A Fine Dark Line

4

CALLIE WANTED TO EXAMINE the letters and the journal more closely, but it was almost time for supper, then it would be time to get ready for opening up the drive-in.

Saturday was our biggest night. It was the night Daddy was the most nervous. He took to wringing his hands and drinking baking soda mixed in water for his stomach.

If we had a big Saturday, we sometimes had our money for the week. Everything else, Monday through Friday, was just icing on the cake. But Saturday you had families and dates, the masses turned out to worship the gods on the big white screen.

Since Rosy Mae was off Saturdays, it had become our custom to have TV dinners, or hot dogs, or fried chicken from the concession stand. But this night, perhaps because Mom didn’t want us to forget she could cook when she had to, we had a big dinner of roast ham, bacon-dripped green beans, brown gravy, and mashed potatoes so light and fluffy you could have tossed them skyward and they would have floated like a cloud. It was as if Mom were trying to compete with Rosy. And as amazing as Mama’s food was, competing against Rosy was like trying to play against a royal flush with a busted flush.

We finished eating, and were about to go about our business, when we heard the front door open, which we seldom locked (though that would change), and we heard a voice call out, “You Mitchels in there?”

It was Rosy Mae, calling from the front door. She was leaning in, acting as if she had never been in our house before.

Mom called out, “Come in, Rosy Mae.”

Rosy Mae came, stood in the doorway of the kitchen, clutching her paisley purse to her as if she were holding a kitten.

Her head rag was gone and her woolly hair was twisted up in braids that bounced about her head like sprung bedsprings. Her black face had patches of greater darkness around the eyes and her lips were swollen and there was a cut on her lip, red as original sin. Her dress was stretched at the neck and her right shirtsleeve was torn, ripped to the shoulder.

“My God,” Mom said. “What happened to you?”

“I didn’t want to bother y’all none, but I jes’ didn’t know where else to go. My old man, Bubba Joe, he done beat the tar out of me, and I guess I had it comin’, sassin’ him back and all, but he done scared me this time. Pulled a knife. He tole me he gonna cut me up.”

Mom went to the refrigerator, broke open an ice tray, poured the ice on top of a cup towel, folded it up. “We’ll see if we can bring some of that swelling down on your eye. Poor girl. Did you call the police?”

“Nawsum. Ain’t no use in that. I done tole the po-leece before. They say it’s a personal matter, and a nigger want to beat his woman, that ain’t none of their business. Besides, we ain’t married.”

“Then you don’t even have a license to fight,” Daddy said.

“No suh, we don’t.”

“That’s not funny, Stanley,” Mom said.

Mom led Rosy Mae to a chair at the table, pressed the towel full of ice to the left side of her face, which was the side most swollen. At that angle, her hair looked like knotty snakes; she could have been Medusa.

“This is the worst spot,” Mom said.

“Yessum, he hits me mostly with the right, so it’s the worst. He hits pretty good with the left too. But he likes to hits me mostly with the right. And he got a ring on that hand.”

“What in heaven’s sake could this have been over?” Daddy said.

“I sassed him.”

“About what?” Daddy said.

“What?” Mom said. “Like it matters what. You ought to be able to sass a man and not expect a whipping.”

“Well, some women don’t know their place,” Daddy said.

“Stanley Senior,” Mom said. “I’ll tell you now, my place is pretty much where I put it. You hear?”

Daddy didn’t answer, but it was plain from the color of his face that he was embarrassed, and it was plain from the slump of his shoulders he knew it was time to shut up on the matter. It was he who knew his place.

“A man ever hit me,” Mom said, “he better never go to sleep.”

She looked at Dad as if he might be considering such a thing. He looked back, shocked.

“Yessum,” Rosy Mae said. “That’s what I was thinkin’. I get him when he sleeps. I gots me an ole chicken axe out back under a bucket. I use it to kill my fryers, but I could kill him like a chicken if he was asleep. He have to be asleep. He a big man. I thought too I could throw lye in his mean ole face. Lots of niggers I know throw lye, and it sure work good. Put your eyes out, cut the color on a nigger’s face . . . But I ain’t got no heart to do neither . . . I don’t know why I come here, Miss Mitchel. I jes’ didn’t know no other place for me to go. He prob’ly won’t bother me at a white person’s house. That’s what I’m thinkin’, see.”

“You just sit there until you feel better,” Mom said. “And let me fix you a plate.”

“That’s mighty nice of you, ma’am, but I don’t know I ought to be sittin’ here at y’alls dinner table and you fixin’ me no plate.”

