Mother Finds a Body Read online

  “Gee Gee and Dimples, those two beauties of the runways, are your friends,” Biff said pleasantly. Too pleasantly, I thought. “Should I have said no when they asked for a lift?”

  “A lift,” I said, “is around the corner or up the block, not clear across the country. Furthermore, you don’t have to be sarcastic about them. They may not be the beauties you’ve been working with in Rings on Her Fingers, but I’d like to see one of those four-forty legitimate dames do the bumps the way Gee Gee does. Or do Dimples’s quiver for that matter.

  Biff was on the verge of answering me when we heard the scratching of the screen door. Bill, dachshund, and proud father of four sons, wanted out. His front paws clawed on the wire mesh. He was standing on a white arm. It was Gee Gee’s Graham’s arm. That was her night to sleep on the floor, and she was sprawled out in front of the door. Her red hair was wet with sweat and she was curled up like a child, with her freckled nose buried in her other arm. When I opened the door for the dog, she gave him a push that sent him rolling down the steps.

  “Nice thing,” Biff said. “Tossing our watchdog out on his pedigreed rear. Come here, Billy Boy.”

  Bill waddled over and allowed himself to be petted. Biff rubbed one floppy ear, then the other. The dog whined happily when Biff talked to him.

  “He’s a busy guy, keeping an eagle eye on his corpse, isn’t he? On account of he found it he feels it’s sort of personal property, doesn’t he?”

  Bill wiggled around saying yes.

  Mother poked her tousled head out from under the towel. “Please don’t forget that I found the body,” she said. “And as soon as I get over this attack we’ll bury it, or I’ll take the first train east.”

  An angry voice from the trailer yelled, “Shut up!” It sounded like Cliff (Corny) Cobb. He was Biff’s very good friend and the only comic in burlesque I really disliked.

  “If he’s got your place in the bed again I’m going to drag him out of it by his big, ugly nose,” I said.

  I didn’t try to keep my voice down; I wanted Cliff to hear me. He had been my pet beef since he joined us in Yuma. And I had my reasons for beefing, too. First of all, he invited himself; moved in, bag and baggage, even after I’d told him how crowded we were. He said he would help Biff with the driving. In the thousand-some miles we had traveled, he hadn’t touched the wheel. He was supposed to pay his share of the groceries, too, and so far I hadn’t seen the color of his money.

  “He’s a dead beat, that’s what he is.”

  Biff tried to shush me.

  “Oh, shush yourself,” I said irritably. “Three weeks now, and he hasn’t slept on the floor once. If everyone else can take turns, he certainly can. I told you what it would be like before we left Yuma, but oh, no, you know so much! He’s your friend. He gets cleaned out in a crap game so he’s gotta move in with us. It isn’t like he’s changed any, either. He was the same selfish, inconsiderate lout when he was on the road with us, too. If there’s a good spot in the show, your friend Corny Cobb gets it. He’s always grabbing the best makeup shelf, grabbing all your scenes, grabbing everything but a check. No wonder he’s the only one who winds up with a buck in the bank at the end of the season. He never paid for anything in his life!”

  I must have been screaming, because Mother heard me even though she was still under the towel.

  “Gypsy’s absolutely right,” she said, her voice muffled.

  Corny yelled from the trailer again. “Shut up, dammit. Where the hell do you think you are? In a boiler factory?”

  I shut up. Not because Corny had requested it in his individual way, but because I had worn myself out. Biff can be so aggravating at times. Instead of putting up an argument when I have one of my fits, he just sits there quietly until I get tired. Nothing infuriates me more and I usually get so mad I want to cry. Instead of crying this time, I started to giggle. The whole picture was suddenly funny to me. A trailer full of people, including one dead one, and me beefing about a comic because he didn’t pay his share of the groceries.

  Biff wasn’t sure that my giggle was his cue. He waited for me to speak.

  “We haven’t enough to worry about,” I said, “I have to make a scene about Corny! I’m sorry, honey.”

  Biff walked over and kissed me on the nose. He might have done better if the Turkish towel hadn’t stirred. Mother could sense emotions even when she was under a towel. After a moment she emerged, red-eyed but businesslike.

