Cold Tea On A Hot Day

Four

Vast Stretches of the Heart

When Parker’s blue pickup truck, with the white-and-gold Lindsey Veterinary Clinic emblem on the side, came pulling up in her driveway, Marilee went running out to meet him. There was in the back of her mind the idea that he would be bringing Willie Lee.

She saw immediately that he had not.

“I heard about Willie Lee. Is he home yet?” Parker strode around the front of his truck toward her.

“No…all this time, Parker…” Her arms pried themselves from her sides, and she reached for him.

He took her against him and held her tight. Then, as he walked her back into the house, with his arm around her shoulders, Marilee told him of her conversation with the principal, of having searched the neighborhoods, of calling Sheriff Oakes, and of the helplessness of just having to wait. She did not mention the fear that was rising to choke her throat, that maybe this time Willie Lee was truly gone, a fear that had haunted her since the night she had delivered him early, blue and choking for breath.

“He is just out diggin’ in a ditch for crawdads or explorin’ ant trails or something that boys do,” Parker said with perfect reasonableness.

Recriminations for having felt the burden of being a mother echoed in her brain, bringing shame and self-loathing.

“He’ll turn up, Marilee. It’ll be okay,” Parker whispered in her ear as he again drew her close.

What was great about Parker was his solidity in any crisis. Probably it had something to do with being a veterinarian, facing life and death on a regular basis. He was not daunted by a crisis, but was, in fact, better in a crisis than at normal times. He could offer himself in a crisis, whereas during normal everyday times, he withheld himself and kept his affability around him like a shield.

“Did you bring any cigarettes?” she asked.

“No. Why would I have cigarettes?” He looked startled.

“Parker, don’t you keep any, just in case?”

“I quit three years ago, and so did you, remember?” he said with a righteousness that Marilee thought uncalled for in the situation.

Annoyed, she almost asked him to go get her a pack, but then the phone rang.

Phone calls had been coming in from people as they heard about Willie Lee. Each time Marilee would jump to answer, hoping it was the sheriff calling to say Willie Lee was found. After three more such calls, she waved at Parker to answer.

Then Charlotte Nation drove up in her little red Grand Am. Marilee, sitting at the window, watched Charlotte unfold her long legs out of the car and come swiftly up the walk, her arms loaded with brown bags. Charlotte had brought containers of fried chicken and potato salad from the Quick Shop that had put in a delicatessen.

Marilee looked at the food and felt sick; it was like funeral food.

Charlotte reported that June had managed to correct both the Ford and IGA ads in time for Leo’s delivery of the disks to the printer for tomorrow’s edition. And that their new publisher, Tate Holloway, had arrived before schedule.

“He did?” Vaguely, Marilee tried to be concerned about this.

“Don’t worry about him,” Charlotte said, giving a dismissive wave. “He took it upon himself to come early, so he had to take what he got. And when Willie Lee comes home, you are going to be worn out, so sleep in tomorrow morning and just come on down when you get ready.”

When Willie Lee comes home…

As Charlotte’s Grand Am pulled away from the curb, Marilee, who felt the need to keep vigil out the front window, was dismayed to see her mother’s Cadillac pull in. The car bore a front license plate that said CCoopers, which was advertising of a sort for the discount appliance store owned by her mother’s second husband—Carl Cooper—one of those stores that plastered the television with cluttered and tasteless ads. What this did for Marilee’s mother, however, was give her the fame she craved.

Watching her mother, a small woman with Lady Clairol blond hair who walked in short, quick strides, Marilee had the thought to run and hide, but like one inextricably caught, she kept sitting there.

Her mother had come to talk about Marilee helping her get new tires for her Cadillac, because her husband could not be counted on to do this to her satisfaction.

“Carl won’t take the time,” she said, having launched immediately into her request. “He insists on just goin’ down to the discount tire warehouse and getting the cheapest ones slapped on there…and he doesn’t pay attention if they balance them or not.”

Marilee jumped in to say, “Mother, I can’t talk to you about this now. Willie Lee is missing.”

Upon being told of her grandson’s disappearance, her mother became very agitated. Her entire countenance became one of doom, so much so that to look at her made Marilee have trouble breathing.

