If Jack's in Love (31 page)

“I hate your brother.”

Her tears were making me wet.

She drew away and said, “I'm going to tell my parents what you just said.”

“I want you to.”

“What will happen to you?”

“To me? Why would anything happen? School will start and I'll go and people will make fun of me. I'm used to that. But you know what, Myra? I have a feeling things are gonna get better when I'm older.”

“Not me, I'll never be happy again,” she said.

Even then, even with my limited thirteen-year-old perspective, that struck me as a dismal thought for a girl to have. But it was true. I believed her. And I, Jack Witcher, I conceived at that moment a rage against my brother that has never quite left me, not even now. I wanted to hit him, punch him, kick his balls, claw his eyes, bite his ears, maybe cut him with the butcher knife.

I said, “You do what you have to do, Myra.”

“I'm sorry, Jack. I wish we could be friends.”

She pulled up the tail of her shirt and wiped her eyes, and I wiped mine on my arm. Our tears were more or less finished.

We gazed at each other for a long time, the way people can when they have cried together. Then she came close and kissed my cheek.

“Mom knows I'm here. I have to tell her everywhere I go now. She made Kathy follow me.”

Through the trees, where the curve began, someone, Kathy I suppose, was hanging around beside the road.

“I can't stay any longer. I'm sorry, I have to go now.”

“Okay. I understand.”

“Come on Rusty,” she said.

But Rusty stayed.

I went home to fight my brother. Maybe to kill him.

THAT WAS THE DAY I found out Stan was on the lam, after I got home and came to the conclusion that we'd been robbed. Then I saw that everything I owned was accounted for. Only Stan's stuff was missing: his clothes, his stereo player, his James Brown records. The essential things.

I called Mom at the Ben Franklin and she told me to go to the Taylors' to check if he was there. I cut through the woods, jumped the creek and surveyed the Taylor yard. There weren't any cars in the driveway and the house looked shut.

When I got back I phoned Mom and she said she would try to leave work early. Then I sat on the carmine sofa and waited. And then I got spooked. What if Stan hadn't gone on the lam? What if he came home? I pulled the butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and returned to the sofa.

I peeked through the window. Rusty, lying in the yard, inquisitively raised his head.

Mom came home at the usual time. By then Pop was home, and I took both of them to our bedroom.

“I don't know, maybe we did get robbed,” Pop said. “Why would a kid take his stereo with him if he was leaving?”

“It's portable,” I said, “you can pack it up and carry it.”

“But why would he just leave without saying anything?”

“Look Pop, all my stuff is here. What robber would come straight to this room and take only his stuff? And then not go to your room?”

“True.” Pop shook his head, thinking. “But would he be running through the streets with his clothes and his stereo player? He can't be carrying all that stuff, can he?”

“I'll bet Anya helped. Probably they loaded his stuff in the GTO.”

“We should go to the Taylors', maybe they're home by now.”

We got in the Ford and drove over.

Basil's Dodge was not in the driveway, but there was Tillie's Cadillac, still warm and ticking under the hood. We parked on the street and Tillie came to the door, newly coiffed and wearing a fine pearl necklace. She eyed our Ford with distaste and quickly appraised Mom's dress, but her demeanor was pleasant enough. She had just this second got home, she told us, she'd been to her hair and nail appointments downtown and stopped by Basil's office on the fifteenth floor of the NVB building and together they had gone to the tearoom at the Tabbot & Reeves department store for a slice of banana cream pie.

Pop was hanging back, awed by the majesty of the Taylor spread.

Mom got right to business. “We think Stan might have run away. His clothes and his stereo player are gone. I'd like to speak with Anya, maybe she knows where he is.”

“Well, her car's not here, can't you see? She must have gone out.”

“But Stan couldn't have carried that stuff by himself and we're thinking someone with a car must have helped. And Anya does have a car. . . .”

Tillie, nervously enlightened, kneaded her fingers and blinked her eyes.

“Why don't y'all come in?”

