Where You Once Belonged (8 page)

S
o for the next five years, after seeing her for the first time in the Holt Cafe that Thursday noon, like everyone else in town I still only saw her infrequently. And then it was only causally, remotely, as from a safe and necessary distance. On those occasions when she happened to be shopping on Main Street, or on those rare weekend nights when she would agree to go out to the bars with Burdette, I would see her, just as everyone else did, and pay attention to her.

She was still doing some of that then—going out to the bars, I mean. During those first seven or eight months after Wanda Jo Evans had left town and while she herself was still new among us, we would see her every once in a while at the Legion or at the Holt Tavern on Saturday nights. And we would all watch her then. Typically, she would be sitting quietly in a corner booth by herself, sipping some sugary drink very slowly while the ice in her glass melted away, thinning the pink liquor to mere colored water, while Burdette himself (since marriage hadn’t changed him; since marriage was merely a change in his weekend companion, not a real break in his Saturday night routine, that masculine habit and custom of his) would be standing off at the end of the bar away from her, drinking whiskey or scotch, the center of that constant and admiring group of backslapping men, while he told his jokes and stories and they all laughed.

That wasn’t often, though; we didn’t see much of that. Jessie Burdette did not go out to the bars very regularly. And when she did go out she was always pleasant and would talk to you if you said something to her, but she would never volunteer anything herself. Instead she seemed to prefer to sit quietly sipping her watery drink, watching others have what she maybe didn’t even consider then as being a very good time.

But in the meantime the local women had begun to work on her, to pay special attention to her. I suppose the women in town wanted to be friendly. They began to ask her to join their social clubs and their church organizations. Wouldn’t she like to come to tea, to join Rebecca Circle, to play bridge, to be a member of the Legion Auxiliary, to golf with them on Saturday mornings, or maybe—wouldn’t she like to participate in Bible study?

But she wouldn’t, she told the women. She refused them outright, although when they called on her she was pleasant about it all. Nonetheless she was certain about it too.

So the women felt a little hurt by this, a little bit rebuffed and rejected. It put them off. But a month or two later they decided to ask her again. She only needed more time, they told one another; she was merely being polite. She probably wanted to settle in more thoroughly and to look about her, as anyone would, moving to a new town. With the passage of time, she would feel differently, they said. In the middle of fall that first year they began to ask her again.

But again she refused their invitations, rejecting that female attempt at communal neighborliness and sociability a second time. She hadn’t changed her mind at all, it turned out. While we understood that she was still quite cordial to them, in that typical, quiet and pleasant manner of hers, she was also absolutely certain about it. She was not in the least bit interested.

And now the women felt more than a little put off. They were offended. They felt wounded by her rejection. As a result, they stopped asking Jessie Burdette to join anything at all.

* * *

T
hen in March of 1973, almost two years after she had arrived in town, she had a baby. She delivered a little boy whom she named Thomas John. Later, when that became too much of a mouthful, she shortened it to TJ. He was a handsome little boy. He had his mother’s dark hair and her sober brown watchful eyes. And it was obvious to us, seeing them on Main Street, what she thought of him. She was delighted with him. We would see them together: the young woman, small and quiet and trim again after her pregnancy, pushing the handsome little boy along the street in a baby carriage, the two of them going in and out of the stores, looking as content with themselves as if nothing else mattered. She would be smiling at him too, talking to him quietly as though he could already understand what she was saying. Then later when he was a little older and when it was summertime we began to see them in front of the house on Gum Street (for Burdette had made a small down payment on a two-bedroom house by that time; it was in the middle of town, near the railroad tracks)—this new mother and her little boy would be playing together on a blanket spread out on the grass in the shade under the elm and hackberry trees. He was a little more than a year old when she delivered a second child.

This one was a boy too, named Robert and called Bobby, who was almost the exact twin of his older brother: a handsome little boy with the same brown hair and the same brown watchful eyes. She was pleased with him as well. She was delighted with both of her sons.

Consequently there were three of them now for us to watch in town. Three of them to notice on Main Street or to observe in the yard in front of the house, playing games on the front lawn or making little farmsteads in the dirt with miniature cows and horses and bits of sticks—this young woman whom nobody knew at all yet, whom we had expected in the beginning to be some playgirl, some Oklahoma Monroe or Mansfield with a heaving bust and a cinched-in waist above wide hips and long legs, but who, it happened, wasn’t like that at all.

