That wasn’t often, though; we didn’t see much of that. Jessie Burdette did not go out to the bars very regularly. And when she did go out she was always pleasant and would talk to you if you said something to her, but she would never volunteer anything herself. Instead she seemed to prefer to sit quietly sipping her watery drink, watching others have what she maybe didn’t even consider then as being a very good time.
But in the meantime the local women had begun to work on her, to pay special attention to her. I suppose the women in town wanted to be friendly. They began to ask her to join their social clubs and their church organizations. Wouldn’t she like to come to tea, to join Rebecca Circle, to play bridge, to be a member of the Legion Auxiliary, to golf with them on Saturday mornings, or maybe — wouldn’t she like to participate in Bible study?
But she wouldn’t, she told the women. She refused them outright, although when they called on her she was pleasant about it all. Nonetheless she was certain about it too.
So the women felt a little hurt by this, a little bit rebuffed and rejected. It put them off. But a month or two later they decided to ask her again. She only needed more time, they told one another; she was merely being polite. She probably wanted to settle in more thoroughly and to look about her, as anyone would, moving to a new town. With the passage of time, she would feel differently, they said. In the middle of fall that first year they began to ask her again.
But again she refused their invitations, rejecting that female attempt at communal neighborliness and sociability a second time. She hadn’t changed her mind at all, it turned out. While we understood that she was still quite cordial to them, in that typical, quiet and pleasant manner of hers, she was also absolutely certain about it. She was not in the least bit interested.
And now the women felt more than a little put off. They were offended. They felt wounded by her rejection. As a result, they stopped asking Jessie Burdette to join anything at all.
* * *
Then in March of 1973, almost two years after she had arrived in town, she had a baby. She delivered a little boy whom she named Thomas John. Later, when that became too much of a mouthful, she shortened it to TJ. He was a handsome little boy. He had his mother’s dark hair and her sober brown watchful eyes. And it was obvious to us, seeing them on Main Street, what she thought of him. She was delighted with him. We would see them together: the young woman, small and quiet and trim again after her pregnancy, pushing the handsome little boy along the street in a baby carriage, the two of them going in and out of the stores, looking as content with themselves as if nothing else mattered. She would be smiling at him too, talking to him quietly as though he could already understand what she was saying. Then later when he was a little older and when it was summertime we began to see them in front of the house on Gum Street (for Burdette had made a small down payment on a two-bedroom house by that time; it was in the middle of town, near the railroad tracks) — this new mother and her little boy would be playing together on a blanket spread out on the grass in the shade under the elm and hackberry trees. He was a little more than a year old when she delivered a second child.
This one was a boy too, named Robert and called Bobby, who was almost the exact twin of his older brother: a handsome little boy with the same brown hair and the same brown watchful eyes. She was pleased with him as well. She was delighted with both of her sons.
Consequently there were three of them now for us to watch in town. Three of them to notice on Main Street or to observe in the yard in front of the house, playing games on the front lawn or making little farmsteads in the dirt with miniature cows and horses and bits of sticks — this young woman whom nobody knew at all yet, whom we had expected in the beginning to be some playgirl, some Oklahoma Monroe or Mansfield with a heaving bust and a cinched-in waist above wide hips and long legs, but who, it happened, wasn’t like that at all.
Thus there developed a kind of mystery about Jessie Burdette in Holt. None of us knew what to think of her. Who was she, really? We didn’t know. It was as if she were some fine and exotic bird that had flown in here one spring and had then decided to stay — but one which didn’t seem to expect any sustenance or even association from anything or anyone around her.
So for five years she was left almost entirely alone. She was merely here, living in a town of three thousand where everyone knew everyone else. And no one knew her.
Then everything changed, for her and for those of us who were still watching her. It had to do with her husband. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon on the last day of December in 1976 Jack Burdette disappeared. And in the end he did not return to Holt for a very long time, not until a great deal of damage had already been done.
7
At first people in Holt were not alarmed by his disappearance. On the contrary, they were rather amused by it. They thought of it as a kind of joke, as another of his sudden and outlandish acts which in time would be explained, or at least accepted, as just another installment in that ongoing legend that followed him about the town.
Then he’d been gone for about a week. And it began to get about — in the bakery and the pool halls and the tavern, wherever people were talking — that he had charged some things on Main Street before he left.
We learned that on that Friday afternoon on the last day of December he had gone into Foster’s Jewelry Store and after looking at several men’s rings and old-fashioned pocket watches he had chosen the most expensive 14-carat gold Bulova wrist-watch that Lloyd Foster had to offer. And he hadn’t paid for it; he had merely signed his name to a charge slip. Then he walked out of the store with the new gold watch on his wrist and went next door to do the same with Ralph Bird.
And there, at the Men’s Store, he charged a new maroon sport coat and a pair of good gray wool slacks, a leather belt and three long-sleeved oxford-cloth shirts — all of which satisfied Ralph Bird so well (since Bird hadn’t expected to conduct any business at all in that dead time following the Christmas rush) that he decided, uncharacteristically, to throw in a good new striped tie to boot.
And Burdette thanked him. He slapped Ralph on the back and signed his name to another charge slip. Then he walked out of the Men’s Store wearing the coat and the slacks and the belt and one of the shirts — with the other things (the two extra shirts and the bonus tie and his old clothes) all stuffed into a plastic store bag. Once he was outside, he walked up to the corner to Schulte’s Department Store.
But we discovered that he wasn’t quite so successful there. It happened that old Mrs. Thompson was the only clerk available at the moment and it was she who waited on him. In no uncertain terms Mrs. Thompson informed Burdette that the store had specific limits on how much they would allow anyone to charge. Burdette took this amiss. “But look here,” he said. “You know me. You know who I am.”
“I certainly do,” Mrs. Thompson told him. “I’ve heard more about you than I ever want to, ever since you were an ornery little boy. Your mother is a friend of mine.”
Consequently, at Schulte’s, Burdette was somewhat obstructed in his Friday afternoon shopping; that is, he was allowed to charge only a pair of dark socks and a set of blue underwear. And before he left the store he must have thought better of changing into the socks and the underwear and wearing them out onto the street. Mrs. Thompson was still watching him.
Despite these new stories about Burdette which everyone in town heard and afterward repeated, people in Holt were still not alarmed. They were still amused by his disappearance and by his post-Christmas shopping spree. If nothing else, there was a good deal of joking and fun to be had at Lloyd Foster’s and Ralph Bird’s expense. People said that either man could profit by hiring Mrs. Thompson to clerk in his store. They said Mrs. Thompson would at least have cut their losses.