Mother Finds a Body Page 3

  Mother was wearing her letter-writing face as I took her arm and led her away from the weeping woman. She turned back and waved at the woman. Then she wheezed again.

  “You know, Louise, I think this fire has brought on an asthma attack.” In the same tone she went on to tell me about the weeping woman. “Poor soul, that trailer was all she had in the world. She just arrived this afternoon, and then to have this happen to her! She had a beauty shop in it and used to go around giving permanents and things. She had three steady customers waiting for treatments and there she is, burned out of . . .”

  “Mother,” I said. “Where were you during the fire?”

  “Don’t be rude. I was telling you about poor Mrs. Smith. She told me she . . .”

  “I don’t want to know about her,” I said. “I asked you where you were during the fire. Your bed wasn’t even slept in.”

  Even as Mother started explaining, I was sorry I had asked. It was too easy to remember Mother’s words: leave everything to me. Too easy to remember how Mother remedied situations.

  “Mother, did you start that fire?”

  Her blue eyes looked at me calmly. Her face was flushed. I hoped the flush was from the asthma, but in my heart I knew better.

  “Why, Louise! How can you ask me a thing like that? Your own mother!”

  Then I knew it was true. But why did she do it? I didn’t ask her; I was afraid of the answer.

  “Oh, stop talking so tragic,” Mother said impatiently. “Of course I started the silly old fire. How was I to know that poor woman’s trailer would get burned up? And how did you think I could get everybody out of our trailer unless I did something drastic?” Mother tossed her head in anger. “You certainly didn’t want those friends of yours to know we were carting a dead body around, did you? You couldn’t have dragged it around in the broad daylight, could you? That’s the trouble with you and Biff. You have no gratitude.”

  It wasn’t the first time I had been staggered with Mother’s methods. I had been through a series of them since I started in show business as a kid, but nothing like this!

  “If you’d been the right kind of daughter, you would have helped me,” Mother said. “But no!” Then she became more cheerful. “Well, anyway, there’s nothing left to worry about. No one got hurt. Nothing got damaged but a few old trees and that trailer of Mrs. Smith’s. She has it completely covered by insurance, and the body’s buried away just as nice as you could ask for. The . . .”

  “No!” The word burst from me. “But—who—helped you?”

  “Why, no one.” Mother sounded a little hurt that I thought she needed help. “I just waited until everybody was quiet. Then I got out of the car by the back door and found the shovel. I dug a nice hole. Then I started the fire before I went back for the corpse. The hole isn’t very deep, though. I do think the very least Biff can do is dig a deeper one. Of course, if we leave town right away, it might not matter. What do you think?”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “See me when?”

  “When you were burying the body,” I said as patiently as my trembling voice would allow.

  Mother stopped walking for a moment. “You know,” she said slowly, “now that you mention it, I did think someone was following me. It was when I was pulling the wagon over the bumps . . .”

  “What wagon?”

  “Why, little Johnny’s wagon. You know, the nice family that lives next door to us. The husband is in the scissor-grinding business. Goes from town to town grinding scissors. She’s having another baby, too. Three already and another one on the way. It’s disgraceful.”

  “Why that wagon, Mother?”

  “Well, we don’t own one, and you certainly didn’t expect me to carry that corpse over my shoulder, did you?”

  Mother was silent a moment. We walked on toward the trailer.

  “You know, Louise, I do believe my asthma has cleared up by itself. It’s either that new medicine or this dry climate.” Mother breathed deeply and clearly.

  “Yes,” she said. “It certainly has. Oh, by the way, dear, let’s not tell Biff about the body right now. Let’s wait until later and surprise him.”

  3BY SEVEN THAT MORNING THE LAST FIREMAN HAD left and the trailer camp settled down to sleep again. The smell of burnt brush and chemicals coming from the woods was like a badly kept Turkish bath, but my nose had been subjected to such a variety of odors during the last week that it was losing its sensitivity. Anyway, I kept it close to the pot of coffee that was boiling away on the relief stove, so the smell didn’t bother me as much as it did Biff.

