Calloustown (23 page)

“Good idea,” I said, and hung up.

The three of us stood there at the register. Someone next door beat on the wall, either excited or upset with the football game being aired. I told Spence what Carol said. “I ain't doing that,” Spence said. “Ten years from now Little John Doe here will have some questionable memories and the next thing you know you and me'll be sharing a prison cell with Father Fudgepacker.”

The kid said, “I want the corn snake.”

I pulled the back of his T-shirt and looked at the tag. His parents hadn't printed a name there. I said, “Is your daddy's name Rex? Did you get that sticker from your daddy?” I thought I'd come up with a good idea, logic-wise. My father always let me wear the paper bracelets they wrapped around his wrist at the hospital, back before drinking and driving was a sin and my father wrecked his car.

Spence said, “Who wants a corn snake?” and smiled.

“I do,” the kid said.

“I don't know anyone named ‘I.' You're going to have to be a little more specific, or Duane here's going to take you out on the sidewalk and pull your pants down.”

I said, “Damn, Spence, shut up. You've already gone too far with the Father Fudgepacker thing.” I said to the kid, “I'm not going to pull your pants down. Do you want a Tootsie Pop or something? Spence, you got any Tootsie Pops back there?”

“Who is it that wants a corn snake?” Spence said again.

“George Washington never told a lie,” the boy said. To me, he no longer looked like a child actor who starred in cereal commercials. I kind of didn't like him—or his parents—and maybe thought about how lucky I was not to have to deal with a kid daily.

I wanted a drink something bad. I felt it necessary to go to the Side Pocket and pull for colleges I'd never heard about. It wouldn't've taken a gun to my head to drive home, shoo Dottie, and get to work impregnating Carol until she kept a baby to term.

Spence said, “No, you idiot, I don't have any Tootsie Pops. Does this look like a candy store? Why would you even get the boy's hopes up in such a way?”

The boy started bawling again. “I want a Tootsie Pop,” he blurted out. Something flew out of his nose, then returned. It looked like a moray eel, I swear to God.

Spence said, “Who wants a Tootsie Pop? I don't know anyone named ‘I.' Again, you have to be more specific.”

I thought about how a five-year-old child wouldn't understand “specific.” The child, though, said, “Wyatt Speight Jr. wants a Tootsie Pop.”

“See?” Spence said. “That ‘junior' part sure makes it easier.”

I said, “I know that you can't leave the register, so keep an eye on him and I'll canvas the block looking for his parents.” To the kid I said, “Did Wyatt Speight Sr. bring you here, or your momma? Or Wyatt Speight's parents? Do you know what your mother's maiden name is, in case I need to look for those grandparents?”

Little Wyatt shrugged his shoulders. Spence told me to shut up, go ask around, and look for a sucker for the kid while I was at it.

Because I've seen the news,
City Confidential, Cops, America's Most Wanted, 20/20, Dateline
, and those other television programs that delve into the uncompromising side of evil human beings, I knew better than to walk into the Side Pocket, stand on the bar, and yell out, “Is anybody in here looking for a little five-year-old boy?” I don't want to say anything about my Calloustown citizens during rough economic times, but there was the chance that some of them might want an extra kid around for cheap labor, and the others for possible ransom demands. No, I walked into the bar, ordered a beer from Pony Robbins, the owner, and looked around for unfamiliar faces. I seemed to know everyone, and if not by name I knew them enough not to be named Wyatt or Speight or Senior. I said to Pony, “You seen any strangers in here today?”

He wore a long ponytail, which I guess he grew what with his official, given name. Sometimes Pony Robbins got drunk and said, “I'm glad my daddy didn't name me Mohawk or Fu Manchu. I'm glad my parents didn't name me Beehive or Bob.” Pony said, “You just missed Eddie and Arnold.”

“There's a little kid next door who's lost his parents. You know anybody around here named Wyatt Speight?”

Pony shook his head. “Only locals and regulars today. You can pretty much tell if an out-of-Calloustowner's been in here by examining the bottom of this.” He held up an empty tip jar. He handed me a glass of draft beer. “You look like you seen a goat,” Pony said. He always told people how a goat's eyes scared him more than a wisp of specter crossing an empty street, say from the old florist's place over to the bar.

