Ruby’s small white house was only a couple of blocks down the road from the Main Street Cafe.
She lived near the Eagleville United Methodist Church. The paint on the house was faded, and vines crawled up the railing of the front porch. A woman Webb assumed was Ruby was sitting in a rocking chair, waving at him.
“Honey, you look just like how Shirley described you,” Ruby said. “Was the pulled pork any good today?”
Webb nodded, not surprised that the waitress had called ahead, given that Eagleville only had one traffic light and, so far, everybody called him honey.
As he got closer, he saw fine wrinkles all across Ruby’s face. She had to be well over seventy. She was a slight woman, wearing a long dress with a pattern of pink flowers on it. A set of wire-rimmed glasses sat at the tip of her nose. She had a pitcher of iced tea on a table beside her and some glasses.
There was also a white and orange FedEx package beside her.
“Jim Webb?” she asked. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“It was the waitress at the Main Street, right?”
“She did call,” Ruby admitted. “But this morning I received another phone call. From a lawyer fellow up in Canada named Devine. Said I’d be getting a FedEx package and asked if I’d give it to a long-haired kid named Jim Webb when he showed up later today.”
She tapped the box. “It’s all yours.”
She laughed. “First FedEx I’ve ever had delivered here, and turned out it was for someone else. Life’s funny, isn’t it?”
Webb nodded.
“And,” she said, “life’s curious. I’ve been sitting here all day, wondering why someone I don’t know would show up from Canada to collect a FedEx, when I see on the label that it came from the same place you just left.”
“Well,” Webb said, “I don’t have an explanation for the FedEx. But I do have a reason for visiting.”
Webb was nervous. He’d been thinking this through for a while, wondering how it might go, wondering how to start. So he sat down and told her about walking the Canol Trail, about the grizzly, and about Brent. How a helicopter had airlifted Brent back to Norman Wells, and how he’d been in serious condition but ended up making it just fine, except for the hundreds of stitches it had taken to pull him together.
She leaned in and soaked up every word as he told her his tale, but when he finished he still hadn’t told her the most important part.
Webb tried a few times and couldn’t find a way to say it.
Finally she said, “It’s fine. Just say what you need to say.”
What came out then, despite all his rehearsing, was only a few words. “I found something that might mean a lot to you.”
He set the small ceramic pendant on the table. And the military dog tag with the name Harlowe Gavin.
She leaned forward. She ignored the dog tag and peered at the ceramic pendant for a few moments, then sat back.
Webb wondered if he needed to tell her what it was, but then he saw tears filling her eyes.
“Oh, Lord,” she finally said in a near whisper. Then she was quiet for a while.
She drew a deep breath, as if she was pulling in strength, and turned to Webb. “Every day since I was eight years old, I’ve thought about that heart. Every day. I made it for him in school. Smoothed out the clay. I can still smell it, you know. It was damp and covered in cloth and the teacher used a cheese cutter to slice off a piece and handed it to me.”
Webb didn’t know how clay smelled when it was damp, but he nodded.
“I wanted it to be perfect. For Father’s Day. I used a knife to cut the heart shape, and the end of a wire to draw in my initials on one side, and I love you forever, Daddy on the other side. Then I painted it with colored glazes, and my teacher put it in the kiln. When it came out, I knew that it was going to last forever too. I gave it to my daddy, and he was so proud of it, he bought a gold chain and strung it around his neck. I was proud too, seeing him in a uniform, knowing he had the necklace underneath it.
He was a pilot in the war and then he was sent north to help with an army project, and he never came back. I never stopped hoping I’d see him walk down the street toward our house.”
She was quiet for a while, lost in memory.
Webb knew better than to break the silence.
“Folks said he deserted the air force,” she said. “Said maybe he found another woman. They can be cruel like that, you know, thinking it won’t reach a little girl’s ears. But I never believed it. Not my daddy.”
She turned on Webb, suddenly fierce. “He wouldn’t run away on me. And don’t you tell me different.”
Webb shook his head. “I won’t. Someone killed him.”
“Oh, Lord,” she said again. Then she wept openly. When she regained her composure, she said, “I can die happy now I know my daddy didn’t run away on me.”
Then she leaned forward, intensity glittering in her eyes. “Tell me who murdered my daddy.”