Hear No Evil (11 page)

She’d had Peyton literally in tow, dragging her by the hand, and the child looked nothing like her. She was dark as a Gypsy, and her clothes were grimy, her knees filthy. She sat beside Mimi on the old orange sofa, and she wouldn’t talk.

Mimi’s high cheekbones jutted, and a long white scar threaded itself across the front of her throat like a crooked necklace. Her mouth had a nervous twist to it, and so did her voice, which was hoarse and wheezy. She said she needed help with Peyton.

“Look, the situation’s complicated,” Mimi had said, sitting on the edge of the sofa, a cigarette between her fingers. “This guy I live with and my kid don’t get along. And I may have to go away for a while, but I can’t leave her with him, you know?”

Peyton sucked her thumb and hugged a toy bear whose ragged fur was matted and filthy. She refused to look at Louise and stared at the bare wood of the floor instead.

Mimi tapped off the ash of her cigarette. “It’s a long story. Basically, I gotta get her out of
here
.”

Mimi put her lean, ropy arm around Peyton, but the child didn’t respond. If anything, she seemed to withdraw further within herself.

“So,” said Mimi, with a toss of her blowsy hair, “I’ve seen your sign, and I thought ‘Why not?’ I could pay you to take her to my grandma’s for me. I know you got a
car, I’ve seen it in the driveway. And nobody has to know—right?”

Louise had serious reservations, but stiffly, from between her teeth, she said, “Right.”

“Just try not to be seen here with her,” Mimi said. “Just get her out of town—fast.”

Louise liked this less all the time. “You’re one of the people at the old Wheaton place, aren’t you?”

Mimi’s face went coldly expressionless. She tossed her hair and said, “It’s no big deal.”

Apprehension swam in tingles through Louise. There were rumors about the people at the Wheaton place. That they were cultists or hippies or militants. She wanted to ask questions, but she said nothing.

Louise’s old dog, Sweeney, came limping in from the kitchen. Sweeney was a mongrel terrier, graying, half-blind from cataracts, fat and bloated with gas. He seldom moved unless absolutely necessary to his own comfort.

“What’s wrong with your dog?” asked the child, speaking for the first time.

“He’s old,” Louise murmured. She rose and opened the door for the dog to totter outside and do his business.

“Is he dying?” Peyton asked bluntly.

Louise sighed. “I suppose he is.” She let the door ease shut and watched Sweeney hobble to the grass and squat to pee. He was too old and weak to lift his leg.

She turned to face Peyton, crossing her arms. “That doesn’t frighten you, does it?” she asked as kindly as she could. She wondered if anyone had ever told the child about heaven and angels and Jesus.

Peyton only yawned, showing a badly chipped tooth.

Mimi shrugged one bare shoulder and looked Louise in the eye. “Look. I can pay you six hundred dollars to take her to Arkansas, drop her off. That’s good money.
I’m not ready to send her yet. When I am, it’ll be short notice. So I’m willing to pay that high.”

Then she amazed Louise by digging into the rear pocket of her grubby jeans and drawing out a flattened wad of bills. “See?” she said. “I could pay you part in advance. Like a hundred dollars. I can put it in your hand now.”

At the sight of the money, Louise’s reservations had flown away like birds set free.
Six hundred dollars. What couldn’t she do with six hundred dollars?

Needs tumbled through Louise’s head until she was half-drunk with them. The car needed a new tire; winter was coming and the furnace needed fixing; the bathroom window was cracked and held together by duct tape …

Mimi smiled and looked through her lashes. “It’s good money, huh? See, when it comes to my kid, I’m willing to pay top dollar.”

The little girl stared at the floor and clung to the filthy bear.
It would probably be a mercy for me to take that child
, Louise thought.
It’s probably my Christian duty to take that poor child
.

“When would you want me to do this?” Louise asked.

“Soon,” Mimi said vaguely. “Like I say, I’ll have to give you short notice.”

“How soon?” Louise asked apprehensively. “And how short a notice?”

“A couple days. Maybe sooner. I’ll call you. You’ll have to meet me somewhere and take her. What this guy doesn’t know won’t hurt him—right?”

Wrong
, thought Louise.
This is all strange. This woman and her child are strange. The Wheaton place is strange
. But she thought, yearningly, poignantly, of the money Mimi had flashed so easily.

