“Ugh, it’s such a mess back there. Cricket, throw that empty box into the way-back, honey, will you? It’s a button I push here on my key chain, Carrie, see? They open and close, depending on which button I push. Now buckle up back there. Cricket, help Carrie with her seat belt, will you? It’s okay, Carrie, she’s just strapping you in. Great. Okay, girls, we’re off!”
I turn the radio on loud enough to where it won’t seem like I’m eavesdropping but low enough so I can. Cricket asks her what she usually does in the summer, and I roll my eyes—I swear that daughter of mine has got to stop finding ways to complain about summer school.
“I don’t know. There’s always something to do in the mountains in summertime. We were sure-footed about ever-where we went. Up on the log fence, like I said, the fence that marked where our land stopped and Mr. Wilson’s started. He was our neighbor, Mr. Wilson. We probably spent more time on his side anyway, what with him learning us to shoot and whatnot. He had a three-legged dog named Brownie. He even made it a wooden peg leg.”
Shooting guns, running around barefoot, log fences—it’s right out of central casting for hillbillies. I know the general area she’s talking about and no one, I mean no one, has more than two dimes to rub together up there.
“You’re so lucky,” Cricket says, interrupting. “Summer here sucks.”
“Cricket Chaplin Ford, we don’t use that word—you know better than that.” I catch her eye in the rearview mirror.
“What! It’s so not a cussword, but whatever. My mom’s like obsessed with not using words that even remotely sound like cusswords. Anyway, it’s so boring here in the summer. Time dies a little more every afternoon and it gets so hot it’s like the whole city’s holding its breath till the sun goes down. It’s suffocating. Seriously. I might even die from the heat.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” I say. “Oh my. Carrie, honey, you might want to slow down a little—maybe try chewing a little more in between bites—oh, well look at that. You’re finished. I guess I’ve never seen someone eat a hamburger so quick.”
“There’s this one girl?” Cricket is telling Carrie, “I think she’s on the track team or something. Anyway, she almost died from the heat—everyone knows it, Mom, what? It’s true! The coach made her do like twenty million push-ups and she started crying and he still made her do them. She was in the hospital and everything. Wait, how’d the dog lose its leg? That three-legged dog you just mentioned. What’s its name again? Blackie? I want a dog so bad but—”
“Me too!” Carrie says, becoming quite animated. “I want one too! I keep telling Momma I’ll take care of it but she says no way.”
“So does my mom. I want one of those little weensy dogs.”
“That’s the kind I want too! You could carry it around with you all day like a baby, and dress it up in cute little doll outfits.”
“Exactly!” Cricket’s saying. Both girls are excited to bursting. “Wait, did you ever watch that show—what’s the name of it? Sister Love or something? You know what show I’m talking about—what’s it called …”
“Our TV broke and then we didn’t have one so …” Carrie trails off, then says, “Um, ma’am? Mrs. Ford? Um, how do you get the window to go down?”
“Not Sister Sister,” Cricket’s saying, “but kinda like that. Wait, you didn’t have a TV?”
“Oh, I know. It’s so hot out, isn’t it?” I say. “The air-conditioning will cool you off in two seconds, I promise. If we put the windows down it’ll never get cool in here. You okay back there?”
“Um, I don’t feel so good,” Carrie says. She’s got her forehead against the window glass.
“Oh boy,” I say, holding back the curse I want to yell at the driver behind me laying on his horn. “Okay, honey, I’m pulling over, just hang on now,” I say. It’s trickier than I thought, moving from the far left lane to the shoulder on this stretch of road.
“Mom, Carrie didn’t have a TV! I’d kill myself. Seriously. I’d totally kill myself if I didn’t have a TV.”
“Can the window go down?” Carrie asks. Her voice is drained now, her skin the color of Kleenex.
“Wait, why are we stopping?” Cricket finally catches on.
“Carrie, honey, it’s okay, let me just … pull … a … little … more … onto … the … shoulder …”
Too late. She throws up on the floor mat.
