Tomorrow River (14 page)

“Did you come across anything else?” Sam asked, setting his pole down that afternoon.

I said, “No, there wasn’t . . . oh yeah, there was.” I went into detail about what else I’d found not
by
the well, but
in
the well. If I’d known Sam was going to go even further deflated, I wouldn’t have just blurted it out.

He also asked, “Was there . . . did you find—” I closed my eyes and shook my head. He was asking about the note. Again.

“Sam?”

“I see him, E. J.”

A boy in a shiny white convertible has come flying into the Triple S. Skidding to a halt in front of pump two, he lays on his horn, and yells our way, “I ain’t got all day. Hop to.”

I’ve never actually seen Sam hop to. Mostly he stays on the porch and stares at whoever pulls into the station until he’s sure they’ve reached the worst part of uncomfortable before he decides to sashay their way.

“I’ll go,” E. J. says, starting to get up. “It’s—”

“I know who it is,” Sam says, unfolding his six-foot-and-more self.

It’s Remmy Hawkins. He’s what you’d call the bad boy of our town. A regular James Dean minus the good looks. Remmy’s built like a doorway, but his face is squashed in like he ran into a wall. And he doesn’t hardly ever wear a shirt and won’t care if you just about toss your biscuits looking at his spotty back. Worst of all? The boy’s got red hair. Not that Howdy Doody kind that’s not so bad. Remmy’s is more like Clarabelle’s and he’s just as honking dumb. The kid could throw himself on the ground and miss. His grandfather is the mayor. Remmy works for him doing this and that. Errands and such. And his aunt, Abigail, is the one that keeps bringing food to our place.

E. J. and I watch all atwitter from the porch. Even Woody seems on the edge of her crate when Sam sashays over to the side of the car. He reaches in and turns down the radio that’s blaring “Stand by Your Man,” which I really love and now I can’t anymore because this moron seems to like it, too. Sam says, “What can I do you for today, son?”

Remmy spits out, “I’m not your son, nig—”

Good thing he cut himself off. Woody and I used to settle disputes by playing Eeny Meeny Miney Moe Catch a Nigger by the Toe until Sam taught us, “You can catch a colored by the toe. You can catch a Negro by the toe. Even getting hold of a spade is not all that bad, but calling somebody a nigger? That’s not only behind the times, it’s hurtful.”

Remmy doesn’t look up, but says, “Ya sell gas in this dump, don’tcha?”

“Ya know, Mister Remmy,” Sam says, changing his usual educated voice to sound very much indeed like he just fell off the back of a turnip truck, “I don’ believe there’s nuthin’ I druther do more in the whole wide world than fill up this fancy go car with a tank of gas, no siree, Bob. That’d be a real privilege.”

“I ain’t got all day,” Remmy says, still not looking up.

“Why, I’m sure ya don’t, an important fella like you,” Sam says. He turns to us and gives a wink. “But . . . well . . . much as I’d like to oblige ya, Mr. Remmy, my pumps is actin’ up. Coulda swore they was topped to the brim this mornin’ but they up and run dry not more’n two minutes ago. Don’ that beat all?”

I can see Remmy biting his tongue from twenty yards away. Acting a whole lot smarter than he is, he revs up his engine and throws his car into gear. But before he takes off, he smiles real ghastly up at Sam with teeth that are buck enough to eat corn on the cob through a picket fence, then he calls over to the porch, “Heard from your mama lately, twins?”

I hop off my crate and shake my fist at him, shouting, “Get your dumb ass outta here, Remington Hawkins.” I don’t want Sam to get into trouble and he will if the mayor’s grandson shows up at supper with a black eye. Mama was Sam’s best friend and he won’t put up with that sass. “I mean it.”

With a beep of his
ah oooga
horn, Remmy dusts out of the Triple S, his wicked laugh not reaching our ears until it’s too late for me to do a darn thing about it.

