Walking Across Egypt (20 page)

At 9:30 Mattie sat down at the piano and played "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," "This Is My Father's World," "There Is a Fountain," and "To a Wild Rose." She stood, sat back down, played and sang "Shall We Gather at the River," then "Victory in Jesus."

Sitting at her dresser, she squirted Jergens lotion onto her hands, rubbed them together. She noticed for the first time in a long time how her fingers were bent, the little ones mainly. She tried to straighten one. It looks like they would hurt, she thought, but they don't. She thought about Wesley. He was better off because of her. One reason Jesus wanted you to minister to those kind was that you couldn't lose. Next, she rubbed Pond's onto her hands and then onto her face while she looked into the mirror. She pictured Wesley back inside the RC. He might tell somebody that he stayed with his grandma over the weekend, that he ate Sunday dinner with her.

Why in the world were her own children so reluctant to get married? What had she done wrong? Should she have taken them to movies showing people in love, happy marriages and all that? All this psychology. Well, there was no need to think about it. She'd done all right. They were good children. Never been in any trouble. They had jobs. She'd done all she could in keeping them clothed and fed and mothered, and she'd kept a husband clothed and fed, and sometimes mothered. She'd done a good job with all three.

She finished rubbing the Pond's onto her face. Tomorrow she'd have to start a week of collecting things from around the house for Saturday's yard sale. Or at least making some decisions about what she was going to have to take, take in Lamar's truck. She needed to call him. It was late, she'd call him tomorrow.

As Mattie was drifting off to sleep, the phone rang. It was Elaine.

"What in the world happened, Mother? Alora called and said there'd been a raid and I don't know what all—with this criminal in the house."

"There won't no raid. It was just a mess, a sort of a mess, with the nephew of the dogcatcher. Didn't you meet him? Saturday?"

"Oh, yes. I met him. Do you need me to come by?"

"No, everything's fine."

"Alora said they might charge you with aiding and abetting a criminal. She said he was an escaped convict."

"No, he's just from down the road at the RC. You knew that."

"Well, I'll come by Tuesday. Does Robert know?"

"He was here. Brought a young woman with him, but we didn't get much of a chance to talk. I wish you could have met her. She was real nice."

"Maybe I'll get a chance. Look, I'll come by Tuesday. I want to hear all about what happened."

"Okay. You come on. You can help me decide what of yours to take to the yard sale Saturday."

"Okay, bye."

"Bye."

The phone rang again. It was Carrie. "Did he do anything to you, Mattie?"

"Oh, nobody did anything."

"Did he try to do anything—you know, anything funny?"

"Oh no, he's a right nice boy."

"Somebody said they had him in jail for rape."

"Oh no. No. No. I think all he did was take a car without asking. That's all. He's never had anybody much to look out after him. He's a right nice boy in some ways. Looks right nice, if he could get a little work done on his teeth."

"Then you're okay?"

"Oh yeah, I'm fine, Carrie. Thank you for calling." After hanging up, Mattie wondered about taking her phone off the hook but decided against it. She'd heard of people doing that. She knew Elaine did it sometimes. But you ought to keep the line open. Anybody should. Somebody sick might call. If you didn't want people calling, you ought not to get a phone. Nothing worse than to call Elaine, and get a busy signal, and you know her receiver is laying on the table, off the hook.

Mr. O'Brien, the preacher, received a phone call from Clarence Vernon, the head deacon, at 10:15. After Clarence apologized for calling so late, they discussed what to do about Mattie Rigsbee's involvement with the young criminal.

"Well, the thing that bothers me," said Clarence, "is we got the convention coming up and Miss Mattie being a Sunday school officer and heading up the Lottie Moon, if this thing got out and she gets charged with something ... Then, too, it could affect our membership drive. It's just a bunch of things all together. Not that I have anything against Miss Mattie—she's as fine a person as can be. You know what I mean."

They agreed to pray about it. Clarence then called Beatrice. They decided that perhaps Beatrice should have a little talk with Mattie, that they were feeling the Lord's guidance.

To his fellow inmates Wesley described the girl who, driving an '84 Camaro, picked him up within two hours of his escape on Friday. She had money. Big money. Friday night they ate flaming food at the Radisson in High Point. Best food he'd ever had. They spent the night there. Best loving he'd ever had. The things she could do. Saturday she wanted to fly to Las Vegas, but he told her he had to meet Blake behind the 7-Eleven in Listre. They waited behind the 7-Eleven and Blake never showed. So they drove back to High Point and spent Saturday night at the Radisson. It was damned hard to believe that he could be so lucky. And she had money. Insisted on buying everything.

Sunday morning she wanted to go to church of all things—to church!—so he went along but the law was on his trail by this time, the FBI, and he fooled the hell out of them by putting on a choir deal and getting in the choir and then stealing a Cadillac, but they caught him in a chase which wrecked two highway patrol cars and he knew they wouldn't put that in the newspaper because he outmaneuvered the hell out of them, even in that big old Cadillac, which talked out of the dash and told you if your seat belt won't fastened.

Wesley told his story in the RC dining room over a supper of beans and franks, powdered potatoes, canned string beans, white bread, and canned peaches for dessert.

After lights out, Wesley lay on his back in his upper bunk with his hands behind his head. He stared through a barred window on the opposite wall at an outside floodlight, normally activated by darkness, now malfunctioning, blinking off and on. He thought about Patricia, how she wouldn't let him do anything hardly, even after he told her he loved her and that she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever known.

He thought about his grandma. He was, after all, from good blood, tough blood. She could cook better than anybody he'd ever known. He'd never known a piece of pound cake could be so moist and solid and sweet. Those biscuits were light and tasty and that cornbread crisp and hard on the outside, mushy on the inside. She was a magician.

