Tomorrow River (13 page)

My mother and I were over at the library a few days later when we ran into Sam again.

He was standing in line—actually,
weaving
in line—behind us at the checkout counter. When the pile of books Mama was holding slid out from between her arms, he bent down, checked the covers, and handed them back with a “Good afternoon, Miss Evelyn. Nice to see you again. I’m . . . an admirator . . . an admir . . . I like poetry, too. Do you read . . .” He burped. “. . . the Great Bard?” Sam’s smelling like a still didn’t seem to bother my mother. I think she was so eager to talk to somebody besides me about this Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet or that Shakespearean play that she was willing to overlook the ripeness that was coming off him. Before I knew it, we’d left the library and walked all the way to the Triple S.

That was the first of many visits.

Every Tuesday afternoon, Papa’s longest day at the courthouse, Woody and Mama and I began sneaking over to Sam’s. We took the rowboat. The one that’s missing. Our mother thought the creek was the safest way to go, but she asked that I do the rowing because she didn’t trust her trembling hands. The first time we rounded the bend and Sam’s place came in sight, Mama said, “You’ve got to promise not to tell your father that we are spending time here. He . . . wouldn’t understand.” Of course, Woody crossed her heart and hoped to die right off, but I wasn’t feeling great about their get-togethers until I saw how happy Sam made Mama. And us. So I promised, too. (The Carmody girls are good at keeping our mouths buttoned up. Practice makes perfect.)

The two of them didn’t sit out on the station porch, Mama in a crisp, pressed dress and Sam in his greasy overalls, sipping pink lemonade and eating tea cakes. That would be foolhardy. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior could dream until he was blue in the face, but folks around here still aren’t even trying to be more tolerant of the coloreds. Mama and Woody and I would wait for Sam to flip his NOT OPEN sign over, and then we’d hike back to where he’s got a cabin behind the station so they could have some privacy. If it was raining, they’d sit on the porch. During more pleasant weather, they’d exchange ideas at a picnic table below a glorious maple. Sam described it as “the kind of tree that Joyce Kilmer would feel grateful to bump into.”

Woody and I’d leave Sam and Mama alone and skip rocks at the creek because my sister would get antsy listening to so many he
doth
this and he
doth
thats. Not like me, who could listen to the two of them word-waltzing into the night. I was fascinated not only by their conversation, but also by the way he talked
with
her. Of course, Mama would pay such close attention when Sam would talk to her about baseball or
Macbeth
because that’s what ladies are supposed to do. Act real interested in what men have to say.

“I’m gonna come back there and light a fire under you if ya don’t hurry up,” I yell back to E. J. I’ve already reached the road. “You aren’t moving very fast for a mountain man that is attemptin’ to rescue his future bride. Maybe I should tell Woody you changed your mind and wanna marry Dot Halloran.”

“For God’s sakes, Shenny. Don’t do that. I can’t stand that cow Dot Halloran,” he calls from somewhere behind me up in the bushes.

I cannot lay my eyes on the Triple S without memories of my mother washing over me. She always had a smile on her face when she was spending time with Sam, and seeing her ruby lips . . . that was like witnessing the parting of the Red Sea, that’s how miraculous her happiness seemed to me.

Woody is crate-sitting on the station porch next to Sam, just the way I knew she’d be. His aviator glasses are covering her eyes. They take up half her face, but Woody just adores those glasses. Sam’s got his baseball hat pulled down over his eyes, but don’t let that fool you. He knows we’re coming.

E. J. finally emerges from the brush, scratched and sweating. His hair has got some twigs sticking out of it.

“Well? What’re ya waitin’ for?” I say, shoving him halfway across the road. “Go get her, Casanova.”

C
hapter Twelve

T
he Triple S is not new and shiny like the Shell out on the highway.

This station looks kind of like, well, not to be ungenerous or anything, but Sam’s place reminds me of a three-legged dog. There’s only two pumps and no car wash. It’s got a restroom, but considering it looks like the entryway to hell, I’d rather relieve myself in the creek, thank you very much. Sam’s office has a beat-up wood desk and a swivel chair, a baseball calendar, and an adding machine. Fan belts hang on hooks above a refrigerated case where you can get yourself a cool drink and all of it reeks of Valvoline.

