The Truth According to Us (14 page)

“Albania?” she stammered, and then, “Oh. Yes'm. Albania.” She paused. “It's small. I got to go, Miss Betts.” She lifted her hand in a clumsy wave.

Miss Betts returned the wave and watched the slender figure disappear. “Good-bye, child,” she murmured.

Out on Prince Street, Willa stood for a long moment, gazing in abstraction at a passing car. Then, galvanized by some invisible force, she
made a sudden lunge to her right, walking by the weary storefronts without seeing them. Mechanically, she brushed her hand over the smooth face of the wooden Indian standing outside Shenandoah Tobacco and Cigar, circled a knot of gaunt men waiting for nothing around a stairwell, and moved with an automaton's gait to the end of the block. There, wiping the sweat from her upper lip, she stepped off the curb, stepped back on, looked both ways, crossed Prince Street, and turned the corner.

At the corner, I wiped some sweat off my face and stepped off the curb. Then I remembered Teddy Bowers and stepped back on it. I looked both ways about a hundred times, and then I crossed the street.

It was heating up. Along Prince Street, I could mostly keep to awnings, but once I turned onto Opequon Street, the buildings didn't have them, nor much else, either. Opequon was just chipped brick, dirty windows, and faded signs. One sign said Cooey's Red Apple, and I wondered what it could be.

I stopped suddenly without knowing why. It took me a minute or two to realize that I'd seen my father's car, parked at the curb. He wasn't in it. I looked up and down the street. There wasn't anything on it that seemed like somewhere he would go—there wasn't hardly anything atall, for that matter. Then I thought, Maybe he's inside Cooey's Red Apple. The hot from the sidewalk sizzled through the soles of my shoes as I peered into Cooey's window. The glass was so dark and gritty, I mostly saw my own reflection, but there were people inside. I could see bodies, moving slow, like bees in a hive. I contemplated marching in the front door, but then I thought better of it. Actually, I was scared to. I decided to sit in Father's car and wait for him. I'd surprise him.

“First families.” I whispered the words to myself, wondering what,
exactly, they meant: a family that had been here for the whole hundred and fifty years? Or did they mean first the way George Washington was first in the hearts of his countrymen? The upholstery was hot against my legs. I sat and sweated, fingering my scab. Dramatic events—now that sounded wonderful. I poked through my father's hot, tidy car. I opened the little pocket that was supposed to hold maps and papers. It was empty. I turned and pushed my face over the front seat. The backseat held nothing, but on the floor was my father's case, the one he carried his chemicals in. It was a big black leather case, sturdy and solid. Near to the handle were his initials in gold. I ran my finger over them: F. H. R. For an experiment, I tried to pick it up. It didn't budge. I couldn't even move it an inch, it was that heavy. Well, but I'm weak, I told myself. I hung over the seat, breathing hard, and yanked. Nothing. I pressed down the button that popped the clasp, but it didn't open. It was locked up tight. Whatever was in there, I wasn't going to see it.

Thwarted again. I slumped back into the front seat. Chemicals cost a lot of money, maybe. He'd locked them up tight because they were valuable. I could ask him. I could say, Father, will you show me what's in your case here? And he would.

I heard a hubbub behind the car, a
creak-slam
, and a low “heh-heh-heh.” Something made me cautious, and I slid down till my head was beneath the edge of the window. Then, feeling just exactly like a Hardy Boy, I rolled over onto my stomach so I could peek out the back window. Four men in hats were standing in front of Cooey's Red Apple. One of them was short and wide. He had a white hat on, a white hat with a black band. I'd never seen such a thing in my life. Then there were two men who must have been brothers, they looked so much alike, lank and stove-in. The fourth was my father. The white-hat man and one of the brothers were laughing, haw-haw-haw. My father wasn't laughing. He was looking at those men quietly, and I felt a little thump of pride at how he was handsomer than the rest of them and more refined, too, because he didn't guffaw like they did. I guessed he was selling them chemicals, though his case was in the car.

Their voices rumbled on. I couldn't hear exactly what they were
saying, until suddenly the white-hat man clapped my father on the shoulder and said, real loud, “That's the ticket, Romeyn!” My father smiled, and I saw it the way you see things by lightning, suddenly pulled free from their tracks. This was his other world, and it didn't touch the one he had at home with Bird and Jottie and me. In this place, with these men, Father didn't talk about me or even think about me at all. He was another person altogether. It made me feel lonesome when I thought about it.

After a moment or two, they all walked away, down the street, and climbed into a car. The man in the white hat was driving. I slouched down farther and heard them pass by, heard the engine mutter down to the corner and fade.

