Valentine(18)
And what of Potter’s puzzle pieces that flew across the linoleum, several of them skittering so far beneath the icebox and stove that there will be no retrieving them? In a few weeks, when Corrine starts packing up his things for the Salvation Army, she will scribble a note for whoever might get the puzzle next, a little warning that some of the pieces might be missing. Because as Potter has told her a hundred times, there is nothing in this world worse than working that hard, for that long, only to discover that you never had all the pieces to begin with.
Tonight, she rises up from the kitchen floor and plugs the phone in. She calls the police station downtown and tells them that she didn’t see a license plate or notice the color of the truck, and she can’t really describe the men, other than to say that they were drunk, and white, and sounded like they were still boys.
The man is long gone when she returns to the alley. Everything hurts. But it’s a pretty night with lots of stars and Mars glowing in the southern sky. There’s a light wind blowing from the north. If she carries the radio out to the front porch and sets it on the windowsill, she might get the radio station in Lubbock. They’ve been playing a lot of Bob Wills since he died, and it will be good company.
She is still sitting out there when a truck pulls into the driveway across the street and a man who must be Mary Rose’s husband steps out. He hurries around to the passenger side, where he picks up his sleeping child. And now Corrine is struggling to her feet, moving as fast as her bruised old body can carry her. She has a knot on her forehead the size of a silver dollar, and there’s not enough Chanel No. 5 in the world to cover up the stink of cigarettes and booze, but she hurries toward the man who shifts his daughter from one hip to the other and grabs a flashlight off the dashboard before starting toward the house, its uncovered windows gazing emptily across the front yard and street, still waiting for somebody to turn on the lights.
Wait, she shouts. Wait! The little girl’s hair glows white under the streetlight and Corrine crooks a finger around her bare foot as it swings next to her daddy’s knee. When the young man tries to step around her, Corrine gently touches his arm. Is the baby all right? How’s Mary Rose? She is breathing hard and holding the stitch in her side. Listen, she gasps, tell your wife if she needs anything, anything at all, she can count on me. All she has to do is ask, and I will be right there.
Debra Ann
On a different Saturday afternoon, in a different year, she might never have seen the man. She might have been playing H-O-R-S-E at the prairie dog park or hanging around the practice field at Sam Houston Elementary, or riding her bike to the buffalo wallow to look for trilobites and arrowheads in the dry lakebed. Back when it was full of water, Debra Ann and her mama sometimes drove out there to watch people get saved. It’s something to do, Ginny always said, as she spread an old bath towel on the hood of the car, and Debra Ann climbed up, careful not to let her legs touch the hot metal. They would lean against the windshield, passing a bag of chips back and forth while the saints stood on the bank singing are you washed in the blood of the lamb and the sinners waded in barefoot, stepping right through the pond scum, faith alone keeping them safe from water moccasins and broken glass. And if a preacher smiled and waved them over, Ginny would shake her head and wave back. You’re fine the way you are, she told Debra Ann, but if you feel someday like you’ve just got to be saved, do it in a church. At least you won’t get tetanus. When they were bored, Ginny packed up the car and they drove back into town for a Whataburger. Where will we go next? she’d ask her daughter. You want to drive out and see the graves at Penwell? You want to go to Monahans and walk on the sand hills? Shall we drive over to the cattle auction in Andrews and pretend we’re going to bid on a bull?
But this spring, Ginny’s not here, and everybody is talking about the girl who was kidnapped and attacked. She was raped—the adults think D. A. doesn’t understand, but she’s no dummy—and now the parents on Larkspur Lane, including her daddy, have agreed that no child is to leave the block without adult supervision, or at least without telling somebody where they’re going. It’s insulting. She hasn’t been supervised since she was eight years old, and she’s spent most of the spring ignoring the rules, even after her daddy sat at the kitchen table and drew a map for her.
The northern edge of the approved roaming zone is Custer Avenue, and the empty house on the curve marks the southern border. The western border is the alley behind Mrs. Shepard’s and Debra Ann’s houses, where Mrs. Shepard stands and frowns at the trucks coming and going from the Bunny Club. It’s a titty bar, D. A. knows this too. At the other end of the block, where Casey Nunally and Lauralee Ledbetter live, Mrs. Ledbetter keeps a close eye on everything and everyone. She thinks nothing of grabbing a kid’s handlebars and firing off a series of probing questions. Where are you going? What are you doing? When was the last time you bathed? The other girls are two years younger than Debra Ann, still too young to break any rules, she guesses, or maybe they’re just afraid of their mamas.
She finds the man the same way she finds most of her treasures. She looks. She rides up and down the alley behind Mrs. Shepard’s house, steering around beer cans, carpenter’s nails, and beer bottles with ragged edges. She dodges rocks big enough to send a girl flying over her handlebars and headfirst into the side of a steel dumpster or cinder-block fence. She keeps her eyes peeled for loose change, unexploded firecrackers, and locust shells, swerving hard when she sees a snake, just in case it’s a baby diamondback. She catches horny toads by the dozens, cradling them in her palm and gently rubbing the hard ridges between their eyes. When they fall asleep, she gently slips them into the mason jar she keeps in her bicycle basket.