The Right Side of Wrong Page 7

  We could hear, though. Cars swooshed past on the highway, mourning dove cooed from the trees, and quail called from the hidden pastures and meadows. Cows were always mooing not far away, but we didn’t pay them any mind.

  The country-style roof only had two sides, angling up from the porch to the ridgeline, and then down the other side. It was simple work, and the day finally warmed up enough to be called hot.

  Before you knew it, we were finished with the front slope and back on the ground.

  Mr. Bell picked up a few short pieces of lumber and pitched them into the fire. “I sure appreciate y’all’s help. Once the other side is finished, I can get started on the inside.”

  Uncle Cody wiped his sweaty face with a bandana, reminding me of Grandpa’s habits. “Well, you can’t work on an empty stomach. Kids, get in the back of the truck and you climb in up front with me, Mr. Bell. It’s dinner time and I ’magine Miss Becky has the table set.”

  “Well, I…”

  “She’s expecting us.”

  “In that case, let me get my hat.”

  I was hungry all right, so Pepper and I climbed over the El Camino’s tailgate and we drove the short distance to the house.

  Uncle Cody was right. Dinner was ready when we got there, and I smelled it all the way out in the yard. The table was loaded with my favorites: creamed peas, pinto beans, green beans, stewed potatoes, creamed corn, chicken, chicken fried steak, and homemade biscuits.

  Mr. Bell took his hat off when he walked into the steamy kitchen and Miss Becky hugged him like he was kinfolk, even though she’d never laid eyes on him until that minute. I guess him saving Uncle Cody made him part of the family, and he settled right in.

  Grandpa was up at the barn and came in right behind us. He was glad Mr. Bell was there, because he was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Sit right there at the other end of the table, Tom.” Grandpa settled into his chair at the head and we filled the rest. There wasn’t much talking, because we were all hungry. Mr. Tom put away more than his share. He didn’t shame us, though. We all ate like field hands too. Shingling is hard work, and I didn’t realize how hungry I was until we dug in.

  As usual, the phone rang halfway through dinner and I thought Grandpa was gonna throw his fork at it. Miss Becky hurried into the living room and answered.

  “Daddy, it’s for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I didn’t ask. You know that.”

  He sighed his way from the table as the talk quieted down, partly so he could hear, partly because we wanted to listen, too. There wasn’t much to hear.

  Two minutes later he was back in the kitchen. “Constable Parker, you ready to get back to work?”

  “Sure ’nough.”

  “I need to go pick up a prisoner from Roxton and take him to Dallas.”

  Mr. Bell put down his fork. “Mind if I tag along?”

  Grandpa frowned. “Tom, I’d enjoy the company, but this is law work, and I cain’t take no chance you gettin’ hurt. You can ride with me one night when I have to make the rounds, if you’d like.”

  If it hurt Mr. Bell’s feelings, he didn’t show it. “That’s all right. I’ll finish my cake here and get on back to work.”

  Uncle Cody plucked his hat off the rack beside the door. “We can drop you off on the way out.”

  “No need. I’ll walk my dinner off.”

  “You ready?” Ned asked.

  “Sure,” Cody set his hat and started for the door. “Who we picking up?”

  “Carl Gibbs. They got him after he blacked Tamara’s eye last night and lit out to hide at his mama’s house. A sheriff’s deputy is holding him ’til we get there.”

  “Why can’t they take him in?”

  “Because I want to, that’s why.”

  From the tone of Grandpa’s voice, I knew he was done talking about it.

  “Cody Parker, you ain’t going nowhere until I give you some sugar.” Me and Pepper snickered when Miss Becky grabbed Uncle Cody and gave him a kiss on the cheek. It broke up the tension in the kitchen.

  Uncle Cody wasn’t embarrassed to be kissed by her in front of Mr. Bell, but instead of saying anything, he and Grandpa hurried off the porch with Miss Becky hollerin’ for them to be careful. The house got really quiet after they were gone, and before long we were finished eating and Mr. Bell struck out on foot for his house.

  Pepper went into the living room and clicked on the radio. The Beach Boys were singing when we laid down on a pallet made of quilts and took a long nap.

  It was the first day we’d worked like a full hand to rebuild a house, but it was far from the last.

  Chapter Nine

  John coasted to a stop in the bare yard. The sun was hot, and he’d driven with the windows of his cruiser open all the way from Chisum. His sweaty shirt stuck to his back, but he didn’t feel the heat because he was smiling at a gaggle of kids watching from the shady porch.

  He got out, opened the back door, and lifted out two brown paper bags full of groceries, bought by money from his own pockets and from the worn billfolds of Ned and O.C. Rains.

  “Howdy!” he called through the gaping door. There were no screens on the house, and insects flew in and out without impediment.

  The slender black woman he’d seen days before on the way to the abandoned still stepped out and shaded her eyes with one hand. The baby on her hip wore nothing but a cloth diaper.

  “I’m John Washington.” For the first time in years he found himself admiring a woman. He liked the way she cocked her head and knew she was taking stock of what she saw.

  She raised an eyebrow. “My man ain’t here.”