“Aw, rank!” Cricket says, waving away the smell. “Sorry, Carrie, but it smells so bad. Mom—open the windows! The safety lock’s on the windows, I can’t open—”
“I’m so sorry,” Carrie is saying, still bent in half, her voice muffled, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to do it in the car, I tried to …”
“Oh-Em-Gee, your hamburger came out almost whole!” Cricket says, her voice nasal because she’s pinching her nose shut against the admittedly horrible smell.
“All right, all right, everybody calm down … The windows are unlocked now.”
“I’m really really sorry,” Carrie says. Cricket reaches across to put Carrie’s window down for her.
“Honey, Carrie, honey, it’s okay, sweetheart. Of course you didn’t mean to. It happens to everyone from time to time,” I say. “Cricket, hand me those napkins or paper towels or whatever’s there in the pocket on the back of the seat. Stay in the car, both of you. I’m coming around to your side, Carrie.”
I do the best I can, getting as much vomit scooped out as possible. Just good enough for us to make it home, where I can clean it up right. There’s no way I can just drop this child off to an empty home, feeling sick the way she is. I probably should call Eddie. Or maybe I should’ve called 9-1-1. But what good would that have really done? And now if I call they’ll wonder why I didn’t call right away so it’ll make it look like I’m trying to kidnap her. With my track record, that’s exactly what they’ll think. I don’t even know what her home situation truly is—I just know what she’s told me, and that’s not much. Mother will know what to do. I’ll just bring her in, clean her up, then Mother and I will figure out who to call. First, though, I’ll swing by their place and double-check to see what the deal is.
“Okay, girls. We’re good to go,” I say, sliding back behind the wheel.
After a few minutes blasting the AC with the windows open for a good airing out (sorry, environment!), the smell doesn’t seem so bad and the girls are chatting away as if nothing happened.
“Carrie? Honey, where’d you say y’all live?”
“Um, the Loveless Hotel and Motor Lodge?” she says. These kids have the habit of talking in “upspeak” so even statements sound like questions.
“That pink place up the road on the right?” I ask her. Please, dear Lord in Heaven, don’t let her be staying there.
“Yes, ma’am,” she says.
She turns back to Cricket and whatever tangent Cricket’s off on.
“… and I change things in my mind,” Carrie is saying, “and after a spell I cain’t tell the difference between what happened and what I only wished had happened.”
“Oh-Em-Gee, me too!” Cricket says. She lowers her voice and I have to strain over Pure Prairie League’s “Amie” so I can hear. “Like when I got blood drawn for my sister? Don’t go telling anybody I said this but I imagined the nurses in back saying stuff like ‘I’ve never seen blood so rich and strong—whose blood is this?’ and someone else will go ‘Why, it’s Cricket Ford’s,’ and the first one will be all, ‘I should’ve known: that girl does everything perfectly. What a lovely child,’ then the other one will go, ‘I wish my daughter could be more like her. She’s a credit to her family,’ and the first one will say, ‘She’s a credit to the whole city, having blood so strong and healthy.’
“You know, stuff like that,” Cricket says. “Wait, I think my mom’s listening. Mom? Can you hear me when I talk at this level?”
Of course I pretend not to hear. Who wouldn’t?
“Oh, phew,” Cricket says.
“I totally thought she was eavesdropping.… Wait, you know how to shoot? Like, a gun? I wish I knew how to shoot. My daddy’s a police officer and he’s got a gun on him like twenty-four-seven and still he won’t let me learn it’s so ridiculous whatever I don’t even care …”
“Okeydokey, girls,” I say, putting the car in park outside the dumpy registration office at the Loveless a few minutes later.
“Wait, Mom? Can’t Carrie just come over for a little bit? If her mom says she can I mean? Please?”
I would have thought Carrie would’ve been the one to beg to stay, but Cricket looks to be on the verge of tears.
“Please, Mom?”
With deliberate movements heavy with sadness at having to part but resigned to the fact that she will have to separate from her new BFF, as Cricket would say, Carrie climbs out.
“Thank you so much for the ride, Mrs. Ford, and I’m sorry I throwed up,” she says, eyes downcast, toeing the gravel.
