Late One Night

23

The news about Brandi turning Ronnie out of her house broke when Anna Spillman admitted that he’d spent the night with her. “It wasn’t like what you might think,” she said. “He just showed up, said Brandi locked the door on him, and he needed a place to sleep. Didn’t say anything more than that, and I never in the world would have thought — well, I mean, I just wouldn’t have thought it of him, would you?”

By this time, late afternoon the next day, the word was out. Missy Wade had called Sheriff Biggs that morning, who in turn had called Laverne Ott at Children and Family Services to express concern for the safety of Ronnie Black’s daughters, and Laverne, when she heard the story that Missy had told Biggs, knew she’d have to look into the matter.

It was just before noon when Laverne walked into the Wabash Savings and Loan and said to Brandi, who was about to take her lunch break, “There’s something we need to discuss.”

Brandi was putting on her coat. “I’ve got an hour for lunch.”

“Why don’t we just get that lunch together?” She handed Brandi a business card with her cell phone number on it. “So you can get in touch with me whenever you need to,” she said.

It was the waitress at the Mi Casita, Maxine New, who let it slip that Brandi and Laverne Ott had been talking in hushed tones and that Brandi seemed upset. Meanwhile, in Goldengate, Willie Wheeler was at the Real McCoy Café telling Pastor Quick that there seemed like there’d been trouble at Brandi’s last night. He’d heard Ronnie pounding on the front door and begging to be let in. Bit by bit, the word made its way around Phillipsport and Goldengate: something was out of kilter with Ronnie and Brandi, and now Laverne Ott from Children and Family Services was involved. It wasn’t long after the noon hour when Pastor Quick, who was pumping gas at Casey’s convenience store, looked across the pump and saw Missy Wade on the other side, filling up her van.

“Missy,” he said. “I’m worried about what’s going on with Brandi Tate and Ronnie Black. Seems she threw him out last night. What’s that mean for his girls?”

“So she threw him out.” Missy took the nozzle out of her tank and returned it to the pump. “Good.”

“They say Laverne Ott is involved. Do you know anything about it?”

“I called the sheriff.” Missy screwed her gas cap back in place. She opened the door of her van and got in. Before she closed the door, she said, “I had to. I’ve got to take care of those girls.”

All of this was happening while Brandi and Laverne talked at a back table in Mi Casita.

“We really ought to be talking about this in my office,” Laverne said. “Or at your home. Somewhere more private.”

“I don’t mind.” Brandi stirred a little sugar into her tea. They were in the corner along the back wall where the restrooms were, and no one else was sitting at the tables around them. “It’s not an easy thing to talk about no matter where we are.”

Laverne knew that was true. She’d seen it time and time again: a woman coming to her, ashamed, afraid to say what she suspected might be the ugly truth about a husband or a boyfriend — something not on the up and up, but the woman not wanting to believe it.

As soon as that woman said what she feared — said it to Miss Ott — she knew it became something to be investigated; she knew her life was about to change. For that reason alone it took more than one woman a while to work up the nerve. She had too much to lose — the man himself, maybe, and the way she’d always thought of him. The money from his paycheck, sometimes even the house where they’d all lived. Some women tried to talk themselves out of it, tried to convince themselves that the facts didn’t add up and the allegations were just that: talk.

Laverne had to coax the story out of so many of the women, but that wasn’t the case with Brandi. She looked Laverne straight in the eye. She said, “What Missy told you is true. I was just waiting for my lunch break to tell you myself. I’m starting to believe that Ronnie burned up that trailer. I confronted him last night, and he didn’t deny it.”

“He said he did it?”

Brandi swirled her straw around in her tea. “He was out there that night. Shooter Rowe saw him, and Angel found Ronnie’s knife behind the trailer. At first, I didn’t want to believe it, but now I know too much. He was there and he was behind the trailer and then it burned.”

“You heard the fire marshal has said it was arson?” Laverne could tell how hard this was for Brandi. “You know there’s been talk about Ronnie?”

