| |
Monday, April 22, 1996
Sadie Maters, determinedly steering her old yellow Chevy up Juniper, noticed an orange and white cat trundling across the street. It paused in the middle of the road, looked her way, and then ran across to the other side. “Why look,” she told herself. “It’s Jelly, that sweet little library cat.” That didn’t sound quite right to Sadie, who had never been one for remembering details of any sort, except epitaphs and funeral attendees. “It’s around all day, underfoot most of the time. Why can’t I ever remember its name? Honey, or Maple Syrup, or something like that.”
Sadie carefully braked as she approached Third Street, looked both ways, and saw that the cat, off to her left now, was doing the same thing. Pausing with her foot on the brake, Sadie continued to comb through her memory. It was some kind of jam or jelly. Raspberry? Loganberry? Kudzu? She laughed to herself, easing her foot off the brake and applying just a little gas. Sharon Armitage had actually carried fancy little jars of so-called Kudzu Jelly in her gift shop last year. Any fool could tell it was only mint jelly just by looking at the color, although they might have thrown a kudzu flower in the batch just to be truthful on their handwritten labels, she supposed.
By the time she maneuvered her car around the left turn, the library cat was just slipping through the open gate to the cemetery.
“Now who would have left that gate ajar?” Sadie questioned out loud to no one in particular. “Oh dear, I’m talking to myself again. That gate is always left closed. Not to keep anyone out. No, no. There’s no lock on that gate. This is such a friendly town, where nothing bad ever happens ...” Sadie had again eased her foot onto the brake, stopping in the middle of Third Street as she looked over toward the cemetery.
Mrs. Martha Pontiac – everybody called her Maggie – who was cutting through the Town Park on her way home, paused in the shade of the big Tulip Poplar that grew near Third Street and Juniper. There was Sadie, she noticed, stopped again in the middle of the road. How that woman ever avoided being run down, she’d never know. If she wasn’t stopped, she was weaving. When she wasn’t weaving, she was usually in the wrong lane. Not that it mattered much around here, but down on First Street along the river, that woman was a holy terror. It was bad enough that there was getting to be so much traffic in town, without Sadie Masters causing calamity everywhere she went. ‘Of course, to be entirely fair,’ Maggie thought, ‘I have to admit that I’ve never heard of Sadie actually having an accident.’ Shaking her head, she crossed Juniper, heading away from Sadie. ‘I don’t think she’s ever really caused an accident either, and if that’s not proof that angels exist, I don’t know what is.’
Sadie corrected herself. “Nothing bad happens here except that terrible murder last year.” What was his name? Harry something or other? He was such a nice young man. He’d helped her carry her groceries into her house once when he and that Olsen boy were walking up the street. Harmon! That was his name! Who’d name anybody Harmon? Sounds like a church organ. Sadie, momentarily distracted from the open gate, nudged her car forward slowly as her mind continued to mull over the crime. ‘We never, ever had anything bad happen around here until then, and now somebody goes and leaves the cemetery gate open.’
Happy that she had found her train of thought, Sadie passed across Dogwood. As she approached the dangerous turn onto Magnolia Way, she marveled again that someone would build a street at such a funny angle. The exigencies of slopes and rock outcroppings and such made no difference to Sadie. It seemed for her inconvenience alone that Magnolia Way ran up the hill from northeast to southwest, unlike Juniper that climbed straight east to west up from the river on a gentler slope than the part of the hill that Magnolia surmounted. Sadie came to a full stop in front of CT’s, that wonderful restaurant where she’d been to dinner once or twice, but the menu was confusing, to say the least, all those foreign words.
Turning left, she suddenly began to chuckle. “Maybe the cemetery gate,” she reasoned, “was always closed to keep people IN, not OUT! Ha-ha! That was a good one. I made a joke!” She shivered deliciously as she thought of the appreciative oohs and ah’s from the other girls next week at the Reading Circle. She passed perilously close to a car parked outside that sweet young doctor’s clinic – she was just going to have to get him to meet her niece from Memphis. They’d make such a nice couple. Then she paused a moment to imagine describing her vision of ghostly spirits being stopped by that simple iron grating. ‘Whatever am I thinking?’ Sadie reined in her imagination. That gate wouldn’t stop anybody. The cat could have just ducked under it, if it had been closed the way it was supposed to be. Maybe she should drive back and shut it out of respect for the dead.
