The Summer We Lost Alice (5 page)

We saw Mr. Ingram at the hardware store earlier. He looked like a
transient
, and he smelled bad. I was surprised when Aunt Flo went over and talked to him. Then I figured out who he was and I understood why he looked and smelled the way he did.

"Nothing matters," he said. "
Dorrie's sleeping a lot. It's all I can do to get her to eat a bite now and again. The kids are helping around the house. They take care of themselves pretty good."

At the dime store, Aunt Flo talks to another woman. "
Dorrie's taken to her bed," Aunt Flo says. "Bud's drinking again. I worry about the kids. He's letting them run wild. We have to get organized. First there were so many people bringing them food that they had to throw it out. Now I don't know. We need a schedule. Pastor says the church collection is over nine hundred dollars."

I ask Aunt Flo if I can look around and she says, "Yes, but don't leave the store. Don't talk to any strangers." That means I won't be talking to anybody, since everybody in
Meddersville is a stranger to me.

The racks are full of marvelous things—squirt guns, plastic cars and trucks, jokes to play on your friends, balloons that beg to be filled with water, jacks, candy, bubble blowers. I think about getting Alice a ball to replace the one I let Boo steal, but it wouldn't be signed by
Skeeter Barnes. Nothing seems right.

Alice likes old things. She likes stuffed animals that belonged to some other kid. She likes them with ears missing or a button eye that dangles by a thread, their fur soiled beyond cleaning. It's like she can smell the years on things, and she likes that smell.

Old post cards, tin wind-up toys with rusted gears, buttons long out of fashion, ticket stubs found in a shoebox in the attic—these are the things Alice likes, not new stuff that comes sealed in plastic.

Then I get an idea.

I find the pet supplies. I buy a leash.

"A leash," Aunt Flo says. "Now what do you want a leash for?"

"For walking Boo," I tell her.

Aunt Flo snorts. "That dog's never been on a leash in his life. Why, he'll drag you halfway to Kingdom Come."

Yes, that's what I'm hoping.

* * *

Things have changed. They've gotten really bad. Another kid—a kid named Martin Dale—has gone missing. The whole town has gone crazy.

"Nobody smiles anymore," Alice says. "It's
like they have to have permission to smile and somebody's told them, 'No more smiling!' Even if they want to, they can't do it. You'll go to jail if you smile or laugh or have a good time. And if it goes on long enough, the jails will be full of people who are happy and smiling and the rest of the world will be all glum and sad. So anybody who wants to have fun will rob a bank so they can get thrown in jail. No, that's stupid. They'll throw a party. And everybody at the party will get thrown in jail. And it's all Martin Dale's fault for going missing."

"It wasn't his fault somebody kidnapped him."

She shakes her head.

"He did something. Who would want to kidnap Martin Dale?"

"A crazy person. A maniac."

"He had to do something. Nobody just grabs kids and kills them for no reason. They did
something!
Martin Dale did something and so did Perla Ingram!"

Now I understand. Alice is afraid. The whole town is afraid because the world doesn't make sense to them anymore. Two kids go missing and suddenly everything is all messed up.

Everybody feels the way I felt already. Their world is upside down the way mine is. I know better than anybody, I think, how the people of Meddersville feel. How Alice feels.

Everything is different here.

Now it's different for all of us.

"WHATEVER ELSE
you say about him, whatever defects he had and Lord knows he wasn't quite right, Martin Dale didn't have a mean bone in his body."

The telephone was ringing when we got home from the store and it's been ringing most of the afternoon. Aunt Flo paces around the kitchen with the receiver on her shoulder. She putters around and talks to everybody in town about Martin Dale and
Perla Ingram and how something evil has come to their town.

"They've called in the FBI," she says to somebody on the phone. "At least that's a start."

Now she's washing the day's dishes. Usually they'd be washed right after every meal, but not today. It's another sign of how crazy everything has become.

Catherine dries them after a fashion and hands them to Alice, who stands on a stool to put them on the shelf. Uncle Billy built the stool himself and it shows. The legs are too close together and they don't all meet the floor at the same time. Alice doesn't seem to notice the way the stool jiggles and tips, but it worries me.

"Such a sweet, sweet boy," Aunt Flo says. "Do you remember he gave me a May basket?"

"He gave it to you on the Fourth of July, Mom," Catherine says.

"Makes no nevermind. It's the thought that counts. He thought to give me flowers, which is more than your father's done in twenty years. He made the basket himself out of construction paper. He left it on the porch and rang the bell, and I saw him peeking out from behind the hedge when I went to the door. He was a sweet, sweet boy."

"He was retarded."

"He was slow. That's all, just slow. There's more things that matter in this world than brains. He had a good heart, that boy."

"
Perla was good, too," Alice says.

"Yes, she was."

"Now she's dead, and Martin Dale is dead, too."

Aunt Flo's face gets hard. "We don't know that," she says. The muscles in her jaw are tight. "They're missing. That doesn't mean they're dead." She's trying to make it sound not so bad. We already heard her tell Uncle Billy that
Perla Ingram was murdered, even if they never found the body.

"But probably," Alice goes on. "Why does God hate kids anyway? If they're good kids, I mean."

"God does not hate children, good or bad. God doesn't hate anyone."

"Then why does He kill them?"

"That's the evil of men, not God," Aunt Flo says.

Alice is persistent. "But God lets it happen, doesn't
He? He could stop it if He wanted to, but He doesn't. So He must want it to happen. Why would He want somebody to kill good kids like that?"

Aunt Flo has been washing the same dish through Alice's speech, rubbing the plate in tight circles like the circles Alice talks in.

