Unraveled (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

Nerves jangling, The Wraith walked through the dew-soaked grass around the empty farmhouse where he lived before his wife left him for another man. He peered into the windows and studied the bare floors, remembering and feeding on the anger that was a steady ache in his chest. The odor of death found his nostrils and he peered inside a bucket sitting on the porch to find it half full of water with a rotting rat carcass floating on top. The Wraith had an idea and built a real smile for the first time in days.

***

Ned steered his Plymouth down the dirt road between high cut banks. A hardwood canopy laced overhead, cooling the thick, wet evening air.

Deputy John Washington rode in the passenger seat with his big arm hanging out the open window. The sleeve rolled above his elbow looked as if it would split at the seams from the pressure of his biceps. “I cain't believe that boy's back with y'all.”

“I wouldn't have believed it, neither. Them kinfolk of his decided they were tired of feedin' him.”

“Y'all gonna raise him?”

“Yep. O.C. said he'd draw up the papers so nobody can take him again.”

“Mr. Ned, you're gonna have a houseful of young'uns, and at your age.”

“Don't I know it. They'll be the death of me before they're grown.”

John's wide smile split his face. “That'll be good for Top. He needs a boy around to put some bark on 'im.”

“I'm more worried about Pepper than anything else. She's got eyes for Mark, so I don't know what's gonna happen.”

“They're gonna be kids.”

“That's what worries me. Listen, if these Mayfields swell up, you step in and cool 'em off.”

“They'll most likely not say much. They're grieving right now. The only ones that might give us trouble are a couple of the younger folks, but I expect their elders'll calm 'em down.”

The .38 on his belt, the sap in his back pocket, and the pump shotgun on the seat between them didn't help Ned's unease as they turned off the dirt road and rolled slowly down a two-lane track to the Mayfield house that was in direct contrast to the Clay place. “Here we are.”

The unpainted, rambling house had seen better days. It squatted in a clearing surrounded by thick woods on three sides and a pasture on the other. Two tall sycamores shaded the dirt yard. A tire swing hung still in the dead air. Rusting screens, their holes stuffed with rags, barely kept bugs and critters out.

Two dozen cars and trucks were parked haphazardly in the dirt yard. The front porch was full of people. An elderly black couple carried foil-covered dishes across the yard and into the house.

John got out first and threw a hand up in a wave. Most waved back. Several faces closed up when Ned appeared from behind the wheel. He threaded his way between the cars, watching a mixed pack of dogs rush up to smell his pants legs.

They stopped short of the steps. Tilting the straw hat back on his head, Ned found Hollis Mayfield sitting in a tired rocking chair to the right of the door. “Hollis. I'm sorry for your loss.”

The old white-haired man rocked slowly in the shade. Two women who appeared to be in their twenties moved closer to him, as if for protection. He plucked at the galluses on his soft, faded duckins. “Constable. John. How y'all doin'?”

Big John propped one foot on a lower step and leaned on his knee. “Fair to middlin'. I sure am sorry about Maggie. She was some punkin'.”

Hollis gave him a weak smile. “She was a ring-tailed tooter, all right.”

A thick middle-aged woman in her Sunday clothes came outside and handed him a sweating mason jar full of sweet tea. “Here Daddy. Supper'll be ready in a little bit.”

“Thank you, baby.” Chipped ice tinkled against the glass as Hollis drained half the quart jar in one long draught. “You gentlemen care for some sweet tea?”

“No thanks.” Ned shook his head.

John wiped sweat that trickled down his cheek in the still air. “Nossir, but thankyee. Just came by to see y'all for a minute and tell you we're lookin' into the wreck.”

“It was murder, John.” Those around the old man nodded. “We done heard there's rubber thick on the road where someone run our girl through the guardrail. You need to be out looking for a car or truck with creases down the sides.”

“Cain't say that yet, Hollis. All we know is they went over the dam.”

His eyes grew moist. “I dearly loved that gal. Bringing her into this family was the only good thing Tylee ever done. Them Clays'll be mad about it, sure as shootin'. I already heard they're sayin' we had something to do with it. They'll be laying for us.”

Ned shook his head. “I thought y'all buried that hatchet years ago.”

Hollis stared off into the trees. “Some did.”

John studied the raw, dusty boards at his feet.

