When Did We Lose Harriet? (23 page)

His head came up, instantly alert. “Dodd was here this morning?”

I nodded. How had I forgotten to tell him that? “He ran, right after Lew—Mr. Henly—was shot. From something Biscuit said, I think the bullet was meant for Ricky, but he didn’t stick around to find out.” I suddenly started shaking all over. “Officer, I’m not quite myself just now.” My head felt heavy enough to fall off, and while I had
stopped crying, there was a waterfall where my heart used to be. “I’m not doing too well. Could we talk later?”

He patted my shoulder. “Sure, ma’am. You’ve had quite a shock, and you’re doing real fine. I’ll have somebody drive you home. We’ll have you sign a statement later.”

I stood up, feeling like a ghost or something. “I have a car, thanks.” I heard myself talking, but couldn’t feel a thing. “I’ll be fine. Do you know where they’ve taken Mr. Henly?”

“No, but I can find out.” He came back and tried to tell me the hospital, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Finally he wrote it down on a piece of paper and stuck it in my hands. “Now let me send you home,” he said again.

“I’ll be fine. Thanks.” I walked steadily down the steps and out the door.

It wasn’t really me doing the walking. I was somewhere up in the air, watching that calm woman who had just almost killed a man and maybe lost the only man she would ever love. She walked to her car, got in, and started the engine. I watched her drive away. That’s the last thing I remember until nine o’clock, when I looked out my windshield, saw the small triangle park across from the Fitzgerald house, and wondered how I got there.

It looked so inviting! A fountain splashed in the center, surrounded by pink and white flowers Mac would know the name of. I didn’t care about the name, just that they were pretty. A little bench circled one granddaddy of a pine tree. I parked and walked directly across the lawn toward it, inhaling the scent of new-mown grass. I sat down carefully on the bench, feeling its warmth on my thighs below my shorts. That was the first I knew how cold I was. Stretching my arms along the back of the bench, I basked in the sunlight, eyes closed.

Memories washed over me. Lewis in black turtleneck and pants, like a tall slim priest. Lewis speaking gently to Ricky even when Ricky was sullen and proud. Lewis laughing. Lewis saying he wanted to marry me. Lewis’s slender shoulder beneath my cheek as we danced. Lewis gasping in pain. “Oh, God, save him!” I wailed.

Frantically I tried all my pockets, but somewhere I had lost the piece of paper saying which hospital he’d gone to. I didn’t know where he was.

How long did I sit there, listening to birds calling in the trees and two poodles barking across the street? I was so still that a bold crow pecked the grass just beyond my feet. Gradually the peace of the place began to penetrate my numbness.

I stood and ambled about. For the first time I noticed a small monument to F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Zelda was raised in Montgomery. She met her future husband at a dance there, and after their marriage and years away, she brought him back to live in a house just across the street from this little park. What griefs had they known in their six months in that house? Was her mind already slipping into the darkness from which he would be unable to save her? Their park was a good place to grieve.

With one finger, I traced words on the plaque:
It was like the good gone times when we still believed in summer hotels and the philosophies of popular songs.

The quote meant nothing to me, but it made me remember the second night Lewis and I went out to dinner. The band played the same awful tune again and again, until he joked, “If we’re not careful, this is going to become our song.”

Finally, tears flooded my eyes. I welcomed their release.

Listen to advice and accept
instruction, and in the end you will
be wise.
Proverbs 19:20

This is MacLaren again.

Jake wasn’t quite up to sitting through an hour’s service yet, so I stayed home Sunday morning and packed, while Glenna went to church. “Don’t cook, we’ve got tons of food,” she reminded me as she left. As if I needed telling. There wasn’t a square inch of empty kitchen counter space, and the refrigerator was bowlegged.

Packing presented a challenge. I had all the clothes I’d bought as well as the ones I’d taken to Albuquerque a hundred years ago. Finally, I had to borrow a suitcase from Jake. Sweet thing, he hated being the cause of my having to buy new clothes so much, he offered to pay for them.

“I’d love to take your money, Jake,” I told him, “but honesty compels me to admit I needed them anyway, and Hope-more doesn’t have stores anywhere near as nice as Montgomery’s. In a way, you did me a favor by having a heart
attack. But you can put a check for a couple of hundred dollars in the collection plate next time you come to visit.”

When I finished packing, I set the table for three and chose several casseroles that might go together. By then Jake was napping, so I sprayed myself with mosquito repellent and slipped out into the backyard for a few minutes of prayer and quiet on my own.

