Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (15 page)

Men that try to act like heroes and use their brute force on little children sure are stupid. Our car would have burned up, too, but Michael, who is only twelve, got in it and backed it away. I climbed in with him and noticed some of my school books in the car, so I took them out and threw them in the fire. I figured it would save me from doing a lot of homework, but unfortunately under the headline in the paper the next day that said
HARPER’S MALT SHOP BURNS TO THE GROUND IN TRAGIC FIRE
it also said that seen throwing her school books in the fire was little Daisy Fay Harper. Rat’s foot! No wonder Hollywood stars hate reporters, and after all that some busybody do-gooder has already bought me a new set of books.

We lost everything we owned, including all the animals in the freezer, but Daddy and I try to look on the bright side of things. All those blue skirts and white blouses burned up and what was left of those Spanish mackerels. Thank goodness I was wearing my jeans and my red and white flannel shirt I like so much. A friend of Momma’s and Daddy’s named Mr. White who has some cottages down on the beach let us stay in one for a while, so that’s where we are living. About a day or so after the fire Daddy took me out to the car and opened the trunk and said, “Well, look
what just happens to be in the trunk.” It was my tin box of private papers with the combination lock, my sweetheart pillow and that stuffed bobcat. All I can say is that I am sorry that my birth certificate and my baby pictures didn’t just happen to be in that trunk. Momma is furious her silver fox fur and her alligator purse weren’t in the trunk either.

She is not speaking to Daddy at all again. According to her, Daddy is a “stupid son of a bitch from hell without the good sense God gave a pig.” If she ever finds out the fire was his fault, she will kill him for sure, especially when she knows what we’re getting from the insurance company.

The day after the fire Daddy sent me to where the malt shop had been to wait for the insurance man. I had to stand up the whole time because the sand was still so hot you couldn’t sit down. A lot of people from Magnolia Springs came to see the ruins and Kay Bob Benson had the woman who works for her mother bring her. She parked right in front of our place and just sat and laughed. When I told Momma on her, she said not to worry, every dog has its day. Mrs. Dot came and cried and cried. She said she couldn’t believe that this terrible tragedy had befallen one of her Jr. Debutantes. She took it harder than anyone and devoted her entire “Dashes from Dot” column to us. She said that I was the bravest soul, standing on the disaster site the next day, like a good little soldier waiting for the insurance man, my little chin held high trying not to cry. I never did think about crying, I was too happy over those white shirts and blue skirts burning, not to mention the Spanish mackerel, but it made a good story.

Everybody is being real sweet and Michael’s mother made him give me a pair of his blue jeans and a shirt. Boys’ blue jeans are the best. People are trying to give us a lot of things, but Momma won’t take hardly anything. She is too proud to accept charity. I think she ought to wait and see what people offer and then make up her mind. When I told her it would be a terrific time to go on
Queen for a Day
because she had a great sad story, she started to bawl. She and Mrs. Dot ought to have a crying contest. My mother doesn’t know this, but I am going to get a job as soon as I finish the sixth grade and buy her a brand-new silver fox fur
that is not worn out on the elbows. Boy, I can’t wait to see her face and if I can make enough money, I will get her an alligator purse, too.

Momma left today to go live with her sister in Virginia. She told me she just couldn’t stay with Daddy anymore and when I get older, I would understand. She wanted me to go with her. I love my mother very much, but I can’t see leaving my daddy. Besides, I am having too good a time in the sixth grade. Mrs. Underwood is reading us
Nancy Drew and the Clue in the Crumbling Wall
. I am very interested to see how this one turns out. Boy, one chapter at a time can sure make a nervous wreck out of you. When Momma left, she didn’t even have a bag to pack or anything to put in it. Mrs. Dot picked her up and took her to Magnolia Springs to catch the Greyhound bus. She’ll come back, she always does. She made me promise to write her every week and if Daddy gets in jail, I’m to go up to Mrs. Dot’s house.

The night she left, Daddy got on a real mean drunk. When I asked him to stop drinking so much, he told me to shut up and leave him alone and get on the bus and go to Virginia with my mother, he couldn’t stand the sight of me. He said he had never cared anything about me, which is a lie. He was saying that because he’s upset over Momma. It hurt my feelings anyway, but I didn’t let him see me cry. I fixed him the next day, though. Before I went to school, I left him a note that said, “Billie G. Thweatt called you up on the phone last night.”