  He divided his complaints between the smell and a blister on his hand. I rather liked the blister. It made him look as though he worked for a living, but I did agree with him about the air.

  “Smells like something Bill might have dragged into the trailer,” Biff said. Then he started laughing. “Boy, if this isn’t one for the book!”

  His laugh sounded dirty to me. I glanced up from the coffeepot, and that made him laugh louder.

  “Punkin, you ought to see yourself,” he said. “You lost half your eyebrows.”

  I don’t see anything funny about that to this day. I had lost half my eyebrows and my bangs were singed. Not only that, my hair was gray with smoke. So were my clothes.

  “I don’t think that’s very kind of you,” I said in a martyred tone. “Laughing at me when I’m bending over this hot stove making coffee for you. I could very nicely have used the time putting on full makeup, and, anyway, if you think you’re Rembrandt!”

  Biff rattled the cups and saucers around on the table and brought the can of milk from the extra icebox on the running board of the trailer. By then I was beginning to think the setup was funny, too, that is, everything but my singed eyebrows.

  “You were wonderful, honey,” I said offhand-like. “Thinking about digging the trench and everything. I certainly didn’t see anyone else working so hard,” I stirred the coffee vigorously. No sense in letting him think he was too wonderful, I decided.

  “You were pretty swell yourself,” Biff was just as offhand. “Driving the car away and pouring water and . . . Say! Where is the car?”

  In all the excitement I had forgotten it myself. Then I remembered I had left the animals in it.

  “It’s down the road a ways,” I said. “Have your coffee first. Then go get it. While your gone I’ll fix the dogs’ breakfast.”

  “Punkin, the Personality Girl of the Old Opera, making breakfast!” Biff said it comfortably. He settled back in the chair and lit two cigarettes, one for me. “I bet if I told the boys they’d never believe it. Here you are, living in a trailer camp in Ysleta, Texas. Corpse in the bathtub, fire in the woods, everything you need to start light housekeeping. And me with a blister on my hand yet. A blister from a shovel!”

  Biff caressed the blister and let a dreamy light fill his eyes. I knew what he was thinking. He was visualizing the story in newspaper print. That’s the only trouble with marrying in the business—no secrets.

  The no secrets reminded me of my own secret. I hadn’t had a chance to tell Biff about Mother’s excursion into the woods, and he looked so pleased with life in general that I didn’t have the heart to spoil things. Not until we’d had our coffee, anyway. I had no intentions of surprising him as Mother suggested, but it was a difficult subject to bring up. We hadn’t been married long enough for me to say, “Look, dear, Mother did the damnedest thing. She set fire to the woods so she could bury the body.”

  As far as that goes, we hadn’t been married at all. Not if you want to be technical about it. We had a deep-sea captain say the right words, and I wore the ring on the right finger, but since the night of our marriage we hadn’t been alone for five minutes.

  It wasn’t only Mother and our guests. Even before they joined us, the studio had sent a publicity man as chaperone until we went through another ceremony that would sound legal to the Hays office. They didn’t like the water-taxi business. They didn’t like the
idea of our captain being willing to disregard the technicalities of a marriage license, and they didn’t like me particularly to start with. Making a movie actress out of a burlesque queen was a tougher job than they had anticipated.

  Hays organization or no Hays organization, I had no intentions of spoiling my romantic marriage. My father had been married at sea; my grandfather had been married at sea, and I had an uncle who married himself at sea. I was being traditional, and if they wanted to call it living in sin, it was all right with me. One thing sure: they weren’t going to get me to wear a white veil and have doves flying around while an organ played bad music. I wasn’t exactly suspended by my studio, but I was too close to it for comfort. I knew I could always go back to burlesque.

  “Punkin?”

  “What?”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “Honest? Or can I color it a little?”

  “Honest,” Biff said.