Thus there developed a kind of mystery about Jessie Burdette in Holt. None of us knew what to think of her. Who was she, really? We didn’t know. It was as if she were some fine and exotic bird that had flown in here one spring and had then decided to stay—but one which didn’t seem to expect any sustenance or even association from anything or anyone around her.

So for five years she was left almost entirely alone. She was merely here, living in a town of three thousand where everyone knew everyone else. And no one knew her.

Then everything changed, for her and for those of us who were still watching her. It had to do with her husband. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon on the last day of December in 1976 Jack Burdette disappeared. And in the end he did not return to Holt for a very long time, not until a great deal of damage had already been done.

• 7 •

A
t first people in Holt were not alarmed by his disappearance. On the contrary, they were rather amused by it. They thought of it as a kind of joke, as another of his sudden and outlandish acts which in time would be explained, or at least accepted, as just another installment in that ongoing legend that followed him about the town.

Then he’d been gone for about a week. And it began to get about—in the bakery and the pool halls and the tavern, wherever people were talking—that he had charged some things on Main Street before he left.

We learned that on that Friday afternoon on the last day of December he had gone into Foster’s Jewelry Store and after looking at several men’s rings and old-fashioned pocket watches he had chosen the most expensive 14-carat gold Bulova wrist-watch that Lloyd Foster had to offer. And he hadn’t paid for it; he had merely signed his name to a charge slip. Then he walked out of the store with the new gold watch on his wrist and went next door to do the same with Ralph Bird.

And there, at the Men’s Store, he charged a new maroon sport coat and a pair of good gray wool slacks, a leather belt and three long-sleeved oxford-cloth shirts—all of which satisfied Ralph Bird so well (since Bird hadn’t expected to conduct any business at all in that dead time following the Christmas rush) that he decided, uncharacteristically, to throw in a good new striped tie to boot.

And Burdette thanked him. He slapped Ralph on the back and signed his name to another charge slip. Then he walked out of the Men’s Store wearing the coat and the slacks and the belt and one of the shirts—with the other things (the two extra shirts and the bonus tie and his old clothes) all stuffed into a plastic store bag. Once he was outside, he walked up to the corner to Schulte’s Department Store.

But we discovered that he wasn’t quite so successful there. It happened that old Mrs. Thompson was the only clerk available at the moment and it was she who waited on him. In no uncertain terms Mrs. Thompson informed Burdette that the store had specific limits on how much they would allow anyone to charge. Burdette took this amiss. “But look here,” he said. “You know me. You know who I am.”

“I certainly do,” Mrs. Thompson told him. “I’ve heard more about you than I ever want to, ever since you were an ornery little boy. Your mother is a friend of mine.”

Consequently, at Schulte’s, Burdette was somewhat obstructed in his Friday afternoon shopping; that is, he was allowed to charge only a pair of dark socks and a set of blue underwear. And before he left the store he must have thought better of changing into the socks and the underwear and wearing them out onto the street. Mrs. Thompson was still watching him.

Despite these new stories about Burdette which everyone in town heard and afterward repeated, people in Holt were still not alarmed. They were still amused by his disappearance and by his post-Christmas shopping spree. If nothing else, there was a good deal of joking and fun to be had at Lloyd Foster’s and Ralph Bird’s expense. People said that either man could profit by hiring Mrs. Thompson to clerk in his store. They said Mrs. Thompson would at least have cut their losses.

But then that first week of Burdette’s disappearance turned into a second week. And then gradually the jokes in the bakery and the pool halls and the tavern began to grow stale and there began to be other people in Holt, besides Ralph Bird and Lloyd Foster, who were growing doubtful that Burdette was ever going to return. No one had any idea where he was and there wasn’t anyone in the county who could imagine what was keeping him away.

I
t was the middle of January then. It was late on a Friday afternoon and it was at this time that Jessie Burdette came into the office of the
Holt Mercury
. During the afternoon it had been snowing and now it was very cold outside. There was little traffic on Main Street and the wind was blowing the dry wisps of snow along the sidewalk. Above the storefronts it was beginning to turn dark.