We walked through the cavernous front room and tacked up the steps to the second floor. The floors were hardwood, an oddity in that era of wall-to-wall carpeting, and we sounded like a small marching army.

Tillie brought us to Anya's room and, turning her back, swung the door open like the lady who reveals the prizes on a game show. We sheepishly hung in the hall while she stepped in before us.

She crossed directly to the walk-in closet. “My God, half her clothes are gone! Look, her green and yellow paisley minidress! And that blue blouse we bought at Tabbot & Reeves. And her jeans, her smocks!”

She turned to the bed. “Oh!”

She put her fingers to her mouth.

“What's the matter?” Mom said.

“Her Teddy is missing!”

We figured that must be bad. We shook our heads.

“She doesn't go anywhere without her Teddy.”

“They must have split together,” Pop observed.

“You mean run away from home?”

“Well that's what it looks like to me.”

“But why would she run away from home?”

We waited. We knew what was coming.

“It's that damn boy of yours, I told her to stay away from him.”

“He's not a damn boy,” Mom said.

“What's Officer Reedy's number? I'm calling the police right this minute!”

“Won't do much good,” Pop said, “she's old enough to go where she wants.”

“After what happened to the Joyner boy? I'm calling the police.”

“Don't go jumping to conclusions, that's all.”

“Her Teddy is gone, what other conclusion can there be?”

She left us alone. We were quiet a few moments and then Pop said, “I wonder how much a head start they got. They could be all the way to North Carolina if they been on the road two hours.”

“You sound like that's what you want,” Mom said.

Pop shrugged. “Well...when you gotta go you gotta go.” He gave me a wink.

“You know what makes me mad?” Mom said. “He promised me he would go to the police. He said he was going to tell them where he was when Gaylord vanished. He swore to me he would do that.”

“Must have changed his mind.”

Mom made a sound under her breath, and we heard Tillie on the phone, downstairs, spelling out Anya's name. “A-N-Y-A . . . No, it's not a Russian name, what difference could that possibly make?”

“I wonder why she didn't use this one,” Pop said, indicating the untouched Princess on the nightstand.

“That's Anya's private line,” I explained, “it's different from the one downstairs.”

“Well heck, you can call the cops on this just as good as any other.”

The mysteries of rich people were beyond our comprehension. Just take Anya's bed: that thing was big as a swimming pool. Its backboard looked like it was made out of the same material they used to produce the banquettes at Neuman's Ice Cream Parlor. And in the corner of the room stood a console stereo player made out of maple wood, with its lid open. Pop and I strolled over to examine it.

“No wonder they took Stan's stereo,” I said, “they could never have got this in a car.”

The downstairs phone jangled as it hung up, and Tillie called: “Excuse me! People! Would you like to come down?”

We descended to the enormous front room with the ski lodge ceiling.

Mom wandered over to look at the piano. Tillie asked if we wanted a Tab and we said no. This was business, not pleasure.

Mom asked Tillie if she knew how to play the piano.

“No, that daughter of mine is supposed to be the pianist in the family. First we bought her the thing, and then we spent a small fortune paying for lessons. But all she wants to do is to listen to the Beatles and the Doors. And now there's this colored boy Jimi Hendrix, that's all she talks about anymore.”

Mom was nodding, relating to what she was hearing. “Does he play this psychedelic music they're listening to?”

“Yes, those screaming guitars. And those lyrics about drugs.”

Mom and Tillie pursed their lips.

After a while we heard the rumble of a police cruiser as it pulled up in front of the house.

“I wonder if that's Deputy Dawg,” Pop said.

“Who's Deputy Dawg?” Tillie said. “Why are you making these tasteless jokes?”

We elected to greet Reedy in the yard. It always took him forever to get out of his car and Tillie was impatient to speak.

“My daughter appears to have run off with their son,” she hollered, dashing over the lawn.

Reedy called through the window, “Ma'am?”

We trailed Tillie to the cruiser.