  “I was thinking if this is living in sin it sure is overrated.”

  When Biff smiles he’s rather handsome. He smiled then, an extra-nice smile. He got up and dropped an eggshell into the coffeepot, and I thought he looked substantial, standing there in the early-morning sunlight.

  He’s a little too tall, six feet four, and because he’s always been conscious of his height, he stoops. Just in the knees, though. Most people think he stoops because it gets a laugh on his theater entrances, but that isn’t true. His hair is dark and, with the exception of one lock that stands straight up in the back, it’s wavy. His eyes are a real Irish blue, almost black when he’s angry, and I like his mouth. It’s big, but, like Mother says, a big mouth is a sign of generosity. She doesn’t say that about Biff’s mouth, of course. On him a big mouth means deceit. If he’d been anything but an actor he could have gotten away with no mouth at all, but Mother doesn’t like actors. Least of all she likes burlesque actors.

  “Having fun?” he asked me.

  “Uh-huh. Best honeymoon I ever had.”

  Biff placed the cups on the table. He looked closely at one and began polishing it with Mother’s asthma towel. “Mandy’s getting damn careless with his dishwashing,” he said.

  “Well, at least he tries,” I said. “That’s more than I can say for that Corny friend of yours. Do you know he wasn’t even around last night when that fire was . . .”

  The car driving up interrupted me. With a screeching of brakes it stopped a few feet from the table. It was our car, and Corny scrambled out of the backseat. His pajamas were wrinkled, but I was glad to see he had on the bottoms even if they didn’t match the tops. His eyes were bleary. I glared at him as he staggered over to the table and reached for the bottle of Wilson’s.

  “I’ll have one of those brown boys,” he said.

  “You’ve had enough brown boys to populate South Africa,” I snapped, taking the bottle from his hand. “Go to bed and sleep it off. On the floor for once.”

  Corny didn’t move. He glowered at me as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether to hit me on the head or kick me in the teeth.

  “Where’ve you been?” Biff asked.

  “Where do you think I’d be?” Corny said. “Hanging around here making a damn-fool hero out of myself? Where there is smoke there is no Cliff Corny Cobb. I went into town and had me a couple of snorts, that’s where I been.’

  “You’ve got a helluva nerve taking our car out when you’re drinking,” I said. Then I remembered where I had left the car. “How did you know where it was, anyway?”

  Corny had to brace himself against the tent pole to keep from falling flat on his face. I had never seen him that tight.

  “If you must know,” he said, “I was walking into town and I passed the car down the road. You shouldn’ta left the keys if you don’t want nobody but yourself to drive it. And don’t go talking about me having my nerve . . .”

  Then I saw that Corny wasn’t alone. A man was getting out of the driver’s seat of the car. He was the biggest man I’d ever seen. Not that he was taller than Biff; it was a different kind of bigness. He had big hands, a big head with lots of curly, almost gray hair on it. His eyebrows were bushy and his ears were big, too. When he walked into the sunlight I could see that he needed a shave.

  Biff poured him a drink. The man had that kind of face. You wanted to drink with him even before you knew him.

  “Kind of early for actors to be up, ain’t it?”

  His voice was exactly what I’d expected. It was big and boomy. He looked and sounded like a perfect ad for Texas. He pulled up a camp chair and sat facing Biff. “This is the most excitement Yselta’s had since I been sheriff. A fire and actors all at once. We don’t get many stage actors around here. Last one we had was away back—some cowboy with false teeth.”

  The sheriff took the drink from Biff and downed it in one gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Do you want a chaser?” I asked.

  Biff didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Chaser, hell,” he said, digging up a gag from the bottom of the trunk. “Nothing can catch that last one.”

  I was glad the sheriff ignored the dialogue. He was still thinking about his cowboy with the store-bought china.

  “No, sir,” the sheriff said, slapping his thigh. “That cowboy didn’t know one end of a horse from the other.”

  That was his contribution to the floor show and he laughed heartily.

