I put my head in the window before he could drive away.
“You know about that cabin Useless stay in around Angeles National Forest?” I asked.
“Sure do.”
“You know where it’s at?”
“Red house on Bear Pond Lane,” he said without straining his memory. “Got a airplane wind vane on top. It’s off Route Seventeen. The exit have a sign for fresh honeycomb underneath it. You take that exit, make a right, and go till you see Bear Pond Lane. Turn there an’ go a mile or two. You’ll see it.”
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When he drove off I actually had a chill.
“What was that all about?” I asked Fearless.
“I don’t know,” Fearless replied. “It was like a wild hyena had run ya down and then he lick yo’ hand instead’a rippin’ a steak outta yo’ thigh.”
“Uh-huh.”
Th e r e wa s a l i q u o r s t o r e at the corner. Fearless and I went in to buy orange soda, potato chips, and devil’s food cupcakes. We were starving. After eating our junk food meal at the bus stop bench we strolled on down to Nadine’s.
She hadn’t left for work yet. As a matter of fact, she was still dressed in her housecoat. The robe was mostly white with some pink and green sewn in. It looked more like an over-grown pot holder than anything else.
“Hi,” she said to us at the door. “I wondered when you were going to bring her home.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Hearts, of course.”
“She ain’t here?”
“She was with you.”
We came in and sat around a small dining table.
Nadine was the kind of woman who overdid everything.
Where there should have been one chair she’d put three; where a three-foot table would fit nicely she’d place a table five feet in diameter. There were seven prints of paintings hung from the wall and little doodads all over the place.
“So you got taken off to jail an’ that devil girl took off with Hearts?” Nadine asked us.
“We couldn’t help gettin’ arrested,” I said.
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“Hm.”
“Does my aunt have your phone number?” I asked then.
“Of course.”
“And she haven’t called?”
“Wouldn’t I tell you if she did?”
“Nadine,” I asked. “Could you stay home from work today?”
“What?” she gasped. You would have thought I’d asked her to take off her clothes and lie out on the bed.
“My aunt may call you,” I said calmly. “She might be in trouble. If you aren’t here when she calls, we might miss the only chance we have to help her.”
“I use my job to pay the rent,” Nadine explained.
“You have sick days.”
“But I’m not sick.”
I’m so used to people who steal and cheat and lie that when I’m faced with someone like Nadine I’m thrown off balance.
Nadine would have walked a city mile to return an extra nickel she got in change from a fifty-dollar transaction. Her idea of life was to look back over all the decades of work and play and be able to say that she never did a wrong thing or took advantage of a single soul. She’d turn on Jesus if he broke a commandment, wouldn’t have a choice.
“Call them,” I said. “Tell them you need a personal day —
that there’s a family emergency and you need to stay home to man the phone.”
No lie there.
But still Nadine hesitated.
“You know I don’t live no fast an’ loose life like you, Paris Minton. I have responsibilities.”
I could have told her that running a bookstore was a 195
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responsible position. I could have told her that trying to save Three Hearts’s life was something important. But instead I said, “Please. For my auntie.”
