Hotel Paradise (51 page)

Ben Queen turned to give me a long look. “You’ve thought about all this real hard, ain’t you, Emma?”

I nodded. I realized I was exhausted with thinking about it.

He sat and smoked another few moments, then he said, “The one bad thing that ever happened to Rose and me was that our child was never quite right in the head. Poor Rosie, she seemed to blame herself because of her crazy family.
None
of them was right in the head, she used to kid around saying. Of course, that was just silly—Rose was about as right-minded as a person can get. She was right about Fern being better off in someplace she could have been helped and watched over. Fern did a lot of crazy things. She’d run off days, weeks at a time; she was promiscuous—you know what that means?”

“Oh, of
course
!’ I had a kind of blind idea, something my mind couldn’t see all that well. Was Ben Queen smiling? I didn’t look. “Go on.”

“Fern didn’t want to go to this institution, although she didn’t
know what it was nor why her momma wanted her to go there. I didn’t want her to go. But Rose was right. She was sure right.”

I looked at his head, bent down, and the sadness seemed to rise off him like river mist and take me into it. I put my hand on his arm. “I’m really sorry, Mr.—Ben. I’m really sorry. It was—” But I stopped, because some things are better left unspoken or not spoken aloud. “It was Fern,” I had been about to say. But why add to his woes by saying it aloud? Unhappy things brought out and said aloud had a kind of black magic working in them. Anyway, he knew I knew. It was Fern he’d been protecting. How terrible.

“Times I think some of us was put on this earth for no reason except to take the blame for others,” he said.

“Like Mary-Evelyn,” I said. “And you,” I didn’t say.

Ben Queen was looking up at the night sky. “She was one, that’s sure.”

We sat there in silence. And then I thought about the Girl—not that she was ever far from my mind. I screwed up my courage to ask: “Did your girl Fern ever have any children?”

He was shaking the tin cup as if he’d make more water spring from it, like magic. He turned to look at me, his expression hard and silencing. “Why are you asking that?”

I put off answering by saying, “Jude Stemple said—”

“Girl, you sure do have some strange friends.” He shook his head.

I ignored that. “He said Fern didn’t have any kids, but—”

“What makes you ask if she
did
, then?”

I felt a great upheaval in my heart; I felt another squall of tears like a cloudburst coming on. I did not want to tell anyone about her, though I didn’t know why. But this was Ben Queen after all, and I thought he’d taken too much blame already. “Because I saw someone who looks just like Rose, your wife, did. Just like that picture on the wall.”

At this he rose and walked over to the water pipe and just stood looking down at it, his hands jammed in his jeans pockets.

I don’t know why saying what I’d just said made me feel so fearful. It was like breaking a trust, or telling a secret you were bound to keep. And my punishment could be that the Girl would disappear—or worse, it would be like she’d never been.

For what seemed ages, Ben Queen stood studying the pipe embedded in the rocks, listening to the steady trickle of clear water. And then
he looked at me and smiled in a ghostly way, saying, “I’d say maybe this girl you saw, or
thought
you saw, that maybe she was a figment of your imagination. You think that could be?”

I knew he didn’t believe that. Otherwise, he’d have asked more questions about when I saw her and where, especially since I’d told him she looked exactly like Rose Devereau. So I knew he didn’t believe what he was saying. What’s more, I knew he knew
I
didn’t believe it. Still, what I said was: “I guess so. She was just a figment.”

We said nothing more about this, but still we sat for a while until Ben Queen dropped his cigar on the ground and got up. He said he had to be going.

I got up too. I did not want him to go and did not know how to make him stay.

Then he turned and smiled and touched his hat brim as he’d done before, as if saluting me. And what he said next was strange and surprising: “Now listen, Emma. If anyone starts asking you questions, as well they might, and if things go too hard on you, go ahead and tell ’em you seen me, and where.” He smiled. The smile was to fool us into thinking it wasn’t all that serious, none of it. But I knew and he knew it was: “If it goes too hard on you, turn me in.”

I was too amazed to speak.
Turn me in.

He touched his hat in a kind of salute, smiled, and said, “Pleasure talking to you.” Then he walked away.

