Fadeaway Girl (7 page)

Mary-Evelyn. She was my age when she drowned,
was
drowned, her head shoved underwater until she couldn't hold her breath any longer. I breathed deeply and wondered, How long could I hold my breath?

Mary-Evelyn.
If Rose Devereau had not run off with Ben Queen, Mary-Evelyn might not have died as she did. But it's not fair putting it off on them, as they meant to come back for her. But then it was too late.

Mary-Evelyn had owned a Mr. Ree game, the same as I did. For each player there was a character, a small hollow tube with a tiny doll-like head, removable for hiding the tiny weapons a player might pick up if the cards told him to do so. The thing is, two of these tubes had turned up, Artist George at Crystal Spring and the other, Niece Rhoda, at Brokedown House, and I thought the Girl had left them as some kind of clue—to what, I didn't know. Perhaps simply that she'd been there.

For all I know, I had left them myself.

That wasn't something I wanted to dwell on.

B
ut dwell I did. It's hard on a person to think she's going crazy, especially when she's only twelve. I haven't come across many crazy people.

Over in Weeks's Nursing Home, where I sometimes went with my mother to take cakes and pies, I remembered a lot of old people sitting around with their mouths open. That looked kind of crazy, but that might instead just be what happens when you're old.

Sitting now by my toy chest, which might not be mine much longer, I inspected one of the tubes from the old Mr. Ree game: the Aunt Cora tube. I removed her head and stuck my finger inside. It would be a perfect place to leave a little rolled paper. But the two tubes I'd found, one at the spring and the other at Brokedown House, had been empty. I was almost glad for that now, for if I'd been writing messages to myself, I might soon be on the doorstep of Weeks's with a suitcase instead of a pie. Since there were never any kids there, I figured there were probably places like that for kids too.

And then I thought of Mary-Evelyn's Mr. Ree box.
Had
two tubes been missing from hers? I thought back, hard. I remembered taking the game out of her toy chest and looking at all the pieces, but I might not have noticed a missing character tube.

What if the same two pieces were missing there?

Maybe I should go back. That idea didn't appeal to me, not after what happened, not after I had almost got murdered.

But the house itself, I had to think, was harmless. Places didn't absorb the evil waves that vibrated off some people. The fourth floor of our hotel, the four small rooms up there, the floors and furniture and doors and walls: they hadn't gone crazy just because Aurora Paradise lived in them.

The Devereau house was just a house. It just happened to have been lived in by at least one totally crazy person and a couple of others that the house would have been better off without.

Take Ree-Jane's room, for instance. The bed and dresser didn't think they were better than other beds and dressers just because Ree-Jane lived there.

Ree-Jane.

Ree-Jane had been in my room; otherwise, she wouldn't have known what was in the toy chest. She could easily have taken Niece Rhoda and Artist George away. My mind moved swiftly to that ghastly-turned-wonderful ten minutes in the Rainbow Café when I'd come upon Ree-Jane sitting in
my
booth (mine and Maud's and the Sheriff's) with the Sheriff, when he showed me what she'd given him: an Artist George tube that she claimed she'd found at Crystal Spring, saying maybe that's how I contacted Ben Queen. The Sheriff had told her off in five seconds flat (the wonderful part) and later given me the Artist George tube.

Now this was not proof she'd taken Artist George from my game, because I had also found him in that stone alcove in Crystal Spring before she'd been there. But that piece might have been the one from Mary-Evelyn's Mr. Ree, and Ree-Jane could still have taken mine.

The Niece Rhoda tube Dwayne found in the woods around Brokedown House, which was near Lake Noir. I don't think Ree-Jane had ever been there; it just wasn't her kind of place; it was deserted, owlish, thickly wooded, and without anyone there to admire her beautiful self. Also, Fern Queen had been murdered very near there, at Mirror Pond, and I couldn't imagine Ree-Jane going to a murder site unless under full police escort.

