Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

“Cука,” Grand mumbled out the door.

Fedelia threatened that when she found out what that meant, she was going to kick his ass good. Then in a sudden turn of emotion, she looked toward Mom. “Before I forget, have you heard about Dovey?”

Fedelia, the wheel of gossip.

“She’s still in the hospital up in Columbus, ain’t she?” Mom picked up her crochet hook and yarn, pretending to be more interested in finishing the crocheting of her afghan square than anything else.

“Oh, my, yes. Might lose that baby. Fall really done her in. Or was it a push?” Fedelia puckered her lips, the wrinkles emphasized and parading around her mouth like thorns of flesh.

A push. That was the idea laying pipes through town. Elohim did as he told the sheriff he would, which was to clear Sal’s name. Still, the thought was too hard to abandon for some, and once it was said, it became like most gossip, drama that ruins.

As Fedelia kept chatting with Mom, someone knocked on the front door. It was the sheriff come to speak to Dad. While Sal stayed in the living room, staring at Fedelia’s hair, I crouched down in the entry hall, at the side of the screen door so I could see and hear the sheriff and Dad out on the front porch.

The sheriff spit over the railing. The glob colored red from his cherry hard candy. He wiped his mouth on his arm before saying, “You know how I’ve been lookin’ into some of the surroundin’ counties for missin’ boys? Well, now, I’ve come up with somethin’ quite interestin’.”

“What’s that?” Dad asked.

“An abundance of missin’ boys. Not much ruckus has been raised about these disappearances. Furthermore, these vanishin’s have happened over the course of years. I can’t say they’re all related, yet I can’t say they ain’t. I mean we’re lookin’ at boys disappearin’ at exactly thirteen years of age. Same as the boy you got in your livin’ room. Boys from poor families. Judgin’ by the clothes he showed up in, he ain’t no Rockefeller. I’d say he’s some farm pup. Plus, all these kids, they were all black, Autopsy.”

Dad wiped his hand over his mouth. “Any suspects?”

“No sir-ree Bob.” The sheriff leaned back into his heels, causing his bulbous stomach to lead out. “Most folks ain’t gonna pay a lot of attention to a kidnapper if they ain’t even aware there is one. These stories of these kids, only two were even mentioned in their local papers. The rest were just police files. And most of ’em was put down as runaways.”

“No linking evidence?”

“Nothin’ hard. There was one thing. A shirt was found belongin’ to one of the boys. Found by a series of railroad tracks. At first they thought the spots on the shirt were bloodstains. Tests proved it chocolate. Better chocolate than blood, I reckon. Gave the momma hope her son was still alive. I imagine the truth will eat her up sooner or later though. It’s a thing to eat any parent up. Losin’ a child is a thing with teeth.”

“Were there photographs in the police files?”

“Some.”

“Any of these boys, the recent ones to go missing, any of them look like Sal?”

“A bunch of little black boys?” The sheriff’s laugh reminded me of Elohim’s. “Sure they looked like him.”

Dad sighed and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “Be fair.”

The sheriff spit over the porch rail and cleared his throat. “Listen, there were three possible cases reported that fell in the timeline of when that boy arrived. One of ’em was that boy Amos. The other two cases had photographs supplied by the parents. They had their likenesses to that boy in there. But they ain’t him. Shucks. Never found those green eyes of his in any of ’em. That’s not sayin’ much.

“I mean maybe the family he disappeared from just never filed a police report. Or maybe they did, but who knows what state they did it in. Maybe the kidnapper ain’t just in Ohio. Maybe he’s done this all over. I’d like to talk to the boy. First, I gotta tend to some issues over at one of the farms. A shitload of cows have just died.

“These animals ain’t built for such heat. We ain’t either.” He used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his cheeks. “You know, I could use some help puttin’ flyers on cars. Remindin’ everyone not to leave pets and children in vehicles. Already had an infant had to be rushed to the doctor with heatstroke or heat rash or some sort of heat sickness after bein’ left in his momma’s truck.”

“I’ll help you hand the flyers out.” Dad said so without much care. He was still thinking of all those missing black boys.

“Listen, this evenin’ is clear for me. Would you bring that boy by later, Autopsy? Not to the station. We’ll question him at my house. Make him feel comfortable, at ease. He’ll talk, I’m sure of it.”

I slipped back into the living room. Fedelia was reading aloud the articles in the newspaper about the fields drying up, livestock collapsing, and the recent infestation of flies. As she got to the article about home remedies for heat rash, Sal sat at her feet and stared up at her hair.

“Can I ask you something, ma’am?”

She folded the paper and smacked it down hard on the table. “Devil gonna ask me a question? Shit, this oughta be good.” She sneered, showing how the bright lipstick had smudged across her yellowed teeth. “Shoot, green eyes.”

“Do you count your days well spent?”

She batted her eyes, the false lashes about to fling off. “Are you offerin’ to buy my soul? Goddamn.” The sweat on her face was little beige droplets, colored by her heavy mask of makeup. “Do I count my days what now?”

“Well spent.”

“Well spent? Fuckin’ philosopher here. Why don’t you tell me?”

“You do not count your days well spent. How could you? Not with all the anger you have. Why have you built infinity for your husband’s mistresses upon your head?”

The circles of blush bounced as her lips twitched like boiling water. “You little shit. How dare you.”

“What else would you call it but a place for them and their damage to live forever upon you?”

“It is none of your damn business anyways, boy.” Her roar shook her dangling earrings.

“Have you ever heard of the paradise shelduck?”

“Fuck you,” she whispered through clenched teeth, her hand beating at her chest as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

“The rule is female ducks are less colorful than their male counterparts. The paradise shelduck is the exception. While the male has a boring black head and an even more boring gray body, the female has a head of bright white with a body of chestnut and gold. The female paradise is a rarity in the duck world. She beats the beauty of the male.

“You, Fedelia Spicer, are meant to be paradise. Look at the white hair there at your roots. As white as the head of the female shelduck. But these colors of the other women. They feather you away from paradise. You must let go of them.” He reached up to a ribbon, but she grabbed his arm.

“I can’t.” Her voice tore at the edges. “Don’t you understand?”

She sat there in the chair looking so fragile, I thought if I touched her with my little finger, she would instantaneously break like a plate being struck by a sledgehammer. Mom tried to comfort her, doing her best to keep Fedelia’s false lashes from falling with the tears.

Dad had long returned from the porch and had listened quietly to the exchange between Fedelia and Sal. Now he placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “Fielding, why don’t you and Sal go be a couple of little boys for a while.”

I waved for Sal to follow me outside. Dad stopped him with just a finger gently pressed into his chest. “You are unusual, aren’t you, son?” He looked down into Sal’s eyes, waiting for a big answer. All he got was a small shrug.