Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind (8 page)

“You’d think a child would know where he lives,” I said.

“I got the feeling that she kept him pretty close to home,” Deputy Bates told me. He picked up the salt shaker and turned it around, thinking over the problem. “Seems his mother did most of her shopping over in Delmont, and of course he went to one of the county schools. Looks as if she made an effort to stay out of Abbotsville.”

“I just wish Wesley Lloyd had made an effort to stay
in
it.” I stirred lima beans around on my plate, not at all hungry, but needing something to occupy my hands. It was humiliating to talk to Deputy Bates, or anybody, about what my husband had
done, and how he’d gone to such lengths to keep me from knowing about it. But of course it wasn’t just me he’d wanted to keep in the dark, but everybody who’d thought he was a fine, upstanding man.

“I’ll get up early tomorrow afternoon,” Deputy Bates said, “so if you’ll call your lawyer and get a list of the county properties Mr. Springer owned, we’ll take Bud and look for the house.”

“All right,” I said. “I don’t know what good it’ll do me to find where she lived, but I’ll at least see the scene of the crime.”

T
HE LIST
I got from Binkie had been winnowed down to residential properties in the county, but it was lengthy enough. Deputy Bates drove my car, with me beside him and Little Lloyd in the backseat with his grocery sack.

“I can’t wait to get there,” he said, snapping his seat belt on. “You’ll like my house. It’s real nice.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said, and cut my eyes at Deputy Bates, who was intent on his driving. I didn’t want any smirks about who had bought the house, and why. Not that Deputy Bates was given to smirking, but you never know. I craned my neck toward the backseat and asked, “You sure you can’t give us any directions?”

“No’m, I never been this way before,” Little Lloyd said. He was looking out the window as Deputy Bates drove us first toward Benson’s Gap and the several small communities along the river. I had to do something about that child, and teach him to look at people when he spoke to them. But maybe it was just me he couldn’t face, which was understandable because I could hardly face him.

From the road, we looked at unpainted or peeling farmhouses, an inordinate number of them with sagging sofas on the porches and rusting farm machinery in the yards. Deputy Bates
slowed down as we passed each one so Little Lloyd could get a good look.

“That look familiar?” he’d ask, and then, “Think we’re getting close?”

Each time the boy shook his head, until we came to a cluster of frame houses around a grocery store and a post office with a dusty flag hanging limply on its pole.

“There it is,” he cried, pointing ahead of us.

“Which one, Bud?” Deputy Bates asked.

“There! At the very end. Maybe my mama’s there.” He hiked himself up to lean on the front seat so he could see through the windshield. He was breathing through his mouth in little gasps, fogging up his glasses.

We turned into a dirt driveway that led to a small white-painted house with a railed front porch. A high hemlock hedge enclosed both the front and back yards, and a huge oak tree shaded most of the house. Right in front of us was a closed two-car garage with a short breezeway connecting it to a side door of the house. Deputy Bates turned off the ignition, and the three of us sat there listening to the tick of the engine as it cooled off. Everything else was quiet, no movement anywhere, no road sounds. My heart hurt as I thought of the many times my husband had pulled into this drive and into that garage, and then slipped, unobserved, into the house where the child who was breathing down my neck was conceived and raised.

“That’s my house,” he said. “It’s real nice, ain’t it?”

“Isn’t it,” I corrected.

“Yessum, it is.”

I took a rasping breath and said, “Well, let’s see if anybody’s home.”

We climbed out, Deputy Bates pulling back his seat so Little Lloyd could get out. He ran to the front steps, calling, “Mama, Mama, I’m home!” I hoped she was.

Little Lloyd opened the front door and walked right in, while we followed behind him. As we crossed the porch to the open door, I could hear his feet running through the house and his voice calling his mama becoming more and more shrill. Desperate, maybe, and I couldn’t blame him. The house was empty, not a stick of furniture, not a piece of clothing. Nothing.

