Leaving Eden (19 page)

I put the dishes in the sink and was squirting detergent on them when the phone rang. I picked it right up, hands still wet, sure it was Spy.

“Tallie?” Rula said.

“Hi,” I said. Rula hadn’t called since school ended in June, and I couldn’t imagine why she was calling now. “What’s up?”

“Have you heard? About Spy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was on the radio.” I didn’t want to talk about it.

“Isn’t it awful?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“God, it’s so creepy. It makes me sick to think about it.”

“Me, too.”

“My Daddy says it didn’t surprise him a bit. He never liked him.”

“Your daddy didn’t like Spy?”

“Jeez, Tallie. Where’re your brains? Mr. Reynolds. He didn’t like Mr. Reynolds.”

“Oh.”

“But I can’t stop thinking about poor Sarah. It’s soooo creepy.”

“Rula,” I said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“I thought you said you knew.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“You don’t know about Sarah and her daddy?”

“Shit, Rula,” I practically screamed. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Stop driving me crazy and just tell me.”

According to Rula’s daddy, who worked nights mopping floors at the courthouse and county jail, Sheriff Craw’d been talking about Spy and how he’d shot his daddy.

“They
think
he shot his daddy,” I said.

“Oh,” Rula said, “he did it, no lie. He did it ’cause Sarah killed herself, just like some of the girls at school were always whispering. She drowned herself because her daddy’d been coming to her bed,” Rula said.

Rula had that wrong. She had to. “But she was only eleven,” I said.

“Exactly,” Rula said. “Don’t you want to puke just thinking about it?”

I couldn’t even answer. My mind shut down. What I wanted to do was go back to when before Rula called, back to when I hadn’t heard anything, back to before the picture of Sarah and Mr. Reynolds took hold in my mind. Rula kept on talking. Spy had known about it, she said, and he hated his daddy for what he’d done to Sarah.

I just couldn’t talk about it anymore.

“You still there?” Rula asked.

“I’m here.”

“ ’Cause there’s more. Spy told the sheriff that their mama’d known, too.”

“Mrs. Reynolds knew about it?”

“According to Spy. But then Mrs. Reynolds told the sheriff it was all a bunch of lies. Every bit of it. She said she didn’t know why Spy had killed his daddy or why he was making up all those terrible lies. She said he was clearly disturbed but he was her son and she’d see he got the best counsel money could buy. And that was all my daddy heard,” Rula said, finally out of breath.

The black place in my chest hurt so, I thought I might be having a heart attack. “Gotta go,” I told Rula. She’d be mad I hung up like that, but I couldn’t help it.

I had to sit quiet-like for a while, until the stone sitting in my chest eased a bit. The ballgame was blaring in the living room and beneath the sound, I heard the soft snoring of my daddy. I thought back to when I used to wish Mr. Reynolds was my daddy, and I came as close to crying as I had since my mama got sick. My daddy was weak, no question, but he was a good man. He wasn’t rich and he didn’t wear fancy suits, but he’d loved my mama as much as it was possible to love someone and that was his strength and his weakness. Mr. Reynolds had a weakness, one I could hardly bear thinking on, but his wasn’t born of any strength. His was pure evil, and just then sitting there thinking of my little friend Sarah, I was glad Spy’d shot his daddy. I wished he’d shot his mama, too.

Tallie’s Book

Vinegar water washes out bloodstains.

Don’t believe everything you hear.

