The 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.
“Did you come across anything else?” Sam asked, setting his pole down that afternoon.
I said, “No, there wasn’t… oh yeah, there was.” I went into detail about what else I’d found not by the well, but in the well. If I’d known Sam was going to go even further deflated, I wouldn’t have just blurted it out.
He also asked, “Was there… did you find-” I closed my eyes and shook my head. He was asking about the note. Again.
“Sam?”
“I see him, E. J.”
A boy in a shiny white convertible has come flying into the Triple S. Skidding to a halt in front of pump two, he lays on his horn, and yells our way, “I ain’t got all day. Hop to.”
I’ve never actually seen Sam hop to. Mostly he stays on the porch and stares at whoever pulls into the station until he’s sure they’ve reached the worst part of uncomfortable before he decides to sashay their way.
“I’ll go,” E. J. says, starting to get up. “It’s-”
“I know who it is,” Sam says, unfolding his six-foot-and-more self.
It’s Remmy Hawkins. He’s what you’d call the bad boy of our town. A regular James Dean minus the good looks. Remmy’s built like a doorway, but his face is squashed in like he ran into a wall. And he doesn’t hardly ever wear a shirt and won’t care if you just about toss your biscuits looking at his spotty back. Worst of all? The boy’s got red hair. Not that Howdy Doody kind that’s not so bad. Remmy’s is more like Clarabelle’s and he’s just as honking dumb. The kid could throw himself on the ground and miss. His grandfather is the mayor. Remmy works for him doing this and that. Errands and such. And his aunt, Abigail, is the one that keeps bringing food to our place.
E. J. and I watch all atwitter from the porch. Even Woody seems on the edge of her crate when Sam sashays over to the side of the car. He reaches in and turns down the radio that’s blaring “Stand by Your Man,” which I really love and now I can’t anymore because this moron seems to like it, too. Sam says, “What can I do you for today, son?”
Remmy spits out, “I’m not your son, nig-”
Good thing he cut himself off. Woody and I used to settle disputes by playing Eeny Meeny Miney Moe Catch a Nigger by the Toe until Sam taught us, “You can catch a colored by the toe. You can catch a Negro by the toe. Even getting hold of a spade is not all that bad, but calling somebody a nigger? That’s not only behind the times, it’s hurtful.”
Remmy doesn’t look up, but says, “Ya sell gas in this dump, don’tcha?”
“Ya know, Mister Remmy,” Sam says, changing his usual educated voice to sound very much indeed like he just fell off the back of a turnip truck, “I don’ believe there’s nuthin’ I druther do more in the whole wide world than fill up this fancy go car with a tank of gas, no siree, Bob. That’d be a real privilege.”
“I ain’t got all day,” Remmy says, still not looking up.
“Why, I’m sure ya don’t, an important fella like you,” Sam says. He turns to us and gives a wink. “But… well… much as I’d like to oblige ya, Mr. Remmy, my pumps is actin’ up. Coulda swore they was topped to the brim this mornin’ but they up and run dry not more’n two minutes ago. Don’ that beat all?”
I can see Remmy biting his tongue from twenty yards away. Acting a whole lot smarter than he is, he revs up his engine and throws his car into gear. But before he takes off, he smiles real ghastly up at Sam with teeth that are buck enough to eat corn on the cob through a picket fence, then he calls over to the porch, “Heard from your mama lately, twins?”
I hop off my crate and shake my fist at him, shouting, “Get your dumb ass outta here, Remington Hawkins.” I don’t want Sam to get into trouble and he will if the mayor’s grandson shows up at supper with a black eye. Mama was Sam’s best friend and he won’t put up with that sass. “I mean it.”
With a beep of his ah oooga horn, Remmy dusts out of the Triple S, his wicked laugh not reaching our ears until it’s too late for me to do a darn thing about it.
