When Did We Lose Harriet? (12 page)

A truthful witness gives honest
testimony, but a false witness
tells lies.
Proverbs 12:17

This is Josheba again. Mac says I was so clever that afternoon, I get to tell about it.

I’d barely hung up from talking to her when the phone rang again. “Who you been yakkin’ with, dollbaby?” Morse asked as soon as I’d answered. “I tried you three times.”

“Just talking to Mac,” I said without thinking.

“Who’s he?” he demanded suspiciously.

“She. The woman I took home yesterday.” Morse always wanted to know everything I did and everybody I talked with. When we first started dating, he just wrapped me up in concern and reminded me of Mama, always asking questions about my life. Today I felt a bit smothered. I didn’t want to explain what Mac and I were up to, so I asked quickly, “How’s the river?”

“Wet. It’s dumped rain ever since we got here, and there’s so much lightning, they won’t let us out in the rafts. All day we’ve done nothing but sit around.”

Of course, that’s not exactly the way he really said it. I mentioned earlier, Morse grew up rough. His language still is. When he talked, I automatically deleted his obscenities. Having grown up in a preacher’s house, I figured obscenity was something you got used to in other men.

Sit around drinking beer,
I thought. I could tell that from his tone.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” I told him. “Maybe it will clear up tonight.”

“It better, or I’ll—Josheba, why don’t you cut classes these next couple of days and drive up here tonight?”

“It’s tempting, Morse, but I’ve worked too hard this semester to throw it away. I’ve got an exam and a paper due Friday. If it keeps raining, why don’t you come on back home?”

“Because this is my vacation. You work too hard, baby, and neglect old Morse. Can’t iron my shirts. Can’t come when I need you. What good’s all that education going to do—”

There was no reasoning with him when he was drunk. I murmured a few sweet, soothing things and sent him back to his buddies. I needed to get on the road.

I picked Mac up and we drove to Chisholm in rush-hour traffic. “Harriet’s other aunt,” as Mac and I had started calling her, lived in a small frame house covered with green vinyl siding in a block that looked like some folks had lived there a long time. Several houses had the kind of additions people put on for themselves, and the yards were a hodgepodge—some carefully planted and some utterly neglected. Eunice Crawley’s yard didn’t have a single tree or bush except the kind with round blue
flowers on each side of the bottom step. After I pulled up to the curb, Mac just sat. I wondered if she’d fallen asleep in the last block or two. “You ready to go, Mac?” I asked.

She gave a start, like she’d just remembered I was there. “Sure. I was just looking at Eunice Crawley’s yard. She’s got a bad case of chinch bug, and needs to prune those hydrangeas. They’re getting leggy. We’re in the nursery business, you know,” she added.

“I didn’t, but anybody seeing you go all googly-eyed over a bad case of chinch bug might have guessed.” I reached for my door handle. “Welcome to Chisholm, where pickups and motorcycles outnumber people two to one.” We climbed out into God’s own blast furnace. “I sure hope Eunice Crawley has an air conditioner.”

Mac paused to listen. “She does. I can hear it whirring around the corner.”

This was a neighborhood of small houses with wide porches. Eunice’s porch had two white rockers with faded yellow print cushions, and they looked like they’d had a heap of sitting in their day. Twenty years ago, every porch on the street would have been full at that time of the afternoon, but not a person was in sight. “Some people blame TV for the rise in crime in America,” Mac told me as we climbed the steep porch steps, “but I lay a lot of blame on air conditioning. People on porches keep neighborhoods safe.”

“Run for office on that platform,” I suggested, “but not in July.” I gave the bell a good solid push.

The woman who came to the door was probably forty-five years old and forty-five pounds overweight. She must have just come home from work and started to get comfortable, because her brown hair was still neatly tied at the nape of her neck with a smart navy bow and her eyes were still ringed with mascara, but she was barefoot, bare legged, and wearing a zip-front, sleeveless cotton shift in peach and peacock blue.

She waited for us to speak first. Mac obliged. “Ms. Crawley? I’m MacLaren Yarbrough and this is Josheba Davidson. We’re trying to find Harriet Lawson.”

The woman stepped back and started to shut the door. “You have the wrong address. Harriet lives with William and Dixie Sykes, out in McGehee Estates.”

