Every Now and Then Page 17

  So she and I were ready-Freddy, but Viv was so immersed in her food that I had to tug on the back of her blouse and tell her, “We gotta go.”

  “But I’m not finished,” she whined.

  Frankie picked a piece of salami off Viv’s plate, stuffed it into her T-shirt pocket, and told Sophia, “Please tell Sally that I’ll come find you after the fireworks. We can talk then. Buena sera.”

  Sophia did not grace us with her Madonna smile and wish us a good night back. She got a pained look on her face and said something urgent-sounding in Italian to her brother. Maybe something to let him know that we were leaving and he should stop us, but by the time her words reached Sally’s ears, the girls and I had already shouted, “Arrivederci!” and disappeared into the heart of the crowd.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As she had every Fourth of July since she and Frankie had moved to town, Dell set up her picnic with the other Mud Towners alongside Founder’s Woods because no one had yet challenged the unspoken rule in Summit: you colored people stay on your side and we’ll stay on ours—unless you’ve come to do yard work, clean house, or haul away junk. Frankie, Viv, and I ignored that rule, of course, and few folks dared to look down their noses at us when we crossed that invisible barrier. I was a Buchanan, after all.

  Mud Towners seemed to enjoy the Fourth even more than Summit proper did, and as we made our way toward the shore of brown folks having a good time on our journey toward Dell, I asked Frankie and Viv if they remembered hearing the name Leo on the afternoon we’d spent in the back booth at Earl’s. As predicted, Viv remembered her cherry pie and the “mysterious goin’s-on” and “private things,” and not much else. But when Frankie got done rifling through her memory, she said, “Yeah. Albie said that there was a patient on the third floor whose name is John Johnson, but he calls himself Leo. But that doesn’t mean he’s the same Leo that Harry was talking about in the note.”

  In the past, I’d always paid close attention to whatever the brains of our operation told me and abided by her decision, but that had begun to change. Mostly. I was still having a very hard time believing that a nothin’-special kid like me might’ve inherited what Aunt Jane May called “the gift,” what other people called “intuition” or “being tuned into God’s wavelength,” and I called my “little voice.” But when I took a chance and began to listen to it—it hadn’t let me down. And it was telling me that I’d been right all those times that I’d thought Harry Blake had been putting on a performance worthy of the silver screen, but that he was speaking the truth now about someone named Leo being in mortal danger.

  Problem was, I had no idea how to explain to the girls this undeniable feeling of certainty that ran through me like a river. If I told them, “I’m hearing a little voice in my head that’s telling me we got to take Harry’s note to Audrey Cavanaugh or this Leo person could die” they’d think I lost all my marbles, too. I had to convince them somehow, but I had to pick my words carefully, that much I knew.

  I waited until Frankie finished her logical argument to tell her, “Yeah. You’re probably right. Harry’s just makin’ the whole thing up. But I think we should give the note to Audrey Cavanaugh tonight anyway. Ya know, just in case somebody named Leo does turn up dead. That way, our consciences will be clean. What do ya think, Viv?”

  The Summit Witch had saved us from Elvin Merchant, but one good deed would probably not be enough to erase Viv’s fear of her. I anticipated that she might go as white as Irish linen and break into a wheeze, so I was pretty shocked when she said, “Okay. I feel really cruddy for tellin’ Harry there was a Mondurian behind the hospital that might go invisible and seep into his ear. When he came runnin’ to me to pull it out, Albie thought he was tryin’ to escape, so it’s all my fault that he got in trouble.”

  It was a rare show of conscience for Viv, and I was so relieved that she agreed to deliver the note, that I almost told her that she didn’t have to feel guilty anymore because I thought Harry was just pretending to be mentally ill and didn’t really believe in brain-sucking aliens.

  I was also tempted to tell the both of them that I didn’t think that the Summit Witch popping up in the woods after Albie had told us to “git” was a coincidence. True, I thought at the time that she saw us as ingredients for her supernatural stew. But now I thought she knew Harry and had seen what’d happened at Broadhurst that afternoon, and she followed us into Founder’s Woods to find out what he had said to us at the fence—not to eat us—before Merchant balled everything up.

