Rust & Stardust Page 14

  It had been nearly nine months already since Sally disappeared. When the garden wasn’t reminding her of this cruel truth, her grandchild was. With each milestone Dee met, Ella realized that somewhere Sally was also reaching milestones, growing up—unless she wasn’t growing up. What if the man to whom Ella had given her child had grown tired of her (how many times had she herself wearied of Sally’s constant chatter?) and discarded her?

  On March 17, 1949, St. Patrick’s Day, Ella received word from the detectives that Frank La Salle had been indicted a second time for kidnapping. He’d been indicted earlier for Sally’s abduction, a charge that carried a maximum of three to five years. Five years for destroying Ella’s life. She’d been so angry, she hadn’t been able to speak without screaming. This new indictment, the prosecutor assured her, would find him behind bars for thirty to thirty-five years as soon as they were able to find him. But there was the rub. An indictment meant nothing without an arrest. It was like a promise that could never be kept. Like promising your own child that you will never die.

  Susan and Al had come for dinner that night, Al abuzz about the indictment.

  “This is good news, Ma,” he said, reaching across the table for her hand. “Once we find him and Sally, he’s going away for good. He’ll rot in prison. For what he’s done.”

  Susan nodded, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “We still have the reward money. Maybe now the police will put up some as well. The FBI. Maybe a bigger reward will get folks to come forward. Somebody’s gotta have seen her, Ma,” Al said, squeezing Ella’s hand.

  Al was a good man. Susan didn’t know how lucky she was. When he spoke to her this way—impassioned, earnest—she almost let herself hope that he was right.

  That night, after Al and Susan took the baby home, long after Ella had retired for the evening and Daly’s had closed, the St. Patrick’s revelers were spilling onto the street, singing “Danny Boy” at the top of their drunken lungs. Outside her window, they cussed and crooned: “Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…”

  She pulled herself out of bed, her skeleton resisting, the revelers persisting, “’Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow…” She stood and pulled her robe tightly around her before flipping on her lights and descending the stairs slowly, her knees crying out in pain with each step.

  At the front door, she looked at the mat where Russell’s old pair of shoes still sat next to a pair of Sally’s boots, and she felt the sorrow she’d buried deep inside clawing to the surface. She bent over and picked up the shoes and held them to her face, feeling the soft worn leather against her cheek. When she set them back down, she grabbed her own pair of shoes and slowly slipped them onto her feet.

  How many times had she woken, alone in her bed, listening for the sound of the front door? For the sounds of Russell returning from the bar. His drunken stumbling, singing in the foyer. How many times had she felt not annoyance but relief that he’d returned? Dozens? Hundreds? Until the one night he didn’t.

  “… And if you come, when all the flowers are dying … And I am dead, as dead I well may be…”

  She opened the door and watched the huddled mass of drunken men staggering down the street. One of them must have seen her in the bright porch light, because he took off his hat and tipped it at her. “Good evenin’, ma’am!”

  In that midnight garden, the tulips with their upright spines, their violent joy, seemed to mock her.

  She returned inside and went to her sewing box and grabbed a pair of shears. Armed, she stepped back outside and marched down the steps to that ridiculous garden, where she started to lop off the heads of those tulips, one by one. But when that did not satisfy her, did not ease the ache that she now could no longer differentiate from the war being waged in her joints, she dropped to her knees and began to dig. She used her wretched fingers to turn the soil, to burrow in like an animal, seeking those buried bombs. The very roots of those persistent bulbs. She dug until her knees roared with pain and her spine was alight in fire. Then she grabbed the bulbs and hurled them like live grenades into the street where the drunken Irishmen continued with their song, staggering home to their wives, to their daughters.

  “… I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.”

  “Go home to your wives,” she yelled. “Go home, go home, go home.”

  “Ah, shut your cake hole, lady! Go back to bed!” one of the men screamed, making an obscene gesture.

  And then she wept, alone in the ravaged garden.

  SALLY

  “Sit closer,” Mr. Warner said, patting the seat next to him.