“He pulled a knife on me. The knife Angel found and then gave back to him.” It was at this point that Brandi got shy. She bowed her head and moved her silverware about, lining up the knife and fork just so. She put her hand on her stomach. “I’m having Ronnie’s baby. I’ve been taking care of his girls. I thought I had everything right where I wanted it.”

Maxine New arrived with their lunches. She set the steaming plates on the table.

Brandi was dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. “I swear,” she said. “I thought we were going to have a wonderful life.”

Now Laverne had questions of her own. Chief among them: where was Ronnie?

Brandi didn’t know. She’d locked him out of the house the night before and hadn’t heard from him since.

At that exact moment he was pounding on Missy’s door. She looked out the window and saw the Firebird. She took a deep breath and thought about just standing there and doing nothing. Maybe he’d get tired of pounding and head on back up the blacktop.

“Missy,” he said. “I know you’re in there.”

He’d awakened at Anna Spillman’s house, and she’d told him he could stay there as long as he wanted. Then she’d gone off to work. Late in the morning, it came to him that if he were headed toward trouble — and the question Brandi had asked him about whether he set the trailer on fire, on top of the suspicion that Biggs held, indicated that he might very well be doing just that — he’d need a lawyer, and to hire one would take money.

Missy pulled the door back a crack so she could see Ronnie, but she wouldn’t open the storm door.

“You told me you wouldn’t let my girls go without.” He tried the storm door, but it was locked. “You said any time they needed something, just to ask. I want a thousand dollars.”

“Better get out of here, Ronnie. I’ve already talked to the sheriff.”

“Damn it. I need that money. I know you’ve got it in the account, and I want it so I can do right by my girls.”

That was too much for her, his claim that he was looking after the girls. “So you can make a run for it?” she said. “I don’t think so. I know that Angel found your knife behind the trailer. I know what you did, and all I can say is God save you, Ronnie. God take mercy on your soul.”

Missy closed the door, and Ronnie felt a tremendous rage filling him. How dare she turn down his request for money and then sit in judgment of him? He tromped on back down the driveway and got into his Firebird. His hands were trembling. He backed out of Missy’s drive, dropped the Firebird into first gear, stomped the accelerator, and tore up the blacktop to town.

But he didn’t stop in Goldengate. He slowed enough to get him through there without calling attention to himself, and then he went on to Phillipsport.

Brandi was with a customer at the counter when he stomped into the Wabash Savings and Loan.

DeMova Dugger was finally getting around to taking down the last of the twinkle lights they’d put around the window for Christmas, and when she saw him, she said, “Hey, Ronnie. Brandi’s with a customer right now.” The customer, Henry Greathouse, was renewing a certificate of deposit. He was a bachelor farmer, tall and gaunt in his bib overalls, his barn coat riding up in the back due to his stooped shoulders. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” DeMova said. Her big glasses had slipped down and were resting on her cheekbones. She had that cheery grin on her face like she always did and a new frosted hairdo that she was happy with, so she was in a good mood when she went ahead and said to Ronnie, “How’s life treating you?”

She had no idea what that would do to him, but what it did was toss him even further into his rage because, of course, life wasn’t treating him well at all and hadn’t been for some time.

He stopped for just an instant and gave DeMova what she would later call “a look to kill.” Then he went on toward the counter, where he crowded in next to Henry Greathouse and said to Brandi, “How in the world can you think I’d ever do a thing like that?”

“Ronnie, I’m working,” Brandi said. She tried to keep her voice even. “I’m helping Mr. Greathouse.”

Henry Greathouse took a step to the side and studied Ronnie the way he must have a hundred or more bulls in his life when he was trying to herd them and could tell they were getting chancy.

To Ronnie’s credit, he calmed down enough to apologize to Henry. “I’m sorry, Mr. Greathouse. I’m not looking to cause a scene here.”

“You need to take it easy, son.” Henry’s voice was steady. “That’s what you need to do.”