The light outside blinked out completely. Somebody farted. The light came back on.

Maybe she would agree to keep him. That lawyer had said that if he could get a respectable relative to sign for him, then ... He'd ask her on Sunday, if she came to visit, if him and Blake hadn't already got out by then.

After Carrie's call Mattie couldn't go to sleep. She kept seeing the weekend as some kind of odd movie in her head. There was the church, the warm, waiting church with Wesley in it. She had counted on it changing him somehow. It was such a warm, welcoming place, so homelike; but Wesley had just sort of flitted through with the deputies after him, got stuck in the choir. It hadn't had time to do anything to him. It hadn't taken. But she shouldn't expect so much in so little time. He needed to go several times. If she could just get him out of the RC on Sundays and into the church, and do that for about three months, then maybe it would take.

She pulled the short chain on the headboard lamp, sat on the side of the bed, reached for her housecoat, then sweater, put them on, pushed her feet into her slippers, stood and walked to the kitchen, turning on the bedroom light so she could see in the hall, the hall light so she could see in the kitchen. In the almost-dark kitchen, she got a biscuit from the bread pan, broke it in half, put one half back, and put the lid on the pan. She opened the refrigerator to its bright light and hum, got out the quart carton of milk and poured half a glass. She remembered when they changed the spout on the milk cartons. The spout had been simple; you pulled open a little hole and poured your milk. Then they'd changed it so you had to do all that work. The first time she used the new spout she had the hardest time getting it open; then when she did, she used the same angle—for distance—she would have used with the old-style spout and the milk poured right over the top of the glass onto the table. She thought of that so often. Robert remembered and mentioned it sometimes. When it happened—so long ago—he'd laughed and laughed.

Mattie remembered how she fixed raw eggs and chocolate milk for Robert, Elaine, and Paul. One raw egg a day for each of them, beat up in a glass of chocolate milk. Paul had complained as much as the children—but it put some color in their cheeks and made them feel better whether they believed it or not.

She ate the half biscuit and drank the milk. She remembered how Paul would get up, walk to the kitchen, eat a piece of cheese and a piece of pound cake, drink a half glass of milk—only a half glass to keep him from having to get up later in the night to go to the bathroom; but he'd have to get up anyway. He might as well have had a full glass. And he always woke her up when he got up. She'd get mad about that but never told him of course, and then she'd started having to get up once a night herself. Sometimes lately she didn't miss him from the couch or from the kitchen table. But in the bed, his absence was always there.

She took the last bite of biscuit, the last swallow of milk, stood, swept the crumbs into her hand, put them into the bird bowl, rinsed the glass, set it in the sink, and went to bed.

On Monday morning at ten, Sheriff Tillman came by—holding a clipboard and a pad—to see Mattie. He needed to ask a few questions. While he asked questions, he and Mattie sat at the kitchen table with cups of coffee. He wrote down what Mattie said.

Mattie said she got to know Wesley through the dog-catcher who cut her out of her rocking chair, she didn't know anything about how he escaped, she did visit him because she realized he was somebody she could help, one of the least of these my brethren, and the reason she hadn't pointed Wesley out was because the choir was too far away for her to see who was up there.

"The choir?"

"Oh me."

"He was in the choir when we were at the church?"

"Well, I don't rightly know. That's the rumor. But it don't seem to make much difference now."

"I'll check that out. One other thing," said the sheriff, writing. "Why do you think he came back here after he stole the car?"

"Pound cake, I imagine. He knew that's what I usually have and he likes it. Oh yes, it might have had something to do with the fact that he thinks I'm his grandma."

Sheriff Tillman looked up. "You're not, are you?"

Mattie looked at the sheriff over the rim of her coffee cup. "Oh no. I don't suppose so."

"Where'd he get that idea?"

"'Cause I went to visit him; and I'm certainly old enough. He just put all that together. I think he has a lively imagination."

"Did you tell him you won't his grandma?"

"Not exactly."

"Did you tell him you was."

"Sort of, I guess."

"You probably ought to tell him you ain't, next time you see him."

"I guess so."

"He told me you was." The sheriff stood with the clipboard in his hand, stuck his pen in his shirt pocket. "Well, I think that'll do it, Mrs. Rigsbee. You obviously aren't involved in this in any direct way. I didn't think you would be, but this is my job; got to have it all down on paper, you know."

"I know. You're supposed to ask questions. I'm glad I got to meet you. I see your picture in the paper every once in a while. Do you have any children?"

"Oh, yeah, three. They keep me busy." He stepped out on the back step. "You take it easy now."

"Okay. Come back when you can stay awhile."

In the kitchen, Mattie poured cookie crumbs from the cookie jar into the bird bowl with the biscuit crumbs from the night before. Three children. She crumbled up the biscuit half she hadn't eaten, put that in, and walked to the back door. There came Alora across the backyard, looking worried. Mattie stood on the step and scattered the crumbs, spoke to Alora. Alora followed her into the house.

"What did the sheriff want?" asked Alora.

"He just had a few questions. How long I'd known Wesley and so forth, if I knew how he escaped."

"Did you know?"

"No, I didn't. Wesley told me he was on leave."

"I declare it's upset me terrible. I've started sleeping with my gun now."

"Sleeping with it? Under the pillow?"

"Yes. Don't tell that boy, if you go back out there to see him."

"No, no, I wouldn't tell him that, but I don't think he would harm a flea."

"He's a thief. There's nothing worse than a thief. You just don't know what a thief will do. I probably shouldn't have told you about sleeping with the gun."

"I won't tell him. You want a cup of coffee?"