31. #2
“You know, my mom was raised in Chinook.”
This time Emma was shocked.
“In the poorhouse there,” Ruby added.
“When was that?”
“A long time ago. But she went missing, too, from Portland. She and your mom and Mitchell’s mom all disappeared within a few
years of each other.”
“That’s a lot of missing women,” Emma said.
“There’s probably more.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Experience.”
Ruby pulled the police printout from her bag. When the case ended—they always did, one way or another—she would return any
evidence like the tape that had to go back, then empty everything else into a case file, seal the envelope, and start anew.
Each case was like this.
“I was hoping you could tell me more,” she said.
Emma began talking. She moved the croissant around the plate, like it was her in the woods that day. Her running into her
dad.
Ruby had a very peaceful feeling. It came over her, sometimes, in this work. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane.
Everything was very still.
When Emma finished, her eyes were filled with pain. Patricia gave her fingers a squeeze. Ruby looked at the television. Mitchell’s
face flashed across the screen: They were mentioning his upcoming execution. The district attorney had announced a press conference
following it.
She turned away, met Emma’s eyes.
“How old were you when Mitchell was convicted?”
“Eighteen,” Emma said.
“You must have been about ready to leave home.”
“I went to college. University of Alaska. It’s where I met my husband.”
Patricia took her hand away. She finished her cold waffles.
“That fall?”
“I left at the end of summer.”
“Your dad must have had more free time then. Maybe even to travel. He travel much?”
“When I was young, sometimes he’d leave me in the care of the woman who ran the market,” Emma said, making a face. “He went
on hunting trips. I hated it. She smelled like milk and circus peanuts.”
“After you left home?”
“I wouldn’t know. I never went back. It’s been ten years, and I never went home.”
The tears were back, the grief.
“Hello there.”
The bartender was putting a fresh till into the register. A wet towel lay on the clean bar, and the smoker outside was still
cold. A pot of coffee perked.
“We’re not quite open yet, but you’re welcome,” he said when he looked up and saw Ruby.
She sat on the same stool she had before and waited. When the coffee was done, he poured them both a cup, then pushed a metal
pitcher of cream down the bar at her. She doctored her coffee and took a sip.
It was the best coffee she had ever tasted.
The bar was dark, quiet. He must like these quiet moments, she thought, before the people came. The contrast.
“Heard about your case on the news,” he said.
“Four days now.”
He shook his head.
“Did you help the police in identifying all the people who were here that night?” Ruby asked.
“Tried to, that’s for sure.”
“What about the man sitting next to Mitchell that night?”
He leaned against the bar, drinking his coffee, trying to remember.
“I’m sure I mentioned him back then, but it’s been too long. Sorry.”
“They didn’t call you to testify?”
“They said they had enough witnesses, which was fine by me.”
“Do you know if the police ever spoke to that guy?”
“I’m assuming they did. They tracked down everyone.”
“How would they have found him, if he wasn’t a regular?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Seems like they found others that might have been hard to find.”
“Like Mary Baldwin and that cook?”
“Yeah. What did they have to say?” he looked curious.
Ruby knew that when patrons—or workers—at a bar stopped coming in, bartenders seldom asked why. They just moved on.
“They’re both dead.”
“Sorry to hear that—about the cook,” he said.
She yawned, overcome with exhaustion.
“The witnesses at the trial saw Mitchell leave,” she said, “but none of them mentioned that he was sitting next to someone.
They’ve been thoroughly pecked at by defense attorneys, and I don’t think they are lying. I think the state picked witnesses
who couldn’t describe that man, and now it’s too late to find out what he looked like. Or had to say.”
“Does it matter?” he asked, gently.
“A man who spoke to a murder suspect before the crime was committed—sure it matters. What did Mitchell tell him? In most cases,
that’s going to be worse for the defense, not better. Trust me on that. If a guy is going to go kill someone, it usually doesn’t
happen out of the blue. And if Mitchell was drunk, he’d have been more likely to blab about his plans.”
“Maybe it was one of those impetuous things. You know, he pulls up at that gas station. Sees the woman is alone inside.”
“Then it was a burning desire inside him, and those desires aren’t easy to hide. Few men can hide them. The kind who can,
it’s usually because they’ve made a practice of it. They’re cold inside. Different.” She sighed. “If I’m a cop or district
attorney, I’m going to want to interview anyone he talked to. So, let’s assume they did. Why hide it?”