Mrs. Underwood took me in the cloakroom today and asked me if my momma and daddy were fighting again. I said no, which was the truth because she’s in Virginia. She said, “I know something is wrong.” I said, “What has Kay Bob Big Mouth Benson been saying now?” Mrs. Underwood said Kay Bob Benson hadn’t said anything, she could just tell by the way I was acting. I don’t know how. I have been real funny lately and have cracked a lot of good jokes and made the whole class laugh, so she didn’t get it from me. It had to be Kay Bob Benson that spilled the beans!

I got a letter from Momma today. She is fine. She has got a job as a waitress and will send for me whenever she can. I am surprised that she hasn’t come home yet. She must have been madder than I thought. This is the longest she’s ever been gone, and I miss her.

Do you remember the little bald boy, Vernon Mooseburger, who came to the Halloween party as a mean potato? You wouldn’t believe how cruel people can be just because he doesn’t have a hair on his head. Kids call him ugly names like cue ball, Daddy Warbucks and Henry, after the bald boy in the cartoon funny papers. I call him Vernon. He is poor and got a disease when he was little that made all his hair come out, including his eyebrows. His momma bought him a brown leatherette hat with
flaps that he wears even in summer. The only time I ever saw his hat off was when he was the potato. I always choose him to be on my side if ever we play softball because the other kids choose him last.

Mrs. Underwood made us all write an essay on what we would like to be when we grow up. I wrote one called “Why I Want to Be Bald When I Grow Up.” Mrs. Underwood picked it out with three others to go to the Harwin County Fair and compete with essays from children all over Harwin County. I said how great it would be in the summer to be able to put a cold rag on top of your head. You would never have to go to Nita’s Beauty Box and get a comb broken in your hair. When you went out, all you had to do was take a rag and polish your head a little; and if you got into a fight, nobody could pull your hair; and when you got old, you would never have to turn gray and dye your hair purple. Vernon didn’t know how lucky he was. Most of the essays were pretty dull, but wait until you hear what Kay Bob Benson wants to be. She wants to grow up and be Miss America, just like Yolanda Betbeze, or the mother of Jesus if He ever comes back. Oh, brother. You were not supposed to be two people, and if Jesus Christ ever does come back, I would want to be Him, not His mother. Daddy says always go for the top prize.

Get ready for this. This is even better than the
HALL OF BLOOD AND GUTS … ENTER IF YOU DARE
. Michael and I were on the beach after school, and he was shooting his .22 rifle at pilings and tin cans, like he always does. He got that gun for his birthday … which deep in my heart made me jealous because girls don’t
ever get a real gun. Michael only let me shoot his stupid gun once, even though I am a mascot for the all-woman army. He pretends he’s Roy Rogers, which is all right with me, except that he always wants me to pretend that I am Dale Evans, which I can never bring myself to do. He says there can’t be two Roy Rogerses, so I have to be Hopalong Cassidy, second best.

He was shooting up and down the beach when he saw that something had washed up in front of Hammer’s Christian Motel. It looked like a sack of potatoes, but Michael ran over and found it was not a sack of potatoes at all. It was a dead woman with a bullet hole right between her eyes! Michael hadn’t meant to shoot her. We hadn’t even seen her. Who would have thought someone would be on the beach this time of year? Here I was, just eleven and already a witness to murder. Since there was nobody around, I decided Michael shouldn’t have to go to the electric chair because of one accident. I chose my friend against the law and I’m still not sure what that says about my character, but we made a blood pact that neither of us would tell.

So I went home and watched
Our Miss Brooks
with Eve Arden, Gale Gordon and Richard Crenna, and about an hour later some men banged on our door. It seems to be men that carry bad news, doesn’t it? They had found a dead woman on the beach by the pier. I didn’t know what else to do but to go with Daddy to see it. After all, a dead body is a big event and if I said that I was not interested, that would have made me look suspicious. I had a duty to protect Michael from the law.

