“I gotta see you.”
“I’m working a shift and a half today.”
“I gotta see you, I said! I got somethin’ important to tell you.”
“I can’t tonight, maybe Thurs—”
“Tonight, or I’ll blurt it out on this phone with Edna Mae Simms rubbering in down at central right now—you there, Edna Mae? You gettin’ all of this?”
“All right, all right!”
“Eight-fifteen, my place.”
“I don’t get off till—”
The phone clicked dead in Harley’s hands.
When he arrived at Lula’s house she was dressed in a black sheeny dressing gown patterned with cerise orchids the size of cymbals. Her hair was neatly upswept and she wore high-heeled shoes to match the orchids. They reminded Harley of one time when his mother had made him eat beets and he’d vomited afterward. Lula opened the door and closed it behind Harley with a sober snap, then turned to face him with her hands on her hips.
“Well, I’m knocked up, Harley, and it’s yours. I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it.”
Harley looked like a bazooka had just been fired three inches from his ear. For a moment he was too stunned to speak. Lula sauntered into the parlor, chin lowered while she pressed a bobby pin into its holding place high on her head.
Bug-eyed, breathless, Harley stammered, “Kn-knocked up?”
“Yup, all yours and mine, Harleykins.” She patted her stomach and flashed a sarcastic smile. “Bun in the oven.”
“B–but I ain’t seen you for two months, Lula!”
“Exactly, and if you’ll remember, you didn’t use any rubber.”
“How could I when I didn’t have any! Goddamn rubbers’re gettin’ as scarce as tires these days. It’s a wonder Roosevelt hasn’t got the Boy Scouts out collectin’ used ones like they collect everything else!” Harley dropped to the sofa and raked a hand through his hair, muttering, “Pregnant... Christ.”
Lula braced a stiff arm on the back of an overstuffed chair, drumming paradiddles with her hot-pink nails.
“Oughta be here about next May.”
“You seen a doctor already?”
“Yup. Went to Calhoun today.”
Harley jumped to his feet and paced. “Dammit, Lula, why didn’t you tell me you could’ve got pregnant that night! This is your fault, not mine!”
Lula came to life like a kicked cobra. “My fault! Why you cheap, sniveling penny-pincher, don’t you blame this on me! You’ve always been a great one to hump first and ask second. And I know why! ‘Cause all you think of is money-money-money! Up there at the mill haulin’ it in hand over fist puttin’ up government contracts at time and a half overtime, and too cheap to go to the drugstore and spend a quarter! Well, don’t you point fingers at me, Harley Overmire! All you’da had to do that night was take ten seconds to put one on, but no, you had to leap on me like some tomcat sniffin’ pussy!”
“Now you just wait a minute, Lula. I come in here and you were sprawled out like a tomato sandwich waitin’ for salt and pepper and you expect me to back off and think! You could’ve shut your legs for just a minute, you know!”
“Me, me, always me!” Lula yowled. “You been layin’ me for six years and how many times you ever thought about it before? Huh? Answer me that, Harley! I’m always the one got to think about it—well, I get sick of it! Just once I’d like you to do the thinkin’ and treat me like the lady I am and take a little time first, instead of jumpin’ on me and ruttin’ like a boar!”
“A boar! So now I’m a boar!”
“Don’t change the subject, Harley. I said I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it and I want an answer!”
“Answer—hell, where’m I supposed to get an answer?”
Lula had done some reconsidering and had come to the conclusion that Harley Overmire was better than nothing. Besides, he wasn’t really so bad in bed. And at least her kid would have an old man. Lula curled four fingers and studied her nail polish for chips while suggesting, “You could leave Mae and marry me.”
“Leave Mae!”
Lula’s nonchalance disappeared abruptly and her mouth grew sullen. “Well, what’s she to you anyway—you never even do it with her. You told me so yourself!”
“She’s the mother of my children, Lula.”
“Oh.” Lula tapped her chest. “And what am I?”
Harley couldn’t think up a fast answer.