The boy came back into the front room, his face a picture of despair. I could’ve felt sorry for him if I hadn’t been so put out with that woman for going off and leaving him.

“Come here, Bud,” Deputy Bates said, pulling the boy to him. “Your mother said she was going to Raleigh, remember? She’s learning a trade and then she’ll be back to get you. It makes sense that she’d take her furniture with her, or maybe she’s stored it for when you’ll be back together. Don’t cry, now. This doesn’t mean anything.”

Well, maybe, I thought. That woman ought to be strung up for leaving her child with strangers the way she’d done.

“Since we’re here, I guess we ought to look around,” I said, taking note of the smallness and sparsity of the rooms. No matter how nice Little Lloyd thought it was, his father had certainly not squandered money on his little love nest. I could’ve felt some shame over his stinginess if I hadn’t been busy trying to picture him in it.

The rest of the house was as bare as the front room; not even the kitchen appliances had been left. Deputy Bates looked in all the closets, checked the ceilings for access to an attic, which he didn’t find, and then went out through the breezeway to the garage.

“Y’all stay there,” he called as the boy and I started to follow him. “Go back out to the car, and I’ll be there in a minute.”

I wasn’t interested in an empty garage any more than I was in an empty house, so it suited me to put my hand on Little
Lloyd’s back and turn him around. The sooner the child got out of there, the better, it seemed to me.

We sat in the car with the windows rolled down, waiting in the afternoon stillness for Deputy Bates. It was hot and humid, with butterflies flitting among the shrubs by the porch, insects chirping, and Little Lloyd sniveling in the backseat. I handed him a Kleenex from my pocketbook, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him. We both had our problems.

“What if my mama don’t ever come back?” he said, trying to choke back the tears.

“She will. I wouldn’t worry about that.” But of course that’s what I was doing.

“But I mean”—he stopped, his throat thick with misery—“I mean, what if something’s happened to her and she can’t come back? I don’t know what I’d do.”

My land, the child thought I’d turn him out cold on the streets. Where did he get such an idea?

“Well, for goodness’ sakes,” I said. “If something’s happened to your mother, which I very much doubt, you’ll stay with me until better arrangements can be made. So you don’t need to worry about that.”

I hoped I’d reassured him on that score, but I wasn’t about to commit myself to any long-term child care, no matter how pitiful the child. I was glad to see Deputy Bates close the front door of the house and walk over to the car. He got in and started it up, his face closed and thoughtful.

“Anything in the garage?” I asked as he backed down the driveway.

“Well, no cars. Just some oil spots and a few odds and ends.” He caught his bottom lip in his teeth, and glanced in the rearview mirror at the child, who was scrunched up in the corner of the backseat. “Miss Julia, I’m going to stop at that grocery store down
the road and get us all a Coke. It’s hot as…well,” he said with a quick grin, “pretty hot.”

“Suits me,” I agreed. “I could use a Co-Cola, and I expect Little Lloyd could, too.”

Deputy Bates parked in the shade of a tree in the packed dirt parking area in front of the store. Tin signs, weathered and rust-streaked, advertised Winston cigarettes and Peeler’s milk. A hand-lettered sign on the screen door announced that fresh farm eggs and homegrown tomatoes were available. While we waited for the drinks, I got out of the car and sat on a bench under the tree, hoping for a breeze to cool me off. Lord, it was hot and heavy. I took last Sunday’s bulletin from my pocketbook and fanned myself with it. Little Lloyd stayed in the car, looking with miserable eyes at the front of the store.

Deputy Bates handed him an icy bottle through the window, then came and joined me.

“Miss Julia,” he said, in a tone that made me look closely at the frown on his face, “I’m going to let you take that little boy and drive back home. I’ll wait here for Sheriff Frady and some of the others, then ride back to town with them.”

“What? Why is Earl Frady coming out here?”

“I called him,” he told me, turning his steady gaze on me. “I found something besides oil stains in that garage; maybe nothing, but it looked like blood.”

