No Way Home Page 10

  “She wanted to meet you,” Gray said in a stiff, apprehensive voice, and Jordan immediately felt guilty for having snubbed him a moment before. The boy had only been showing off a little to impress a pretty girl. There was no harm in it. And they were virtually related. He had no cause to embarrass the boy. “Well, why don’t you introduce me to her, Grayson?” he asked kindly. “I’d like to meet her too.”

  “This is Emily Crowell,” said Grayson. “Jordan Hill.”

  Jordan shook the girl’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Emily beamed at Grayson as if the boy had pulled off a magic trick. Then she turned back to Jordan. “I want to be an actress someday,” she said. “Can you give me any advice?”

  “Be an actress now,” said Jordan. “Audition for every production.”

  “Do you think I’m pretty enough?” she asked earnestly.

  Grayson gave Jordan a sly, man-to-man smile. “I don’t know, Jordan. I don’t really think so, do you?”

  “Grayson,” she wailed, and punched him lightly in the arm.

  Jordan felt his smile wearing thin. He wanted to like the boy, because he was Lillie’s son, Michele’s brother. But there was something about the boy that irritated him no matter how he tried. Face it, he thought. You just don’t like him because he’s Pink’s.

  “You’re very pretty,” Jordan assured her. “You just worry about learning to act.”

  “Well, we’d better get going,” said Gray. He cocked a finger at Emily in a gesture that Pink sometimes made. “Come on, Emily. We’ve got class.”

  “So long,” said Jordan. He watched Grayson walk away, shoulder to shoulder with the black-haired beauty. He realized that the boy had dismissed him, and it annoyed him. And he did not like Grayson to call him by his first name. He preferred the surly “sir.” He felt like calling out to him and telling him so. Lighten up, he thought. Stop acting like an old curmudgeon.

  A cluster of giggling girls approached him, shuffling closer as he turned and smiled at them. They extended pieces of notebook paper and he signed autographs dedicated to them and their mothers.

  “How come you have a mustache?” one of them asked boldly.

  “Makes me look younger, don’t you think?”

  They all giggled again and then scattered like little birds.

  Jordan watched them go and then walked over to the water fountain in the nearby alcove to get a drink. As he stooped over he noticed that he was looking at one of Grayson’s campaign posters. He felt his nose wrinkle as he studied it, as if he had smelled something bad.

  Across the top it read “Grayson Burdette for Student Council Vice President.” The picture on the poster had been taken in the summer. Grayson’s hair was white blond from the sun, and he was leaning against the car with a mischievous grin on his face. His arm was draped loosely over Michele’s frail shoulders, and she was looking up at him with laughing, admiring eyes.

  That little prick, Jordan thought, staring at the poster. Of all the pictures he could have used, he had to use one with Michele. All the kids knew about Michele and what had happened to her. He didn’t pick that photograph by coincidence. He knew that people would be touched by it, would feel sorry for him. It was probably Pink’s idea, he thought disgustedly. No, it was too subtle for Pink.

  Jordan took another swallow of water, but it tasted bitter in his mouth. Michele would probably have been proud as punch to appear on a poster with her little brother, he thought. She had adored that boy. Jordan recalled that whenever he saw Michele she had chattered happily about Grayson’s accomplishments, about how handsome and popular he was. She bragged about his ability in sports. He was a star athlete, while she was delicate and the last one picked for every team. She marveled at his high grades while she labored to keep her average up.

  And now her photograph would probably help him win another victory. If she knew, she’d doubtless think it was great. But he couldn’t see it that way. It felt to him as if Grayson was capitalizing on her memory.

  You’re probably just jealous, he told himself, staring at the two teenagers in the picture. Jealous that Pink still has his child and you no longer have yours. Maybe that is all it amounts to. That’s stupid of you, he thought. Michele was Pink’s child too. But still he wished that he had Grayson in front of him at that moment. He would shake him until his teeth rattled.