"Because God gives Man free will," Uncle Billy says. He has come in to get a beer. "God lets us decide for ourselves if we want to be good or bad." He opens the refrigerator and reaches deep inside. Aunt Flo makes him keep his beer in the back where she doesn't have to look at it every time she opens the refrigerator door. The beer is in a bottle. In Wichita, my dad's beer comes in cans.

"But when men decide to be evil," Alice says, "why doesn't God smite them? I mean, after whoever it was killed
Perla, why didn't God say, 'Okay, you had your chance' and
wham
, drop a rock on his head or something. Then Martin Dale would still be around making May baskets in the middle of summer."

Catherine snickers. Aunt Flo shoots her a look that would knock a picture off a wall.

"God loves little children and He loves having them around Him in Heaven," Aunt Flo says. Catherine hums softly, "Jesus Loves the Little Children." Aunt Flo's ears are turning red. Her teeth are clenched tight and there's a vein on the side of her head that I think must be about to bust.

Uncle Billy says, "You're going to scrub the shine clean off that plate, Mama."

"Well that's just selfish," Alice says. "I sure hope God doesn't take a liking to me anytime soon. I've got plans."

"Right," Catherine snorts.
"Big plans."

Aunt Flo spins around and grabs the dish towel out of Catherine's hand. "I'll finish myself," Aunt Flo says. "You two go on. You, too, Bill." Uncle Billy slips from the room, hunching his shoulders as if
a flying dish might follow him through the door.

Alice and Catherine smile and Alice says, "Let's go!"
She grabs my arm and we're out the back door. Boo is jumping all around us. Aunt Flo appears in the doorway.

"Stay in the yard," she says. "I mean it. Catherine, you keep an eye on your little sister."

Catherine makes a face. "I'm meeting Sammy," she says.

"You can have him over. There's a killer on the loose and you don't let those children out of your sight, you hear?" She lets the door bang as she goes back inside. Aunt Flo never lets the door bang.

"Did you hear that?" Alice says. "She said 'killer.'"

I look at her, not understanding.

"She
does
think that Perla Ingram and Martin Dale are dead," she says. "That proves it."

* * *

Aunt Flo pulls open the drawer under the oven and digs through the pans, practically tossing them over her shoulder, until she reaches the roasting pan on the bottom. She throws the other pans back into the drawer and tries to slam it shut, but the pans bang against the oven and she has to slow down and stack them just right. I get the feeling that she'd as soon throw them out.

She won't say it, but she's mad at Alice for talking the way she did about God. And she's mad at somebody, probably God, for letting two kids go missing. And she's mad at Uncle Billy for not being as mad as she is about these things.

When she's finally able to shut the drawer, she picks the roasting pan off the floor and slams it down on top of the stove.

She pulls a plucked chicken out of the refrigerator. It still has its head and feet on. She scrubs it mercilessly
. She whacks off the head and feet with a meat cleaver, slices it open, and scoops out the insides.

Alice and I have
wandered back into the kitchen. We watch with fascination, like watching the fuse burn on a stick of dynamite. Before Aunt Flo can blow up, though, she shoos us out, saying that she doesn't want to see us or hear us until dinnertime.

* * *

Aunt Flo brings out the roasted chicken. It's burnt black because she forgot to set the timer. Alice is dying to blurt out, "That chicken's burnt to a crisp!" Uncle Billy looks at it and I think he'd rather eat cold cereal for dinner, but he knows better than to say anything. Catherine takes the platter when Uncle Billy passes it to her, but she doesn't take any chicken.

"I'm not very hungry," she says.

Aunt Flo has calmed down but now she's determined to go completely the other way. She tries hard to keep the conversation lively even if it's like pushing a rope.

"They're having a farewell tea for Ruth Nichols," she says, "down at the church. She's retiring, you know."

Uncle Billy says that, no, he didn't know, while he peels burnt skin off his chicken leg.

"Moving down to Florida to live with her sister," says Aunt Flo. "Her daughter's coming out to take over the home.
Her daughter, Lilian. She sounds like a fine young woman."

"
Uhm," says Uncle Billy.

"Well, she's not exactly young. In her thirties, I guess. Single, though, so she doesn't have to worry about moving a husband and a passel of kids. More beans?"

"Thanks."

Deciding that Uncle Billy is a conversational well gone dry, Aunt Flo turns to Catherine.

"How was your day, dear?"

Catherine shrugs.

"Did you see your friends?"

"I saw Sammy. He was busy, though, working on his car. It was boring."

Aunt Flo is about to say a few words about Catherine's boyfriend Sammy. She doesn't like Sammy because he says "ain't." She holds her tongue, though, and turns back to Uncle Billy.

"And
how was your day, Bill?"

"Fine," Uncle Billy says.

"Did you talk to the Nutters about their claim?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Well?"

"Well what?" Uncle Billy says.

"Well, did you settle the claim?"

"Mm-hmm."

Aunt Flo seems fit to burst, as if her sole mission on earth was to pry some pleasant dinnertime talk out of her family and their sole mission was not to let her do it.

"I think," Uncle Billy says, and he pauses to wipe the corner of his mouth. Aunt Flo looks at him expectantly. "I think I'll have a few more of those potatoes." Aunt Flo picks up the bowl of mashed potatoes. She is
that far
from smushing them in Uncle Billy's face.

S
o it goes for what seems like a week. Finally dinner is over and we're told to clear the table. After that we can play in the backyard or go to our room. There is to be no TV. Alice protests. She wants to know what she did and Aunt Flo just says, "You know."

"I'll do the dishes myself," Aunt Flo says, "no more company than this sorry lot is."