The Search for Belle Prater (6 page)

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Authors: Ruth White

BOOK: The Search for Belle Prater
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Miz
Lincoln motioned Joseph to come over and sit by her on the couch, which he did, and she commenced telling her and Reeve’s story.
“I was born to normal-sized parents with pea-sized brains. They took one look at my ‘deformity’ and yelled for somebody to come and take this monstrosity away. They didn’t have sense enough to realize that a deformity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. You may not know it, but there are many like me born every year to all races of people. Most people call us midgets or dwarfs, but we prefer to be called Little People.
“Your Grandma and Grandpa Lincoln didn’t have children of their own at that time, and they wanted me, Joseph. They really wanted me!”
Miz Lincoln had a big beaming smile on her face when she said that.
“It was probably the luckiest break I ever got. They
loved me, and took care of me, and treated me like I was as big as anybody. Why, they made me feel like I was five feet tall—ha! That’s a joke.”
We all laughed to be polite.
“Did you ever see Little People in the public schools?” Miz Lincoln asked us. “No, you didn’t. There was no such thing, then or now. So I was educated at home, and it was no inferior education, either. My mama knew what she was doing.
“Then when I was fifteen, my little brother, Reeve, was born. He was really something. We just about loved him to pieces.
“When I was seventeen, I went away to a special college where there were others like me, and I studied to become a teacher, but I don’t know what for. After I graduated, the regular schools wouldn’t hire me. So I moved home and just bided my time, hanging around the house for a few months. And then, out of the clear blue sky, both of my adopted parents got killed in a car wreck. It was the worst time of my whole life, but for Reeve’s sake, I had to pull myself together and go on. Somehow I had to support the two of us.
“Since no other school wanted me, I got me a job teaching circus children. Circuses and carnivals have always been a sanctuary for misfits like me who might be considered freaks. Some of my students were actually performers, but a lot of them were the sons and daughters
of the barkers, animal trainers, high-wire walkers, flying trapeze artists, jugglers, and of course the clowns, who were mostly Little People like me. I had finally found a place where I could feel I belonged. They saw nothing odd about me. Reeve and I traveled all over the country with them for years. And we had the time of our lives.
“But sometime during that period with the circus, Reeve took up gambling—or, I should say, it took him. When he turned eighteen, he left me and he left the circus and struck out hitchhiking to wherever the road would lead him. He has been a wanderer and a gambler ever since. I never knew where he was from one day to the next, except for those years he was married to your mother.”
“A wanderer? A gambler?” Joseph echoed.
“I’m afraid so. He’s plain addicted to gambling. Try as he will to quit, he can’t seem to do it. To him it’s like smoking cigarettes, and I think he’s tried every trick known to give it up, but he’s failed.
“When he met your mama, he fell head over heels in love. She had a way about her that settled him, calmed him, and kept him by the home fires. It was the incentive he needed to quit, and he did—for a while, anyway. Then he started gambling again.
“At this point things got ugly. His addiction made him steal food from y’all and take clothes off your backs.
When he lost the house … well, that’s when he hit the road again. He was doing you a favor.”
“What house?”
“Your mother never told you?”
“No. She never talked about him at all. She said we should consider him dead.”
“I can understand that,” Miz Lincoln said sadly. “But I wonder why she never told you about me. I always liked your mama, Joseph.”
Joseph had no answer for her.
“Anyway,” she went on, “when you were just a baby, your mother and father owned a house together in Asheville, and he gambled it away.”
“No foolin’?” Joseph said. “A whole house?”
“A whole house,” Miz Lincoln said, and shook her head slowly, as if she still couldn’t believe it. “When he left you, he wandered around some more, gambled some more. Then two years ago he figured he had hit rock bottom and couldn’t sink any lower. He longed to be clean again. So right in the midst of this big old horse race, he took to praying.
“‘Lord,’ he said, ‘if you let me win this last bet, I will never gamble again, and the only thing I will try to win from now on is respect.’
“Reeve told me later that it was against all odds, all logic, all reason that his horse would win that race, but it did. And he took it as a sign from God.”
Woodrow nudged me and whispered, “Read the signs.”
“Your father was as good as his word, Joseph,” Miz Lincoln continued. “He quit gambling for the second time. By then I had retired from the circus, bought this house for my golden years, and settled down. He came here and asked could he stay with me while he was trying to pull his life together. Natur’ly I couldn’t turn him down. Never could. Besides, I was happy to have him.
“He got himself an honest job doing construction work. And with some of the money from that last bet, your father bought a watch for Ethan, and that fine coat for you, Joseph.”
Here Miz Lincoln grinned and poked Joseph in the chest with her index finger. “I was joshin’ you about that coat, lad. I was the one who picked it out.”
Joseph broke into a big grin his own self, and I was glad to see it. I figured right then he was going to be all right.
“Yeah, I took one look at that coat,” Miz Lincoln continued, “and I says to myself, says I, ‘That’s it! That’s a fine coat for my nephew Joseph.’ And I mailed it and the watch to y’all at Christmas, along with the letter.”
Joseph’s head shot up. “What letter?”
“There was a letter to you and Ethan from your daddy in that package. If your mama didn’t give it to you, well, I can’t fault her for that, either.”
“What did the letter say?”
“He asked your forgiveness and asked if he could come and see you.”
“But he never got an answer, did he?” Joseph said.
“No,” Miz Lincoln said sadly. “And it was just as well. He couldn’t stay clean. Gambling is a powerful addiction. He didn’t last six months.”
“So when I came to your door,” Joseph said, “did you know me by the coat?”
“Yes, I did. The minute I saw that coat, I said a silent prayer, ‘Thank you, God, for bringing this boy to me.’ How did you get here?”
