Where You Once Belonged(26)

So for five years she was left almost entirely alone. She was merely here, living in a town of three thousand where everyone knew everyone else. And no one knew her.

Then everything changed, for her and for those of us who were still watching her. It had to do with her husband. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon on the last day of December in 1976 Jack Burdette disappeared. And in the end he did not return to Holt for a very long time, not until a great deal of damage had already been done.





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At first people in Holt were not alarmed by his disappearance. On the contrary, they were rather amused by it. They thought of it as a kind of joke, as another of his sudden and outlandish acts which in time would be explained, or at least accepted, as just another installment in that ongoing legend that followed him about the town.

Then he’d been gone for about a week. And it began to get about—in the bakery and the pool halls and the tavern, wherever people were talking—that he had charged some things on Main Street before he left.

We learned that on that Friday afternoon on the last day of December he had gone into Foster’s Jewelry Store and after looking at several men’s rings and old-fashioned pocket watches he had chosen the most expensive 14-carat gold Bulova wrist-watch that Lloyd Foster had to offer. And he hadn’t paid for it; he had merely signed his name to a charge slip. Then he walked out of the store with the new gold watch on his wrist and went next door to do the same with Ralph Bird.

And there, at the Men’s Store, he charged a new maroon sport coat and a pair of good gray wool slacks, a leather belt and three long-sleeved oxford-cloth shirts—all of which satisfied Ralph Bird so well (since Bird hadn’t expected to conduct any business at all in that dead time following the Christmas rush) that he decided, uncharacteristically, to throw in a good new striped tie to boot.

And Burdette thanked him. He slapped Ralph on the back and signed his name to another charge slip. Then he walked out of the Men’s Store wearing the coat and the slacks and the belt and one of the shirts—with the other things (the two extra shirts and the bonus tie and his old clothes) all stuffed into a plastic store bag. Once he was outside, he walked up to the corner to Schulte’s Department Store.

But we discovered that he wasn’t quite so successful there. It happened that old Mrs. Thompson was the only clerk available at the moment and it was she who waited on him. In no uncertain terms Mrs. Thompson informed Burdette that the store had specific limits on how much they would allow anyone to charge. Burdette took this amiss. “But look here,” he said. “You know me. You know who I am.”

“I certainly do,” Mrs. Thompson told him. “I’ve heard more about you than I ever want to, ever since you were an ornery little boy. Your mother is a friend of mine.”

Consequently, at Schulte’s, Burdette was somewhat obstructed in his Friday afternoon shopping; that is, he was allowed to charge only a pair of dark socks and a set of blue underwear. And before he left the store he must have thought better of changing into the socks and the underwear and wearing them out onto the street. Mrs. Thompson was still watching him.

Despite these new stories about Burdette which everyone in town heard and afterward repeated, people in Holt were still not alarmed. They were still amused by his disappearance and by his post-Christmas shopping spree. If nothing else, there was a good deal of joking and fun to be had at Lloyd Foster’s and Ralph Bird’s expense. People said that either man could profit by hiring Mrs. Thompson to clerk in his store. They said Mrs. Thompson would at least have cut their losses.

But then that first week of Burdette’s disappearance turned into a second week. And then gradually the jokes in the bakery and the pool halls and the tavern began to grow stale and there began to be other people in Holt, besides Ralph Bird and Lloyd Foster, who were growing doubtful that Burdette was ever going to return. No one had any idea where he was and there wasn’t anyone in the county who could imagine what was keeping him away.

It was the middle of January then. It was late on a Friday afternoon and it was at this time that Jessie Burdette came into the office of the Holt Mercury. During the afternoon it had been snowing and now it was very cold outside. There was little traffic on Main Street and the wind was blowing the dry wisps of snow along the sidewalk. Above the storefronts it was beginning to turn dark.

Jessie Burdette came into the Mercury just before five o’clock. She had the two little boys with her. TJ was almost four years old then and Bobby was almost three. They came in bundled up in their winter clothes, the boys in matching snowsuits and Jessie in a navy blue wool coat which was still loose enough that she could button it over her stomach; for, although we didn’t know it yet, she was pregnant again; she was already in her fourth month. Inside the office she sat TJ and Bobby down together on a wooden chair against the wall. The little boys looked handsome as ever and red-cheeked. She unzipped their snowsuits and smoothed the hair back from their foreheads. “Now sit still, please,” she told them. Then she stepped up to the counter and waited for Mrs. Walsh.

Mrs. Walsh was the office receptionist. My father had hired her to work in the office twenty years earlier as copy editor, and she had stayed on all those years although my father himself had retired in 1970 and had left the daily management of the paper to me. Now she stood up from her desk and approached the counter. From across the room I watched her talking to Jessie Burdette.