There are two kinds of weakness: one
born of evil and one born of good.

nineteen

As soon as Daddy left for the mill on Monday, I set out for Martha Lee’s. I figured it would take me about an hour to bike over to Lynchburg and of course I had to stop by Martha Lee’s on the way. The only hitch in the plan—the huge hitch— would be if Martha Lee was home, preventing me from taking the money. The whole idea that I was turning into a major league thief made me such a wreck, I practically got in an accident turning onto the main road. As I passed the Tyree place, the sisters were on the porch. They lifted their hands to wave as I went by and I wondered if later they’d tell anyone they remembered seeing me ride by. I figured Martha Lee’d call Sheriff Craw when she discovered the missing cash and he’d go snooping around. I was hoping he’d think some tramp broke in. Or that it was someone needing money for drugs, like the reporters thought when Mr. Reynolds got shot. The idea of an official investigation got me so riled, I almost got in another accident turning onto High Tower Road. By the time I got to Martha Lee’s and saw the pickup was gone, I honestly didn’t know whether I was relieved or not.

I found the key and let myself in. She’d fried up some bacon for breakfast, and the greasy smell hung thick in the air, making me queasy. One thing about Martha Lee, she loved pork. All kinds. Bacon. Ham steak. Pork barbecued or roasted, even sliced cold, which I personally couldn’t stand ’cause of the way the fat coated your mouth. One time when she and Mama were playing gin rummy she said, “I’m so hungry I could crawl up a pig’s ass and eat a pork sandwich,” which made Goody slap down her magazine and stamp out of the room. Martha Lee was always saying things like that in front of Goody just to get her goat. The time she said she was sweating like a whore in church, Goody near turned purple.

The gray envelope from the bank was on the kitchen shelf, right where I’d last seen it. Taking it was harder than I’d imagined. It was one thing to steal fifteen dollars and another to take a thousand. I briefly reconsidered, thinking maybe I’d call Uncle Grayson. Hadn’t Mama said I could always count on him? I just wasn’t sure I could count on him for that much money without him insisting on an explanation. Plus, even if he gave to it me, I’d have to wait at least a week for the money to arrive from Atlanta. My choices seemed clear. I could take the money from Martha Lee and pick up my ticket for L.A. or I could leave it where it was and head back home, probably staying in Eden for the rest of my natural life. Finally I convinced myself it was just a loan I was taking and I had full intentions of paying it back.

That wad of money heated up my pocket all the way to Lynchburg. Still, none of it seemed real until the lady at the counter handed me the ticket. That was when it hit that I was actually going to L.A. The lady explained that the flight had two connections—one in D.C. and one in Denver—and was scheduled to depart at nine-forty, Wednesday morning. Then she told me I should plan on arriving an hour before my flight and that I’d need some identification—driver’s license or birth certificate or something—to show at the gate before they’d let me on the plane.

“No problem,” I said, as natural as you please, like I flew to L.A. every day of the week.

On my way back to Eden I stopped at the dollar store and bought myself a pocketbook. I still had six hundred and forty-three dollars of Martha Lee’s money and I didn’t want to risk losing it. I figured I’d be needing every penny when I arrived in Hollywood.

The rest of the day hung heavy, and I was riding by the Eden library when I was struck by an idea straight out of the blue. I parked the Raleigh, marched straight in, and asked old Mrs. Boles if they had the yearbooks from Eden High.

“Yearbooks?” she said, squinting at me through glasses thick as half-inch plywood. She was so old, I swear she must have been librarian back when Easter Davis was a child. “That’d be the Resources Room,” she said. “You’ll find it over there, directly beyond the nonfiction department.” Then she pointed me off to this little section that was divided by one of those movable partitions, and it turned out that the “Resources Room” was really comprised of three long shelves. There were a bunch of telephone directories, one dictionary and a world atlas, a set of encyclopedias that was missing the second and seventh volumes, and
The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature.
Way off to the far end I caught sight of a bunch of yearbooks that I recognized by the blue and gold writing on the spine. To my immense disappointment, there were only the ones from the past five years. I headed back to the front desk.

“Did you find them, honey?” Mrs. Boles said.

“I found a few,” I told her. “What I was really looking for was the old ones.”

“Old ones?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell you. We only have them from the last five years.”

Well, I could see
that.
“Where would I find the old ones?”

“Well, we don’t keep them here,” she said. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. You might want to try over at county historic museum.”

