Lee Martin - Late One Night

Then the local news came on the radio, and the first story was about the trailer fire and how the State Fire Marshal had confirmed its suspicious nature. The investigation, the radio announcer said, was ongoing.

Missy recalled the day at the bank when Laverne had practically begged her to say that Ronnie couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the fire, and Missy had left enough space for that rumor to spread.

Now she only looked at Pat and said, “Oh, my. My word. Isn’t that just the saddest thing? And after what Shooter told us about Ronnie.”

Pat got up from the table and grabbed his coat and lunch box. He looked at Missy a good long while. “Do you think he really did it?”

“God help him,” Missy said.

Pat nodded and then headed out the door.

She took her time washing the dishes, keeping an eye on the clock on the wall of the kitchen. The clock was round with a yellow sunflower painted on its center. Yellow numbers circled the sunflower just outside the reach of its petals. It would take thirty minutes to drive to the high school in Phillipsport, and Missy wanted to make sure that she got there in enough time to be waiting when the bus from Goldengate pulled to the curb.

At the school, she stood by her van, watching. When she saw Angel get off the bus, she called to her.

Angel stopped on the sidewalk, her backpack slung over her shoulder, while the students getting off the bus moved past her. They were laughing and shouting, their breath steaming in the cold air.

Missy waved at Angel, and her heart lifted when Angel finally raised her arm and waved back. Then she came down the sidewalk to where Missy was standing.

“I know you have to get to your first class,” Missy said, “but I wanted you to have this.”

Missy gave her the iPod, and Angel looked at it and looked at it and looked at it. When she finally raised her head, her lip was trembling.

“Thank you,” she said in a soft voice.

“Your dad said you’d been wanting a new one.”

Angel rolled her eyes. “He wouldn’t let me have one.”

Missy could have told her not to hold her father to account. She could have told her about the three-hundred-dollar check she wrote him and how he promised to make sure all the girls got something from it. But what she said was, “Sometimes dads just don’t know, do they?”

“That’s for sure,” Angel said, and Missy thought she saw the trace of a smile.

“It’s 4-H meeting tonight,” Missy said. “You and your sisters want to go?”

“We don’t have our goats anymore.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Missy put her arm around Angel’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “We’d all love to see you. What say I come by for you around 6:30?”

Angel nodded. “Okay,” she said. Then the bell was ringing, and Missy told her to hurry so she wouldn’t get in trouble.

By six o’clock that evening, Brandi had called everyone she could think of who might know where Ronnie was. He hadn’t been in the Real McCoy Café or Casey’s convenience store or the IGA. Shooter Rowe hadn’t seen him, nor had Pat Wade.

“Tell Missy not to come and get the girls for 4-H,” she told Pat. They hadn’t had their supper, and Emma and Sarah were getting whiny. Emma was tugging at the leg of her slacks. Sarah was pressing the tweezers against the sides of the Operation game over and over so it made an annoying buzz. Angel and Hannah were back in their room.

“The girls?” he said, in a way that made it clear Missy hadn’t said a word about it to him. “She’s already gone,” he said, and before Brandi could say anything else, he hung up.

She happened to think then to call next door to Willie Wheeler’s.

“I saw Ronnie around noon,” Willie said. “He was out to the curb talking to the sheriff. Then Ronnie got in his car, and Biggs, he followed up the street after him.”

“Must have been something about the fire,” Brandi said.

Some time passed before Willie said anything else, and when he did, Brandi wished she wasn’t hearing what she was.

“Haven’t you heard?” Brandi couldn’t find her voice, afraid to ask what Willie was talking about. Finally, he went on. “It’s about the fire all right. Fire marshal says it was set. It’s all over the news.”

The rumors about Ronnie that she’d so readily dismissed now took her by the throat. Arson, and now Ronnie was more in the middle of it than she’d ever dreamed.

She got off the phone and marched down the hall to Angel’s room. She didn’t bother to knock. She just pushed open the door.

Angel was standing behind Hannah, braiding her hair. “Is there anything to eat before we go?” Angel asked.

“You’re not going with Missy,” Brandi said. “I need you to get supper for your sisters and then look after them.”

Angel took her hands out of Hannah’s hair. “Why haven’t you made supper by now?”

“I’m trying to find your daddy. Aren’t you even worried?”

Angel just shrugged her shoulders.

Hannah said, “What’s wrong? Is there something wrong?”

“No, there’s nothing wrong. I just need to find him.” She started to go. Then she turned back and said, “You’re to stay here tonight. Do you understand me?”

Hannah said that she did. Brandi thought she might have seen Angel nod her head, but she couldn’t be sure. She guessed that was the best she could do. Now she needed to find Ronnie.

He was in a bar in Brick Chapel — the Kozy Kiln — and had been since three o’clock in the afternoon. He and Brandi had come there once in the summer before he left Della and they were looking for somewhere to be off by themselves. He drank a few beers while the daylight faded and the streetlights came on and the headlights of cars swept by the plate-glass window by the table where he sat.

The last of the afternoon shoppers hurried past, women with scarves wrapped around their faces and snow boots on their feet. They held shopping bags in their arms as if they were toting babies. From time to time, one of the women laughed so loud that Ronnie could hear it, a streak of a woman’s bright voice that was his for just a moment and then was gone.

The waitress came to see if he needed anything, said, “Darlin’, you’ve been in here a good while. Don’t you have somewhere to go?”

She was a girl with yellow hair falling over her shoulders. A girl with slender arms and long fingers. A girl with papery skin beneath which Ronnie could see the faint blue trails of her veins. A girl who put him in mind of Della when he’d first fallen head over heels for her. Della the way she was before the kids and all those years, and now he was starting over again, this time with Brandi, and he knew he should be home with her and the girls, but he hadn’t been able to lift himself up and make the drive back to Goldengate.

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said to the girl.

Then he had to look away, had to turn his face to the window. The girl was too beautiful in the way that Della had been, and if he kept looking at her, he wouldn’t be able to think of anything more than the way he and Della had once promised themselves to each other and how he’d broken his end of that promise and now she was dead.

“I hope things get better for you, darlin’,” the girl said, and then he heard the heels of her shoes clicking over the floor and falling away to nothing.

He’d been to the garment factory to see about that job. The plant manager, a tall man with a big belly and a long, sad face, said, “Pardner, I had to get me someone in that warehouse.” He hooked his thumbs into his waistband, on either side of an ornate silver belt buckle that featured an eagle and the Alamo and the words TEXAS TOUGH.