Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (16 page)

The police found the gun that killed her up on the beach about two blocks from where Harper’s Malt Shop used to be. She had taken a cab all the way from Meridian. I’ll bet she was surprised when she saw the malt shop had burned down and she didn’t have any place to use the bathroom. The police called it a suicide and said she had walked out in the water and shot herself in the head. Then her body had drifted down the beach in front of the Hammer’s Christian Motel. What I wonder is this. After she had shot herself between the eyes, how had she enough time to turn around and throw that gun way up on the beach before she died. Daddy pointed out if she had drifted down the beach from where the malt shop was, she would have had to pass under George Potlow’s pier. That pier has barnacles on the pilings that would have ripped her up, but she was in fine shape except for the hole between her eyes.

At school, Mrs. Underwood let me stand up and tell how Michael and I had found the dead woman. I did it great with gestures and everything. Afterwards, she let the class ask questions. You should have heard those questions! Some of them didn’t even believe that we found the dead body at all. And of course, Kay Bob Benson got up and told the story about how her mother had found the leg. So what! We found a whole body. Stay away from sixth graders if you can.

At recess I go across the football field to the high school and a senior boy named Marvin Thrasher gives me a Mounds candy bar every day and sometimes an Almond Joy. He is a big fan of the Peter Paul candy company. I talk to the high school teachers a lot, too. I am getting plenty of attention being a victim of a fire disaster and the product of a broken home at the same time.

Mrs. Dot comes down to see me once in a while and she sure has been acting funny lately. She wears the Jr. Debutante pink and seafoam green barrettes all the time now, and she made me sit down and listen to a talk called “Fun with Rayon” that I already heard her do in Jr. Debutantes. Sometimes she does baby talk to me. Mrs. Romeo said that her “Dashes from Dot” column last week didn’t make a lick of sense.

In school Mrs. Underwood told us a story about a little girl who had gotten rabies and gone mad. They had to feed her by putting a tray under her door. When anybody in her family got close, she said, “Don’t get near me because I’m liable to bite you.” Well, you should have heard the class just roar at that one, including Michael. Mrs. Underwood told them there was nothing funny about rabies. That little girl knew if she bit any member of the family, they would get rabies, too, and she died without ever having been petted. I cried so hard Mrs. Underwood had to take me to the school nurse.

When I was in the school nurse’s office, a high school girl came in and said, “Oh, Mrs. Smith. I feel awful. I’ve got my period and my stomach is all hot.” Mrs. Smith went over to a big icebox and got her a Coca-Cola. I wondered why I didn’t get a Coca-Cola. I told Patsy Ruth Coggins, the dumbest girl living, I knew a way to get us a free Coca-Cola. So at recess we went over and I said, “Oh, Mrs. Smith, my stomach is burning up something awful and so is Patsy Ruth’s.” She said, “Do you have real bad cramps?” I said, “No, we just have a period and I think I might have to have a Coca-Cola and Patsy Ruth wants one too.” Patsy Ruth said, “I would rather have a Dr Pepper if you have it.” I could have killed her. Sure enough, Mrs. Smith gave us both a Coca-Cola and two aspirins. I told her I didn’t want any aspirins, but dumb Patsy Ruth took the aspirins. We finished our Coca-Cola and thanked her and left.

Today I went back over there. Mrs. Smith said, “Do you still
have your period?” I said, “Oh, yes, and now it’s worse than ever. My stomach is so hot I can’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

But she didn’t give me my Coca-Cola. She went over and looked at some papers and said, “You are going to the doctor right now. This is not normal, you having a period for a week.”

I said, “Listen, I don’t even go to school here. I was just passing through. I live in a school bus and I am on my way to Wisconsin.”

That lie didn’t do me a bit of good because she had my name and Mrs. Underwood’s name written down on a paper from the time I had been there for a crying fit. She took me right back over to the grammar school and told Mrs. Underwood I had my period for over a week and, not only that, it had gotten worse. Mrs. Underwood looked real surprised and asked me if it was true. I said, “Well, I didn’t know for sure if I had it for a week or not, but my stomach is hot.” Mrs. Underwood looked at me funny, thanked the nurse and told her she would take care of it.