Sam inherited the station in his second cousin’s last will and testament. “Good thing it was Sander that passed away and not my cousin Hembly or I’d be shrimping off the Gulf Coast instead of whiling away the afternoon with you, Shen.” I told him, “That
was
a lucky break. You didn’t even have to get a new sign made up.”

After sprinting across the two-lane and scrambling onto the station porch, E. J. quick drags over another crate and gets comfortable at my sister’s side. I get right up into her. “You’re using up all our lookin’-for-Mama time and Papa almost saw—” She’s looking so natty in the aviator glasses. Like she could skip over to Jessop’s Field and fire up one of those planes, rip into the wild blue yonder without so much as a “take care now, ya hear,” and that only makes me worse mad, because honestly. “Ya hear me?”

E. J. chops my arms down from her shoulders. “Quit shakin’ her so hard. You’re gonna dislodge her brain.”

“But she’s gonna get us . . . you don’t know . . .”

Sam’s listening in on our bickering, but not umping. He’s working neats-foot oil into the pocket of his already broke-to-death Rawlings. There’s a foamy bottle of half-drunk cream soda at his feet. He stays away from sloe gin these days. Mama helped him dry out. (He fell off the wagon for a while after she disappeared, but he got himself up, brushed himself off, and hopped right back on board.)

It would be six kinds of rude to ask, so I haven’t, but I think Sam’s around forty years old. Those ravines that run from his nose to his lips, I’ve noticed that’s about the age they begin appearing on somebody’s face even if they aren’t prone to smiling all that much. His nose is beaked. His eyes are the color of hazelnuts and like the Zulus in the
National Geographic
magazine, he wears his hair bushy, not oiled. He dresses a whole lot better, but the rest of him takes after his mother in looks, except for skin color. Nobody knows who Sam’s father is except for Blind Beezy and she’s not telling. I know that it
wasn’t
Carl Bell. (Thank the Lord. I’ve seen pictures of him. The man looked like he got dropped off a bridge at dawn and nobody bothered picking him up ’til dusk.)

“How are you, Shen?” Sam asks, still working on the glove. From spending sixteen years up North, most of Sam’s Southern drawl has faded away, but you can hear it coming out on some words. And it’s not only how he sounds. It’s what he says. He always treats us like we’re on the same playing field. His kind voice made me uncomfortable at first. Like maybe Sam wasn’t very manly. A little too up on his toes, if you know what I mean. I’m used to him now.

“I been better, Sam,” I say, getting comfortable next to his calico named Wrigley, who’s named not after the gum, but a baseball field in Chicago, Illinois. Even if I didn’t tell you that somebody tossed him out of a fast moving car, that’s immediately what you’d think upon seeing this cat.

“Did you happen to see those shooting stars last night?” Sam asks, looking up like they might’ve left a scorch mark on this afternoon’s cottony sky.

“I certainly did.”

“Did you make a wish or two?”

“I certainly did not.”

“Why’s that?”

“You know why.”
Wishes. Bah.
“So I been thinkin’.”

“A portent of doom if ever there was one.” Sam shakes a couple of lemon drops out of the box that he keeps in his shirt pocket, places one in Woody’s cupped hand and wiggles the box at E. J., who, of course, accepts. “Care for one?” he asks me.

“No, thank you, and kindly quit trying to distract me.”

He tosses one of the lemon drops up in the air the way you do peanuts. “What’s giving your bounteous brain such a workout that you don’t have time to enjoy the finer things in life?”

“Well, amongst other things,” I say, looking past him at my sister, “Papa is threatening to send Woody away because she won’t talk.”

Sam jerks his head up and gives me a long, lingering look, like he wants to tell me something, but he doesn’t. That’s another of the qualities I really appreciate about him. He isn’t getting ready to say, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” He knows that spouting that kind of hooey doesn’t make you feel better at all.

“And Beezy told me this morning that she believes that I might be takin’ too big a bite out of this rescuing-Mama idea,” I say. “She thinks I could use somebody to help me out. You know anybody like that? I can pay. Been beatin’ the snot out of Mr. Jackson and Louise in five card.”

“Son, would you mind bringing me that bar of candy that’s sitting on my desk?” Sam says to E. J.