  Of course, I wasn’t a hundred percent positive about all that. What my little voice had been whispering to me might’ve felt as sure and true as the Ten Commandments, but what if it let me down, the same way hope was always doing?

  More than anything, I wished I could bounce my suspicions off Frankie and Viv, but while my love for them was unconditional and forever—it was not blind. I knew who my blood sisters were, same way they thought they knew my every nook and cranny.

  Frankie would ask me why I thought Harry was pretending to be mentally ill and how a man confined to a hospital that didn’t allow visitors and a gal like Audrey Cavanaugh, who barely left her house, could know each other. If I told her, “I just got this feeling deep inside me” or “This little voice told me,” she’d roll her eyes and treat me like a lost cause. And Viv would laugh, throw a loogie at me, and say something horribly derogatory. Something like, “Is this like the time you thought for sure that Mister Baglavich was a Russian spy because he has an accent and a two-way radio in his basement? Or maybe it’s like the time you were so positive that Mister Paulson was a werewolf until you found out from Doc’s files that he was so hairy because he had something wrong with his glands? Is thinkin’ Harry’s only pretendin’ to be nuts and that he’s in cahoots with a witch like that, Biz? Huh … huh?”

  You know, it wasn’t anything like those times, but without some kind of proof to back me up, I’d have such a hard time convincing the girls of what I believed that I decided to keep my mouth shut until further notice.

  I dialed back into their conversation about what Harry was counting on us to do just as Viv said, “Okay, Frankenstein. But Biz can do it, and you and me’ll wait around the corner, okay?”

  When Frankie nodded and turned to me, I could tell she didn’t think that delivering the note was worth the sweat we’d break, that she was only agreeing to because Viv thought we should. “That plan good with you?” she asked me.

  I told her that it was, so barring something else monstrous coming out of the woodwork to throw us off track, it looked like Audrey Cavanaugh would receive a visit from the Tree Musketeers right after the fireworks.

  When the girls and I reached the invisible line that separated the Mud Towners from Summit proper as distinctly as the railroad tracks did, Frankie asked me, “Ya see Dell?”

  She had better eyesight than me, but I had those five inches on her. When I got up on my toes, I spotted her mother right off. It made me sad that Frankie could never call Dell “mom” in public because if anyone should hear her she would no longer be considered “that Italian family’s orphaned relative.” That would be what Uncle Sally called, “il bacio della morte”—the kiss of death.

  Dell had staked out a spot near the stage where the mayor would soon give his tedious speech about the founding fathers of our country and the founding father of Summit, my great-great-grandfather, Percival Buchanan. Around the time we lost the will to live, he would wrap things up, and we’d stand and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner”—or as Viv called it, “The Star-Mangled Banner”—and the whole town would ooh and ahh over the fireworks.

  Dell was sitting on an ice chest and fanning herself in the prettiest ruby dress. The kind she’d usually wear beneath her white choir robe at Emmanuel Baptist on Sundays to really show off her skin tone.

  Bigger Dolores was sitting next to her in a metal kitchen chair. She kept her hair in a net at work, but that night it looked like she’d just walked out of Vi
olet Penny’s home salon. She was wearing her Sunday best, too. I hadn’t seen her out of her kitchen uniform in a while and she looked almost glamorous and … for God’s sakes. If Viv was in the little girls’ room when God was passing out patience and big bladders, then I must’ve been in there the day He was passing out brains, because how dumb could I be?

  Bigger!

  She could confirm if there was a patient who called himself Leo on the third floor. While she assembled their trays of food, she liked to chat with an orderly, Mitch Washington, who slid the meals through the slots in the bottom of the doors of the criminally insane patients. Mitch was bound to have mentioned someone who thought he was a newspaper reporter to Bigger because they were good friends who liked to shoot the bull.

  “Dell is sittin’ with Bigger close to the stage, which is gonna work out great,” I told the girls as we drew closer to them. “We can visit with them a little and then I’m gonna ask Bigger what she knows about a patient named Leo so we can get this settled once and for all.”