She gave the class a longer recess and took me in the classroom, sat me down and said, “Now are you sure you have your period?” I said I couldn’t say for sure, but I thought so.

“What makes you think you have one?”

I said, “I was craving a Coca-Cola.”

Then she asked me if I knew what a period was. I said if she meant in grammar, I knew what a period was and I knew what a comma and an exclamation mark were. She said, “Daisy Fay Harper, didn’t your mother tell you what a period is?” I said, “I guess not or I would have remembered.” Caught like a rat in a trap in a lie in front of Mrs. Underwood!

She said, “Do you know what a Kotex is?”

“Sure, Momma has a box of them at home.”

She said, “Do you know what they’re for?”

“I sure do,” I said. “My momma told me they were for dusting in hard-to-reach places.”

Mrs. Underwood settled back, crossed her legs and said, “I guess I’m going to have to tell you about your period.” And she did. She told me all about it and it meant you were a woman and all. I thought I was going to die right there on the spot. I’ve never heard anything so terrible in my whole life. I hope she is
wrong and I never get a period. I am eleven years old and entirely too young to hear about it. Can you imagine my mother not knowing what Kotex are for and dusting the house with them? Well, her mother can just tell her what they are for, I’m not getting into the facts of life. I haven’t heard one fact of life that I liked yet.

I AM IN BIG TROUBLE
! Yesterday at school I was sitting there listening to Mrs. Underwood read us,
The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes
, Chapter 14, “Trouble on the Mountain,” when someone knocked on the classroom door. Mrs. Underwood stopped right at the best part and went to find out who was there. She came back and said, “Daisy Fay, your aunt and uncle are here to see you. They’re waiting for you in their car.”

I got all excited because it had to be my Aunt Mignon and Uncle Raymond all the way from Virginia and I just knew Momma was with them. They had brought her home as a surprise!

Mrs. Underwood said to get my things, I could be excused early and not to forget to do page 57 in my arithmetic book. I got all of my stuff, ran out and jumped in the car. And guess what? It wasn’t my Aunt Mignon and Uncle Raymond at all. I had never seen these two people before in my life. I said, “Hey, I think you’ve got the wrong little girl.”

The woman said, “You’re Daisy Fay Harper, aren’t you?”

I said, “Yes,” but by that time they had driven off with me. I said, “Wait a minute, I don’t know you.”

She said, “You were named after a vase of daisies that were in your mother’s room, weren’t you?”

I started to get nervous. I said, “How did you know that?” And then I saw that ring on her finger and I knew who she was, Opal, the murdered woman’s sister! I started screaming they had better stop and let me out of that car or I would tell the police. I tried to jump out, but the man had locked all the doors.

Opal said, “Don’ be afraid. We won’t hurt you. We just want to talk to you about my sister Ruby.”

I said to the man, “Who are you?”

He said, “I’m her husband.” He pointed to Opal.

Then Opal said, “Wouldn’t you like some ice cream?” That sounded like a good idea and besides, I thought if we went to a public place, I could run if I had to. But they took me up the road to the Tastee Freeze, a drive-in, and I had to stay in the car. When the waitress came, I screamed that I was being kidnapped and to call the police. She laughed because she knew me. One time I had gone up there with Michael with a saucepan on my head and had told her that I was Johnny Appleseed. She just kept laughing, so I gave up. I ordered an orange crush and a banana split, but I wasn’t saying anything to those people. I had made a promise to Michael’s mother not to ever mention the names Ruby Bates or Claude Pistal out loud as long as I lived.

Opal said, “I wanted to meet the little girl my sister told me about. Ruby liked you a lot, and we hope you’d like to help us find her killer. We know it was Claude Pistal, and we’ve tried every way in the world to get a case against him, but Claude lies and says he never knew a Ruby Bates. Ruby had told me all about Claude, though I warned her against ruining her reputation by going with him, but Ruby just told me not to worry, the only person who had ever seen them together was a little girl named Daisy who lived on the beach and had been named after a vase of flowers. That was how I found you.”

Well, I hope everybody is satisfied they gave me such a stupid name! If they had named me something simple like Mary, this would have never happened.

