Hotel Paradise (45 page)

I did not really need to see Miss Flyte for anything in particular; it was just nice to know if she was as usual and not sick or anything. I walked around the shop, enjoying it as I always do, except for Bonnie being there. It’s hard being in the presence of someone who wishes you’d go away. It’s as if the other person could reach out a dark hand and take the shine off your pleasure, as the narrow awning outside stops the light from falling on that strip of visored pavement.

Bonnie was still reading her movie magazine and fingering a strand of lifeless hair and paying no attention to me. I moved towards the smoky-dark rear of the shop, where Miss Flyte had arranged some
very tall, thin candles and a couple of chunkier ones on a mirror half-surrounded by polished tin with a sort of roof of some darker metal. It looked almost like a miniature amphitheater, such as the one in Spirit Lake. Now, on the mirror she had placed tiny metal figures, smaller than toy soldiers; these were skaters. Men in scarves, women in bonnets and long full skirts, boys in caps, and little girls with muffs. An old-time skating scene. But what was the biggest surprise was the way the different-sized candles made their “effects.” The high, thin ones pointed their lighted wicks up to the dark roof and made stars; the chunkier candle had a thicker wick and made a wavery, uncertain moon; and the ropy wick of a very low candle must have been spliced and feathered out, for the threads gave off tiny flames that sometimes blended, sometimes separated, and looked for all the world like a campfire.

Imagine going to all of this trouble! I was awestruck. Yet, given Miss Flyte’s reputation, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

The gently flickering lights almost hypnotized me, just as the reflection of the water on the ceiling in Mary-Evelyn’s room had done. It was equally hard to explain. It was as if a lot of things of no importance that were cluttering up my mind began to burn away like bits of dark ash lifting from burning newspaper, floating up and off. Things like how annoying Miss Bertha was, or Vera’s waiting on only the best customers, or even Mrs. Davidow’s temper tantrums. What was left was the small but still burning core, and it was the core that was important, and all else was ashes and cinders and I was not even to waste a thought on it. My state of mind was strange; it was bright and empty like a room full of light. I watched this lighted-up space to see what would come into it. I wasn’t surprised when it turned out to be the Girl, just standing there looking at me, first as near as she’d been on the station platform, then as far away as the other side of the lake. My mind felt very clear, as if everything had been swept away so that she could be free to speak. Of course she didn’t. Clear as my mind was, it couldn’t force words from her.

She faded, and the next thing to occupy that space was Jude Stemple and me, sitting on his porch in Flyback Hollow as we’d sat that day when he told me about the Queens.

Fern never had no kids.

I looked into the fluttering candlewicks and frowned.

Fern never had no kids.

The explanation hit me, the answer kind of slammed me in the stomach because it was so simple: How did Jude Stemple
know
?

I don’t mean he was lying, for I suspect he really thought he knew; but Fern Queen could have gone off somewhere and had a whole litter of kids, for all he knew. Hadn’t he said how Fern “went off” and then’d come back and after a while just go off again?

This was a lesson to me to believe in the evidence of my own senses, and not just what other people said. Mr. Stemple had sounded so positive, but he’d never seen the Girl, and I had.

I was surprised to find it was almost noon when I left the Candlewick; I’d been looking at Miss Flyte’s “effects” for over an hour. I really must have been in a kind of trance with these thoughts of Fern Queen and the Girl.
Her
girl, I thought, again with a little shocked feeling.

I was thinking all of this while walking from the Candlewick to the Rainbow, the next street away, past the Orion and Souder’s. I was so lost in these thoughts I guess I snubbed Helene Baum, for I turned when I heard her call my name from Souder’s doorway, where she was just going in or coming out. Was I getting so stuck-up I no longer spoke to people? That’s what she called out, right down the street, in case anybody else wanted to wonder if I was getting stuck-up too.

I didn’t care.

It was pretty clear the Sheriff knew, now, about the missing Fern Queen, and that it was the missing Fern Queen who’d been shot and left to lie in Mirror Pond.

I stood staring for a minute or two into the Rainbow’s plate glass window. I sighed with a kind of contentment despite my new knowledge. For it was lunchtime, and I wasn’t at the Hotel Paradise listening to Miss Bertha complain. Standing there, I had a couple of sharp stomach spasms. I wondered if I felt guilty about the sausage patties. No, it was because I was thinking about the chili and oyster crackers that I could see Charlene setting in front of the Woods.

