Those Bones Are Not My Child (9 page)

“The Iron Claw,” he said, suddenly up and playful, except that she could see he was serious, lunging around with the tool, fencing with the shadow the loose telephone wire made against the side of the house. He was so completely unself-conscious it floored her. She wondered if a .32 Smith and Wesson strapped to her thigh would give her that kind of
confidence. And she was wondering why she felt embarrassed and he didn’t.

The phone ringing brought the swordplay to a halt. He leaned over on one leg and put back the claw, a golfer on the green. She heard the children shoving each other aside in a race to the phone.

Hall’s partner walked up to the hedges. “Anything back there?”

“Nothing of interest. Any sign of the nephew?”

“Not yet.” Officer Eaton looked off toward Ashby.

Kofi was swinging back and forth on the door with his knees when Zala reached the front steps.

“That was Nana Cora looking for Dad. He was supposed to be down there at two o’clock. He didn’t show.”

“And she’s mad,” Kenti said, coming to the door.

“Onnaconna she was waiting for him to pick her up at the Eastern Star ’cause Grandaddy Wesley took the car to go to the lodge.”

“She still on the line?” From the doorway, Zala could see the phone had been hung up, but the heat of the house messed with her timing. “Kofi, please go to the bathroom if you need to. And cut off all these lights. It’s like a furnace in here.”

“We told her,” Kenti said, taking Zala’s hand to feel her hair. It was dry, which meant it would be a battle to comb through and braid up. Zala patted her head and went down the steps.

“We told her about Sonny. And she said Sonny was a caution. What that mean?”

“See if you can call her back, Kenti.”

“She’s not home, I told you that.”

“Beg pardon?”

Kenti tucked in her lips and backed into the house.

She had to step between the two officers and the patrol car. They seemed to be ready to leave.

“It looks like the boy’s with his father, wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Spencer?”

“Took in an air-conditioned movie is my guess, ma’am. I know that’s where I’d be,” Eaton chuckled.

“Like you said, your husband comes by to visit the children on Sundays. I’d say the two of them hooked up on their own. What do you think?”

“Well, he doesn’t come by every single Sunday,” she began, but Hall and Eaton both seemed so sure. These men weren’t rookies. They should know how things went. They’d told her already it wasn’t an unusual situation. And before Old Man Murray talked Sonny out of his bike, Sonny often rode over to Campbellton to see Spence. She concentrated on the certainty in Hall’s voice.

“So, missing the campers,” he was saying, “feeling left behind, so to speak, he went to see his father. It’s Sunday. And your husband, to make up for the outing, took him to a show, or maybe for pizza. Can you think of some regular place they would go? Six Flags, is that a possibility?”

“Makes sense, ma’am.” Officer Eaton was encouraging her with his eyebrows. “Took a drive out to Six Flags. Some Sunday crowd, phew. Or just a drive, the kid and his old man. Air-conditioned car, I bet.” He invited her to smile with him.

“The time got away from them and your husband neglected to notify you of the boy’s whereabouts.”

“Having such a good time, they got a late start heading down to the old folks. In the country, is it? They got a farm somewhere?”

“Columbus,” she said.

“Don’t discount the possibility of road trouble, either.”

“Now, I’d say that was pretty likely in this heat. And God help him if he left antifreeze in the engine. Boy, that can get sticky.” Officer Eaton was suddenly an old family friend ready to wire money to a buddy stuck on a “country” road down in Columbus, Georgia.

“They’re together, wouldn’t you say so? I think so.” It was the first time Officer Hall had smiled a full smile. He looked radiant, turning from her to his partner, then to her again. He shoved his bottom lip out and bobbed his head the way Spence did after unloading a TLC house on a handyman.

“It’ll occur to them to call.”

“Sure. They were having a good time.”

They agreed. They looked ready to throw light punches at one another’s shoulders, so pleased with themselves. Mystery solved, case closed.

She felt lighter somehow. The knot toward the top of her spine—just under the one clenched for the overdue rent—loosened. She could
see it, the two of them in one of a half-dozen cars Bryant leased out, taking a drive, the radio blaring, a jumbo pack of gum divided between them on the dashboard, singing and chewing and talking loud, without a thought for Kenti, for Kofi, or for her. She could even smile about their thoughtlessness. And she did, until the officers tried to hand her back Sonny’s pictures.