Her mother then launched in with comments of a dire sort. “Anything could happen to him out there, all these perverts in the world.” And, “The boy is too friendly, doesn’t know a stranger. I hope he didn’t get in a car with somebody.” Then, “You never should have sent the boy to school anyway. He isn’t capable of regular school,” and, in a whisper that really wasn’t one and that Parker heard very well, “You should marry Parker, and then you could stay home with the boy.”

Invariably her mother called Willie Lee the boy.

“He has a name, mother. It is Willie Lee.”

“Well, I know that,” her mother said, looking confused and hurt and more fearful than ever. Marilee felt like a toad but did not apologize.

Parker, who could stand no conflict, said, “Norma, would you like more coffee?”

Marilee turned and went and shut herself in the bathroom, where she stared at her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror for a long minute, asking all sorts of unintelligible questions of herself and God.

Finally, her spinning brain settling somewhat, she opened the medicine cabinet and began a thorough search. Surely she had some pills left in here from the time when Stuart had walked out on her. Surely she did. Oh, Lordy, she felt like she was coming apart.

A knock sounded at the door. Marilee, wondering if word had come of her son, whipped the door open to see standing there her tall and sturdy Aunt Vella.

“Hello, sugar. I’m sorry, I’m not Willie Lee.” Her eyes, all sympathetic, went beyond Marilee to the sink strewn with the stuff out of the medicine cabinet. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for any of my old pills. I don’t have any, though. I threw them all out.”

“Well, yes, you did. I was here that day. Now, I’ve brought you what you need—a big chocolate shake.”

“Chocolate?”

“Yes, sugar…it’s in the kitchen.”

“Bless you.” Marilee threw herself on her aunt, who hugged her tight and then kept an arm around her all the way to the kitchen, where her mother saw and frowned. There had always been animosity between Marilee’s petite mother and her statuesque Aunt Vella, who was her father’s sister.

Marilee disengaged herself from her aunt and sat down, taking up the large paper cup and spooning the thick shake into her mouth. Her Aunt Vella and Uncle Perry owned Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, and Aunt Vella knew exactly how Marilee liked her chocolate shakes, with an extra squirt of chocolate syrup.

Then Marilee saw that Corrine had her own shake, too. Corrine’s black eyes met Marilee’s for an instant, in which Marilee summoned forth an encouraging smile from the place mothers always keep them. She had forgotten about her niece and wanted to make up for it. The child had enough of being forgotten in her life.

Corrine quickly looked away, though, as if needing to protect herself.

“Well, I have to go,” Marilee’s mother said. “I have to get Carl’s supper.”

“That’s okay…there’s nothing you can do here.” God forbid Carl’s supper be interrupted. Marilee breathed deeply.

“You call me as soon as you have news…and I can come back down.” She was edging toward the door, and turned and told Parker, “Good seeing you, Parker—you call me if Marilee needs me.”

Parker nodded politely, wisely not committing himself.

“Vella, it was good seein’ you.”

“Norma…”

Different as night and day, the two women managed to tolerate each other.

For a second Marilee’s mother hovered uncertainly, and then she patted Marilee’s arm and stroked Corrine’s dark hair away from her forehead, saying, “Honey, can’t you clip your hair out of your eyes?”

Marilee saw Corrine quietly keep sipping her milk shake, while beneath the table her legs swung about ninety miles an hour.

“Well, I’ll get with you this weekend about the tires,” Marilee’s mother said before leaving.

Marilee played the straw around in her milk shake and suffered guilt at the thought of telling her mother to cram the tires up her ass.

Vella, feeling the need to be polite and thoroughly cover the annoyance she always felt in the other woman’s presence, hopped to her feet and escorted her ex-sister-in-law to the front door. And needing to make certain the woman did indeed get out the door. It was, Vella thought as she saw her ex-sister-in-law get into her car, a great failing on her part that, after all these years and the death of her brother, Norma Cooper should still have the power to irritate the fire out of her.

When she returned to the kitchen, Parker was massaging Marilee’s shoulders and joking with Corrine, producing a rare smile from the child. Although she had always found Parker Lindsey vaguely wanting, Vella thoroughly admired the way he could lighten a moment when he put his mind to it.

Marilee said to her, “Don’t you have the Rose Club meeting tonight?”

“Yes. And I’m going. There’s plenty of time. Perry can get supper over at the café, and I can go straight to the meeting from here.” Perry always took himself off to the café, if he came home and she wasn’t there and no supper was on the table. Then he would come home, turn on the television and fall asleep in his La-Z-Boy.

