warmer and cleaner out there, away from the weeds and the trees and the big rotting Chapman place.
———
I ARRIVED at the drive-in to find Mom in a state. She had been shopping with Callie and had had an adventure.
She was dressed in a black dress with a black hat with a red bow on it; it looked like something Robin Hood would wear if he were in mourning and was a sissy.
Mom removed the hat, which was somehow fastened with a couple of pins, put it on the drainboard by the sink. Her hands were shaking.
“He was pacing us, across the street,” she told me and Rosy Mae.
“Shu it was him, Miss Gal?”
“Well, no. I’ve never seen him. But I think it was. He was big and very black. Had a fedora, pulled down just above his eyebrows. A longish coat. He looked strong.”
“What kind of shoes was he wearin’?” Rosy Mae asked.
“I didn’t think to look at his shoes,” Mom said. “He could have been wearing ballet slippers for all I know. I have to sit down. Stanley, will you get me a glass of water?”
“He had on army style boots with red laces,” Callie said. “I noticed it. I’ve never seen a man with red laces before.”
I brought Mom a glass of water. She sat at the table, and after a few sips, she set the glass down and took a deep breath.
I hadn’t noticed if the man out front of the drive-in the other day, smoking a cigarette, was wearing army boots with red laces, but the rest of it, the clothes, the hat, fit.
Daddy, who had been out back, picking up trash from the drive-in yard, came in, said, “Stanley, I want you out here right now, picking up trash. You can’t go off fishing when there’s work to . . . What’s going on here?”
“I’m not sure if anything is,” Mom said. “I think it may be my imagination.”
“Well,” Daddy said, “am I going to have to imagine what happened?”
“No,” Mom said. “I just don’t know it was anything. You see, me and Callie, we were in town shopping. Going to Phillips’s Grocery, but had to park down from the store a ways. It’s coupon day for the store. They’ve started this thing with their own coupons—”
“Gal, for heaven’s sake,” Daddy said.
“Okay. Anyway. We were walking back to the car, and across the street was this big colored man wearing a brown fedora. He looked so scary. He . . . Well, I didn’t like the way he was looking at us. As we walked back to the car, he paced us on the other side of the street. When we stopped, he stopped, and he glared at us. I didn’t imagine that, did I, Callie?”
“No. He was watching us, Daddy.”
“He followed us all the way to the car, and when we got inside, and I was starting to back out, he came next to the window and looked in. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. But he had the strangest look on his face. And his eyes, they were so . . .”
“Scary,” Callie said. “Like something out of a monster movie.”
“Yes. Something out of a monster movie. I froze with my foot on the brake.”
“It was him, Miss Gal,” Rosy Mae said. “He wear them red laces all the time. I bought them for him. And he got that look. I seen that look many times, right before he hit me so hard my clothes changes colors.”
Rosy Mae pulled up a chair, sat down.
“He done gone to followin’ you, and it’s all my fault.”
“I invited you here,” Mom said.
“Yes,” Daddy said. “You did.”
“I can get my stuff and be gone in jes’ fifteen minutes,” Rosy Mae said. “Ain’t no one been nicer than you, Miss Gal. But I don’t want to bring nothin’ on your fambly.”
“You hush up, Rosy,” Mom said. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Maybe I should, Miss Gal.”
“You go out there, roam those streets, he’s going to hurt you,” Mom said. “I guarantee it.”
“And what about you?” Daddy said. “Sounds to me like he’s going to hurt you. Or Callie.”
Mom glared at him. “And what do you suggest?”
Daddy thought it over, said, “I suggest we leave things like they are. You’re welcome here, Rosy. I don’t want you roaming the streets. You really don’t have anyplace to go . . . Do you?”
“No, sir, Mr. Stanley, I don’t.”
“Well, then, you got to stay. But this old dog ain’t gonna hunt. Where did you see this nig . . . this fella?”
“On Main Street,” Callie said. “But he’d be gone by now. You should have seen him, Daddy, lookin’ in the car, scary-like.”
“Where’s he live, Rosy?” Daddy asked.
“Down in the Section.”
“Where in the Section?”
She told him.
“I’ll check by there,” he said. “I don’t find him, I’ll call the police.”
“No, Stanley,” Mom said. “The man is dangerous. He might have a gun.”
“He might not have no gun,” Rosy said. “But he carry a knife or a razor all the time, and he cut you too, you can bet on that.”
“Go to the police right away,” Mom said.
“I’ll be back,” Daddy said. He went upstairs, put on a clean shirt, got his hat, went out.
I said, “You think he’ll go to the police?”
Mom said, “I certainly hope so.”
———
DADDY WAS GONE for some time. We were all nervous about his whereabouts. Mom and Callie went about household duties, and I picked up paper on the lot with the nail stick. When I finished, I read the last Sherlock Holmes story in the book Buster had loaned me, but my mind never really wrapped around it.
We were, to put it mildly, excited when Daddy finally came in the door, removing his hat.
“Did you tell the police?” Callie asked.
“I did,” Daddy said. “I gave them the description you gave me. But first, I went by the shack where he lives . . . Where you lived, Rosy. He wasn’t there. And neither was the shack.”
“How’s that, Mr. Stanley?”
“It was burned to the ground.”
“He threatened to do that with me in it,” Rosy Mae said. “I’m glad I wasn’t in it.”
“Police are out looking for him. They said they’d keep us posted.”
“I want to keep all the doors locked,” Mom said. “I’m scared for all of us.”
“Not a bad idea,” Daddy said, “but I doubt he’ll come around here.”
“I ain’t puttin’ nothin’ past him,” Rosy Mae said. “Not now. If’n he’s big on the whiskey, they ain’t no tellin’.”
Suppose I should have mentioned seeing Bubba Joe, and I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t. Sort of felt it really didn’t matter. He wasn’t out there now, and Mother and Callie were already upset enough, and if I told Daddy, he might charge off looking for him, might do something to him that need not be done. Or maybe, though it was hard to imagine, Bubba Joe might hurt Daddy.
I was a mess of emotions.
In the end, I was silent.
At least as far as my family went.
———
THE DAY WENT BY nervously. I found myself constantly looking to see if Bubba Joe was trying to storm the drive-in fence, or the locked gate where cars came in.
When Buster arrived that day, I went out to see him.
“You look skittish, boy.”
“I am,” and I told him why.