  Well, it was a satisfying thought, he had to admit, but impractical. The kid was long gone. Mind your own business, he thought. But before he turned away, he reached up and tore the poster off the board. He wadded it up in his hands as he headed for the exit doors. As he left the building, he threw it into a garbage can in the hall.

  The arrest of Ronnie Lee Partin and the announcement of the establishment of his alibi, all of which had occurred during the weekend, had done nothing to soothe the nerves of the Reverend Ephraim Davis. The reverend had suspected all along that the escapee was not the one they wanted. He had seen the pictures of Ronnie Lee Partin on the news, and he was definitely not the one he had seen down by the Three Arches on that awful night.

  “Do you want another slice of cake, Reverend?” Clara Walker asked, her cake knife poised above the frothy coconut frosting.

  Distracted by his thoughts, the reverend had not noticed that Bill Walker had left the supper table and Clara had been trying to clean up around him. He looked longingly at the cake, and then he lied. “No, thank you. I couldn’t.”

  He got up from the table and went into the parlor, partly to get out of Clara’s way and partly to get out of the way of temptation. In thirty years of marriage, he had never cheated on his wife, but he had lusted after the cooking of other women. His travels took him to the parishes of many excellent cooks, and he paid for his vice with tight-fitting vests and belts he had to punch holes in with a hammer and awl. He had sampled the chicken, the black-eyed peas, the turnip greens, and pork chops of women across the state. But in Cress County there were few treats that could compare with Clara Walker’s coconut cake. The reverend eased himself down into a chair in the parlor and picked up the county paper, which lay on the table beside him. He could hear the hum of Bill Walker’s band saw coming from the workshop. Bill was a quiet fellow who kept to himself, but he never seemed to mind the presence of an extra person in his home. The reverend picked up the paper and put on his glasses, feeling grateful, as always, for the goodness of the people who took him in. He opened the paper and scanned it with the perfunctory interest of an outsider. When he came to the back pages he stopped and stared at the picture of the girl.

  She was an ordinary-looking girl, although there was something heartbreaking about her smile. He read the plea for information from her family and felt the heartburn beginning beneath his vest at the same time.

  He remembered that smile. Maybe it only seemed heartbreaking now in light of what had happened. But it was ironic that he, who paid so little attention to the doings of the whites around him, should find his dreams haunted by the little girl’s smile. He told himself that he had tried, that to do more was foolhardy, but the fact was that he was not sleeping well, not feeling well, and was not able to talk himself out of the shame and guilt he felt for keeping quiet.

  He looked at the picture again. Maybe what he’d seen was not important, he told himself for the hundredth time. But maybe it was. And she was a good girl. And she had a mother and father who were suffering and who deserved an answer. Maybe this ad in the paper was just the solution. He could call the number and talk to them anonymously. It would be safer than calling the police. And it was certainly better than doing nothing at all.

  Clara Walker wandered into the parlor and dropped down onto the velveteen settee with a sigh. ‘ ‘Anything interesting in the paper?” she asked.

  The problem, he thought, was that the phone was in the parlor. He didn’t want to ask Clara to move out of her own parlor. She was tired. She had worked all day.

  “Nothing too much,” he said. You’re making excuses again, he thought.
Just do it.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, Bill Walker poked his head into the room. There was sawdust in his woolly black hair. “Hey, honey, come out and take a look at this, will you?”

  Clara rolled her eyes at the reverend. “He’s making me a new table,” she said. “I’m coming, honey.” She heaved herself off the sofa with a sigh and waddled out the door behind her husband. The Reverend Davis was alone in the parlor.

  He walked over to the phone and then hesitated. Despite the cool dampness of the night, he could feel sweat running down beneath his cleric’s shirt. He picked up the phone and dialed the number in the paper. The phone rang three times, and then a young voice said, “Hello.”

  The Reverend Davis took a deep breath and began. “Hello,” he said. “I’m calling about the advertisement in today’s paper. Is this…I’m calling for Mr. or Mrs. Burdette.”

  “What about the ad? This is Grayson Burdette.”

  “This is about Michele. Uh, the murder. I might have some information.”