“I dunno,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around her midriff. “I’d feel better if we took a look around the campsite.”

“We can do that, ma’am, sure.”

“We can radio a unit in the area,” Officer Hall corrected, “as soon as we get a fix on the exact location.”

“There go Bobby!” Kofi yelled. He jumped from the stoop and took off.

“Is that the boy’s cousin?”

“That’s him,” Zala said. The thud of Kofi’s landing shivered in her uterus. She told herself—and was sure of it, as she began moving up Thurmond—that if Sonny were in any real danger, she’d feel it. She signaled Kenti to stay by the door and picked up her pace. She couldn’t recall her womb having taken any elevator rides in the past twenty-four hours. She’d experienced no sudden updrafts. He would be home before nightfall. She felt free for the first time since Saturday afternoon, when, coming in from the barbershop to change clothes to go teach her craft classes, she’d been derailed by “He went.”

“Damn if that don’t look like somebody with him.” Eaton came up on her right, Hall flanked her on the left.

Zala had to laugh. Tucked under Bobby’s arm was a buckram-bodied woman with one long, glossy leg. Far from demanding the machine back, her sister-in-law was apparently asking her to sew.

The streetlights came on. Moths and large bugs circled the globes. Moths were still trying to get at the old man’s hat up the street. The old lady slapped them away, but they kept coming back. The old man took it off when Zala and the two officers went by. The old lady stood up and looked at the sweaty backs of the police. Both had dark V’s in their uniform shirts. Then the old lady ducked inside the house.

Kenti waited to see if she would come out again with a spray can
and aim it at the old man. He had a bald head almost, just fringe around the back where the moths were playing around.

She watched her brother and her cousin come down the street carrying Aunt Delia’s shape between them. The big-belly lady poking the screen of her door out swung it open to say something friendly to them. Cousin Bobby had a dip to his walk, now that he was the center of attention. Then all five joined up in the middle of the street and came down Thurmond like a parade. Bobby shook his head a lot when they asked him something. He would stop walking to say what he had to say. And Kofi would have to slow up, go back, and keep in step. Kofi was carrying the tricky end, the leg stand. And when they all bunched together to ask Cousin Bobby something special, Kofi got left out at the far end of Aunt Delia’s dress form.

The old man slapped his hat back on just so he could tip it when the parade went by. It looked like the old lady wasn’t coming back out. She was going to miss the best part, all the stopping and talking and then picking up the rhythm again.

Kenti was waiting to see who was going to pile into the car and go get Sonny and who was going to get left behind. She counted everybody coming and placed each one in the cop car. They all fit, with three laps left over for her to sit on. If Aunt Paulette hurried up, they would have two cars to go in. Then no one could say, “Draw a map, Bobby, and stay with Kofi and Kenti while I go, ’cause someone has to stay by the phone.”

“Everything all right?” It was Mrs. Grier cracking her door open. She said it so sweet, Kenti’s eyes filled up. She tried to smile and nod to Mrs. Grier without blinking. If she didn’t blink, she wouldn’t spill.

“All right, then.” Mrs. Grier closed the door right on her own housecoat. It was a long time before she tugged it and the shiny orange disappeared.

Kenti tipped her head back like she had a nosebleed. The two cops looked like they were hurrying up to jump into the car by themselves. She looked up and down Thurmond for the familiar bronze car with the black top. At the Ashby end Old Man Murray was walking his bike, Sonny’s bike, the one the old man paid Sonny ten dollars for when Mama had paid Goodwill twenty-five dollars, the one Daddy wouldn’t go get cause he felt sorry because Mr. Murray’s mother had died and he
lost his job going South to bury her. And now Murray had Sonny’s paper route too. So Kenti didn’t want to look at him.

“Old fart,” she said, the way Aunt Paulette had said it. “Look like the change of life.”

A boy was coming up the Taliaferro end of the street. He had on black-and-white sneakers. The rest of him was in the shadowy part between the streetlights where the trees hung over the sidewalk. She hoped it wasn’t him. She wanted Sonny out in the woods lost. She wanted to be the first one to see him from the police car. She would lean over from somebody’s lap and tap the driver on the shoulder. She’d say, “Pull over please, there go my big brother Sonny.”