I drank my beer, ordered another, and placed a five-dollar bill on the bar. “I'll be right back,” I said, and went to the diner and called out, “Wyatt Speight Sr.?” then repeated the process up and down the street, sticking my head in storefronts.

Nothing.

Somebody at Calloustown Diner said, “Wyatt Earp” immediately after my summons, evidently thinking I wanted to start up a bastardized game of word association.

When I returned to the Side Pocket fifteen or twenty minutes later, Carol and Dottie stood beside my empty stool. They had Wyatt Speight Jr. with them. The kid had a piece of yarn tied to his wrist, which, I learned later, originated from a potholder Dottie had knitted. My wife held the other end of the yarn.

“I told her you weren't in here,” Pony said, “but she recognized the five-dollar bill you left.”

I thought he joked. I said, “No one showed up at the pet store? We need to call the police.” To Wyatt I said, “Did someone drop you off and leave you? Did you hit your head? Do you know your address?”

Pony said, “Your wife goes through your wallet and memorizes numbers on the bills. Then she can go to places you say you haven't been and trade money from the register in order to look through all the serials.”

Dottie said, “How old are you, Wyatt Speight Jr.?”

He said, “Five and a half.”

“Hey, didn't you have a miscarriage five years and eight months ago, Carol?” Dottie stomped one foot down and opened her mouth wide. “If you ask me, this is the Lord's way of giving you the baby back. And that's how good Jesus is! He's saved you from dirty diapers, vaccinations, a breast pump if you so chose that option, potty training. The list goes on! Jesus probably saved y'all'ses marriage, seeing as old Duane here didn't have to lie and sneak out of the house when he couldn't take the kid howling from colic anymore. Jesus saved you a fortune in having to buy gripe water.”

I looked at Carol, hoping she'd be able to read my eyes, with which I tried to say two things: “We need to ditch Dottie somehow,” and “Do you really go through my wallet?”

Wyatt Speight Jr. said, “Are you my new mommy?” Maybe he had some kind of wall-eye problem, but he appeared to be asking Pony.

_______

Out of everyone involved, Spence—who may or may not have bought and sold cobras, inland taipans, black mambas, bushmasters, cottonmouths, and diamondbacks to questionable breeders and collectors—called up the sheriff's department and the Department of Social Services to report the situation. When Deputy Leonard Marder showed up to ask questions, we left the bar and returned to the pet store in case anyone—namely the kid and me—needed to reenact the scene.

We let Spence give the appropriate answers. In a place like Calloustown, die-cutters were considered much more reliable than housepainters, roofers, or pulpwood drivers, but not shopkeepers. There were a number of occasions wherein I allowed someone else to talk to an authority figure, mainly because Die-Co came out Dyke-o to most people's ears, and a cop or meter reader might be prejudiced immediately.

“What time did you first notice the boy?” Marder asked.

“I don't know. What time was it, Duane?”

Dottie said, “I come over at noon.”

My wife said to Dottie, “Let's let them figure it out. Let's go get some coffee.” I don't know if I said, “Thank you, Carol, thank you,” audibly. To Marder I said, “Yeah, I'd say about noon.”

The kid said, “I had Cocoa Puffs for breakfast.”

I didn't think anything of the statement, but Deputy Marder might've had better training than I understood. He said, “So you're not from Calloustown, are you? We don't sell Cocoa Puffs around here.”

I said, “What the hell's gripe water? Dottie—the woman who just left with my wife—said something earlier about babies needing gripe water.”

Leonard Marder said, “Where you been, Duane? I thought you and your buddies took your bourbon with gripe water. Go on over to the Bag 'n Pay and look in the formula section. Or in Mixers.”

He seemed unnecessarily adamant about his directive. Maybe I breeched the law enforcement officer/witness protocol.

Spence said, “Every minute counts, I'm thinking.”

Wyatt Speight Jr. said, slowly, a series of numbers. It wasn't little-kid-trying-to-count numbers, either. He didn't go, “One, two, three, eight, fifty!” He counted out seven digits, which Leonard Marder wrote down while I concentrated on a defense strategy, seeing as that's how I ran my life daily with Carol and my boss.