  “That’s all right. I can see him later.” John stopped at the edge of the porch and set the bags down. “Y’ain’t got no dogs here, do you, that’ll tear into these here bags?”

  “We can barely feed ourselves, let alone dogs.”

  “Good.” He smiled and motioned toward the kids. “Y’all come on and help me unload these groceries. We need to move fast, before the ice cream melts.”

  “Ice cream!” They charged the car. The older children grabbed the heaviest bags and started back toward the house.

  “Hold it!” The woman shouted and the kids braked to a stop. She frowned and rested her free fist on a hip covered by a shapeless house dress. “We cain’t pay for no ice cream, ner other groceries, neither.”

  “It’s already been bought.”

  “We ain’t takin’ no charity, not from nobody…not even a nigger in a uniform. What you want?”

  John waited in the middle of the yard, both hands full. The raggedly-dressed children stood around him in a protective circle, as though to defy their mother’s wrath against a uniformed Santa Claus. There wasn’t one shoe among them.

  “It ain’t charity. It’s from Mr. Ned Parker to pay you for some work you’re about to do, and for some questions I have to ask.”

  “I ain’t turning in no kinfolk to y’all.”

  “Ain’t asking for that.”

  “I don’t work for no Parker.”

  “You do now.”

  “What’s he want?” She frowned again. “Uh uh, I don’t do that, not even when we’re hungry.”

  John felt his face flush. “We ain’t asking for nothin’ ain’t right. Let me get up there in the shade out of this hot sun and we’ll talk. I ain’t a-kiddin’. This ice cream’s done rode from Chisum, and I imagine it’s pretty soft already. Let the little’uns eat while we visit a minute.”

  “My man’ll be here any time.”

  John understood. “I’ll stay right out here.”

  She finally came to a decision and sat primly in a straight-back wooden chair. The cane bottom was almost rotted out, but it held her slight weight. She bounced the baby on her knees. “All right.”

  The kids
squealed again and charged up on the porch. In seconds, the paper bags were ripped to shreds as they pawed through the canned and dried groceries. In the bottom of one bag, two sweating and soft square cartons of chocolate Mellorine brought even more shrieks.

  “Y’all go get something to eat out of,” the woman said. Two of her oldest girls ran inside.

  John grinned down at the smaller kids, and picked a piece of grass from a girl’s thick black hair. “I figgered they’d like chocolate.” He sat on the lip of the porch, just in the edge of the shade, with his back against a gray post.

  “They like anything sweet.”

  Two shirtless little ones climbed up in John’s lap. He figured they were around three or four, and knew one was a girl by the braids in her short hair. When a toddler saw them, he wanted up too. He soon lost count of how many there were, because they were as busy as a bag full of kittens.

  The oldest girl appeared to be about seventeen. She dipped melting ice cream in to a variety of utensils, ranging from cups to bowls. Small hands reached out eagerly, but she followed a system that worked downward by age. The boy and girl quickly abandoned John’s lap and joined their siblings, leaving him with the toddler. The oldest girl finally handed John a cracked bowl with little blue cornflowers around the outside edge. He glanced around.

  “They all eatin’, ’cept the baby there in your lap. I’ll feed him some after I’ve had mine.”

  His bowl contained one small scoop. The teenager handed her mama a brown bowl. The woman picked up the fork that rattled on the edge. “I know you.”

  He met her tired eyes.

  “You the one saved them two little white kids down on the creek a while back.”

  “Yep.”

  “You took up with that old constable.”

  “I work with him.”

  She took a bite, scraping the ice cream off the fork with her teeth. “That why you here?”

  “Yep. Did you hear about them two was killed down the road a piece?”

  “Don’t surprise me. They was cars going in and out—and my first thought they’s up to no good.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. Somebody set up a still way back up in the woods down there, and then some others came along and left ’em in a shaller grave.”

  “So that’s why you here?”

  “Partly. I saw y’all when we went by, and figgered you might need some help. I also figgered you might have seen who’s been driving in and out, before we showed up.”

  She snorted like a colt. “A-course I noticed. There ain’t no door or screen on this sorry-assed shack, so I hear everybody that comes by.”

  “You know what they look like?”

  “The dead’uns?”

  “Or them that did it.”

  She stabbed the melting chocolate with the tines. “I watched the moonshiners come and go, but they didn’t come by much. They only made a trip or two. I knew what they was doin’ down there, ’cause they had a truck with a tarp coverin’ the back. Don’t nobody cover nothing like that ’less they don’t want anybody to see what they got back there.”

  “Could have been anything under that tarp.”

  “But it weren’t.” She tilted the bowl and drank the cool chocolate.

  “What about the others?”

  “Four of ’em. Three was greasy-looking no-account white mens. The other’n was big, like you, only white, and he wore shades.”

  “Would you know ’em if you’s to see ’em again?”

  “Yeah, they slowed once to get a real good look while I was hanging out clothes one day. I’s facin’ the road, and gave ’em a good look right back.”

  John dipped his finger in his bowl and let the baby suck on it.

  “You got kids?”

  “Ain’t married.”