  I tried to laugh with him, but it was an effort. If I hadn’t known he was the sheriff it would have been a cinch, but between the doubt of our corpse half-buried in the woods and Corny’s sly looks, I just couldn’t get with it.

  Suddenly the sheriff stood up. He sauntered over to the trailer and peered through the screen door.

  “All them folks in there actors?” he asked, as though such a thing were impossible. Then he wrinkled up his nose. “Boy, they sure do stink!”

  Biff hurried over and tried to explain the odor. “Oh, that’s Evangie’s asthma powder. That’s my mother-in-law and she’s got . . .”

  “Whatever she’s got,” the sheriff interrupted, “we bury ’em in Texas when they smell better’n that.”

  Biff raised one eyebrow. “That’s my gag,” he said. “I broke it at the Gaiety. You must get around, brother.”

  The sheriff smiled. He walked back to me and scribbled a name and number on a piece of paper.

  “That’s Dr. Gonzales’ number. He’s got some kind of injections for asthma. Allergies, I think he calls ’em. Tell him you’re friends of mine.”

  Before I had time to read the number, the sheriff took the paper away from me. “Here,” he said. “I’ll put my number down, too, just in case you need me.”

  I glanced at the number without seeing the names or numbers. Why, I thought, would the sheriff think we needed him?

  He was having another drink with Biff. “Up the river,” they said in chorus. The sheriff had another drink. Then he turned to leave. He refused Biff’s offer of a lift into town.

  “Nope. Like to walk when I get the chance. Speaking of driving, though, better not let this friend of yours at the wheel anymore. He busted the hell outta the rear end of your car.” The sheriff looked Corny over from head to foot. It wasn’t a love look. “He’s a little too mouthy for the size of him, anyway.”

  Biff and I waited until the sheriff was out of sight before we examined the car. The sheriff was right. Not only was the rear end smashed, but the trailer hitch was snatched off clean.

  “Some drunk backed inta me,” Corny said insolently.

  I knew he was lying. I only hoped Biff realized it.

  “What did that guy mean about your big mouth?” Biff asked.

  Corny didn’t answer right away. He looked at me and grinned. “Ask her,” he said, tossing a thumb in my direction.

  “I ain’t asking anybody but you.” Biff was calm, but his eyes were getting blacker every second. “What’s more, I don’t like your attitude. Pack your toothbrush, funny boy. You and me have co
me to the end of a beautiful friendship.”

  My first feeling was that it was almost worthwhile. If it took a corpse and a brush fire to get rid of that sponger, I’d sit still for both. My second feeling wasn’t as easy. Corny’s lips had turned up in a smile. He rocked back and forth on his unsteady legs.

  “You mean you want me to leave this happy little group?” he asked. “Well, brother, you are asking the wrong guy. From a few hours ago I am already the star boarder.” He turned to go into the trailer and, as an afterthought, he patted me one on the back. “Ask your dear little mother what she was doing during the fire,” he said.

  Biff grabbed him by the seat of his pajamas before Corny knew what had happened to him. He pulled him off the step and shook him around.

  “Apologize to my wife!” Biff said.

  I’ve always dreamed of a moment like that. The dialogue was usually, “Unhand that woman!” In my dreams I had rehearsed myself to go into a womanly act, but when I came face to face with the scene, I didn’t like it at all. It made me feel foolish. I didn’t know whether to frown with great dignity or smile with great generosity. I took the middle road.

  “You’re both nuts,” I said, and walked away. I stumbled over the guy ropes that held the lean-to, but I didn’t care. My mind wasn’t on big exits.

  Of all the people in the world, Cliff Corny Cobb would be the one to see mother bury the body. When I got behind the trailer, I said, “Dammit!” It made me feel better, so I said it again. “Dammit.”

  “Maybe he didn’t though,” I said aloud. “After all, he was walking in the other direction, or he wouldn’t have found the car. He did go into the village, or he wouldn’t have met the sheriff.”