  “Oh my,” she said, “that certainly was a bad one.” She folded the towel carefully and placed it on the back of her chair. Then she put out the last of the asthma powder by smothering it with the top of the Life Everlasting container.

  “Now we get busy,” she said. “You and Louise get a shovel to dig the hole. While you’re getting it, I’ll go look for a nice burial place.” As she walked toward the woods she hummed a little tune: “I know a place where the sun never shines, where the fou-u-r leaf clovers grow.”

  She stooped over and picked up something. She walked back into the light of the kerosene lamp, examining the pieces of grass she held in her hand.

  “See, children,” she exclaimed happily, “a four-leaf clover. My little song never misses. That’s a sign for you to leave everything to Mother. Everything.” Without a backward glance, Mother tucked the four-leaf clover into her curly hair and walked back toward the woods.

  “Biff!” she sang out a moment later. “Ask Louise to tell you about the time I found the seventy-one four-leaf clovers.”

  We both listened to Mother’s little song as it became fainter and fainter. Then Biff turned to me. There was something strange in his expression: not exactly fear, but close to it. As though he were puzzled about something that would frighten him if it were true. He waited so long to speak that I became uncomfortable.

  “That’s true,” I said. “About the four-leaf clovers, I mean. She really did find seventy-one of ’em once. On Mother’s Day. We were making our jumps by car and, believe it or not, we had five blowouts! While we were waiting for the tow car, Mother started singing her song and before we knew it, there was Mother, with a fistful of clovers.”

  “Five blowouts doesn’t sound very lucky to me,” Biff said. He was still staring into the woods. Mother was out of sight, but he kept peering into the darkness.

  “In a way it was lucky,” I said. “The last blowout was near Akron, Ohio, where they make all those tires. Well, Mother fluffs up her hair and powders her nose and calls on the president of the company. How she gets in to see the head guy is still a mystery, but you know Mother. Anyway, she tells him how we’re a travelling vaudeville act and how we have to make Springfield in time for the matinee. Then she cries a little, and ten minutes later, a mechanic comes out and put five brand-new tires on the car! ‘No charge,’ he tells us. ‘The boss is happy to help poor folks out.’”

  Biff answered me only because he was trying to be polite. He hadn’t been listening very attentively.

  “Well, that seems only right to me. Tires are guaranteed,” he mumbled.

  “Yes, but Mother didn’t tell him we’d traveled over fifteen thousand miles on the tires. And I know she didn’t mention how they were retreads when we bought ’em.”

  Biff didn’t say anything. Listening to the story again after so many years, I suddenly thought it sounded sort of crooked. I tried to clean it up a little.

  “Mother felt that the tire people were rich, and, well, five measly old tires aren’t going to break them.” My explanation was wasted on Biff.

  “Punkin,” he said seriously, “I don’t like the way Evangie’s been acting lately. She’s not herself. Oh, I know all the cute little gags about tires for free and swiping other acts’ music, but this is different. It’s this heartlessness, this coldness, that gets me. I’m a man and I’ll be damned if I have nerve enough to bury that body in the dark woods. I should dig a hole and put that corpse in it! The thought of it scares the hell outta me. But look at Evangie! Four-leaf clovers in her hair,
humming away like she hasn’t got a worry in the world, and out there alone looking for a good burial spot! A good spot, yet, to bury our best man. Do you think maybe the heat’s gone to her head or something?”

  “Darling,” I said slowly, “you knew all about my mother before you married me. You were the one who insisted that as long as she missed our wedding she at least should get in on the honeymoon. You were the one who wired her to join us. Besides, I don’t talk like that about your family.”

  “My family are in the Ramapo mountains,” Biff said.

  “Don’t bring them into it. My mother never wore shoes in her life and my old man never saw a streetcar. They’re nice, simple people. They wouldn’t know how to cook up schemes like Evangie.”

  That might have gone on and on, but I heard Mother coming back. She was still humming, and I thought her voice sounded happier than it had for some time. When she neared the trailer I could see her dimly: the pale-blue organdy dress, the half socks to match, the black patent-leather Mary Janes on her feet. Even when she walked into the full light of the lamp, she looked like a little girl. Her cheeks were flushed and she held another four-leaf clover in her hand.

