“You sound like you’re trying to tear down the house, Rosy . . . Oh, hi, Richard.”
“Hi, Mrs. Mitchel.”
“You look a mess, son. What have you been doing?”
Richard put his head on the table and started to cry again. Mom pulled a chair up next to him, put her arm around him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“It’s not that,” I said.
“What is it?” Mom asked.
“Let him eat now, Miss Gal,” Rosy said. “That’s what a growin’ boy needs.”
So Rosy cooked and Richard ate. When he was finished Mom didn’t ask him any questions. She showed him where he could bathe and I went upstairs and got some of my clothes for him.
When Richard was finished, he dressed, except for shoes, and came back to the kitchen. Rosy and Mom were waiting on him. They had him perch on his knees on a chair in front of the sink, and they washed his hair, using strong soap and turpentine to kill lice. When they finished that, they rinsed his hair, dried it, combed it for him. Exhausted, he ended up on the living room couch.
Instantly, he was sound asleep.
Daddy came in for breakfast, and while Rosy cooked it, Mom guided him to the living room to see Richard sleeping on the couch.
“What’s this about?” Daddy asked.
“Stanley?” Mom said.
In the kitchen, at the table, I explained.
———
I’VE HEARD OF PEOPLE like that,” Daddy said. “They call them masochist, and the one does it to them a sadist.”
“That’s sick,” Mom said.
“I suppose,” Daddy said, “anyone wants to hurt someone and likes it, or someone likes or thinks they deserve being hurt, is, yeah, a little sick.”
“You liked slapping Chester around,” I said.
“I did. Liked slapping Chapman around, for that matter. Like it better now I know what he’s done to that boy. But for me, not just anyone will do. James Stilwind would do. I’d like to slap him around.”
“What are we going to do with Richard?” Mom asked.
“Nothing,” Daddy said. “He can sleep in Stanley’s room for now. By the way, where in the hell is Callie?”
“Still sleeping,” Mom said.
“I hope she can get up when school starts,” Dad said.
“We were late ourselves,” Mom said.
“Yes,” Daddy said, smiling at Mom, “but we weren’t sleeping.”
Mom reddened a little. “What if Mr. Chapman comes for him?”
“He won’t,” Daddy said. “He doesn’t want to come around here. If he does, he gets another slapping.”
“You can’t solve everything by slapping someone around,” Mom said.
“I know,” Daddy said. “But some things you can. At least temporarily. Haven’t seen Chester around here lately, have you?”
“We could call the police on Chapman,” Mom said.
“They’d just take Richard back to him,” Dad said. “Way the law works when kids run off, darn near no matter what the reason, law takes them back. There’s folks believe kids belong to parents and they can do what they want with their own kids. Law wouldn’t help, Gal.”
“The law does that?” Mom asked. “Gives beat-up kids back?”
“Afraid so,” Daddy said.
“What if Chapman calls the police?” I said. “He could call them on us.”
“He could,” Daddy said, “but he might be thinking we know more than he wants us to know. And we do. Law might give him Richard back, but Chapman wouldn’t want us spreading his business. Town like this, his business would burn through it like a wildfire. Wouldn’t be anyone didn’t know it. When it comes right down to it, he and Stilwind aren’t all that different.”
“Do you think Stilwind will bother us, Daddy? You know, with regulations and all that?”
“That’s his style, son. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
———
ON A HOT STICKY NIGHT with mosquitoes, the Friday starting off the weekend before school was to begin, I went out to visit with Buster.
I did that when the concession was slow, and it was slow right then because the first run of the movie,
Richard stayed to help with concessions. He seemed comfortable around the family, and right now, comfort was good.
Pretty soon, I found I was telling Buster all about Richard and his daddy without even being asked. It jumped out. Maybe it was information I shouldn’t have shared, but I couldn’t help myself.
Buster shook his head sadly and clucked his tongue.
“Older I get, Stan, more I wish I had a family and hadn’t messed up the one I had. Drinkin’ didn’t do me no good. You know, I haven’t had me a drink since that day . . . with you and Bubba Joe.”
“Do you feel better?”
“I feel miserable. I think about drinkin’ all the time. Near come off the wagon least once a day every day. Make that least every hour. It ain’t easy. Main thing with me these days, is I’m finally startin’ to feel old.”
Buster removed from his shirt pocket a folded piece of yellow paper. He gave it to me and I unfolded it. It was the chief’s report on Susan Stilwind and her father.
“Why are you giving this to me, Buster?”
“Old Man Stilwind starts to give you trouble, it might come in handy. Guess you could say it’s a kind of insurance. You might want to make a copy of it and show it to the old man, tell him the real copy is put away and you got another copy written out and with a friend. That would be me. Here’s the address where he’s stayin’. I had Jukes get it for me.”
“Is there anything Jukes can’t find out?”
“My exact age, and that’s about it. You do this thing, I think your problems with that old Stilwind cracker will be over.”
———
NEXT MORNING, I awoke to find Richard lying on the floor of my room, twisted up in a blanket, clutching his pillow. Nub had taken his spot on the bed, and was lying on his back with his feet in the air, his tongue hanging out.
I got up, grabbed some clothes, went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, combed my hair and got dressed. I came back to he room to find Richard sitting up, looking bewildered.
“Don’t like sharin’ a bed?” I said.
“Nub kept licking me.”
I got the piece of paper Buster had given me out of the sock drawer and took a pencil and paper and copied down word for word the police report. I put the original back in my sock drawer.
“I got to go into town today,” I said, folding the copy, poking it into my pants pocket. “I’m going to go before Daddy or Mom asks about me. I’ll be back soon as I can.”
“I’ll go with you . . . If that’s okay?”
“I guess . . . Listen, maybe I ought not tell you this, but if you go with me, you ought to know. I need to have someone else who knows anyway, as a kind of backup.”
I took the folded piece of paper Buster had given me out of my sock drawer, gave it to Richard to read.
When he finished, he said, “I don’t get it.”
I explained it to him. I told him a lot of stuff. One thing that can be said about me, I’m a regular blabbermouth. But I didn’t tell him about Buster and Bubba Joe. I didn’t even remind him of the night we had been chased together.
