Stony River (48 page)

MARCH 29, 1960
. Not now. Her grief is too raw.

But one day Tereza will remember the four days Buddy gave her as the long, sappy kiss she'd always wanted from him. They were vacation days he'd said would go to waste if a grand jury indicted him for Evelyn Shore's murder.

But how could they have indicted without a body?

The cops only had three teenagers who claimed to have seen Buddy with the girl the night she went missing in a car that looked like his. Maury had said that might be enough along with everything else a grand jury was allowed to consider. They could look at his juvie record. Hear he'd been charged with trying to kidnap two girls, even though he'd been acquitted because the state hadn't proven
intent
to kidnap. They could review Linda's testimony, despite Buddy's not having been found guilty of a single charge related to her. They could fix their beady juror eyes on the pale blue skivvies the cops had found in Buddy's car and be asked to connect the dots between them and the coroner's report that Barbara Pickens had turned up bareassed even though the dead girl's mother couldn't swear the skivvies were her daughter's. The cops hadn't made any noise about charging Buddy with the Pickens murder, but Maury had advised that another grand jury might be assembled for that since Linda had testified that Buddy had taken her to the same place where they'd found Barbara's
body. Tereza had missed Linda's testimony because she was stuck in a windowless room until it was her turn to go on the stand. Maury'd had to point her out after the trial. Tereza could only stare with her yap open. She wasn't sorry she'd said Buddy had been with her the night Linda claimed he humped her. Tereza had trouble recalling what she'd done last week much less on a certain day a year and a half ago. Why not take Dearie's word for it? Maybe she
did
have bad cramps that night and Dearie went to Herman's without her. And even if what Linda said were true, Buddy's going to jail wouldn't change that; it would only rob little Lisa of a father. Tereza knew what that was like. Sometimes you had to make a decision that hurt one person in order to help another. Like Ma deciding not to call the cops on Jimmy. Or weird Miranda ratting about the knife. She'd known it had been Miranda when the cops came with a search warrant even though they said it was because of Linda's statement. Tereza was glad she hadn't told Miranda about the money; she didn't deserve to get it back. Anyway, Maury said the state didn't really care about an assault charge; they'd been waiting to nab Buddy on murder, only using Linda to get her testimony for the grand jury.

Buddy said he wanted to spend his days off with Tereza and Lisa so he could picture what they'd be doing every hour when he went to prison. “Everything will be fine,” Tereza said. “Maury will get you off.” If she said that enough times, it would come true. She'd decided to believe he was innocent so she could stop wondering where Miranda's knife had gotten to or worrying about leaving Lisa alone with her own pa. Dearie said babies knew the difference between good folks and bad; if Buddy were guilty, would Lisa look at him so sweetly?

Buddy wanted to eat only the kind of food he'd loved before he found Charles Atlas. On day one, Tereza fixed him crispy fried chicken from a recipe on the cornflakes box. Buddy said it was perfect. They stood together over Lisa's cradle, watching her open
and close her long fingers, wave her arms and pump her chubby legs. They tried to decide who she looked like more. She had Tereza's black hair (but straight, not kinky), Buddy's blue eyes and long eyelashes, and her own honey-colored skin, lighter than Tereza's. Her mouth looked like Buddy's when she cried. He took tons of photos on the chance he'd catch the devil trying to sneak into her. The film was still waiting to be developed. Tereza asked him how many girls he'd ever given rides to. He wasn't sure, maybe twenty, thirty. He hated to see them walking alone, especially when it got dark. He said most girls didn't know how to defend themselves. Tereza reminded herself how protective he'd been of her when they first met.

He hadn't killed
her
.

Parents
magazine said you could raise a baby's IQ just by talking to it. Tereza didn't want Lisa to be dumb like she was so she'd chattered to her until her voice wore thin. On day two she told Buddy, “Let her hear your voice. You're the smart one.” He read to Lisa from
Moby-Dick,
said it was his favorite book. “I never knew that,” Tereza said as they huddled together on the back porch settee, wrapped in a musty quilt and watching night close in around them.

“Yeah, I love that barnacled old whale, charging around the ocean, pursued by the evil Captain Ahab.”