“Came on a bus,” Joseph said.
“Did you run away from home?”
“Not really,” Joseph said.
“Then your mother knows where you are?”
It was then that I saw in Joseph’s dark eyes the grief that he had so carefully concealed from us until this moment.
“Mama died the last of October,” he said in a quivering voice.
I felt a hot stinging behind my own eyelids.
“Oh, I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Joseph,” said Miz Lincoln as she touched his arm. “How did she die?”
“Heart attack.”
“Tell me about it.”
Joseph told his story with lots of feeling, specially
when he came to the part where Ethan dumped him at the home of a man he hardly knew.
“Your father first, then Ethan abandoned you, too,” his aunt said softly.
“Ethan and me, we coulda made it together,” Joseph said. “But I couldn’t make it by myself.”
“Course not,” Miz Lincoln said sympathetically. “But you and me, Joseph? I’m sure we’ll do just fine.”
For a minute there was no sound except for the crackling of wood in the fire and the ticking of a miniature grandfather clock on the mantel. The rain had slowed.
“I don’t want to be a burden to you, Aunt Carlotta,” Joseph said.
“A burden?” his aunt said with a funny, strangled sound that was a cross between a laugh and a sob. “My boy, you couldn’t be a burden to me if you worked at it. Don’t you know the years I spent caring for your father were my happiest? Having you here will be like having him with me again. It will give my life new meaning. Besides, I have a bedroom all ready for you.”
“A bedroom?” Joseph said. “For me?”
“Yes, I had it papered with cowboys and Indians for you and Ethan. I was hoping you two would come looking for your daddy or me someday. Now you, at least, are here to stay.”
Joseph glanced around the living room. I wondered
what he thought of his new home. Was he thinking he was safe at last? Was he imagining what it would be like to live here, and maybe see his father someday?
“I’m sure Reeve will contact me eventually, Joseph,” Miz Lincoln said, “and we can tell him you’re here. You can decide if you want to see him or not. Whatever you decide, you will always have a home with me.”
Woodrow went to the window and looked out. The rain was still pouring down. He glanced at his watch, then resettled himself beside me in front of the fire. I was relieved he did not suggest going out into the weather again.
Miz Lincoln invited us to have an early supper with her, and presently we found ourselves seated around her table, enjoying a pot of navy beans, with cole slaw, corn bread, and butter. Woodrow, Cassie, and I made pure tee pigs of ourselves, but I noticed that Joseph merely picked at his food. I imagined he had too much emotion in him to taste anything proper. He didn’t say much at all, but he hung on to every word his aunt said.
“So why did you kids come into Bluefield today?” Miz Lincoln finally turned her attention to me and Woodrow and Cassie.
Woodrow began his story once more. As we sat around the table listening to my cousin again recalling the mysterious disappearance of his mother, it occurred to me that he was able to speak about the whole episode
now like he was talking about somebody else. In the beginning, when Woodrow’s hurt was still fresh, he had been as pained as Joseph had been in describing his mother’s death.
“And that’s why we are here,” Woodrow finished. “We thought it shouldn’t be so hard to find her in a small place like this, but we haven’t had any luck.”
Then he brought out the photograph of his mama and handed it to Miz Lincoln. She pulled a pair of glasses from her apron pocket, placed them on her nose, and studied Aunt Belle’s face. All was quiet for a moment as we watched her heavy brows go into a frown.
“She looks familiar,” she said at last, and it was like a mild explosion in the quiet room.
“No kidding?” Woodrow said breathlessly.
Miz Lincoln propped the picture up beside her water glass and scrutinized it carefully.
“You said the story was big news at the time?” Miz Lincoln asked.
“Yeah, it was in all the papers,” Woodrow said.
“Then it’s possible that I saw her picture in the paper,” Miz Lincoln said thoughtfully. “But I don’t always read the newspaper, and I’ll declare, I can’t recall reading about this. I am sure I would remember such a story.”
Woodrow moved quietly from his chair and went to stand behind Miz Lincoln to look over her shoulder, but
he didn’t breathe for fear of disturbing her concentration.
“It’s also possible that I saw her somewhere,” the woman mumbled at last, then turned to Woodrow and said, “Could you leave the photo with me?”
Woodrow glanced toward the window again, and said, “I guess so. It seems like the rain is never gonna let up, so I won’t need it anymore today. And I got plenty more at home.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Miz Lincoln produced a pencil from the drawer of a nearby sideboard and asked Woodrow to write down the number where he could be reached. Woodrow scribbled Grandpa’s phone number on the back of the snapshot.
“If you remember anything,” he said to Miz Lincoln, “call and let me know. Be sure and call collect. Grandpa will be happy to pay.”
Shortly after four o’clock Woodrow, Cassie, and I pulled on our coats, preparing to walk to the bus station. Miz Lincoln, however, insisted on calling a taxi for us and paying the fare herself. She said children shouldn’t be running around in freezing rain, in near darkness, in a strange place, and I sure was glad she felt that way.
When the taxi arrived, Joseph thanked us for helping him, and we were all kinda awkward and tongue-tied saying goodbye to him and Miz Lincoln.
“I want to come searching again next Saturday,” Woodrow told them as we were going out the door. “Maybe I’ll see you then.”
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?” Miz Lincoln said. “If you come to Bluefield, you better come by and see us, or we’ll be mad, won’t we, Joseph?”
“That’s right!” Joseph called after us. “We’ll be mad!”
Then we waved at the two of them standing in the doorway together, as Cassie climbed into the taxi, with me following her, and Woodrow behind me.
We were quiet on the way to the bus station. Woodrow turned his eyes toward the soggy town with its big oaks and cozy houses all in neat rows. Darkness was creeping over everything, and you could see lights burning behind the windows, and you knew it was warm and dry inside. You could probably smell supper in there, and you could hear children laughing or bickering, singing or whining.

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