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Chapter 15
My cell phone rang on the way home that afternoon. It was Karen. She was frantic.
“Mom! Beau's gone! He was sleeping on the bed with me, and then I fell asleep, and when I woke up, he's just gone! I've searched the house and the yard. I can't find him anywhere!”
I held the phone away from my ear. Karen's shrill voice was bawling on the other end in sharp contrast to the drowsy, still setting of the funeral home on West Pecan Avenue.
“Karen! Calm down!” I said, struggling to keep some calm in my own voice. Beau was a tiny dog, never allowed outside in the big world alone. “We'll find him, don't worry,” I added.
“Mom, I'm really sick today. Throwing up. I can't get out of bed, so I can't help you hunt. What're we gonna do?” And then Karen started crying.
“Don't worry, Karen!” I repeated. “I'll get Johnny Little to help me hunt. He knows every inch of this town.” I could almost feel her nose dripping onto the bedclothes from afar. “Beau went outside looking for me. I'll call for him. He'll find me, don't you worry, honey.”
She sniffed several times and then blew her nose. “He's been so happy in bed with me lately. I never thought he'd leave me!” And she wailed again.
Johnny Little was more than happy to help me hunt for Beau. He picked me up in his old Woodie and we crept around Peace Valley at eight miles per hour, each of us hollering out a window, “Beau! Here, Beau! Here Beau honey!” It was fun to hear Johnny calling a dog “honey.”
This went on for nearly an hour before we were parched and weary and needed a drink of something. “Let's stop by and see Patty,” I suggested. “She keeps some Cokes in the frig in the office.”
Johnny parked the Woodie on the street and we strolled under the magnolias to the front door of the funeral home. I entered Patty's office. She was preening in front of a large mirror she keeps on the back wall just for that purpose. One an upholstered chair in one corner of her office lay Plato, his tail keeping leisurely time in the air like a sluggish metronome.
On an upholstered chair in the other corner of the room sat Beau, gazing at me in a reprimanding manner and licking his front paws.
“Beau!” I squealed, and I swept him up in my arms and kissed his face. He was displeased at this intimate display of emotion and stiffened, backing his face away from mine. I turned to Patty.
“Patty! How did Beau get here?”
She turned to me, batting one recently mascaraed eye. “I thought you brought him in,” she replied.
“Johnny and I have been hunting for him for an hour! We've been all over town.”
Patty returned to her job at the mirror, addressing the second eye. I could see her mouth gape open as she applied a thick coat of mascara. “I went to the ladies' room,” she said, “and when I came back, there he was, pretty as you please, up on that chair.” She pointed with her mascara brush. “I figured you let 'im in, but it must've been the FedEx man.”
I stared at Beau. He had a “I'm smarter than you ever realized; admit it, Mama” look on his face. I was speechless. Johnny nodded at me and grinned as he exited the building.
“But Patty, how'd you know this was my dog?” I asked. I was still trying to figure it all out.
“Mrs. Monson, use yer God-given brain.” She walked over and pinched Beau's name tag between two of her glossy green fingernails. She read slowly for my weak mind: “'Beau,' it says. 'Return to Ivy P. Monson,' and that's yer phone number, I take it?”
“Yes, thank you, Patty. He's been wearing that tag for five years. I'm glad to know it's done its job.”
She plumped down into her desk chair. “He seems quite comfortable here. Y'know, he's welcome here any time he wants. Mr. Plott brought Plato ever' day.” She looked back and forth at the two animals. “And fer a dog and a cat, I'd say they get along mighty well.”
When Beau and I left, we found Johnny leaning against the hood of the Woodie, smokin a cigarette.
“Glad ya found yer dog,” he said. “Care for a ride home?”
I accepted his offer. The Woodie had a nice, old smell inside, a smell of leather and tobacco and decades of Southern sweat. Johnny took excellent care of his vehicle. The leather and wood were polished to a shine and even the carpet seemed clean.
“This is a lovely car, Johnny.”
“Yes'm.”
The magnolias passed by and the school children yelled in the distance as school let out and sports began.
“Did you grow up in Peace Valley, Johnny?”
“Yes'm, I did,” he said.
I petted Beau's head gently. An idea clicked in my brain.
“Johnny, you don't happen to know Barbara Dixon, do you?”
He nodded. “Yes'm, I do. Well, I can't rightly say that. I know 'er to speak to. My second cousin Larry worked with her son Jim over at the water department for years. They was right good friends. Larry knows her mighty well. It's a shame, her cancer an' all.”
We were nearly to Karen's house, and I hated to ask another question of him, but I couldn't resist.
“Johnny, did you know that Barbara Dixon's aunt and uncle were foster parents to Anita Wagner, that woman who died?” And I turned to look at his face. He didn't answer right away.
“Yes'm, I know all that. I didn't want to say, Ms. Barbara bein' so sick an' all. But I do believe she loved Anita. She doted on that girl. She was a good bit older than 'Nita, mind ya.” We pulled up in front of Karen's house, and Johnny cut the engine off. The birds of spring were chirping and singing in the neighborhood trees and someone was playing Dean Martin on the stereo. I watched as Jeffrey skipped along the sidewalk next to us, hitting each tree trunk with a slim branch he'd carried home all the way from school. He dropped it on the front lawn, leapt up the front stairs and swung open the screen door, letting it slam behind him. “Mom! I'm home,” I heard from inside, and then faintly from upstairs, “Hey sweetie! Come see me.”
Johnny and I sat in silence. I could tell there was something more he wanted to say.
“Ms. Monson, years ago when my boy was little, he was in the same class with Ms. Bobbie's boy, Jim. Me 'n' my missus had him late, y'understand. Lawd, this must've been nigh twenty years back. Fer a bit the Dixon boy would come over after school, play in the back yard. We got t' know the fam'ly a bit that way, 'specially Nelda, my wife. They did coffee and Tupperware parties and such for a few years.”
“Um hm,” I said to encourage him.
“All I can say is that there was sumthin' amiss in that family. Don't know what, and don't care to speculate. But the Gillespies were the kindest of folks, and Ms. Bobbie and her husband, they did a good job with that youngun. Weren't nuthin' wrong there.” He shook his head. “Sumthin' done happened t' that girl before she ever come to Peace Valley, ever step foot in the Gillespies' house.”
“Well, foster children sometimes do come from troubled backgrounds,” I interjected.
“That's true, that's true.” I thought Johnny was finished, but then he added, “yet she was alright enough until that sister of hers came avisitin'. She were more troubled yet. We watched as Miss Anita spiraled downhill, ya might say. She were 'bout outa high school then. Workin' at the drug store. Then that Prescott girl come up from Alabama, and she seemed t' change.”
“Alabama?” I asked him. “The Prescotts were from Alabama?”
Johnny scratched his chin. “I do believe so. Seems to me … I reckon … they was from Opelika.” He thought a moment. “Yep. Opelika, 'cuz I told Nelda once a few years back, when we was drivin' through there, I said, 'Miz Little, this here is where those Prescotts live,' yes, I did.”
“Opelika,” I said.
“Yes'm.”
I opened my door. “Thank you ever so much, Johnny. I'd like to meet Nelda some time.”
“She's like that right much too, Mrs. Monson. She still goes to visit Ms. Bobbie ever' Friday. They stayed close like that. If you should care to join her --”
“Johnny, that would be wonderful. Thank you!”
Beau and I waved good-bye and went upstairs to check out the doughnut crumbs under Karen's bed.
Copyrighted by M.K. Christiansen
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