Ronnie was tired of people trying to tell him what to do — Brandi telling him not to press charges against Wayne after he clocked him with that tire iron, Missy telling him what could and couldn’t be done with the money for the girls, and now Henry Greathouse, a man he didn’t much know, telling him to take it easy.

“Damn it, Brandi.” Ronnie slapped the counter with his open hands. “You believe all this talk?”

“I’m working, Ronnie.” This time Brandi’s voice had an edge to it. “We can’t talk about this now.”

“Did you tell all this to Laverne Ott?” Ronnie’s voice was rising as if he and Brandi were the only ones in the Savings and Loan. “Did you tell her you thought maybe I—”

“I talked to her.” Brandi cut him off before he could finish his sentence. “I told her you were at the trailer that night, and I told her you pulled that knife on me.”

“My knife? I was just trying to show it to you. I was just trying to explain.”

“I can’t have you being like that around the girls. What else did you expect me to do but to talk to Laverne? Especially if it’s true that you did what it looks like you did.” Tears welled up in her eyes and her voice shook a little. “Good God, Ronnie.”

“You’re not going to cost me my girls.” Ronnie swept his arm across the counter, scattering the documents Henry Greathouse had been resting there. “I mean it, Brandi. I won’t let that happen.”

DeMova Dugger said later that she was afraid he might come after her as he was on his way out. He had that kind of look on his face. He was mad, mad, mad.

Said Henry Greathouse, “That boy was out of his head.”

Brandi asked DeMova if she could please finish up Mr. Greathouse’s business, and then she slipped back into the break room, found the card Laverne Ott had given her at lunch, and called her cell phone to let her know what had just gone on.

“I’ve never seen him so mad.” Brandi was still trembling. “I’m afraid he might go after the girls.”

“Don’t let him get Sarah and Emma after school,” Laverne told her. “Can you get off early? I’ll be waiting for you at the grade school. I’ll call for the sheriff if need be. Don’t worry, Brandi. I won’t let him harm those girls.”

As soon as Brandi got permission from Mr. Samms to leave work early, she called Missy.

“It’s Brandi,” she said. “Please don’t hang up. I know I treated you bad last night, but now I’m in trouble.”

For a long time, Missy didn’t say anything, and Brandi was afraid to go on — afraid even that Missy had already hung up the phone.

Brandi couldn’t know that Missy was standing in her house looking out the front window, distracted by the sight of Shooter Rowe in the field across the road. He was leading one of Della’s goats by a rope around its neck. He was leading the goat toward the woods at the back edge of the field, and Missy couldn’t keep from wondering why he felt compelled to do such a thing, and why he had a shotgun cradled through the loop he made with his free hand stuck into his coat pocket.

Finally, she found her voice. “He was here this afternoon. Ronnie. He wanted money.”

Brandi wondered whether he might be thinking about running, maybe taking the girls and hitting the road, or worse — and she could barely bring herself to believe this — maybe he was about to do something more horrible than that. Maybe the girls were in danger. If he’d set that trailer on fire, then who knew what else he might do, especially now when he was so mad.

“I’ve talked to Laverne Ott,” Brandi said. “We’re worried about what Ronnie might try to do. I’m leaving work early to meet Laverne at the grade school in Goldengate. We want to make sure Ronnie doesn’t try to get Emma and Sarah. Do you think he wanted money so he could run off?”

It was at this moment in the conversation when Missy saw Shooter stop a moment at the far end of the field. He got down on one knee, resting the shotgun barrel across his leg so it wouldn’t droop to the snow-covered ground. With his hand, he scratched the goat’s head, leaned in close and rubbed his face against his neck.

“That’s what it seemed like to me,” Missy said.

Shooter got back to his feet, tugged on the rope, and continued leading the goat across the snowy field.

Mr. Samms came out from his office and began sorting through some papers on DeMova Dugger’s desk. He was a tall man with narrow shoulders and a long, slender neck. From time to time, he raised his head and gave Brandi a disapproving look.

