Dream With Little Angels (19 page)

T
he next day was Saturday.

I always woke early on Saturday mornings, and this Saturday wasn't any exception. The clock in the kitchen said twenty minutes to seven when I padded out wearing my pajamas. This morning I even had socks on. I decided the weather had gotten too cold for bare feet on my hardwood floor in the morning anymore.

Sometimes, Uncle Henry had the same sleeping habits I did. Usually, by the time I got up, the smell of coffee brewing would already be filling the kitchen and the hall when I opened my bedroom door. This morning though, I could still hear him sawing logs from the living room sofa. It was a bit of a disappointment, to be honest. I liked getting up early, but it was awfully boring when you were the only one awake. Besides, I especially liked having the smell of coffee drifting through the house while I wiped the sleep from my eyes. This morning, all I got was the cold tile kitchen floor (that even felt cold through my socks) and the feeling that the entire rest of the world was sound asleep just waiting for me to make some sort of noise to bring it to life.

I tiptoed into the living room, thinking that just my standing there looking at him might make Uncle Henry open his eyes, but he did not. The thick gold drapes were pulled mostly shut across the picture window above the sofa, but there was a gap of a few inches between them, and the morning sun glowed through it, casting the room in a magical pink and gold that really made me wish I wasn't the only one wandering around awake.

Then I noticed something move outside through that gap in the drapes. At first I couldn't believe what I thought I saw, so I had to creep closer, and near on lean right over top of Uncle Henry to get a better look. My heart flipped up into my throat when my initial guess turned out to be absolutely correct.

It turned out I actually wasn't the only person in the world awake this morning. I wasn't even the only person awake on our block. Across the street, in plain morning daylight, Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow had just left his house and was headed down Cottonwood Lane, taking the sidewalk in the direction of Hunter Road.

He looked like some sort of cowboy from those old movies, with a cowboy hat, boots, and everything. He even had a leather vest over his checked shirt. Under one of his arms was a long, rectangular cardboard box. It looked to me like the perfect size and shape of box someone might use to carry something like a shotgun in. Squinting into the morning sun barely topping the tree line behind the row of houses across our street, I continued watching him shuffle down the lane until he was out of my line of sight.

I couldn't believe it. It was the first time I had ever seen him leave his house since he moved in. There was only one thing to do. I had to call Dewey, and we had to follow him.

Now
I was very happy that nobody else in the house was awake. It made it much easier for me to discreetly use the phone, and I would be able to get out without having to answer a whole slew of questions. Probably Uncle Henry wouldn't have been so bad, but my mother would most likely frown upon the idea of me and Dewey sneaking around after our neighbor, even though I was near on positive he was up to no good. I couldn't understand why she didn't see it. To me, it was so clear. Even Uncle Henry thought the man seemed at least a mite suspicious after me and Dewey told him everything we saw.

At any rate, I was starting to learn forgiveness was generally easier to get than permission. Besides, I
really
didn't think my mother would be all that upset anyway; she would just have something to say about it. Mainly because she
always
had things to say about stuff I did.

Dewey turned out to already be up. He answered the phone on the first ring, which was good, because I didn't want to wake up his ma. She would have her own concerns, although through the years I had discovered Dewey's mother didn't seem nearly as thorough as my own when it came to worrying about or monitoring her son's business.

“I'll meet you outside on my bike in fifteen minutes,” I whispered excitedly into the phone after telling him about what I saw.

“Why was he dressed like a cowboy?” Dewey asked. I heard him yawn right before he said it. It annoyed me that he wasn't already off the phone and getting his shoes on.

“How the heck should I know? Why is he walking down Cottonwood Lane before seven on a Saturday? And the biggest question is why is he carrying a shotgun with him?” I was getting frustrated, because it was questions like these that were exactly the reason we had to follow him. If we knew all the answers, we could just stay home and Dewey could go back to bed the way it sure seemed like he wanted to right now.

“You said the box just
looked
like it could carry a shotgun,” Dewey said.

“Yeah, but what else would you put in a box like that? Come on, Dewey. It was a cardboard shotgun box if I ever seen one.”

“Have you ever seen one? I never even heard've one.”

I thought that over. “No, I suppose I haven't. Not until this morning, anyway.”

“I'm not sure I should leave,” Dewey said. “My mom's still asleep.”

“Leave her a note. Tell her you'll be back before nine.” I reminded him I now had my very own watch.

“I'm still thinking that maybe we should wait . . .”

“Wait for what? We've been watchin' his house going on . . . I don't even know how long. Now, out of nowhere, I actually see him leave and we have the opportunity to find out what he's
really
up to. And you're worried about your mom because she's sleepin'?”

“We know he ain't taking roadkill,” Dewey said. “It came back, remember?”

“We know he ain't taking it no
more,
” I corrected him. “We have no idea
what
he does.
This
is what we have to find out.” I sighed, trying not to get too angry and raise my voice too loud. I didn't want to wake anybody.

Finally, I convinced Dewey that going after Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow was not only the right thing to do, it was, by all intents, the
only
thing to do.

“All right,” he said. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes? You already used up ten on the phone. We need to catch up with him. You got ten to get here.”

“All right.”

It took him more like seventeen. In fact, I was on the verge of calling him back when I saw his bike pull up outside my yard through that gap in them drapes. I already had my boots on and quietly headed outside using the backdoor, being careful to shut it slowly so it didn't slam the way it normally did. I grabbed my bike from beside the garage and pushed it gently down the driveway in the still quiet of the early morning.

“What took you so long?” I asked, still keeping my voice down.

“I was in my pajamas when you called.”

“So was I.”

“I was hungry.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine time to think about eating. Anyway, let's go before someone wakes up and finds us.”