  He told Sally he’d bought the pickup truck from his boss. For two months, he’d stayed at the garage after work, fixing it up. “All of this,” he said almost proudly. “I done for us.”

  Sally looked out the truck window at the smudge of green as they drove through Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas. She felt stretched, somehow, as if she were holding on to home with one hand while her body was torn, tugged, pulled away. She could feel the ache of it in her shoulders, sinews strained to the point of almost snapping. It was the same feeling she recalled having when her stepfather died. She’d refused to leave the grave, her mother pulling at her arm. Was this why it was called “longing”?

  They had been driving for days. Three? Four? They stayed at roadside motor courts, checking in long after nightfall. Mr. Warner—she couldn’t bring herself to call him Daddy like he’d asked—would tell her to lie down across the truck’s bench seat as he checked them in. He’d always request a room that was farthest away from the motel office. Then, when he was sure no one was watching, he’d usher her from the truck and into the room. They kept the shades closed. They woke before the sun did each morning, Mr. Warner pulling her from the safety of her dreams and back into the truck. By the time the motel manager awoke, they were long gone.

  “We’re both wanted now,” he told her.

  And she’d thought about want. Wasn’t it want that got her here in the first place? She’d only wanted to be friends with those bright-eyed girls with their white teeth and shiny hair. She’d wanted it so badly (this simple, stupid thing), that she’d broken the law. Wanted. Now she only wanted not to be driving away so far away from home, with this man, her daddy, and his awful hands (her body recounted the bones: knuckles, fingers, wrists) and grinding jaw.

  “Wanted?” she asked, still peering out at the never-ending green, the impossible, oblivious sky.

  “By the law. That’s what the reward’s about. Your mother wants to keep us apart. I been trying to get back to you for years, but she been keeping me from you. She put up the money to have me arrested.”

  “But Mama didn’t know you at all when I got on the bus to the shore.”

  Mr. Warner scowled. “You really think that, Sally? That she didn’t know her own ex-husband? ’Course she knew exactly who I was. She was happy to have you off her hands at first. One less mouth to feed. It was just when we decided to go to Baltimore, she changed her mind. Didn’t want you out of state. But I’m your daddy. You belong to me, just as much as her, you see. Now stop thinkin’ ’bout all that grown-up business and scoot closer,” he said, patting the place on the seat next to him again.

  She slid across the seat, and he put his hand on her leg, squeezing. She flinched.

  “Now lean your head on my shoulder and get some sleep, Sally. We got a long way to go before we stop again.”

  Reluctantly, she did as she was told and leaned against his hard knobby shoulder, trying not to breathe in the gasoline stink of him. He hadn’t worked at the garage in two weeks, but he still carried the smell of it. It was in all his clothes. In his skin.

  A man and woman in a bright blue convertible drove behind them for nearly three hours that day. She thought about what they might see: the back of Mr. Warner’s head, his battered fedora, and her spill of curls as she leaned against him. A father and his daughter. They couldn’t know, of course; it wasn’t their fault. Ye
t Sally blamed them. She blamed all of them: the cars passing them by, the managers of the motel courts, the gas station attendants as they swiped their rags across the glass. Why didn’t anyone see what was going on inside that cab? Why didn’t anyone try to save her? It didn’t matter one bit if this man was her real father like he said he was. She wanted to go home, and he wouldn’t let her.

  “We’ll be in Dallas by tonight,” Mr. Warner said. “I’ll take you out for a nice steak dinner. Would you like that? Maybe a chocolate milkshake?”

  She nodded, but her stomach was still upset. Dallas, Texas. So far from Camden, from home.

  That couple in the car had been behind them all the way since Little Rock. Perhaps she could give them a signal, write Help me in the dust, in reverse. She looked over her shoulder out the back window, but there was nothing but an endless stretch of highway, unfurling like a dirty hair ribbon behind them.