“Missy, I can’t be there for the girls every day after school.” It hurt her to have to say this, tore her up to know what she was about to ask. “I know we’ve never been friends, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Shooter slipped into the woods with the goat. Missy watched them though the bare trees. They climbed a hill and then went down the other side and disappeared from her view. Crows called from somewhere across the field. She heard the anguish in Brandi’s voice, and though she knew she’d always hold her to account for Ronnie walking out on Della, Missy couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the mess that Brandi was in the middle of now.

“I’ve talked it over with Lois and Wayne,” Missy said. “They know I can give the girls a good home, a good life. That’s what Lois and Wayne want. Brandi, Pat and I are godparents to the girls. In the eyes of the State of Illinois, that makes us relatives. That makes us someone who could get custody.”

For a good while, Brandi didn’t say anything. Then in a quiet voice — she could barely bring herself to form the words — she said, “I expect that would be best, at least for now.”

Missy heard a noise from the woods, a percussive blast she felt in her chest. Crows lifted up from the trees. She put the phone down and pressed her hands to the window glass.

“Thank you,” Brandi said. She had no way of knowing that Missy was no longer listening. She was staring out the window, waiting for Shooter to come out of those woods. “Can you come to the school?” Brandi asked. “Can you meet Laverne and me there?”

Brandi waited for a response, and when none came — and when Mr. Samms gave her one more stern look — she did the only thing she could. She put the handset back in its cradle and glanced at the clock. Two-thirty. She needed to leave for Goldengate and whatever might be waiting for her there.

At a quarter till three, she pulled her Mustang to the curb in front of the grade school. Ronnie’s Firebird was already there, parked across the street. The driver’s door was open and a Prairie Farms milk truck rumbling by had to move to the left to safely pass. She didn’t know where Ronnie might be, but she didn’t like the sight of that car door open out into the street. When he’d gotten out of the Firebird, he’d still been mad. He hadn’t even stopped to shut the door. She feared that he might already be inside the school, waiting to grab up Emma and Sarah. Maybe he’d make his way to the house and tell Hannah to come with them — maybe he’d force Angel to do the same — and then he’d take off, even if he didn’t have much money. A crazy stunt like that. Brandi had no idea what he might try to do, but none of the thoughts that came to her were good ones. She remembered the knife he’d pulled when she’d thrown him out of the house last night, and a shiver went up her neck.

She got out of her Mustang and looked up and down the street. No sign of Ronnie. No sign of Laverne. The wind had picked up, and it hit Brandi in the face as she turned to the north. The chain-link fence around the school playground shook and rattled. The snap hooks clanged against the flagpole with a banging that set her heart to pounding. Such an insistent sound, one that told her to move.

First, she slung her purse strap over her shoulder and crossed the street to Ronnie’s Firebird. She’d seen the way the driver of that Prairie Farms truck, a little man with clip-on sunglasses flipped up now that the light had weakened, had shaken his bald head in disgust as he’d swerved to the left to avoid that open door. Brandi couldn’t bear to look at it, knowing it was a sign to anyone who saw it that the life she’d thought she was making with Ronnie was coming apart. She wanted it shut.

She started to close the door, and then she saw something inside the Firebird that caught her attention. Poking out from underneath the passenger seat was one of Ronnie’s T-shirts, his favorite T-shirt, one he’d found in the Goodwill in Phillipsport. A black shirt with the Sun Records logo on the chest, that yellow disc of music notes and inside the circle at the top the word SUN in big black letters, shaded with yellow and an arc of what Brandi supposed was to be sun rays, though she could turn them into piano keys if she took a notion. A crowing rooster stood atop a yellow bar beneath that arc. The bar said RECORD COMPANY, and below that, in yellow letters, were the words, THE LEGENDARY SUN STUDIO and its address on Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee.

Ronnie was thrilled to death to find that shirt in the Goodwill. He rattled off all the big stars that had started at Sun — Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis. “What a deal,” he said to Brandi. “Cool.” That shirt was such a treasure to him, it struck Brandi funny now to see it wadded up and stuck under the car seat. She leaned in and pulled it out, meaning to fold it neatly — just force of habit, she guessed — and that’s when she noticed something that puzzled her.