“That’s another thing,” Mom said. “You work for us, you sit at the table from now on and take your meals with us.”

I saw Daddy give Mom a look, but Mom gave him one back that could have sheared the horns off a bull.

“Callie, you get Rosy Mae a fork, knife, plate and napkin. Fix her a good plate. Stanley Junior, you get her ice tea.”

Callie and I got the stuff and brought it over. When Callie set the plate in front of Rosy Mae, she patted her on the shoulder.

“Now, what did he hit you about?” Mom said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Daddy said. “You said so yourself. Just some sassin’.”

“No matter what, he didn’t have call for this,” Mom said. “But why he hit her matters to me. If, of course, you want to talk about it, Rosy.”

“He hit me ’cause I ain’t been givin’ him all the money I make here. He wants it all, but he jes’ gambles and drinks it. He been wantin’ me to go out and do another little work, but I ain’t doin’ it.”

“What little work?” Mom asked.

“Well now, Miss Mitchel, I can’t talk on that with the chil’ren here.”

Mom’s eyes widened.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yesum, that’s the work. And I ain’t gonna do it. He done run him some womens like that befoe, but I’m a good decent woman, and I ain’t gonna do none of that. Not for no one. Even if’n they beat me. He gonna kill me fo’ I do that.”

“He beat you because you told him no?”

“I sorta made it a little too clear, sassy-like. He didn’t ’preciate that none. He’ll cool down, though. He always does. When he gets off the drinkin’ a day or two and sobers up. Then he’ll be pretty good for a time. It’s ’round Fridays, when my payday come, that’s when he gets all swirly-wigged. By Monday, Tuesday, he doin’ better.”

“That gives you maybe two good days a week,” Mom said. “Rosy Mae, you don’t need to go back to him tonight. You eat your dinner, then you’re gonna sleep in the living room. I don’t want you around that man.”

Daddy was sitting with his mouth open, not knowing exactly what to say. Mom removed the iced towel from Rosy Mae’s face, said, “Now, you go on and eat. We’ll eat too.”

Rosy Mae was tentative at first, but pretty soon hunger overtook her.

“How is it?” Mom asked.

“It really good, Miss Mitchel. Needs a little salt in them green beans, but it’s real good and I thank you.”

“Salt?” Mom asked.

“Yesum. Jes’ a little, though.”

When we were finished, Mom said, “Rosy Mae, you want, you go lay down in there on the couch. We got to open up the drive-in.”

“Miss Mitchel,” Rosy Mae said. “You gonna feed me and let me spend the night. I be glad to help you in the kitchen with the fried chicken. Anything you doin’.”

“Well, there’s no real cooking except the chicken,” Mom said. “But sure. You can do that. But you get to feelin’ tired or in pain, you come in and lay down on the couch.”

“Thank you, kindly, ma’am.”

“You’re more than welcome, Rosy Mae.”

Rosy Mae finished eating, went out to the concession’s kitchen to help Mama fry chicken. I knew that was going to be the best fried chicken anyone ever had at the drive-in, or maybe anywhere else, and it would have just the right amount of salt.

Daddy sat at the kitchen table, looking in the direction of their retreat, an expression on his face like he had just awakened to find his old life was a dream and that his left foot was actually a cured ham.

Me and Callie finished eating, asked to be excused, told Daddy we’d be back in plenty of time to start helping with the drive-in work, went back to my room where we dragged out the box and Callie started reading from the letters.

“It’s all from M to J. Were any real names mentioned?”

“I don’t think so . . . I don’t know. I haven’t read all of that stuff.”

“These last pages, they’re out of a journal, or a diary . . . Well, this is odd.”

“What’s odd?”

“They’re from a diary, but the diary seems to be the girl’s diary. It reads in the same way as the letters. With it bound up and in a padlocked box, you get the idea it’s something someone treasured, but wanted to keep secret. That makes me think it all belongs to one person, this J. I guess it could belong to the girl who wrote the letters and the journal, and she never sent the letters. You know. Wishful thinking . . . Or maybe J gave them back. That happens sometimes when people break up. Back then, during the war, letters were prized more highly than now, Stanley.”

“How come there’s just pages torn from the diary? Where’s the rest of it?”

“That is odd, isn’t it?”

Callie examined the journal closely. “Here’s something interesting, though you may be too young to hear it.”

“I’ve heard more lately than I knew there was,” I said. “I don’t believe a little more information will kill me.”

