No Way Home (12 page)

“It shows off your muscles,” Allene said loyally.

“Here he comes.” Emily squealed. “Oh, Gray, I can’t stand it. Come over here.”

“Well, all right then,” said Gray, feigning world weariness. “I may as well do the honors now.”

Allene stared at Grayson as he ambled over toward Jordan Hill and Miss Jones, the music and drama teacher, who had just come out of the double doors. She thought briefly of marching up and demanding to be introduced to him too. But what for? She wasn’t going to be an actress.

She turned away and walked toward her next class. She hoped maybe he would call out to her as she walked away, but she did not hear her name.

Jordan had enjoyed giving the talk. When he’d stepped up on that auditorium stage he had been overcome with nostalgia. The stage was so much smaller than he remembered it. It was narrow and kind of shabby, where once it had seemed grand to him. He remembered his hand trembling as he gestured with his pipe when he played the role of the narrator in Our Town. It was a character part that Lulene Ansley had insisted he should try, rather than the romantic leads he easily landed. He had been so proud of that role.

The audience was composed of high-school kids now, just as it had been then, but now they looked like eager children to him. In those days they had seemed like formidable critics. After the talk and the questions he had signed a number of autographs. Gay Jones twittered nervously by his side as they walked up the sloping floor to the auditorium doors. She blinked in the light of the vestibule behind her thick glasses.

“I can’t thank you enough for coming,” she said. “We all really enjoyed it. It’s really an inspiration for these youngsters, seeing that you came from Cress County.”

“My pleasure,” Jordan replied. “A little encouragement doesn’t hurt. It isn’t a profession for the fainthearted.”

“No, indeed,” said Miss Jones. “Would you care to join me in the faculty room for some coffee and refreshments?”

“Hey, Jordan.”

Jordan turned and saw Grayson ambling toward him, a pretty girl with black hair in tow. Usually the boy treated him coolly, addressing him as “sir,” like any polite Southern child, but putting a sardonic spin on it. Today, however, Grayson’s face had the possessive, overly familiar look people wore when they wanted something from you. Deliberately, Jordan turned back to the music teacher. “That’s very kind of you,” he said, “but I’ve got to be getting back home.”

Miss Jones smiled shyly. One of her front teeth overlapped the other slightly. “I really appreciate it. I know this was a bad time for you…”

Jordan shook her hand. “I’m glad I could come.”

He turned back to Grayson, whose confident smile had faded while he had been forced to wait, unacknowledged. “Hello, Grayson,” Jordan said. He smiled briefly at Emily.

“Grayson told me you’re his stepfather,” Emily said uncertainly. “I hope we’re not bothering you. My parents used to watch your old show all the time when we lived in Chicago.”

Jordan was surprised by the “stepfather” designation. Still, it would be hard to say exactly what he was to Grayson. These days family relationships could be difficult to define.

“She wanted to meet you,” Gray said in a stiff, apprehensive voice, and Jordan immediately felt guilty for having snubbed him a moment before. The boy had only been showing off a little to impress a pretty girl. There was no harm in it. And they were virtually related. He had no cause to embarrass the boy. “Well, why don’t you introduce me to her, Grayson?” he asked kindly. “I’d like to meet her too.”

“This is Emily Crowell,” said Grayson. “Jordan Hill.”

Jordan shook the girl’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Emily beamed at Grayson as if the boy had pulled off a magic trick. Then she turned back to Jordan. “I want to be an actress someday,” she said. “Can you give me any advice?”

“Be an actress now,” said Jordan. “Audition for every production.”

“Do you think I’m pretty enough?” she asked earnestly.

Grayson gave Jordan a sly, man-to-man smile. “I don’t know, Jordan. I don’t really think so, do you?”

“Grayson,” she wailed, and punched him lightly in the arm.

Jordan felt his smile wearing thin. He wanted to like the boy, because he was Lillie’s son, Michele’s brother. But there was something about the boy that irritated him no matter how he tried. Face it, he thought. You just don’t like him because he’s Pink’s.

“You’re very pretty,” Jordan assured her. “You just worry about learning to act.”