“What am I, huh, Harley? There’s one of yours breedin’ in me right now, but since Mae is the mother of your children, maybe she’d like to add it to her collection, huh? How about that? How about I pay Mae a call and just happen to mention, Oh by the way, Mae, I’ll have another little monkey-faced brat to add to your brood next summer. How about that, Harley? Would that suit you?”
“Lula, be reasonable—”
“Be reasonable! Be reasonable, he says, when I’m the one faced with disgrace and he’s off rockin’ on his front veranda with Mae and his legitimate brats. Be reasonable? I’ll give you reasonable, Harley. How’s this for reasonable? Two months. Two months and I’ll be starting to show, and by that time I want one of two things. Either your name on a wedding license beside mine so I’ll know my kid’ll be provided for for the rest of his life, or ten thousand dollars in the bank, in my name, Lula Peak.”
“Ten thousand dollars!”
Turning to a bevel-edged mirror on the living room wall, Lula opened her lips and edged each corner with the side of a finger. She patted her varnished topknot and added as if in afterthought, “Or I could still offer it to Mae to raise and my worries’d be over.” She swung to face Harley in a shimmer of black and cerise. “Oh, well...” She flipped her palms up. “I never cared much for monkey-faced brats anyway.”
It was not a good autumn for Harley Overmire. Lula wouldn’t leave off him. He earned good money at the mill—sure—but it’d be a cold day in hell before he’d hand over ten thousand dollars to a slut like her. And she’d almost torn his face off when he’d suggested looking for a doctor to get rid of it. But worst of all, she was beginning to pester him at home, calling him in the middle of the night, at breakfast time, asking for some trumped-up name if Mae happened to answer.
She showed up at the mill one night when he was getting off at nine o’clock, just to remind him he had only four weeks left to come up with the money or the marriage. When another week passed without any progress toward a solution, she actually called Mae, giving her correct name, and told him about it afterward.
“I talked to Mae today.”
“You what?”
“I talked to Mae today. I called her up and said I was collecting for the Red Cross and wondered if she had any donations for Care packages. She said she had buttons and soap and tablets and pencils, and that I could come over there and pick them up anytime, so I did.”
“You didn’t!”
“Oh, but I did! I went right over and walked up to your front door and knocked and Mae answered and we had a pleasant little chat.”
“Goddammit, Lula—”
Lula’s expression turned serpentine. “You see how easy it is, Harley?”
Harley developed an ulcer. The stomach pains intensified one night when he came home and looked through the mail to find Lula had brazenly directed the doctor in Calhoun to send his bill directly to Harley’s house. When Mae asked what the bill was for, he told her somebody had been hurt at the mill and the bill had come to the house accidentally.
But Lula’s harassment continued daily. Harley began to detest her, wondering what he’d ever seen in her in the first place. She was hard and shallow and stump-dumb to boot. To think he’d actually jeopardized his marriage over a pussy like that.
At work Harley was distracted. At home, jumpy. Everyplace else, wary. The damn woman would show up anywhere, saying anything, doing any rash thing she took a mind to do.
The corker was when she stopped his oldest boy, Ned, coming home from school one day and talked him into Vickery’
s to give him a free ice cream cone. Afterward, she had the gall to tell Harley what she’d done and add in a sultry voice while fussing with the ugly yellow hair of hers, “You haven’t been around much, Harley. And that boy of yours is gettin’ better lookin’ by the day. Losin’ his monkey face and growin’ tall. How old is he now, Harley? Fourteen? Fifteen maybe?”
The threat was clear as that varnish she spread on her pincurls and it was the last straw. When she started in on the kids, it was time to put a stop to Lula Peak.
Harley planned it out carefully in his mind. The gift he’d left under Lula’s Christmas tree would shut her up temporarily, but he’d do it right after the holiday.
It’d work. He knew Lula and what Lula craved worse than anything, and it’d work. He hadn’t been deaf, dumb and blind these last couple years. The men at the mill made ribald jokes about how Lula stalked Parker, how she ogled him out the window of the restaurant and even pursued him outright at the library. But word had it Parker had never given her a tumble, so Lula’d still be itchin’ to get at him.