“She’s talking about sexual activity in the journal. She says . . . I don’t know if I should read this to you. Maybe you should look at it.”

She gave it to me. I read it. I said, “What’s fingering?”

Callie turned red. “That’s why I had you read it, silly. I didn’t want to say it or explain it.”

“Well, I read it, but now you explain it.”

She did.

I said, “Oh,” and gave it back to her.

“She’s talking about what she and this boy, J, did. She says they did it out back in the woods, on a blanket. She doesn’t say anymore in detail, just that they made each other happy. That means they did it.”

“Did what?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Stanley, you are dense. Remember about the dogs?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I felt worse than when I discovered there was no Santa Claus. Here was something that was going on that everyone seemed to know about but me.

“You said they did it in the woods. You mean the woods where the old house was?”

“I don’t know. I think the house would have been there when these letters were written. So probably not. I think M tore these pages out of her diary and gave them to J as a kind of memento. I think that’s it, and that’s why J has M’s pages.

“I think maybe you’ve had enough of this for now. I don’t want you blowing out a fuse. You’re going to need a better hiding place for this than under the bed. Mom or Rosy Mae are eventually going to come across it . . . I’ll be.”

Callie was reading from the pages. I said, “What?”

“She thinks she might be pregnant . . . Listen to this. ‘I’m sorry about the baby. But it will be okay. Things can be done.’ She’s talking about getting rid of it before it’s born, Stanley. And here’s more. ‘Or we can learn to live with the idea. Having a baby around wouldn’t be so bad.’ ”

“What do you mean, getting rid of it?”

Callie spent a few minutes explaining.

“You can do that?”

“Some doctors will do it, but it’s against the law.”

“So J must have lived in the house in the trees?”

“I suppose. It wasn’t in the trees then, though.”

“I know that.”

“You can never be certain with you, Stanley. Thing to do, when we get time, is find out who owned the old burned-down house. That might help us decide who the box belongs to.”

“That sounds great. Like a mystery. Like the Hardy Boys. Or Nancy Drew.”

“It’s interesting, Stanley, but it isn’t exactly something that drives me to distraction. Understand?”

“Sounds to me like a murder.”

“Guess it could be that,” Callie said. “J didn’t really love her like M loved him, and when she got pregnant, he decided to get rid of her. It could have happened that way. But if he hated her, why did he keep the letters?”

“He hid them?”

“Why didn’t he just destroy them?”

“See,” I said. “You are interested.”

“I suppose. But that doesn’t mean I’m nuts to figure it out. I’m just saying, since I got nothing else to do with my summer, maybe we can take a crack at it. Maybe not. We’ll see. Come on. We got to help Mom and Daddy.”

Callie went out. I put the box in my closet on the top shelf and put a folded shirt over it and my Davy Crockett coonskin cap on top of that.

———

THE LAST SHOWING of Vertigo finished well after midnight. It was like that in the dead of summer. It got dark late, so to make two showings, you had to go into early morning.

That night they packed the place. Everyone wanted to see the new Hitchcock film. I saw none of it, of course. I was waiting for our family get-together.

I spent time helping out at the concession, and when we closed at eleven, Daddy took position at the exit to make sure no one was trying to sneak in for the last hour of the movie.

It took about an hour to clean up, and Rosy Mae’s disposition seemed much better. She even hummed a bit while she used woolen mitts to pour the grease from the frying pot into a barrel.

Rosy Mae washed the pot and other dishes, and when she finished, she asked if I wanted to go out front while she smoked a cigarette, as she was afraid of her man, Bubba Joe, and my mother did not allow smoking in the house by friend or relative.

Mom overheard us, said, “I wish he wouldn’t go out front. It frightens me to think Bubba Joe might be out there. Why don’t you go on the roof and let Stanley keep you company?”

“Yesum,” Rosy Mae said.

We went upstairs, walked a slanted ramp that opened on to the roof by a trapdoor. We stepped out just below the giant dew drop.

The last of the cars could be seen filing out of the drive-in, their lights coming on, poking at the night. I could see Buster leaving the concession stand, his thermos in his hand, walking toward the exit, moving slowly by the cars as they exited. I thought I heard someone yell “nigger” from one of the cars.

Buster didn’t look up. He kept walking.

Rosy Mae got out a can of Sir Walter Raleigh and shook some tobacco onto a rolling paper. She folded it quickly with one hand, licked, slipped it into her mouth, smooth as any cowboy.