“Maybe,” Louise said. “I’m not so sure.”

“Look at her,” Mimi cajoled, putting her arm around the child again. “She’s an easy kid to take care of. Quiet. She’s a little picky about her food is all.”

The child frowned and stared even harder at the floor.

“I don’t know,” Louise said and thought of new glasses and seeing clearly again. “How far would I have to take her?”

“Down to Arkansas. Endor. It’s only seven or eight hours,” said Mimi.

Louise took a deep breath, thought hard. She could not drive seven or eight hours at a stretch. She would have to stop halfway, coming and going. That would entail a motel, which would cost even more money …

“I don’t know,” Louise repeated.

Mimi’s toughness seemed to wither away, and naked pleading came into her eyes. “Please,” she said. “You’ve got to help me. Things are getting out of control.”

She lifted up Peyton’s dark bangs, and Louise was shocked to see a purple bruise on the child’s forehead.

“Please,” Mimi said again. She lifted Peyton’s arm and showed more bruise marks, like bluish fingerprints, above and behind the elbow. “I’ve got to figure out what to do. Please. For the love of God.”

Louise’s heart contracted in repulsion and fear. “You have money,” she said. “You can run away.”

“It’s not that easy,” Mimi said earnestly, her thin face suddenly seeming not only too thin, but vulnerable, as well. “I’ve got to have some time.”

Against her better judgment, Louise had agreed, not knowing if pity or greed was the stronger of her motives.

Mimi pressed the first hundred dollars into Louise’s hand. “This is our secret, right?” she said.

Louise nodded numbly, not sure the secret should be kept.

“Whatever you do, don’t call me at the Wheaton place,” Mimi warned her. “I’ll get in touch with you, not the other way around.”

A dozen worries danced a sickly dance through Louise’s mind. “But what if I have the child, and—and there’s an emergency?” she asked. “What do I do?”

Mimi brushed away the question. “Call my grandma. I’ll give you her number. I don’t have her address. You’ll have to call when you get to town. I’ll give you some papers to take her. Her name is Jessie Buddress. Don’t tell her anything. Just give her my kid, all right? I’ll—be along for her when I can.”

“When you can?” Louise asked. “What do you mean?”

“Just that,” Mimi assured her. “I’ll be along when I can.” She gave Peyton another squeeze. “See this nice lady? In a little while she’s gonna take you to your granny. But it’s a secret, see? You can’t tell it. Or else.”

The child looked frightened.
I want no part of this
, Louise wanted to say. But she said nothing.

“Your granny’s gonna love you to pieces,” Mimi told the child.

Peyton nodded listlessly.

“We gotta go,” Mimi said, rising. “He doesn’t like me to be gone too long.”

“Let me give you some apples,” Louise said on a sudden impulse to do something kind for the child. “They’re not much, only windfalls, but you could make a pie.”

Mimi did not look grateful or even interested, but Louise hurried into her kitchen and took up one of the small bags of bruised apples from her counter.

“There’s a copy of my favorite pie recipe in there,” Louise said. “Apple butter, too. And a Bible verse.”

Mimi accepted the bag almost reluctantly, then took Peyton by the hand and led her outside. On the porch, the woman turned and looked at Louise again.

Mimi’s eyes were hard, yet haunted, almost desperate. “You’re going to help us?” she said in her rasping voice. “I’m counting on you. So’s she.”

Louise nodded silently and watched them go. She let the limping dog back in.

I’ll call the child welfare people
, she told herself.
I’ll call the sheriff. I’ll notify people
.

But she had done no such thing. Instead, she’d waited in apprehension for Mimi’s call. It came on a Sunday night.

“Be at the NiteHawk Diner at one
A.M
.” she’d told Louise. “Meet me in the ladies’ can.”

And Louise had done it. Mimi was dressed much as before, in dirty jeans and a T-shirt. This time she wore a faded denim jacket as well. But at least she’d cleaned up the little girl.

Peyton looked both exhausted and wide-eyed. “She’s tired,” Mimi said gruffly. “We had to walk here.”

They came on foot?
Louise thought. The woman and child must have walked over four miles through the country darkness.

Mimi handed Louise a sealed envelope. On the front was written “Peyton’s grandmother, Jessie Buddress, Endor, Arkansas 1-900-555-6631.”

“Her granny knows she’s coming,” Mimi told Louise. “I told her you’d probably make it tomorrow morning.”