“The historic museum?” I said.

“That’s right.” She squinted up at the big clock behind the desk. “You hurry over there right now and you might get there before Mr. Beidler closes up for the day.”

When I arrived, Mr. Beidler was sitting at a card table. Before he’d answer a single question, he made me put a dollar in the donations jug and sign the official visitors book. According to the book, I was the first visitor he’d had in more than a week. I was writing out Tallie Brock when it hit me that that would probably be the last time I’d be signing my old name. Once I hit Hollywood I’d be Taylor Skye. The idea made me smile.

“Yearbooks?” Mr. Beidler said when I repeated my request. “What year would you be looking for, little lady?”

“Nineteen sixty-five,” I said.

“Well, I think I can help you with that.” It took him about two hours to make it up the stairs and to the section where they stored the yearbooks. Then it took him about another two hours to locate the correct year. Finally he slid it out and set it on the table. “Now, when you’re done with it, you leave it right here,” he said, tapping the table. “Right here. I’ll put it back.”

“All right,” I said.

“Be sure about that,” he said. “We don’t want things going back on the wrong shelf.”

Honestly, sometimes old people just killed me. When I’d promised to follow his exact directions, practically swearing an oath not to return the book to the shelf, he went back down the stairs, which only took him about an hour going down. Finally I opened the book. I was operating on instinct, and Mama always said if you trusted your instincts, they wouldn’t let you down.

I flipped open to the A’s and found Mama’s picture straight away, the same one the
Times
had printed with her obituary. Beneath the photo there was a list of everything Mama’d done, including her four years in the Drama Club and being Queen of the Prom and Homecoming, too. It hurt my throat just to look at it, that burning kind of hurt, like when you’re coming down with a real bad cold. After a while, I flipped back to the first page and started through the whole book, taking my time and checking every picture. I found him in the W’s. His full name was Gordon Allen Wheeler. The only Wheeler I knew was that stuck-up Ashley, and I wondered if she was related to him. For sure, I’d never heard of him, and sure as shooting I’d never seen him before, except for that photo with Mama. According to the yearbook, he’d been class treasurer, played baseball and football, and had been captain of the debating team. I liked that about him. Brains and brawn. A good match for Mama. I knew I could probably go to jail for what I was about to do, but that didn’t stop me. I just ripped the page right out, folded it up, and stuck it in my new pocketbook. I left the book on the table and went down to find batty old Mr. Beidler. He was back at the card table.

“You all done up there?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Did you leave the book out on the table like I told you?”

I said I had—neglecting to mention that I’d ripped out a page—and then I asked him if he’d ever heard of a boy named Gordon Wheeler. Gordon Allen Wheeler.

Mr. Beidler repeated the name twice, staring up at the ceiling like he expected to find the answer written there. “Name sounds familiar,” he said after a few minutes of checking the acoustic tiles.

“Class of sixty-five,” I said.

He shuffled over to this filing cabinet, pawing through until he located the right folder. “Yup,” he said after he’d looked over a couple of pages. “Here he is right here. Gordon Allen Wheeler.”

My fingers pure itched to grab the folder right out of his hands. With a name to go on, I was figuring it would be easy to track him down, even if he had left Eden. And that was when Mr. Beidler told me where to find him, for all the good it would do me. The Baptist Cemetery, he said. Then he told me that Gordon Wheeler had been killed over in Vietnam. Six months after he graduated from Eden. Thinking about it, remembering the picture of Mama sitting with him in the fire-red car, I had to wonder what would have happened if Gordon Wheeler hadn’t died. Would my mama have ended up with my daddy? It was weird to think how close I’d come to not even being born.

Tuesday I went to work, same as usual. As soon as I walked through the door, I got busy with the regular chores—folding towels and such—and tried to avoid Raylene. I was sure she’d be able to read my plans plain on my face. I needn’t have worried. No one was paying the least bit of attention to me. Spy’s murder confession was the main topic of conversation, and the women were mostly talking about Mrs. Reynolds. Clear as springwater she wasn’t winning any popularity contests.