Maud was behind the counter making a milk shake when I walked in. She waved and smiled. Shirl greeted me with a grunt, as always. She was positioning lemon meringue pie in the display case.

Both Ulub and Ubub said their version of hello and acted excited that I was there. Ulub got off his stool and took the one next to it, and it was clear they wanted me to sit down between them. Most of the people at the counter were turning to look at who or what had
got the Wood boys talking. Well, kind of talking. That I could excite anyone by my mere presence made me feel like a celebrity as I calmly took the stool offered me and asked Charlene for a cherry Coke. But Maud was already pumping the syrup into a large Coke glass.

“Good Lord,” she said, setting the glass in front of me. “You out of stir?”

I was surprised when Ubub heaved with laughter at that. The Woods weren’t dumb. It’s too bad other people didn’t realize it. I laughed along and told her, “There wasn’t anyone there for lunch.” I sipped my Coke, glad to be a celebrity for once in my life.

“Well, come on back and sit with me. The cook just made a fresh pot of chili.”

Chili was better when it wasn’t just cooked, better after it had sat for a day to blend the seasonings. Not many people seemed to understand that. Actually, I wasn’t really so hungry; it must have been all of that thinking I’d done. Maybe I had too much on my mind for chili. “Not right now,” I said. “Maybe later.”

Politely, I waited for another five minutes for Ulub and Ubub to finish their own chili, since I didn’t want them to think I was deserting them for something better. When they’d wiped their paper napkins across their mouths and balled them up, I told them I’d be seeing them soon. Both of them smiled big smiles and nodded.

Maud sat down beside me and said, “You must be sick as a dog, turning down chili. Or is your mother making something special for lunch?”

“It’s always special,” I said, seriously.

Maud looked at me for some moments, smiling, but in an odd, hurt kind of way. “I bet Chad never says that about
my
cooking.” She lit a cigarette.

I didn’t see Chad much around La Porte because he was usually away in school. And he spent some of the vacations with his father. I had always felt there was something very painful in all of this for Maud, especially being away from Chad, just as there was something painful about the Sheriff and his wife, Florence.

“Donny was saying the Sheriff went to Cold Flat Junction.” I wondered if he’d told Maud anything.

“I believe he found out who she was,” Maud answered.

“The dead woman?”

She blew a thin stream of smoke sideways so as not to get it in
my face. “ ‘Day-ed’? When’d you start talking like that? Sounds like
you’ve
been hanging around in Cold Flat Junction. ‘Day-ed.’ ”

“Who is she?”

“He didn’t say. Maybe because he wasn’t certain, or because he’d have to tell the family first.”

I was glad that now I didn’t have to worry about actually identifying Fern Queen for the Sheriff. Now I wanted to devote my thinking time to how to get back to Cold Flat Junction and into that yellow-shuttered house.

It did not surprise me that Miss Bertha was the reason I missed the train to Cold Flat Junction the next day. When her spaghetti and meatballs were served (this being the only dish on the lunchtime menu), she started in. First she told Mrs. Fulbright the meatballs were really that leftover poisoned sausage; then she raised her voice even more and told me; then she actually wrenched her way out of her chair and, bent over her cane, went to the door of the kitchen and shouted the news at my mother.

Finally, everybody got her settled down again, but by then it was after one and I would never be able to get down to the Spirit Lake station. I suppose I would have been more disappointed if I had worked out a plan. Only I hadn’t. I was stumped. Nothing I thought of, like knocking on the Queens’ door and saying I was collecting for the County Cripples, was very convincing. And it would have to be something that would get the Queens talking about the Devereaus and about Ben Queen, too.

But my mother’s spaghetti and meatballs did a lot by way of cheering me up, and after I’d eaten it and cleaned up Miss Bertha’s table (where she’d hidden her meatballs in the sugar bowl), I felt better and decided to walk up to Britten’s. Not only had the spaghetti made me feel better, it had started my brain humming again, and I had an idea about how to get to Cold Flat Junction.

Mr. Root was sitting on the bench, but Ulub and Ubub weren’t there. I was disappointed. I asked Mr. Root if he’d seen them, and he said no, not that day.

“I was hoping we could all go to Cold Flat Junction. They’ve got their trucks.”