Spence said, “You can use my phone here.”

Leonard Marder said, “I don't know why they went and got us all cell phones. Got to drive out of the county to get a proper and reliable signal.”

I learned later, on Monday, that everything worked out for little Wyatt Speight Jr. and his parents. There had been some disharmony in the family, evidently, and Wyatt Sr.'s father-in-law tried to scare his daughter. The old man kidnapped young Wyatt, young Wyatt escaped, and his grandfather chickened out and drove two counties away. Was he going to ask for ransom money? Did he plan on reinventing his life elsewhere, complete with very young son? Eventually, I felt certain, Leonard Marder or the Department of Social Services caseworker or a minister would recognize the entire story.

My wife and I had returned home without saying much to each other. I don't want to say there was a tension between us, but something caused us both, I felt sure, to feel a need to be alone and with one another simultaneously. Perhaps it was guilt—I beat myself up for owning seed that couldn't grip for more than a month, and I got that Carol, too, underwent a sense of hopelessness in regards to our ever filling the extra bedroom with a crib, mobile, and stuffed animals reminiscent of what thrived in tiny cages at Southern Exotic Pets.

Carol sat down in the den and tried to teach herself how to knit.

I stared at her more often than not for the rest of the weekend, in hopes that should words come out of my mouth I wouldn't say something that might make her cry.

We didn't answer the telephone when a television news reporter called from fifty miles away. I kept the TV tuned to the Weather Channel and concentrated on a documentary about Hurricane Hugo, which had affected Calloustown peripherally twenty years earlier. Carol and I didn't answer the phone when a newspaper reporter called, or when Dottie called, or even when Wyatt Speight Sr. called and left a message of gratitude.

I said to my wife, “We would make the best parents ever, more than likely.”

Carol's needles clacked out a noise that—if I remembered rudimentary Morse code well enough from back in Boy Scouts—spelled out either S-O-S or S-O-N.

Like I said, I learned the entire story on Monday. I had called in sick and figured it safe to go buy a newspaper to check out both Saturday and Sunday's scores.

I read where Wyatt Speight's father promised his son that corn snake, as it ended up. And right there on page 2A under Local News the father mentioned how his son really wanted a “pine gator,” but a snake would have to do, after this ordeal. He said, “I want to thank all the people who helped bring my boy home,” and said that he wouldn't be pressing charges against his father-in-law, a man who “fought some demons.” Evidently the grandfather thought Wyatt Jr. liked dinosaurs more than snakes, thus the “Rex” ploy.

My wife and I ate Alpha-Bits for supper that night, as we had most nights, spelling out words to each other and waiting without complaint.

Is There Anything Wrong with Happier Times?

Harold Lumley needed to check out his mother's reported lapses in judgment. He had received a call from the executive director of the Calloustown Community Center—a place where Ruth Lumley had volunteered for the past six years reading to the children of migrants, offering English lessons to the workers, and basically being a joyful person in a variety of capacities. She'd refereed Liga Pequeña basketball games up until her hip replacement surgery and had taught a roomful of Latina women how to cook a number of Southern staples when it came to funeral foods, from potato salad to chicken pot pie. Ruth Lumley'd conducted seminars on how to open bank accounts, pass the DMV's written test, and talk to a child's teacher without having the teacher feel threatened. She had offered baton-twirling lessons so the little girls could one day feel good about themselves as majorettes.

The woman—Ms. Pickens? Ms. Pickering?—had told Harold over the phone that, although she didn't want to pry into the Lumley family's way of treating their elderly relatives, perhaps he should drive down and observe his mother's recent peculiarities. She said, “I don't want to judge you or nothing, but I believe your momma might be getting to that point where a retirement facility's the best option. When they start acting peculiar, it's a sign. I don't know for sure, but she seems to have befriended some puppets, and turned her back on the rest of us.”

Harold cradled the phone to his ear. He needed to talk to his franchise owner about firing three people—one for ineptitude, one for stealing herbal Viagra, one for sexual harassment. He managed a place called Other Medicine—a small chain, a constant for Buddhists and Unitarians distrustful of pharmaceutical companies and reassured by the OM in the store's name. “Can you be more specific?” Harold asked the woman. “Say your name again?”