Jessie Burdette came into the
Mercury
just before five o’clock. She had the two little boys with her. TJ was almost four years old then and Bobby was almost three. They came in bundled up in their winter clothes, the boys in matching snowsuits and Jessie in a navy blue wool coat which was still loose enough that she could button it over her stomach; for, although we didn’t know it yet, she was pregnant again; she was already in her fourth month. Inside the office she sat TJ and Bobby down together on a wooden chair against the wall. The little boys looked handsome as ever and red-cheeked. She unzipped their snowsuits and smoothed the hair back from their foreheads. “Now sit still, please,” she told them. Then she stepped up to the counter and waited for Mrs. Walsh.

Mrs. Walsh was the office receptionist. My father had hired her to work in the office twenty years earlier as copy editor, and she had stayed on all those years although my father himself had retired in 1970 and had left the daily management of the paper to me. Now she stood up from her desk and approached the counter. From across the room I watched her talking to Jessie Burdette.

“Yes?” Mrs. Walsh said. “Can I help you?”

“I want to print something in the paper.”

“Is it an ad?”

“No. It’s not an ad.”

“Ads are fifty cents per line.”

“It’s not an ad, though.”

“What is it, then? Do you have it with you?”

I watched Jessie reach into her coat pocket and draw out a sheet of yellow tablet paper. She began to unfold it on the counter. When it was completely unfolded she pushed it across the counter toward Mrs. Walsh.

Mrs. Walsh picked it up and held it close to her face under the light. Immediately she put the paper down again. She stood up very straight. “Why,” she said, “we can’t print this. This is … We can’t print this.”

“I intend to pay for it,” Jessie said. “Is that the problem?”

“No that is not the problem.”

“What is the problem, then? Why can’t you print it?”

“It’s simply unprintable.”

Jessie looked past Mrs. Walsh, looking across the room at Betty Lucas who was typing at her desk, and then at me. “Is there someone else I can talk to?” she said.

“What?”

“I’d like to talk to someone else, please.”

“But they’ll just tell you the same thing I have.”

“What about Mr. Arbuckle? He’s the editor, isn’t he?”

“Mr. Arbuckle is busy.”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“But I’ve just told you. He’s busy.”

“Yes, but would you ask him to come over here?”

I stood up from my desk and walked across the room to the counter. Mrs. Walsh had begun to shake. The dark veins at the side of her head stood out beneath her white hair. “Is there something wrong, Mrs. Walsh?”

“This young woman thinks we will publish this in the paper.”

“What is it?”

“Here,” she said. “You read it. I refuse to.” She handed the tablet paper to me.

“Thank you, Mrs. Walsh,” I said. “Maybe you can begin closing up now.”

She turned and sat down at her desk. I could hear her behind me. She was upset. She had begun to whisper in the direction of Betty Lucas.

I read what was on the paper. It was a brief notice. It had been written in pencil and the paper it had been written on had been folded many times, into small squares, and at the edges it was frayed and ragged as though she had been carrying it around in her pocket for a week waiting for the right moment to bring it in. Then I looked at Jessie. Her eyes were very brown and her cheeks were still red from having been outside in the cold. I thought she looked very beautiful. There were bits of dry snow on the shoulders of her blue coat.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard your husband was gone. I suppose we’ve all heard that much. But I take it you haven’t heard from him yet either. Is that what this is about?”

“No. I haven’t heard from him.”

“Where do you think he is?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t any idea where Jack Burdette is.”

“You’ve notified the police, though?”

“Yes. But yesterday there was a bill in the mail.”

“A bill?”

“For some clothes he charged,” Jessie said. “So I called them back and told them they could stop looking for him. He isn’t lost.”

“I see,” I said. “I think I do, anyway.” Because it seemed obvious to me now, having read what she’d written on the piece of tablet paper, that she had come to a thorough understanding about the charges Burdette had made on Main Street and also about what those charges indicated about his disappearance. She hadn’t had to be present for the jokes and the talk in the bakery, or later to be there to hear the growing alarm people felt. She seemed to understand all too well what those things would mean to her as his wife in Holt.

I looked outside for a moment. On Main Street it was fully dark now. The streetlights had come on and it was snowing again. Behind me Mrs. Walsh and Betty Lucas had begun to put their coats on, preparing to go home for the evening. I waited until they had gone out through the back room into the alley. Then I turned back to Jessie.

