presidential assassinations. Some people are just born with intuition.
I held on to Maurey’s hand after she pulled me upright. She looked at me sharply.
“You said the rules are off today.”
“Don’t get carried away.” She drew her hand free.
The town seemed asleep as we walked by the triangle. A few trucks sat outside the Esso station and the White Deck, and a parked Buick was running next to Kimball’s Food Market, but we passed no people, not even a dog, and the snow made everything unreal and quiet. The flag twisted around the pole in front of the Forest Service headquarters. I glanced at Maurey a few times, figuring the implications. Was the truce temporary or had a connection been made? A snowflake landed on her cheek and I counted to four before it melted.
“So all Southerners aren’t racist?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Why do they try to make us think they are?”
“Makes a better story, I guess.”
We stopped at a yellow house with white trim. “Want to make a bet?” Maurey asked.
“You live here?”
“Mom will have heard about the president and it’ll have had no effect on her at all. She’ll be baking cookies and waxing the kitchen floor.”
“My mother’s never baked a cookie in her life.” Waxing floors was too much even to deny.
“I wish my mom hadn’t.”
We found Mrs. Pierce cutting out coupons at a coffee table. She had on a green apron with all these profiled sharp-nosed women on it in silhouette. The dishes were all clean in the drain board. A Santa Claus magnet held a newspaper recipe to the refrigerator. The contrast to Lydia’s kitchen was a hoot.
Mrs. Pierce had the same long, long neck, but on Maurey it was pretty and classy, while on her mom it was mostly strings. And Mrs. Pierce’s eyes were more a faded, washed-out blue.
She smiled at Maurey. “You’re home from school early.”
“They let us out on account of the assassination.”
“I know, isn’t it a shame about Mr. Kennedy.” She bent over a Sunday magazine section and scissored with a precision I wouldn’t waste on a coupon. “I wonder if Petey’s school will let out early too. Let me finish this last one and I’ll make us some hot cocoa.”
My theory is all thirteen-year-olds are embarrassed no end by their mothers. I mean, I thought Mrs. Pierce’s perfect home-maker act was kind of cute, like a Betty Boop cartoon, and cocoa sounded okay. I could use a warm- up after all that snow wallowing. But Maurey’s disdain came across like a paper cut.
“The president is dead, Mom. This isn’t the time for hot cocoa.”
Mrs. Pierce put down her scissors. “It’s always time for cocoa. What happened to your skirt?”
“I fell down.”
After Maurey changed, she and I sat on a couch in the den to watch history unfold on a black-and-white RCA Victor fourteen-inch. I had trouble with juxtaposition. There was the scene—Maurey and me next to each other in a spotless house in the absolute midst of the Wyoming winter—and there was what we watched—muted, frightened faces, people talking slowly. Death and national tragedy.
My stomach hurt. Maurey chewed her lower lip. Her eyes were a dark blue with gray specks. I guess I’d never seen them close up before. When they were loading the casket into the plane, she put her hand on my arm.
A Dallas policeman was killed. No one knew why. A doctor explained entry wounds. Maps were shown, detailing Dealey Plaza and the route to the hospital. Cameras filmed the fence of the Hyannis Port compound while analysts wondered if they would tell John’s grandmother. Somebody interviewed a priest. They made a big deal out of whether the president got last rites before or after he died.
“What do you think happens to people when we die?” Maurey asked.
World’s most personal question and she’s asking it an hour after our first real words. I guess all the rules were off for the day. I thought of about six answers, but they were all either unacceptable, cute, or weird. “I don’t know.”
“Why would God care if someone chants magic words over your body before you die. That’s an awful stupid thing to base eternity on.”
“My grandfather’s Episcopal. I think they go to heaven without it.”
“All sounds like a crock to me.”
When Mrs. Pierce—who introduced herself as Annabel— brought the cocoa, I noticed Maurey didn’t turn it down as unbefitting the occasion. It tasted good, none of that instant jive. This stuff was real and wholesome as life gets—even with a marshmallow half-sunk on top. Maurey held her mug with both hands, blew across the steaming surface, and smiled at the first sip. Down a hallway, I heard a vacuum cleaner kick in.
“Who’s Petey?”
“My baby brother. He’s a brat, Mama’s little angel.”
“Are you close?”
“Are you kidding?”
A man was arrested in a movie theater. Eyewitnesses to the murder were interviewed. John Connally’s press secretary issued a statement. They announced that Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, had been sworn in on the plane. College football games were canceled for the next day. Everything was canceled.
“I wish my dad was here,” Maurey said.
“Where is he?”
“We have a little horse ranch ten miles up the hill and they don’t plow the road. He stays out there most of the winter.”
“He’s stuck?”
“Dad snowmobiles out every couple of weeks and for the holidays. In the summer we’re mostly out there.”
“What’s your dad’s name?”
“Buddy. I wish he was home today.”
The news announcer said the arrested man’s name was Lee Henry Oswald. One after another, strange facts came out. He had a Russian wife. He’d been to Cuba. He’d been to Russia. His name was Harvey instead of Henry. They interviewed his landlady downtown.
“What’s your dad do?” Maurey asked.
“I don’t have a father.”
She looked from the TV to me. “Did he die?”
“Lydia won’t tell me anything about him. When she’s drunk she claims virgin birth, like Mary and Jesus.”
Maurey said, “I’d like to see my mom drunk.”
“It’s not that neat.”
We sat in more silence. I held her hand a little while, but then she took it away. “So you don’t have a clue to what your dad was like?”
“Lydia has these pictures hidden in her panty box. They’re from different yearbooks, I think. Four photos of five guys in football uniforms. I kind of figure one of them might be my dad because she hides the pictures.”
“Panty box?”
“Lydia hasn’t unpacked yet. Her stuff is in suitcases and boxes. She won’t sleep in her bedroom.”
“What were you doing in the panty box?”
I skipped that one. “One of the guys in the pictures is a Negro.”
Maurey studied me closely. “I heard the rumor. Is it true?”
I’m not that dark, a little maybe, darker than Lydia for sure, but not that much, and I have curly hair, but it’s not kinky or anything. “I guess the odds are one in five. If my father is one of the pictures.”
Petey arrived amid much banging and slamming of doors. He clomped into the den from the kitchen, dropped his coat in a heap on the floor, and crossed to the television where he changed the channel.
“Hey,” Maurey yelled. “We’re watching that.”
Petey ignored her. He stood with one hand on the dial, peering suspiciously at the picture. “What’s this?”
“It’s news. There’s nothing on but news. Now change it back to what we were watching.”