I say, “Ohhhh… I’d like to… I’d like to…” I wasn’t counting on something like this. The station being off the beaten path the way it is, mostly only the lost and the colored stop by and none of them would tell Papa they saw us. What if Remmy goes yakking to somebody, “You know who I saw this afternoon? The judge’s girls, shootin’ the breeze with Moody over at the Triple S.” And what if that somebody is a meddler of the highest order and answers, “You don’t say,” and rushes right over to Lilyfield to tell Papa? Like I told you before, nobody in town but a few know that Papa is keeping Woody and me prisoners, but everybody knows that we’re not supposed to be hanging out with the coloreds unless they work for us. Being the most prominent family in town, we are expected to set a good example. Grampa is one of those people who believes that Negroes should be hardly seen and never heard. That’s something that Mama and Papa never have come to terms with. When she would tell him that this sort of prejudiced thinking is nothing but Southern ignorance born out of fear, he would respond with, “Feel free to take your enlightened Northern attitude back where it belongs, Mother.”
Sam steps back onto the station porch after his tangle with Remmy and he’s smiling. Smiling!
I’m still fuming! “For two cents, I’d… I’d take a garden claw to Remmy and once he was down on the ground writhing I’d-”
“Shen,” Sam admonishes. “Watch yourself.” He gets after me all the time to remember that a temper like I got can only lead to me doing something I might regret. I think of Stumpy or The Maggot lying beat to death in that Decatur back alley when he says that, and I can’t help but wonder if he is speaking from experience. “Now, what were we discussing?”
I say with a fed-up snort, “You can be super-infuriatin’ in a real calm way, you know that?”
Sam picks his glove back up and gets back to softening it, but what he’s really doing is ignoring me until I can get a grip on myself.
“Fine. If that’s the way you’re gonna be.” I take in air to the bottom of my lungs the way he taught me and count to ten. “I believe we were at the part where you’re about to agree to help me look for Mama and if you could do that sooner rather than later I would appreciate it,” I say on an exhale. “It’s gettin’ on in the day, and well, we got to get back before Papa-”
“Bawwwk… bawwwk… bawwwk.” My head swivels to my sister. She has started making a fox-in-the-henhouse racket. “Bawwwk… bawwwk.”
How absolutely brilliant!
Maybe she’s not quite as bad off as she seems. Woody’s got to know that Sam’ll feel sorry for her. Believe me, no matter how hard-boiled he seems, he’s over-easy.
E. J. pops up off his crate to soothe my sister and I flip my palms up to Sam like-see? This is all your fault. She’s never going to stop squawking unless you agree to help us find Mama. You better speak up before we all go deaf as a post.
“I’ll…,” Sam says.
“But…” I’m sure he’s about to give me another one of his excuses.
“Hear me out, Shen.”
“I would if I could.” I shout, “That’s enough now, Woody.” Instead of feeling proud of her the way I was a few minutes ago, I feel like wringing her neck. “Will you pipe down!” E. J. is doing all the right stuff, like patting her and crooning, but he’s not having much luck.
Sam scoops up Wrigley and sets him down in Woody’s lap. He picks up her hands, places them gently on top of the cat’s back, and like somebody turned her on switch off, she smiles and shuts right up. Bringing his attention back to me, he says, smooth as can be, “We’ve been over this before. You know why my asking around about your mother would not be a wise idea.”
The colored and the whites are like the birds and the bees. The birds are supposed to stick with their kind and same goes for the bees. If Sam goes around questioning folks, “Do you know anything about the disappearance of Evelyn Carmody?” somebody could start the rumor that Sam and Mama could’ve been, well, pollinating. (There’s always someone willing to fan the flames no matter how dumb the gossip.)
“How about if you discover something that seems important to your mama’s disappearance you bring it to me? I’ll assist,” Sam suggests.
“Do you mean like a double play?” I got him now. He cannot resist baseball lingo.
Sam grins from ear to ear, just like Blind Beezy does, and says,
“You’ve got a lot of your mother running through you, you know that?”
“Funny, I was just thinkin’ the same about you.” Him and Beezy both make me prett’near drag everything out of them. “How do you mean I’ve got a lot of my mother runnin’ through me?”
“You fishin’?”
He means for a compliment.
“Guess I am.”
“Well, there’s lots of ways you two resemble one another, but mainly, I was thinking about her tenacity.” He looks down at her watch on my wrist and says real seriously, “Wish you’d leave it here with me for safekeeping.”
That’s the same thing he said to me the day after I found it and came rushing over here.