A thick man in unbuttoned overalls thumped the legs of his chair to the floor. “There's gonna be
trouble,
all right.” He sounded like a fire and brimstone preacher.

“What makes you say that?” Ned tried to place the man but came up empty. “You know something the rest of us don't?”

A middle-aged man in suit pants and a white shirt spoke up. “We never had no business with any of them since the Trouble, but when her and Rubye went to work for him, it all came back.”

“Now don't go bringing the past up, Willie.” John frowned at the big man. “Let it lay. Have they done anything to any of y'all yet?”

A younger man with thick forearms spoke up. “I done seen cars I don't know driving slow up and down the road last night. You need to do something about it, John.”

The big deputy wiped sweat from his eyebrow. Ned and John were baking in the direct sun. “Nothin' to do yet, Bryce. It looks like a pure accident when she didn't make the turn over the dam. If we learn something different, we'll let you know.”

A woman holding a hip baby spoke up. “White law won't help us find out what happened. You're gonna have to do it for us, John.”

“That ain't true.” Ned shook his head. “I'll do everything I can.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Everything?”

“Yep.”

“Then why you here now, a day and a half after she was killed? A full day and a half after you already went to them white people's house?”

The truth was that Ned couldn't bear to talk with two grieving families on the same day, and then with Mark showing up, it had slipped his mind. He realized how it looked and was ashamed.

John took the focus back on himself. “Avon, that was my fault. Him and Sheriff Parker talked to the Clays first, but I couldn't get over here 'til now and Mr. Ned wanted to come with me. You know I woulda been by yesterday if I could and Mr. Ned here, well, he had some family business to take care of this mornin',” he waved a hand toward the cars behind him and the house full of grieving people, “and y'all
know
about family.”

She backed off and Hollis sighed. “Well, I appreciate y'all checking on us.”

John tilted his straw hat up on his forehead and wiped at the sweat again. “Bury your dead, and I'll do everything I can to find out what happened. Just y'all don't take it on yourselves, no matter what. Stay away from the Clays.”

“If they'll stay away from us.” Hollis rocked and sipped at the sweating jar.

Ned didn't like that comment at all. “I'll come by and check on you, too. Y'all call me if there's trouble.”

“Ain't got no phone.”

Ned wasn't surprised. “Well, somebody close by does.”

“I do.” Avon shifted the baby to her other hip. “But I'm on the other side of the pasture. Daddy cain't run over to tell me every time sum'm happens.”

“You'll know if there's trouble.” Hollis finished his tea.

“How, Daddy?”

“You'll know.”

Ned worried at that statement all the way home.

Chapter Thirteen

Mark and I were finishing breakfast Monday morning when a car pulled up our gravel drive. Miss Becky was washing dishes and humming her favorite sacred song, “In The Garden.” The wooden kitchen door was open and the candy-apple red '67 Impala I saw through the screen almost took my breath away. Hootie barked a couple of times before slipping under the porch.

“Uh oh.” Grandpa took one last sip of coffee from his saucer and rose from the table.

Miss Becky dried her hands on a flour sack dish towl. “Who is it?”

“Frank Clay's brother, Donald Ray.” Grandpa took his hat from the rack beside the door and set it just so on his head. He stepped onto the porch. “Shut up, Hootie! Get out Donald Ray.”

“Does he bite?”

“Naw. The worst he'll do is histe his leg on you.”

“My lands.” Miss Becky cleared the table around me. “He don't have to talk like that.”

Mark and I snickered 'cause we'd heard worse up at the store. Miss Becky raised an eyebrow. “
You
watch what
you
say when you get older, Mister Terrence Orrin Parker, and you too, Mr. Lightfoot. Hurry and brush your teeth. The school bus'll be here any minute.”

Grandpa and Donald Ray were talking in front of the Impala when we came out, spitting Pepsodent. We sat on the porch to wait for the bus.

Mr. Donald Ray was about half mad. His horn-rimmed glasses had slipped down on his nose and he pushed them up with a finger. His voice rose. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“I don't see much
to
do, Donald Ray. It was a car wreck and we're looking into it.”

“Shouldn't you be trying to find out why he was in the car with a nigger gal?”

Grandpa flicked his eyes at us, and I pretended to be interested in the ink scribbles on the brown paper cover on my math book. I probably should have been paying attention to the contents, because I was lost as a goose in “new math.” I'd been pretty good at arithmetic, but all those sets and unions got past me on the first day and I was still having trouble catching up.