IT WASN’T ENOUGH
to have that worry on my mind all the way back to town. As soon as we pulled into the driveway at home, I knew something was wrong. Lillian was sitting on the back steps with her hands over her face. She sprang up as soon as she saw us.

“What is it now?” I wondered aloud.

She was at the car window before I got the keys out of the ignition, and the sight of her face made me forget about blood on a garage floor.

“Oh, Miss Julia!” she cried as I got out of the car. “You not gonna b’lieve…I didn’t know what to do! I been waitin’ for you to get home. Oh, Law, I ain’t never!”

“What in the world, Lillian?” I put my arm around her shoulders. “What is wrong with you?”

“I just went to the store, like I always do, an’ I locked the doors. You know I always lock the doors. An’ I didn’t even know it till I got the groceries put up, ’cause the kitchen ain’t messed up a bit. But then I went in the front room, an’ I couldn’t b’lieve it!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Somebody been in the house, that’s what I’m talkin’ about! Tore it up, too. Least the front room’s all tore up, I didn’t look no further. I come out on the steps to wait ’cause
Unsolved Mysteries
say don’t touch nothing when somebody break in yo’ house.”

“My Lord,” I breathed, feeling dizzy with all the implications. I put my hand on the car to steady myself. “Come here, Little Lloyd, and hold my hand. We better go see what the damage is.” He gave me his hand, and I tried not to think how many times he’d rubbed it across his nose. He held his grocery sack in the other. “Come on, Lillian.”

“We ain’t s’posed to touch nothing,” she warned me.

“I’m not going to touch a thing. But I want to see how much of the house they’ve been in, and see if anything’s been stolen. And I need to get to the telephone to call the sheriff.” Except he was at the other end of the county, along with Deputy Bates.

Lillian was right. The house had been ransacked, drawers pulled out of the desk and sideboard, with papers and silver dumped on the floor. The sofa cushions were on the floor, and
the chairs tipped over. My needlepoint pillows had been hurled across the room, knocking over a lamp that lay shattered on the floor.

“Oh,” I said, holding to the back of a chair. “My
Gone With the Wind
lamp! Who did this? Who in the world is responsible for this?”

We went upstairs, my feeling of trepidation confirmed at the sight of the bedrooms. My dresser drawers had been turned out on the floor and on the bed, with underclothes strung everywhere. Clothes from the closet were piled on the floor, and shoe and hatboxes emptied and discarded. Even the bathroom cabinets and the linen closet had been cleared. It looked like someone had just swept his arm along the shelves, knocking everything to the floor. Soap, bath crystals, talcum powders, cologne, towels, washclothes—everything had been flung to the floor and walked on. A full roll of toilet paper was stuffed into the commode, along with the red rubber bag that had to do with my personal hygiene. The lemon scent of Jean Naté was almost strong enough to mask the putrid smell of the semisoft clump of you-know-what on my white Royal Cannon towels.

“My land,” I gasped, holding my hand over my mouth. “This is unbelievable.” I pulled Little Lloyd away from the door. He didn’t need to witness such an affront to sensitive natures.

“That the worst thing I ever seen,” Lillian said. “What kind of person do somethin’ like that? We better call the police.”

“I’m going to,” I said, pulling Little Lloyd out of the room. “But let’s check the other bedrooms first.”

They were the same. Little Lloyd’s room was worse than mine, if that was possible. The mattress had been pushed off his bed, where it leaned half on the floor. His clothes were on the floor and his cardboard suitcase had been cut and stomped. We stood there surveying this senseless damage, and I could feel Little Lloyd’s damp hand closing tighter on mine.

“I’m real scared,” he said.

“Don’t be,” I said. “Let’s go to the kitchen, and I’ll call the sheriff. Little Lloyd, don’t you worry. Somebody sick and evil did all this, but they won’t do it again. Don’t you be afraid; I’m going to see to it.”