Miss Julia Stands Her Ground (23 page)

Mr. Pickens couldn't stand still. He paced the floor, slapping a fist into the palm of his other hand, his black eyes darting from one side to the other. “Where's Sam?”

“He's out looking for Brother Vern, and he still thinks Hazel Marie is safe in her bed. He doesn't know we don't know where she is, and I don't know where he is.”

“He have a cell phone with him?”

“No, but wherever Brother Vern is, that's where he'll be.”

“Okay. Here's my cell number,” he said. “Call me if you hear from her.”

“Where're you going?”

“To the sheriff's office to see Coleman. If Puckett's doing any street preaching, he had to get a license. It should have his address.”

“I know he started a new business. Printing things, I think. But, Mr. Pickens, how is finding Brother Vern going to help find her? That's the last place she'd be.”

“I know, but we have to start somewhere. And I want Sam to know she's missing. In the meantime, you stay here. . . .”

“I can't just sit here. I'm going with you.”

“We've had this conversation before,” he said, his face grim
and determined. “You need to be here in case she calls, and if she does, call me on my cell. And I want you to do something else. I want you to call everybody Hazel Marie knows and ask if they've seen her.”

“I can't do that,” I moaned. “She wouldn't want everybody to know. Besides, if I tie up the phone, how's she going to call?”

“Leave five minutes or so between each call you make, and she'll get through. Now, I'm outta here. Lillian, make sure Miss Julia stays right where she is. I don't want to be looking for two missing women.”

Lillian nodded at him, her eyes big with apprehension. Then she put her hand on my arm to keep me seated.

“All right, all right!” I snatched my arm away. “I'll stay.” But I wasn't happy about it. It just did me in to have to sit and wait while the men were out doing something—and usually not getting it done.

Before Mr. Pickens's car, with its low rumbling motor, had gotten out of the driveway, the telephone rang. My heart leapt in my breast and I nearly crippled myself getting to it.

I answered it with an eager, “Where are you?”

“Why, right here, talking to you,” Emma Sue Ledbetter said, as my heart dropped like a lead balloon. “Who did you expect?”

“Oh, uh, I thought it was Sam, letting me know where to meet him for lunch.” I shook my head at Lillian to let her know it wasn't Hazel Marie. “I have to get off the phone, Emma Sue. He'll be calling any minute.”

“It's only ten o'clock, Julia. You have plenty of time to arrange a lunch date. But I won't keep you, I just wanted to apologize to you for my behavior yesterday.”

“Don't worry about it, Emma Sue. If ever a man needed swatting, Vernon Puckett did.”

“Oh, I didn't mean that. Jesus himself took a whip to the money changers in the temple, you know. No, I just couldn't
stand by and listen to that man castigate Hazel Marie. She is just the sweetest thing, and so spiritual. We have to stand up for each other, Julia.”

I didn't know what to say. Hazel Marie was certainly sweet, I could attest to that. But if Emma Sue had known what Vernon Puckett was claiming, she would have to rethink her opinion of Hazel Marie's spiritual quotient.

So I said, “Uh, huh.”

“No,” Emma Sue went on, “I want to apologize for slamming your door when I left. There was no call for that, and you know I am not ordinarily that rude.”

“Don't give it another thought,” I said, shifting from one foot to the other in my anxiety. “Now, Emma Sue, I do have to go.”

“Wait, Julia, I have something else to tell you. You know about Dub and Clara and that electrician, don't you? Well, did you know that Dub was fixing to sue him for stealing Clara's affections?”

“I've heard all about it, Emma Sue, but I don't have time for an update now. Besides, I think it's ridiculous for a man to demand payment for a wife who wants to go.”

“Well, but, Julia, marriage is sacred, and it has to be preserved.”

“But not by buying and selling a woman's affections, it doesn't. I can't be bothered with this now, Emma Sue, it's all so sordid.”

“Well, anyway, they settled out of court, and Dub got seventy thousand dollars because he had them dead to rights.”

“My word, Emma Sue, I heard he was asking five hundred thousand, and he settled for seventy? If I were Clara, I'd be insulted.”

“Oh, Julia, you are such a liberal. And speaking of that, Larry is beside himself, wanting to know what you're going to do about the session.”

“I haven't had time to give it a thought, Emma Sue. I'm still praying about it, though, and I'll let him know the minute I decide.”

“You can't take too long. The election'll be here before you know it. What you ought to do, Julia, is get Hazel Marie to pray
for you. She's come so far on her spiritual journey, and I just know she can guide you in the right way.”