“Well, we’d better get going,” said Gray. He cocked a finger at Emily in a gesture that Pink sometimes made. “Come on, Emily. We’ve got class.”

“So long,” said Jordan. He watched Grayson walk away, shoulder to shoulder with the black-haired beauty. He realized that the boy had dismissed him, and it annoyed him. And he did not like Grayson to call him by his first name. He preferred the surly “sir.” He felt like calling out to him and telling him so. Lighten up, he thought. Stop acting like an old curmudgeon.

A cluster of giggling girls approached him, shuffling closer as he turned and smiled at them. They extended pieces of notebook paper and he signed autographs dedicated to them and their mothers.

“How come you have a mustache?” one of them asked boldly.

“Makes me look younger, don’t you think?”

They all giggled again and then scattered like little birds.

Jordan watched them go and then walked over to the water fountain in the nearby alcove to get a drink. As he stooped over he noticed that he was looking at one of Grayson’s campaign posters. He felt his nose wrinkle as he studied it, as if he had smelled something bad.

Across the top it read “Grayson Burdette for Student Council Vice President.” The picture on the poster had been taken in the summer. Grayson’s hair was white blond from the sun, and he was leaning against the car with a mischievous grin on his face. His arm was draped loosely over Michele’s frail shoulders, and she was looking up at him with laughing, admiring eyes.

That little prick, Jordan thought, staring at the poster. Of all the pictures he could have used, he had to use one with Michele. All the kids knew about Michele and what had happened to her. He didn’t pick that photograph by coincidence. He knew that people would be touched by it, would feel sorry for him. It was probably Pink’s idea, he thought disgustedly. No, it was too subtle for Pink.

Jordan took another swallow of water, but it tasted bitter in his mouth. Michele would probably have been proud as punch to appear on a poster with her little brother, he thought. She had adored that boy. Jordan recalled that whenever he saw Michele she had chattered happily about Grayson’s accomplishments, about how handsome and popular he was. She bragged about his ability in sports. He was a star athlete, while she was delicate and the last one picked for every team. She marveled at his high grades while she labored to keep her average up.

And now her photograph would probably help him win another victory. If she knew, she’d doubtless think it was great. But he couldn’t see it that way. It felt to him as if Grayson was capitalizing on her memory.

You’re probably just jealous, he told himself, staring at the two teenagers in the picture. Jealous that Pink still has his child and you no longer have yours. Maybe that is all it amounts to. That’s stupid of you, he thought. Michele was Pink’s child too. But still he wished that he had Grayson in front of him at that moment. He would shake him until his teeth rattled.

Well, it was a satisfying thought, he had to admit, but impractical. The kid was long gone. Mind your own business, he thought. But before he turned away, he reached up and tore the poster off the board. He wadded it up in his hands as he headed for the exit doors. As he left the building, he threw it into a garbage can in the hall.

The arrest of Ronnie Lee Partin and the announcement of the establishment of his alibi, all of which had occurred during the weekend, had done nothing to soothe the nerves of the Reverend Ephraim Davis. The reverend had suspected all along that the escapee was not the one they wanted. He had seen the pictures of Ronnie Lee Partin on the news, and he was definitely not the one he had seen down by the Three Arches on that awful night.

“Do you want another slice of cake, Reverend?” Clara Walker asked, her cake knife poised above the frothy coconut frosting.

Distracted by his thoughts, the reverend had not noticed that Bill Walker had left the supper table and Clara had been trying to clean up around him. He looked longingly at the cake, and then he lied. “No, thank you. I couldn’t.”

He got up from the table and went into the parlor, partly to get out of Clara’s way and partly to get out of the way of temptation. In thirty years of marriage, he had never cheated on his wife, but he had lusted after the cooking of other women. His travels took him to the parishes of many excellent cooks, and he paid for his vice with tight-fitting vests and belts he had to punch holes in with a hammer and awl. He had sampled the chicken, the black-eyed peas, the turnip greens, and pork chops of women across the state. But in Cress County there were few treats that could compare with Clara Walker’s coconut cake. The reverend eased himself down into a chair in the parlor and picked up the county paper, which lay on the table beside him. He could hear the hum of Bill Walker’s band saw coming from the workshop. Bill was a quiet fellow who kept to himself, but he never seemed to mind the presence of an extra person in his home. The reverend picked up the paper and put on his glasses, feeling grateful, as always, for the goodness of the people who took him in. He opened the paper and scanned it with the perfunctory interest of an outsider. When he came to the back pages he stopped and stared at the picture of the girl.