“Maybe they figured they had enough,” he said.
“Maybe,” she said.
She drank her coffee, shaking her muddled head.
He saw. As an expert on people, he knew. This woman, he thought, needs comfort.
“You look tired,” he said. “I got a back room. It’s safe, I promise. I let the drunk ladies sleep there all the time, so they don’t get robbed or worse trying to get home. You can rest back there for a bit, if you like.”
“I’d like that, but I’ve got to eat first.”
“I know just the thing. I got to fire up the grill anyhow. Got some fresh fish in the back. Make you the best fish sandwich
you’ve ever had, then let you take a rest.”
Which was how she ended up on a leather sofa in a quiet, dark back room, her belly happy with what had been the best fish
sandwich she’d ever had, with leftover slaw, chased by an icy cold beer, ready to dream, her travel alarm from her bag next
to her. From behind the wall, she could hear the music turn on, softly, and the pinball machine ting.
She slept.
She woke with a start. The alarm had not gone off—reaching for it, she realized that she had not set it—and she could sense
that it was getting dark outside. Feeling like she was still dreaming, she moved through the now crowded bar out the door.
The bartender, busy, did not see her go.
She stepped into the sunset. The humidity was so high she felt like a sea was hanging in the air, dripping down her neck,
pooling in her clavicle.
She realized that she was thinking, not for the first time, about how our parents make us real. They form us from blood and
cells. We come from them, as helpless as the proverbial infant we are, and we choke on their spirit until the doctor suctions
it from our lungs, and hands us to the nurse to spank. Then we come alive. But we are not really alive until our parents are
with us, standing by our side, cuddling us, feeding us from their breasts or carrying us on their backs.
When they disappear, our very bones melt.
She froze. There, in her bag.
She reached for it, feeling as if another set of eyes was leading her. Look again at that picture, the bone said.
Ruby held the picture, seeing it anew. The Caddy for the kitchen worker, the pink car for Mary Baldwin, the dirty Gremlin
for Wes Rogers.
The brown Datsun.
Why, of course, she thought. You didn’t notice because you grew up seeing this, surrounded by it from a young age.
Oregon plates.
She drove back to Hammock County, feeling restless and filled with a strange energy. The nap, she knew, meant she would not
sleep. The stars, hanging in a foggy sky, told her it was too late to do anything about the license plate or the man at the
bar tonight.
She found herself back at the truck stop, with its rows of concrete restrooms. A few semis had pulled in for the night, their
windows covered. They were long-haul drivers, crossing the country. She had heard that Georgia was one of the more complicated
states to cross because of varying restrictions on weight classes and exclusions from the Atlanta interstates—some of the
many factoids she had learned from truck drivers, some of her favorite witnesses. They were her eyes and ears on the road.
Grabbing her bag, she went to the women’s room. Here were a few johns, with no doors on the stalls, and a buzzing fluorescent
light in a metal cage. The floor was sticky, but in the back was a solitary shower, with a rusted metal showerhead. A sign
bolted on the wall said respect each other, and then 3 minutes.
Ruby turned to see that the door had a lock.
She slid the bolt home and tried the shower.
The water came out lukewarm. It was warmish in the pipes, she thought—no need for a water heater here.
That was fine with her. She stripped, reaching for one of the motel soaps Willa had given her.
The soap left silky steaks of bubbles on her pale skin: She felt like a sliver of moon, here in the concrete restroom.
She rinsed, mindful of the three-minute time limit.
A woman truck driver could be pulling in, to sleep under the twisted pines, the ropes of moss.
The last trickle of water ran down her face.
Stepping out of the shower, she realized that she had forgotten to pack a towel. Oh well. She brushed herself dry in the warm
summer air.
She dressed in the change of clothes from her bag, put her holster under her arm, and washed the outfit she had been wearing
in the sink, rinsing the clothes well and wringing them out.
Feeling clean and well cared for—it was remarkable how low that bar had become, after her mother disappeared—she went back
to her car and cracked the window in the back. She hung the wet clothes out the window, knowing they would be dry by daybreak.
She locked the doors and lay down on the cool back seat. Ruby looked out the cracked window at the sky. That narrow slice
of air leading to the sky mesmerized her. She wasn’t sure why. She just knew it did.