I stood there looking after him until he was soaked up by darkness, until I heard no more sound of twigs trampled or bushes rustling. But I hadn’t finished asking him questions. For it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t
enough
to think it had all been unplanned and unplotted. I felt the mystery was leaking away and would leave me with nothing. Frantically, I started into the woods.
“Mary-Evelyn!”
I called after him. I ran a little way along the path we’d taken, calling again. But either he didn’t hear me, being too far away by now, or heard me and didn’t come.

“Mary-Evelyn.” This time to myself.

I didn’t sleep at all that night. At least, I knew I was staring up at the ceiling thinking about Ben Queen, and in the morning I was staring up at the ceiling, so I don’t know what happened in between.

Groggy, I was dragging on my socks and shoes, thinking how Ben Queen seemed able to see underneath things, underneath words; thinking he was a lot like the Sheriff—

The Sheriff!
I sat bolt upright, fully awake now. Oh, Lord! I was right back in it again, right back wondering whether to tell the Sheriff what I knew. Only this time, there was absolutely no mistaking if I
should.
Why was it, you get through making one decision, another decision comes along, and this one even harder? I guessed that was the way it was for everybody as they got older.

Except everybody didn’t have to go downstairs and wait on Miss Bertha.

After I’d cleaned up the buttered toast Miss Bertha had managed to knock onto the dining room floor, along with her orange juice, which she claimed was canned and not fresh, I phoned up the taxi stand, was told Axel would come on out right away, and when the taxi came, it was, of course, Delbert.

I had been almost too tired to eat my own breakfast, except for a waffle and some of that canned orange juice, so by the time I got to the Rainbow (I wasn’t ready for the courthouse yet) and smelled the chili, I was pretty hungry. Maud brought me a bowl and a little dish of oyster crackers and told me the Sheriff would probably be in soon for lunch, as Shirl had just made deep-dish peach pie, one of his
favorites. I figured since I had my chili in front of me, I might as well stay. I’d have to face him sometime, though I didn’t know what I was going to say.

Maud had her cup of coffee and her pack of cigarettes. She sat down beside me and lit one up.

I dropped oyster crackers one by one on my chili and watched to see whether they’d float or just stick. It was my chili test. If they stuck, that meant it was too thick. They floated.

“Does it pass the cracker test?”

I nodded. “I guess it always does.”

“You look a little tired. They’re working you too hard.”

“It’s Miss Bertha.” I told Maud what had happened. She knew all about Miss Bertha.

“You’re probably the only one who gives her the attention she wants.”

It just amazed me, the way Maud could take throwing your toast and orange juice at a person as some kind of compliment.

She said, “Sam found out about that woman who was shot. Her
father
just got out of prison. Fifteen years he was in for killing her
mother.
Isn’t that strange?”

I nodded, and broke more crackers into my chili.

“Well, at least Sam thinks he found out how she got there. . . . Are you at all interested in this?”

I looked up quickly. “Me? Sure I am. So how did she?”

“Took a train to La Porte. Then she got a cab out to White’s Bridge. Axel drove her.”

Maud turned just then to look toward the door, so she didn’t see my mouth drop open.
Axel drove her.
Yes, I guess that’s just as it should be. Maud had looked toward the door because the Sheriff was walking in. I dipped my head a little more deeply into my shoulders and slid down in my seat.

The Sheriff stood over our booth, and if he was looking at me, well, I couldn’t tell. My nose was nearly in the chili. He said hello to both of us and stood there with his arm resting across the high wooden back of the booth. He asked Maud for some of the deep-dish peach pie.

She told him, “After you eat some chili or a roast beef sandwich or something. You can’t eat only dessert.” She got up and kind of ducked under his outstretched arm.

“Yes I can.” He called over his shoulder to her back, “If you don’t mind.”

Then the Sheriff sat down across from me. There was a silence and I tried to think of something lighthearted to say. I couldn’t.

“I went to Cold Flat Junction a few days ago. And again today. I was talking to George Queen and his wife. But you know them probably better than I do.”

“You want some chili?” I shoved my bowl toward him. “It’s four-star today.”

“No. Thank you.”