“Never did like her,” Hattie Jones said, going through a roll of Tums like they were peanuts. “Always ‘yes ma’am-ing’ me to death and acting like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

“Always did act better than anyone else,” Easter Davis said. “That woman believed her farts smelled sweet.”

“Do you think she knew what was going on between him and the girl?” Raylene said.

I knew she was talking about what Spy had said about his daddy and Sarah.

“I just can’t imagine how a woman could know what was going on right in her own house, right in front of her nose, and pretend she didn’t,” Hattie said.

“I’d a thrown his ass right out the front door,” Easter Davis said. “I don’t care how much money he had.”

It made me sad to think about what Spy had said about why he’d killed his daddy. I pictured Sarah smiling at everyone as she stood in front of the school auditorium in her pretty dress with the wide lavender sash, the same one they’d buried her in. I remembered her at the spelling bee, acting so confident, like she had nothing more important on her mind than where to place the vowels, sailing right through every word Miss Banks gave her: Odyssey. Eucalyptus. Resplendence. Decoupage, a word I couldn’t spell if I had the dictionary to help me. I remembered the times we sat together on the bus rides to swim meets. All those times she might have said something and didn’t. Then I wondered if I’d been her, if my daddy had been doing what hers had, if I would have told anyone either. I pictured Mr. Reynolds dressing up in his suit and shaking hands with the teachers at the school picnic, and cutting the ribbon to the new chamber building, not giving the least sign that at night he was going to his own daughter’s bed. Deception ran deep in that family. Then I thought about Spy setting to go off to UVA and becoming a lawyer, and kissing me like he meant it, all the time planning on killing his daddy. My mama told me once that a person could never tell what was going on in another person’s house or in his mind. Experience was proving this true as a plumb line.

Just about then, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, and I looked the same as usual. If Raylene or Lenora looked over at that moment, they’d see me sweeping up and preparing to water the ivy, and nothing about me would indicate in the least that I’d stolen more than a thousand dollars from my mama’s best friend and that right at that moment hidden in my closet was a packed suitcase and a new black bag holding a ticket to L.A.

It was spooky to think about. It made me wonder if everyone had a secret self. A secret story. But if it was possible to hide what you’d done and what you were thinking, how was it possible to ever trust anyone? Thinking about all this made me get real quiet, and Raylene asked if I was feeling all right.

“Just thinking,” I said.

She said I was looking a little peaked.

“Really,” I said. “I’m okay.”

“You thinking about that boy?” she asked. “You knew him, didn’t you?”

“Do you think he’ll go to prison?” I asked.

“No need to worry about that,” Raylene said. “Rich folks don’t go to jail.”

I took comfort in her words, but she would prove to be wrong. Sometimes rich people did land themselves in jail, and all the high-priced lawyers in the world couldn’t prevent it.

Easter Davis was under the dryer, and Lenora was putting the last of the wave solution on Hattie. Raylene went and poured herself a cup of coffee, then checked the schedule. I thought she’d forgotten about me, but the next thing she told me to go and sit at one of the sinks. She said she had a half hour before the next set. She said that wasn’t enough time for her to do a foil, but she could give me a shampoo.

“You sure?” I said. I loved having a shampoo. Some people can’t stand being touched, but not me. I lay back and let her get to work. She’d done the first rinse and was just working up the suds again when the phone rang. Lenora got to it first.

“It’s for you,” she yelled to Raylene. “It’s Jackson.”

Jackson was Raylene’s husband. Her
first
husband, she always told people, when she talked about him. Like she was auditioning for another one, though everyone in Eden knew Raylene would never leave Jackson. Easter Davis always laughed when she heard Raylene say that, and she’d tell her she’d better get busy if she wanted to beat her record. Easter liked to say she’d had five husbands, three of them her own. Raylene said that was just talk.