Tomorrow River

I’m sure he thinks that being “undercover” has something to do with pulling a quilt up over his head. “That means Curry has only been pretendin’ to be a hobo, while he gathers important police facts of some kind.” I saw that happen on Mannix and that other show with Peggy Lipton called The Mod Squad. Those kids were undercover all the time.

I ask Detective Sardino, “Why are you undercover?”

“Sam’s been placed under arrest.”

Swallowing back the brown cow that’s come halfway up my throat, I ask, “For… for what?”

“First-degree murder.”

E. J. and I reach for one another.

The seed of what I used to worry about has blossomed. The Decatur police must have finally found some proof that Sam beat to death Stumpy or The Maggot, that man who killed his police partner. Curry has come to arrest our Sam for that lowlife’s murder.

I’m sure this cop doesn’t care about Sam beating to death that criminal who killed his brother. No. He must feel just fine about that. Lieutenant Sardino here must blame Sam for not keeping his brother Johnny safe the way a partner is supposed to. He’s come to settle the score. Curry is going to slap a pair of handcuffs on Sam and drag him back to Decatur to be put on trial. Sam could be found guilty and go to prison the same way his mother did after she killed her bad husband. I think that when I see the WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND sign painted in frosted letters on the front window.

I rush to tell Curry, “Just in case you don’t know, Sam is still so sad about not bein’ able to protect your brother from that bad man who shot him. I can’t even say Johnny or arrividerci… his Adam’s apple goes nuts.” I am horrified that I was stupid enough to talk to Curry or Anthony or whatever his name is over at the camp. I know better than to trust people like that. He asked me so many questions, and like an idiot, I answered them. I thought he was lonely or trying to garner some protection from a girl whose father is the most superior court judge in Rockbridge County. I even thought for a time that he would put me in his Hobo Like Me book that he was writing. But all he was doing was plying me for information in his investigation of Sam the same way he was doing to others. Vera told me he made phone calls in the booth outside the courthouse. And I bet Dagmar Epps told him a thing or two. They got very chummy around that campfire.

What about Woody? I’m going to have to go back to the fort and tell her that this man she likes so much is not a harmonica-playing hobo, but a badge-wielding cop. And that he’s about to take her new uncle Sam Moody away from her. I can’t let that happen. She just couldn’t take losing another person that she loves.

“Please,” I implore Curry, “please don’t take Sam away. As you already know, we’ve lost our mother.” I haven’t told him that she’s dead. That’s what I’ll do next if this doesn’t work. “Can’t you let bygones be bygones?” I know he must be a Catholic. He’s Italian like the pope. “Remember what Jesus said about forgivin’ your enemies?”

When I break into sniffles, Lieutenant Sardino reaches for a dish rag off the table he’s standing next to and sets it gently into my pleading hands. He’s got hair on his knuckles. “You’ve got this all wrong, Shenny,” he says. It’s not just Curry’s clothes, his personality seems different from when he was just a hobo. He’s still nice, but it’s a more take-the-bull-by-the-horns kind of nice. “I’m not here to arrest Sam for Buddy DeGrassi’s murder.”

“You’re not?” I say, blowing my nose. Buddy? That doesn’t sound like a mean-enough name for a man that killed Sam’s partner so cold-bloodedly. “Are you sure?”

Curry gets a gleam in his eye. “Yes. I’m sure.”

Is this another one of his undercover lies? “Then-”

“Just a hanged minute,” E. J. says, showing off his mountain man moxie. “If you’re not here to arrest Sam, then why’s he been arrested, Curry? I mean, who’s he supposed to have committed first-degree murder on?”

I know. I have figured it out. And I can tell by the way he’s looking at me so pitiful that Curry knows that I know. He says softly, “Shenny’s mother.”

E. J. wheels towards me and shouts, “But you told me… you said the sheriff would need proof of wrongdoin’.”

Shakily, I ask Curry, “Doesn’t he?”

“Something incriminating was found at Sam’s place,” Curry says. “Something of your mother’s.”

“I don’t care what the sheriff found. That… that just means that Sam and Mama were friendly, not that he murdered her. E. J., we got to go get Sam out of that jail right this minute,” I say, stepping towards the back door with a full head of steam.

“Come back, Shenny. Sheriff Nash didn’t find the evidence,” Curry says. “A boy found it buried under a rock in Sam’s yard. He was searching for fishing worms and found something else instead.”

“What something?” E. J. and I say together.

“A woman’s blouse.”

Without even thinking, I ask the same way a defense attorney in my father’s courtroom would, “Which boy was this exactly that found this blouse?”

“The one I noticed you talking to over at the carnival grounds earlier,” Curry says, holding steady under my cross-examination. “Remington Hawkins.”

“That’s not real evidence!” I tell him with a stomp of my foot. “That’s… Remmy… He hates Sam, isn’t that right, E. J.?”

“A hundred percent!”

Curry replies even more delicately, “There’s blood on the blouse, Shenny. And the boy is the mayor’s grandson. That gives him some credibility.”

Needing to sit down, I boost myself up onto one of the card tables and pick up a mouth-eaten sweater to hold on to for comfort.

“But what does that have to do with Mama? Kids like to hang out at that part of the creek. Probably some girl drank too much beer and… and fell down and got a scrape. So she took off her bloody blouse and left it, that’s all that is,” I say. “The blouse is what my father would call circumstantial evidence.

Curry looks down at his feet and then back at us. I can tell he’s dreading what he has to tell us and is putting it off as long as he can. “Shen, I… your grandfather and father have identified the blouse as one belonging to your mother.”

I glance over to where Miss Artesia has tops hanging. I have searched and searched this shop for the one she was wearing at the carnival that night. “Is… is it white with red yarn trim?”

Curry doesn’t have to say, “It sure is.” The answer is in his I’m-sorry eyes. “And your mother’s diary states some pretty strong feelings.”

“Her diary?!” I remember how my hand rattled around in the empty stronghold. I thought Mama had moved it or given it to Woody. Could Remmy have broken into our home when we were asleep? Pried up the floorboards in the master bedroom and stolen it? “Remmy found Mama’s diary, too?”

Curry reluctantly says, “It wasn’t the Hawkins boy.”

“Then who?”

He’s stalling. Gazing around the shop like he’s come to pick up a few things.

“Curry?” I say. “Who found Mama’s diary?”

He looks at me with concern and says barely above a whisper, “Your father.”

“Papa found Mama’s diary and took it to the sheriff?” I ask, incredulous. “Are you sure?”

Was this recently or has my father had the diary the whole time that Mama’s been gone? Has he been lying in his bed at night reading it? Is that why he wails in the wee hours? I have no idea what Mama might’ve written about Sam in her most private way, but I know the words would have been glowing with gratitude for finding a friend who was so kind to her. A man who shared the same interests in foreign languages and poetry. Someone who had spent some time up North.

Curry answers me, “Some pages have been ripped out of the diary, but there are enough left for anybody to conclude that Sam and your mother had a relationship that would be considered improper to some people.”

The diplomas hanging on Papa’s study wall let you know that he graduated from law school at the top of his class. He is the smartest of the smart. He wouldn’t have given the sheriff Mama’s diary unless something in it put him in a good light and Sam in a bad one.

This couldn’t get much worse.

“Your father also brought in a watch as evidence,” Curry says. “The one that Sam gave your mother.”