I waited a few minutes before I sat up. I could have gotten out of the car, but I didn't. I sat, hot as I was, and thought. I'd been silly about Miss Beck, I could see that, silly and childish, and now she thought I was odd. I cringed a little inside myself, recalling it. She wouldn't ever ask me to copy her notes for her, or say in her book, Special thanks to my assistant, Wilhelmina Romeyn. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter what she thought of me, because I had other things to do. I didn't have time to be her assistant. Keeping my ear to the ground had been just as fruitful as Jottie had said. I was learning all sorts of things, like Father locked his case, and we were at the center of dramatic events, and Vause Hamilton had set my grandfather's mill on fire. And now I had glimpsed Father's other world. I was starting to know things, and I wanted more. I wanted to know about Father and his other world at Cooey's Red Apple. It was research, just the same as I had imagined doing with Miss Beck, but it was my own. I had my own research to do.

I didn't recognize my uncle Emmett's truck until it passed me a second time, backward. He bent forward and squinted into my window. “Willa? Is that you?”

“Yeah. It's me. Hey, Emmett.”

“Hey.” He craned his neck, looking up and down the street. “Where's Felix?”

“I don't know,” I said truthfully.

He nodded and pulled his truck over to the curb. I watched him as he came across the street and leaned in at my window. He was real tall, so he had to lean a good ways. “Any particular reason why you're sitting here in his car?” he asked.

Jottie always said that Emmett was a mystery. I guess she meant because he didn't talk as much as everyone else in our family and he generally looked as sober as a judge. But Bird and I knew better. He had a way of asking us questions, real perplexed and formal, that sent us into stitches. He only did it when we were alone, just the three of us. Sometimes we'd get to howling, out on the porch, and Jottie would come and stand at the door. “What's happening out here?” she'd ask, sort of hopeful and eager.

“I think these children are defective,” he'd say gloomily. “I can't understand a word they say.” He'd wave his hand at us. “And they're dirty, too.”

I giggled again now, just thinking about it. “Father went somewhere with some men,” I explained.

“And he left you here?” Emmett asked, kind of surprised.

“No. No, he doesn't know I'm here,” I said, and explained how I'd come to be in his car. “He left his case behind.” I rolled over and pointed at the floor of the backseat. “It's locked.”

Emmett glanced over my shoulder at the black leather case. “Ah.” He returned to looking at me. His eyes were the same as Father's and Jottie's, dark, dark brown. “I don't suppose you know that because you tried to open it.”

“Well. Yes.” I was surprised to hear myself admit it.

“Why?”

“What do you think's in there?” I asked. “Chemicals?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes. Chemicals. Now.” He opened the car door and gestured for me to come out. I did. “I am going to give you a piece of good advice, Willa. People pay money for this kind of service, but as your uncle, I'm going to give it to you for free.”

“Are you about to tell me to mind my own business?” I asked.

“No I am not,” he answered. “My advice is this: Don't ask questions if you're not going to like the answers.”

I folded my arms. “Well, honestly! How can I know I'm not going to like the answers until I ask the questions?”

His smile flashed bright. “Easy. You ask yourself if there's any answer that would endanger something that's precious to you, and if there is, don't ask the question.”

Endanger? Nothing was endangered. “That's silly. No one would ever find out anything that way!”

“Finding out isn't all it's cracked up to be, Sherlock,” he said. The Presbyterians' bell went four, and he glanced up, toward Prince Street. “Hey, honey, I got to get. You go on home, okay? Don't sit here anymore.”

“Okay,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “I wasn't born yesterday. I want to see you leave.”

I smiled. “Okay.” I took a step and stopped. “Say, Emmett?”

He had turned to cross the street, but he turned back. “What?”

“What's Cooey's Red Apple?” I pointed to the sign.

“Bootlegger's,” he said.

I looked toward the gritty little storefront, surprised.

“See what I mean?” said Emmett. He waited for a moment. “Go on. March.”

I started home.

In the theoretical cool of the porch, the twins were draped like wet flowers across divans. Upright and scowling at
The Yearling
, Jottie jumped at the
wheeze-slap
of the screen door. “There you are!” She patted the decayed wicker chair at her side.

“Hey,” said Willa, thumping into it. “Hey,” she said to Bird.

Stolidly chewing day-old gum, Bird grunted.

“Help yourself,” said Jottie, nodding at the pitcher of ice-tea.

“No thanks. What's a first family?” inquired Willa.

Jottie lifted an eyebrow. “A what?”

“A first family. Mr. Davies gave Miss Beck a list of Macedonia's first families, and we're not on it.”

Minerva lifted her head, her eyes finding Jottie's.

“Oh, isn't that Parker all over,” said Jottie carelessly. “He don't think you're important if you're not related to him.”

“Huh.” Willa contemplated this. “We're not, are we?”

“No, we are not, and I go down on my knees every day to thank the Lord for it,” Jottie said gaily. First families indeed, she fumed. Damn your eyes, Parker Davies, if you make my Willa ashamed.