his life working for Toyota. And that's the only car I'd known him to drive. His was blue. I didn't know how old it was or anything, but to me it seemed pretty nice.

A slight smile came to his lips. “You bet I did. Guess what this car cost me?”

I shrugged and looked back at Dewey. He still looked a little freaked out having to sit beside my sister and all her anger. You see, at this time in her life, Carry was so unpredictable you never knew what to expect. And that was just during her regular moods. Something like this? Who knew? She could suddenly pull a pen out of her pocket or something and shove it in Dewey's eye.

Well, to be perfectly honest, nothing like that ever happened. But we didn't know back then that it wouldn't.

Shaking my head, I said to Uncle Henry, “To be right honest, I don't really know the cost of cars.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Well, you'll be amazed to know that I got this fine automobile for absolutely nothing.” His voice was changing, and I could tell he was off on one of his stories. “I betcha don't believe me, hey? But it's the God's honest truth.” He was always saying his stories were the God's honest truth. I don't think Uncle Henry maybe believed so much in God.

“Really?” I asked.

He nodded. “That's right. Absolutely nothing. Except it took me ten years to do it.” One of his trademark dramatic pauses followed.

“How come?” I asked. “Why ten years?”

One of his eyebrows lifted and he grinned sneakily at me. “Because I
stole
it.”

My eyes widened. In the backseat, the fear on Dewey's face hadn't changed. His fearful eyes set into his round freckled face surrounded by all his thick red hair made him look like an alarm bell ready to go off at any second. I looked back to Uncle Henry.

“You
stole
this car?” I asked. “Does my mom know? That's grand theft auto.” I knew these things on account of my mother being a police officer and all.

“No, she don't,” Uncle Henry said. “And let's keep it our secret, okay?”

Narrowing my eyes, I considered this. “I don't rightly know if it's ethical for me to keep somethin' like this from her. Frankly, Uncle Henry, I find this quite disturbin'.” And I did. I couldn't believe he was a car thief.

“Why don't you ask why it took me ten years?” he asked.

“Okay,” I said. “Why did it take you ten years?”

“Because I took it one piece at a time. Smugglin' them out in my lunch pail, or under my jacket. My tailpipe's seven years older than my muffler, which is two years older than the rearview right here.”

He tapped the mirror as we pulled into our driveway.

“Wow,” I said. “That's amazing.”

“No, it isn't, ass face,” Carry said, opening her door and getting out. “It's a stupid Johnny Cash song. I can't believe how gullible you are.”

She slammed her door as Uncle Henry turned off the ignition. “Well, at least she talked to us,” he said, and smiled. Dewey let out a loud sigh, almost like he had been holding his breath the last five miles. The normal color was creeping back into his face as we all got out of Uncle Henry's car.

A heavy wind had set into the storm. The rain now fell slanted and the few tall pines along the sidewalk looked about ready to snap while their upper branches tossed like kite tails. We were halfway to the front door of the house when one of Mr. Farrow's tools roared to life across the street. Both me and Dewey stopped midstep and turned to look at his garage and that strip of bright white light beneath it, shining like a shark tooth in the middle of such a dark and gloomy afternoon.

“What is it about that house that catches you boys' interest so much?” Uncle Henry asked. He was on the top step, protected from most of the rain by the overhanging roof. Me and Dewey were still out in the elements, getting wetter by the minute, but neither of us cared. Our eyes met and we both knew what the other one was thinking, and that was:
How do we answer such a question?

After a moment of silent consideration, I decided that when in doubt, honesty was almost always the best policy and most certainly the safest way of keeping out of trouble (yet more advice handed down from my mother). So I took up the initiative.

“Well, Uncle Henry,” I said. “We've been noticing somethin' peculiar about the roadkill lately.”

He just stood there, looking at me expectantly. But it was Dewey who finished the observation. “There ain't none no more,” he said. “Not a one. Not
any
where.”

Uncle Henry stared back at each of us a moment longer. Then he nodded his head without so much of a smile or anything and said, “I see. You know, this sounds like the kind of thing we need to discuss more inside the house, out of all this rain. And probably best done over hot cocoa, I figure.”

Twenty minutes later in the living room, with me and Dewey on the sofa and Uncle Henry in the big stuffed chair beside the television, three empty cocoa mugs were on the coffee table, and our concerns about Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow and the sudden disappearance of Alvin roadkill had all been completely laid out. I was worried at first we were going to sound crazy, but the more we talked, the more I realized we were on to something.

Even Uncle Henry seemed to think so. “You're pretty sure this Farrow fellow is up to no good?” he asked, sitting back in the chair. Like the sofa, the chair was also in bad need of replacing. Uncle Henry rubbed his chin with his fingers.

“I definitely got a bad feelin' from him when we brung over them apples,” I said. “He's the sneaky type.”