“I’ve spoken with them.” Mac put one hand on the door to ask her nicely not to shut it in our faces. “They said she left home several weeks ago, and they aren’t sure where she is.”

Eunice Crawley looked at her blankly for a second, then shook her head. “I haven’t seen Harriet for some time now.”

“We’re getting worried about her,” I told her frankly.

Eunice hesitated a second, then seemed to come to some decision. “Well, why don’t you all come in? It’s too hot to stand out here, and I’ve just made a fresh pitcher of tea.”

Some people have closets as big as Eunice’s living room, but most closets don’t have white walls, white woodwork, a white carpet, white blinds (pulled down), and white lace valances. Even the slipcovers on the love seat and fat armchair were white. A beveled glass coffee table sat like an iceberg on brass legs, and instead of pictures there were three mirrors in white frames. The woman didn’t even have colored knickknacks on her mantle piece. She had glass candlesticks with white candles. Vanilla candles. I could smell them from the door.

The only color in the whole room was provided by a big blue and white needlepoint pillow showing a polar bear, propped in the middle of the love seat, and a soft gray Persian crouched on one end.

Eunice looked around her room with pride. “White makes everything seem bigger and cooler, don’t it?” Her air conditioner was doing its fair share, too. I felt like I’d blundered into a refrigerator. “Sit down and let me get you some tea. You! Clear off that sofa!”

For one startled moment, I thought she was talking to us, but the cat stretched like he was bored to death, rose, and stalked out, tail a-plume. “Sit down, now. Sit down!” Our hostess patted the air with one plump hand to show that the last command was for us, then bustled into her kitchen without waiting to see if we obeyed.

Mac chose the love seat, disregarding the very good chance that her navy pantsuit would get covered with cat hair. I perched on the front of the armchair.

“Like I said before, I haven’t seen Harriet in a coon’s age,” Eunice called breathlessly from the kitchen, “but she used to be in and out of this house all the time. She’s just like my own, practically.”

“Have you seen her since school was out?” Mac called back.

“No, not since her granny’s funeral the end of April.”

The cat came back, brushed against my leg, and stayed to lean, purring. I reached down and scratched him between the ears. Eunice returned with a tray. “Why don’t you all come in to the dining room where we can be more comfortable?”

We obeyed, although four chairs, a table, a small corner hutch, and a life-sized picture of Hank Williams filled the room without us. Eunice spread a white cloth over the table, then went back for a tray with wavy green glasses of iced tea and a clear bowl of freshly cut lemon. “You like Hank?” she asked, handing out white paper napkins. “He’s my love. I go up to the cemetery once in a while to talk to him. Now just let me get the cookies.” She spoke in the breathless voice of an overweight woman who has hurried. I felt a catch in my throat. Mama used to sound like that sometimes.

I’d never eaten in a white person’s house before, and wondered if she would have gone to all that trouble for just Mac or if she was showing off for me. From the sharp little looks she kept giving me, I suspected she was showing
off. I gave her a big smile to show her I appreciated her thoughtfulness. Finally she set down a green flowered plate of Oreo cookies and squeezed herself into the chair nearest the kitchen door. “Now, what is it you’re wanting with Harriet? And how do you know her?”

Mac nodded for me to begin. “I work at a library where Harriet used to come almost every week,” I explained, “but she hasn’t been in for quite a while. Then yesterday—”

Mac gave me a startled look. “Was it really only yesterday? It seems like a year.”

I nodded. “I know. Anyway,” I continued to Eunice, “Mac here was volunteering yesterday at a teen center where Harriet used to go, and the girls there said they haven’t seen Harriet all summer.”

“She left some things at the center,” Mac picked up the story, “including a library book. That’s how I met Josheba. When I took the other things out to her guardian—”

“Dixie Sykes—or Dee, I think she’s calling herself now.” Eunice nodded and reached for a handful of cookies. “I was just ahead of her and her brother Frank in school.”

“Harriet’s dad?” Mac asked.

“Yeah. He married my baby sister Myrna before she ever finished school. He was a lot older’n her, of course, and working. They had Harriet that next year.” She shook her head like she was answering a silent question. “I haven’t seen Dixie in years. Since she married money, I figured Harriet was sittin’ pretty in that big fancy house.” She looked around and sighed. “I’d have loved to have her here, of course, but I work all day.”