She went to the counter to unpack a grocery sack from the IGA, where she had bought chocolate cookies and bananas. In her estimation a person could live on bananas for a meal and cookies for desert. She noted then on the counter a big bucket of fried chicken and a container of potato salad. With a small slice of alarm over possible food poisoning, she put the potato salad in the refrigerator.

The phone rang, and all of them jumped. Parker was the first to reach the receiver hanging on the wall. “James house,” he answered in an uncharacteristically clipped tone.

They all stared at him, not a breath being breathed. He said, “Hmmm…okay,” and hung up then said, “That was Neville. He said they haven’t found Willie Lee, but they have talked to five people who saw him this afternoon. He was definitely heading this way home.”

Marilee wished she had talked to the sheriff herself. Hearing his voice would have been something. Then she imagined the sheriff telling her that they were searching all the drainage culverts.

“Where is he?”

They all stared helplessly at her. She swung around and pushed out the back screen door and down the steps to the yard, hardly realizing what she was doing.

Please, Lord, bring my baby home. I will do anything. Please, Lord…just please. How will I bear it if you take him from me? If anything happens to him…

Thankfully, those in the kitchen knew her well enough to let her go alone. She went to the foot of the tree that housed the little fort Marilee and Willie Lee had built together and looked upward. She did not cry. She never cried in a crisis. As she saw it, crying had never changed anything, and if she cried, then all would be lost.

She went to the rabbit cages and realized it was way past time the two rabbits inside were fed their evening meal. She got their food from the garage and filled their dishes, changing their water, too. She thought how Willie Lee loved animals. He seemed more comfortable with them than with people.

As she stood gazing at the rabbits, a squeal sounded…the familiar squeal of the gate in the back fence.

She whirled around to see a man coming through the gate. A tall man…Charlotte had said Tate Holloway…

Then she saw, standing beside the man, her much smaller son.

“This boy says he lives here,” the man said.

“Oh, my…Willie Lee!”

It was not until that instant of seeing the small boy’s figure and then her eyes falling on his upturned face that she realized she had truly begun to believe she would never see Willie Lee alive again, and that what she had been wrestling with all these hours was the inner imagining of his limp little body being pulled from some muddy ditch.

But here he was, his blond hair standing on end and his blue eyes peering out from his thick glasses, regarding her calmly.

“Hey, Ma-ma.”

She had scooped him against her. He pushed away and put a hand on her cheek, looking deep into her eyes.

“Why are you cry-ing, Ma-ma?”

“Because I missed you…” She was crying so hard that she could hardly speak. “I didn’t know where you were, and I’ve been so scared, because you were lost.”

She hugged him close again.

“I was not lost,” he said, again pushing away to look at her with his dear blue eyes blinking behind his glasses. “I was com-ing home.”

“Oh, honey…” She caressed his dear, unruly hair, so glad for the feel of it. “It is a long way from school. You shouldn’t come home all by yourself.”

“I was not all by my-self. I had Mun-ro with me.”

For an instant of confusion, Marilee thought he meant the man, but then he was reaching to bring forward a dog. A shaggy, spotted small type of shepherd.

“Mun-ro,” Willie Lee introduced happily.

The man was Tate Holloway, which was a little surprising, but not so much, because Marilee had recognized his deep Southern drawl. He explained that he had been looking around his cousin’s house and had discovered Willie Lee sleeping on the wicker settee on the porch, with the dog and a big orange cat that had, as Mr. Holloway put it, “skeddaddled faster than a hog skatin’ on ice.”

Tate Holloway’s voice was as it had been when Marilee had spoken to him on the phone, all deep and smoky, and he drew his words out like he purely enjoyed each one on his tongue.

“Bub-ba,” Willie Lee said, turning concerned eyes up to her. “I was going to feed Bub-ba, but his food is all gone, and he ran away from us.”

Understanding dawned as to what had brought Willie Lee home by way of the back gate. “We’ve been going through the gate each night to feed Bubba on the back step,” Marilee explained. “Bubba is—or was—Ms. Porter’s cat. We’ve been feeding him until you came. She said you got the cat with the house.”

Willie Lee said, “Bub-ba needs food.”

“We’ll let Mr. Holloway take Bubba some of this chicken,” Marilee told him.