“Did you get her address?” Louise asked nervously.

“I forgot,” Mimi said shortly. “Anyway, I’m going with you partway.”

“What?” Louise asked, liking this less and less. “You didn’t say anything about that before.”

“What difference does it make?” Mimi demanded. “You gotta drive anyhow.”

She reached into the pocket of her jeans and took out the wad of bills. She counted them into Louise’s hand. “That makes six hundred dollars,” she said. “Let’s go. I want you to go through Branson.”

Branson?
thought Louise.
The town with all the music shows? Why?
But she said nothing.

Once in the car, Mimi did not talk, and the child, in the backseat, seemed restless, frightened. Mimi smoked and stared out the window with the air of someone stunned by grief.

When they reached the outskirts of Branson, Missouri, Mimi wanted to stop at a liquor store, but they couldn’t find an open one.

“Screw it,” Mimi had said petulantly. “The hell with it. In a little while, I’ll tell you to stop. I’m getting out.”

“But—but—” Louise said.

“Just
do
it,” Mimi said so sharply that Louise clamped her mouth shut. Louise was tired and nervous and, in truth, frightened. She wanted this terrible adventure to be over.

A few miles later, Mimi told Louise to pull over at a motel that looked little better than a fleabag. In the parking lot in front of the seedy office, Mimi gave Louise a fierce stare.

“You take
good
care of this kid.”

Then Mimi got out of the car and opened the back door. She leaned inside and put her hands on the little girl’s shoulders. “Now you be good for Mrs. Brodnik,”
she said. “And be good for your granny. She’ll take
fine
care of you, I promise. Mama’s got to stay here awhile. I’ll come for you when I can.”

Peyton eyed her warily, as if she did not trust her.

“I love you a bunch and I’m proud of you,” she said to Peyton. “I want you to know that. I love you a bunch.” She gave the child a resounding kiss on the cheek.

Then she stood up, looked Louise up and down. “Get her to my grandmother’s. Understand?”

“I understand,” Louise said, her heart beating too hard and too fast.

“Bye, kid,” Mimi said to Peyton. Then she turned sharply and walked away.

Peyton said nothing. She did not try to follow Mimi. She did not cry. She sucked her thumb and stared after her mother.

Louise, her heart beating hellishly, did not know what to say. She put the car in gear and headed once again toward Endor.

The child was uncommunicative to the point of unnerving Louise. She asked only one question. After twenty minutes, she tapped Louise on the shoulder and said, “Did your dog die?”

“Yes,” Louise said nervously. The old dog had risen to go to his water dish one afternoon and fallen over dead. She didn’t want to talk about it.

Louise forced herself to keep driving south, toward Endor.
I shouldn’t have gotten involved in this
, she told herself uneasily.
Still, God knows someone’s got to help this child
.

But she knew she had not done it out of pity or Christian duty. She had done it for money.

And she was punished for it. In the motel late that morning, the child wouldn’t sleep, she wet the bed, she
made Louise crazy. So Louise, exhausted, gave up, paid the bill, and drove on.

When she reached Endor, shortly before noon, and called the grandmother, she got an unpleasant surprise. “I’m here, like your daughter said. I’ve got the girl. Where do I come?”

The old woman said her only daughter had been dead for years and what the hell was going on?

This frightened Louise badly and now she was terrified she’d be stuck with this difficult child. At last, Mimi’s name came up, and Louise wrangled the woman’s address from her.

Fearing the old woman wouldn’t accept the child, Louise had almost literally dumped the little girl on the front porch, thrust the envelope into Jessie Buddress’s hand, and escaped.

She drove straight back to the Missouri border, her heart beating so erratically that she thought she was having an attack. Early in the afternoon she stopped at another motel, completely spent.
God help me, God help me
, she kept thinking.
And God forgive me for what I’ve done
.

She’d yearned, like a lost soul, for the comfort and safety of her own home. She’d been physically ill and thrown up twice.

Now she was home, had been home for half an hour, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
It’s over
, she kept telling herself.
It’s over
. But her pulse wouldn’t stop its hectic pounding.

Eden saw Owen’s car pull into Jessie’s drive. Her emotions clashed in unruly conflict. She didn’t want to see him; she did. He made her uneasy, yet he was her only ally in this foreign land she had once called home.