  “You handle ’em like you know what you doin’.”

  One little girl draped herself over John’s big shoulder. He could tell they were all starving for love. He patted her hand, and gave the least one another chocolate-covered finger to lick.

  “I know about kids. My sister has two. You from around here?”

  “Not really. We moved here from Jefferson when I was carryin’ the oldest girl there, Belle. My husband Walter said things might be more better for us here than back on the Caddo, but he was wrong, as usual. It’s as hard here, as there.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Sheeeiiittt. I don’t know. I ain’t seen him in a year. Probably laid up with somebody else.” When she realized that her story was blown, she stopped.

  “How do you get by?”

  She ducked her head, but didn’t say anything for a long minute. “We manage.”

  “Well, you got a job now. Mr. Ned’ll send a truck by to get you.”

  Her eyes flashed. “I ain’t no field hand.”

  “Well, there’s a difference in a hired hand, and there ain’t no shame in working a field. Mr. Ned pays good wages for a day’s work. He’ll pay them older kids, too, the same wage.”

  “Who gonna watch these little ’uns?”

  “Bring ’em all along. There’s always a young gal or two who’ll watch ’em while everbody works.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to.”

  “I guess you figure a car’s gonna drive out here from Chisum to give you money, or a job at the soup factory. It’s a job, and it’ll make a difference here.”

  She stared at the empty road. “I heard the shots.”

  “When them fellas was killed?”

  “I figger it was about that time. Them four drove past, and then a while later there was a whole bunch of shooting, a lot more than it takes to kill two people. Then, they drove back past with only two in the car. Two more was driving the first truck.”

  “That must have been it, then.”

  “Shades stopped for a minute.”

  John waited.

  “He got out of the car and came up here in the yard, pretty as you please, like they was decent folks out on a Sunday drive and stopped to ask direction. Said he liked what I had and was I interested in sellin’ any of it.”

  “Sellin’ what mama?” a girl asked.

  She studied her for a moment. “Eggs.”

  “We ain’t got no chickens.”

  John saved her. “So what did you tell him?”

  “I told him to get on out of here. Then he offered me five dollars and some reefer to go along with it. Said he’d come back later and bring some more, but I had a butcher knife tucked here in the back of my belt and I took it out. That sharp cuttin’ edge backed him off right quick.”

  “Reefer?”

  “A joint, you know, weed.”

  “They been back?”

  “Nope. They left real quick and I ain’t seen ’em since.”

  John used his spoon to rake the last of the sticky chocolate from the bowl and fed it to the toddler. “Was that good?”

  The sticky face belied no expression at all. He struggled to get down. John lifted him off his knee. The toddler wandered off to examine the other empty bowls scattered on the rough porch, hoping his brothers and sisters had left something.

  “Well, I know more than I did when I got here.”

  “About what?” She gave him a quick smile.

  John liked the dimples in her cheeks. “About a lot, I guess.”

  She noticed all the bags and cans scattered on the porch for the first time. “Belle, y’all get these groceries in the house, then go on out back and pick us a mess of greens. I saw some fatback in one of them sacks. It’ll taste good for supper.”

  She gave John a hard look.

  “We have a good truck garden out back. That’s where we get most of what we eat, but sometimes it don’t stretch far enough, ’specially this time of the year when things is jus’ startin’ to come up.
”

  “I figgered you had a garden. Y’all ain’t starvin’. You’re just po’.”

  “That’s how I’ve lived my life.”

  He rose. “All right, then. I might be back from time to time, but don’t be surprised when a truck comes at daylight to pick y’all up.”

  John rubbed a couple of little heads and stepped into the sunshine. When he got to his car, the woman’s voice stopped him.

  “John Washington!”

  He stopped and rested his arm on the roof of his car.

  “My name’s Rachel Lea.”

  He grinned. “Good to meet you, Rachel Lea.”

  “Not all these kids is mine.”

  When John raised his eyebrows in question, she gave a laugh. “Belle and Bubba there, the two oldest are mine. The rest belonged to my sister. She and her husband got killed six months ago and I took ’em in.”

  He waited.

  “She liked makin’ babies!”

  John chuckled and opened the car door. “So it’s you and them kids here all alone.”

  “I tol’ you the truth. Husband run off a while back and good riddance, he weren’t no’count, nohow.” She lifted a hand. “Next time you come by, you stay for supper, John Washington. I believe I’d like to cook you a bite.”

  “I might do that.”

  “Where’d you say all these groceries come from?”

  He didn’t want to tell her that Judge Rains and Ned had given him money when he told them he planned to drop by. They were constantly buying food for people with little or no means, but it was always quiet.

  “Folks that care.”

  Chapter Ten

  O.C. idly studied Frenchie’s backside as she left their back corner booth and worked her way down the long, narrow café, refilling coffee cups and visiting with her regulars.

  “What are you watching that thing for?” Ned took a cautious sip of his coffee and studied the remnants of scrambled eggs on his plate. “You’re too long in the tooth to do anything with it these days.”

  “I know it, but I ain’t dead yet. It don’t hurt to look.”