Evan Hunter - The Moment She Was Gone

I was still living at home, and attending school at NYU, when the call from Georgia came that May. My mother answered the phone. It was the middle of the night. Everything with Annie seems to occur in the middle of the night. “Andrew, wake up,” my mother yelled, “quick, pick up the phone!”

“What is it?” I said.

“Your sister’s in trouble. Annie? Hello, just a minute, your brother’s getting the extension. Andrew!” she yelled.

“I’ve got it,” I said.

I was on the living room phone already, standing there in my pajamas. My mother was on the phone in her bedroom.

“Annie? We’re both on now. What is it?”

“Hello, Sis.”

“Hi.”

“What is it, Annie?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I got arrested.”

“What for?” my mother asked.

“I peed on a policeman.”

“You what?”

“He wasn’t in uniform.”

“Annie, what on earth...?”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Georgia,” she said.

“Where in Georgia?”

“Just outside Atlanta.”

“You got arrested?” my mother said.

“It’s okay, I’m out on bail.”

“But why’d they... what did you say you did?”

“He forced us to cake off our panties.”

“Annie!”

“Well, he did, Mom.”

“Then he’s the one they should have arrested.”

“Oh sure,” Annie said. “I need money to pay the fine, Mom. The gig broke up in a riot, and we never got paid. Can you send me some money?”

“How much money?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“What!”

“The fine is a thousand dollars.”

“What!”

“This was a cop I pissed on, Mom.”

The way she tells it, the party at the fire house was in full swing when this young man came up to the bandstand and made advances. Fire house, you heard me correctly; the jobs Wally Hennessy booked for The Gutter Rats were seldom of high caliber. The job that night (or gig, as my sister preferred calling it) was paying a hundred dollars a man (women, too, for that matter) and started at eight and was to have ended at midnight had it not been for the fracas precipitated by one Harley Welles.

At the time, Pearl Williams was a strikingly attractive black girl who was only a fair musician, as for that matter was every other musician in the group, with the possible exception of my sister whose tambourine-shaking was admittedly no great shakes, but whose voice was pretty good for this level of performance. They made a nice couple, my sister and Pearl. Shaking her tambourines and her considerable booty, Annie would stand emerald-eyed and blond and somewhat body-pierced, belting out songs made famous by other singers, while behind her at the keyboard Pearl tossed her head and hurled lightning bolts from her flying fingers, dark eyes flashing, wide grin promising gospel-sister pleasures. It was no wonder that Harley Welles thought both these ripe young ladies from the big bad city might care to accompany him home for the night.

Harley was wearing some kind of blue nylon jacket with yellow letters on the back, GHP for Georgia Highway Patrol or some such, although the first time around (we heard this story many times, too) he was merely an out-of-uniform member of the local constabulary. Whatever else he was, he was certainly comical. At least the way Annie tells it. She’s wonderful with accents and dialects, my sister. I wish I could do them the way she does.

Young Harley, it appears, came up to the bandstand during the eleven o’clock break and immediately introduced himself to Pearl and my sister.

“Hah, ah’m Hahley Wales, nice t’meet y’all, ladies.”

(I can’t do dialects, I’m sorry.)

I’ve been observing you ladies (he tells them in his inimitable way) and it occurred to me that you both being strangers in town and all, you might enjoy a little sight-seeing tour after y’all quit playing tonight. I want you to know there are more enjoyable places we could visit here in town than this li’l ole fire house, though I must say your presence has enlivened and beautified the place beyond measure. We could, for example, go to a fine ole bar I know of down the road, which is touch-close to a lovely motel many visiting celebrities like y’all stay at when they’re here in town. I would be happy—

“We’re busy, thanks,” my sister says.

“Thanks,” Pearl echoes.

I would be happy (young Harley goes on, undeterred) to accompany you ladies to this bar I’m telling you about, where perhaps you might enjoy dancing a little instead of singing and playing your l’il ole hearts out, like you’re doing here, though it’s a juke box there, I must admit. I’m a fair dancer, and I would be happy to alternate as your partner, so to speak, until such time as the three of us might become better acquainted. I’ve been noticing how well you two ladies play together, and I know this sort of intimacy, if you take my meaning, comes with practice—

“Get lost,” my sister says.

“But thanks,” Pearl says.

He is not about to get lost, young Harley. He tells my sister that if perhaps she’s not interested, then maybe her little black friend here with the swift fingers and the big smile might be enticed into sharing a brew and tripping the light fantastic, or whatever, this being an enlightened age in the South and all. My sister tells him that perhaps he hasn’t understood what she’s saying, which is that neither she nor her little black friend here with the speedy fingers and the bright smile is interested in sharing anything at all with him tonight, and besides it’s time they got back on the bandstand.

“So tell you what, Cracker, take a walk,” she says. “Or I’ll call a cop.”

“I am a cop,” he says.

According to my sister, Harley then pulled a rather large weapon from under his blue nylon jacket with the letters GHP on it, and pointed it at both her and Pearl, waving it in their faces from one to the other, and forcing them to accompany him outside behind the fire house where he ordered both of them to take off their panties and pee on their hands.

This was sixteen years ago.

I had not yet heard Annie’s story of molestation by the man giving pony rides or the kid sitting behind her on the saddle or poor Mr. Alvarez under the sink. When she related this Southern atrocity story to me and my mother, it sounded entirely fresh and believable. My mother was thoroughly appalled. I think she would have preferred Annie being raped, rather than so humiliated; her ruination, so to speak, rather than her urination.

As for me, I found the whole tale amusing. First, the image of these two frightened amateur rock artists, one black, one white, pulling down their panties for a redneck in a blue nylon jacket holding a .357 Magnum on them, and then Pearl actually starting to pee on her own talented fingers while Annie becomes so enraged that she suddenly straddles ole Harley’s leg and begins pissing all over his pants and his shoes — hey, you can’t get that on prime time television.

We laughed so hard, Annie and I.

We sit on the living room sofa, side by side, my mother and I. It is beginning to become light outside, a false dawn promising another clear day. I take my mother’s hand in mine. It is cold to the touch.

“Mom,” I say, “when did you speak to her last?”

My mother hesitates.

“Mom?”

“Yesterday afternoon sometime. I was going downstairs to do some shopping. We needed milk and orange juice.”

“What did she say to you?”

“She certainly didn’t say she was planning to leave. I would have...”

“Mom? Please, okay? We’re trying to find her. No one’s hurling accusations. Can you remember what she said?”