  “You know, children, I’ve just been thinking,” she said. Her voice was too calm. I knew something was up. “I’ve decided that Biff is right. We will wait until morning, then we’ll tell the police about the body.”

  It was too good to be true. I watched Mother closely as she gathered up her toothbrush and towel and things. I watched her as she walked toward the washrooms at the far end of the trailer camp.

  “Maybe she means it,” Biff said uncertainly.

  “Of course she does!” I said. “Are you insinuating that my mother is a liar?”

  Biff gulped noisily. Then he began fixing the bed in the back of the automobile. The mattress, the blankets, the pillows—all the things Mother always traveled with were in the trunk of the car. Biff made up the bed and turned on the dome light overhead. He poured out a glass of water and placed it on the small shelf he had built near the headboard for that purpose. Then he put the asthma powder and the matches next to the glass.

  “Maybe if we make her real comfy she’ll get a good night’s rest,” he said hopefully.

  “Oh, I will.” Mother, back from the washroom and scrubbed until she shone like a beacon light, looked fondly at both of us. “How sweet to fix everything so nice,” she said. She kissed Biff. Then she kissed me. “Sleep well, darling,” she said as she scrambled into her bed.

  Biff eyed the folded-up army cot that was his bed, and I peeked into the trailer at the two feet of floor Gee Gee had left me. “We’ll sleep like logs,” Biff said. In an undertone he added, “And who’s kidding?”

  2AT FIVE MINUTES PAST FOUR I WAS STILL TRYING TO get the stove to work. Biff and I had wanted a cup of coffee since we tucked Mother in at midnight. The stove wouldn’t draw.

  “It’s a mechanical difficulty,” Biff said for the fifteenth time. He kept poking at the valve with a broom straw.

  “It’s no fuel, you mean,” I said. “I told you to buy a new tube of rock gas before we left San Diego, but oh no, you know everything.”

  Biff grabbed my arm. “Look!” he said, and pointed.

  I thought the red sky was the sun coming up. Suddenly I saw smoke. The camp is near the town dump, as most trailer camps are, and I thought the smoke had something to do with garbage being burned. Then I saw the flames. A second later the entire wood was on fire.

  My first thought from then on was for the safety of the animals. I pushed Biff aside as I dashed into the trailer. I don’t even remember screaming that the fire was within a few feet of us all. I do remember grabbing up Bill’s family, basket and all. I remember unhooking Rufus Veronica, the monkey, and putting him on my shoulder. Then I scooped up Gee Gee’s guinea pig form the bureau drawer and shoved him into my pocket. It wasn’t until I tripped over Gee Gee that I had sense enough to arouse our guests.

  While I banged on the bedroom door and yelled for Cliff and Mandy to get up, Gee Gee brushed past me, clutching her scrapbook in one arm, her ten-year-old kolinsky scarf in the other.

  I rolled Dimples Darling out of bed and threw a kimono at her. She opened her mouth to scream, but Gee Gee pushed her out of the trailer before she had a chance to finish it.

  By the time I got out, Cliff and Mandy were leaving by the back door. They were wearing a pair of Biff’s pajamas. Mandy wore the bottoms, Cliff the tops. They weren’t awake yet and they stared at the flames stupidly.

  Dimples screamed then. Not because of the fire, but because of Cliff. She threw him her kimono and rushed back into the trailer. When she came out she had her mangy seat-warped mink coat over her arm. Her hair was rolled up in tin curlers, and she wore a pink rubber chin strap, but for once Dimples Darling wasn’t worried about how she looked. She turned the coat inside out and held it close to her chest.

  “My last faded rose,” she said with a sickly grin. Then she fainted dead away.

  By then it seemed the entire trailer camp was up. People in nightgowns and pajamas were running toward the fire with buckets and pails of water in their hands. Someone was thoughtful enough to pour a bucketful on Dimples, and she sat up with a bewildered expression on her wet face.

  “W—what’s cookin’?” she mumbled.

  “You!” Biff snapped, “if you don’t get with it.” He was searching around for something, and his language was not to be listened to. “Where’s that shovel?” is the only part I can translate.

  Finally he ran toward a neighbor’s trailer and returned in a moment with a large shovel. Then he began digging a trench near our house. As the trailerites passed by, he shouted at them to get shovels and start digging.