Mark didn't have any books because he wasn't even enrolled yet, so he just studied his feet. Grandpa promised to come up to the school before classes took up so he could sign the papers.

“I don't believe there was any laws broke, him riding with her.” Grandpa's hands were in the pockets of his overalls. “We're thinking she was giving him a ride home and lost control and went off the dam, or maybe somebody might have strayed into her lane.”

“He was in the car with a jigaboo and somebody got mad about it and ran 'em off the road. It's clear as the nose on your face.” His glasses slipped again, and this time he looked over the top of them.

“We don't know any such thing.”

“You should be investigatin' or something instead of hanging around here at the house.”

I figured that was one of the worst things anyone could say to Grandpa. He hated for people to tell him his job, the one he'd been doing since World War II. He was good at it, too, catching moonshiners, drunks, and even a murderer or two.

“Tend to your own business, Donald Ray, and don't tell me what I
oughta
do.”

I knew more about the Clay family than the Mayfields. It was a pretty good sized family, and all of them were used to giving orders. A couple of 'em were the most well-to-do folks in Chisum with money earned from cattle and crops raised by sharecroppers. Grandpa said others always operated right on the edge between good and bad, and they'd skin their hands for two bits on a wagonload of cotton if they saw a chance.

Grandpa sighed. “Cody has a deputy working on it. But she hasn't found anything yet.”

“She? He got some secretary making phone calls?”

“Did you hear me? I said a deputy. He hired a woman deputy.”

“Good God. You got that Washington feller on it and he ain't doing nothing 'cause that Mayfield gal was half nigger, and now a split-tail workin' on Frank's case. I want somebody who'll take it serious and find out who did the killin'.”

Grandpa's ears were getting red, a sure sign he was mad.

“I'm getting tired of saying this. There weren't no killing, as far as I know right now. It was an accident until we find out otherwise, and if you have trouble with that, you need to take it up with Cody's
deputy
handling the case. Her name's Anna Sloan and she's as good a hand as anybody else I know. Do you have anything that'll help us, or are you here to just yap and not listen to me?”

“You better be glad it's me here instead of Royal. You know how he is.”

Grandpa rubbed his neck, telling me he was doing everything he could to hold back. Listening to Donald Ray, it was like telling a two-year-old to quit being nosey. “That's enough of that. I don't want to hear you call nobody that word no more. Now, murder's a hard thing to prove.”

“I'll take Royal and Wes over there with me to Slate Shoals and they'll beat the goddamn truth out of Hollis Mayfield. I bet he knows.”

I'd heard of Royal Clay ever since I came to Center Springs. I wasn't sure how they were all kin, whether they were brothers, cousins, or uncles, or even how old they were, but everything I'd ever heard about him told me he was tough as boot leather and mean as a snake. The adults talked about him in soft voices that always sounded full of fear, like they were talking about the Boogie-man.

Grandpa took his hands from his pockets and closed the distance between him and Donald Ray, who jerked for a second like he was about to jump back in the car. I didn't have to see Grandpa's ice-blue eyes to know they were flashing. He lowered his voice, but the wet air was so still we could hear him clear as a bell.

“You keep on and I'll haul you in for being a public nuisance and interfering with an investigation, and maybe even trespassing, if I think it'll stick. You better settle yourself down, hoss, and stay out of my
business
. All you're gonna do is start trouble.”

“You can't tell us where we can go and where we can't. Royal's done said what needs doing.” Donald Ray poked at Grandpa's chest with a forefinger. “He don't want to wait.”

“You better fold that finger in if you want to keep it!”

They were both breathing hard, like they'd been throwing sacks of feed into the back of the truck when Miss Becky's voice floated through the screen. “Ned, your eggs are ready, if y'all are finished talking.”

She cut through his mad with just a few words. I knew there weren't any eggs on the table. It was her way of cooling things off.

Donald Ray's hand dropped.

Grandpa's voice was still chilly. “If I's you, I'd back off for a while and let me alone.”

I was disappointed when the school bus made the corner in front of the church and headed towards us. I sighed, picked up my books, and we headed down the drive, looking back over our shoulders a time or two to see if they were still going at it.

Donald Ray was back in his car by the time me and Mark got halfway to school, and that red Impala was nothing but a blur that disappeared toward Forest Chapel.