I was just about to go back inside when I heard a familiar voice. “Dangnation, I know somebody’s here! Jake shouldn’t be going to church quite yet.”

I jumped up and ran across the backyard faster than I’d moved in years. “Joe Riddley? Is that you? Honey! I’m in the back!”

I’d barely gotten through the gate and into the drive when I was swept up in an enormous bear hug. “I decided to come get you, Little Bit. Couldn’t wait any longer. Besides, I wanted to see how old Jake is bearing up under so much attention.”

“How’d you get here so early?”

“Gained an hour with the time change, and sprayed my right foot with some of that lead my wife uses when she drives. Come get me a Co-cola. I haven’t had a thing to eat or drink since breakfast, and these last fifty miles, my stomach’s thought my throat was cut.”

As we headed into the kitchen, he added, “If you have any ideas about us sharing that little biddy double bed in Glenna’s guest room, you can think again. I robbed the till before I left. We’re going to the Marriott.”

Joe Riddley and Jake were exchanging insults and I was sitting there thinking how fond I am of both of them, when the doorbell rang. Josheba stood there looking pretty as a picture in a yellow and white dress, but with her face practically washed away with tears. When I told her to come on in, she managed a watery smile, but her
lower lip quivered. “I’m sorry to come right before lunch, Mac, but something has hap…hap…Oh, Mac! I’m so scared he’s dead!” She collapsed into my arms, sobbing.

I helped her into the living room.

“What on earth—?” Joe Riddley asked. Jake waved him to be quiet.

“Come on in, honey,” I told her, “and wash your face. Then tell me all about it.”

A splash of cold water and a few deep breaths, and Josheba felt as ready as she’d ever be to tell us what happened that morning.

When she finished, her big dark eyes were pitiful. “I’ve lost the paper telling me where they took him, Mac, and even if I knew, I’m scared to death to call and find out he’s—he’s—” She couldn’t go on.

“Let me find out for you, honey.” I called the police station and told them who I was and what I wanted, but they weren’t giving out information to a woman calling from who knew where, for who knew what.

I was about to give them a piece of my mind when Joe Riddley took the phone. “This is Judge Joseph Yarbrough from Hopemore, Georgia, son. The woman you’ve been talking to is my wife. She needs that information, and she needs it quick.” He handed me back the receiver. Less than a minute later, I knew where Lewis was.

I also knew that Josheba had touched Joe Riddley’s big heart. Otherwise, he’d never have pulled rank like that.

My next call was scary, for I was almost as reluctant as Josheba to know if Lewis had died. The woman at the hospital information desk, however, said he was there and in critical condition. We comforted each other that he was still hanging on.

“You come in here and get a little bite to eat, then you go right down there and be near him,” I told Josheba. “Give him every reason to live. You want me to come along?”

She shook her head. “Not right now, Mac. But if—if—”

“As soon as lunch is done here, Josheba, I’ll be there. Count on it.”

While she nibbled on some cold chicken and potato salad, I asked gently, “Do you want to talk about Lewis, dear?”

Josheba closed her eyes. “I wouldn’t know what to talk about.”

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t know, Mac,” she whispered. “I like talking to him, dancing with him, being with him—”

“What on earth do you think love is, honey?” I cast a look back into the living room, where the two dearest and most ornery men on earth were arguing about who was going to win the Auburn-Georgia game next fall.

“But I’m engaged to Morse! Besides, I don’t understand Lewis sometimes, Mac. Today, he took that bullet for Ricky. For Ricky! Worthless as he is. I can’t stand even the thought of that. How could somebody as fine as Lewis take a bullet for somebody like Ricky? And how would I know he wouldn’t do it again?”

I shook my head. “You don’t. That’s who Lewis is, and what he believes in, and when you live with somebody, you also have to live with what they believe in. At some point you’ll have to decide whether you’d rather live with what Lewis believes in, or what Morse does. For now, though, get down to that hospital and give Lewis something to live for. I’m gonna be praying for you both.”

I expected a protest, but she just nodded. “We need it, Mac. We really need it.”

Once she left, I left the armchair quarterbacks to their discussion and went to my room. There, as I had promised, I prayed for Josheba and Lewis. I also prayed for Ricky, Dré, Biscuit, and even Z-dog.

However, I couldn’t help remembering a prayer our older son said one night when he was ten: “Lord, you
know I am grateful for many things, but this day is not one of them.”

The phone rang in the silence like a fire alarm.

I answered it in Glenna’s room, ready to explain to one of Jake’s friends that he was doing real well.

