Lee Martin - Late One Night

Now it was getting close to an end. Pat could sense that. Questions were going to be answered, and his life and Missy’s and the lives of those sweet girls, who deserved none of this upset, were going to move on.

“I’ll be back when I can,” he told Missy.

She grinned and gave a little shrug of her shoulders as if to say of course he would. Everything was going to be fine. It was going to be easy-breezy. “I’ll be here,” she said.

_________

At the courthouse, Biggs had Ronnie in an interrogation room. Biggs sat at a foldout table. He allowed Ronnie to wander over to the window, where he stood looking out at State Street. A fine snow, half rain, was falling. Ronnie watched a man come out of the J.C. Penney store, a blue scarf wrapped around his face.

“You better start talking,” Biggs said.

For a good while, Ronnie didn’t speak. He just stayed there at that window, his head bowed. Then he turned to face Biggs. He lifted his head, drew his shoulders back.

“All right,” he said. “Now listen.” His voice started to quaver, then, and he had to bite his lip and look down at his feet to get control of himself. “I’m not what people say I am.”

Biggs said, “No one’s condemned you yet.”

Ronnie let out a little puff of breath. He gave Biggs a weak grin. “If you ask me,” he said, “that’s exactly what this town’s done.”

It was Willie Wheeler who finally came into the Real McCoy that afternoon and told Anna Spillman in a voice loud enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear that he’d seen a deputy carrying what looked to be a man’s T-shirt in a big ziplock plastic bag out of Brandi’s house. Another deputy had a bag that held Ronnie’s work boots. The deputies spent some time going through the storage shed in the backyard, and they carried out a five-gallon Marathon gas can, the kind with that logo of the nearly naked man running with his arm in the air and the red block letters that spelled out MARATHON.

Willie didn’t know that at one point the taller deputy went back into Brandi’s house and told her, “We found a gas can in your shed.”

Brandi said, “It’s the can Ronnie used the morning when I ran out of gas before I got to work. He carried five gallons to me in Phillipsport.”

“Did he put it all in your car?”

She nodded. “Every drop.”

For a while, the deputy didn’t say anything. He took out a small pocket notebook and a pen, and he wrote something down. Then he said to Brandi, “That can in your shed? Ma’am, it still had about a gallon of gas in it.”

Missy was making a shopping list — things she needed now that the girls were there — when she heard a racket outside. She got up from the kitchen table, went to the living room window, and peeked outside.

Shooter Rowe was sitting on his Bobcat tractor in her driveway, looking toward the house. He lifted his arm and pointed a finger at her.

What else could she do but go outside to see what he wanted.

He had a scoop shovel on the front of the Bobcat, and she could see the chain saw riding inside. The scoop was stained with fresh mud, speckled with dead leaves and sticks.

“You got those girls with you now.” He shouted over the idling tractor engine. “I saw you all leave this morning.”

She was in no mood for chitchat. “What is it you want?”

He sat on his tractor. “It’s a good thing you’re doing, taking those girls.”

“You said that goat had hoof and mouth.” The words were out before she could even think about where they would lead. “Pat said we haven’t had hoof and mouth in this country for almost eighty years.”

Shooter shut off the tractor and, after the noisy idling, the silence was unnerving. “That goat was sick.” His voice was low and pointed. Missy knew he was telling her to pay attention, warning her that she was going somewhere she really didn’t want to go. She felt certain that he’d been in the woods cutting trees and bulldozing them into the gully to cover the body of the goat. He’d been filling in that grave. “He was sick,” Shooter said, “and I had to put him down.”

“But Pat said—” She heard the weakness in her own voice, and she stopped to gather herself.

Then Shooter said this last thing: “You’ve got what you want, Missy. You’ve got those girls. You wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of your happy-ever-after, would you?”

She didn’t know what to say.

He held her eye a moment longer, and when she still didn’t say anything, he said, “That’s right. You keep to your business, and I’ll keep to mine.”

With that, he put the Bobcat into gear and backed out of the driveway. She watched him go, and then she took out her cell phone and called Pat.

“It’s Shooter,” she told him. “He’s up to something.” Then she related the story of what had just happened. “He threatened me, Pat.”

“Threatened you? How?”

“He told me to keep to my business and let him keep to his. Pat, I’ve got this feeling. This very bad feeling.”

“Do you want me to come home? I’ll leave right now. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“No, I’m on my way into town. I’ve got to get some things for the girls. I’ll stay and pick them up from school. They get out earlier than Angel. Maybe we’ll all drive over to Phillipsport to the high school and pick her up so she doesn’t have to ride the bus. I want to make sure everyone stays safe tonight.”

“Try not to worry too much about Shooter. He’s mostly full of bluff.”

“Still,” she said, “just to be on the safe side.”

“All right, Missy. You know best. Call if you need me.”

_________

Missy moved through her day trying to convince herself that nothing was unusual. It was the first day of what was going to be her life for a good while to come, the life of a mother. She stopped at Read’s IGA and ticked off the items on her list: breakfast cereal, orange juice, bread, milk, apples, bananas, canned soups, lunch meat, ham salad, ground beef, frozen pizzas, pasta, and tomato sauce. It was so cold outside the perishables would be fine in the very back of the van. It wouldn’t take her long to gather up Hannah and Sarah and Emma and then drive over to Phillipsport for Angel. They’d all ride home together, a family, and she’d ask the girls to help her put the groceries away.

By the time she got to the checkout line, Missy’s cart was heaped full.

“Got a load there,” Roe Carl said.

“Cooking for five now,” Missy said.

“I heard you got Ronnie Black’s girls.”

Missy nodded. “The sheltered care hearing was this morning.”

“Good luck to you.”

“Thank you,” said Missy, feeling her breath catch.

She knew Roe didn’t mean to give her any alarm, but something about that wish for good luck made Missy afraid of everything she’d soon know about the night of the fire. Here she was dreaming about the future, all the good parts of it, not stopping to think what it would do to the girls if they found out that indeed Ronnie had set fire to the trailer.

As Missy loaded her groceries into the back of the van and made ready to drive to the grade school, she thought back to the day that ended up being the last one of Della’s life. She’d been making plans too, not knowing she was about to run out of time.

At the high school in Phillipsport, Angel slouched at her desk behind Tommy Stout’s in algebra class and kept kicking her foot against his chair back. The teacher, Mrs. Ferenbacher, was writing equations on the board. She was about a million years old, and she kept a handkerchief balled up in her left hand, and sometimes she had a coughing spell and she spit phlegm into her hanky. When Tommy turned in his seat, Angel rolled her eyes, letting him know how bored she was, and he laughed a little, but not enough for Mrs. F. to hear. The chalk kept on squeaking, and Mrs. F. coughed a little, and Angel stuck her finger in her mouth like she was gagging, and that sent Tommy into a laughing fit he couldn’t control. Mrs. F. turned on her heel and surveyed the class. “Tommy Stout,” she said. “Would you mind telling us what’s tickled your funny bone?”