“I can’t do that. I’ll take good care of it. Mama’ll be wanting to wear it as soon as she gets back home so I have to keep it at the ready.” I get a little choked up. “It… it makes me feel closer to her and… you understand?” I don’t feel bad about not granting his wish. I brought another memento for him to remember Mama by. “Hold on.” Withdrawing the dog-eared copy out of my back pocket, I tell him with my most cheerful smile, “I know she’d want you to have it until we can bring her back home.” It’s the story they were studying together right before she vanished. Mama could barely read the part to me where Juliet takes a potion that makes her appear to be dead but she really isn’t, but Romeo thinks she is, so he drinks poison and then Juliet wakes up and daggers herself so they can at least be together in heaven. What a mess.
Sam doesn’t say, “Thank you. How kind of you,” when I hand the book over to him and that’s all right. I’m not giving it to him because I’m trying to win an award for being the most generous person on earth. I just can’t have it near me anymore. Picturing Mama holding it between her hands with the bit-to-the-moon nails makes me pine too much for her, and my lunar-loving papa, too. I’ve been thinking that the book might be a hint in her disappearance. Everybody knows that it’s a story of unquiet love that takes place in Verona, which only adds credence to one of my original ideas of where Mama might’ve taken off to. “Do you… do you think she could’ve run off to Italy?” I ask.
“No,” Sam says, looking affectionately down at the little red book and then off to House Mountain. Those twin peaks are Mama’s favorites. “I… I’m hoping that your mother is much closer to home.”
“I hope you’re right. Because I’ve tried and tried, but all I’ve managed to learn from that Berlitz record so far is Buon giorno. Dov’è la biblioteca? That means-”
“Good day. Where is the library?”
His dead partner taught him some of the language when they were on stakeouts up in Decatur. I feel remorseful about bringing up Johnny’s memory. It always makes his Adam’s apple work extrahard. “Shoot, Sam. I didn’t mean to mention-”
“Y’all better start towards home.”
“Okay.” I understand that he’s not trying to get rid of us. Or chastise me. He’s being thoughtful. He doesn’t know exactly what will happen if we get back to Lilyfield too late, but he does know how strict Papa is. “Time to hit the trail, Woody.” I reach over E. J. to remove the aviator glasses off her eyes, but she twists at the waist so I can’t get at them and starts squawking again and it’s about all I can take. I’m sticky and tired and getting real worried now about how late we stayed at the station. I holler at her, “Why ya always gotta be so obstinate? I should start callin’ you Mule Girl. How’d ya like that, huh? Mule Girl… Mule Girl… Mule Girl. Maybe I should sell you to the Oddities of Nature show when it gets here. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. You… you could stand up on that stage next to Armadillo Boy and the two of ya could-”
“Shut your mouth, Shenny!” Without warning, E. J. stiff-arms me straight off the porch. I land hard in the dirt on my behind. Shocked, I yell, “You little…” I clamber up and come charging back at him.
“That’s enough, Shenandoah,” Sam says, grabbing me by the arm before I can sock E. J. a good one.
“But-” I am struggling to break free. “That’s not fair! I’m the youngest, she should be babying me.” I get so sick of pulling on my kid gloves. Brushing Woody’s teeth. Braiding her hair. Braying those stupid show tunes. I even got to butter her toast. I deserve those aviators with shiny frames that hook behind the ears. “She’s always gettin’ what she wants!”
“Is that right?” Sam asks, pointing over my shoulder at my sister who has gotten up off the crate. She lifts her arms out to her sides and begins slow, but is soon twirling herself round and round, like a whirlygig falling out of the branches of an oak tree. “Perhaps you’d like to reconsider that statement.”
“I know she’s bad off, but… but what about me? I’m the one that’s always got to-”
Sam says so low in his high humidity voice, “Your sister needs them more than you do.”
I hate it when he does this. He’s trying to make me feel like I’m acting spoiled rotten.
Sam glances over at Woody again with sorrowful eyes. “Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. That expression mean anything to you, Shenny?”
Even though I know exactly what it means, I yank my arm out of his hand and say, “No, it certainly does not.” I want to hurt his feelings as much as he just hurt mine. So with my nose up in the air, I say as snippy as a girl can get, “That must be something that only Negroes who are too big for their britches go around sayin’.” And then I step off the porch and glide across the gas station lot like I’m white and you’re not so put that in your pipe and smoke it, former Detective Samuel Quincy Moody.