AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve got a trial on Friday. He’s supposed to defend me.”
“Friday? Oh, I’m sure not. Mr. Beach never misses a court date. I keep his calendar, and there’s nothing coming up on Friday.”
“He promised Bunny he’d do it.”
“Are you sure? He never mentioned anything to me.”
“I’m sure.”
“What was the name of the case? Do you remember?”
“It was about me.”
“Well, what kind of a case was it? Were you hurt in an accident?”
“It was juvenile delinquency.”
“Ohhhh.” She waited a moment. “Well, Mr. Beach never handles juvenile cases. At least, he’s never handled one since I’ve been here.” Another pause. “Well, let me look in the files. I always make up his files, but maybe this once he did it himself. You’re Martha Calhoun, right? C-A-L-H-O-U-N?” She spelled it out.
“Yes.”
“Hold on a second, and I’ll look.”
She was gone three or four minutes. After a minute or so, I realized I was holding the phone so hard against my ear that it was hurting me. I loosened up, and the receiver turned incredibly heavy, as if it were made of iron. Mrs. Vernon, who’d been upstairs, wandered down and looked puzzled to find me on the phone.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
I shook my head and turned to the wall. When the secretary came back at last, she opened with a sigh. “Well, I don’t find it. I looked over the active and inactive files, and I went through the papers on his desk, and there’s nothing there. I’m afraid there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. Why don’t you check with your mother again?”
“I don’t need to check with my mother. He promised.”
“He may call in later today. He’s on the road, but he may call in, and, if he does, I’ll give him your message. Why don’t you leave your number?”
I gave her Bunny’s number, the Vernons’ number, and the number out at the country club. She read them back to me.
“Okay, got it,” she said. “I’ll give him your message. Good luck with your case. But you don’t really need a lawyer in juvenile court anyway, do you?”
I put the receiver back gently and wandered down the hall. After a few steps, I stopped by a plant stand, a tall, spindly table made of wood. The hall didn’t get much direct light, so Mrs. Vernon had set out a thin vase filled with pussy willow twigs. For no reason, I pinched one of the soft buds, and it broke into furry tufts, which clung to my fingers.
What a fool I’ve been, I told myself. I’ve been wrong from the start, wrong forever. No one can help me, not even Bunny. Nobody cares. Oh, maybe Bunny does, but she’s got too many other problems. Everybody’s got other problems. I’m all alone in this. Why didn’t I see that before? What a fool.
I felt a charge of energy. Realizing how things really were gave me a new sense of power. It seemed for a moment that I could change myself right then, forever, just because I wanted to. No one’s going to solve my problems but me, I told myself. Everything’s up to me.
I turned and marched back to the phone. Fumbling clumsily with the directory, I found the number of the police station and gave it to the operator. When Mrs. Donaldson picked up, I asked to speak to Sergeant Tony. He came on the line and didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. “Come on down, and let’s talk,” he said.
Mrs. Vernon offered to drive me, but I told her I’d rather walk. “Why don’t you take Sissy’s bike?” she suggested. She led me through the kitchen into the garage. Garden tools and fishing gear hung from the walls, and dark spots of grease patterned the cement floor. In a corner, she pulled away a large sheet of canvas, unveiling Sissy’s lavender three-speed, still glistening with oil. “Walter looks after it every month,” said Mrs. Vernon. “Don’t know why, really, since no one ever rides it. You can imagine how a father gets about these things, though.” She frowned suddenly. “I hope he’s been checking the brakes, too.”
“I’m sure they’re okay.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”
“This’ll be fine.”
She opened the garage door, flooding the room with midmorning sunlight. The seat was a little low—Sissy was much shorter than I am—but I didn’t bother to adjust it. I just wanted to get there, to make something happen at last. Dwayne was still lurking outside. He jumped on his bike and pedaled after me, but his rickety, wide-wheeled one-speed couldn’t stay with Sissy’s smooth and almost unused machine. Besides, I had energy now, I had power. I knew what I wanted to do.
I sped past the humming KTD. An old, green station wagon filled with Mexicans passed me going the other way, and someone yelled something. I pedaled harder. The streets were almost deserted. The air sat in hot, puffy clouds between the trees, and the leaves hung listlessly. During the spring, if there had been storms in the area, this kind of stillness might be taken for tornado weather. At times like that, the air turns a kind of yellow, and everything that can move stops, as if the coming storm had sucked up all the wind to save for itself. But summer heat is different. There’s no sense that something’s coming and eventually will pass. It’s just timeless, it’s dead weather.
At the police station, I parked Sissy’s bike in the rack in front. Mrs. Donaldson was sitting behind the screened-in counter. “Yes,” she said without looking up. Then she did look up. “What do you want?” she demanded. I told her I was there to see