  Viv stopped and pointed across the crowd. “What the heck is goin’ on over there?”

  To the side of the stage, it looked like Aunt Jane May was going toe to toe with the president of the Ladies Auxiliary, who seemed fired up, too. I’d expect that kind of behavior from Evelyn Mulrooney, who knew no bounds and loved to shoot off her mouth, but participating in a screaming match was very out of character for a lady from the South and a member of the Buchanan family, especially at a social gathering.

  There were too many babies crying and cherry bombs going off and radios playing for the girls and me to get even a hint of what the two of them were squaring off over, but, thanks to our years of practice, that wouldn’t be a problem. We could read their lips.

  “Holy hell,” Viv said. “Auntie just told that so-and-so that she’s got a big gut. No, wait. She called her a bigot!”

  Frankie said, “And now Mulrooney is yellin’ about jungle music and saying—”

  “Blackball … blackball,” I said.

  “What ya wanna bet that’s why Auntie didn’t come have that little chat with us last night?” Viv said. “She must’ve snuck over to Mud Town to meet the sheriff at Earl’s Club again. Those religious gals must’ve seen them when they were parading past the back door with those ‘Get out of town’ signs, and now Mulrooney is gonna kick Auntie out of the Auxiliary and … aw, shit.”

  It didn’t feel so good to be right sometimes.

  Frankie said, “Looks like Mister Willis and Reverend Archie are breaking them up.”

  Separating hotheads is the kind of thing the sheriff would usually be in charge of, but I saw him and Doc leave the park together in a hurry shortly after we left the Maniachis’ table. I thought they must’ve been rushing to the site of a car accident, which was not surprising. The juvenile delinquents celebrated the holiday by drinking too much beer and racing for pink slips on that straight stretch of Highway C every Fourth of July. Last year, Buzz Arnold’s Chevy skidded off the road and he broke both of his legs, and I hoped it was Elvin Merchant who’d wrecked this summer. If he was recovering from his injuries, he wouldn’t be able to watch us ride over to Mud Town with that sickly grin on his face, or come after Frankie again in the woods.

  When the sheriff rushed out of the park with Doc, he must’ve left picnic organizer, Mr. Willis, in charge of keeping the peace, because he said something to Mulrooney, who gave one last furious look at Aunt Jane May and then stomped off. The man who inspired confidence on the Mud Town side of the line was Reverend Archie. He put his arm around Aunt Jane May and guided her to the back of the stage, which would be a good place for her to cool down.

  Viv didn’t say anything else about the sheriff and our aunt having being seen over at Earl’s Club. She was beyond gloating. I could tell by the look in her eye that she was busy planning a hideous revenge for Evelyn Mulrooney, when she began to spread bad gossip about them.

  Frankie thought that’s what she was doing, too, because she told Viv, “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re jumpin’ the gun again. Auntie could’ve said something else besides ‘bigot,’ and Mulrooney coulda said ‘baseball’ instead of ‘blackball.’ And they might not have been fighting about her getting seen with Uncle Walt at Earl’s either.”

  I nodded and said to Viv, “Remember what happened after we read Mrs. Chastain’s lips?”

  We couldn’t sit down for a week after we’d called the sheriff at the station and told him that he should arrest Mrs. Chastain because we’d just seen her ask Rusty to kill her husband, when what she’d really told the owner of the market in the checkout line was “Could you bill my husband?”

  Viv rubbed her backside and said, “Yeah, maybe we should just go ask Auntie what she and Mulrooney were yellin’ about.”

  “Good idea,” Frankie said, “if you want your head bit off.” Aunt Jane May didn’t lose her temper often, but when she did, you did not want to be the one standing next to her. “On second thought, maybe you should run over there and ask her, numnuts.”

  Those were fighting words, so to defuse the situation I jumped in and told the kid with a sweet tooth a mile wide, “You know what you need, Viv? You need pie. Let’s go get a slice of Bigger’s lemon meringue.”

  It’d always been her favorite and she perked right up. “First one there gets the biggest piece!” she said and turned to trot off.