My eyes rolled back in my head. “I'll be sure and do that, Emma Sue. Now, thank you for calling, but, oh, someone's at the door. Talk to you later.” And I hung up.

Lillian said, “Who's here? I don't hear no do'bell.”

“Nobody, Lillian. I just wanted to get off the phone. Now, help me think who to call about Hazel Marie.”

We spent the rest of the morning taking turns calling everybody in the Lila Mae Harding Sunday School class, the Tuesday morning circle, the book club, the bunco group, the PTA, and the dress shops downtown. It was hard work, for we couldn't just come out and tell everybody that Hazel Marie was missing. The whole town would've been out beating the bushes, if we had. So we went all around Robin Hood's barn to find out if anybody had seen her. A lot of little stories were told, like, Hazel Marie was on her way to the grocery store and we needed to add something to the list, but she'd said she had to run a few errands of her own beforehand, and had she stopped off at your house before going on to the store. We really needed a head of lettuce. Like that.

But nobody had seen her or heard from her. A lot of them offered to lend us some lettuce, though.

“Lillian!” I slapped my hand down on the table, struck with a new thought. “I don't know where my mind is. Kinfolk! That's where she is. She would go to family.”

“Who her fam'ly?”

“Well, that's the sad thing,” I said, deflating in a hurry. “I don't know a one. But let me think. I know that her mother passed on years ago, and I think her father remarried. I gathered that the new wife pushed her out of the house before she was old enough to take care of herself.”

“She don't have no brothers or sisters?”

“I've never heard her mention any, so I guess not.” I mused on that for a few seconds, saddened that I knew so little of Hazel
Marie's early life. Hadn't wanted to know, if you want to know the truth. As far as I'd been concerned, her life had begun the day she first showed up at my door, mainly because I didn't want to hear the details of her connection to Wesley Lloyd. Now, though, I'd have given anything to know every last one of them.

“Anyway,” I went on, then stopped again. “Lillian! There is one person we haven't called.” I jumped up and hurried to the phone. “Etta Mae Wiggins! They've known each other for years.”

I leafed through the phone book. “Let me see, she's probably at work, so I'll call there first. Here it is, Handy Home Helpers.”

The woman who answered the phone was not the most helpful person I'd talked to, in spite of the name of her business. In fact, she was right on the verge of rudeness, saying that Etta Mae Wiggins had called in sick that morning, and she'd had to get somebody else to fill in for her at the last minute, and furthermore personal calls were not encouraged at a place of business. She wouldn't even give me Miss Wiggins's home phone number, so I had to look that up, too.

“Some people,” I said to Lillian, as I listened to the phone ring and ring and ring some more. “She's not answering, Lillian, and no answering machine, either.”

“Maybe she at the doctor's, if she sick.”

“Maybe so. Well,” I said, finally hanging up, “we'll have to keep trying. Miss Wiggins is our last hope, although I never thought a woman like her would be in such a position.”

I did not care for Miss Wiggins. She was too outgoing, too perky, too flashy, and too familiar with Sam. But at the moment I could overlook every one of her faults if she could lead us to Hazel Marie.

About that time, two long and anxious hours after he'd left, Mr. Pickens returned. Both Lillian and I hurried to meet him at the door.

“Have you found her? What did Coleman say?”

“Where she at?”

“Let me get inside,” he said, for we'd waylaid him on the back porch, where it was too cold to stand around and talk. “No, I haven't found her. But no accidents and no admissions to the emergency room, thank goodness. Coleman got me Puckett's business address, but the place is closed up tight.”

“Oh, Mr. Pickens,” I moaned, standing aside but not too far away. “We've come up against a stone wall, too. Nobody's seen or heard from her, and Miss Wiggins is not at home or at work, and I'm at my wit's end, not knowing where to turn to next.”

Mr. Pickens smeared his hand across his face. “I still don't understand why she'd take off this way. I thought she'd come to me if she had a problem. She knows I'd make it right for her.”

Well, not always,
I thought. There're some things that can't be made right by anybody, no matter how good their intentions, and nine times out of ten they're things out of the past that we've brought on ourselves. In spite of Hazel Marie's philosophy, we have to live with the consequences, and that's the fact of the matter.

I turned away so he wouldn't see the distress on my face. Everything that was happening seemed to lead to the conclusion that Hazel Marie had a secret, the potential revelation of which was now tearing her apart and sending her scurrying off to who knew where.

“You've not heard from Sam?” Mr. Pickens asked.

“No, and I'm about half mad at him for not staying in touch.” I paused and reconsidered. “Of course, he doesn't know that Hazel Marie didn't come home last night. Maybe you ought to be looking for him, too.”