T
he next morning after my breakfast of lingonberry pancakes with powdered sugar sifted across them and syrup-swarmed (Faulkner, again), I was down at Slaw's Garage.

If there was one person to talk to about insanity it was Dwayne, who worked at Abel Slaw's. Dwayne was the William Faulkner expert, which I thought unusual for a mechanic, but the mere fact of reading him would make a person an expert around here, since nobody else did.

Slaw's Garage was down the highway maybe a mile or so, and across the highway from the railroad station. An old boardwalk could be taken from near the hotel past some tennis courts. It ran parallel to the highway. People had long used the boardwalk for strolling to the post office or the general store, or to Jessie's Restaurant, which was something like the Windy Run Diner.

Abel Slaw employed Dwayne, master mechanic, and a couple other ordinary mechanics, but they were never all there at once. One was You-Boy, whose strange name he'd had from when he was little, and his mother always calling to him: “You, boy! Get in here!” Things like that.

I looked to see if Mr. Slaw was in his office, and he wasn't, which was a relief. He didn't like me going into the garage.

You-Boy was under one of the car lifts and saw me and tilted his wrench toward me by way of greeting. I heard a clanging coming from under another car, not up on a lift, and figured it was Dwayne. The car was one of those fancy foreign models, and I recognized it as belonging to Bubby Dubois, the Chevrolet dealer in La Porte. I'd rather be called You-Boy than Bubby. Imagine, a grown man still letting himself be called Bubby.

Harsh metallic sounds came from beneath Bubby's car. I don't know why Dwayne didn't just raise the car on the other lift, but then he was the master mechanic, so I guess he had his reasons.

I hoisted myself up on the stack of new tires to wait for Dwayne to roll himself out. I sat there thinking how I liked the clanging sound of metal against metal and the smell of the new rubber. Then I stopped watching myself, posing as if the photographers were all gathered at Slaw's today, taking my picture, and slid down onto the floor, then down on my knees. I had to squat even more until I could see under Bubby's car where Dwayne lay on his rolling board. He was tightening up something under the car. A caged light hung from the car's undersurface.

“Dwayne?”

He turned his head. He shook it slowly and in a wondering way, lying there on the pallet. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

My cheek was now down on the cement. Dwayne had picked up his wrench and started tightening something. The underside of a car held no fascination for me, but as he wasn't rolling himself out, I just lay down on the oil-stained floor and propped my head on my hand.

“Dwayne,” I said. “Do you think a little kid”—that was the fourth time for the kid category, and this time with “little” in front of it—“could go crazy, even insane?”

The noises stopped. He turned his head to look at me again. Even in the half dark of the car, he was handsome. Ree-Jane had a terrific crush on him; he did not have a crush on her, I am happy to say. I thought I would mention to her that there were a lot of handsome men in my life and how many could she say were in hers?

He surprised me then by pushing himself out from under the car. He said, “Are you talking about that little kid that's the dishwasher's son?” Dwayne was getting up now and wiping his hands on the oily rag that he kept in his back pocket. All mechanics had one.

“Him? Paul? No.” Paul was already insane, not going.

“Okay, so who?”

“Well, me, maybe.”

“
You?
Christ almighty, you're too ornery to go insane. Come on.” He nodded for me to follow him.

“Ornery? What's that got to do with it?” I walked after him.

“With you, everything.” On the way out he said to You-Boy, “Tell Abel I'm over at Jessie's when he gets back.”

“Sure, Dwayne.” You-Boy smiled and gave him a wrench salute, hitting himself in the forehead coming back.

Poor You-Boy. It was like something I'd do. “Wait up!” I called to Dwayne, who was now almost at the highway's edge.

We crossed the highway, then crossed the railroad tracks. I loved the old station. It was nearly as wonderful as the one in Cold Flat Junction.

We got to Jessie's Restaurant and Dwayne actually stepped back and held the screen door for me and I thanked him. I was still amazed that he'd be leaving work and going over here with me.

