Runny03 - Loose Lips (38 page)

Because of the unseasonable heat no one wore a raincoat. The drizzle felt good. Chessy, Pearlie, and Nickel trolled out of a little flat-bottomed boat. Sheriff Harper Wheeler and Noe Mojo moved faster; their boat had a hull bottom, and the outboard motor was bigger.

“Daddy?”

“What, honey?”

“Will the fish bite?”

“Not today.”

“O.B. says rain’s the best fishing.” She quoted the stableman.

“He’s right, but we’re looking for a truck.”

“Do trucks swim?”

Pearlie smiled. “Not this one.”

“Oh.” She dropped her hand into the cool water and watched the small waves.

Fannie Jump Creighton drove down the road to the small dock. She rolled down her window. “How long you been out here, boys?”

“Sunup,” Noe answered.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Haven’t found squat. Why waste a nickel?” Harper Wheeler replied.

She checked her diamond-encrusted wristwatch. “About time for lunch. You want to come in or you want me to bring you something from town?”

“We’ll be in. Just another minute or two.” Harper shifted his pipe to the other side of his mouth. It wasn’t lit, but sucking on it soothed him.

“Daddy?”

“What, honey?”

“There’s a big fish over there.” She pointed, the water dripping off her forefinger.

“That’s nice.”

“Look.” She sounded cross, because he wasn’t paying attention to her fish.

“Where?”

“There. Bet it’s a giant catfish.”

“Bet it’s not.” He waved to Harper. “Buddy, over here.”

As Harper and Noe approached, the small waves slapped against the side of the flatboat.

“Over there.” Chessy pointed.

Pearlie squinted. “Whatever it is, it’s big.”

“It’s a whale,” Nickel said authoritatively.

“Nicky saw it first.” Chester praised his girl.

“Hard to see at all in the rain.” Harper grumbled as the rain fell harder now.

“Why don’t I drop over a hook?” Noe sensibly suggested.

He lofted the hook over his head, a circle, then delicately cast it into the deep side of the creek. A moment later he tugged. “Got something.”

It took the rest of the afternoon with Harper commandeering Yashew Gregorivitch’s tow truck. They pulled the rusty truck out of the creek. The words “Rife Canning” on the side had been painted over. The license plate was missing.

Fannie, mouth agape, stared as the truck was hauled up from its watery parking space.

“How’d it get down here?” she asked.

“Well, it was bound to drift some in seven years, even though it’s heavy. Remember, we had all that rain the last couple of springs.”

“You’d think someone would have seen it.”

“Not if whoever drove it dumped it in the deepest part of the creek, which would be off Toad Suck Ferry.” The old ferry station was about a mile and a half north of the meat plant and Sans Souci. No longer in use, the station was located in the widest part of the creek and the deepest water was around it.

Fannie slowly walked around the dangling truck. “That’s it. I swear it. Sure a waste of a good machine, too, the walleyed son of a bitch.” She remembered Nickel. “I’m sorry, Nicky. Aunt Fannie needs her mouth washed out with soap.”

“Why would the Rifes have wanted to burn you out?” Harper fanned himself with his sheriff’s cowboy hat.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh come on, Noe, you must have pissed them off.” Harper was irritated that he still hadn’t solved the motive behind the 1941 arson attack.

“I hardly even talk to the Rifes. Why would they have been mad at me, other than the obvious?”

“That’s not it.” Pearlie leaned against the tow truck.

“There’s got to be a reason, dammit!” Harper put his hands on his hips. “People don’t burn each other out for no reason.”

“It was Pearl Harbor.” Noe shrugged.

“Daddy, what’s Pearl Harbor?” Nickel whispered.

“I’ll tell you later.”

She reached up for his hand, satisfied that he would keep his promise.

“You don’t know for certain that it was the Rifes. It could have been an employee of theirs or someone who stole their truck and had a grudge against Noe. Or, well, maybe it really was Pearl Harbor. After all, that’s what we thought at the time,” Fannie said.

“If a truck had been stolen from Rife Canning, don’t you think I’d have heard a squawk the minute it was missing?” Harper shook his head. “No, no, those two were in on this.” Then he added, “Well, boys, we found our truck. Just what comes next is a point of solemn conjecture.”

“Oh, for Chrissake.” Fannie spit on the ground, an unladylike gesture but a fitting one, for Popeye Huffstetler was bearing down on them in his old car.

“That blistering idiot!” Harper slapped his hat hard against
his leg. Chessy picked up Nickel, placing her on his broad shoulders. “Hansford used to say Popeye could screw up a wet dream.”

The men and Fannie exploded in laughter.

“Daddy, what’s a wet dream?”

“Uh—I’ll tell you later, honey.”

“You know, Hansford said something a little strange when I questioned him. What the hell did he say that time?”

Popeye pulled up, reporter’s notebook in hand as he switched off the engine with the other hand. He was firing questions before he had both feet on the ground. When he caught sight of Pearlie he blurted out, “Louise wouldn’t give me a quote about Maizie causing a disturbance yesterday. And—”

“Huffstetler, shut up!” Pearlie’s face reddened.

“Hey, news is news and your daughter was exhibiting herself at the
Clarion
and—” He didn’t finish because Pearlie socked him with a right cross.

“You print a word about my girl’s troubles and I’ll knock your teeth out, you stupid shit!” Pearlie advanced on the staggering Popeye, whose notebook and pencil lay in the sandy loam.

“Now Paul, you have to realize that everything people in this town do or say is news and I have a responsibility to the citizens to—” Backing away, he fell over a log.