I say, “Ohhhh. . . . I’d like to . . . I’d like to . . .” I wasn’t counting on something like this. The station being off the beaten path the way it is, mostly only the lost and the colored stop by and none of them would tell Papa they saw us. What if Remmy goes yakking to somebody, “You know who I saw this afternoon? The judge’s girls, shootin’ the breeze with Moody over at the Triple S.” And what if
that
somebody is a meddler of the highest order and answers, “You don’t say,” and rushes right over to Lilyfield to tell Papa? Like I told you before, nobody in town but a few know that Papa is keeping Woody and me prisoners, but
everybody
knows that we’re not supposed to be hanging out with the coloreds unless they work for us. Being the most prominent family in town, we are expected to set a good example. Grampa is one of those people who believes that Negroes should be hardly seen and never heard. That’s something that Mama and Papa never have come to terms with. When she would tell him that this sort of prejudiced thinking is nothing but Southern ignorance born out of fear, he would respond with, “Feel free to take your enlightened Northern attitude back where it belongs, Mother.”

Sam steps back onto the station porch after his tangle with Remmy and he’s smiling. Smiling!

I’m still fuming! “For two cents, I’d . . . I’d take a garden claw to Remmy and once he was down on the ground writhing I’d—”

“Shen,” Sam admonishes. “Watch yourself.” He gets after me all the time to remember that a temper like I got can only lead to me doing something I might regret. I think of Stumpy or The Maggot lying beat to death in that Decatur back alley when he says that, and I can’t help but wonder if he is speaking from experience. “Now, what were we discussing?”

I say with a fed-up snort, “You can be super-infuriatin’ in a real calm way, you know that?”

Sam picks his glove back up and gets back to softening it, but what he’s really doing is ignoring me until I can get a grip on myself.

“Fine. If that’s the way you’re gonna be.” I take in air to the bottom of my lungs the way he taught me and count to ten. “I believe we were at the part where you’re about to agree to help me look for Mama and if you could do that sooner rather than later I would appreciate it,” I say on an exhale. “It’s gettin’ on in the day, and well, we got to get back before Papa—”

“Bawwwk . . . bawwwk . . . bawwwk
.
”
My head swivels to my sister. She has started making a fox-in-the-henhouse racket.
“Bawwwk . . . bawwwk.”

How absolutely brilliant!

Maybe she’s not quite as bad off as she seems. Woody’s got to know that Sam’ll feel sorry for her. Believe me, no matter how hard-boiled he seems, he’s over-easy.

E. J. pops up off his crate to soothe my sister and I flip my palms up to Sam like—
see?
This is all your fault. She’s never going to stop squawking unless you agree to help us find Mama. You better speak up before we all go deaf as a post.

“I’ll . . . ,” Sam says.

“But . . .” I’m sure he’s about to give me another one of his excuses.

“Hear me out, Shen.”

“I would if I could.” I shout, “That’s enough now, Woody.” Instead of feeling proud of her the way I was a few minutes ago, I feel like wringing her neck. “Will you pipe down!” E. J. is doing all the right stuff, like patting her and crooning, but he’s not having much luck.

Sam scoops up Wrigley and sets him down in Woody’s lap. He picks up her hands, places them gently on top of the cat’s back, and like somebody turned her on switch off, she smiles and shuts right up. Bringing his attention back to me, he says, smooth as can be, “We’ve been over this before. You know why my asking around about your mother would not be a wise idea.”

The colored and the whites are like the birds and the bees. The birds are supposed to stick with their kind and same goes for the bees. If Sam goes around questioning folks, “Do you know anything about the disappearance of Evelyn Carmody?” somebody could start the rumor that Sam and Mama could’ve been, well, pollinating. (There’s always someone willing to fan the flames no matter how dumb the gossip.)

“How about if you discover something that seems important to your mama’s disappearance you bring it to me? I’ll assist,” Sam suggests.

“Do you mean like a double play?” I got him now. He cannot resist baseball lingo.

Sam grins from ear to ear, just like Blind Beezy does, and says,

“You’ve got a lot of your mother running through you, you know that?”

“Funny, I was just thinkin’ the same about you.” Him and Beezy both make me prett’near drag everything out of them. “How do you mean I’ve got a lot of my mother runnin’ through me?”

“You fishin’?”

He means for a compliment.

“Guess I am.”

“Well, there’s lots of ways you two resemble one another, but mainly, I was thinking about her tenacity.” He looks down at her watch on my wrist and says real seriously, “Wish you’d leave it here with me for safekeeping.”

That’s the same thing he said to me the day after I found it and came rushing over here.