“Does Ahab catch him?”

“No. It's a fairy tale.”

“If those two girls had gotten in the car, would you have taken them right home?”

“I hope so. I like that they turned out brave like you.”

On day three, Buddy woke up jumpier than usual. He cracked his knuckles so bad all morning that Tereza suggested they go for a walk. He needed the exercise for sure. She hadn't seen him do Atlas in months; the skin of his neck was sitting in folds on his collar. He looked older around the eyes and mouth, too, like time was passing faster for him than anybody else. It didn't help that he hadn't shaved
in days. They tried to sneak out the back with Lisa in her carriage, but reporters sprang up out of Dearie's garden beds like weeds.

“How many girls did you kill?”

“Where'd you stash Evvy Shore's body?”

Their questions wound around Tereza like vines, squeezing the breath out of her. Buddy lunged at the reporters, punching the air with his fists, calling them vultures and cussing until they vamoosed.

In air that was beginning to thaw after the cold winter, they pushed Lisa's carriage eight blocks to the cemetery, not a sad place if you didn't come across a kid's grave. Their shoes made sucking sounds on the squishy ground. Buddy said he wanted to be cremated like his grandfather, couldn't see taking up valuable space with his dead bones. Tereza said there was lots of time to think about that. She could picture him one day crouching on a sidewalk tightening Lisa's roller skates with the key, driving her to tap lessons, showing her how to turtle-wax the car. Tereza loved how Buddy's two big mitts could hold all of Lisa. She wanted Lisa Lange Jukes to feel like the most loved child in the world. Her birth had been like winning a prize, a chance to be a better mother than daughter. Tereza still could hear Ma saying, “You was a terror. Didn't sleep through the night, wouldn't go to bed at a regular time, didn't like to be rocked or held.” Dearie said she'd never seen a better baby, as if Lisa knew what her folks were going through. “I'm glad you'll have Lisa when I'm gone,” Buddy said.

“Everything will be fine. Maury will get you off.” That evening, after hamburgers with pickles that made her gums sting, she asked, “Could Linda have been one you gave a ride to?”

“I've asked myself that a hundred times, Ladonna. But when I looked at that girl in court I knew I'd never seen her. You don't forget somebody that fat.”

“She wasn't always that fat,” Tereza said.

They pushed Lisa to a park on day four and sat on a damp gray
bench. Even if the grand jury didn't indict him, Buddy said, his A&P career was over: the others on night shift were nervous around him; he'd be fired before long. The movie theater had replaced Tereza when she went into the hospital to have Lisa. “You should look for something full-time with more money,” Buddy said. “Dearie will babysit.”

“I've been thinking about waitressing because of the tips. Someplace I could work shifts around acting lessons. I'd like to see food go in, for a change, instead of hearing it come out.”

Buddy laughed. “I'll miss you.”

“Maury will get you off.”

He took her hands in his. “The defense doesn't get to say anything at a grand jury. If they indict me, a judge might not grant bail. I could be stuck in jail a long time before any trial.”

Tereza shut her ears to his words, swallowing the urge to puke, as she had for weeks. If Buddy went to prison, she could still see him and ask his advice about stuff, right? It might be better, in a way, because her gut wouldn't churn wondering where he was, what he was up to.

Dearie made her famous garlicky spaghetti for supper with meatballs the size of plums. They turned the dining room into a restaurant, Tereza taking orders from Buddy and Dearie—Salad on the side? Bread? Something to drink? She carried the dishes on a tray. Dearie perked up for the first time in weeks. She said that to get good tips, Tereza would need to “project” more of a personality, like an actress throwing her voice. Tereza saw herself giving impressions of famous actors; pictured people lining up for a table in her section, refusing to sit anywhere else.

That night, Buddy didn't turn his back to her, or curl up into himself and fall asleep as usual. Sitting with his naked back against the headboard, he said, “I need to tell you about something that's been festering in me.” His face looked ghostlike in the dim glow of a nightlight they'd bought so they could see their way to Lisa in the dark.