“Yeah, they do. What you want to go there for?”

I didn’t want to tell him all I wanted was a ride from somebody, so I said it had to do with the Devereaus and I needed them to help out. I guess that sounded pretty mysterious, as he just kept looking at me and I knew he was trying to work this out.

Glumly, I had listened when the train went through; glumly, I sat there sucking on my cheek, thinking.

And then a miraculous thing happened. Father Freeman probably wouldn’t have called it a miracle, especially since it came from the First Union Tabernacle church. It was the bus. The bus from Cold Flat that came twice a week and then went back to Cold Flat.

While my plan was forming, it let off one person and then drove on. But I knew it made another stop—over there at the camp meeting ground just across from Greg’s. I’d have plenty of time to get over there.

“Mr. Root, I’ll see you later. I’m going over to get the bus.”

“Well, but I don’t think they let you on, you’re not one of theirs.”

But I was nearly flying down the bank to the highway while he was still talking. I heard him call out if he saw the Woods he’d tell ’em I was needing ’em.

In the hubbub of people leaving the big prayer meeting, no one paid a bit of attention to me going into the tent. There were a lot of kids running around (and getting smacked up the side of their heads for it). I just plucked up an extra prayer book—or whatever the little black book was that was lying on a folding chair—and then went out and stood with the others waiting for the bus. I’d say there were twenty-five or thirty-five standing around, talking among themselves. Occasionally one or another glanced at me, but not at all in a suspicious way, merely indifferent to me, or, from the ones who’d taken their religious training seriously, looking friendly and giving me a smile or two.

I looked holy and listened closely to whatever talk I could and decided Maud was right, for they did have a way of saying words like “say-ed” for “said” and even said “tooken” when they meant “took.” Unless they did mean “took
and.”

“. . . an’ I done tol’ her my mama’s vis-ut-un . . .”

“Visiting” was pronounced as if the person drew in her breath
and sucked in the second syllable with it, so it kind of got stuck in the back of her throat. I tried it out, “vis-ut-un,” kind of like a little hiccup. Or swallowing the second syllable.

I’d been concentrating so hard on this interesting way of talking that I barely registered the bus was standing there and I was at the door to it. I stepped up to where the lady driver was.

“Why, hullo, hon, I ain’t seen you before,” she said. “You never come over on the bus, did you?”

I cleared my throat and said, “No, ma’am, I never did.” I kept my voice kind of high and singsongy. Before she could ask—and I knew she would—I said, “My name’s Rae Jane and I’m cousin to the Queens. You know them?”

“Course I do. What—”

People were jostling to get around me, so I tried to bunch myself back where I wasn’t in their way. I said, “Well, it ain’t the Queens I’m vis-ut-un, it’s folks live in Flyback Holler.”

The driver was saying hello, hello, to people who boarded and not giving me her full attention, which was fine with me. I just kept on talking. “Like I said, I’m vis-ut-un the Stemples. They live in Flyback Hol-
ler
.” For I wanted to make sure she caught the way I said that.

“Um-hmm. Do your folks live . . . where?”

“Oh, my mama and my daddy’s day-ed.” I looked down at my shoes. A lady who’d just said hello to the driver heard me and glanced at me with a sympathetic shake of her head before she passed on to claim a seat.

The driver patted my arm. “Now, honey, never you mind, you just take yerself back to the back there and have a nice ride.”

“Thank you. Most kindly.” I tried not to skip to the back of the bus.

•   •   •

Well, about five miles out of town they started singing “I Once Was Lost in Sin,” singing and clapping, and I, of course, sang along with them, although the only version I knew was Brownmiller’s “I Once Was Lost in Gin,” dedicated to Lola Davidow, so I had to be careful. Mill and Will were always going to the camp meetings to listen to the hymns so they could go back to the Hotel Paradise and Brownmiller would make up new words. It was a good rainy-day pastime for them when they weren’t otherwise engaged. I was grateful they’d done it,
too, for that made the hymns familiar to me. At least the music was. Between the two of them, Will and Mill, it was like a single wildfire imagination that, once a twig of it was lit, would spread and suddenly burn the whole place down. I liked to warm myself in it, but I could never compete and always got the worst roles in their plays. They only let me play pigs and dogs and Igor—things that weren’t supposed to speak properly.