“What you want?”
“I’m lookin’ for Beulah Tales.”
“Ain’t been Beulah Tales for years. What you want?” She had bourbon on her breath. His mother drank it all the time too. He did sometimes, but more than a little made him sick.
“I’m just, I’m just lookin’ for Aunt Beulah, Beulah Hardwick Tales, I mean, Beulah Tales Hardwick, ’cause she’s my grandma’s sister. And I’m lookin’ for Clare. Clare Hardwick. ’Cause she lives here.”
“Not for long,” she said, “not for long.” She squinted. “Good Lord, you’re that goddamned Bud Tales Junior.”
“Naw, I’m Jaime.”
“You ain’t Bud and Sally’s boy?”
“That’s my ma, Sally Tales, but I’m Jaime.” She was Aunt Beulah, she just looked different. A lot older. She didn’t look like Maamaw before.
“Jaime Tales? The little one that’s stupid?” He didn’t answer, just stared. “What the hell you people want now?” she went on. “You done took Pa for everything he had, long ago.” She was swaying.
“I’m lookin’ for Clare Hardwick.”
“You want Clare? Good. Come on in and fuckin’ take her.” His grandmother would never have said “fuckin’.” The room was well-kept but the house smelled of Lysol and some kind of decay beneath that. The TV was on, but the sound was off.
“Clare!” screamed Aunt Beulah. “Getchur ass down here, ya damn baby stealin’ whore!”
She turned to Jaime. “You know what she done? Was working at the Hardwick Funeral Home, which we don’t run no more since Pa Hardwick sold it, and a goddamn dead baby turned up missing. A dead baby! After they talked to her, it turned up again outside the funeral home, on the steps the next morning, all decayed.” She pointed upstairs. “But I could smell it afterward when I went up there. You could smell it had been in that little whore’s room! She’s crazier than your father and my husband and the whole bunch of them! Calls herself a Hardwick!”
Someone was at the top of the stairs, stepping down. It was Clare, wearing a lightweight yellow dress and worn, dingy tennis shoes. She was much thinner than when he’d last seen her, looked starved even, and her hair looked like something had gnawed it off close to her skull.
Aunt Beulah scowled at her as she descended. “Did you know the Tales boy was comin’ to getcha? You probably did. You know everything, your highness.”
Clare didn’t speak, came calmly to the bottom of the stairs, glanced briefly at Jaime but didn’t look surprised to see him. She didn’t acknowledge Beulah at all. “Queen Shit,” said Beulah, but Clare didn’t seem to hear.
“Too good to even look for work. Nobody’d hire her anyway, after she took that baby.”
Clare sat down on a sofa near where Jaime stood. Suddenly she screamed, “Will you shut up?!”
“I’ll shut up when you—”
Clare picked up a sofa pillow and threw it at Beulah. “Get out!”
Beulah retreated into the kitchen, saying “Call the damn police, that’s what I’ll do.”
Clare looked at Jaime, said “Yes?”
Jaime found he was out of breath. “I come to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“What you said. About Todd.”
Clare gazed out the front window. “You have Todd’s car. The Thunderbird.”
“Yeah.”
“Did Todd send you here?”
“No, he’s back in Stankerton. I mean, no, he didn’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You said to tell you that a girl came. A girl. You said to tell you. At the Limbo.” He was flustered, sounded to himself like a tattletale.
She sat quietly, running her fingers through her hair, acting troubled. They could hear Aunt Beulah talking on the phone in another room, past the kitchen, yelling incoherently.
“Okay, let’s go,” said Clare. She went back up the stairs. Some minutes passed, and finally Jaime sat on the sofa himself, watching the silent TV. It showed that preacher guy Fred at the Limbo had on all the time
Beulah came back into the room, said, “Where’s she?”
“Upstairs,” he said.
“You leaving?”
“I guess…”
“Well, take her with you, ’cause she sure as shit ain’t staying—”
Clare came down the stairs again, carrying a big plaid suitcase that seemed to be heavy.
“You’re really leavin’, finally!” said Beulah. She smiled at Jaime. “Are you ever in for it.”
“Let’s go,” said Clare, opening the front door.
“Don’t come back, neither one of yas,” said Beulah, her voice breaking. “Hardwicks, my fuckin’ ass.”
CHAPTER 20
SHANNON AND DEWEY AT THE TALES’ HOME
After some discussion in which Dewey had advocated, reasonably he thought, that they should tell Todd about his car being stolen, a move Shannon rejected with annoyance, they were driving along in silence for a while. Without saying anything, Shannon pulled into somebody’s driveway, backed out, and drove off back in the direction they’d just come.
“Where are we going now?” asked Dewey.
“I’m gonna see if fuckin’ retard Jaime is home, or if the other retards know where he is,” said Shannon.
“You mean, at the Tales’ house over on Dodsworth?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think he lives there anymore.”
“Yeah. Well, if he doesn’t, maybe someone there will be conscious enough to tell me where he does live. Okay?”
“Sure. Whatever you want. Just don’t go in there and call them retards or hilljacks or something. You know, they get pretty serious about shit.”
“Yes, I know,” said Shannon. “I’m fucking familiar with them.”
They drove on. Dewey thought about the time years ago when he saw Jaime and some other Tales outside the entrance to the A&P grocery store at a strip mall, his mom standing around talking to some other woman in a loud, cawing voice. Jaime kept interrupting, begging for a quarter so he could get something he wanted in a gumball machine. Mrs. Tales got enraged and hollered, “Lick my worm, boy!” Heads turned, but the woman Mrs. Tales was speaking to didn’t react, just went on talking. Jaime had been a kid then, but not that little.
When they arrived at the Tales’ house, it looked like it might be unoccupied except for the ancient hound dog sitting in a mudhole at the edge of the front lawn, which was overgrown in the spots where it wasn’t bare. As they stepped up to the front door, the dog woofed at them, turned and rose up, and started walking slowly and unsteadily toward them.
“They still have Baby,” said Shannon, for that had been their dog’s name years before.
“Unless that’s his grandson,” said Dewey.
The door was open, a TV was going inside, but no one answered when they knocked. Shannon stepped inside, saying, “Yo! Hello?” Dewey sighed and went after him. The dog was at their heels, woofing more and whimpering as he struggled along. Inside, the house smelled like burned microwave popcorn.
The TV was in the living room with the sound up loud, but no one was watching it. “Well, shit,” Shannon said. “Hello? Mrs. Tales? Anybody?” The dog followed, wheezing, and managed another woof, this one ending with a weak, sad-sounding howl.
“Baby, what you doin’ in the house?” came a voice from a room down the hall, and then a loud sneeze. There was, in fact, the sound of another TV coming from the same direction. They stepped down the hallway and turned into a room, which turned out to be a bathroom, for in it, they saw a very fat naked woman sitting in a bathtub full of sudsy water, watching a small TV perched upon the toilet beside the tub.
Shannon and Dewey ducked back out. Dewey was about to run for the door, but Shannon said “’Scuse me, ma’am, we were lookin’ for Jaime?”