Bev waved me into the kitchen. I followed and watched Beverly get a glass out of the cabinet and take a pitcher of tea out of the refrigerator and pour herself a glass. She drank about half of it, poured the glass full again.
“Let’s go on the deck,” she said.
We went. Bev took a deck chair and sat down and sipped her tea. I leaned against the railing. Bev said, “First off, I see you saw Bill is in the paper.”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother is beside herself.”
“Bless her heart,” I said. “What did you tell her?”
“Nothing,” Bev said. “I tried to reassure her best I could. Said we didn’t think he had done what the paper said. You know? BS… Hank, honey, I hate to sound like a weak sister, but I’m not so sure we should get involved. I don’t know how innocent Billy really is. Since money and women were involved weht=', anything could have happened.”
“A woman killed and raped in her bed? Four others tortured and murdered in his home. You think he’s capable of that?”
“No. Not really. Did you see the lawyer?”
“Yes,” and I told her what Virgil told me.
She listened intently, said, “I’m sorry if I seem cowardly and short tempered. But I’m cowardly and short tempered. And I’m tired. JoAnn has nagged me to death. Take her to the store, she’s got to have everything in there. Gimme this. Gimme that. And this dead rat business, it’s driving me over the edge.”
“What’s the dead rat business?” I asked, hoping for a domestic crisis I could involve myself with.
“She found a dead rat… mouse, whatever the damn thing is, out by the drive. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Beverly got up and I followed. There was a dead critter lying in the grass next to the garage. I bent down and looked at it. It was covered with ants. It wasn’t a rat or a mouse. It was a mole.
“It’s a mole,” I said.
“Yeah,” Beverly said. “Well, that doesn’t change things. She’s determined to take it to school tomorrow for show and tell.”
“A dead mole?”
“That’s what she says. She says she’s got to take it, and I told her no, of course, and she’s nagged me all afternoon.”
“I sort of like the idea,” I said. “Yo, Ms. Nichols, look what I got for show and tell. A stinking, ant-covered, dead mole.”
“I’m not laughing, Hank. I thought it was funny when I first heard it, but I’ve been hearing about it now for a couple of hours. She won’t take no for an answer. Her whining is turning my brain to mush. I’m ready to beat her with the dead rat.”
“Mole.”
“Another thing. She wanted me to stop beside the road and look at a dead armadillo, and a skunk. I’m worried about her.”
“That’s normal curiosity. She’s finding out about death. It’s not even scaring her. It’s fascinating her. Kids take death in doses, to inoculate themselves against the reality of it. We all do.”
“I don’t remember wanting to look at dead things.”
“You didn’t grow up in rural areas either. You didn’t see a lot of dead things. She’ll get past it.”
Beverly looked at her watch. “Oh, hell. Time to go get Sammy.”
“I’ll do it.”
“No,” Bev said. “Actually, a little time on the highway, hoping an innocent pedestrian will cross my path, might be just what I need to cheer me up.”
· · ·
After Beverly left, I wenty lheight='0e in the house and knocked on JoAnn’s bedroom door and called her name. She invited me in with reluctance. She was lying on her bed with her thumb in her mouth holding her teddy bear Fred. Fred was so much a part of JoAnn, he had, in our minds, developed a personality. We treated him like family.
I gave JoAnn a pat on the head, then gave Fred one.
“Ohhh, thank you,” JoAnn said in a wee-bear voice.
“What’s this about a dead rat?”
JoAnn held up Fred and moved him from side to side. She had Fred say, “JoAnn wants to take it to school.”
“I don’t want to talk to Fred,” I said. “This isn’t for bears, this is for girls to talk about. Come on, JoAnn. Tell me about the dead rat. It’s actually a mole, by the way. I looked at it.”
“I want to take it to school for show and tell,” she said.
“It has ants on it and it stinks.”
“I want to show the ants for show and tell, too.”
“What about the stink?”
“I guess.”
“Look,” I said. “Let me make you a deal. You talk to your teacher and tell her what you want to do, and see what she says. She says you can bring a dead rat-mole-to school, then it’s okay with me. All right?”
She thought that over.
“Can I take my rock collection?”
I guess my idea about her asking the teacher was a good one. She knew in her heart of hearts Ms. Nichols wasn’t going to allow a dead mole in her classroom. I realized then that JoAnn had mostly been in a battle of wills with her mother. The kids did that to us all the time. It wasn’t always that they wanted a certain thing, they just didn’t want to be told they couldn’t have things their way. It was a small way of controlling their universe, which they were gradually beginning to realize was bigger than they were.
At that moment, I understood that attitude perfectly.
The rock collection became JoAnn’s focus. She got out of bed and got the cigar box she kept it in and we looked at rocks. They weren’t unique rocks, but they meant something to her. She had gotten them at places that reminded her of fun and friends.
We finished looking at the rocks and I fixed her a snack of cereal and a glass of milk. When she finished we went upstairs to the TV room and I put on cartoons. She settled in to watch She-ra, Princess of Power, and I went back to the bedroom to read my book, but, good as it was, I couldn’t keep my mind on it. The phone rang.
It was Arnold.
“I got Billy,” he said.
“Good. I’ll be over tonight. I got a few more old clothes Bill can wear. My stuff is too big on him, but yours would swallow him.”
“Whatever. And Bubba?”
“Yeah.”
“Watch your ass.”
19
The rain had almost stopped and water dripped from the tree branches that overhung the road, fell in clear pearls onto my hood and windshield, exploded in all directions like shards of glass. The blacktop had the sheen of fresh-licked chocolate and there was a slight chill inside my truck that was more cozy than cold.
As I drove into Arnold’s driveway, I saw a hot, white, web of lightning patch its way across the sky above the mobile home, beyond the trees where the woods started. I killed the truck’s lights and engine and got out, leaned on the open door, cautious for Arnold’s dog, but the dog didn’t bark. The wind howled in the bottles in the bottle tree. I could see the door to Arnold’s double-wide was cracked slightly and light was falling out of there and onto the ground as if pressed there by a heavy weight.
