A Fine Dark Line (22 page)

After an hour or so, we started back. Partly because the wind had stopped blowing and it was now hot as a baker’s oven. We stopped at a log near the car and sat and scraped our shoes free of mud with sticks.

“Daddy says they’re going to put in some tables and benches, cooking areas, boat ramps. Maybe plant some trees.”

“Like the ones that were here?” Callie said.

“Fast-growing trees. There’s going to be a colored section too. On the other side of the lake.”

“How convenient,” Callie said.

“I haven’t a thing against coloreds,” Drew said. “Really.”

He sounded like he meant it.

“Why don’t we go back to town,” Drew said, “get a burger and soda?”

By this time, I was actually starting to get hungry. That’s the way kids are. Bottomless pits.

“Callie, you got any money?” I asked.

“I’ll take care of you,” Drew said.

“You can take care of me,” Callie said, “but I have Stanley’s money. He’s not your responsibility. You’re not dating both of us.”

“Well,” Drew said, “that’s true. But I don’t mind.”

“You’re sweet,” Callie said, in that syrupy voice she uses when she wants something from Daddy, “but it’s not a problem.”

We tooled back into town in the Cadillac, and I must admit I felt pretty special when we stopped in front of the drugstore and climbed out of that fine machine, stood on the hot sidewalk like three gods descended from heaven.

———

W
E HAD HAMBURGERS
and malts at the drugstore, and I might add Drew paid for all of it. Timothy was working again, and he looked less than happy to see Callie with Drew. He put our food on the table like he was delivering bubonic plague. He had his soda hat pulled down close to his eyes, and his mouth was held so tight the thin line it made could have been used to thread a needle.

“What’s with him?” Drew said.

“Don’t pay him any mind,” Callie said.

“He wants to date her,” I said.

“Stanley!” Callie said, as if this revelation shocked her.

“You want me to take care of him?” Drew said.

“What? Hit him because he wants to date me?”

“Tell him to leave you alone.”

“No, Drew. I want to eat, then maybe we can go to the movie. It starts at one. I’ve already checked.”

“You have a theater,” he said. “Don’t you get tired of movies?”

“No,” she said. “And that’s our theater. I think of it, I mostly think of work. Besides, I want to see the movie at the Palace.”

“It’s a love story,” I said.

“Well,” Drew said. “If you want to.”

I almost felt sorry for Drew, way Callie had him tied around her little finger. She could have asked him to take her to a ballet recital and have him watch while wearing a tutu and a beret, and he would have done it.

We went to the picture, and it bored me. I slept through most of it because the theater was air-conditioned. Back then, any place that was air-conditioned in the summer was a treat.

As we were going out, we saw James Stilwind at the candy and popcorn counter, leaning over it, talking to a young girl raking popcorn out of the popper into a bag.

“There’s James Stilwind,” Callie said.

“That’s him?” Drew said. I thought he sounded a little sour about the recognition. I had a feeling he had come up in their private conversations. For all I knew, Callie had blabbed about all the things I had told her.

’Course, I was kind of a blabbermouth myself.

Stilwind turned his head, saw Callie. He had a bright white smile that looked as if it belonged in a Pepsodent commercial. “Y’all enjoy the picture?”

“It was good,” Callie said.

“It was all right,” Drew said.

I remained silent.

James came over to us, leaving the girl behind the counter looking pouty, raking popcorn, shoving it into bags, stacking it at the back of the popper.

“Haven’t I seen you before?” James asked Callie.

“I believe so,” she said. “We were coming out of the drugstore, and I saw you with your wife.”

“Wife? No. You saw me with a date. I forget who it was, but she isn’t my wife.”

“You forget?” Callie said.

“Well, if it were you, I wouldn’t forget.”

“We have to go,” Drew said.

“Sure,” James said.

“And what’s your name?” he asked Callie.

She told him.

He asked ours. We told him. I don’t think he was listening.

“And you’re James Stilwind?” Callie said.

“You know my name?”

“I know you own the theater, so I suppose it must be you.”

“Come around anytime. Here . . .” He went back behind the candy counter, reached into a drawer, came back with three tickets. He gave us each one.