My eyes met Mac’s. Would a woman with a white living room really want a teenager? Eunice was antsy enough watching grown women drink tea and eat Oreos over her white tablecloth. Any crumbs that strayed from our napkins were immediately swept into her wide palm and brushed back onto the cookie plate.

“Harriet hasn’t been at the Sykes’s since early June,” Mac said, taking another cookie. “They thought she was staying with a friend, but he hasn’t seen Harriet since school was out.”

“He? A boyfriend?” Eunice asked suspiciously.

“No, a foster child her grandmother kept. A brother, like.”

I jumped in again. “The only other idea we have is that several people said they thought Harriet might have gone to stay with her mother.”

When I was growing up, neighborhood children used to play a game called “Statues.” Somebody would swing the others hard, then let go. You were supposed to freeze like you landed. Eunice Crawley froze just like a statue as soon as I said, “stay with her mother.” Then she gave her head an emphatic shake. “Her mother? Why would they think that? Harriet hasn’t seen her mother since she was a baby.”

“Somebody thought Harriet had a letter from her,” Mac explained.

A funny look crossed Eunice’s face. “I doubt it. Myrna’s not much of a writer.” She pushed herself to her feet and began collecting the napkins and the cookie plate. “I haven’t heard from Myrna lately myself.”

I stuck out one toe and nudged Mac’s leg, hoping she could read my mind:
Give me a minute or two.
“Could I use your bathroom?” I asked in what I hoped was an apologetic tone.

“Right through there.” Eunice waved me toward a hall that led to bedrooms, as well.

Mac, bless her heart, picked up the three glasses and headed toward the kitchen.

“If you do hear from Harriet, would you tell her to please call Dee?” I heard her ask Eunice over the sound of running water. I appreciated her making all that noise.

I hurried with what I wanted to do, then gave the toilet a noisy flush and joined the others. It took all the
willpower I had to give Eunice Crawley a grateful smile and say casually, “Thank you very much. Ready to go, Mac?”

Mac seemed in no hurry whatsoever to leave. When I headed to the car, she was giving Eunice her brother’s phone number and asking her to call if she heard from Harriet.

As soon as she got in the car I pulled away and drove down a couple of blocks. Then I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. “Mac, that woman reminded me so much of my cousin Stella that when she wouldn’t look at us while she was saying she hadn’t gotten a letter lately from Harriet’s mom, I just knew she was lying. Stella always tucks letters into the frame of her mirror, so I thought I’d take a look. Sure enough—look!” I thrust an old charge receipt at her—the only thing I’d had to write on. “I scribbled down everything except her bad spelling. Read it, and tell me why that woman lied to us!”

May 10

Dear Eunice,

Guess who I ran into? I can’t tell, because I promised, but you’d be surprised. That’s how I heard both Frank and Granny are dead. Good riddance to one, and the other was an old busy body, but sounds like she stood by Harriet. I think I should come see her. Maybe we could even move in together. But don’t tell her anything. I’ll write myself. I don’t know when I can come, but sometime this summer. Don’t be surprised when I give you a call and say Here I am! Love and kisses. Myrna.

“Harriet must be with her mother!” I told Mac as we headed downtown. “And from what I’ve seen of her at the library, if she had a letter saying to come to her mother’s, she’d just go, and deal with hassles later. Harriet doesn’t take anything off anybody, but she avoids conflict if she can.”

“And the money?”

“Stashed in what she felt was a safe place until she got back. For the first time in several weeks, Mac, I feel okay—” An enormous peal of thunder cut me off.

Mac peered out her window and pointed. “Looks like we’re going to get a terrific storm from the north. Jake’s garden sure could use some rain.”

I was making a tricky left turn, so I only gave the clouds a quick glance. “Morse called today and said they’ve had nothing
but
rain up in the mountains.”

“That must have been unpleasant when he wanted to be on the river.”

“Unpleasant is certainly the operative word.” I carefully edged over a lane. “He’s grumpier than Snow White’s dwarf. How long’ve you been married, Mac?”

“Forty-four years this fall.”

“Does marriage take a lot of adjusting?” As soon as I’d asked it, I half wished I hadn’t. It felt real disloyal to Morse. But lately there were some things about him that made me feel—well, smaller. Like I was being swallowed up in Morse’s opinions and Morse’s preferences. Mac didn’t act the least bit swallowed up in anybody. I wondered how her marriage worked.