The restaurant was bigger than the Windy Run Diner, but it always struck me as having diner intentions. There was a horseshoe counter, and the people now sitting there could have been the same ones who sat there every day. It was clear some at least knew some others. The ones sitting at the counter nodded to Dwayne, and he nodded back and then said hello to Jessie.

I sat wondering if she had a crush on Dwayne too, the way she kind of came up to the other side of the counter as if in a moment she might be over it. Jessie was a pretty brunette, only she looked kind of worn.

“Hello, lover,” she said.

I might retch. And Dwayne took it without even a tenth of the smackdown he'd have given me if I'd tried saying something so silly. Of course I was twelve and Jessie was probably a hundred and twelve. Ha-ha.

She got him his coffee and me my Cherry Coke, and after we'd taken our first sips, he said, “So what's all this insanity stuff?”

“Remember at Brokedown House you found that little game piece on the path that you didn't know what it was?”

“Yeah. Hollow tube thing.”

I pulled the Mr. Perrin tube from my pocket and put it in front of him.

Dwayne held it up, inspecting it. He had really nice hands with long fingers, a pianist's hands, or, I guess, a master mechanic's. “The one I found had a woman's head.”

“Niece Rhoda.”

“And this one's—?”

“Mr. Perrin.”

“Go on.”

Then I took Artist Geroge from my other pocket. “This one's the tube I found over at Crystal Spring. It was behind the tin cup in a kind of stone alcove. It was missing from Mary-Evelyn Devereau's Mr. Ree game.” I leaned in closer to him so no one else would hear. “It was missing from mine too. My Mr. Ree game. And so's my Niece Rhoda tube. Like the one you found. What I'm wondering is:
was
that the one you found?”

“And somebody stole it and tossed it on the path? Is this the insane part of the story?”

Nervously, I nodded. “Was it me? Could I have done that and not remembered?”

“No.” Dwayne was turning Mr. Perrin in his fingers. “You never forget
anything
. Better if you did.”

“But the point
is
if I was
insane
—” I whispered the word, not wanting to give it too much life.

“If you were insane, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You wouldn't be sane enough to wonder if you weren't.” He drank his coffee.

“Huh?”

“What about that ditzy brother of yours?”

Will? Ditzy?

“He could've taken those game pieces.”

“But he didn't know I was going to Brokedown House.”

“He was over at Mirror Pond, you told me. Where that murder happened.”

“Oh, Will's too busy with their production to be playing tricks.”

Dwayne guffawed. “From all I've heard, I'd say your brother is
never
too busy to be playing tricks.”

I considered that, knowing it was probably true.

He said, “Besides you, who else knew what was in the toy chest?”

“In mine?”

“Yours and what's-her-name's. The little drowned girl?”

“Mary-Evelyn Devereau. I don't know about hers. But mine, I think Ree-Jane's been into mine, from something she said.”

“Well, there you go.”

“You think it was her?”

“Could be. After all, she's jealous of you, so it would seem likely she'd want to mess with your mind.”

“Jealous? Of
me
?”

Dwayne turned upon me a look of surprise. “You tellin' me you don't know that? For God's sakes, you're a ton smarter than she is, and she knows it; you've practically got yourself a whole career in reporting going, which must really get her goat; and you're prettier. Of course she's jealous.” He was getting out some money.

I sat there, gape-mouthed.

“Come on, I gotta get back to that Mercedes.” He left a tip on the counter. “Some of us have to work for a living.”

I slid off my stool, complaining. “I work for a living.”

“Oh yeah. Sure you do.”

And we argued back and forth across the tracks and the highway about working for a living.

I really wanted to discuss my being prettier than Ree-Jane.

“N
o'd bye nd neep nold—”

I was on the Britten's Market bench, listening to Ulub practice his elocution.

“First thing people notice is how you say your words. For instance, ‘ask,' not ‘ast.' ”

Somehow I felt “ask” was light-years behind Ulub's problem; I don't think he needed to worry about mispronouncing words.