“Free passes,” he said. “On me. I own the place. If I’m here, I’ll see you get a free bag of corn and a soft drink.”

“Thanks,” Callie said.

“We got to go,” Drew said, and he took Callie by the arm.

Outside, Callie said, “Drew, you’re hurting my arm.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“That’s all right,” she said, rubbing it.

“What a creep,” Drew said.

“He seemed all right to me,” Callie said.

Drew sighed. Even his daddy’s Cadillac couldn’t trump a handsome grown-up with his own theater and a Thunderbird that didn’t belong to anyone’s daddy.

I thought: James Stilwind is someone who should be talked to if I’m going to truly investigate this murder. Buster couldn’t do it. Even the idea that a colored man might be quizzing a white man on something as sensitive as a sister’s death could get him beat or worse.

Problem was, I didn’t know how to do it either.

Drew drove us home. Except for Callie commenting on how much she liked what some girl walking along the sidewalk was wearing, it was a silent trip, the air thick enough to carve into shapes.

Drew let us out at the Dew Drop. Callie slid over and kissed him on the cheek. “See you soon, Drewsy?”

That kiss broke the ice. Drew smiled. “Sure. Real soon, I hope.”

“You can bet on it,” Callie said.

“See you, Drewsy,” I said.

Drew gave me a stony look.

We got out of the car and started inside. I said, “You sure know how to work them, don’t you, Callie?”

“Comes natural,” she said.

W
HEN WE CAME
into the house Rosy and Mom were sitting on the couch. Mom had her arm around Rosy, and Rosy was crying. Daddy was leaning against the corner of the wall where the living room led into the kitchen.

Callie said, “Rosy, are you okay?”

“Let her be for a moment,” Daddy said. “Y’all come in here.”

We went into the kitchen. There was no door between the kitchen and living room, just an opening, so when we sat at the table he spoke softly.

“Bubba Joe,” Daddy said. “They found him.”

“Where?” Callie asked.

“Dead,” Daddy said. “Washed up out of Dewmont Creek. They found him on the edge of a pasture. Creek had swollen during the rain, receded during the dry spell. He’d been dead awhile. Man owned the land where they found him didn’t go back there often. When he did, to check on a cow, he found
Bubba Joe. He was so blowed up he thought he was a calf at first.”

“Yuck,” Callie said.

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” I said. “Not that he was blowed up, but that he’s dead.”

“Rosy still loves him,” Callie said. “That’s so sad.”

“He tried to kill her,” I said, and started to say he tried to kill me, but caught myself. “He might have tried to kill someone else. He might have killed someone else.”

“That’s true,” Daddy said. “I don’t miss him any.”

“Did he drown?” Callie asked.

“Throat was cut. They think he might have been in the water awhile, but mostly he’s been laid up in that pasture, going ripe.”

“How did you find out about it?” Callie asked.

“Barbershop.”

“It could just be a rumor,” she said.

“Man told me was the man who found him,” Daddy said. “And the police called to tell me too. I told Gal and Rosy.”

“Sorry as I am for Rosy,” Callie said, “it’s a relief.”

“True enough,” Daddy said.

Daddy went back into the living room.

Callie said, “You think that was him that chased us that night?”

“Sure of it,” I said.

“Then I guess it’s good he’s dead, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “It’s good.”

———

L
ATER THAT DAY
I went out on the veranda where Rosy had retreated. She sat there looking out at the projection booth. I sat down in a chair beside her. I said, “Rosy, I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t no need to be, Mr. Stanley. He wasn’t no good man. He had it comin’. I don’t know why I feel like I do.”

“I’m sorry you and him didn’t work out better. That he wasn’t a better man.”

“Me too, Mr. Stanley.”

“Just Stanley,” I said.

“You know what your daddy done say?”

“No,” I said.

“He told me now Bubba Joe dead, it don’t matter none about stayin’ here. I don’t got to go nowhere. He gonna fix that top floor up and get me a fan, and cut me out a window right there above them cowboys and Indians.”

“That’s good, Rosy.”

“He say I can stay on and work and he gonna give me a wage and I gonna have weekends off if I want ’em. Gal didn’t say that, and she didn’t put him up to it. He tell me that, and he pat me on the back.”