“I can’t do that. I’ll take good care of it. Mama’ll be wanting to wear it as soon as she gets back home so I have to keep it at the ready.” I get a little choked up. “It . . . it makes me feel closer to her and . . . you understand?” I don’t feel bad about not granting his wish. I brought another memento for him to remember Mama by. “Hold on.” Withdrawing the dog-eared copy out of my back pocket, I tell him with my most cheerful smile, “I know she’d want you to have it until we can bring her back home.” It’s the story they were studying together right before she vanished. Mama could barely read the part to me where Juliet takes a potion that makes her appear to be dead but she really isn’t, but Romeo thinks she is, so he drinks poison and then Juliet wakes up and daggers herself so they can at least be together in heaven. What a mess.

Sam doesn’t say, “Thank you. How kind of you,” when I hand the book over to him and that’s all right. I’m not giving it to him because I’m trying to win an award for being the most generous person on earth. I just can’t have it near me anymore. Picturing Mama holding it between her hands with the bit-to-the-moon nails makes me pine too much for her, and my lunar-loving papa, too. I’ve been thinking that the book might be a hint in her disappearance. Everybody knows that it’s a story of unquiet love that takes place in Verona, which only adds credence to one of my original ideas of where Mama might’ve taken off to. “Do you . . . do you think she could’ve run off to Italy?” I ask.

“No,” Sam says, looking affectionately down at the little red book and then off to House Mountain. Those twin peaks are Mama’s favorites. “I . . . I’m hoping that your mother is much closer to home.”

“I hope you’re right. Because I’ve tried and tried, but all I’ve managed to learn from that Berlitz record so far is
Buon giorno. Dov’è la biblioteca?
That means—”

“Good day. Where is the library?”

His dead partner taught him some of the language when they were on stakeouts up in Decatur. I feel remorseful about bringing up Johnny’s memory. It always makes his Adam’s apple work extrahard. “Shoot, Sam. I didn’t mean to mention—”

“Y’all better start towards home.”

“Okay.” I understand that he’s not trying to get rid of us. Or chastise me. He’s being thoughtful. He doesn’t know exactly what will happen if we get back to Lilyfield too late, but he does know how strict Papa is. “Time to hit the trail, Woody.” I reach over E. J. to remove the aviator glasses off her eyes, but she twists at the waist so I can’t get at them and starts squawking again and it’s about all I can take. I’m sticky and tired and getting real worried now about how late we stayed at the station. I holler at her, “Why ya always gotta be so obstinate? I should start callin’ you Mule Girl. How’d ya like that, huh? Mule Girl . . . Mule Girl . . . Mule Girl. Maybe I should sell you to the Oddities of Nature show when it gets here. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. You . . . you could stand up on that stage next to Armadillo Boy and the two of ya could—”

“Shut your mouth, Shenny!” Without warning, E. J. stiff-arms me straight off the porch. I land hard in the dirt on my behind. Shocked, I yell, “You little . . .” I clamber up and come charging back at him.

“That’s enough, Shenandoah,” Sam says, grabbing me by the arm before I can sock E. J. a good one.

“But—” I am struggling to break free. “That’s not fair! I’m the youngest,
she
should be babying
me
.” I get so sick of pulling on my kid gloves. Brushing Woody’s teeth. Braiding her hair. Braying those stupid show tunes. I even got to butter her toast. I deserve those aviators with shiny frames that hook behind the ears. “She’s always gettin’ what she wants!”

“Is that right?” Sam asks, pointing over my shoulder at my sister who has gotten up off the crate. She lifts her arms out to her sides and begins slow, but is soon twirling herself round and round, like a whirlygig falling out of the branches of an oak tree. “Perhaps you’d like to reconsider that statement.”

“I know she’s bad off, but . . . but what about me? I’m the one that’s always got to—”

Sam says so low in his high humidity voice, “Your sister needs them more than you do.”

I hate it when he does this. He’s trying to make me feel like I’m acting spoiled rotten.

Sam glances over at Woody again with sorrowful eyes. “Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. That expression mean anything to you, Shenny?”

Even though I know exactly what it means, I yank my arm out of his hand and say, “No, it certainly does not.” I want to hurt his feelings as much as he just hurt mine. So with my nose up in the air, I say as snippy as a girl can get, “That must be something that only Negroes who are too big for their britches go around sayin’.” And then I step off the porch and glide across the gas station lot like I’m white and you’re not so put that in your pipe and smoke it,
former
Detective Samuel Quincy Moody.