Kofi drew his legs up at the foot of the sofa bed and folded the newspaper. “Listen to this. You listening?” Kenti squashed the pillows against her ears. Kofi sucked his teeth. Wasn’t his fault only Bobby got to go. He slid the phone closer. And just to make sure it didn’t slip out of place, he propped it against the schoolbook Sonny hadn’t turned in yet.

“There was this little girl and she was your age. She was going to be eight the next day. But somebody stole her right out of her bed. And they can’t find her. You listening?” He looked toward the kitchen. His mother was slamming things around on the back porch, so she wouldn’t hear him.

“There was this boy around my age. He just disappeared. Then one day somebody found him under a trestle thing and said he musta fell from the trestle ’cause he was holding leaves in his hands when he died. You know, like he’d tried to grab hold on the tree while he was coming down. But one of the cops said he suspected foul play because the leaves couldn’t come off those trees. So he said foul play. That means not an accident. Someone offed him.”

“I know, dummy.”

“Okay. So when the parents got together and started talking to the news people, the police changed their story from accident to murdered.”

“I already knew that part. That was the boy named Andrew, like your friend Andrew, right?”

Kofi ran his finger down the newspaper looking for something
Paulette hadn’t told them already. She mostly went dah-de-dah-blah over the scary parts and only read little bits just so she could tell them to watch out, be careful, behave, and don’t take rides with strangers.

“I don’t want to hear any more,” Kenti said. “I’m mad with you. You coulda said something. You were scared, that’s what.”

Kofi put the paper aside. He couldn’t understand why such a big story as somebody knocking off little kids was crammed between a lot of furniture ads. He opened Sonny’s school book. At the bottoms of
this page
and
this page
a bunch of olden-time people in one-shoulder robes were running for their lives with their mouths in an O. And flames drawn like tongues were licking down the side of
this page
, chasing them. Some of the people ran right off
this page
. But on 95, the lava got them and all their houses and cows and carts and lumps of cheese too.

“Want to hear this? It’s about some Romans who kept living in a place where there was this volcano.” When Kenti played like she was snoring, he closed the book and slid it under the phone so it wouldn’t tip over. He searched the clock face behind the dress form. Somebody should’ve called—if not the police, then Bobby. But Bobby was like that. He was going to summer school and had to get home to study for a test. Even so … Kofi reached for the paper again. He didn’t want to read about people too stupid to build houses where no volcanoes were around.

It was quiet in the kitchen. To see her, he had to lean all the way down to the floor. Balancing up on the tips of his fingers, he could see the fluorescent ring in the kitchen ceiling. And when he leaned sideways, bracing his hip against Kenti, he could see what she was doing. She wasn’t reaching around in the cupboard behind the dishes. She was bent over with both arms wrapped around the silverware drawer. At first he thought she was taking it out to put it on the table, like maybe she’d hid something back behind the drawer. But she was only lifting it. And when she shoved it in, the drawer went in strong and everything in the kitchen rattled. It rattled him too. He almost toppled over on his head.

“You scared to go to sleep, hunh?” Kenti bopped him with a pillow and moved to the window side of the mattress and curled up.

Kofi stretched out along the foot of the bed. He looked at the living-room wall, waiting to see what Mrs. Grier would do. Sometimes when they made noise at night, she started running the vacuum cleaner
and rode it right into the baseboards to let them know. Maybe she didn’t hear the drawer. Or maybe she felt sorry for them. He sure did. He had a feeling Kenti was sucking her thumb under the sheet. He rolled over and sucked his.

Zala locked up the back, checked the windows, cleaned the fishbowl, tapped it to make sure Roger was still alive, and set it on the kitchen table. She checked the nails in the bathroom and backroom windows. She left the light on in the hall, then walked through to the front. She locked the door, pulled her bathrobe sash tighter, securing everything that could be secured.

They’d promised to call back. She couldn’t remember all that they’d said about filing a report, but she wouldn’t let them go until they’d assured her: “We’ll get back to you.” She set the phone on the floor and made sure it was plugged in at both ends. Holding Sonny’s sixth-grade reader by the cover, she shook it. Nothing fell out. She pushed her finger through the tunnel of the spine. No “illegal substances,” as Officer Hall had put it, Bobby stopping, pulling himself up tall, his chin digging into his chest, thoroughly offended by the question.