The shirt, along the bottom, had been ripped. Not just a little tear. It was clear from the jagged cloth that someone — Ronnie, she assumed — had torn a strip all the way around the bottom of the shirt. A strip needed for a purpose, and though she didn’t know what that purpose might have been, she knew Ronnie would have had to have been in dire need of that cloth to ruin his favorite shirt.

She held it up in front of her to get a closer look at its now jagged edge, and that’s when she caught the scent of gasoline. She pressed the shirt to her face and breathed in through her nose. Just the faintest smell of gas.

She’d run out of gas on her way to work the morning of the fire, and Ronnie had carried some to her in a can. Could he have sloshed some on his shirt? She didn’t know. Toward bedtime that night he went out for a drive — just a little jaunt to help him work out the heebie-jeebies. Just needed to unwind a little, he said. At the time, she’d believed him. Driving did that for him, especially when he could get the Firebird out on a straight stretch of country road like the blacktop and let it go. That was all right with her. She was cozy in bed where it was warm. She was reading her baby books.

When he came back — she wasn’t sure how much time had passed; she’d been so caught up in what she was reading — he called to her from the hallway and then went into the bathroom and took a shower. He was naked except for his boxers, and he slipped into bed beside her. In the midst of all the upset after the fire, she’d had no reason to notice that Ronnie had stopped wearing that Sun shirt, and she’d never stopped to think that it wasn’t showing up in the weekly laundry. She hadn’t given it a thought until now. Nor had she given much thought to the fact that Ronnie said he made a call to Della the night of the fire, a call that wasn’t answered.

“Brandi.” She heard her name and, without turning around, she knew it was Laverne calling to her. “Brandi, have you seen Ronnie?”

She shoved the Sun T-shirt into her purse, snapped it closed, and spun around to see Laverne coming down the sidewalk in front of the school. Her long wool coat was unbuttoned, billowing out behind her in the strong wind.

Brandi held her own coat closed and hurried across the street as best she could to meet her.

“His car was there when I pulled up.” Brandi was talking fast. “His car door was open. A truck almost hit it. I went over to close it. Now what are we going to do?”

Just then, bells in the school started ringing, signaling the end of the day. Laverne glanced over her shoulder at the front door. Soon there would be students streaming out, book bags drooping from their shoulders, the coats the teachers and aides had zipped already undone, the mittens tugged on now stuffed into pockets.

“We’re going in there to get Sarah and Emma,” she said. “Come on.”

_________

At that moment, out in the country, Missy was still watching out her window, praying that any moment now she’d see Shooter come out of those woods, and it would be even better if he had that goat with him. She knew that what she’d heard had been a shotgun going off, and she waited and waited and waited. At one point, she realized that she’d put down the phone while Brandi had still been talking to her. How long ago had that been? She glanced at the anniversary clock on the fireplace mantle. Ten minutes till three. Missy picked up the phone, and even though she knew it was ridiculous — she’d been talking to Brandi nearly twenty minutes ago — she said, “Hello?” She said it in a timid voice, and it startled her to hear it in her quiet house. “Hello?” she said again, but there was no one on the other end of the line to hear her.

Brandi and Laverne stepped into the main hallway of the school, and there at the other end, crouched down to tie Emma’s shoe, was Ronnie. He was taking his time, making neat bows with the laces. Sarah was behind him, frantically searching through her book bag.

When he finished with Emma’s shoes, he put his arms around her and pressed her to him.

Brandi called out, not giving a thought to the children now filling the hallway and the teachers coming out of classrooms to see their students off.

“Ronnie,” she said.

He stood up and looked at her. Then he took Emma’s hand with his right and Sarah’s with his left, and they came down the hall to where Brandi and Laverne were standing.

“Hello, Brandi,” he said. “Hello, Miss Ott.”

“Ronnie, what are you doing?” Brandi asked.