“I'm going to,” Mr. Pickens said. “I just stopped by to see if you'd heard anything.”

“I would've called you. Now, don't stand around, Mr. Pickens, we need to find her before Little Lloyd gets home from school.”

“I'm gone, then.”

“Wait,” Lillian said, “lemme fix you a sam'wich to take with you.”

“He doesn't have time for a sandwich,” I said, holding the door open. “He needs to be on his way.”

And so he was. I stood by the door, my nerves so on edge that I could hardly think straight. Listening to his car back down the driveway, I decided that I couldn't sit around and wait much longer.

“Lillian,” I said, “I'm going to Miss Wiggins's house, I mean, trailer. She'll have to come back sooner or later, and I can get more out of her face-to-face than I can over the telephone.”

“Yessum, an' I'll go with you.”

“No, somebody has to stay by the phone. Where's my pocketbook?”

“I don't know, an' you not about to go drivin' off by yo'self. We got enough people running 'round where nobody know where they be. An' we got that machine what say leave yo' number an' we call back, so I'm goin'.”

“Well, so we do.” It brought me up short to be reminded of the
answering machine, mainly because I'd not given it a thought, hating to talk on one myself. And also, of course, because I wanted to speak directly to Hazel Marie if she called. But we'd waited all morning, and I was sick of it.

“Let me get my pocketbook then,” I said.

I hurried out of the kitchen, snatched up my pocketbook from the dresser in the bedrooom, and hurried back in, shrugging on a coat as I went. Lillian was doing something with peanut butter and crackers at the counter.

“We can't linger, Lillian. Get your coat and let's go.”

Lillian stuffed the crackers smeared with peanut butter into a plastic bag, and followed me out to the car. “We can eat on the way,” she said, settling herself into the passenger seat.

“I can't think about eating now.” I raced the motor to warm it up, turned the heat on high, and backed out into Polk Street. Lillian grasped the armrest as I gave it the gas and we sped through town and out onto the state road that led to Delmont.

On the way, Lillian dug into the plastic bag and handed me two graham crackers sandwiched with peanut butter. “It won't hurt you none to eat this while you drivin'. Jus' keep yo' eyes on the road while you doin' it.”

A short way on the outskirts of Abbotsville, I impulsively turned onto a side road that led us to a long, sloping, grass-covered hill lined with hemlocks and dotted with a few leafless oak trees. A tarred track curved away from the two stone pillars that indicated the entrance to Good Shepherd Memorial Park.

As we passed between the pillars, the tombstone-studded hill spread out before us. Lillian sat up. “What we doin' here? I thought we lookin' for Miss Hazel Marie.”

“We are, and I know she's not here, so don't say a word. I'm just seeing if everything is as it should be.” I swung the car onto the lane that bisected the cemetery, following it to the top of the hill where the Springer family plot was outlined by a dry stone
wall. One tall moss-covered tombstone marked the resting place of Wesley Lloyd's father, a lesser one, his mother.

I slowed the car and peered through the window. “Look at that, Lillian. Why in the world did I let them put that double tombstone over Mr. Springer?” I pointed to the wide granite marker that had SPRINGER engraved across the top. An engraved line down the middle divided the stone into two halves. One half was etched with Wesley Lloyd's name and dates, along with the words WELL DONE, GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT.

“Lord, Lillian, I'd forgotten about that. Mr. Springer arranged for it long before he passed, and I was in such a state at the time that I told them to go ahead and put it up. And just look at it.”

My own name and birth date balanced Wesley Lloyd's on the other half of the tombstone, and beneath the blank space for the date of my passing were the words LOVING WIFE.

“The arrogance of the man!” I fumed. “That thing has got to go. There's not a way in the world I'm going to be buried beside anybody but Sam.”

“I still don't know what we doin' here,” Lillian said. “We didn't bring no flowers or nothin'.”

“Flowers don't last long, especially in this weather,” I mumbled, still eyeing the site while my mind was on the logistics of getting an earthmover in there without destroying a fifty-year-old wall. Not that I particularly cared, because whether we exhumed Wesley Lloyd or not, and even if it tore up the entire burial plot, I was going to get that double marker removed. After we got through with Wesley Lloyd, he could just lie there under a single gravestone, alone forever. I'd show him a “loving wife.”

Wanting out of the place, I sped up, but Lillian was still mumbling at my lack of respect for the dead. “Lots of people put plastic flowers on they graves.”

“Lord, Lillian,” I said, turning to look at her. “Mr. Springer would come flying out of there if I did that.” Besides, I was more
interested in what was
in
his grave, namely the same DNA as Little Lloyd's, not what was on top of it. “We better go.”