Tereza's gut sat down hard inside her. If he confessed to killing those girls, would he have to kill her to keep her quiet? She parked herself beside him but close enough to her side of the bed to get away. He reached over and gripped her hand. “I know I'm not a normal husband. You deserve better than me.”

She let out the breath she'd been holding. Maybe he was just going to tell her he liked boys better than girls. “I never turned you on, did I?” she said.

“If all it took was love,” he said, “I'd be your Casanova.”

She didn't know what a Casanova was.

He told her that, when he was fourteen, the devil had taken over his body and kicked a hole in Richie's garage. Tereza had nearly forgotten about Richie. How long ago had he moved away to who-knew-where? Buddy said Richie's mom told him that day he was brain-damaged and called the cops. He'd known for sure then that he was crazy because Richie's mom was a nurse. “The cops tied me to a chair and threatened to send me back to the loony bin.”

“What do you mean send you back? When were you in a loony bin?”

“For a few months when I was twelve. Dearie said that was a mistake, that cops and doctors didn't understand sensitive kids. But I knew it wasn't a mistake when I saw that it wasn't me they'd tied to the chair. It was the devil. They left me standing in a corner.”

“What did the devil look like?”

“Me, of course. That's what he does.” He brought her hand to his lips, stretching her arm so much she had to sidle an inch or two closer to him. Her flannel PJs rode up into her crack. She wondered if he was getting ready to break something, wished Dearie wasn't all the way downstairs.

“She made Rich go into hiding,” Buddy said.

“Who did? When?”

“Rich's mom. Three years ago. I drove him to his house after the
cop shot him, praying to any god that would listen. She went bonkers but had to let me in because I was carrying Rich. She took the bullet out with tweezers, him yelling bloody murder, me crying, scared he was going to die.”

“I'm lost, Buddy. Why would a cop shoot Richie?”

Buddy released her hand, drew his knees to his chest and started rocking back and forth. “We're cruising town and he says he wants to break into Bing's Pharmacy. Just to see what could happen. He's making a comic book about twins whose mother is sick and he wants to get it right. We climb in real easy through an alley window and stand there, hardly breathing, waiting for a siren, flashing lights, a Doberman. Nothing. So we pretend we're dropping pill bottles into a bag but we're not touching a thing. Rich is saying stuff like, ‘We wouldn't have to do this, Bart, if Ma wasn't so sick and Pop didn't drink away all the money.' I'm laughing. Then the cop rattles the front door. We should've just ducked down. He probably didn't see us. But we panic, climb back out the window and crouch behind a row of garbage cans in the alley. Clumsy me knocks one over. It was freezing that night but I can still feel the sweat coming right through my palms. All I remember, after that, was the cop coming up behind us, Rich running, the cop's gun going off, more shots and the cop falling a few feet away from me. Honest to God, Ladonna, I didn't know Rich had a gun on him. After I left his house I called the police station to tell them where the cop was. I should've seen to him right away, maybe he wouldn't have died, but I was too scared for Rich.”

Tereza felt like a bone had leaped into her throat. She clawed back through her memories: the women yakking about it in Herman's ladies' john, Dearie turning the radio off whenever it came on the news. “The cop from Stony River?”

He gave her a quick, sad smile and rocked harder. “Yeah. Dearie said if I didn't talk about it, I'd forget it ever happened. But the devil
won't let me forget. He moved into me for good that night. You don't get away with murder without him in charge.”

“But you didn't kill him. Richie did.”

Buddy was shaking now, his lower lip quivering. “He was my best friend, the only guy who really understood me, and I didn't protect him.”

Tereza drew him toward her and he let her hold him until Lisa woke. She brought the baby into bed with them and covered them all with the blanket. Nursed Lisa with Buddy's head on her lap, his thick arms wrapped around her legs, his veins like little blue rivers running under the skin. He fell asleep with a worried look on his face. She was afraid to move in case he rolled away and took his warmth from her. So she lay Lisa down beside her and sat up the rest of the night—a sharp-eyed owl guarding her chicks. She watched the moon paint the far wall with its milky light. Sniffed in Lisa's baby sweetness and Buddy's spaghetti breath. She wondered if he'd loved Richie the way he couldn't love her.