She removed a big kitchen match from her wild hair, cocked her hip, struck it on the side of her dress, and lit up.

“Oooooeeee,” she said. “I needed that.”

She began coughing almost immediately.

“I don’t need that none. Hit me on the back, Mr. Stanley.”

I did, sharply.

“Thanks. It done went down the wrong pipe.”

“You don’t need to call me Mr.,” I said. “I’m just a boy.”

“Yessuh, but you a white boy.”

“Call me Stanley.”

“All right, Stanley.”

“This man of yours . . . Is he dangerous?”

“Scares me. I know some niggers run the other way they see him comin’. I carries me a razor.”

Rosy Mae reached into a fold of her dress and produced it, flicked it open. The blade lapped like a tongue, cut some darkness, flicked closed, went into her dress.

“He carry one too, though. And he done cut folks with his. I ain’t never cut nobody. But I did threaten me a nigger with it once. He got on my wrong side, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. But I don’t want to cut nobody. ’Specially him.”

“You love him?”

“I shuly do, Stanley. I do. I don’t know why and shouldn’t, but I do. I ought to take the ole chicken axe to him, but I won’t. He don’t do nothin’ but make me crazy and sad. He messes with other women, drinks somethin’ awful, plays them cards, shoots that dice all the time. He ain’t no good at all.”

“Then why do you love him?”

“I couldn’t begin to tell, honey. I ain’t got no reason. Men’s got their reasons, and they reasons ain’t much and don’t last long. But a woman. She ain’t got no real reason. She jes’ does.”

“But you’re scared of him?”

“I am. I loves him, but I hates him too.”

“Does he love you?”

“I don’t know he loves nobody. He don’t even love himself. And Mr. Stanley . . . Stanley. You got to love yo’self ’fore you can love most anything. Even if’n it’s a flower, or some old bush you a growin’. You hear what I’m sayin’?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You so polite.”

“So you think he could hurt you?”

“I do. But don’t jedge on him too hard. You know what the Bible say about not jedgin’ least you be jedged yo’self?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well it says that. Somewhere. Or so I been told by a preacher, but since he had his hand on my knee, I don’t know he was tellin’ the truth. I told him, you maybe ought not to jedge, but I sho ought to tell you to get yo’ hand off my knee. And he did . . . Bubba Joe, he done had it hard, Mr. Stanley.”

“Just Stanley.”

“Yes, suh. He done been put down by the white mens hard.”

“White men? How?”

Rosy Mae laughed. “Oh, chile, you just the sweetest thing. And don’t know nothin’, and that good right now, ’cause someday you’ll know somethin’ and you gonna be different. All coloreds be niggers then.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I hope you right, honey. I truly do.”

“How’s he been put down, Rosy Mae?”

Rosy Mae sucked at her cigarette, blew smoke in a little white cloud that hung about her nose, spread, and faded.

“He a man, Stanley. Jes’ like you gonna be when you grow up. Like yo daddy. He a man. And Bubba Joe, he treated like a boy. White man calls him boy, and he a grown man. Bigger than most men you ever see. He six three, weigh near three hundred pounds. Stong as an ox. And I tell you another thing. He a war hero.”

“Really?”

“That’s right. He go over there to Korea, and he a hero. Got him a wound that cause him to walk a little stiff. But when he come back, come into Dallas, he told to go to the back of the bus. Told he can’t eat with white folks. He mean ’cause of them ways he been treated, Stanley. Way his family been treated.

“When he a boy, them Kluxers, they hear Bubba Joe’s daddy stole a watermelon and a chicken ’cause his family hungry, and they take Bubba Joe’s daddy down in them bottoms and whup him good. Then they take off his clothes, and they got this big ole cottonmouth in a tow sack, and they make his daddy put his foot in that bag with that snake, and they tie the bag around his leg and waist so he can’t shake it off, and they tie his hands behind his back and leave him.”

I had a sensation like someone rubbing an ice cube along the top of my skull.

“What did he do?”

“Well, Bubba Joe get this story from his daddy, and he tell it to me on one of his good times, when he’s happy I’m with him. Say his daddy can’t just stay in the woods till either he or the snake dies, so he try to walk home. He do all right at first, then the snake slip down to the bottom of the bag, and he step on it, and it gets its fangs hung in the bag. Now, he thinks he can walk on while the snake’s hung up, and he do good for a time, then the snake works loose, and he bites Bubba Joe’s daddy, and by the time he get to the house, he done been bit, three, fo’ times.”