See that? Just like Beezy, Sam is excellent at changing directions whenever the subject of my mama comes up. I have hinted and hinted, but he hasn’t yet offered to apply his detecting skills to find her. He’s a generous soul, so I don’t think he’s being withholding. No, it’s a combination of perfectly good reasons that he’s not stepping into the batter’s box.

I believe Sam lost some confidence after his partner get shot dead right before his eyes. A bad guy, whose name I’m sure was Stumpy or The Maggot or something simply awful like that, ambushed Johnny Sardino, who was Sam’s police partner and best friend. How that killing creep managed to get out on bail I can’t imagine, but the police found him dead two days later in a Decatur alley. It took some time to identify The Maggot because his face had been beaten to a pulp, but when the cops finally figured out who it was, the shadow of suspicion immediately fell upon Detective Sam Moody. Charges were pressed against him, but on account of what is known in legal circles as insufficient evidence, Sam got off. But not entirely so. His chief called him into his office and explained to him that even though he would be sorely missed by one and all, he thought it would be for the best if Sam took an early retirement. (He doesn’t know that I know this. I pried this out of Beezy.) Grampa lectures that “revenge is a dish best served cold,” but just like almost everything else he says, I disagree. When the wrong is still piping hot, when your blood is still on the boil,
that’s
the best time to serve revenge up. I believe that’s what Sam thinks, too. That’s not even taking into consideration his breeding. His mother knocked off her husband, didn’t she? So I completely understand if Sam committed that justifiable homicide, but I get scared that the police up in Decatur might not feel the same way. They might discover new evidence in the death of Stumpy or The Maggot and come looking for Sam. I know how unrelenting officers of the law can be.

“Here ya go,” E. J. says, coming out of the station office with the Baby Ruth in hand. He winds up and tosses it to Sam, who catches it one-handed.

“You know, now that I see this chocolate up close, I just recalled I need to lose a few pounds,” Sam says, throwing the bar back to E. J. “Go ahead and eat that temptation for me, will you?” (What he’s really doing here is being considerate of E. J.’s always-complaining stomach. Sam does not at all run on the chunky side. He’s built like a Popsicle stick. Arms and legs just dripping.) “That reminds me. Did you know that in the 1918 World Series the Babe—”

I interrupt him with, “Pardon me?” Sam pitched for a few seasons in the Appalachian League and once Number Eight gets onto the subject of baseball, he can go on and on about who hit this and who caught that. Babe Ruth’s not his favorite player, though. I try to make sure never ever to say the word
Jackie
or
Robinson
or
Brooklyn
or
Dodgers
in any conversation or I’ll never get another word in edgewise. “The help?”

Sam gives me the kind of look a pitcher gives a batter when he’s deciding if he’s going to throw a fastball or a screwball. He says, “I ran into the sheriff this morning.”

He settled on the screwball.

“No kiddin’,” I say, not excited. I have suspected for some time that the sheriff is not on the up-and-up. I think Papa wrote Sheriff Nash a nice fat check for his Be-handy-Vote-for-Andy campaign. Sam doesn’t agree with me. He thinks Sheriff Nash is “doing the best he can given the circumstances.” I have seen the two of them now and again chatting away. It’s because they’re both cops that Sam likes Nash. Not me. The sheriff never did find Mama. The man couldn’t locate ants at a picnic. “Did you get anything out of him about Mama’s missing?”

“He’s not at liberty to discuss it,” Sam says.

Figured as much. I know the Eleventh Commandment—
What goes on with the Carmodys is nobody’s business
—just as well as I know the other ten. By heart.

Noticing, Sam points at my wrist and says, “You’re wearing Evie’s watch.”

I hold up my hand so the sun can catch it. “I know you told me to be careful, but . . . you don’t really mind, do you?”

I let him know right off when I found it last month by the old well. I went straightaway to his place. Sam was down by the creek fishing. “Look what I found!” I said, running up. “It’s the watch you gave Mama and it’s still running!” Since I was feeling like a month of Sundays, I was expecting a much livelier response out of Sam, but the air just went out of him like he’d sprung a leak. I hadn’t considered how seeing the watch might upset him, until I realized that if I gave someone a present nice as this one, I’d expect them to hold it dear. I’d feel that same way if I let myself wonder if Mama ran off and left me and Woody behind.