Ширли Мерфи - Tomcat

And then Florie Mae got scared maybe she'd brought bad luck, her thinking like that. Because, not two weeks later, the middle of June, a second girl come up missing. Over in Simms, the other end of Farley County.

She told herself a person didn't bring bad luck, that was foolish talk. Well, everyone knew something terrible had happened. Two pretty girls couldn't go missing, the same summer, without there was foul play. Middle of June and it was tornado weather for sure, the sky heavy-dark with clouds and rumbling like a cornered bear, the night Susan Slattery was reported missing. Simms was just twenty miles from Greeley. Florie Mae would remember the time because the tomato plants were all but sold out, just the half-dead leggy ones left, when their hired boy, Lester, brought her the Greeley paper. She didn't know Susan very well, but sometimes Susan worked in Greeley, helping out in the office at the trade school. And she dated several Greeley fellows though Florie Mae didn't know that she was serious about any of them.

The day Susan disappeared, there still had been no sign of Rebecca and no lead to help the sheriff. Tommie was still crisscrossing the county looking in all the back country and around old abandoned homeplaces for some sign to her. Florie Mae imagined him searching every patch of tangled woods, and every old dry well and shallow draw, dreading to find Rebecca's grave but unable to rest until he did find it or found Rebecca herself miraculously alive. That evening that Susan vanished, it was hot as sin in the Feed and Garden, and the storm just a-rumbling. It was near to closing time, Florie Mae was toting up the day's receipts at the front desk—she was getting real good at keeping the books, as good as James, he'd said—when Lester came stumbling in the front door carrying the Greeley paper from the Cash-and-Carry. He just shoved the paper at her, front page up. He couldn't talk right, he was so upset, was stuttering the way he always did when he got aggrieved.

Well, no wonder. Lester had growed up in Simms and had went all through school to tenth grade just two years behind Susan, Lester's family'd lived right next door to the Slattery home-place, its five houses all occupied by Slattery's, so Lester had played all his life with Susan's two little brothers and her cousins. Florie Mae suspected that Lester'd had a boy-sized crush on Susan, the way he was acting, so naturally he'd be upset, with the headlines blabbing,

SECOND WOMAN DISAPPEARS, SHERIFF SUSPECTS FOUL PLAY

Florie Mae read quickly, watching Lester. Susan Slattery hadn't come home from work at the new Wal-Mart out on the highway. Her parents said she never had liked working late, but she was saving money to go to the two-year college. And she had been helping them make house payments. They were all tore up that she'd gone out working late and someone, some son-of-a-bitch, her father said, had gotten to her. He saw no other explanation. The paper was real sympathetic but it did criticize the Farley County sheriff for letting this kind of thing happen twice in just a few weeks.

Standing beside the counter not looking at her, looking down at his shoes as he usually did, Lester was silently crying, a quiet little gulping that made her want to comfort him. She reached out to him, but then she drew her hand back. She was uncertain why. And she stepped back from the counter.

Lester was thin and tall, with round shoulders. You could tell a mile away he was a Slattery. Same light brown eyes and brown hair as all the Slatterys, and with the same weak chin. Same way of looking down at the floor most of the time, like he didn't know where else to look. But Lester was strong, and James was proud to have him. He could hike the straw bales and the heavy creosote fence posts right up to the top of the shed just as good as James could, could toss up the heavy rolls of wire fencing to James. The sight of the two of them working so easy together always warmed her.

Florie Mae did most of the watering and took care of the nursery plants, feeding them and repotting them when they needed it, but James and Lester did the heavy work. They'd be hard put to do without Lester.

But this evening, Lester just stood there in the center of the store, staring at his toes, his knuckles in his mouth, silently bawling. Florie Mae tried to think if Lester had ever taken Susan out. But that couldn't be, Lester might look grown up but he was hardly more than a child.

Folding the paper she laid it on the counter and looked at Lester. At the top of his head. "Lester, go out back and unload the truck, get those bags stored away in the shed. Then get on over to the sheriff's office, see if you can help look for Susan. Sheriff's bound to be sending out posses." Florie Mae didn't know if that was true, but it would give Lester something to think about. Same as Bobbie Lee and Lacy June when they got to bawling. Granny or Florie Mae would start walking them around looking at the new pots of bright flowers or pointing out the birds nesting under the tin roof, and pretty soon they'd forget what they were bellyaching about.

But Lester was harder to deal with than her little children. When he looked up at her, the tears were just running down.

"It's better for you to be doing something, Lester, than moping around the store. Go on now, get a wiggle on."

Lester went, scuffing along. Granny said that boy watched his feet so much it was a wonder he knew what part of town he was in.

The paper said Susan had left her cashier's job at Wal-Mart at 9 in the evening. None of the clerks had seen her once she walked out the door, didn't know if she'd got in her own car, or what. But her green Plymouth was gone, no sign of it.

Moving to the back door, looking through the half-glass, out where Lester was working on the bags of feed, Florie Mae felt cold clear down to her toes. Felt so off-kilter that when the door to the kitchen slammed she jumped near out of her skin.

But it was only the children, come out into the store because it was near about closing time. Granny'd had them over to the park, just down the street, and they were sweaty-hot and tired. The June weather was hot as boiled sorghum.

But it didn't take Bobbie Lee long to recharge. Within seconds he was running hunched over pushing his racecar full speed the length of the store, it rattling and whirring on the smooth pine boards. The mother cats in their carton paid him hardly any mind, they were used to Bobbie Lee. The kittens were spooked by the noise, but not for long before they began to play again, and to try to climb out of the big carton. Lacie June ran over, laughing, and stood on her toes to look in at them. She was dressed in shorts and sweatshirt and sandals, her knees grubby and scratched from play. Hanging over the side of the carton, she reached down with a gentle finger. Even at three years old, she knew to watch the mother cats. When Goldie half-rose to stand over her kittens glaring at Lacie June, the little girl backed obediently away.

Lacie June was carrying the new cloth doll Granny had made for her. Trotting over to the shelf where they kept local produce—bags of stone-milled flour and honey in pint fruit jars—she began dusting the doll's face with wheat flour, scooping it up with her fingers from around the bags where it had spilled. Florie Mae was standing at the counter reading the paper all over again about Susan Slattery, as if she might discover some fact gone undetected, when the faintest stir—a different sound than the running toy car or Lacie June's childish talking to herself—made her look up at the door.

Grady Coulter stood in the doorway. Watching her. He paid no attention to the children, just stood looking at her, his green eyes in shadow, the dropping sun behind his back turning his red hair as bright as a hearth fire.