“Did he die?”

“Might near. But they take him over to a colored man works on horses and such, and he cuts the leg off ’cause it done turned black as the bottom of a well, and swole up big as an oak tree trunk. Bubba Joe’s daddy lives, but now he can’t work no mo’. And he turns mean. He gave some of that mean to Bubba Joe. Coloreds got reason to be mean, but it may be worse on a colored man ’cause he don’t never get to be no man ’cept in his own house, and he overdo it. He knows he goes out, he jes’ another nigger. Some little white boy comes along, he got to step off the sidewalk. Little white boy can call him boy, and he has to grin and live with it. Wears on a person.”

“Does it wear on you, Rosy Mae?”

“Yes, chile. It shuly does. But all that said, it ain’t no excuse for doin’ the wrong thing to people. They’s lots of people ain’t happy, but you don’t get no happier makin’ people unhappy. Least you shouldn’t. Well, I done smoked my smoke. We ought to go on back down see there’s anything we can do ’sides set a fire and rob a bank.”

“Rosy Mae? Do you know anything about the house that stood where those trees are?” I pointed in the direction of the pine stand beside the drive-in.

“That ole place belong to the Stilwinds. They a big important family, and they still ’round here. That house, burn down on the same night little Miss Margret Wood was messed with and murdered. And when it burn down, it burn up that young Stilwind girl, Jewel Ellen. Hard to believe how fast them pine trees growed up after that house burned down. That was in, let me see, nineteen and forty-five. ’Course, that ole oak and some of them elms and them sweet gums out to the side there, they always been there long as I can remember. They jes’ bigger.”

“Who was Miss Margret?”

“Why she a young girl then, about fifteen. I think me and her about the same age when that happen.”

“Who murdered her?”

“Ain’t nobody know.”

“Was she murdered in that house?”

“Where you get such an idea? Miss Jewel Ellen die in that house. In the fire. Miss Margret, she killed over by the tracks. Someone do somethin’ mean to her. And Mr. Stanley, you and me don’t need to talk about what that was. That ain’t for me and you to discuss. But I tell you she was laid out with her head put on them railroad tracks, an’ that ole train come along and cut it right off. That’s what I hear, anyway. They never did find her head. Say her ghost still wander down there, where the woods run close to the tracks. That’s where she was murdered. They was this man say he thought he saw an ole stray dog runnin’ along down there with that head in its mouth. But that could have been a wolf. Or a wolf’s man.”

“A wolf’s man?”

“Mr. Stanley—”

“Stanley.”

“Stanley. White folks don’t believe this, lot of coloreds don’t. But I believes there’s mens can turn themselves into wolfs and such. That a wolf’s man. Like the movie with the wolf’s man. I ain’t sayin’ no wolf’s man got her head now, I’m jes’ sayin’ could have been. It might have been an ole stray dog or other varmints. It might have been smashed like a pumpkin when that train hit her. It might have been cut off ’fo she was put on the tracks. Ain’t no one ever find Miss Margret’s head. But they say her ghost down there lookin’ for her head most nights and I believe that. I ain’t never seen it myself, but I done hear on it plenty from them has.”

“What started the fire?”

“Oh, chile, I don’t know. I jes’ remember it burnin’ down and that sweet Jewel Ellen burning up.”

“You knew her?”

“I know’d them all. My mama used to wash the mess out of that whole family’s drawers, and that Miss Margret, she live on across town in the lesser part. You see, this here used to be money here. Right where the drive-in stand. Then money move on over there a ways. You know all them big pretty houses ’cross the highway?”

“Yes, ma’am. Well, I know they’re there. I’ve never really looked at them.”

“I don’t know lookin’ such a good idea. I look over there, I feel how that Lot’s wife felt in the Bible when she looked back on stuff she wanted, and God turn her to that pillar of salt. ’Course, she least got to have it oncet. I ain’t never had it none. Ain’t never gonna. Ain’t no need for God to turn me to nothin’ for lookin’ back. There ain’t no lookin’ back. Place I live ain’t nothin’ but a nigger rent house. I don’t be lookin’ forward or back.”

“What about Margret?”

“Miss Margret live over on the other side of town, ’cross them tracks. It’s the place where the poor whites live, down by the swamp land. Their house set off a bit from the others.