Parker. Even the name galled Harley yet. Parker and his goddamn Purple Heart. Parker, the town hero while people sneered at Harley Overmire behind his back and accused him of cutting off his finger on purpose to avoid the draft. Not one of them could even guess what kind of courage it took to run your finger through a sawblade! And besides, somebody had to stay behind and make crates for all those rifles and ammo.
So you think you’re a hero, eh, Parker? Hobbling into town on those crutches and parading around the square in your fancy uniform so everybody’ll fall on their knees and wave banners. Well, I didn’t like you the first time I clapped eyes on you, whore-killer, and I don’t like you any better now. It might not’ve worked when I tried to run you out of town the first time, but this time it will. And it’ll be the law that’ll do it for me.
It took Harley three nights of scouting the library trash cans in the back alley before finding the perfect garrote: a piece of discarded shop rag filled with easily identifiable dust and lemon cleaning oil.
Once it was in his possession, Harley prepared the note carefully, selecting oversize individual words and letters from newspapers which he glued perpendicular to the typesetting on an ordinary sheet of want ads from the Atlanta Constitution. No stationery to identify, no fingerprints left on the greasy newsprint.
MEET ME BACK DOOR LIBRARY 11 O’CLOCK TUESDAY NIGHT. W.P.
He mailed it in a used envelope from his electricity bill, addressing it by cutting away the old address with a razor blade and fitting a newsprint address in its place.
When Lula got the note in the mail she tore it in quarters and swore like a longshoreman. Fat chance, Parker, after you knocked me around and called me a whore! Go cut holes in your pockets!
But Lula was Lula. Undeniably hot-blooded. The longer she thought about Will Parker, the hotter she got. Big bad boy. Big tough Marine. All shoulders and legs and sulk. She loved that sulkiness and the brooding silences, too. But she’d had a taste of his temper, and if he flared like that in the middle of a good piece of sex—oooo-ee! That’d be one to remember! And another thing she’d learned—men with long earlobes usually had peckers to match, and Parker’s earlobes weren’t exactly miniature.
By nine o’clock Tuesday night, Lula was taping together the torn note. By nine-thirty she felt like a piece of itchweed was stuck in her pants. By ten o’clock she was in a tub full of bubbles, getting ready.
Harley Overmire hunkered in the cold December drizzle, cursing it. One thing was lucky though: the blackout was still in effect in the coastal states. No streetlights. No window lights. Nobody on the streets after ten unless they had a permit.
Come on, Lula, come on. I’m cold and damp and I wanna get home to bed.
The rear door of the library was eight feet above his head, giving onto a set of high concrete steps with an iron handrail. He’d heard Parker lock the door and leave well over half an hour ago, had sat as still as a sniper in a tree, listening to Parker’s footsteps scrape down the steps, to the sound of his car starting and driving away without lights on.
Now Harley hunkered in his black rubber jacket and old fedora hat, feeling the rain seep into a tear on his shoulder. He hugged himself with crossed arms, feeling the cold concrete pressed against his back, and listened to the rain drip from the library eaves onto the alley below. In his fist the oily dustrag formed a hard knot. Something solid to hold on to.
When he heard Lula’s footsteps his heart hammered like that of a coon before a pack. High heels—click... click... click... probably toeless, because she stepped in a puddle and cursed. He waited till she’d reached the third step, then quickly slithered around the base of the steps and up behind her.
He’d planned to do it swift, clean, anonymously. But the damn rag was old and rotten and tore and she struggled free, turned and saw his face.
“Harley... don’t... pl—”
And he was forced to finish the job with his hands.
He hadn’t planned to see the shock and horror on her face. Or the grotesqueness of the throes of death. But no blackout was total enough to hide it. And Lula struggled, fought longer and harder than he’d have thought a woman of her size could.
When she finally succumbed, Harley staggered down the steps and threw up against the north wall of the library.