  “Who am I speaking to, please?” Grayson asked in a clipped tone.

  The reverend was silent, and angry at himself for his silence. He was ashamed that he could not tell his name to a child.

  “Look,” the boy said in a brittle voice, “I don’t know who you are, mister, but if you’re some kind of a nut or a psycho—”

  “This is very serious, I guarantee you.”

  “Then why won’t you say your name?”

  Once again the reverend was unable to answer. It was not exactly the reception he had expected.

  “Do you know something about my sister’s murder? How come you haven’t told the police?”

  “I saw the ad in the paper. It said to call—”

  “Call Sheriff Royce Ansley, mister, and talk to him. If you’re for real,” said Grayson. “Otherwise, stop bothering our family.”

  Ephraim Davis heard the phone click off at the other end. He gripped the receiver for a moment with sweaty palms and then he slowly put it back in its cradle.

  Chapter 10

  WITH THE EXCEPTION OF MONDAY NIGHT, when she had agreed to help Brenda and Loretta with the Daughters of the Confederacy supper meeting, Lillie stayed in the house and waited by the phone. All day Monday her nerves were humming, so sure was she that someone would see the ad and phone. When she got home Monday night, Grayson admitted with distaste in his voice that one crank had called, but otherwise nothing. Tuesday seemed an interminable day. The phone rang a few times, never with any import, and by the end of the day she was amazed at how wearying it was to sit and wait. It put her in mind of those long hours outside operating rooms, where you did nothing except to focus your attention, your mental energy, on something you could do nothing else about. And you waited for a verdict. When Grayson got home on Tuesday night she questioned him more closely about the caller of the night before.

  “How do you know for sure it was a crank call?” she said, delaying him at the supper table.

  “I told you,” Gray said patiently. “It was some black guy. He didn’t have anything to say. He wouldn’t give his name. He was just calling to hassle us. I told him to call the sheriff if he knew anything.”

  “But that was the whole point,” Lillie insisted. “In case someone didn’t want to go to the sheriff.”

  “Lillie,” Pink said. “For God’s sakes, stop this. Grayson did the right thing. He told the man to call the sheriff. If the guy knew anything, if he called Royce, don’t you think we’d know it by now?”

  “I know it,” she said. “I know.”

  “Well, if you know, then why don’t you cut it out?”

  After they both had left the table, she remained behind, slumped in her chair, staring blindly at the mess around her. Pink was right. She was clinging to this idea of the ad as if it held some sort of hope for her. But hope for what? she wondered. Even if someone did call, it would not bring her baby back. It was all she could do to clean up and fall into bed.

  The next morning when she awoke, the house was quiet, and she was alone. Like a boxer who had fought on, glassy-eyed and wobbly kneed, she was finally flattened to the canvas. She knew that she had to face her loss.

  It took her a long time to get up. When she did, she forced herself to go to the kitchen and eat a piece of toast. Next she took a shower and washed her hair. Then she went back to her bedroom.

  The sunlight was coming in through the bedroom window, falling across the pale green and rose patterned carpet that she had kept from her grandmother’s house. She looked at the bed, but then went instead to her dressing table and sat in front of it, beside the open window. She closed her eyes and breathed in the clear October air. Autumn in Tennessee was never really crisp, the way they said it was in New England, for example, but in those early autumn days it had a silky coolness to it, and the sky, through Lillie’s lace curtains, was a baby blue. Lillie sat quietly with her hands in her lap, letting the pain wash over her, taking in her loss, accepting it in a way that she had, to this point, avoided. It was the kind of day that made you glad to be alive. Lillie brushed the tears off the familiar tracks down the sides of her face. After a while she knew what she wanted to do.