“Carrie, we’re totally gonna hang out soon.” Cricket is frantic to unclick her seat belt. I’ve never seen her this determined to hold on to someone but then we’ve never been faced with a mirror image of my dead daughter. “You should come over and see my grandma’s house where we’re living now. It’s so freaky. Mom, please can’t she come over, like, now? Why do we have to leave her?”
“All right, simmer down,” I say.
I want to tell them that I don’t want Carrie out of my sight any more than Cricket does, but I think it might freak Cricket out more to see me just as googly-eyed as she is over this spectacular find.
“Carrie, honey, how about we try to find your mom to see if you can come over to our house for a bit? I can call her cell. What’s her phone number?”
The smile across this little child’s face is so big you’d never believe her face was glum only seconds before.
“Oh, no, ma’am, no need to call,” she says, putting her tiny self between me and the front office. “Like I said, Momma’s looking for a job? She’ll not be back for a long time. I can come over, it’s okay. She’d say it’s okay, I mean. She’s always telling me to go out and make friends and whatnot. It’s fine.”
“Well, let me just pop into the office here and get the lay of the land,” I say. “Why don’t you wait in the car with Cricket?”
“Yay! Come on!” Cricket pats the empty seat next to her.
The smell of air freshener hits like a punch in the gut before I’m even half in the door to the office. When someone’s got that much fake smell, you’ve got to wonder what they’re trying to cover up. I learned that on Law & Order. Detectives notice things like that when they’re looking for dead bodies. I’ve always thought I’d make a good detective. Not that I’d ever say that to Eddie, who’s been trying to make detective ever since he joined the force. Unfortunately for him, Hartsville isn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity. Detective openings are few and far between.
“Hel-lo?” I call out in a singsong voice. “Anybody here?”
I hear a newspaper rustling, the groan of someone reluctant to get up off a couch, footsteps, then a door opens from the manager’s living quarters. I am face-to-face with a strange-looking man so rail thin you could break him in half with a flick of your fingers. He is so emaciated his eyelids don’t seem to be able to cover enough of his eyeballs, leaving him looking bewildered or scared.
“Hi, there. I’m a … I’m a friend of Caroline … oh, dear, it appears I can’t recall her last name. Carrie? A little girl from out of town,” I say. “I’m sure you know who I mean. She’s got dark hair and eyes. Real thin. Nine years old. Anyway, I just stopped by to ask, well, I guess I’m here because I’m wondering about her mother.”
“I know who you’re talking about. That’s Carrie Parker. She all right? What about her mother?” He squints at me and chews on a toothpick sticking out of the corner of his mouth. “She in trouble? I knew the minute I laid eyes on her, that woman spells trouble. Like that Travis Tritt song—you know the one?”
“Carrie’s fine,” I say.
He looks relieved, then starts humming and bobbing his head to music playing in his head.
“You know the song,” he says.
“No, can’t say I’m familiar with that one,” I say. “But why do you say that about the mother?”
“He spells it out. Travis Tritt does. You know. Like T-R-O-U-B-L-E,” he says. He looks at me hoping to see recognition, but I keep shaking my head, and finally he shrugs and with his tongue moves the toothpick to the other corner of his mouth. “You’d know it if you heard it,” he sighs.
“You were saying? About Carrie and her mother?”
“Can’t put my finger on it,” he says, “I just knew I’d be hearing something bad about them at some point. She came in here not long ago looking like the losing end of a prizefight. Bruised all up and down, dried blood in places. I told her I didn’t want any trouble. I said those exact words as a matter of fact. I don’t want any trouble here, lady, I said. The way she looked I just knew there’d be an angry husband on her tail. That what happened? Her husband finally catch up with her?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I say. “I mean, I think she’s fine. Do you see much of her? Do you know where I can find her? Her daughter says she’s looking for work.”