CHAPTER
21
On a day in late December, Elly was working in the kitchen when she looked up and saw Reece Goodloe pull into the yard in a dusty black Plymouth with adjustable spotlights and the official word SHERIFF on the door. He’d held office for as long as Elly could remember, since before he’d come knocking on the door of Albert See’s house, forcing him to let his granddaughter go to school.
Reece had grown fat over the years. His stomach bobbed like a water balloon as he hitched up his pants on his way up the walk. His hair was thin, his face florid, his nostrils as big as a pair of hoofprints in the mud. In spite of his unattractiveness, Elly liked him: he’d been the one responsible for breaking her out of that house.
“Mornin’, Mr. Goodloe,” she greeted from the porch, shrugging into a homemade sweater.
“Mornin’, Mizz Parker. You have a nice Christmas?”
“Yessir. And you?”
“A fine Christmas, yes we did.” Goodloe scanned the clearing, the gardens neatly cleared for the winter, the junk piles gone. Things sure looked different around here since Glendon Dinsmore died.
“Your place looks good.”
“Why, thank you. Will done most of it.”
Goodloe took his time gazing around before he inquired, “Is he here, Mizz Parker?”
“He’s down yonder in the shed, painting up some supers for the hives, getting everything ready for spring.”
Goodloe rested a boot on the bottom step. “You mind fetchin’ him, Mizz Parker?”
Elly frowned. “Somethin’ wrong, Sheriff?”
“I just need to talk to him about a little matter come up in town last night.”
“Oh... well... well, sure.” She brightened with an effort. “I’ll get him.”
On her way through the yard Elly felt the first ominous lump form in her belly. What did he want with Will? Some sheriffing business, she was sure. His homesy chitchat was too obvious to be anything but a cover for an official call. But what? By the time she reached the open shed door, her misgivings showed plainly on her face.
“Will?”
With paintbrush in hand, Will straightened and turned, his pleasure unmistakable. “Missed me, did ya?”
“Will, the sheriff is here lookin’ for you.”
His grin faded, then flattened. “About what?”
“I don’t know. He wants you to come to the house.”
Will went stone still for ten full seconds, then carefully laid the paintbrush across the top of the can, picked up a rag and dampened it with turpentine. “Let’s go.” Wiping his hands, he followed her.
With each step Elly f
elt the lump grow bigger, the apprehension build. “What could he want, Will?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll find out, I reckon.”
Let it be nothing, she entreated silently, let it be a carburetor for that dusty black Plymouth, or maybe Will’s got his road sign on county property or they need to borrow the library chairs for a dance. Let it be somethin’ silly.
She glanced at Will. He walked unhurried but unhesitant, his face revealing nothing. It wore his don’t-let-’em-know-what-you’re-thinking expression, which worried Elly more than a frown.
Sheriff Goodloe was waiting beside the Plymouth, with his arms crossed over his potbelly, leaning on the front fender. Will stopped before him, wiping his hands on the rag. “Mornin’, Sheriff.”
Goodloe nodded and boosted off the car. “Parker.”
“Somethin’ I can do for you?”
“A few questions.”
“Somethin’ wrong?”
Goodloe chose not to answer. “You work at the library last night?”
“Yessir.”
“You close it up, as usual?”
“Yessir.”
“What time?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“What’d you do then?”
“Came home and went to bed, why?”
Goodloe glanced at Elly. “You were home then, Mizz Parker?”
“Of course I was. We got a family, Sheriff. What’s this all about, anyway?”
Goodloe ignored their questions and uncrossed his arms, firming his stance before firing his next question at Will. “You know a woman named Lula Peak?”
Will felt the anxiety begin at the backs of his knees and crawl upward—sharp needles of creeping heat. Hiding his worry, he tucked the rag into his hind pocket. “Know who she is. Wouldn’t exactly say I know her, no.”
“You see her last night?”
“No.”
“She didn’t come in the library?”
“Nobody comes in the library when I’m there. It’s after hours.”
“She never came there... after hours?”
Will’s lips compressed and a muscle ticked in his jaw, but he stared squarely at Goodloe. “A couple of times she did.”