The Day of Small Things (34 page)

(Birdie)

D
or’thy … it’s Birdie.… I know I already talked to you once this morning.… Listen here, I just had a call from Bernice and her boy saw Prin Ridder coming out of a convenience store up near Wildcat Reach.… Wildcat Reach … No, that name didn’t mean nothing to me neither. Bernice says it’s one of them high-priced new places fer rich folk … up near Yancey County …”

Dorothy goes to hollering all manner of questions in my ear and, quick as I try to answer one, she’ll ask another.

“No, Bernice’s boy, he didn’t talk to her … said it wasn’t till the vehicle had pulled out that it come to him just who that was … ’cording to Bernice, he said it’d been quite a while since he seen Prin and she’d changed right much.… Well, I asked that and Bernice asked him and he said the vehicle was heading on up the road and that there ain’t nothing at all up that way ’cepting that Wildcat
Reach place.… Well, I reckoned you’d say that.… I’ll be ready everwhen you want to come after me.”

“Oh, Birdie, if this isn’t an answer to prayer! At least we know they’re still in the area. I was fearful she might have taken him who knows where. Did Bernice’s boy mention if he might of seen Calven?”

Dorothy has been jabbering a mile a minute ever since she picked me up. We are headed out to that Wildcat Reach place, and if I’m not mistaken, she is going a good bit over the speed limit.

“Now, Dor’thy,” I tell her, “if you’re stopped for speeding, it’s going to take a good bit of extra time. If it was me, I believe I’d slow down some.”

She gives me a look but she slows down considerable and I answer her question.

“All Bernice’s boy said was that there was this big white van with them dark windows and a sign for some kind of cleaning service on the side. He said Prin had on these tight-fitting coveralls and he saw her climb in on the passenger side. So, stands to reason they was somebody else driving. But it’s not likely that was Calven, now is it? Far as I know the boy’s not learned how yet, has he?”

Dorothy is staring down the road and biting her lip, trying hard not to cry but I see a tear slipping down her cheek just the same.

“He had his heart set on getting his learner’s permit soon as he took this driving course at the high school but I told him he’d have to wait till he was older. I don’t know if he thought I was just being hateful—I reckon it seemed so to him. But I was fearful of him getting hurt. You know boys that age ain’t got no sense—”

She stops herself, and I reckon she is remembering my boy—who never could have gotten a driving license.

“Oh, Birdie,” she says, and now it is a good thing she slowed down for the tears just bust loose, “I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t mean nothing, honey.” I pat her arm. “And Calven knows how much you love him—now don’t take on so. Seems things is beginning to work for us—could be we’ll find Prin and Calven up at that Wildcat Reach.”

Dorothy sniffles some more and wipes her eyes. “I believe the turnoff is right up here. And then there ought to be a sign—according to what that feller back at the gas station said.”

She slows the car some more and we go off onto a smaller road where there’s another sign with gold letters.
Wildcat Reach
, it says,
1.3 miles
. There is a sorry-looking little store up ahead with a few cars out front but no white van.

Dorothy turns in to the bare-dirt parking lot where there is a beat-up old yellow Ford off to the side, a black pickup truck, and one of them little motor scooters like folks ride when their licenses have been taken away for drunk driving.

“You just stay put, Birdie,” she says, “and I’ll run in and see does anyone in there know of a cleaning service in the area. If we could find out the name on the van Prin was riding in …”

I don’t want to miss nothing, so I follow Dorothy into the store. There is a tired-looking woman behind the counter, setting on a high stool and drinking a cold drink. This place has the usual line of such little stores—things like paper diapers you’d maybe run out of and not want to
drive far to get, lunch food like crackers and Vienna sausage and sardines, and big old bags of livestock feed stacked over to the side. There is two fellows lounging right comfortable on them bags of feed, just loafering away the time, I reckon, and they stop their talk to look at us when we come through the door.

Dorothy marches right up to the counter and, without even a howdy, sets in to quizzing. “I wonder could you help me,” she asks the woman. “I need to get up with some folks who run a cleaning service around here. They drive a big white van and I thought I had their phone number but I believe I must have copied it wrong and now I can’t even remember what their name was. Law, I hate it when I can’t remember things, don’t you?”

