THEO
IT’S HARD TO ANTICIPATE the actions of a crazy person, but the more information, the better. I found an old college book, Trends in Jewish Mysticism, and read up on the Chamber of Guf.
Weeks had passed with no sign of any trouble. I figured they were laying low, hoping everyone would think they moved on. But I suspected that was not the case and continued my research of old news articles about missing children.
I was due to cover the store for Imogene, so took the book and headed across the street.
It was early fall. A gust of dry leaves swirled past Imogene’s open window. The crisp breeze tickled at the newspaper stand where a rock the size of my fist held down the papers. On Tuesdays she drove into Tillamook for supplies, usually alone. Since she refused to let me go along, I insisted she take Pearl and Tula May. For once, she didn’t argue.
I sat behind the register, tore into a Baby Ruth, and in-between reading about Jewish mysticism and studying the Hansel file, manned the register for some very big retail: Mr. Kenney’s cigarettes, and the McFall twins’ purchase of black molasses for their constipation, which I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing.
The clock chimed ten thirty. Mrs. B pushed through the door, laid her supply box on a table, and said, “Mornin’.”
“Mornin’.”
She unpacked her blackberry-rum jam onto the shelf marked “Mrs. B’s Secret Recipes”—those jars would fly off the shelf because everyone believed she poured a stash of prohibition rum into each batch.
She untied her scarf and tucked it into her blue-and-grey-plaid jacket. Her outer clothing was like a snail’s hard shell: practical and protective of what lay beneath. Beneath were her Mandarin blouses, silk scarves, and jade necklaces—the soft underbelly of her past. Able to converse in three languages, she was like a planet in a universe of her own making with her unforgettable and unforgotten past always wrapped around her.
“Tula May go with the girls?” she asked.
“Yep, shopping.”
“Bouvre house is still empty,” she said.
“Yep.”
“Time will tell,” she said, tucking errant hairs into her snow-white braided bun.
“It always does.”
“We Rounders can raise Tula May just fine, you know.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m working on it.” I’d left messages with my old friend Judge Madsen to find out about adoption or other legal remedies to the situation.
“Well,” she said rapping at my feet with her cane. “Work harder.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I’m going to need brandy,” she said and raised on her tiptoes to take a dark brown bottle from the top shelf. She nestled it into her coat pocket. “Put that on my tab.”
“Got it,” I said, writing “$1.48.” Ironic, given all the rum-runner rumors that brandy was her drink.
“Looks like rain,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am, it does.”
“You’re agreeable today. I hope that means you’re up to something . . . Remember,” she said as she cast her expectant eyes on me, “you were a Rounder before you put that contraption on your neck, and you always will be.” She opened the door and looked me straight in the eye. “And Theo, this is one child you can save.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The screen door slammed behind her. I looked at Imogene’s telephone. Why hadn’t Madsen returned my calls? Next to the phone, someone had stuck Imogene’s crabbing and fishing license over her wedding photograph. I moved the license just as Imogene’s Woody lurched to a stop. She shot out of the car. Pearl, who believed the inevitable impact would be less from the back and thus didn’t ride in the front, climbed out as well.
I stood with the door open. “Imogene?”
She pushed past me.
“Pearl?” I said. She scurried by with Tula May in tow.
Imogene tore her jacket off and threw it on the counter, then grabbed her cigarettes.
“We see them,” Pearl told me as she took off her matching jacket.
“What?” I asked. “Who?”
“You bet we see them.” Imogene yanked the telephone off its shelf and anxiously tapped the connection bar. “Lucy? Lucy?” she shouted into the phone. “Dammit, girl, where are you?” She leaned down toward Tula May and whispered, “That’s a bad word, honey. Don’t ever say it.” Then she stood back up and yelled into the phone, “Dammit Lucy, are ya there?”
“You see who?” I asked.
Pearl frowned and whispered, “Him.”
“Toreck?” I asked.
“Lucy,” Imogene said, “Tillamook 222. Bud’s office.” Holding the phone, she paced back and forth behind the register. Pearl stood bug-eyed, biting her lip. Imogene stopped pacing and stared at her wedding photo. “Yes, I’ll hold,” she said, then reached up, took the pin out of the fishing license, and hung it over the photo. “Yes, I’ll hold for Sheriff Grearson.”
She turned to me and said, “That master plan a yours . . . well, it’s come back to bite.”