Sam scoops up Wrigley and sets him down in Woody’s lap. He picks up her hands, places them gently on top of the cat’s back, and like somebody turned her on switch off, she smiles and shuts right up. Bringing his attention back to me, he says, smooth as can be, “We’ve been over this before. You know why my asking around about your mother would not be a wise idea.”
The colored and the whites are like the birds and the bees. The birds are supposed to stick with their kind and same goes for the bees. If Sam goes around questioning folks, “Do you know anything about the disappearance of Evelyn Carmody?” somebody could start the rumor that Sam and Mama could’ve been, well, pollinating. (There’s always someone willing to fan the flames no matter how dumb the gossip.)
“How about if you discover something that seems important to your mama’s disappearance you bring it to me? I’ll assist,” Sam suggests.
“Do you mean like a double play?” I got him now. He cannot resist baseball lingo.
Sam grins from ear to ear, just like Blind Beezy does, and says,
“You’ve got a lot of your mother running through you, you know that?”
“Funny, I was just thinkin’ the same about you.” Him and Beezy both make me prett’near drag everything out of them. “How do you mean I’ve got a lot of my mother runnin’ through me?”
“You fishin’?”
He means for a compliment.
“Guess I am.”
“Well, there’s lots of ways you two resemble one another, but mainly, I was thinking about her tenacity.” He looks down at her watch on my wrist and says real seriously, “Wish you’d leave it here with me for safekeeping.”
That’s the same thing he said to me the day after I found it and came rushing over here.
“I can’t do that. I’ll take good care of it. Mama’ll be wanting to wear it as soon as she gets back home so I have to keep it at the ready.” I get a little choked up. “It… it makes me feel closer to her and… you understand?” I don’t feel bad about not granting his wish. I brought another memento for him to remember Mama by. “Hold on.” Withdrawing the dog-eared copy out of my back pocket, I tell him with my most cheerful smile, “I know she’d want you to have it until we can bring her back home.” It’s the story they were studying together right before she vanished. Mama could barely read the part to me where Juliet takes a potion that makes her appear to be dead but she really isn’t, but Romeo thinks she is, so he drinks poison and then Juliet wakes up and daggers herself so they can at least be together in heaven. What a mess.
Sam doesn’t say, “Thank you. How kind of you,” when I hand the book over to him and that’s all right. I’m not giving it to him because I’m trying to win an award for being the most generous person on earth. I just can’t have it near me anymore. Picturing Mama holding it between her hands with the bit-to-the-moon nails makes me pine too much for her, and my lunar-loving papa, too. I’ve been thinking that the book might be a hint in her disappearance. Everybody knows that it’s a story of unquiet love that takes place in Verona, which only adds credence to one of my original ideas of where Mama might’ve taken off to. “Do you… do you think she could’ve run off to Italy?” I ask.
“No,” Sam says, looking affectionately down at the little red book and then off to House Mountain. Those twin peaks are Mama’s favorites. “I… I’m hoping that your mother is much closer to home.”
“I hope you’re right. Because I’ve tried and tried, but all I’ve managed to learn from that Berlitz record so far is Buon giorno. Dov’è la biblioteca? That means-”
“Good day. Where is the library?”
His dead partner taught him some of the language when they were on stakeouts up in Decatur. I feel remorseful about bringing up Johnny’s memory. It always makes his Adam’s apple work extrahard. “Shoot, Sam. I didn’t mean to mention-”
“Y’all better start towards home.”
“Okay.” I understand that he’s not trying to get rid of us. Or chastise me. He’s being thoughtful. He doesn’t know exactly what will happen if we get back to Lilyfield too late, but he does know how strict Papa is. “Time to hit the trail, Woody.” I reach over E. J. to remove the aviator glasses off her eyes, but she twists at the waist so I can’t get at them and starts squawking again and it’s about all I can take. I’m sticky and tired and getting real worried now about how late we stayed at the station. I holler at her, “Why ya always gotta be so obstinate? I should start callin’ you Mule Girl. How’d ya like that, huh? Mule Girl… Mule Girl… Mule Girl. Maybe I should sell you to the Oddities of Nature show when it gets here. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. You… you could stand up on that stage next to Armadillo Boy and the two of ya could-”
“Shut your mouth, Shenny!” Without warning, E. J. stiff-arms me straight off the porch. I land hard in the dirt on my behind. Shocked, I yell, “You little…” I clamber up and come charging back at him.
“That’s enough, Shenandoah,” Sam says, grabbing me by the arm before I can sock E. J. a good one.
“But-” I am struggling to break free. “That’s not fair! I’m the youngest, she should be babying me.” I get so sick of pulling on my kid gloves. Brushing Woody’s teeth. Braiding her hair. Braying those stupid show tunes. I even got to butter her toast. I deserve those aviators with shiny frames that hook behind the ears. “She’s always gettin’ what she wants!”
“Is that right?” Sam asks, pointing over my shoulder at my sister who has gotten up off the crate. She lifts her arms out to her sides and begins slow, but is soon twirling herself round and round, like a whirlygig falling out of the branches of an oak tree. “Perhaps you’d like to reconsider that statement.”
“I know she’s bad off, but… but what about me? I’m the one that’s always got to-”
Sam says so low in his high humidity voice, “Your sister needs them more than you do.”
I hate it when he does this. He’s trying to make me feel like I’m acting spoiled rotten.
Sam glances over at Woody again with sorrowful eyes. “Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. That expression mean anything to you, Shenny?”
Even though I know exactly what it means, I yank my arm out of his hand and say, “No, it certainly does not.” I want to hurt his feelings as much as he just hurt mine. So with my nose up in the air, I say as snippy as a girl can get, “That must be something that only Negroes who are too big for their britches go around sayin’.” And then I step off the porch and glide across the gas station lot like I’m white and you’re not so put that in your pipe and smoke it, former Detective Samuel Quincy Moody.
Chapter Thirteen
I’m leading the way back home.
Woody is sandwiched between me and E. J. so he can grab her if she tries to get away. We’re at the spot on the path where the house will soon come into sight when E. J. whisper-shouts to me, “Shen… Shenny… ya gotta slow down.”
“I’ll do no such thing.” We stayed much later at the Triple S than we should’ve. Papa will probably still be napping, but if he isn’t, if we should run into him, he’ll smell the motor oil that’s sticking to our clothes the same way I am. Woody and I are taking a hot bath tonight, no ifs, ands, or buts.
E. J. shouts even more frantic “Stop!” and then there’s this flurry of activity.
Scared that Woody has sprinted off, I spin around and am relieved to see that my sister has done the exact opposite. She’s planted herself on the path and in doing so has tripped E. J., who is lying spread-eagled in a patch of ivy next to the trail.
“Kindly give a little warnin’ before you dig in, all right?” I say, backtracking to her side. I’m sweet-talking her because I’m already feeling contrite about being mean to her up at the Triple S. Sam was right. I was acting spoiled. Put upon by my twin, who I love with every ounce of my heart. What gets into me? I know darn well that she’d stop all this twirling, flapping, and running if she could. Woody has never liked perspiring all that much. Thinks it’s unladylike. “Pea?” I brush up her clumpy bangs and blow on her forehead. “Are you overheatin’?” I tap the rose-colored glasses low on her nose and wave my hand in front of her lime eyes, but she doesn’t blink. She’s locked onto something that she’s seeing over my right shoulder. I don’t see anything except for a couple of hot-headed cardinals, but I trust that my sensitive sister has picked up the scent of something that’s beyond me. Her nostrils are flaring.