Read Where the Heart Is Online

Authors: Billie Letts

Where the Heart Is (20 page)

BOOK: Where the Heart Is
5.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

When Forney jumped up, his chair turned over backward and tumbled to the floor. “What woman?”

“I knew it,” Lexie hollered. “I knew it was a woman.”

Novalee came running from the bathroom, wide-eyed and pale.

“What happened?” she screamed.

“A woman came in to use the phone.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. No, the day before. Said her car broke down and she needed to call her husband.”

“Can you describe her?”

“She was about as tall as me, a little heavy. But I can’t really say what she looked like. She wore a scarf and dark glasses. Said she’d just had cataract surgery.”

“Does she live around here?”

“Have you ever seen her before?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Something about her seemed familiar, but I can’t say. She just used the phone, then she left.”

“Did you see her car? Did you see where she was parked?”

“No. Just as she walked out, Americus woke up from her nap and I went back to get her out of bed.”

Mr. Sprock dabbed at his eyes when Sister said, “Americus.”

“Oh, Forney. I did a bad thing letting her in here, didn’t I?”

“No, Sister. You couldn’t know.”

“You couldn’t know,” Mr. Sprock whispered.

“Besides,” Forney said, “we don’t know if she had anything to do with this.”

“She did,” Sister said. “I just know she did.”

After the police had come and gone a second time, Novalee was in the bathroom, sick again. The policeman had explained that without a description of the car or more details about the woman, they weren’t much further along then they were before.

When Novalee came dragging back to the kitchen, Sister made her drink a cup of comfrey tea, then insisted she rest for a while. But she felt worse on her bed when she was still. Her heart raced and her legs twitched and her head felt like it was caught in a vise.

As she crawled out of bed, she could hear Forney and Sister and Lexie trying to be quiet in the other room.

Novalee opened the top drawer of a chest where she kept Americus’

clothes—stacks of gowns and undershirts, socks rolled into pairs.

She lifted out a white gown printed with clowns and held it to her face.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the description she had given the policeman. Americus—her weight, the color of her hair, her eyes.

But he didn’t know about the smacking sounds she made when she was hungry. Or the way she closed her eyes when she laughed. He didn’t know about the mole in the bend of her knee and the tiny cut on the pad of her thumb put there by Henry’s cat, Patches.

Novalee refolded the gown and put it back in the drawer, then picked up a basket of diapers fresh from the line and stacked them on top of the chest. She wondered if Americus had been changed, wondered if she’d had her evening bottle, wondered . . .

Novalee pulled down the window shade just above the baby bed, then smoothed the blue blanket and fluffed the pillow—and then she saw the Bible. A small Bible with a silver gray cover just under the satin edge of the blanket.

She exploded into the living room. “Sister! This isn’t your Bible. It can’t be yours, but I—”

“No, it’s not!”

“I found it in the baby bed.”

“I don’t own a Bible with a cover like that.”

“Then who put it there? How did . . .”

“It’s hers! Novalee, it’s hers!”

“Whose?”

“The woman who came in to use the phone! I know who she is!”

“Sister . . .”

“She came here. She and a man, right after you got out of the hospital. Said they came from Mississippi to bring you the word of God. They wanted to see Americus, too, but I sent them away. And they had Bibles with silver covers. Just like that!”

Chapter Twenty

JUST AFTER THREE in the morning, Novalee went to the kitchen, put her coffee cup in the sink, then grabbed the keys to the Toyota from the hook beside the door.

She had just called the police station again, her third call in an hour. On her first, she learned they were still waiting for some response to the inquiries to Midnight, Mississippi. During the second call, she found out that a man and woman driving a Ford with Mississippi plates had stayed for two days at the Wayside Inn, a motel west of town. And on the third call, her last, a policeman told her the Mississippi couple had checked out earlier in the day.

Forney slumped in a straight-backed chair, roused from half-sleep when Novalee walked into the living room. “Novalee, what . . .”

“I can’t sit here, Forney. I can’t just sit here and wait.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know! Drive around. Ask some questions. Do something!”

“All right. Let’s go.”

Mr. Sprock, folded into the recliner and covered with a quilt, mumbled softly in his sleep, a word that sounded like “sundown.”

Sister, huddled into a corner of the couch, flinched when Novalee touched her shoulder, then waved her hand through the air as if to push away sleep.