“Miss Margret was poor, but seemed like she had it pretty good to me. My momma would have jes’ wanted to move us up that much. For her, it would have been a castle. Miss Margret had a yard out back, even if it was wet land, and the house was painted up white and nice, and it was big enough she might have had her own bedroom. And Miss Margret, she jes’ as pretty as could be. Had dark hair and dark eyes and this real pretty skin, and she smile, she got a big smile, and a big silver tooth right next to these front two.

“I use to see her ’round. She didn’t have no daddy ’cause he run off when Miss Margret born. That’s how I heard it. I think he was some kind of Mex’kin and white man mixed up, or some such thing, and her mama got some Indi’n blood.”

“So they weren’t really white?”

“Well, when you a colored girl, they white. Miss Margret look like she gonna grow up to be a movie star, she so pretty. I really liked that tooth, though I don’t know white people would make no movie star out of some girl with a silver tooth.

“I hear her mama was kinda mean, though. Really don’t know much about ’em ’sides little Miss Margret was nice. Both her and that Jewel Ellen was nice. That brother of Jewel Ellen, James Ray, he not always so nice. He pinch me on my bottom oncet. I’m on the street, carryin’ white people’s wash home to be done by my mama, and he pinch me on the rear end and laugh and say he give me money I do somethin’ for him. I got away from there real quick.”

I thought: M for Margret and J for James. Some of the mystery was coming together.

“Is James still around?”

“After they house burned down, he growed up, lived on the hill over there where the money is. Guess he still live there. He own a big store downtown. Men’s shop with suits and the little drugstore next to it, and the picture show. Colored can buy hamburgers and get a pop out back the drugstore. Movie house has a big upstairs and it’s where the colored go. But, James Ray, I don’t really know so much about him. He don’t ’vite me over for supper, you see. All I remember was him wantin’ to pinch my bottom, and I wasn’t but a girl.

“Come on, now. I don’t want no one thinkin’ I’m takin’ leave ’cause your momma been nice to me. Let’s go down see there’s anything left we can do . . . And, Stanley, you tell me. I shouldn’t have mentioned that salt in them green beans, should I?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I know’d it when I done it. But I jes’ couldn’t helps myself.”

———

THAT NIGHT after the drive-in was closed and Rosy Mae was given a place to sleep on the couch, I slipped out of my room, leaving Nub to curl up on my bed, opened Callie’s door, stuck my head inside. “Callie?”

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I wanted to talk.”

“You’ve talked to me more in the last two days than since the time you learned to talk.”

“I found out some stuff about the old house that burned down.”

“Oh . . . Come in.”

I sat on the foot of her bed. Callie sat up in bed and turned her face toward me. I couldn’t make out her features completely. Her dark hair was undone and fell down to her shoulders. In the moonlight I could see a bit of her face and the horse designs on her pajamas. The water-cooled fan beat the warm air into near submission.

“What do you know?” she asked.

I told her what Rosy Mae told me.

“That’s kind of creepy, Stanley. To think a little girl burned up right over there.”

“What’s creepy,” I said, “is that a little girl named Margret was murdered on the same night as Jewel Ellen Stilwind died, and her brother’s name was James. Don’t you think it’s odd, Callie, that the letters we have are from an M to a J? Margret to James, who got her pregnant.”

“It may not be connected at all. You certainly didn’t even know how a girl got pregnant until I told you.”

“I know now. Come on, it’s interesting? Right?”

“Tomorrow, maybe we’ll look into it. Right now, I got to sleep. I’m exhausted. Beat it.”

I told Callie what Rosy said about Margret’s ghost, about her missing head and the wolf’s man.

“Oh, poo. I don’t believe that. Coloreds are always telling ghost stories. Besides, I don’t want to hear that right now. This whole thing is kind of scary to me and I don’t want bad dreams. Now beat it.”

“It isn’t any harder for this to be connected, than believing someone stuck that balloon through your window when your bedroom was downstairs.”

“Stanley, you little shit, get out of my room.”

I beat it with regrets, knowing full well I shouldn’t have added that zinger, not if I wanted Callie’s help. But, heck, it was the brotherly thing to do; I couldn’t help myself.

I didn’t go right to sleep. I got the letters out from under my bed and looked at them. I read the journal carefully. Nothing in the letters or the journal mentioned Margret’s last name. But I was convinced these letters had been to James and that Margret had torn out the journal pages and given them to him, maybe to keep her mother from seeing them, or as a gesture of some kind.

I put the letters and pages up, went to bed, dreamed of a decapitated girl walking along the railroad tracks, searching for her missing head. I dreamed too of a wolf’s man, as Rosy called it, running through the brush with Margret’s head in its mouth.