Dorothy smiles real friendly at the woman, who don’t answer right off but takes another swallow of the cold drink first.

“Naw,” she says at last, giving her mouth a wipe with the back of her hand. “Don’t nothing come to mind. You might take a look at that bulletin board over there—they’s all kinds of business cards and such stuck up there.”

Dorothy don’t give up, just goes on smiling. “I believe they might of stopped here this morning—a white van and a woman in coveralls?”

Just then one of the loaferers calls out, “They was a woman in coveralls come in here two-three hours back of this. Good-looking little thing. Earl here follered her outside. Maybe he can help you.”

Dorothy starts over to quiz Earl about this and I follow after her. Poor old Earl don’t have time to get up from the sack of starter and grower crumbles he’s setting on afore he finds two old women pestering him with one question
after another. He kindly draws up and sends a dark look his friend’s way.

“Was it a white van she was in?” Dorothy wants to know. “Was there a name on the side?”

I think she sounds awful anxious for somebody who’s just looking for a phone number but I reckon Earl will just take her for another quizzy old woman, used to poking her nose into everything.

The other fellow laughs and jabs his elbow into his friend’s side. “C’mon, Earl, what kind of a vehicle was that sweet thing riding in?”

Earl shifts his tobacco from one cheek to the other and says something under his breath. Then he speaks up. “Big white van—like you said. And they
was
a sign on the side … one of them stick-on kind … something about cleaning but I disremember the name.” He reaches for his spit can. “Seems to me like it was to do with motor-sickles …”

Dorothy keeps on asking one question after another—who else was in the van and did he see a boy and all like that—but Earl can’t tell her one thing we don’t already know. So I go on and take a look at that bulletin board by the front door. There is all manner of notices stuck up—church singings and a cakewalk and lost hunting dogs—and I have to lift up some of the papers on the top to see the ones what’s underneath.

When I see the card for the cleaning service, I pull it out from under the notice about firewood for sale and tack it on top for Dorothy to find. Then I go pick up some Nabs, and after I pay for them, I ask where is the restroom. The woman points me towards a door off to the side.

The restroom is about the size of a closet—just room
for a commode and the littlest sink you ever saw. I am washing my hands when I notice there on the side of the sink a long white hair that is dark on one end. And I can hear Dorothy saying,
Prin’s hair is bleached most white. And she has those ugly dark roots.…

My fingers reach out but I stop. If I pick up that hair … knowing full well how it could be used to give me the power over her … could be used to draw her to me …

And here, though I thought I had made up my mind already, I find I ain’t sure.… There is a dim little mirror there over the basin and I look myself in the eye.
You made a promise
.

And the girl in the mirror whispers back.
There was an older promise. Remember
.

Her and me is facing one another down when someone taps on the door.

“Birdie honey? You all right?”

The girl is gone and the face in the mirror is the old wrinkledy one I still ain’t used to, though it’s looked back at me for many a year now.

“Just drying my hands, Dor’thy—I’ll be right out.”

I reach for a paper towel from the roll hanging there beside the sink. I think that I have made up my mind which promise I must honor, but when I go to drop the wadded-up towel in the trash, my hand brushes near the hair that lays there like a snake in the sun and the hair rises up, catching on my sleeve.

The girl is back in the mirror. She watches as I pull off another paper towel and careful pick off the hair and fold it up in the sheet. When I put the little white square into my pocket, the girl smiles at me before she fades away.

(Birdie)

W
hen I come out of the restroom, Dorothy is jittering around like one thing. She grabs hold of my arm and starts pulling me towards the door to outside, just jabbering away like a crazy woman.

“Birdie, I’ve found the name that was on the van. There was a card over there on the bulletin board for something called Hurley’s Cleaners, so I asked Earl was that it and he said he believed it was. Look here—this is the number!”

Dorothy hustles me out to the parking lot and right off starts mashing buttons on that cellphone of hers. She puts it to her ear and looks over at me. “It’s ringing,” she says and then gets quiet.