Paul straddled him, fists doubled up. “I won’t kick a man while he’s down, which is more than I can say for you.”

Popeye scrambled to his feet. “News is news,” he repeated. “It’s all over town. Give me your side of the story.”

Pearlie lashed out with a left jab, his hands fast for an amateur. Popeye ducked and moved sideways.

Harper, in no hurry to intervene, ambled toward Pearlie. “Pearlie, let me handle this.”

Chessy was now on the other side of Pearlie. “Come on, Pearlie. I’ll carry you home.”

“Paste him away, Uncle Pearlie!” Nickel clapped her hands with glee.

Pearlie, tears in his eyes, let Chester put his arm around him and guide him back to the car.

Fannie waited at the car.

Nobody heard what Harper said to the reporter but they heard Popeye’s loud “Yes, sir.”

The sheriff rejoined the group. “Noe, I told Popeye he can come when we dig around your plant. That suit you?”

“Since when are we digging around the plant?” Noe tilted his head, puzzled.

“Since I remembered what Hansford Hunsenmeir told me.” He hitched up his belt and sauntered past, winking at Nickel.

I
’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say you were.” Mary checked her small wrist-watch as they strolled along the tree-lined street.

“If I’m that boring, just go home.”

“Don’t be tetchy. It’s close to Billy’s quitting time.”

“Well, I am tetchy. Everyone’s staring at me with goggle eyes. Okay, so I took my clothes off and ran around the parking lot. I didn’t shoot anyone.”

“No.”

“Well—” Maizie noticed that Orrie and Noe Mojo had painted the shutters of their house dark green. Slanting rays of sunlight fell across the enticing green of the lawn. “When did they do that?”

“The week you were in New York. Billy painted it for them, making up for the times he comes to work late.” Mary sighed. “Daddy gets on his nerves sometimes and he gets on Daddy’s nerves.”

“He’s surprised everyone,” Maizie stated, not indicating exactly how Billy had surprised people.

“Not as much as you have.”

Maizie shrugged and turned on her heel to head back down the street.

Mary hurried to catch up, reaching for her sister’s elbow. “I didn’t mean to sound snippy. God, I hope I don’t sound like Mom.”

“No. She keeps jamming those pills down my throat. I spit them out when she leaves the room. Boy, they have a bitter taste.”

“Nothing is worse than milk of magnesia.”

“That’s the truth.” A blue jay squawked overhead.

“I love this time of year. Billy and I like to walk out in the moonlight and smell the leaves turning.”

“No one is ever going to fall in love with me.” Maizie cast down her eyes.

“That’s not true.”

“Would you fall in love with a woman who took her clothes off and ran naked around the
Clarion?”

“I don’t know.” Mary hesitated. “Why’d you do it?”

“Felt like it.” She took a giant step forward. “You know what it is, Mary? I’m bored. Ever since I can remember, someone’s been telling me do this, do that, say this, say that, don’t get your dress dirty, wash your hands, don’t talk with your mouth full, don’t air your dirty linen in public, don’t kiss on the first date, don’t hang
out with the wrong sort, blah, blah, blah—I hate it. I hate listening to all these old farts talk about the past. Is there one square foot of Runnymede that isn’t drenched in somebody’s memories?”

Mary, not an inquiring sort of person, was surprised by her sister’s outburst. “Gee, I never thought of that.”

“A thousand invisible threads are tying me down.”

“If you don’t have something tying you down, you float off.” Mary nervously laughed.

“You have Billy and the boys.”

“Yes …I just wish we had more money.”

“That’s another thing I’m sick of: money, money, money. Ever since I can remember, Momma has worried about money. And when she had that damned old beauty salon she’d tote up the money from the cash register every single day. Remember? She’d stuff nickels in red cardboard tubes and the bills in a canvas tote and hurry to the bank. Money, money, money!”

“You know how Momma is.”

“She wants me to be just like her.”

“She’s like that with everyone. It’s not you.”

“Well, I’m sick of it.”

“Maizie, you can be sick of it but you don’t have to take your clothes off and you don’t have to gobble like a turkey.”

Maizie exploded with laughter. “I do that to drive her crazy. Scares her.”

This stopped Mary in her tracks; she was scandalized. “That’s mean.”

“Payback.”

“Why are you so mad at Mom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Forget it. Don’t let her get to you.”

“Easy for you. You don’t live with her anymore.”

“You don’t have to live with her either if you get a real job.”

“What in the hell am I going to do in Runnymede?”

“You could teach regular.”

“I didn’t go to teachers’ college.”

“Work for the Yosts. They need help in the bakery.”

“Millard’s a lech.”

“He is?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s got to be something.”

“You don’t have a worry.”

“I do so have worries,” Mary protested. “We’ve got so little money I’m working part-time at the Bon-Ton.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, you know what you’re doing. I don’t know anything. I feel lost, kind of, even though I know where I am.”

As they approached the house, Mary’s step lightened. Billy’s red beat-up truck was rounding the corner.

“What’s he say about me?” Maizie sullenly asked.

“Nothing. Billy’s not like that.” Mary thought a moment, then said hurriedly before he reached the curb, “Whatever he saw over there in Okinawa …” She held up her palms, an involuntary gesture, and left the thought unfinished. “Small stuff, he doesn’t pay attention to.”

“Lose his wild streak?”

“He’s full of energy but he’s different now—”

“You’re lucky.”

“You will be too.”

Maizie gobbled, then giggled.

“That’s awful!”

L
ouise slept in a wicker chair on her screened-in porch. The
pitter-patter
of rain on wisteria vines climbing on posts framing the porch had lulled her to sleep. Doodlebug dozed at her feet.