Her younger brother Eustace was buried there, next to their parents. And, of course, little Samuel was there, too. Sadie always kept the plots tidy looking, with fresh yellow flowers from her yard each time she visited, which hadn’t been very often recently. How had she gotten off her twice-a-week schedule? “I know!” she remembered. “It was when I started working at the library on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesday always used to be cemetery day. That and Sundays after services. So poor Eustace has suffered a bit for the past year.” Well, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt him to miss his flowers once a week. He had a whole eternity ahead of him. She did idly wonder if her good friend Esther Anderson might think a wee bit less of her for neglecting the grave.
Maybe she’d just turn left and head back that way. She could take a few moments to tidy up Eustace a bit and then be sure the gate was closed on her way out. “Esther probably pities me having to walk all the way to the top end of the graveyard to tend my family. But I like the way Mama and Daddy and Eustace and, of course, little Samuel are sort of tucked into the corner with the dogwood branches hanging out over them. It gives such lovely shade on hot summer afternoons. Not that I ever try to walk up there at that time of day. No, early morning is the best time to visit poor Eustace and the rest of them.”
By this time Sadie was back on Juniper where she had started. Martha Pontiac was happily out of view, so no one noticed that Sadie appeared to be going in circles again. Sadie pulled up onto the curb just past the church and stepped carefully from her car. She smoothed out the front of her yellow housedress. She always wore her seatbelt, but it did cause wrinkles. Sadie closed her car door carefully, so she wouldn’t disturb the stillness of the morning.
As she stepped gingerly up onto the curb, a blue truck gunned its motor off to her right, startling Sadie to a standstill. The truck raced around the corner and almost rammed Sadie’s Chevy. She caught a quick glance of an angry-looking dark-haired young man behind the wheel. “Oh land sakes alive, was he making a rude gesture at me?” Sadie gasped, and then felt another delicious shiver go up her spine as she thought of the sympathetic murmurs of support she’d get when she told the girls about her close call. ‘Some people though,’ thought Sadie a bit uncharitably, ‘shouldn’t be allowed to drive.’
After stepping through the little gate, Sadie closed it after her, then continued her slow walk up the narrow winding pathway. She paused respectfully for a few moments at the Martin Memorial, almost in the center of the graveyard. “Poor young men,” she mumbled, as she sat down on the wide stone wall that surrounded the grave plot. She took a few minutes to re-tie her shoelaces. “And their poor mother and grandmother. Nobody should have to lose a child. Nobody else. Ever.” Getting to Eustace took her a bit longer than usual, as she felt compelled to say a few words of greeting to so many of her old friends as she passed. “Hello, Mrs. Perkins. You were the first dead body I ever saw. I was only four when my Mama made me kiss your hand when you were laid out in your front parlor. My how times have changed,” she muttered to herself. “Now there’s that fancy funeral home, and we can’t prepare people properly – wash their bodies and dress them in their finest clothes and sit by them through the night. Now we leave all that to strangers.”
‘Well,’ she thought, ‘not that Marvin Axelrod is a stranger. I’ve known him ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. But now we have to wait for viewing hours. Bunch of nonsense!’ By this time she had reached her family’s grave, and there was no one else around – ‘at least nobody who’s standing up!’ Sadie laughed to herself. Another joke. She was sure funny today, if she did say so herself.
As she turned to look back across the little hillside cemetery, she noticed a movement off to her left. It was that library cat, who seemed to be acting very strangely. As Sadie watched, the cat was trying to stand up. It lurched a bit, and then sat down suddenly in the middle of the old Axelrod plot. Sadie hoped it wasn’t going to do its business there. But no, the cat stood up slowly, looked around at Sadie, turned back toward the church, and carefully picked its way between the head stones. Sadie could have sworn the cat was limping. Was it hurt? Was it sick? She called out, wondering if she could do something, but the cat ignored her and kept up its painful trek down the hillside.
There is Looselaces again ... here to give more dead flowers to the ... bones in the ground. She cannot help me though. I need to get back to Widelap. One step ... at a time. I can do it ... I can do it ...