“Yessum, an' I don't know why we up here in the first place. You don't never tend to his grave nohow.”

“Lillian,” I said, somewhat exasperated, as I took a side lane that would lead us back to the main road. “His grave is well tended because I pay a tidy sum every year for what they call perpetual care. Although how long perpetual would last if I missed a payment, I don't know. But I'm not about to come out here and pull weeds every time it rains.”

“We s'posed to look after the dead,” she said under her breath.

“Well, I'm more concerned about the living. Now let's get on to Miss Wiggins's place.”

“Wasn't me wantin' to stop at no graveyard.”

I let her have the last word, because she didn't know the interest I now had in getting in and out of a particular grave site. Trying to make up the time, I sped along the highway toward Delmont. But wouldn't you know, we caught the only red light. I cleared my throat of lingering peanut butter and tapped my hand on the wheel, waiting for the light to change.

Before long, we were through the town and out on the road again, watching for the left turn onto Springer Road.

“I haven't been out here in I don't know when,” I said, as I made the turn. A horn from an oncoming pickup blasted us and the driver shook his fist. “People can be so uncivil when they're behind the wheel. He could see I had my blinker on. Let's see, Lillian, the trailer park's on your side, so watch for it. We ought to be fairly close.”

We went over a slight rise in the tarred road and saw the trailer park on our right. A dozen or so trailers, looking bleak and forlorn under the gray sky, lined the narrow gravel drive. As I made the turn, I took note of the neatness of the place, a far cry from the way it had looked when I first learned that it was part of Wesley
Lloyd's estate. Even though I had little use for Miss Wiggins, I congratulated myself for elevating her to the managerial level. With her bossy ways, she was making the tenants toe the line and pick up their trash.

“Watch out!”
Lillian yelled, grabbing the dashboard with both hands.

I slammed on the brakes and gasped for air as the seat belts jerked us upright. “Lord!” I yelled back as the car skidded on the gravel, ending up nose to nose with another car on the way out. Gravel spewed up around both cars, and I could hear my heart pounding away at the close call.

“Look, Miss Julia!” Lillian yelled again. “It's her!”

“What? Oh, my goodness, it is!” I opened my door and started out of the car, almost strangling myself on the seat belt. Fumbling to unsnap it, I said, “Watch her, Lillian. Don't let her leave.”

But Hazel Marie wasn't going anywhere. By the time I got around to her door and looked through the window, her head was resting on the steering wheel.

Lillian, who'd followed me, peered over my shoulder, looking in at Hazel Marie. “Lord Jesus, she ain't hurt, is she?”

The door was locked, so I knocked on the window. “Hazel Marie! Are you all right?”

She looked up at us, her eyes red-rimmed and teary. Then she slowly opened the door and stepped out. Lillian pushed me aside and wrapped Hazel Marie in her arms.

“Law, Miss Hazel Marie, we been worriet sick. Where you been? Why you not come home where you s'posed to be?”

Hazel Marie stared at me over Lillian's shoulder. Her eyes seemed to be filled with fearful questions. Did I know? Did I suspect? Did I want anything more to do with her?

We looked at each other for several seconds while my mind went a mile a minute. As Sam had pointed out, everything Brother Vern had said had been couched in such ornate and
oratorical flourishes that only those in the know would've caught his meaning.

And I was in the know. But, for Hazel Marie's sake, I didn't have to be.

“Hazel Marie,” I said, reaching out to pat her arm, “don't you worry about that uncle of yours any more. Both Sam and Mr. Pickens are after him with a stick. He is not going to be around to embarrass you in front of Emma Sue or anybody else. You don't have to run off and hide your head. Everybody has relatives they'd rather not have, so you just hold your head high. He may shame you with words, but he can't touch you any other way.”

She stared at me for a while longer, then gradually a look of gratitude filled her eyes with more tears. “Oh, Miss Julia,” she said, moving away from Lillian and flinging herself at me. “I was so afraid . . . I thought you'd, you know, believe all that stuff he said.”

“There, there,” I mumbled, patting her back, somewhat unnerved to have her clinging to me. “Who could understand him? I know I couldn't, nor any other preacher when they get on their high horses.”

She stepped back then, wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater, and sniffed loudly. She tried to laugh, but made a poor showing of it. “I'm about to freeze,” she said. “I left so fast yesterday that I forgot to get a coat.”

“Well, let's go home,” I said, noticing now how the wind was whipping up under the low clouds. “We've all been quite beside ourselves with concern for you.”