“Did you leave
your
mom a note?” Dewey asked.

I nodded.

“What'd it say?”

“Said I was going biking with you and I'd be home by nine. What did yours say?”

Dewey's cheeks pinkened under the golden morning light. The sun twinkled off the chrome of his handlebars. A few puffy white clouds were stretched across an otherwise light blue sky the color of a dipped Easter egg. “I said we was going after your neighbor to see what it is he does on Saturday mornings dressed as a cowboy.”

I stared at him for what felt like a full-on minute, wondering if he was pulling my leg. He wasn't. “Now, why would you go say somethin' dumb like that?” I asked.

“Cuz it's the truth, ain't it?”

“So? What if your mom calls my mom?”

“I always tell the truth.”

I bit my tongue and thought before responding. “I do too, but just because I left out part of the
why
doesn't mean I wasn't being truthful. Anyway, it's too late now to worry 'bout it; we ain't goin' back to your house to rewrite your note. Let's go, before we lose any chance of findin' him. Christ, Dewey, it's been nearly half an hour since he left.”

We kicked off in the same direction Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow had been walking. “I figure he's likely gone downtown,” I said. “Although I doubt too many shops or anythin' is open so early on a Saturday morning.” I said this, although I didn't rightly know whether or not it was true. Maybe all this time I'd been thinking I was one of the only people who woke up bright and early on Saturday mornings when the truth was it actually turned out
most
folk were just like me, and my mother and Carry were the exceptions. I guess me and Dewey were about to find out.

While we rode, I told Dewey about me and my mother finding Carry and her boyfriend the night before. Most of the story I went over rather quickly, but he made me slow down at several key areas. The first was when I described what Carry was wearing in the back of that car. I knew he'd be interested in hearing that, I just never realized
how
interested. He must have asked me nearly ten different things about it. Finally, I just got mad.

“She was in her bra. What else do you need to know? Why is this so important?”

Dewey shrugged. He was coasting beside me. “I dunno,” he said.

“Well, let's get past it, then, all right? I mean heck, you can either imagine what she looked like, or you can't. I don't see how I can provide any more details than I already have.”

He stopped me again when I got to the end and told him about how my mother pulled out her gun, pointed it straight at Carry's boyfriend, and—the most important part, I thought—used
the
word. Not once, but twice.

“Really?” Dewey asked. This interested him even more than Carry's undergarments. “Was the gun loaded?”

It was my turn to shrug. “I'm assuming so. My mom said it was.”

“And she used all them words?”

I nodded. We both swerved around a parked Chevy truck. “I couldn't believe what I heard,” I said. “She even said she was gonna blow his balls off, or something to that effect.”

“Wow.”

When Dewey was finally satisfied that he'd wrung every detail of the story he could from me, we fell into silence for a while. I rode the lead, taking us up to Main Street.

“How do you know this is the way Mr. Farrow went?” Dewey asked.

“I don't,” I said. “I just figure if you're gonna go out on a Saturday morning and get dressed up, you're probably headed downtown. I doubt he was going to the swamp or any of the mud roads or anything like that. He certainly didn't look dressed for roadkill collectin'.”

Dewey considered this and seemed to be satisfied that it made some sort of sense, because he never asked any more about it. “So,” he said after a bit, “did your mom really arrest Mr. Garner?”

This question didn't sit well with me, but I answered with the truth. “Yep. Far as I know, he's still in jail.”

“You don't sound too happy about it,” he said.

I hesitated. Truth was, I wasn't happy about it, but I didn't exactly know why. Something about the whole thing felt very wrong to me. Like there was something I should understand but didn't, or maybe something I should be remembering but forgot. “Tell me somethin', Dewey; you were there that afternoon in the rain when we went searching for Mary Ann Dailey. Remember all the stuff Mr. Robert Lee Garner said? Remember the way he talked about Ruby Mae Vickers? How he put flowers out for her?”

Dewey said he did. “He didn't seem as though he wanted to talk much 'bout them flowers, though.”

I nodded. “But we saw more flowers that day we rode over to his ranch, remember?” I asked. “The day they found Mary Ann? Those flowers seemed fresh to me.”

“Yup,” Dewey said. “Me too.”

I backpedaled slightly, slowing a bit. “Dewey, do you think Mr. Garner could do something like this to Mary Ann?”

“If the police think so, I don't see why my opinion would rightly matter. I'm only eleven years old,” he said. This was a slightly different opinion than the one he had expressed the night Mary Ann Dailey showed up dead and Mr. Garner was first taken into custody.

“But—” I wanted to keep talking, yet I really didn't know where to go with it. Problem was the details surrounding everything to do with Mary Ann Dailey nearly exactly matched those of Ruby Mae Vickers. This meant, at least in my mother's eyes, that the two cases weren't just likely related, they
were
related. They
had
to be related.

I had figured nothing downtown would be open this early on a Saturday, but I was wrong. As we came up on the Mercantile (which everyone as old as my mother referred to as Mr. Harrison's five and dime), I saw Jesse James Allen coming up the sidewalk and turning in. I couldn't believe how many people were up so early. As the door opened, I slowed down to get a glimpse inside to make sure Mr. Farrow wasn't there.

I squinted into the dark interior. I didn't see any customers, just Mr. Harrison stocking shelves. My concentration was fixed so much on the store that I nearly ran into Jesse James where he was still holding the door open. Smiling, I backpedaled, skidding my bike to a stop. “I reckon I near on hit you,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

It had been at least a year since I'd last seen Jesse James, but he knew me well enough. At least usually. This time, it was like he'd never seen me before in his life. He just stared at me without saying a word.