The mid-morning sun glinted for a moment off the cat’s tawny fur. “Now I remember,” exclaimed Sadie. “It’s Peach Preserves! Strange name for a cat.”
~~~~~
FROM THE STATEMENT of Sadie Marie Masters to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
Has the date for the funeral been set yet? ...Well, of course I need to know. I want to be there to tell his mother what a sweet young man he was ... My shoe size? What does that have to do with anything? Five. Well, sometimes a six ... Never! I don’t believe in tottering around on those pointy things. It’s not safe. Give me my tennis shoes any day ... Yes, I knew him. He helped me carry my groceries into the house once, and he spent one whole Sunday evening taking pictures of my yellow dahlias ... I’m really sorry his mother gave him such an unfortunate name ... My goodness, you do change the subject a lot. Yes, this is Peaches, the cat that found the body ... No, he was never here in the library before. I would have noticed him ... I’m very observant.
You did not ask me.
~~~~~
MONDAY, APRIL 22, 1996
“I stuffed a couple of good books in the zippered side pocket just in case I couldn’t find a library.”
“Very funny.”
Glaze was talking as she squeezed out some toothpaste. “I brought you a new biography and a great Elizabeth Peters book. I hope you haven’t read it yet. Why don’t you get them out so I don’t forget and take them back home with me?”
I opened three zippers before I found the right one. There was the biography - some poet I’d never heard of. Then the Peters book, which I’d already read. I noticed that there was something else underneath them, so I tugged on it. It was a small paperback cookbook. “Do you read cookbooks for fun?” I asked.
She poked her head through the bathroom door and mumbled through her toothbrush, “No, why?”
“Because you have a cookbook in your suitcase.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” I said, holding it up for inspection. “Chicken recipes.”
“Let me see that,” Glaze said after rinsing and spitting.” She hobbled over to where I was perched on the side of the bed. “Oh my gosh, it’s Sarah’s book. You know, the woman in the blue car that ran into me? I remember picking this up off her night table to look at, but I don’t think I ever read any of it. I must have just fallen asleep. How the heck did it get in my suitcase?”
“You said the nurse packed up your stuff for you since you had your finger in a cast. Maybe she stuck it in by mistake.” I looked through the first few pages. There were some interesting recipes in there. “Maybe I could copy some of these before you return it.”
“I don’t know how to reach her.”
“Sure you do. Look here. Her name and number are on the inside cover. Sarah Borden. The number’s in our area code.”
“Yeah, she said she lived nearby in Garner Creek. She was on her way home for lunch when she hit me.”
“Why don’t we call her and see if she can drive down here? You’re in no shape to drive twenty miles with your ankle the way it is. You sit here, and I’ll hang the rest of these clothes up so they don’t get wrinkly. I should have done that for you two days ago.” I picked up a lime green short-sleeved pullover. How can she possibly look good in that color? I tried wearing a lime green dress once, and my kids actually laughed at me. Pathetic.
“Why would she drive all this way for a cookbook?”
As we chatted, Glaze had been idly turning more pages of the cookbook. There was some sort of heavy bookmark, something wrapped in a piece of plain white paper. It slid out of the book and landed on the braided rug.
“What’s that?” Glaze asked as I bent to retrieve it for her. “I don’t know, should I open it up?”
“No, you shouldn’t. It’s private property. Give it to me and I’ll open it.”
It was a small square of white paper, folded around a single key. “Now we really have to call Sarah,” I said, heading for the phone. “It looks like it might be her safety deposit box key. She’ll want it back right away. Poor thing. She must be worried sick.”
“Imagine using it as a bookmark. Isn’t that pretty careless?”
“Only if you run a red light and end up in the hospital next to somebody who steals books,” I teased as I handed her the phone. “Here, prop your foot up and get this ice bag on it before you call.”
