Where the Heart Is (6 page)

“Yeah, you do. One. This one.”

The sheriff got the number from the long-distance operator, then dialed. When it started to ring, he pushed the phone across the desk, smiled again, and said, “One.”

Willy Jack cleared his throat, then put the receiver to his ear. On the third ring, he scooted up to the edge of his chair. By the eighth, he was biting at his lip and twisting the phone cord beneath his fist. At ten, he started whispering. “Ten Mississippi . . . eleven Mississippi .

. . twelve . . .”

The receiver was slick and the sound coming through it was distorted, like an alarm echoing through a tunnel.

The sheriff held up his index finger and mouthed the word, “One.”

“Twenty-one Mississippi . . . twenty-two . . .”

Suddenly, Willy Jack shot up out of his chair and hammered the receiver across the edge of the desk, sending splinters of plastic flying across the room. Then, Willy Jack bellowed, the words roaring out of his mouth like sounds riding on strong winds.

“God-dammit!” he shrieked. “Answer the phone. Answer the goddamned phone.”

One of them hit him just below his ear. The other one took him to the floor, but Willy Jack managed to hang on to a piece of the receiver.

He heard someone speaking, but he didn’t know who. A child somewhere whimpering in the dark.

“Thirty-one Mississippi . . . thirty-two . . .”

NOVALEE HARDLY MOVED when the first alarm went off, but when the second one sounded, she turned and stretched inside the sleeping bag, slow and sluggish like a caterpillar nestling in its co-coon. The third alarm, an irritating whistle, got her moving, wiggling out of the bag, then plodding down the aisle to the clock counter. She always set three alarms for fear the first employee to arrive would discover her sleeping—a Goldilocks without her bears.

She had not needed alarms in the beginning when she hardly slept more than minutes at a time. Strange noises would jerk her from dreams and leave her rigid with fear, her eyes creating monsters in the shadows of coffeepots and hunting jackets. But once she got used to the building, got to know the look of the dark and the feel of the sounds, sharp and metallic, she began to sink into sleep too thick for sounds to slip through.

She rolled up her sleeping bag, then stuffed it behind the others at the bottom of a shelf. A sharp pain poked at her lower back when she straightened, but she rubbed it away as she shuffled to the bathroom at the back of the store.

She splashed her face with cold water, then brushed her teeth.

When she pulled the nightshirt off, she stood on tiptoes to see her belly in the mirror. Her skin was stretched so tight it looked like the color of thin milk. She ran her fingers across her navel and thought of the baby attached to the other side of it, imagining it could feel her touch so that it might even reach out to her.

The sound of the garbage truck behind the store jarred her from the daydream. She washed and dried herself with paper towels, then dressed quickly in the blue pantsuit she had picked from the maternity rack in ladieswear, the one she alternated with the tent dress she was wearing the day she arrived. She washed both outfits on Sunday nights when the store closed early, so they would have the extra few hours to dry.

She was combing her hair when the back door slammed. Her heart raced as she crammed her things inside the beach bag, then turned off the light.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she whispered to herself, angry that someone had arrived so early. She waited until footsteps echoed off the plastic tiles out front, then stepped soundlessly out of the bathroom, slipped around the corner and squeezed into her hiding place, the closet housing the hot water tank. She held her breath as she eased the door closed behind her.

These were the times she hated most . . . hiding before the store opened and after it closed. The airless little closet was too small for a chair, or even a stool, so Novalee had to stand, wedged between the door and the tank. And the bigger she got, the less room she had.

She had tried other hiding places, but they didn’t feel as safe. The first couple of weeks she was there, she had climbed a shaky ladder to a crawl hole into the attic, but the height made her dizzy. Then, she made a space for herself in the storage room by rearranging large cardboard boxes of pillows. But a few days later, a stock boy taking inventory came within inches of her before he was called to the front.

That’s when she found the hot water tank closet.

She usually stayed hidden about an hour in the mornings, a little less if everyone was on time. She counted them as they came in, all eighteen of the morning crew. But they fooled her occasionally, when two or three came in together. One morning she stayed hidden for over two hours, waiting for a straggler to arrive.