  Dallas, Texas

  April 1949

  SALLY

  “This is where we’re gonna stay?” Sally asked, peering through the windshield. The sign said GOOD LUCK MODERN TRAILER COURT, with a flashing neon horseshoe. The trailer sat on a dirt plot just off a busy street, a faded and tattered green awning and a couple of lawn chairs out front.

  “I know it ain’t no palace, but the court’s got a swimming pool and a canteen. You can swim every day this summer if you want,” Mr. Warner said.

  “Where am I gonna go to school?” Sally asked, thinking of Mrs. Appleton back in Camden, of Sister Mary Katherine at St. Ann’s.

  “Only a couple months to summer now. Way I figure it, you start your vacation early this year. We’ll get you enrolled in school in the fall,” he said. When she scowled, he added, “I already talked to the school. They said you’ll catch up.”

  Sally shook her head. “But I’ll be behind the other kids,” she said.

  “Listen, you want me to take you back to Camden? That what you want? To a mama who wanted to get rid of you, but was too much of a coward to say?”

  At the mention of her mother, her chin sank to her chest. She thought about her mother putting her on the bus, knowing full well that he had no intention of bringing her back. Whenever she thought about her mother now it was anguish she felt, not solace. Still, maybe she had changed her mind. Sally knew they were looking for her. That was why Mr. Warner said they had to leave Baltimore, because they were wanted.

  “You said she changed her mind,” Sally protested softly. “There’s a reward for me.”

  “Because you’re an outlaw, Sally. A fugitive. How many times do I have to tell you that before you get it through your head?”

  Sally leaned against the window and closed her eyes, and tears rolled down her cheeks. He reached over and brushed them away. His voice softened. “I’m sorry, Sally. It’s just after all I’ve done for you…,” he said, looking hurt.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said.

  “Listen, let’s stop with all this fuss and go take a look-see.”

  The trailer was small, but it had a couple of beds, a kitchenette with a cookstove and an icebox, and a heater and a small lavatory. When they came out of the trailer, a woman was leaning out the open door of the trailer in the next space over.

  “Hi there!” she said, waving at them. She had dark auburn hair and milky skin. She was dressed in a pair of dungarees and a man’s white button-down shirt, and she didn’t have any shoes on. The lady looked so friendly; something about her reminded Sally of Susan. “You our new neighbors?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mr. Warner said, stepping in front of Sally with one hand extended and the other tipping his hat. “Frank,” he said, eyeing the cactus plants on either side of her doorway. “Frank LaPlante. This is my daughter. Florence.”

  “I’m Ruth,” the lady said, smiling with big white teeth. To Sally, she said, “How old are you, sweetheart?”

  “Almost twelve,” she said softly.

  “Well, it’s so nice to meet y’all. My husband just called and said he’s gonna be workin’ late. I got a pot of chili cookin’ on the stove. Would y’all like to join me for dinner?”

  Sally nodded even though she knew Mr. Warner had said they were going out.

  “And Mrs. LaPlante…?” Ruth said, leaning forward a little and looking past them, as if Mr. Warner’s wife might be hiding behind the pickup truck.

  “Her mama’s passed,” he said. “Horrible accident. She don’t like to talk about it much.”

  Sally felt her chest prick. Each of his lies felt like one of those cactus spines.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” the woman said, clutching her hands to her chest in pity and then quickly opening them to her, motioning for Sally to come closer. Without thinking at all, Sally went to her, let this stranger’s arms enclose her, and felt, for the first time in nearly a year, almost safe. Ruth seemed surprised. Her heart sped up under Sally’s ear. “Well, welcome home, hon.”

  RUTH

  “What brings y’all to Dallas?” Ruth asked the man, Frank, as she served up two heaping bowls of her famous chili for him and his daughter.

  The Good Luck was the temporary home to the homeless: migrant farmworkers like her husband, traveling salesmen, and circus folk. Drifters and grifters. Evacuees and refugees.

  “Following the work,” Frank said, nodding and accepting the bowl and then a piece of corn bread from the steaming basket.

