Jeff Abbott - Do Unto Others

“Thanks for the catch-22. Look, if you saw how Billy Ray guns for me-”

“You were panicked this morning, sug.” Eula Mae rested her knobby hand on my arm. “You found the dead body of someone you know in your workplace. That’s a profound shock. I think you’ve borne it quite well. But you’ve got to quit thinking that you’re going to be arrested in the next ten seconds unless you find the killer. It’s not healthy to worry so.” I hated to admit it, but she made sense. Junebug surely wouldn’t arrest me-or anyone else-without hard evidence. He was a professional, after all. I kept picturing him as the boy I’d grown up with and not as the responsible police chief he was. He’d done a good job for Mirabeau. Billy Ray was another story. “Thanks, Eula Mae. I appreciate that.” “Yeah, yeah, right.” She wagged crimson fingernails at me. “Just give me first rights to be your biographer from the hoosegow.” “Deal.” I nodded toward her scattered pages and then toward Hally, who was drying the sweat from his firm body with his shirt.

“I’ll let our beloved Jocelyn Lushe get back to work.” “Have a good dinner. Don’t let Candace know. She might poison you even if Ruth doesn’t.” You could always count on Eula Mae for moral support. I headed back down the walk, watching Hally toss open another trash bag for the mound of weeds he’d pulled. I suppose Eula Mae was right. Even distantly related as third cousins (still considered kin in this part of the country), there was a family resemblance. We both stood tall with thick blondish hair and green eyes, and we had the distinctive stubborn Schneider cheekbones that could freeze into refusal and mulishness at a moment’s notice. But where I was lanky from running and idle reading, Hally was thickly-built from years of football and work. I’d been a much gawkier kid. Hally was a senior at Mirabeau High and was probably years ahead sexually of where I’d been at that age. I just hoped he wasn’t ahead of where I was now. I shook his hand, ignoring the dirt on his palms. “Hey, Jordy. How’s Cousin Anne doing?” he asked. I admit surprise; the Schneiders live no more than three houses down from us but they’ve only shown a passing interest in Mama’s decline. Hally’s annoyingly peppy mother Janice boasted a better attendance record at library board meetings than she did in checking up on her neighboring kinfolk. “She’s about the same, Hally.”

He shook his head. “Damn shame. I know Mom keeps meaning to come over and see you and Arlene and Anne. I see Mark in the neighborhood, but I get the feeling that he doesn’t care to discuss his grandmother.” I suspected that Hally didn’t do much to curry a friendship with Mark.

Hally was a senior, a popular athlete from a perfect family; Mark was a moody freshman loner stuck with a mouthy mother, a mouthier uncle, and a diminishing grandmother. I sighed. I halfway felt like telling Hally that the Schneiders had been crappy kinfolk, but I decided it wasn’t the time or place. “It’s hard. Listen, Hally, I wanted to see you about something else.” He looked bemusedly at the porch. “Hope it’s not about Miz Quiff. I assure you my intentions are honorable.” I laughed. “No, not about Eula Mae.” Curiosity couldn’t resist though.

“She hasn’t acted, uh, inappropriately toward you, has she?” It was his turn to laugh. “Not at all, although I’m sure she thinks I never see her looking at me. I kind of like older women, but Eula Mae’s not my type.” “No, I need to discuss a different topic with you. I guess you heard about Beta Harcher.” Hally’s smile faded. “Yeah, I heard.

Mom told me about it. You found her in the library?” “Yeah.” And why didn’t you ask me about that straightaway? I wondered. Not every day someone you encounter has stumbled across a corpse, and you’d think the topic would debut damn early in the conversation. “Did you know her?” Hally blinked. “Why are you asking?” I figured a football player like Hally appreciated bluntness. I told him about the list. Shock spilled across his face. “Honest to God, Jordy, I don’t know why that woman would have my name there.” Hally wiped a sweaty lip with the back of his garden-gloved hand. “There was a Bible quote by each name.

Yours was Proverbs 14:9. Fools make a mock at sin. ” Hally’s tongue darted out to his lips and back again, nervously. “Why would she write something like that about me?” “I thought you’d know. You been doing any sinnin’ lately?” I said it as nicely as I could, but I’ve never believed in treating errant family members with kid gloves. Or garden gloves, in this case. Hally looked spooked. He took a step backward and fell over the bag of weeds. Dirt and twigs stuck to his sweaty back and he jumped up quickly, brushing them off his jeans and mumbling about being clumsy in the off-season. I’d seen that boy play football with the grace of a dancer, so I crossed my arms and frowned at him. “What’s got the chigger in your pants?” “It’s a little unnerving, you know, to hear some dead person was writing shit-I mean stuff-about you.” Good thing sweet cousin Janice wasn’t there to hear her little boy cuss. Janice would smile big as day while she scrubbed your mouth with lye soap. “So how did Beta know you, Hally? She must’ve, to write what she did.” The words came quickly. “She knew Mom from the library and the church. I knew her from Sunday school; I’m president of the youth group there. And she babysat for us sometimes, when I had a date or something for school and Mom and Dad went out.”

Hally had been an only, extra-adored child until his little brother Josh arrived five years ago, much to Janice’s embarrassment. She was the kind of woman who’d prefer no one know she was still getting sex at forty. “So you knew her socially.” “I saw her at church. She had some definite opinions about how the youth group should be run.” I remembered what Tamma Hufnagel said in the same vein. Beta’s need for control was an equal-opportunity annoyance. Hally continued: “And I saw her about a week ago when she baby-sat Josh. After going to the movies in Bavary, I got home before Mom and Dad did, so I relieved her. Put Josh in the car and took her home.” I sighed. Hally seemed shook by all this, and I couldn’t blame him. I was shook, too. But I didn’t like that he wasn’t able to meet my eyes for more than a second or two. What was he hiding? “How did she act when you saw her?” I asked. Hally shrugged and pulled his T-shirt back on. “Same mean old bat as always, I suppose. She was still mad at Mom for siding with you about banning books. Mom told her that didn’t mean they couldn’t still get along, even if they disagreed. So I think that’s why Mom asked her to baby-sit Josh, maybe to patch up. Miz Harcher really seemed to like Josh; she’d play games with him, read him Mother Goose and Pooh Bear stories. I kind of thought she’d wished for a grandkid of her own.”

Beta Harcher? Being nice to a child? I imagined Beta’s baby-sitting activities to include recanting of cartoons, a delicious serving of cold gruel (with a side order of guilt), a spirited game of Name That Heretic, and basics of book incineration. Kindness and stories that didn’t involve retribution for sins hadn’t occurred to me. Maybe there’d been a heart under that stony skin. “And nothing unusual happened when you took her home?” I pressed. Hally looked nervous again, running his tongue tip over his chapped lips. His jaw worked.

“Well, yeah. But I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything. It was probably library business or something.” He glanced nervously toward the house.

“I don’t want to get in trouble and I don’t want her in trouble.” I followed his eyes to the empty porch. Eula Mae had vanished into her inner sanctum to be Jocelyn Lushe and chronicle the escapades of her latest pair of star-crossed lovers. “Eula Mae?” I asked. “What do you mean?” “She was sitting on Beta’s porch when we pulled up. Waiting for her. Miz Harcher had left her porch light on and I could see Miz Quiff sitting up there. Miz Quiff looked madder’n hell. She was sitting in a porch chair, and she got up real slow from it when Miz Harcher got out of my car.” Hally paused. “Real slow. You know, like someone who’s so mad that they’ve got to move like molasses to keep from knocking the tar out of someone?” “I know what you mean. So what happened then?”