A few moments later, Glaze was talking to an answering machine. “This message is for Sarah. This is Glaze McKee. I was in the hospital with you last week, and I ended up with your cookbook in my luggage by mistake. Your safety deposit box key was in it. I would offer to drive it up to you, but I’ve sprained my ankle. I’m going to be here another couple of days visiting my sister in Martinsville. Could you drive down tomorrow or Wednesday? We’ll even serve you lunch or dinner! It’s just the two of us, and we don’t have any other plans since I can’t move very fast.” She chuckled as she admitted, “We’re using a couple of the recipes, I hope you don’t mind. I promise to leave the book and your key right on the kitchen counter so they don’t find their way back into my suitcase again by mistake. Give us a call anytime today or tomorrow.” She gave the address and phone number, then said a cheery goodbye.
“I love machines with long message tapes,” she remarked as she gave me the handset. “I hate it when it goes beep and I have to call back again. Now we just wait to hear from her. How about a rousing game of Scrabble before we start on the office curtains?”
The Scrabble game was a success. Glaze and I sat side by side on the little loveseat in what I’m calling the sitting room. Eventually, once we own the house, Bob and I are going to take out the wall and merge this room with the bedroom to make a huge master suite. For now, this is just a pleasant room to sit in for reading or garden planning. Or Scrabble. Glaze and I have never followed the rules. We didn’t play together much when we were kids, but when we did, we never counted up scores. Sometimes we helped each other out if one of us had a strange combination of letters. Now that she had her ankle to contend with, she left it propped up on the ottoman, sticking out to the left of the coffee table, and I placed all the words. She handed me an O and told me to put it in front of the “micro” I had just formed.
“That’s not a word!”
“It will be when you put this N at the end of it.”
I looked at the resulting word. Omicron. Greek letter. “Smarty britches,” I said over my shoulder.
We never bother much about what words to accept. French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, contractions, abbreviations, whatever. If we can look it up in a book, we let it count. I think that’s a much more civilized way of playing the game. I do the same thing when I play that trivia game with all the little pie pieces. Yes, I play it by myself. I always substitute a science question if I land on a sports square. To give myself a chance, though, I read the sports question first, just in case. As if I care who won the open in 1956. And I could use help on the entertainment questions. That’s about the only disadvantage I can think of for not having a TV set. That, and not being able to watch operations on that surgery channel I’ve heard about. Wouldn’t you love to see an appendectomy?
“How about taking a break for some tea and cookies?” Glaze interrupted me just as I was contemplating the best angle of incision for that appendix.
“Sure.” I put the scalpel down on the sterile cloth. “You sit here, or better yet, stand up and do some stretches. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
~~~~~
MONDAY, APRIL 22, 1996
Dr. Nathan Young’s Office, Martinsville
“Come right back this way, sir. I need to check your weight. Step up here carefully ... 194 ... Now if you’ll come in here and sit up on the table ... Thank you. I’ll put this around your arm. Don’t worry about the blood. We’ll clean it up later.
That’s a nasty gash. It’s amazing you were able to drive here with your leg in that shape ... Now, quiet for just a moment ... hmm ... 157 over 95. ... I hope you have another pair of pants in your car, because we’ll probably have to cut this pant leg off.”
“Yeah, I have a pair of shorts I can use.”
“Are you allergic to anything Mr. Winslow? ... good ... Any medicines you can’t take? ... Okay ... You just wait here a moment and the doctor will be right with you.”
Jeff couldn’t believe this. ‘I’ve probably got rabies,’ he thought. ‘I hope I ruptured something big when I threw that ...’ His thoughts wallowed in obscenities until a young, brisk-looking man wearing a white lab coat walked in. Jeff could tell right away he was a friggin’ pansy.
‘Great,’ he thought. ‘Now I’ll have AIDS and rabies.’
Dr. Nathan Young looked at this new, walk-in patient, and recognized the mixture of pain, fear, and disdain in his eyes. He sighed, and breathed a quick prayer of gratitude that he was being given yet another chance to help the healing along. ‘This guy looks like he could use a lot of healing.’ That thought was there before Nathan could censor it – a postscript to his prayer.
“So, you said you were attacked by a wildcat?”
“Yeah. Are you going to put gloves on before you touch me?”
‘God give me patience ...’ “Yes, Mr. Winslow. Do you have any idea what your usual blood pressure is?” he asked as he glanced over Polly’s concise notes.
“No, why should I?”
“It would just help me to know whether this high pressure reading was caused by your injury or whether it’s in your normal range.”
