women in all the summers left ahead of you that you were first kissed”—her
ancient, beautiful face smiled—“by a lady.”
When we got home, Dad sat down with the telephone book and scanned the
names, looking for the address “thirty-three.” There were two residents and a
business: Phillip Caldwell at 33 Ridgeton Street, J. E. Grayson at 33 Deerman
Street, and the Crafts Barn at 33 Merchants Street. Dad said Mr. Grayson went
to our church, and that he was nearing ninety. He believed Phillip Caldwell
was a salesman at the Western Auto in Union Town. The Crafts Barn, Mom knew,
was run by a blue-haired woman named Edna Hathaway. She seriously doubted if
Mrs. Hathaway, who went around supported by a walker, had had anything to do
with the incident at Saxon’s Lake. Dad decided Mr. Caldwell’s house was worth
a visit, and he planned to go early in the morning before Mr. Caldwell left
for work.
A mystery could always get me out of bed. I was up bright-eyed by the
time the clock showed seven, and Dad said I could go with him but I wasn’t to
say a word while he was talking to Mr. Caldwell.
On the drive over, Dad said he hoped I understood he might have to tell
Mr. Caldwell a white lie. I feigned shock and dismay at this, but my own count
of white lies had been on the heavy side lately so I couldn’t really be
disappointed in him. Anyway, it was for the right cause.
Mr. Caldwell’s red brick house, four blocks past the gas station, was
small and unremarkable. We left the pickup truck at the curb and I followed
Dad to the front door. He pressed the buzzer and we waited. The door was
opened by a middle-aged woman with jowly cheeks and sleepy eyes. She was still
wearing her quilted pink robe. “Is Mr. Caldwell at home, please?” Dad asked.
“Phillip!” she called into the house. “Philllleeeeup!” She had a voice
like a buzz saw at high pitch.
In another moment a gray-haired man wearing a bow tie, brown slacks, and
a rust-colored sweater came to the door. “Yes?”
“Hi, I’m Tom Mackenson.” Dad offered his hand. Mr. Caldwell shook it.
“Aren’t you the fella who works at the Western Auto in Union Town? Rick
Spanner’s brother-in-law?”
“That’s right. Do you know Rick?”
“Used to work with him at Green Meadows. How’s he doin’?”
“Better, now that he found a job. Had to move to Birmingham, though. I
pity him, I wouldn’t care for the big city myself.”
“Me neither. Well, the reason I dropped by so early and all is… I lost my
job at the dairy, too.” Dad smiled tightly. “I’m workin’ at Big Paul’s Pantry
now.”
“Been there. Big ol’ place.”
“Yes, it is. A little too big for me. I was just wonderin’… uh… if… uh…”
Even a white lie stuck in his craw. “If there were any jobs to be had at the
Western Auto.”
“No, not that I know of. We hired a new fella last month.” He frowned.
“How come you just didn’t go by there and ask?”
Dad shrugged. “Thought I might save myself the gas, I suppose.”
“You ought to go by and fill out an application. You never know what’ll
come up. The manager’s name is Mr. Addison.”
“Thank you, I might do that.”
Mr. Caldwell nodded. Dad didn’t retreat from the door. “Anythin’ else I
can do for you?”
Dad’s eyes were searching the man’s face. Mr. Caldwell lifted his
eyebrows, waiting. “No,” Dad said, and I heard in his voice that his answer
had not been found. “I don’t think so. Thanks anyway.”
“All right. You come on by and fill out an application, Mr. Addison’ll
keep it on file.”
“Okay, I’ll remember that.”
Back in the truck, Dad started the engine and said, “I believe that was a
strikeout, don’t you?”
“Yes sir.” I had been trying to figure out what the numbers 3 and 3 might
have to do with Dr. Lezander, but I, too, was coming up empty.
So was the truck. “Uh-oh!” Dad glanced at the gas gauge. “I’d better stop
in and filllleeeeeup! Don’t you think?” He smiled, and I returned it.
At the station, Mr. Hiram White shambled out of his cathedral of engine
belts and radiators and started pumping the gas in. “Pretty day,” Mr. White
commented, looking up at the blue sky. It had gotten cold again, though;
January was champing at its bit like an eager horse.
“Yes, it is,” Dad agreed, leaning against the truck.
“Ain’t gone be no gunplay today, is there?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mr. White grinned. “I swear, that was more excitin’ than television!”
“I’m just thankful nobody got killed.”
“Good thing the bus didn’t come in while all that shootin’ was goin’ on,
there would’ve been some dead bodies to sweep up.”
“Right as rain.”
“You heard about the bus gettin’ hit by that monster out on Route Ten,
didn’t you?”
“Sure did.” Dad checked his watch.
“’Bout knocked it off its wheels. You know Cornelius McGraw, been drivin’
ol’ thirty-three for eight years?”
“I don’t know him personally.”