She was an ordinary-looking girl, although there was something heartbreaking about her smile. He read the plea for information from her family and felt the heartburn beginning beneath his vest at the same time.

He remembered that smile. Maybe it only seemed heartbreaking now in light of what had happened. But it was ironic that he, who paid so little attention to the doings of the whites around him, should find his dreams haunted by the little girl’s smile. He told himself that he had tried, that to do more was foolhardy, but the fact was that he was not sleeping well, not feeling well, and was not able to talk himself out of the shame and guilt he felt for keeping quiet.

He looked at the picture again. Maybe what he’d seen was not important, he told himself for the hundredth time. But maybe it was. And she was a good girl. And she had a mother and father who were suffering and who deserved an answer. Maybe this ad in the paper was just the solution. He could call the number and talk to them anonymously. It would be safer than calling the police. And it was certainly better than doing nothing at all.

Clara Walker wandered into the parlor and dropped down onto the velveteen settee with a sigh. ‘ ‘Anything interesting in the paper?” she asked.

The problem, he thought, was that the phone was in the parlor. He didn’t want to ask Clara to move out of her own parlor. She was tired. She had worked all day.

“Nothing too much,” he said. You’re making excuses again, he thought. Just do it.

As if in answer to his thoughts, Bill Walker poked his head into the room. There was sawdust in his woolly black hair. “Hey, honey, come out and take a look at this, will you?”

Clara rolled her eyes at the reverend. “He’s making me a new table,” she said. “I’m coming, honey.” She heaved herself off the sofa with a sigh and waddled out the door behind her husband. The Reverend Davis was alone in the parlor.

He walked over to the phone and then hesitated. Despite the cool dampness of the night, he could feel sweat running down beneath his cleric’s shirt. He picked up the phone and dialed the number in the paper. The phone rang three times, and then a young voice said, “Hello.”

The Reverend Davis took a deep breath and began. “Hello,” he said. “I’m calling about the advertisement in today’s paper. Is this…I’m calling for Mr. or Mrs. Burdette.”

“What about the ad? This is Grayson Burdette.”

“This is about Michele. Uh, the murder. I might have some information.”

“Who am I speaking to, please?” Grayson asked in a clipped tone.

The reverend was silent, and angry at himself for his silence. He was ashamed that he could not tell his name to a child.

“Look,” the boy said in a brittle voice, “I don’t know who you are, mister, but if you’re some kind of a nut or a psycho—”

“This is very serious, I guarantee you.”

“Then why won’t you say your name?”

Once again the reverend was unable to answer. It was not exactly the reception he had expected.

“Do you know something about my sister’s murder? How come you haven’t told the police?”

“I saw the ad in the paper. It said to call—”

“Call Sheriff Royce Ansley, mister, and talk to him. If you’re for real,” said Grayson. “Otherwise, stop bothering our family.”

Ephraim Davis heard the phone click off at the other end. He gripped the receiver for a moment with sweaty palms and then he slowly put it back in its cradle.

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF MONDAY NIGHT
, when she had agreed to help Brenda and Loretta with the Daughters of the Confederacy supper meeting, Lillie stayed in the house and waited by the phone. All day Monday her nerves were humming, so sure was she that someone would see the ad and phone. When she got home Monday night, Grayson admitted with distaste in his voice that one crank had called, but otherwise nothing. Tuesday seemed an interminable day. The phone rang a few times, never with any import, and by the end of the day she was amazed at how wearying it was to sit and wait. It put her in mind of those long hours outside operating rooms, where you did nothing except to focus your attention, your mental energy, on something you could do nothing else about. And you waited for a verdict. When Grayson got home on Tuesday night she questioned him more closely about the caller of the night before.

“How do you know for sure it was a crank call?” she said, delaying him at the supper table.