Then the man started to talk and asked me to think about
Ruby’s four little motherless children. He must have thought I was stupid. I said, “Mister, I am in the sixth grade and I can read obituaries, and she didn’t even have any children, so there.” That shut him up. I said, “You better take me home now.”

He tried a different story. “Don’t you feel bad about letting Ruby’s killer run loose when you could put him in jail where he belongs? How would you feel if it had been your momma and somebody knew the killer and wasn’t telling?”

He was beginning to get me with that mother stuff, so I just clamped my lips shut and looked out the window. I did feel bad, but not bad enough to get myself killed in case they didn’t arrest Claude in time.

Opal started to cry and said, “Please help me, Daisy. You are the only one who can.”

Then he started up again. “Daisy, I want you to think about this. If Opal and I found out about you seeing Claude and Ruby together, don’t you think eventually Claude Pistal’s going to remember you saw them together. Think what he might do to you.”

“You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

I could have choked myself. I still hadn’t admitted anything, but I should have kept my mouth shut. The man pretended like nothing had happened and just kept on talking. “Now, we don’t want to, Daisy, but the time will come when we might have to tell the police.” They kept talking to me like that for over an hour, but I never said another word except to order a hot fudge sundae with nuts.

They finally gave up and took me back to school in time to catch the school bus home.

Mrs. Underwood better check out who she lets take her students out of class. She should ask to see some identification. I was as sick as a dog on that bus. Mrs. Butts had to stop three times for me to throw up. When I got home, guess who was sitting there with Daddy? Opal and her husband, the very ones that had kidnapped me.

Daddy looked worried. The man said, “Daisy, I’m Mr. Kilgore from the FBI.” He had lied and told me that he was Opal’s
husband! FBI men are not supposed to lie. On top of that, he had a tape recorder and was playing the tape of what we had been saying in the car that afternoon. They made me sit down and hear it.

“Listen to this, Mr. Harper. This is where we got her.”

He played the part where I asked if they were going to tell Claude Pistal on me. I sure do have a southern accent. He played some more of the tape, but all you could hear was them talking and me eating my banana split.

He said to Daddy, “This tape will hold up in court as evidence, Mr. Harper, because the child had no way of knowing Ruby had a sister named Opal unless she had talked to her because her name appeared in the obituaries as Mrs. Julian Wilson.”

Daddy looked at me. “Is this true?”

I didn’t know what to answer without incriminating myself. I said, “I want to talk to my lawyer,” which was the wrong thing to say because Daddy grabbed me and about shook my head off.

He said it was not funny and I better quit acting like a horse’s ass and tell him everything before he beat the living daylights out of me. Mad as he was, he might have killed me before Claude Pistal got a chance.

Mr. Kilgore told him to calm down, I was probably just scared. So I told them the whole story, but I never once said Ruby Bates’s or Claude Pistal’s name out loud. Only used “he and she” and they would say “Ruby” and “Claude Pistal” and I would nod my head yes. I wasn’t taking any chances of them fooling me and taping my voice again.

I told them all about when I was up at the Blue Gardenia Lounge waiting to get paid for taping Angel’s ears back and how he threatened me and how Harold Pistal had warned me not to tell my parents about Claude being so mean. Then I told Mr. Kilgore about the afternoon Claude brought Ruby up there to use the bathroom. It was when Momma and Daddy had gone fishing with Mr. and Mrs. Dot and caught all those rotten Spanish mackerel. When Mr. Kilgore asked for the exact date, Daddy called Mr. Dot on the phone to find out. Mr. Dot remembered, and also reminded Daddy that he still owed him money
for half the rental on the boat. Ill bet Daddy was sorry he made that phone call.

After I finished my story, Mr. Kilgore admitted that taping my voice had been illegal. Tricked! But he did it for my own protection, Claude is dangerous and the FBI suspects him of a lot of murders all over the country, but they haven’t been able to pin anything on him until now. All I had to do was to sign a paper stating I had seen Ruby Bates and Claude Pistal together on the afternoon of September 21 and for us not to worry, that I would probably never be called to testify. That’s right, I’ll probably be dead.

My daddy must have read my mind because he said, “Now, wait a minute, how do I know my little girl will be protected?”

Mr. Kilgore said, “Mr. Harper, trust me. We know exactly where Claude Pistal is at this very minute.”