  “The fire can’t jump the trench,” he yelled as they stared at him.

  It took a full minute for the smartest one to catch on, but when he ran for his shovel, the others followed him blindly.

  With that off his mind, Biff started yelling for us to pour water on the trailer so the sparks wouldn’t catch. “And get the cars out of the way! The gasoline . . .”

  I didn’t wait to hear the rest of the direction. With the animals tangled up in my hands and hair, I piled into the driver’s seat of our car and drove like mad down the road. When I found a spot that looked safe, I pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the ignition. I tied the monkey to the steering wheel and started to put the dog basket in the back seat. Then I missed Mother! Her bed wasn’t mussed; the asthma powder rested on the shelf, the glass of water was spilled over the pillow, but Mother was gone.

  I raced back to the trailer camp. Dimples and Gee Gee were pouring bucketfuls of water on our trailer. The dust streaked down the sides in mud streams. Gee Gee was soaking wet, too.

  “Where’s Mother?” I yelled above the roar of the excited people.

  They didn’t answer me.

  I heard Biff’s voice. “Leave our trailer alone,” he shouted.

  “Get the ones nearest the fire and pour like hell!”

  We grabbed the buckets and raced past the safer trailers to those that were in the most danger. The other cars had been driven away, and that meant that the camp was in darkness. Aside from the trailers that carried their own generators, fire was dimmed by the heavy smoke. The wind was blowing toward the end of the camp, and as I ran sparks would catch in the dry grass near my feet, I tried to beat them out with my empty bucket, but they fell so fast!

  My eyes burned and I couldn’t breathe, but I still kept running toward the fire. It wasn’t bravery. I could hear Biff’s voice up there and at that moment I would have run through hell to be near him. Whenever the shouting died down for a second I could hear him giving orders. Sometimes he sounded closeby. Then it sounded as though he were miles away. His voice was so calm, so reassuring, that I ran faster.

  The handle of the tin bucket was burning my hand. As it hit the side of my leg, I could feel the heat through my heavy slacks. Then suddenly I stumbled into a
clearing. The woods weren’t woods at all when I saw them close up. The trees were stunted bushes with dried brush piled up around them.

  The wind rolled them that way, I thought. But it had been done purposely, it couldn’t have made a better bonfire. I saw Biff’s shadow coming toward me. Then I heard Dimples.

  “To hell with this,” she said peevishly. “Here we are, doing all the heavy work. You don’t see Corny or Mandy knocking themselves out, do you? Damn right you don’t. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get a drink, and fast.”

  “That’s for me,” Gee Gee said. “Nothing more we can do, anyway.”

  One trailer near the woods was still burning. With the sun coming up behind it, it looked like the framework you see in automobile showrooms. A dilapidated car hitched to it was also burning. There was a strong odor of gasoline in the air.

  But I hardly noticed anything except that Mother was safe. She was there, talking to a tired-looking woman standing near the burning trailer. The woman was weeping, and I could hear Mother consoling her.

  “Such a pity. You didn’t even have time to unhitch the car.” Mother put her arms around the woman and patted her on the shoulder. “We just got here, too. And to think of driving into all this trouble. But as long as you have insurance, there’s nothing to cry about. You can get a new car and trailer. One like my daughter’s . . .” Mother saw me and rushed into my arms. “Isn’t it the most terrible thing, Louise?” Under her anxious voice I caught a hint of satisfaction.

  I felt a tight feeling in my throat. Just like when the manager of a theater would come backstage and ask to talk to me. I could always tell when they were going to ask me questions about Mother. It might be nothing more than a missing letter, a costume flushed down a toilet, or a piece of music missing. I would know then that Mother was “protecting my interests” again.

  Sometimes it was worse. Mother loves writing letters. She loves it almost as much as she loves steaming open letters other people have written. Unfortunately, Mother’s letters are what people call “poison pen.” Mother doesn’t call them that, of course. She thinks of her letter writing as a sacred duty. Too often I’ve heard her say, “Someone should drop that woman a line and tell her just how low she is—copying that song like that. It’s my duty as your mother to do it. I will do it.” Then Mother would get that too-innocent look in her eye and she would say, “Of course I won’t sign it. I’ll send it anonymously.”