  They sat outside at the picnic table where Ruth and Hank ate supper most nights, but tonight Hank had picked up an extra shift at the restaurant and wouldn’t be home until after midnight.

  “You and your husband been here long?” he asked her.

  “Not too long. Six months?”

  She and Hank had been on the road for years it seemed, so long Ruth had forgotten what home meant. From peas to strawberries to sugarcane, she and Hank had followed the crops across thousands of miles. They’d wound up in Texas because somebody had said they were looking for men for the wheat harvest. But they’d arrived too late, and so instead Hank had ended up washing dishes at the Sky-Vu, a busy nightclub and restaurant down the street. The clientele at the Sky-Vu was mixed: both locals and some high-rolling Dallas types. But they were all there for the same thing: good music, dancing, and stiff drinks. Hank’s boss, Joey Bonds, was married to a showgirl named Dale Belmont. She was the headlining act most nights, a singer with a pinup girl body, backed by Johnny Cola and a five-piece band. Hank didn’t talk about it, but Ruth knew that there were darker things happening at the Sky-Vu, too—bound to happen any place where gangsters congregated. She’d heard the talk.

  They’d been in Dallas since last October, but she knew it was just a matter of time before they took off again. Ruth was no gypsy, but she was living the life of one, her caravan a 1940 New Moon camper. It wasn’t what she planned, what she’d dreamed of as a girl. But really, how many women get what they dream of anyway?

  Hank barely made enough to pay for their little lot at the trailer court, so Ruth cut hair on the side for the other ladies who lived at the Good Luck. She’d have preferred to work at one of the fancy salons in West Dallas (everyone said she was good enough to do so), but she couldn’t afford a chair rental, so her clientele had to sit in the tiny trailer on an adjustable stool Hank had found at the dump. She loved washing hair, cutting it, and setting it in rollers. Nothing made her happier than making other women feel beautiful. It was her calling, she thought. With a pair of shears in her hand, she felt useful. These women trusted her, and they were the closest things she had to friends. But like her and Hank, the rest of the residents at the Good Luck were transient, and every time she started to get friendly with someone, it seemed Hank was ready to up and leave again, following this crop or that dream to somewhere else.

  “Do you have any children?” the girl, Florence, asked hopefully, peering toward the trailer door as if a gaggle of young’uns would just tumble out.

  “No,” Ruth replied sadly.

  There were no babies yet, though not
for lack of trying. But after three pregnancies and three miscarriages, she’d figured a baby just wasn’t in the cards for her and Hank. Still, each time her monthly came, she felt a distinct snag of disappointment. She’d even thought for a while when they first arrived at the Good Luck that their luck might turn. But six months had gone by, and she’d been right on time every one of them.

  But now Florence and Frank LaPlante had arrived, and the second that curly-headed girl fell into her arms, she felt the giant hole at the center of her start to fill up. This poor sweet motherless girl, and her, a childless mother, she couldn’t help but think they’d be a match.

  Plus, the girl had the most wonderful head of hair. Naturally curly hair could be a blessing or a curse, depending on what you did with it. Ruth could hardly wait to get her hands on those locks. She studied the girl the way an artist studies her subject. She was at that in-between age, such a fragile place to be even with a mama in the picture. Her body was on the edge of blooming, but her face still bore the sweet fat of childhood. Smooth complexion, round cheeks. Still, something about her looked tired, the kind of fatigue you usually saw in women four times her age. Grief had that effect on people, she knew. She wondered what sort of horrible accident had taken her mama’s life. Car crash? Train wreck? So many possible disasters.

  “You know,” Ruth said to the girl. “You have the prettiest hair. You need a trim, of course. I do hair, maybe I could give you a new ’do?”

  Florence looked up from the tin bowl of chili and smiled, her mouth twitching nervously.

  “She got her mama’s curls,” Frank said, whisking his hat off his head, revealing a head full of gray stubble. He looked old enough to be her grandfather without his hat on. He ran his hand across his head and laughed.