Novalee’s stomach growled then, so loud she was afraid whoever was out front could hear it. She wished for biscuits and gravy, but would settle for the granola bar and peanut butter in her bag. She had given up Paydays and Pepsis after the first few days in Wal-Mart, but she still worried she wasn’t eating right for the baby.

When she was sure the morning crew had arrived, she opened the closet door just a crack, checked the stock room, then slipped out and crossed quickly to the tool locker. She lifted the buckeye tree out, then hurried to the employee entrance and stepped outside.

The day was already hot. By the time she walked the half block to the stop light, her hair was plastered to her neck and her blouse was wet across the shoulders, but she still had a long walk ahead of her.

The library was on Main Street, less than a mile from Wal-Mart, but Novalee was going to walk an extra four blocks to avoid passing the nursery. She didn’t want to take the chance that Benny Goodluck or his father might see her carrying the tree around, its roots still tied in burlap. But more than that, she didn’t want them to see that she had let it get sick.

She had tried to take good care of the buckeye, had watered it every night, had taken it outside two or three times a week. Sometimes she took it to the city park and placed it between the large oaks that grew in straight rows at each side of the fountain near the entrance.

Occasionally she took it to a wooded field behind the King’s Daughters and Sons Nursing Home where she left it hidden in a grove of young pines.

But some days she left it in the tool locker. She knew it needed sunlight, but on days when she didn’t feel so well, the tree seemed too heavy, too bulky, too much for her to manage. Besides, she knew a pregnant girl carrying a buckeye out the door of the Wal-Mart every morning was bound to attract someone’s attention.

Then the buckeye got sick. Some of the leaves had turned the color of oatmeal and patches like liver spots covered their underside.

The trunk, spindly and twisted, was so dry it left a film of powder on her hands when she touched it. And it hadn’t grown at all since Benny Goodluck had given it to her four weeks earlier. She wanted to make herself believe nothing serious was wrong, but the truth was, Novalee was scared. If buckeyes really did bring good luck, she couldn’t imagine what trouble she’d have if she let it die.

So, she had to get to the library to find a book on buckeye trees, to find out what she needed to do to save it.

She had wanted to ask someone for advice, find someone who knew about trees who would tell her what do do, but she didn’t know who to ask. She couldn’t ask the Goodlucks and let them know she hadn’t planted the tree yet. She had checked the phone book to find other nurseries, but the Goodluck was the only one in town.

She had read a book in the Wal-Mart about plants and trees, and had learned when to plant zinnias, where to plant pansies and how to plant daisies, but she didn’t learn what was wrong with her buckeye tree.

And then she thought of the library, a two-story brick building with a black wrought-iron fence, the lawn planted with joseph’s coat, calendula and foxglove, names she had learned from the gardening book. She had passed the library many times on her way to the park, but she never thought of going inside.

Novalee hadn’t walked far before a dull ache spread between her shoulder blades. The buckeye, light as it was, felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. She shifted it from one hand to the other and waited through several green lights at each corner so she could stop and stand the tree on the sidewalk beside her.

She stopped in a small cafe called Granny’s Oven and asked for a glass of water. The waitress, who smelled of White Shoulders and fried onions, didn’t seem pleased that Novalee wasn’t a paying customer, but she was too busy with the breakfast trade to do more than roll her eyes.

While Novalee sipped at her water, she studied the menu to show she was at least thinking about food. Since she had been living at Wal-Mart, she had eaten so many Del Monte carrots and Green Giant peas, unseasoned and cold from the cans, that her mouth ached at the thought of a cheeseburger and fries.

Novalee jumped when the sound of a police siren rattled the front window of the cafe. She looked outside to see the sidewalk filling with people as a police car, lights flashing, crept by.

“Hey, Dooley,” the waitress yelled back to the kitchen. “Parade’s startin’.”

She poured coffee for a woman seated at the end of the counter.