Jeff’s thought was clearly visible on his face. ‘It’s probably up a lot since I’m gonna have a queer touching me.’
Dr. Young turned abruptly, opened the door, and called out, “Nurse Lattimore, could you please come in to assist me? Bring a large pair of scissors.” Ordinarily, he would have taken a pair of scissors from the second drawer and cut off the pant leg himself. But he wanted a witness around.
‘Nurse Lattimore?’ she thought. ‘He’s calling me Nurse Lattimore? Whatever happened to hey, Polly, can you help me out here?’ Sighing, she realized he probably just wanted some moral support – and maybe a witness. Anybody with a ghastly tattoo like this man had, needed watching. She laughed to herself, picked up the desk scissors, and went to Nathan’s aid.
As she entered the pleasant little examining room with its watercolors of daisies and lilies on the light blue walls she heard Dr. Nathan – whoops! she’d better remember to call him Dr. Young – explaining, “Don’t worry, Mr. Winslow. There hasn’t been a case of rabies in this county in decades. Thank you, Nurse Lattimore.” He reached out a gloved hand to take the scissors, barely suppressing a wink as he did so. “Would you please help me get this pant leg cut away?”
The man had obviously been attacked by something that didn’t like him very much. There were some deep-looking puncture wounds that were already beginning to bruise around the edges. Too bad he hadn’t been wearing heavy jeans. These lightweight chinos weren’t a match for teeth and claws.
The claw marks were long, but fairly closely spaced. ‘Cancel wildcat and substitute housecat,’ Nathan thought. Out loud he said, “So where were you when this wildcat attacked you?” He and Polly, also gloved, continued to clean and examine the multiple wounds as the patient complained.
“I was just sitting on my tailgate, minding my own business up ...” He was about to say ‘up behind the cemetery’ but checked himself. He’d had to drive over a couple of flowerbeds to get his truck in there out of sight of the streets. “... a couple of streets over. I saw your sign when I drove into town, so I knew right away where to come to get patched up.”
“Where are you staying?” Polly couldn’t help but ask. “In a motel about twenty miles up the road.”
‘Good,’ she thought. ‘He won’t be hanging around here then.’
“This may hurt a bit, Mr. Winslow, but it’s important that we clean this up thoroughly. Nurse Lattimore will give you an injection once I get this bandaged. You’ll need to see your own doctor if you notice any signs of infection. Please examine your leg thoroughly twice a day. If you see any red streaks, or if any more swelling occurs, get to your doctor immediately.”
Once all the bandaging was in place, Nathan wrote a prescription and some instructions in a surprisingly legible script, while Polly gave the injection of antibiotics.
Nathan handed over the two sheets of paper, with near certainty that they would not be followed. He paused at the door, turned around, and said, “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Winslow. I hope your leg heals quickly.”
“Yeah, right.” He followed the nurse down the short hallway, gave her a credit card, signed the receipt, and stuffed his copy in his wallet.
He limped through the waiting room, past three small giggling children, a woman in an armchair, and an old lady who was reading what looked like a library book. Nothing interesting there.
At the curb, he leaned into his truck, extracted a wrinkled pair of khaki shorts, stomped back into the little house with as much dignity as he could muster wearing three-fourths of a pair of slacks, with the left leg cut off at mid-thigh and fat bandages winding down his leg. When he told the nurse he needed to change, she led him back to the same little examining room.
While he was changing, he glanced around and took a moment to open drawers and cabinets. Nothing interesting, except that he saw a pair of scissors in the second drawer. Stupid pansy doctor didn’t even know he had a pair of scissors right under his nose. So Jeff took the scissors, figuring they wouldn’t be missed. They’d make a nice souvenir. He slipped them into the front pocket of his shorts and left his mutilated pants on the floor.
Once again he passed through the waiting room. The old lady was gone, but the woman with the kids was still there. As he walked by her, he muttered, “I hope you like queers, lady.” The woman was so startled, she looked up at Polly, who simply shrugged and said, “Goodbye Mr. Winslow.”
“Yeah, right.”
Just as he was getting set to slide into the driver’s seat, he remembered the scissors, and removed them from his pocket in time to avoid another nasty puncture wound.