Grateful and mystified both, Angie Kellogg settled back into the seat while the huge truck rumbled swiftly through the starlit desert night.
“What’s your name?” Dayton Smith asked eventually.
“Tammy Sue Ferris,” Angie said without sing a beat.
“Well, Tammy Sue,” Dayton Smith said, set-g back into the driver’s seat. “Tell me where you’re from.”
“ California.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
His face had an otherworldly glow in the greenish reflected light from the dashboard. As Angie answered his question, she felt almost as though he weren’t real, as though she was talking to some kind of ghost.
“And what do you do for a living?”
Somehow she no longer felt like lying. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a whore,” she said unexpectedly, surprising herself. “I have been for ten years.” If she thought her answer would shock him, it didn’t.
“And this Tony character was your pimp?”
“More or less,” she replied. “Tony doesn’t fit into any definite categories.”
“You’re away from him now,” Dayton Smith said forcefully. “Stay that way. Get a job, get married, have children. In other words, have a real life.”
“I don’t know how,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“I wasn’t born driving this truck, honey,” he told her. “I took lessons, got myself a license. That’s what you’re gonna have to do, too. Go back to school and learn typing or shorthand or whatever it is they teach girls nowadays. Maybe even computers, but at twenty-three, you’ve got your whole life to live. Don’t screw it up.”
After that, they didn’t talk much more. At o’clock, Dayton Smith helped Tammy Sue Farris check into the last available room in Bisbee’s Copper Queen Hotel. When she stepped away from the desk, Dayton was standing halfway across the lobby with both hands stuffed in his hip pockets. He smiled at her.
“You’ll do fine,” he said. “I’m sure of it.” He reached out, took one of her hands in both his, and shook it warmly. “You be careful the people you meet and keep the jacket. You need it worse than I do. If you ever turn in Dallas give me a call. I’m in the book. The wife and I would like to have you over for dinner. She cooks a mean fried chicken.” With that, Dayton Smith turned and shambled out the door, leaving Angie Kellogg alone. Riding up to the third floor in the creaking elevator, she found herself wiping tears her eyes. Dayton Smith was probably the nicest man she had ever met, but she couldn’t uderstand why watching him walk out the door and down the steps had made her cry.
FIFTEEN
The long, polished hardwood hallway of Greenway School still smelled exactly the way Joanna remembered it-dusty and lightly perfumed with hints of sweaty-haired children and overripe sack-lunch fruit. Worried about her daughter, Joanna walked swiftly toward the principal’s office. As far as Joanna knew, this was the first time Jennifer Brady had been sent to the office for even the smallest infraction.
Nina Evans, the five-foot-nothing fireplug of a woman who was the school principal, met Joanna in the hallway. “I’m glad I was finally able to locate you,” Mrs. Evans said irritably “I didn’t expect to find you at work today.”
School principals had never been high on Joanna’s list of favorite people, and Nina Evans was no exception. Joanna found herself bridling at the apparent rebuke in the woman’s tone of voice.
“What seems to be the problem?” Joann asked.
“Oh, you know how children are,” Nina sins said quickly. “I’m sure the boys didn’t mean any harm.”
“Which boys?”
“Jeffrey Block and Gordon Smith. According to what I’ve been able to learn, they evidently started it. Regardless of provocation, though, I simply can’t allow students to resort violence. That’s no way to teach problem-solving. It’s a short step from that kind of youthful behavior to starting wars.”
Joanna was in no mood to hear an educational lecture on the political correctness of violence. “What provocation?” she asked.
“No doubt Jennifer was feeling sensitive,” the principal continued, “and I don’t blame It’s always difficult for children to be in school after a traumatic event like this. In fact, not at all sure it was wise of you to send to school today, considering what she’s been rough.”
With her arms folded smugly across her chest, Nina Evans stood looking up at Joanna. There could be no mistaking her attitude of reproach and disapproval. The two boys may started the day’s altercation, but Nina was holding Jennifer primarily responsible. Somehow, the fight was all Jennifer’s and, through Jenny, ultimately Joanna’s.
Battling to control her temper, Joanna felt her jaws tighten and her face grow hot. “I didn’t
Nina Evans replied with a noncommittal shrug. “At morning recess the boys were evidently teasing Jennifer and saying naughty things to her. She waited until noon and then punched them out when they were all three supposed to be on their way to the lunch-room.”
“Both of them at once?”
The principal nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been told. Jeffrey’s parents took him over to the dispensary to have his thumb looked after, Gordon Smith’s mother picked him up about half an hour ago. Jennifer’s the only one still here. I didn’t want to send her home wit someone else without first having a chance to discuss the situation with you in person. It’s far too serious.”
“I want to see her,” Joanna said. “Where she?”
“In my office. You can go on in if you want.”
In the fifteen years since Joanna’s eighth grade graduation, the Greenway School principal’s office had altered very little. Personnel changes had occurred because elementary school principals come and go, but the same gray metal desk still sat in one corner of the room with the same old-fashioned wooden bench sitting across from it.
On the wall above the bench hung the familiar, but now much more faded, print of George Washington. The print, too, was exactly the same. Joanna remembered the cornerwise crack in the glass. She remembered how she had sat on the wooden bench herself and craned her neck to stare up at George Washington’s face on that long-ago spring afternoon when her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Fennessy, had sentenced Joanna Lathrop to a day in the principal’s office.
Jennifer glanced up nervously as the door opened. Seeing Joanna, she dropped her eyes and stared at her shoes. “I’m sorry,” she said once.
Joanna walked across the room and sat n on the bench beside her daughter. “Tell about it,” she said quietly. “What did those boys say to you?”
For a time the child sat with her head low-and didn’t answer. Joanna watched as a fat, heavy tear squeezed out of the corner of Jennifer’s eye and coursed down her freckled cheek before dripping silently off her chin.
“Tell me,” Joanna insisted.
Jennifer bit her lower lip, a gesture Joanna recognized as being very like one of her own. “Do I have to say it?” the child whispered.