  Slowly she got up and went to the closet. She took out a pair of gray corduroy jeans and pulled them on. She noticed, with a vague feeling of surprise, how they hung from her narrow hips and bagged at the waist. Everyone had been scolding her, telling her to eat. For the first time it was apparent to her that she must have lost quite a few pounds. She used a belt to secure the pants around her waist. Then she went to her bureau and looked in her sweater drawer. She was reaching for the drabbest sweater she had when her eye was caught by a sapphire-blue cotton sweater that Michele had bought for her on her last birthday. It was a big, bulky sweater, the kind that young girls favored these days. Lillie would never have bought it for herself, but Michele had clapped when her mother put it on, and Lillie had to admit that it suited her very well. Michele had boasted that she knew it would. Lillie pulled the sweater out and put it on.

  Finally dressed, she sat down at the dressing table and looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin was the palest it had ever been. The sunlight seemed to kindle the ends of her dark, wavy hair as it dried in waves to her shoulders and even her eyes seemed lighter than usual, as if the sun were filtering through them, washing out their color. Although she was of a fragile build, Lillie thought of herself as a strong person, a healthy person. But the woman in the mirror looked evanescent, like a puff of smoke in the process of dissolving. Lillie reached into her makeup drawer and dusted a little pink blush on her cheeks. She could see now why Brenda had mentioned her lack of makeup. She looked ghostlike, even to herself. The pink blush helped. She put a creamy rose color on her lips, but she left her eyes alone. Tears would wash the makeup away anyhow. She pulled her damp hair back into a clip, although some of the clean tendrils escaped and curled around the taut, pale skin of her temples.

  She got up from the vanity and walked out of the house. She went out into her garden and stood amid the withered summer blossoms and the bright, hearty autumn blooms. The day was even lovelier and more bittersweet than she had imagined. She went and got her garden tools from the storage shed, then returned to the garden. Bending over, she slowly began to clip. Candy-pink, gold and russet, the dahlias and zinnias fell into her basket. A few cream and peach roses still nodded in the breeze. She clipped them too and added them to her bouquet. She stood up and rubbed her back. Then she went into the house and filled a mayonnaise jar with water. She arranged the stems in the jar, and replaced her gloves, clippers, and basket in the shed. Then she picked up a trowel and the flowers and headed for the car in the driveway.

  Across the street, the old horse was snorting in the field behind the fence. Lillie hesitated for a moment at the car door. Then she set the flowers down on the seat and crossed the road to the fence. She pulled up a handful of grass and offered it to the old beast. The horse lifted its nose over the railing
and nibbled from her palm. Lillie ran her fingers over the horse’s coarse mane and leaned her head lightly against its warm nose, which felt soothing on her cold skin. The horse quickly lost interest in the grass and turned away. Lillie walked back across the street and got into her car.

  It was only about a two-mile drive to the cemetery, but the quiet roads of Felton had never looked more beautiful and tranquil to Lillie. She welcomed the pain that flooded her heart. The flowers in their jar sat upright on the seat beside her, like an obedient child.

  She parked the car along the road and walked through the iron gate that was the only marker for the old town cemetery. They had chosen a lovely spot for the graveyard long ago. Trees sheltered it and farmlands surrounded it. Black-eyed Susans and bright-orange butterfly weed grew wild along the slope that led up to the graves. Lillie had not been back since the day of the funeral. It had been crowded that day, and the rainy atmosphere had been charged with anger and tension and tears. Now, as she walked to the spot where Michele was buried, she felt the peace and the imperturbable, endless quiet of the place.

  She was still some distance from the grave when she suddenly saw that she was not alone. She was startled, so certain had she been that she was the only one there. She wondered if she had been speaking aloud to herself. But no, Jordan Hill was clearly unaware of her presence. He knelt on one knee at the gravesite, staring at the white cross that temporarily marked the spot until a stone could be placed there. The shadows of the branches above shifted across his stooped shoulders, and as Lillie came closer she could see that he was shivering as he knelt there, although the day was still mild. She did not want to startle him, so she gently spoke his name.

  Jordan rose awkwardly to his feet and looked at her with glistening eyes across the crumbling stones of the cemetery. Lillie’s heart turned over in a long-forgotten way at the sight of his sorrow. She tried to summon the old anger, but it seemed unimportant for some reason. She looked down at the flowers in the jar.