“Our cook,” she said, motioning toward the back. “His kid’s a drummer in the band.”

Novalee emptied her glass, then went outside where she pushed in behind two little girls at the curb. A flatbed truck decorated in red, Where the Heart Is

white and blue crepe paper moved down the middle of the street.

Banners attached to the doors had WESTERN DAYS printed on them, and on the bed an old man dressed in a white suit played the fiddle.

Then Novalee heard the music from a marching band as it turned onto Main Street. Boys and girls in blue uniforms marched in crooked rows and broken lines as they followed eight majorettes, their batons gleaming in the sunlight. Novalee watched them, their boots high-stepping, their batons sailing into the air while they posed, their bellies flat, their breasts high. They were girls with shiny hair and freckles, girls with dimpled wide smiles . . . their lips too red, their eyes too bright, their faces too young. They were girls who made brownies in home ec, who cut hearts out of red paper for Valentine’s dances.

Girls who had their pictures in annuals, who got crowned at homecoming. Girls who ate oatmeal for breakfast with little sisters who borrowed their lipstick and sweaters. Girls who were Novalee’s age . . . girls who would never be as old as she was.

THE ONLY LIBRARY Novalee had ever been inside before was the bookmobile that came to the grade school in Tellico Plains, so when she stepped into the Sequoyah County Library, she was filled with a sense of expectation. This library didn’t have wheels under it.

Even before the door closed soundlessly behind her, Novalee knew she had entered a special place. She hardly breathed as her eyes played around the room, a room with dark wood carved into intricate designs, tall windows of thick, frosted glass and red velvet drapes held back with silver cord, chandeliers whose crystal drops caught fragments of light transfused into rich blues and deep greens, paintings in gold frames of nude women with heavy bellies and thick thighs. And books. Racks of books, stacks of books, walls of books.

More books than Novalee had ever seen.

Then suddenly Novalee knew something was different in this place. Not the light filtering silver through the frosted panes. Not the Where the Heart Is

stillness. Not the smells—varnish and oils and strong wood. But something. Something.

“What do you want?”

Novalee looked around to see who had spoken, but her eyes had trouble spotting the figure at the far side of the room. He was folded into a chair much too small for him, propped over an opened book on a long, narrow table. He had a beard the color of copper, but his hair, mostly hidden beneath a brown stocking cap, was darker than heartwood.

“I’m looking for a book,” she said.

“Librarian’s not here.”

“Oh.”

Novalee waited for him to say more, but he returned to the book he was reading without looking back at her. She didn’t know if she should wait for the librarian or try to find the book for herself. In the bookmobile kids had just grabbed whatever was the brightest and biggest, but she knew that was not the way to find a book about buckeyes. She decided to wait for the librarian.

She wandered to a pair of glass cases in the middle of the room.

One contained an assortment of shiny gold and silver coins from foreign places. The other held a collection of letter openers, their handles decorated with jewels or intricate carvings in ivory or jade.

She walked past the paintings on the walls, staring into eyes that seemed to stare back. Novalee stopped before a picture of a girl trying to put on her stocking. The girl was naked and very heavy. Her stomach was so round, so full that Novalee wondered if she might be pregnant. She stepped closer to the painting.

“Renoir.”

It was the man’s voice, the man in the brown cap, but he wasn’t at the table where he had been sitting. Novalee couldn’t see him anywhere.

“What did you say?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. She began to feel a little strange then and wondered if she and the man were the only two people in the building. She thought of leaving, but the buckeye, hidden just outside the front door, was going to die if she didn’t do something.

She moved nearer the front, a quicker escape if she needed one, and began to walk down an aisle with books shelved on either side of her. She read titles, then pulled out The Dream House Encyclopedia.

She flipped through the pages, but the pictures were not in color. As she started to put it back, she saw a brown cap bobbing on the other side of the shelf, so she shoved the book back, then turned to the end of the aisle and stepped around the corner. She could hear him as he rounded the other end of the aisle, moving in her direction.

“You reshelved it in the wrong place,” he growled.