Ed Gorman - The Day The Music Died

I rolled down my window and said, “Hi, Debbie. You like a ride?”

“Oh, hi, McCain. I’m just walking over to Randy’s.” Randy’s was the supermarket used by most people on this side of town, which was mostly a working-class neighborhood.

“Get in. I’m going right by there.”

When she got inside, I could see she’d been crying. She was a tall and somewhat awkward woman. We’d gone to school together since kindergarten. She had one of those wan faces that is pretty in an almost oppressive way. She always looks as if she might break into tears at any moment. She’d gotten married three weeks after we graduated from high school. It had always been a rocky marriage made even rockier by Susan Whitney. They’d gone to school together for years but had never paid much attention to each other.

Suddenly, they were fast friends, two married women with bad marriages. Debbie’s husband had taken to hitting her; Susan’s to ignoring her. There was a lot of town talk about them being easy lays after a few drinks but you couldn’t prove it by me.

I’ve never had any luck at all with women who are called easy. In fact, once I hear a woman described that way, I know I’ll never score, not even with a sub-machine gun and a bag of cash. Life is like that sometimes.

Debbie wore a pair of festive red earmuffs and a winter jacket with a fake-fur collar, jeans and loafers with bobby sox. Her nose was red from the cold and looked little-girl sweet. She took a pack of Winstons from her jacket pocket and tamped one out on her gloved hand. She pushed in my car lighter and when it popped out, got her weed going.

She said, after exhaling, “I just hope this town is sorry now for the way they treated her. You know, like she was some whore or something.”

I didn’t have to ask who she was talking about.

“She was the nicest girlfriend I ever had. You know how many clothes she bought me? Like this jacket for instance. You know how much she paid for it?

Thirty-nine dollars. And you know why? Because she said she was tired of seeing me freeze all the time. She knew I couldn’t afford one like this.

Thirty-nine dollars. So I hope all those bastards are happy now that she’s finally dead.”

“I don’t think he killed her.”

She looked stunned. Or stricken. I wasn’t sure which. “What? Chief Sykes is telling everybody he killed her.” That was the nice thing about a small town. You didn’t have to worry about your pronouns. We hadn’t mentioned any names but we knew exactly whom we were talking about.

“You really believe anything Chief Sykes has to say?”

“Then who killed her, McCain?”

“That’s what I need to find out. I thought maybe you could tell me who she was hanging around with lately. Guys, I mean.”

“Nobody in particular.”

The late-afn traffic was starting to pile up, our version of rush hour. The shadows were starting to kidnap the day, the sky layered salmon and gold and a kind of celestial puce. Kids were lobbing snowballs back and forth, yard to yard.

Scarves were trailing behind the prone bodies of kids steering their sleds downhill to the sidewalks. In a lot of houses, small groups of kids would be gathered in front of the Tv watching Hopalong Cassidy or

Howdy Doody or the Three Stooges.

And moms in kitchens would be starting supper, the smells rich and good on the chill melancholy of the fading winter day, spaghetti and pot roasts and cheese casseroles.

“I really need you to think hard, Debbie.”

“I knew that’s what you wanted.”

“What I wanted?”

“Yeah, when you pulled up back there. That you wanted to talk to me about Susan.”

“You were her best friend.”

She took another drag and looked out the window. “I really like this town.”

“So do I.”

“I just wish people didn’t gossip so much.”

“It’s just the way people are. And most people here don’t gossip that much. Just a few of them. And it doesn’t matter where you move to because they’ll be that way there, too.”

“I suppose.” Then, “She wasn’t screwing a lot of guys, if that’s what you mean.”

“I didn’t say she was.”

“She only slept with a couple of guys.”

“I don’t suppose you’d tell me who they are.”

“I wasn’t screwing a lot of guys, either.”

“I’m sure you weren’t.” Then, “Would you tell me who she was sleeping with?”

“Well, Tommy Fennelly for one. But he left for the service three months ago. Camp Pendleton.”

“Wasn’t he a little young for her?”

“He was nineteen. But he’s a real nice kid. A couple of times, he tried to get her off the booze. He sat up with her the whole night at his apartment, she told me. Let her cry and throw up and tear his place apart. She quit for a while, too. Couple of weeks, one time. Not one single drink that whole time.”

Tommy Fennelly had always seemed to me nothing much more than a loafer-a little pool, a few card games, minor trouble with the law now and then. But Debbie had swept all that away.

She’d just made him a damned nice kid.

“Who else?”

She sighed. “And Steve Renauld.”

“At Leopold Bloom’s?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t believe it, either. He’s such a loser. Mr. High and Mighty.”

“How the hell did she get hooked up with him?”

“Well, you know, we used to go in there and look around. He and his wife have nice stuff in there.

Or anyway that’s what Susan told me. I couldn’t tell. I mean, Susan was educated.

I’m just a bumpkin.”

“Same here.”

“You’re a lawyer, McCain.”

“A lot of lawyers are bumpkins.”

“Really?”

“Hell, yes.”

“Well, you’re not as much of a bumpkin as I am, anyway.”

“So you started going to Renauld’s place.”

“And he started asking Susan if he could paint her. Him and his painting. I used to call him “Vincent Van Phony.” He heard me once and really got pissed off. But he kind of wore her down. And she started posing for him. You know, he’s got that so-called studio over on Jackson Street. That’s where they did the dirty deed, anyway.”

“When was this?”

“About a month ago. She said they were both pretty drunk the times it happened.”

“She tell you anything else?”

“Just that he wasn’t much in the sack and that she sort of felt sorry for him. She said that once and I’ve always remembered it.”

“Said what?”

“Said she couldn’t sleep with a man she didn’t feel sorry for. She didn’t like most men. Said they all reminded her of her father. You know, the swaggering type and everything. Renauld’s pretty pathetic so I guess that’s why she slept with him. But I think she got scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of Renauld. He was making it a lot more of it than it was. She went to bed because she felt sorry for him, like I said. But he saw it as this big romance. He was going to leave his wife and daughter. He wanted them to move to Iowa City.

You know, he was always talking like Iowa City was -what’s that place the Arabs always go to?”

“Mecca?”

“Yeah, he always talked like Iowa City was Mecca. Or something. She was going to run away from Kenny and he was going to run away from his wife and they were going to be this real cool artistic couple and live in Iowa City.”

“And she didn’t see it that way?”

“Are you kidding? She got to be as afraid of Renauld as she was of Kenny. He really started putting a lot of pressure on her.”

We were at the supermarket. I swung into the drive. A lot of people left their cars running.

You could see the exhaust putt-putting out of their mufflers. Folks trust one another out here, and that’s nice.