  Frankie reeled her back and said, “I’ll give you the biggest piece if you promise to keep your mouth shut about what we think we saw Auntie and Mulrooney say to each other. I don’t want you to upset my mom before I talk to her. She’s been arguing with Uncle Sally and Aunt Sophia about something all week and I need to know what before I go lookin’ for them after the fireworks, so I’m not caught off guard.”

  When Viv chuckled and said, “I promise I’ll only open up my pie hole to stick Bigger’s lemon meringue in it,” I thought she better keep that promise because Frankie might shove it down her throat if she didn’t.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When we arrived at the spot where Bigger had set her kitchen chair, she was wrapping up a conversation with Sissy Leonard, who assisted Reverend Archie with the choir at Emmanuel Baptist, so I wouldn’t have to wait long to ask her about Leo, and Viv could get her pie.

  Dell was sitting on a blanket, looking gorgeous. She was shades darker than her daughter, and her hair was curly, more like Jimbo’s, but Frankie had inherited her stunning beige eyes and pretty, full lips. Seeing them together, I thought, not for the first time, that if those nosy Germans and church gals paid as much attention to the details as the girls and I did, they’d no longer be entertaining any doubts about Frankie’s heritage. It was as plain as the noses on their faces.

  Frankie was primed to ask her mom what she and Uncle Sally and Sophia had been fighting about, but Dell didn’t give her the chance. “Seeing you three together always fills my heart with hope,” she said when we came to her side. “Sure wish Jimbo could be here. He’s been looking forward to spending tonight with you and is so disappointed that he has to watch the fireworks at the hospital.”

  “Ditto for Albie,” Bigger said when she said came to join us. She made a funny oomph sound when she eased into the kitchen chair that struggled to contain all of her. “He sure could use some good food and relaxation after the awful day he had yesterday.” She gave the girls and me the evil eye. “Don’t know if you heard, Dell, but Albie had to pull the siren because one of the patients almost escaped.”

  When Frankie uttered, “That’s too bad,” she wasn’t sympathizing with Albie, but with us. As we’d feared, Bigger Dolores’s boyfriend had told her what we’d done, and it looked like she was about to share that with Dell.

  “Yeah, Jimbo mentioned something about that in passing,” Dell said. “What happened?”

  “Honey, that’s a story I’d be more than happy to tell ya, but I’m so parched my tongue is swelling,” Bigger said. “Would you mind fetchin’ me one of those colas
they’re giving away at the refreshment stand? My bunions are botherin’ me somethin’ fierce.”

  “Now? Not sure there’s enough time.” Dell glanced down at the gold watch the Maniachis had given her for her thirty-fourth birthday last year. “Can’t it wait until after—” She looked up at the girls and me, then popped up off her blanket. “Be right back.”

  As she walked off, I was struck yet again by how lovely she was. Slim, but with muscular legs, a nice-sized bosom that held itself high, and hips that swayed just the right amount. Why she’d not found a nice man in Mud Town to have and to hold until death did them part was beyond me, but I wondered if Frankie had inherited her dislike of romance from her.

  Now that we had Bigger alone, I was going to ask her about Leo, and was even considering showing her the note Harry had given me, but she turned on us. “You three stepped in it now,” she huffed. “Albie spent most of last night swearin’ to go to the sheriff to report you for trespassin’.” She shook her finger in Frankie’s face. “You know how scared Dell is of folks findin’ out who you are. Some of them already look at ya like you’re one of us. You bring attention to yourself … what in God’s name were you thinkin’? You wanna stop livin’ in that nice house with those people who love you? Quit going to the school you do? I thought you was so smart.”

  Frankie could’ve stuck up for herself, told Bigger what happened at Broadhurst wasn’t her fault, that it was Viv who’d started the ball rolling when she flipped for Ernie Fontaine, but she’d never do something like that. “I’m sorry” is what she told Bigger.

  I said, “It’s not like we meant to cause—”

  “What you meant to do don’t mean nothin’, little girl,” Bigger said with a dismissive wave. “Even if you don’t mean to run someone over with a truck, they still dead, ain’t they? If it weren’t for me talkin’ Albie out of it, you’d be answerin’ to the sheriff.”