“You show some respect, girl. Now give me...”
“All right. Here’s your old purse. Catch.”
Celia’s reflexes were no longer quick enough to respond to the unexpected, and the purse landed at her feet, the clasp open, the contents strewn on the hooked rug: a lace handkerchief, a pencil, a tarnished silver compact, a creased snapshot of Mabel’s two children, a worn calfskin change purse, a prayer book, a post card, an alligator wallet.
“Gee, I’m sorry,” Mabel said. “Honestly, I thought you’d catch it. Here, I’ll pick everything up for you.”
But Celia was already on her knees, scooping up her things and stuffing them back into her purse with fierce determination.
“Mom.”
“Fresh. That’s what you are. Fresh.”
“I didn’t know you had a wallet, Mom.”
“There’s lots you don’t know, including how to behave to your elders.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Someone gave it to me. As a gift.”
“It looks like genuine alligator.”
“So?”
“Mom. It don’t make sense. Who would give you a genuine alligator wallet?”
“A man, a very rich man.” Celia rose, clutching her purse to her chest. “Now that’s all I can tell you. The rest is my business, and my business alone.”
“You don’t know any very rich man.”
“I do, too.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“On the road, just outside.”
“Mom.”
“It’s the truth, so help me. I met him on the road.”
“And he just came up and tipped his hat and said, madam, I’m a very rich man, here is my genuine alligator wallet. Mom.”
“Stop saying Mom like that.”
“Well, it don’t make sense.”
“What’s more,” Celia said loftily, “you use bad grammar. That’s what comes of marrying beneath you. Well, I warned you. I said, he’s a common laborer, he’ll drag you down with him and you with a high school education...”
“Don’t change the subject, Mom. I want to hear more about the very rich man. He intrigues me.”
“And don’t get ironical-sounding either. It so happens I’m telling the truth and I don’t expect my own child to be ironical-sounding to me.”
“What are you going to do when other people notice the wallet? Tell them the same story you told me?”
“Nobody else is going to notice it.”
“How come?”
“I’m going to get rid of it, that’s how come.”
“Get rid of it! Mom, are you losing your mind? Someone gives you a genuine alligator wallet and now you say you’re going to get rid of it. It’s worth, well, ten dollars at least. And now you say you’re going...”
“Stop it. Stop pestering me.”
“But it just don’t make sense, Mom. A real genuine alligator wallet and you want to get rid of it, I never heard anything so crazy.”
They stared at each other across the room, Celia pale and grim, and her daughter red-faced and bewildered.
“I’ll keep the money,” Celia said finally.
“What money?”
“There’s money in it.”
“How much?”
“Nearly a hundred dollars.”
“A hundred dollars?”
“Not quite. Nearly.” Celia clung to the word as if it somehow provided a saving grace.
“Mom. Where did you get it?”
“I told you. The man gave it to me.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Why?”
“For Laddie. To pay for Laddie.”
“What’s Laddie got to do with it?”
“Don’t you shout at me! I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“Something happened to Laddie?”
“Yes.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t even sound sorry,” Mabel said coldly. “You don’t even sound sorry. Your own dog.”
“I am sorry! Only it wasn’t my fault, he ran out in the road. He couldn’t see very well anyway any more, and the car was speeding.”
“What car?”
“One of those sporty kinds without a roof.”
“A convertible.”
“I guess so. There was a man driving. He had on one of those fancy plaid caps people wear sometimes in the movies. He knew right away he’d hit Laddie, I guess he must have heard me scream too. He slowed up and yelled a word back at me, it sounded like ‘sorry.’ Then he threw something out of the car. At first I didn’t know what it was.”
“But you found out quick enough, eh?”
“I don’t like your tone. It’s not respectful.”
“Stop bothering about tones and get back to facts. What happened then?”
“The car went on. Laddie was lying by the side of the road. I picked him up and I could tell right away he was dead. So I buried him myself, in the back yard.”
“And kept the wallet.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
Mabel shook her head. “It just don’t sound right to me. It sounds sneaky, if you want the truth.”
“The money’s mine. It was given me fair and square, in just payment for my dog. Laddie was a very valuable dog.”
“He was a half-blind, ten-year-old mongrel and you know it.”
“Even so.”
“Mom, last night when it happened, why didn’t you call me?”
“Why didn’t I? This is why, all this questioning.”
“I’m only trying to get things straightened out so we can decide what to do.”
“I’ve already decided. I’ll get rid of the wallet so nosy people won’t see it and ask nosy questions. And I’ll keep the money because it’s mine, given me fair and square.”
“How do you know?”
Celia pursed her lips. “How do I know what?”
“The man driving the car, he might have thrown the money out on purpose to keep you quiet, so you wouldn’t tell anyone you saw him.”
“Why should he do that?”
“Maybe he was a criminal escaping from the scene of a crime.”
Celia was shaken but refused to admit it. “Oh, nonsense.”
“He hit Laddie and didn’t stop to leave his name or to see if he could help. That’s hit-and-run driving, right there. That’s a crime in itself.” Mabel’s imagination was like her car. Once it started to move, it moved all over, in every joint and with a great deal of noise. “How do you know he wasn’t a bank robber escaping with his loot?”
“The banks,” Celia pointed out, “are closed on Saturdays.”
“Or a murderer. How do you know he won’t come back?”
“Why would he come back?”
“To make sure your lips are sealed.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Celia sat down abruptly in a wicker chair and began fanning herself with a handkerchief. “I’m not well. I feel — I feel faint.”
“I’ll fetch you a glass of water, wait there.”
The water was administered, and with it, since nothing else was readily available, a chunk of Mabel’s horehound. Mabel sang soprano in the choir and used horehound as a ladder to some of the higher notes.
“Are you feeling better, Mom?”
“No thanks to you I’m not dead,” Celia said bitterly. “Giving me a fright like that, at my age.”
“I was only trying to make you see reason.”
“Reason, is it, to throw away nearly a hundred dollars? If that’s reason, I want to be crazy, thank you.”
“All I’m asking you to do is to tell someone about what happened.”
“Such as who?”
“The Reverend Wilton might know what to do.”
“Over my dead body,” Celia said. “He and I don’t see eye to eye on too many things as it is.”
“The constable, then, Mr. Leachman.”
“Mr. Leachman has fits.”
“Now what has that got...”
“His own sister told me. He has fits. He even,” Celia added with an air of triumph, “foams at the mouth.”
Mabel’s face was so red it seemed ready to burst its skin like an overripe tomato. “Will you stop changing the subject?”
“I didn’t change the subject. You brought up Mr. Leachman and I merely pointed out that he has fits. Bad ones.”
“That’s simple gossip.”
“Gossip, is it? How is it that when you find out something interesting about a person you get information, I merely get gossip.”
“Put your coat on, Mom. We’ll be late for church.”
“I don’t feel like going to church.”
“Maybe you don’t feel like it but you need it. I think maybe I do too. And after church we’ll go see Mr. Leachman. And I don’t care if he’s foaming like bubble bath, you’re going to tell him what happened and show him the wallet and describe the man in the car.”
“I didn’t see him very well, only by the street light.”
“The wallet had a name in it?”
“Yes. Galloway. Ronald Gerard Galloway.”
“Sounds phony to me,” Mabel said. “Come on, let’s get going.”