“My daughter has run away, and so has their son. They went in her car. It's a candy-apple-red GTO. I can give you the license number, I have it written down in the house.”

“Yes ma'am. How old is your daughter?”

“Eighteen.”

Reedy looked at Pop and Mom.

“Your son went with her?”

“He's eighteen,” Pop said, “it's legal.”

Reedy cocked his head. “There isn't a whole lot I can do if she's of age.”

“Of course you can,” Tillie said, “you can find her and convince her to return.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Isn't it your job to find out?”

The cop met Mom's eyes. She was staring a hole through him. He raised his eyebrows and said, “Why would your son skip? What do you think must be going through his mind?”

“I wouldn't call it skipping,” Pop said. “When I was his age I run off all the time.”

“Spare us the sordid details,” Mom said.

Pop missed the sarcasm. He turned to Reedy with a furrowed brow, showing his concern. “Have they found the Joyner boy yet?”

“No sir, we're still looking.”

Reedy was watching my mother.

She said, “Why don't you take Jack home, I'd like to speak with Officer Reedy alone.”

Pop slowed down his gum-chewing. “What for?”

“I think it's time he learns what we found out from Stan.”

Pop's eyes grew large as buttons. His mouth halted, midchew. He nodded at Reedy, his way of offering an “Excuse me,” and then he said to Mom, “Could we have a word?”

He pulled her way up in the yard and began to whisper histrionically. We couldn't hear a word they were saying, all we could do was watch. It was like they were arguing in pantomime. Pop was uneasy, and Mom had lowered her Kirby brow. There wasn't going to be any talking her out of what she was set on doing, I could tell that a mile away.

Tillie shrugged and returned to Reedy. “They might be heading to Pennsylvania. My sister lives there, she married Paul Thatcher of Harrisburg.”

“Then you know what you should do, ma'am? You should phone your sister and tell her to be on the lookout for your daughter.”

“That's not very helpful. A crime is being committed and you don't even seem to care. That boy could have kidnapped her.”

“Excuse me, but doesn't your daughter have relations with the Witcher boy?”

“What do you mean, ‘relations'? What are you insinuating?”

“Well, isn't she his girlfriend?”

“I don't think I like your tone.”

Reedy was only halfway paying attention, anyway; he kept craning his head to see how Mom and Pop's dispute was progressing.

I wandered off. The evenings were growing shorter and there was a blue tinge to the air. When I got to the corner I looked behind. Mom and Pop were still at it. Tillie was still berating Reedy for ignoring her.

I turned off Clark and headed home. Rusty, lying in front of Witcher House, labored to his feet and came loping along to greet me. . . .

A half-hour later Pop stomped through the door.

“Your mother's telling Deputy Dawg no one knows Stan's whereabouts at the time Gaylord disappeared.”

I got up from the sofa and went to the window. Reedy's patrol car was idling in front of the house. The Ford was in the driveway and Mom was in the front seat of the cruiser next to Reedy. Rusty was at the edge of the yard looking in.

I turned around. Pop's hands were trembling. He lit a cigarette and stared at me wildly.

THEY FOUND THE BODY a week or so later: Pop and I saw it on the news.

That was when they swore out the warrant.

Stan, it turned out, gave the cops quite a run. By the time they busted into the crash pad in San Francisco where he'd been holing up (we learned about that later) he was long gone.

Months passed, and the murder of Gaylord was no longer news. No one was interested outside of the families and a few neighbors. During this period Pop and Mom separated. I don't know the details. He split in the night while I was sleeping. Mom said he was staying in a cheap hotel in Southside. She didn't know if he was coming back.

The upshot was, we were now living in the house by ourselves. It didn't seem any bigger with just the two of us, but at least I didn't have to worry about being killed for snitching. Pop and Snead were no longer playing the blues in the front yard, which must have made Mr. Pudding happy; and the junk at the side of the house had ceased accumulating, which no doubt pleased Mr. Kellner. So I guess everyone was happy.