“I see her nearly ever-day,” he says, “going off to do who knows what. I ain’t no parole officer or babysitter—I got no idea where she hies off to. But I tell you what, she’s got an attitude, that one. Ever-day she’s walking out to the bus, her purse real high on her shoulder like she’s sure someone’s gonna mug her. Constantly looking over her shoulder. I guess you get mixed up with bad folks you pretty much assume they’re always gonna be with you. That’s her manner, see? When she’s sober, I mean. Not that she’s sober much. Boy, that one can drink. She’s got that little girl a’hers run ragged between here and the package store. And that’s not counting the bottle she brown-bags home at the end of the day, pulling on it like she’s dying of thirst in the desert. Meantime, that kid …”
“Carrie?”
“Yeah, that’s her name,” he says, giving it thought then shaking his head. “My wife’s after me about that little girl day and night.”
“Why?”
“Oh, who knows,” he says, waving off his wife’s invisible words. “She winds herself up about lawsuits and liabilities and whatnot. I tell her look, if the girl gets hurt climbing in and out of dumpsters and sneaking over fences to the empty pool and all, well, it’s their word against ours and ain’t no judge in the land gonna believe hillbillies over good upstanding business persons such as ourselves. No sense making trouble where there ain’t none.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I say. “She climbs in and out of dumpsters?”
“You don’t understand because you’ve probably never gone hungry,” he says. “I seen all kinds of things here, believe you me. All kinds of things. And what I learned is folks’ll do just about anything to feed themselves. The Parkers ain’t no different—well, except that kid’s a sweetheart. She’s real careful and polite. Plus, she’s clever beyond her years. She finds some pretty funny ways to put food in her belly, that one does. Reminds me of myself when I was little, if you want to know the truth. That’s why I tell my wife to lay off her. Let her be. All she’s trying to do is keep her hunger at bay, and let’s face it, her momma ain’t exactly doing much on that front.”
He tips an invisible bottle to his lips and winks at what he doesn’t need to say.
“When does Mrs. Parker usually come back?” I ask.
“Last I checked I don’t have eyes in the back of my head,” he says, “but best as I can tell she ain’t never back before dark. Not that I ever seen. You ask a lotta questions—you a cop? I don’t care one way or the other, mind you, but the missus’ll have a fit she hears the police been asking around about them two.”
“I’m not a cop,” I say. “I do appreciate your time, Mr. …?”
“Burdoc
k,” he says, stretching his face into a painful but genuine-looking smile. “Hap Burdock.”
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk, Mr. Burdock.”
“It’s Hap,” he says, tipping his head, “and it’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
See, now there’s another example of me jumping to conclusions and judging harshly. It’s not his fault he’s got no meat on his bones. He seems like a real nice man. I’ve got to work on that. The world doesn’t need another conclusion jumper, that’s for sure.
“You’re a good man, Mr. Burdock. I mean, Hap. I can tell,” I say, figuring I’ll make him an ally whether he likes it or not. If he feels invested in Carrie, he’ll watch out over her. “I guess I don’t need to tell you I’m worried about that little girl, and maybe I’m off on this but you seem to be concerned as well—no no, don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me, ha ha! You men—always so careful not to let on you’re all softies underneath. But I want you to know I really appreciate you looking out for that child. You shake your head like you don’t know what I’m talking about, but we both know you do. Anyway, I better get going. I just want to thank you for watching over her.”
“Whoa, Nellie! I’ll tell you what I told them,” he says, holding up his hand to stop me from talking. “I ain’t no babysitter. I don’t want to get involved with any of that. I’m just telling you what I know, is all. Hey, I got it! It’s been eating at me the whole time you’re standing in front of me. I’m thinking, gee, she sure looks familiar but I can’t put my finger on where I know you from …”
“I’ve got to skedaddle,” I say, backing toward the door. “I’m glad to meet you, Hap.”
“I seen you in the papers,” he says, pointing a eureka finger in the air. “That’s it! You’re the one who was in all them papers a while back …”
I ignore it like I do all the other times.
“Bye, nice talking with you!”
I’m careful to use my knuckles to push the glass door open—it’s so grimy there’s no telling what kinds of germs are plastered all over the metal bar. I use the palms of my hands, I get those germs on the steering wheel. Whoops! There I go again. Judging. This door might be cleaner than my whole minivan, for all I know.