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Is this Hurley’s cleaning service?” she says, sounding like someone who’s about to raise a ruckus. She listens, then goes on. “I sure hope you
can
help me … you see, I’m parked at this little store just outside Wildcat Reach and your big white van was right next to my car and the door was open and I believe my little
dog Sugar—she’s just a tiny thing, mostly Chihuahua—well, I believe she must of gotten into that van.”

Dorothy catches my eye and swings around so’s her back is to me. I believe she’s trying to keep from laughing. And no wonder—how she can make up such a story—I wouldn’t of thought it. But she rattles on and on.

“Well, I left Sugar in my car with the window down so she wouldn’t get too hot and I went into the store to get a cold drink, and when I came back, I like to had a heart attack. The van was gone and so was Sugar. She’s done this before—jumped into a strange car—she’s the friendliest little thing—too friendly for her own good … but be that as it may, I don’t reckon the folks in the van could have gone very far. So what I was wondering, could you get in touch with the van? Tell them—”

Dorothy breaks off sudden and stands there listening to the quacking sound at the other end. Then she says, and she ain’t talking so brash now, “White. A big old white van with a sign on the side that said—”

All the spunk has gone out of her voice and she says, kinda flat-like, “Oh. I see. No, I reckon I must of made a mistake. I thank you kindly for your trouble.… What? Oh, I will; thank you.”

She shuts up her little phone and puts it back in her purse. “They say they don’t have a white van—”

“Then that Earl told you wrong—must of been some other name. I’ll go ask him again and see—” I turn to go back into the store but Dorothy catches hold of my sleeve.

“No, Birdie, he was sure of it, certain sure. He said the name Hurley had made him think of the Harley motorcycle his son had. As soon as I showed him the card, he said that was the name. I can’t make any sense of it—it had to be the same van.”

Dorothy lets go of me and just stands there, looking up and down the road. All the excitement and happiness is gone out of her face.

I reach into my pocket and touch the paper towel with that hair folded inside. I close my eyes and clear as anything I can see Prin pulling on white coveralls while a big old fellow slaps a sign onto the side of a white van. And then I see Calven come out from—

“Birdie, are you all right?” Dorothy is grabbing my arm and steering me towards the car door. “Maybe you’d best sit down.”

I open my eyes and find that I do feel swimmie-headed. Seeing used to take me that way, I remember.

“Reckon it’s the sun,” I tell her. “I’ll just clamber into the car and set. But don’t you think we ought to go on to that Wildcat place? Bernice’s boy said they went that way. Could be that’s where they are right now.”

Dorothy is all for it and we start off. She is still going on, saying that she don’t understand about the name on the white van.

“Honey,” I tell her, “didn’t that Earl say it was a stick-on sign he saw? Well, don’t you reckon that’s the answer? Prin and these folks she’s with is pretending to be cleaning people and they just copied the—”

“But why would they do that?”

I ain’t got an answer for that and we go along in silence till we turn off the road between two big walls. They is all kinds of bushes and flowers planted in front of them and the one to the right has big gold letters saying
THE HOLDINGS AT WILDCAT REACH
across it. Just inside is a little house setting smack-dab in the middle of the road with a gate like a railroad crossing to either side. The gates is
down and a man in a brown uniform comes out of the little house.

“Evening, ladies.” He’s real polite but he looks us over right sharp. “Are you uns here on business or are you visiting a resident?”

“We just wanted to drive around and see the place,” says Dorothy but the police or everwhat he is shakes his head no.

“I’m sorry as I can be, ma’am, but this here’s private property. You can’t come in unless you own property or you have a visitor’s or workman’s pass.”

“Now you listen here,” Dorothy says and cuts off the engine. She tells him how we are looking for her nephew and we think he is in a white van that says
Hurley’s Cleaners
. “Did that van come through here a little back of this?”

The guard don’t answer but from inside the little house, someone says, “It sure did—almost ran me over while I was taking my walk. I told Kenny here to give them a warning when they leave. There’s a twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit and that crazy fellow had to be doing almost fifty.”