“I wonder, Mrs. Burdette,” I said, “I wonder if you don’t think this is a little bit drastic? After all he might come back. Don’t you think? Maybe he’s just taking a vacation.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think that. I’ve stopped thinking that. It’s been two weeks.”

“Yes. But two weeks aren’t a lifetime.”

“They’re long enough.”

“And so you still want me to print this in the paper? You do want that?”

She began to open her purse. “How much is it?”

“But wait a minute,” I said. “I haven’t said I will yet.”

She looked at me. Her eyes were very large and dark. I picked up the penciled notice once more, reading it again while she turned to see that the two little boys were still seated quietly on the chair behind her. They were watching her like little birds.

Finally I said: “Very well, then. I’ll agree to print this. Although I don’t think it will do you any good. In fact I’m afraid it will do you a great deal of harm in town.”

She still wanted it printed. So I took out a form from a shelf under the counter. I copied her note onto the form as she had written it and afterward she paid for it.

She began to prepare TJ and Bobby to go outside again. They sat solemnly in front of her while she knelt to zip up their snowsuits; she helped them pull their mittens on.

I was standing behind the counter, watching her. Her blue coat was smooth and neat across the hips and her hair looked dark and lovely. “Listen,” I said, “will you let me drive you and your boys home? I’m leaving now anyway.”

She looked out the front window. Outside it was worse: it was snowing harder and the wind was blowing the snow horizontally along the street. “If it’s not any trouble,” she said. “I don’t want them to get cold again.”

“I’ll get my coat.”

Thus she allowed me to drive them across town to Gum Street that first time because it was snowing and because it was cold outside. I don’t recall that we said anything of significance. TJ sat on the seat between us and she had Bobby on her lap and I suppose during the six- or seven-block ride one of us managed to say something about the accumulation of snow. It was a quiet and awkward ride. But at the curb when I stopped to let them out I remember watching her take the boys up the sidewalk into their small house in the snow and I recall how she looked in her blue coat when she opened the door and then how the house itself looked after she had turned the lights on. Afterward I drove home again to the house where Nora and Toni were waiting for me to eat supper with them. But I wasn’t very much interested in supper just then, nor in going home again, nor even in my wife and daughter. I suppose by that time I was already a little in love with Jessie Burdette.

So in the following week I ran her notice as a kind of display ad on the back page of the
Holt Mercury
just as she had wanted it. I offset it with the announcements for Sunday church services and the obituaries for two longtime Holt County residents. Her notice said:
I’m not responsible for whatever Jack Burdette did or will do. He’s no good. It doesn’t matter what people say. He’s a son of a bitch and I don’t care anymore
.

I had my own reasons for printing it.

T
his public declaration of hers caused a stir in town when people read it. My father, for one, called me on the phone and said I was crazy to print such a thing. What did I think I was doing? It was unprofessional, he said; it was bad business practice. This was Holt County, Colorado, not San Francisco, California. Did I think he’d turned the paper over to have it ruined?

Of course other people in town felt similarly, as I knew they would, although their annoyance and their objections had more to do with moral considerations than with any concern over practical issues. Some of the older women were particularly incensed: they wrote letters to the editor about the appearance of profanity in the
Holt Mercury
. They didn’t like it, not the profanity nor the public display of raw emotion, and a number of the women canceled their subscriptions as a result.

Nonetheless, the commotion Jessie’s notice caused in Holt County that week was soon forgotten. It was a minor episode compared to what happened in the weeks and months that followed. And all of that got into the paper too.

Then there was one other small event which reflected on what was printed in the
Mercury
at about that time. It was in a minor key. It had to do with Jack Burdette’s mother.

She was an ancient woman now, gray-haired and very thin and even more severe than she had been before, but still living alone in the house on North Birch Street and still attending the Catholic church on Sunday mornings when she was able. After her son had been gone for about a month, in a kind of desperate form of masculine absurdity—since no woman would have even considered such a thing—several of the men in town decided that they would call on old Mrs. Burdette to ask her some questions. They thought it would be worthwhile to inquire if she had heard from her son. They hoped, if nothing else, that she might be able to suggest where he had gone.