traveled with us. She was a player, all right.”
“How do you mean?”
“You met her, didn’t you?”
“Not really. We tossed a few quarters at her plates, but I can never get anything to stick, and then I saw her with you Friday night.” I remembered bright red hair, the pink laces on her shoes, and that off-the-shoulder ruffled blouse as she flirted with the men in our party to encourage them to keep tossing quarters. “She seemed...” I tried to find the right words. “I don’t know. She looked very feminine, but I felt she might be sort of hard underneath?”
“That was Polly, all right. She had an eye for anything in pants, but they didn’t get in
“How did Mike take it?”
“You mean was he the one killed Polly?”
“Scorned lover? Jealousy?”
“Scorned and jealous, yeah. Do anything about it? Nah. Just kept getting stoned. Eve took it worse.”
“Eve?”
“She’s Mike’s daughter. I don’t think she was pissed at Polly so much for dumping her dad as because he quit pulling his full weight here and that made more work for her and Kay.” She put the mustard jars in the ice chest. “And of course, Tasha was with Sam before Polly moved in on him.”
“Really?” That fresh-faced kid I’d just met at the floss wagon and the road-worn Sam?
“Sam’s got a great sense of humor,” Tally said. “And he’s dependable. You get to appreciate things like that when you’re out here on the road.”
“Who else didn’t like Polly?”
“Well, you heard Skee. No love lost there. She didn’t think he did all he could for Irene before she died and she got mad because Irene was barely in the ground good before he moved another woman into their doublewide, somebody who took him for almost everything he and Irene’d built up together. By the time that little possum belly queen did a rake ‘em and scrape ‘em on him, all he had left was his camper truck and his Lucky Ducky. And Polly wasn’t above rubbing it in about what a jackass he’d been. Like some juicy young thing was going to love him for himself alone.”
My nose wrinkled as I thought of the woman who could crawl in beside Skee Matusik’s scrawny body or kiss that nearly toothless mouth. “Some men don’t ever take a good look in the mirror. Don’t you reckon she earned whatever she got from him?”
Tally sighed. “Maybe she did. But when I think how hard it was for Irene out here on the road with her bad heart and all, and then to have some little whore walk away with everything she’d worked for? I tell you, if it hadn’t been for Braz, we wouldn’t have let Skee book in with us this season. But Irene was good to him and he knew she’d feel bad if Skee went down the slop chutes, so he talked me into it.”
“Anybody else have problems with Polly?” I asked.
She was silent for a moment and I didn’t push it. Just kept scrubbing.
“Oh, well, hell, doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Your deputy’s probably snapped to it already. It was Braz, okay? They didn’t get along worth a damn. And don’t ask me why. I don’t think it was over Skee, though, ‘cause he used to razz Skee about that little bitch, too. Braz was another that thought women couldn’t resist him. Maybe he came on to her and she slapped him down too hard? I didn’t ask and they didn’t bring it to Arn or me. Sometimes it’s better not to know stuff when you’re going to be living this close with somebody for the season.”
She sighed. “Val and me, we went over and picked out his casket this afternoon. The last thing we’ll ever do for him. Poor Braz. I should have made more time for him. Been a better mother.”
All I could do was make consoling noises. There are never any easy words.
By now, the wagon was almost spotless. I rinsed out the dishcloth I’d been using, then went and dumped the bucket in the weeds behind a shuttered balloon-bust stand while Tally turned off the lights and closed down the flaps.
“Thanks,” she said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Hey, what’s family for?” I said, draping my jacket around my shoulders.
She turned and looked at me steadily. “You’re not just shitting me, are you? You really mean it.”
“I mean it.” I looked straight back into those blue eyes. “I made a promise almost twenty years ago that you would be part of our family if you ever wanted to be.”
“To your mother?”
I nodded.
“Do you know, I only saw her that one time, but I still remember her as if it was last week. She was the nicest woman I’d ever met.” She finished locking the wagon. “You don’t know what it meant to me when she put that bracelet on my wrist and it was just like yours. I mean, you were her daughter, so sure, you’d have a pretty one. But mine was just as pretty and shiny. And that candy! No chocolates I’ve ever had since tasted as good as what she gave me that day.”
“Till the day she died, she was sorry she didn’t just put you in the car and bring you home with us,” I said. “She went back a week later with Andrew, but you were gone.”
Tally’s face lit up. “Did she really? Because she promised she’d come back to see me, and when my mom came to take me away, I told her I couldn’t go till Mama Sue came—that’s what she told me to call her, okay? Soon as I said that, Mom slapped me and said I’d been played for a fool. That your mother never had any intention of coming back.” She shrugged. “I always wondered.”