It seemed an effort for him to get out the “Thank you.” He repeated it: “You know them, don’t you? George and Bathsheba Queen?”

I stopped my spoon on its way to my mouth and pretended to be thinking hard. “Well, I know
some
Queens, I guess. . . .”

“You know
these
Queens. You were there day before yesterday with Elijah Root.”

“Oh, do
you
know Mr. Root?” I crumbled some more crackers and drizzled them over my chili. “He likes to sit outside Britten’s store with Ulub and Ubub. He can understand just about everything Ulub says. Mr. Root—”

The Sheriff raised his voice just a little to tromp on that. “According to Mrs. Queen, Elijah Root came to see her and brought along Jen Graham’s daughter. That would be you, wouldn’t it? Last time I looked, you were the only daughter Jen had.”

I knew this was the beginning of a life of cobweb lies. Like up in the old servants’ rooms, where those transparent and filmy cobwebs stick to you, and you don’t see them coming. “I was sitting outside Britten’s with Mr. Root. He said he wanted to go over to see this Mrs. Queen, who was an old friend of his. And I didn’t have anything to do so I went along with him. You know, for the ride.”

Oh, thank heaven I saw Maud coming back, for the Sheriff was already shaking his head. She set a white dish of pie oozing peaches and topped with ice cream before the Sheriff. I scooted over farther, meaning for her to sit down. But the Sheriff held his cup out to her.

“Mind getting me a refill?”

“In a minute, Mr. Stoneface. You should be up on Mount Rushmore today.”

I glanced up quickly at him. He did not look angry. He just looked clenched, like a fist.

Maud walked off and I crumbled the crackers, making a coverlet of the crumbs all over my chili. I wondered if the Sheriff had questioned any of the First Union Tabernacle people. But why would he do that?

“George Queen said they talked a lot about his brother, Ben.”

“I guess so. I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“I bet.”

The peach pie just sat there with the vanilla ice cream tracking down the sides. Everything had gone quiet, as if all the customers in the Rainbow Café had suddenly stopped talking to listen. Someone had plugged money into the jukebox and Patsy Cline’s voice cut through this silence like breaking glass. Then Maud was back with the coffee pot. She poured a measure into the Sheriff’s cup and turned and walked off again.

He said, “Ben Queen is the father of the woman we found in Mirror Pond.”

“You haven’t got any
cream
! I’ll get it!” I was halfway out of the booth when he reached out with his hand and pulled me back down. I saw that Maud had been called back into service by the men at the counter. I picked up another fistful of crackers and crumbled them. By now my chili was half crackers. I risked a quick glance up at the Sheriff and wished I hadn’t. His blue eyes were icy.

“Ben Queen got out of prison a week ago. He was in for murdering his wife—”

“He didn’t do it!” It came out in a rush, unplanned and helpless.

“He didn’t?” Surprised, the Sheriff sat back. “Now, what makes you say that?” Then he leaned forward, halfway across the table, fixing me with those blue eyes. “Do you know something I don’t?”

This was misery. I swallowed. “Well, it’s just that plenty of people in Cold Flat don’t think he did. His sister-in-law, that Mrs. Queen, said he just couldn’t. And the same goes for his brother, George.” I didn’t bring Jude Stemple into it.

“It’s understandable his own family would feel that way.” There was another silence. “You going to tell me?”

I didn’t even bother with the crackers anymore. I just said, with a little shrug, “Tell you what?”

He sat now with his hands kind of tented over his chin, so I couldn’t
see his mouth. I would have liked to think he was hiding a smile, but this time I knew he wasn’t. I crinkled up my forehead in as huge a frown as I could and said again, “Tell you what?”

“I have the strangest feeling you know something you’re not telling me.”

His voice was soft, but his eyes were like that blue ice you see in travel pictures of Alaska or the Poles.

A small wail almost like the note that Patsy Cline was drawing out set up in my mind, as if wind blew through its cracks and crevices.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Was this what happened to friends? Could something come along and be more important than the friendship? I opened my mouth to answer him, but then I heard that other voice in my mind:
If things go hard for you, turn me in.

So I closed my mouth again and looked at the table while my chili got cold and his ice cream melted.