When we got there, it was almost dark. The wind was blowing the sea wheat and it was making a weird noise. The moon was full and turning orange. The police had the place roped off and were looking at the woman with flashlights and were doing a lot of mumbling that police do at this sort of thing just like in the movies.

The Hammers, who were lording it over everybody because the body had been found on their property, have a vicious grandchild named Gregg. Do you know what he did when everybody’s back was turned? He ran up there and tried to get the dead woman’s watch and rings off of her before he was stopped. Personally, I think he had a lot of courage to touch a dead body in
the dark. They should have let him go ahead and keep it, even though the watch probably wouldn’t run unless it was a Timex. They put one in a washing machine on television once.

Pretty soon the hearse from Magnolia Springs came. Right at that moment Michael and his mother and daddy came down. I found out later that Michael had run home and hidden under his bed and made his momma and daddy wonder about him. Michael was white as a sheet and he is an Italian person. He looked at me, but I kept a blank look. I was sticking to our blood pact. Michael, however, after being there three minutes fell down in the sand and started screaming and hollering that he was the murderer and had shot the woman dead that very afternoon. I kept my mouth shut. His confession, however, didn’t hold much weight with the police since they said she had been shot with a pistol and had been dead for about three days.

It was real sad to see someone confess like that when they didn’t have to. To make him feel better, I told him it could have been him, if she hadn’t already been killed. I looked over and little Gregg was getting the tar smacked out of him by his grandmother. She had to wrestle him to the ground to get whatever it was away from him. He let out a scream and tried to bite her in the leg. Mrs. Hammer marched right up to the police and said, “Here, my grandson took this off that dead woman,” and handed them a ring.

The minute I saw that ring I knew the dead woman was
RUBY BATES
! I hadn’t recognized her without her makeup. I yelled, “I know who that dead woman is. She’s Ruby Bates and she’s a friend of Claude Pistal’s.” This policeman said, “What did you say, little girl?” and I said, “That woman is Ruby Bates and she’s Claude …” but before I could get anything more out, Michael’s mother slammed her hand over my mouth so hard I saw stars. She told the police I didn’t know what I was talking about and was hysterical at seeing a dead body. I tried to tell them again, but she pinched me so bad that I couldn’t have said anything if my life depended on it.

She pulled me up the road and asked me where in the world did I get the idea that woman was a friend of Claude Pistal’s. I told her he had been parked in a car with her smooching one
afternoon and I had taken her to the bathroom for him. She said, “How do you know that’s the same woman who was with Claude Pistal?”

I said, “I recognized the ring … I’d know that ring anywhere.”

She thought for a minute and then she said, “You didn’t see that woman with Claude Pistal.”

I said, “Yes, I did.”

She said, “No, you didn’t.”

I said, “Yes, I did.”

And then she said, “Daisy Fay Harper, believe me, you didn’t see any woman with Claude Pistal. Do you understand me?”

I said, “All right, but I did.”

She said for me not to mention his name under any circumstances because Claude Pistal is the meanest man in Harwin County and there was no telling what he would do if I said he knew that woman. I suddenly realized she had a point and that Peachy Wigham had called him mean as snake shit. Mrs. Romeo asked me if I thought he would remember me seeing them together. I said I didn’t think so, he was pretty drunk. She asked me who else knew I had seen them. I said, “Nobody.” I hadn’t told anybody, not even Daddy, which is a miracle because I usually tell everybody everything. She made me proimse not to open my mouth and to never say Ruby Bates’s or Claude Pistal’s name out loud again as long as I lived or she would call my mother and make her come get me and take me to Virginia.

Daddy asked me what Michael’s mother and I had been talking about and I said, “Female trouble.” That always shuts them up. Momma used that one all the time.

The papers are full of stories about the dead woman. The police said her name was Mrs. Ruby Bates. I told you so! She was from Meridian, the wife of a Mr. Earl Bates. She is survived by her sister, Mrs. Julian Wilson, who must be Opal, and a brother, Mr. Lee Halprin, who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. She had been killed by a single bullet in the head and had been dead approximately sixty-eight hours when the body was found. They even knew what her last meal had been—peas and carrots. I sure wouldn’t want my last meal to be peas and carrots.