There were tears in my eyes. I looked away from her, out toward the projection booth.

Rosy reached over, took my hand. I gently squeezed it. She bent her head and cried more deeply than before. I pulled my chair closer to hers. She put her head on my shoulder and kept crying. We sat that way until she was out of tears.

———

O
N
M
ONDAY
, near dark, me and Nub went out to greet Buster as he came to work. In the projection booth I told him about Bubba Joe being found.

“I know,” Buster said. “I heard it through the grapevine. Ain’t nothin’ happens in this town, or the Section, gets by them birds on that porch over by my house. Word gets to them fast
as if it come by telephone . . . It was just a matter of time . . . You didn’t say nothin’, did you?”

“No, sir. ’Course not.”

We had a new picture to run.
The Fly,
starring Vincent Price. A year ago it would have frightened me to death, and that part where the fly with the little human head says “Help me!” would have given me a nightmare.

Not now. Not after seeing the ghost light, being chased at night by Bubba Joe, nearly being hit by a train, and then seeing Buster cut Bubba’s throat and throw him in the creek.

This night I wasn’t watching the movie. Buster and I were sitting in the projection booth with the little light on, sitting at the small table on which were spread a number of newspaper clippings and a manila folder.

“Yeah, I know you’ll be quiet about it, Stan. Ain’t that I’m ashamed of killin’ him, you want to know true. I ain’t lost one minute’s sleep. He had it comin’. But I don’t need no police.”

“You sure we shouldn’t tell them?”

“I’m sure. They might just let it go. Not give a damn. But they could decide to make sure I went upriver. That ain’t exactly what I had in mind for an old-age pension. Prison stripes and workin’ on a chain gang in the hot sun. I wouldn’t last six months at my age.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “These clippings, the folder? You have something to show me?”

“The folder’s got police reports in it. Told you Jukes would come through. Let me lay some of this on you, Stan. Now just listen. Put it together with what you know, but don’t hold to anything you know. Understand?”

“I think so.”

“Think around corners. Figure out what it could be, but don’t hold to that bein’ it till there’s nothing else to hold to but that.”

“All right.”

“These clippings, we got news that the oldest girl, she left town. You remember me telling you that before?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She went off to London, England. It’s right here in the society section. Ones that make up this town’s society is about three families. Stilwinds is one of the families. This Stilwind girl goin’ off was five years before the murder of either them other girls, Margret and Jewel. Now we got an old police report here. Jukes didn’t give this one to me right off, but when I read this in the paper about Susan, that was her name, goin’ off to London, it got me to thinkin’. She’s fifteen it says, and it’s a January when she goes. What’s that say to you?”

“It’s winter?”

“That ain’t got a damn thing to do with it. Think, boy. How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Yeah. And what you got to do when the summer’s over?”

“Go to school.”

“Give the little boy a candy cigar. That’s right. Go to school. Now, does what I told you come up different now?”

“She left during school . . . She had to leave.”

“There you go. So I’m thinkin’, she goes off during school-time, and she’s fifteen, and they send her to London, what’s the reason? I figured she was pregnant. That’s what them rich folks do if they got a girl gets knocked up. They send them away to have the baby or they send them away to get rid of it. I thought, well, maybe they just wanted her to be educated in England. It could be that way. Rich folks do that. But high school. All of a sudden, three years or so before she graduates . . . Didn’t sound right.

“So, I say to Jukes. Jukes. Go back to when this gal left and get me the police reports for then.”

“Wouldn’t you want hospital reports? To see if she was pregnant?”

“Good thinkin’, but can’t get ’em. May not even exist now.”

“But why police?”

“Nothin’ says this has anything to do with the police, but I got to go on my gut sometimes. I get to thinkin’, what if some event happened with Susan about then and they want to send her off.”

“But why would the cops care if she’s pregnant?”

“What if it isn’t that she’s pregnant?”

“I’m confused now.”

“That was just my guess, but I had to guess another way too. Maybe somethin’ happened with her that was in the police files. Anything. Like she got into some kind of robbin’, and her daddy wanted to send her off. Delinquent stuff.”