“Yes, darlin’. I’m awake.”

“Sister, me and Forney are going to go out and look around. Maybe stop by the police station.”

“Where’s Lexie?”

“I made her go home. No sense in her paying a sitter all night.”

Novalee smoothed Sister’s skirt. “Will you be okay while we’re gone?”

“I’ll be just fine,” Sister said as she patted Novalee’s hand. “Mr.

Sprock will be here with me. We’ll be here by the phone. You call if you need us, you hear?”

Novalee nodded, kissed Sister on the cheek, then slipped out the door.

The night air was cold and Novalee, still wrapped in the afghan, pulled it up around her neck as she slid inside the truck.

“Where do you want to start?” Forney said as he backed the Toyota out of the drive.

“Let’s go out to that motel.”

“The Wayside?”

“I know the police have been there, but I want to see for myself.”

The Toyota was the only vehicle on the street until Forney turned onto Commerce where they saw one more, the town’s lone taxi. The car was an old Dodge Charger and the driver, a Comanche woman name Martha Watchtaker, had been driving it since 1974. Forney Where the Heart Is

waved when they passed, but Novalee turned to stare, wondering if there could be a seven-month-old baby hidden inside.

A few blocks later, when Forney saw a police car in front of the twenty-four-hour Get N Go, he pulled in and parked beside it. They could see the policeman inside the store at the counter, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee.

“You want to wait out here?” Forney asked. “I’m going to talk to him.”

“I’m coming, too.”

The policeman, a heavyset man near fifty, smiled when they walked in. “Forney, what’re you doing out this time of the morning?”

Forney turned and ushered Novalee to his side. “Gene, this is Novalee Nation, mother of the baby that’s . . . uh, missing.”

“Ma’am.” Gene ducked his head. “Sure sorry about your trouble.”

Novalee nodded.

“Can you tell us anything, Gene?” Forney asked. “Anything at all?”

“I can’t, Forney. Just came from the station. They’re keeping the lines to Mississippi hot, but nothing yet.”

“Well, just thought I’d check.”

The clerk, a baby-faced boy wearing a heavy turquoise earring, leaned across the counter and smiled. “Y’all want a cup of coffee?

Fresh pot. And it’s on the house.”

Novalee shook her head, but Forney said he’d have a cup.

While the boy poured the coffee, Novalee stepped up to the counter. “I was wondering,” she said, “if anyone had come in to buy things for a baby. Things like diapers, bottles . . . maybe a pacifier or a teething ring. Stuff like that.”

“No one I didn’t recognize,” the boy said. “I know all the girls here in the neighborhood who’s got babies and they’re the only ones in tonight for things like that.”

“Ma’am,” the policeman said. “We been checking since the call came in this evening. Every store in town. Even the clerks who’d already finished their shifts and gone on home. We checked out all the drugstores, too. And the Wal-Mart. But I don’t blame you for thinking about it. I’d do the same thing.”

Novalee nodded, then headed for the door.

“Forney, how’s Mary Elizabeth gettin’ along?” the policeman asked.

“She’s just about the same, Gene.”

“Well, give her my best.”

“I will.”

“And ma’am? We’ll let you know the minute we hear a word.”

“Thank you.”

When Novalee climbed back in the pickup, she was shivering.

“You want to wait inside while the heater warms up?”

“No. I’m okay.”

Forney headed west, and a mile later, when they passed Wal-Mart, Novalee craned her neck staring at it.

“What do you see?”

“A car over there.”

Forney pulled in and drove across the lot toward the car parked in a dark corner. He slowed as they neared it, a blue Ford, backed up to a retaining wall.

The lights of the Toyota swept across the Ford’s windshield as Forney pulled up in front of it and parked.

“Novalee, you stay here. Okay?”

“Okay.” Her voice sounded pinched and thin.

Forney got out, approached the car, then began to circle it. He walked to the back, ducked down and disappeared. Novalee opened her door and started to step out. Suddenly, Forney popped back up, went to the far side of the Ford, pressed his face to the window and peered inside.

Moments later, he stepped away, then hurried back to the Toyota and climbed back in.

“Oklahoma tag,” he said. “And it’s empty. Nothing inside but a couple of boxes.”

Novalee made a sound as if all the air had just been sucked out of her.

“It’s got a flat, right rear. That’s probably why it’s out here, someone without a spare.”