He seemed perplexed by the question. “Doing?” He cocked his head to the side and squinted his eyes at her. “I’m picking up the girls. The way I do every day. You know that.”

Emma was tugging on Ronnie’s hand. “Let’s go, Daddy. Let’s go.”

With her free hand, Sarah was searching her coat pockets — still looking, Brandi supposed, for whatever she’d misplaced.

Ronnie let go of Sarah’s hand. He put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “We’ll find it later, sweetheart,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

The hall was emptying out, the children’s voices growing faint as they ran out into the cold day. Soon it was just Ronnie and the girls and Brandi and Laverne in the hallway, and when Laverne spoke, she did so in a hushed tone as if she were soft-talking a skittish horse so he wouldn’t bolt.

“Ronnie—” she said.

“I know why you’re here.”

“I’m going to have to talk to you, ask you some questions. You know that, too, don’t you?”

He nodded.

A clock in the hallway clacked as the second hand marked off another minute. The classroom door nearest them creaked on its hinges, and Sarah’s teacher, Cynda Stout — Tommy’s mother — came out into the hall carrying a plastic cup full of watercolor brushes. Brandi saw the way she hesitated, surprised to find her and Laverne there with Ronnie and the girls. Then she said, “Oh, Sarah. Good. You’re still here.” She reached into the front pocket of her purple smock and pulled out a pink pompom hair scrunchie. “You left this on the art table. I bet you’ve been looking for it.”

Sarah took the scrunchie, a sheepish smile on her face.

“Better put it on your hair, baby,” Ronnie said. She let him have the scrunchie and he bent over and gathered her fine hair into his hand and then deftly spread the scrunchie with his fingers and crisscrossed it around Sarah’s hair so when he was done it held her ponytail. “There you go,” he said. “That looks good, baby.”

Brandi wasn’t sure what she should feel watching Ronnie. He was so tender with Sarah. He stroked her ponytail, fluffing out the fuzzy scrunchie. How could this be the same man who had been so angry with her, the man who had pulled that knife, the man everyone thought set a house trailer on fire with his wife and children inside, asleep? Brandi caught herself feeling sorry for him — this man she thought she loved — but then she drew herself up short, steeled herself for what was to come. Like Laverne said, he had questions to answer.

She stepped up to him now. Laverne Ott. Brandi imagined she must have done this countless times, not only in her job with Children and Family Services, but in all the years she’d taught school. Again and again, she must have done what she was doing now with Ronnie, talking to him in that soft voice that was still firm, making it plain that hers was the voice that mattered here.

“Ronnie, I want you to let Emma and Sarah go with Brandi. She’ll take them home. Then you and I will find a room here where we can be alone, and we’ll have the talk we need to have. Cynda here will help us find that room, I believe. Do you understand?”

He nodded his head. Then he looked right at Brandi, and she felt her heart go the way it had that first time in Fat Daddy’s when she’d danced with him. He had that look of being lost, of wanting someone to hold onto him.

“Brandi, do you really think—”

He couldn’t go on. He swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut.

Laverne nodded to her, and Brandi took Emma and Sarah by their hands.

“What’s wrong with Daddy?” Emma asked.

Ronnie opened his eyes and forced a smile. “Nothing, doodlebug,” he said. “Not a thing in the world. You go on with Brandi now. I’ll see you later.”

Brandi said, “I bet we can find you some cookies. And Hannah and Angel will be home soon. How about that?”

“I’ll save a cookie for you, Daddy,” Emma said.

Brandi had wanted a family so badly. She’d wanted it with Ronnie. She was carrying his baby, and she didn’t have any idea what was going to happen.

Missy knew exactly what she was going to do. She couldn’t stand there at the window a second longer, waiting for some sign of Shooter. She’d heard that shot and she had to know what it meant. Pat, she knew, would tell her to mind her own business, but he wasn’t there. She was all alone. She was going to put on her boots and coat. She was going to step out into the cold. She was going to walk across that field into those woods and see what there was to find.