The voice on the other end was hoarse, choked with fear. “It’s me, Ricky. Listen, I gotta talk to you. Can you meet me somewhere? I gotta talk to you bad.”

“Can you come to my house?”

He hesitated. Maybe he was remembering, as I was, that the last time he’d been there it had been very late and he had not been welcome. “Who else is there? Police?”

“No, just my husband and my brother. But Ricky, if you’re planning any funny stuff—” I was about to tell him Joe Riddley was a magistrate, but he interrupted.

“I ain’t gonna try nothin’!” he protested desperately. “Lady, you’re my only hope. You gotta help me. You just gotta.” He added a word that only terror could have wrung from him: “Please!”

It took Ricky over an hour to get there. Meanwhile, Glenna came home and we ate dinner. Jake asked the blessing. As you can imagine, with all that was going on, that took awhile.

During the meal, I filled the other three in on every single detail of what had been happening. I wound up, “I don’t know what Ricky wants, but I know he’s in big trouble. He’s been dealing drugs, I think, and I don’t know what he was planning with Z-dog and Biscuit, but I doubt it was legitimate. He’s also still out on bail for killing Myrna.” I held one palm to my cheek, suddenly worried. “Are we harboring a fugitive when he comes?”

Joe Riddley shook his head. “Not unless his court date is past. But it sounds like this young man needs a good talking to.”

Jake had taken a fork in the road way back in my story. “Kateisha’s been having toothaches?” he asked me. “How long?”

“I don’t know, but it must be a good while. It was swollen and looked like it pained her a lot, but she said it would go away, that it always does.”

He turned to Glenna. “Honey, think you could go by this next week and see if she and her mother would let our dentist take a look at her? You may have to promise her a new dress or something before she’ll go.”

“A new CD,” I corrected him. “Have you ever seen Kateisha in a dress?”

He poured himself another glass of tea. “No, but there’s always a first time. You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’, Joe Riddley? Talking with this Rick sounds like men’s work to me, not women’s work.”

“I guess women’s work is washing the dishes?” I asked, miffed.

“No, I thought women’s work was getting yourself down to that hospital to make sure Josheba and Lewis are all right.”

“The only thing it is
not,”
Joe Riddley added with emphasis, “is getting any more involved in trying to find out how that little girl died. We’ll talk to Carter later—all four of us,” he added, knowing full well I was going to protest again, “to get him to stir his stumps on that, and you and I’ll stick around a couple of days to be sure he does. But you’ve done enough—” I expected him to say “meddling,” but he swallowed it and merely said, “already.”

“Before anything else”—I reached over and rubbed his jaw, which was gleaming silver in the sunlight—“I think you might want to shave.”

He rubbed his cheek and grinned ruefully. “I left Georgia so early, I plumb forgot.”

As I watched him head to the bathroom, it sure felt good to have all four of us together, helping each other out. I forgot to tell Josheba, but that’s what love’s about, too.

I left for the hospital before Ricky got there and spent the afternoon sitting with Josheba. Surgeons had stitched Lewis together as best they could. Now everybody was sitting tight to see if he would come back from wherever his spirit had fled.

When I got home, I didn’t get a full report about Ricky’s visit from the menfolk, of course. You know men—they never tell you everything you want to know. What I did learn was that Joe Riddley talked real straight to Ricky about what his chances were if he kept going like he’d been going, and suggested that he offer to turn state’s witness against the drug dealers he knew, in exchange for some kind of protection. Jake persuaded Ricky to let them call Carter, so Carter came over and talked to all of them, then took Ricky away.

Jake’s hoping Ricky will wind up in the army. I hate to think our national safety might ever depend on Ricky Dodd, but Glenna insists, “We don’t know what God and a little discipline could do for that boy.”

Glenna was troubled about one thing Ricky said, though. Joe Riddley asked him before he left if he knew anything at all about Harriet’s death. Ricky swore he didn’t—nor her mother’s, either—but said we ought to ask William. “That boy said William was paying Harriet not to tell that he had—oh, Clara, I can’t even say it. Not William, with his own niece!”

We looked at one another soberly. “Harriet told Kateisha that William was paying her ten dollars a week not to tell Dee something,” I admitted.

“Well, I don’t believe it,” Glenna said firmly. “I just don’t.”

“There’s something else that’s been bothering me,” I told Glenna. “William said the other morning that he couldn’t have a peroxide blonde working for him, but Myrna had brown hair when she left Montgomery. I think he must have seen her pretty recently.”

I could hardly stand the pain in Glenna’s eyes. It wasn’t going to get any better until all this was over.