As Forney pulled away and headed the Toyota back toward the street, Novalee slumped like she’d been hit and let her head fall back against the seat.

Closer to town, they passed the Risen Life Church where a life-sized nativity scene was lit by spotlights. Just beyond the church the Kiwanis Club had set up a Christmas tree lot. Novalee couldn’t believe that only hours earlier she and Forney had been out looking for a tree. It seemed to her that days, weeks . . . a lifetime had passed since then.

Minutes later, Forney turned onto Main Street, absolutely deserted, but bright with Christmas lights. Lamp posts had been transformed into candy canes, and plastic trains trimmed in red garland stretched across the intersections.

“I brought Americus here the other night to see the trains, Forney.”

“I’ll bet she liked that.”

“You won’t believe this, but when I said, ‘choo choo,’ and pointed up there to the engine, she made the sound of a train whistle.”

Forney cut his eyes at Novalee and clicked his tongue, a teasing accusation.

“No lie!” she said. “I swear.”

“Novalee . . .”

“She did. Like this.” Novalee took a deep breath and filled her cheeks with air. But instead of the sound of a whistle, a long mournful wail spilled from her lips.

Forney slammed on the brakes, stopped the Toyota in the middle of the street, then reached for her.

“I’m so afraid,” she said, but her voice was torn, ripped by powerful sobs that shook her body.

She slipped her arms around his shoulders, pressed her face into his neck. He cupped her head in one hand, circled her back with the other . . . and they held together and cried.

The vacancy sign was lit at the Wayside Inn, a squat two-story building. They circled the parking lot three times, but the closest they could find to a Ford from Mississippi was a Mazda with Georgia plates.

When they finally parked and went inside, the night clerk, an elderly man asleep on a couch in the lobby, couldn’t help them at all.

He hadn’t come on until ten, hours after the Mississippi couple had checked out.

“Can’t you tell us what they looked like?” Novalee asked.

“I never seen ’em. I been off for over a week, down with the flu.

Tonight’s my first night back.”

“How about their car? Someone saw it, someone said it was here.”

“Well, that was probably Norvell. He’s been workin’ my shift while I been gone.”

“Where is he?”

“Lives over to Sallisaw, I think, but—”

“Is Norvell his last name?”

“Can’t rightly say. He hadn’t been here but a few weeks.”

“But there has to be some way we can—”

“Girl, I sure do wish I could help you, but I just don’t know how I can. That’s what I told them police. Now they went and found Norvell, so I was told. Maybe he had somethin’ to say.”

Forney took Novalee’s arm and led her outside. “Why don’t we go down to the police station? See what this Norvell had to say.”

“Sure, that’s a good idea,” she said, but without enthusiasm.

As Forney pulled back onto Main, they heard a siren in the distance, growing louder as the flashing lights came up fast behind them. Forney slowed and stayed well into the right lane until the police passed. Then, at the intersection of Main and Roosevelt, a second police car raced by.

“Wonder what’s going on?” Forney asked. “Might have had a wreck out on the interstate.”

When a third police car sped around the Toyota, Forney hit the gas and took off behind it.

“Forney?”

“I don’t know, Novalee. I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”

When they topped the hill just west of the Wal-Mart, they could see flashing lights from all three police cars parked on the lawn and in the driveway of the Risen Life Church.

Forney wheeled in and slammed the Toyota to a sudden stop.

“Novalee, I don’t know if this has anything to do with Americus, but—”

“Look! Look, Forney!”

But by then, she was out of the truck and running toward the church, running to the nativity scene where the three policemen were converging as they raced past plastic camels and goats, darted between donkeys and sheep, pushed back angels and shoved aside the wooden Joseph and Mary . . . jostled their way into the heart of the stable to bend over the crib, to kneel by the manger, where, from a bed of straw, one tiny fist was flailing at the air.

Halfway across the lawn, Novalee fell, went down on one knee, pulled herself up, then gasping, ran on . . . pushed her way through the policemen . . . and stared down into the face of her baby, crying in the manger.

BOOK: Where the Heart Is
5.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Betrayal by The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry
Into the Deep 01 by Samantha Young
Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia
Just Annoying! by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton
A Day at School by Disney Book Group
Red Bird: Poems by Mary Oliver
A Moment of Doubt by Jim Nisbet