They all sat around the big oak table in Marilee’s kitchen, eating the meal friends had brought earlier. It was very much like a party. Marilee kept Willie Lee sitting on her lap, where she could repeatedly touch him. On one side, within touching distance whether she wished it or not, sat Corrine, who seemed to grin an awfully lot for her, and on the other side, with his arm often on the back of Marilee’s chair, sat Parker. Aunt Vella hovered, a good hostess attending everyone. Marilee soaked up this time of contentment, of safety after threat.

“I was going to call you,” Tate Holloway said, having gone over the story a second time and embellishing with how Miss Charlotte had taken him to task for coming before his scheduled Saturday arrival and how surprised he had been to see a boy on his settee.

“I had your telephone number, but Willie Lee here—” he winked and pointed at Willie Lee with a chicken leg “—said he would show me the way over. I sure wondered where he was goin’ when he led me into those cedar trees, but by golly, there was the gate right in the midst of those ramblin’ roses, just like he said.”

Marilee, putting warm chicken meat in her mouth with her fingers, watched the man and her son grin at each other. Tate Holloway had a charming grin.

“I knew the way. I was not lost,” Willie Lee said. Then he looked at Marilee, squinting with one eye behind his thick glasses. “Well, oncet I was lost, but Mun-ro led me home.”

Taking a roll from his and Marilee’s plate, he slipped from her lap and went to feed it to the dog lying on the spiral rug in front of the sink, as was the right of a dog who had protected her son.

Marilee, approving of how gently the dog ate from her son’s hand, felt a sinking feeling. “Honey, Munro may belong to someone. He has a collar.”

Willie Lee said, “No…he was look-ing for me, to come live here. I told God I want-ed him. Re-mem-ber?”

Marilee glanced at Parker.

“I don’t think I’ve seen that dog before,” Parker said. “But not everybody ‘round here brings me their pets. Most, but not everyone. And he doesn’t have any tags…may not have had a rabies shot,” he added as caution.

Everyone looked at the dog, who blinked his kind eyes.

Tate Holloway said, “You just can’t separate a boy and a dog, oncet they’ve chosen each other,” and winked at Willie Lee. “Plain secret of life is a good dog.”

Now Marilee knew where Willie Lee had picked up saying “oncet.”

“How come you to name him Munro, Willie Lee?” Aunt Vella asked.

“That is his name.”

At this good sense, all of them chuckled, except Corrine, who had begun to help Aunt Vella clear the table and who informed them, “It says Munro on his collar.”

When they all looked at her, she added, “It’s printed in white. M-U-N-R-O.”

Parker took a look, pulling the collar out of the dog’s hair. “Yep. Munro.” He petted the dog.

“Who told you his name?” Marilee asked.

“Mun-ro told me,” Willie Lee said practically, stroking the dog.

“Did he tell you if he has had his shots?” Parker wanted to know, giving Marilee a wink.

Willie Lee looked at the dog and then said, “He does not want shots.”

They all chuckled. Marilee looked closer at the dog, who smiled happily back at her. She had to admit the name fit him perfectly.

The sheriff and friends and neighbors and Marilee’s mother had been alerted that the crisis was over, and Willie Lee had been returned home safe and sound. Vella, who had made a majority of the telephone calls, left to go to her Rose Club organizational meeting. Now that all was safe and sound, she was in a hurry, backing her Crown Victoria with racing speed.

Tate Holloway decided he would walk home on the sidewalk. “Think I’ll see a bit more of the neighborhood,” he said.

Parker went with Marilee to see their new neighbor out the front door. It occurred to Marilee that in all the years she had worked for Ms. Porter and lived just beyond the rose-lined fence from the big Porter home, the woman had never even once visited her home. Here, in the first hours of his arrival, Tate Holloway had not only visited, he had returned her beloved son and eaten a celebration meal with them.

Streetlights were on now, sending their silvery glow up and down the street and casting shadows into yards.

“Thank you for the delightful meal,” Tate Holloway said, stopping at the foot of the steps and turning to look upward at Marilee and Parker on the edge of the porch. “And for this fine fare for Bubba,” he added, lifting the plastic bag containing the leftover chicken pieces.

Marilee said, “Thank you, Mr. Holloway, for returning Willie Lee.”

Tate Holloway grinned. “Well, now, I think it would be more accurate to say that Willie Lee led me over here.”

He gazed at her with that grin.

“And I’d prefer it, Miss Marilee, if you would call me Tate,” he said in his deep, slow East Texas drawl.