“Well, he told me that monster was as big as a bulldozer. Said it ran
like a deer, too. Said he tried to swerve, but it hit ’em broadside and he
said the whole bus ’bout shook itself to pieces. Had to retire the bus is what
they had to do.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure is.” Mr. White finished the job and pulled the nozzle from the
truck’s gas port. He wiped the end with a cloth so no drop of gas would mar
the pickup’s paint. “New bus has the route, but Corny’s still drivin’ it.
Still number thirty-three, too, so things don’t change so much, do they?”
“I don’t know about that,” Dad said, and paid him.
“Ya’ll take care, now!” Mr. White told us as we drove away.
We were halfway home when Dad said, “I guess I’d better check the phone
book again. Maybe I missed somethin’.” He glanced at me, then back to the
unwinding street. “I was wrong about the Lady, Cory. She’s not evil, is she?”
“No sir.”
“I’m glad I went. I feel lighter now, knowin’ that man isn’t callin’ for
me. I feel sorry for whoever he is callin’, though. Poor devil must have a
hell of a time sleepin’, if he sleeps at all.”
He’s a night owl, I thought. It was time. “Dad?” I said. “I think I know
who—”
“God have mercy!” Dad suddenly shouted, and he hit the brake so hard the
pickup slewed around and went up onto somebody’s lawn. The engine shuddered
and died. “Did you hear what Mr. White said?” Dad’s voice quavered with
excitement. “Thirty-three! Ol’ thirty-three, he said!”
“Sir?”
“The Trailways bus, Cory! It’s number thirty-three! I was standin’ right
there listenin’ to him, and I hardly heard it! You think that could be what
those numbers mean?”
I was honored that he was asking my opinion, but I had to say, “I don’t
know.”
“Well, the killer couldn’t be Cornelius McGraw. He doesn’t even live
around here. But what would the bus have to do with whoever killed that man in
Saxon’s Lake?” He started puzzling it over, his hands clenched hard around the
steering wheel. Then a woman holding a broom came out on her porch and started
hollering at us to move the truck before she called the sheriff, so we had to
go.
We returned to the gas station. Mr. White emerged again. “Sure went
through that tank in a hurry, didn’t ya?” he asked. Dad wasn’t interested in
filling up anything but his curiosity, though. When was number thirty-three
due back in again? he asked Mr. White, and Mr. White said the next day around
noon.
Dad said he’d be there.
Maybe he was wrong, he told Mom that night at dinner, but he was going to
be at that gas station waiting for the bus at noon. It wasn’t Cornelius McGraw
he would be there to see, but he would be watching to find out who the bus
brought to Zephyr or who it took away.
I was there with him as noon approached. Mr. White was driving us crazy
talking about how hard it was to find good GoJo to clean the grease off your
hands anymore. Then Dad said, “Here it comes, Cory,” and he walked from cold
shadow into crisp sunlight to meet it.
The Trailways bus, with number 33 on the plate above its windshield,
swept on past without even slowing, though Mr. McGraw honked the horn and Mr.
White waved.
Dad watched it go. But he turned to Mr. White again, and I saw by the set
of his jaw that now my father was a man with a mission. “Bus come back through
day after tomorrow, Hiram?”
“Sure does. Twelve noon, same as always.”
Dad lifted a finger and tapped it against his lips, his eyes narrowed. I
knew what he was thinking. How was he going to meet the bus on the days he had
to work at Big Paul’s Pantry?
“Hiram,” he said at last, “you need any help around here?”
“Well… I don’t know if I—”
“I’ll take a dollar an hour,” Dad said. “I’ll pump the gas, I’ll clean
the garage, I’ll do whatever you ask me to do. You want me to work overtime,
that’s fine. A dollar an hour. How about it?”
Mr. White grunted and stared at the cluttered garage. “I reckon I do need
some stuff inventoried. Brake shoes, gaskets, radiator hoses, and such. And I
could use another strong back.” This from Quasimodo of the Belts. He stuck out
his hand. “Got a job, if you want it. Startin’ six in the mornin’, if that’s
all right?”
“I’ll be here,” Dad said, grasping Mr. White’s hand.
My father was nothing if not resourceful.
The bus passed through once more without even a hiss of brakes. But it
was due again, twelve noon, same as always, and my dad would be there.
New Year’s Eve came, and we watched on television the festivities in
Times Square. At the stroke of midnight, someone shot off fireworks over
Zephyr, the church bells rang, and horns honked. It had become 1965. On New
Year’s Day we ate black-eyed peas to bring us silver, and collard greens to
bring us gold, and we watched football games until our south ends were sore.
Dad sat in his chair with a notepad on his lap, and though he hollered for his
teams he was scribbling 33… 33… 33 into an interlocking mosaic of numbers with
his ball-point pen. Mom chided him to put down that pen and relax, and he did
for a little while but soon his fingers found it again. I could tell by the
way she looked at him that she was getting worried about him once more; ol’
number thirty-three was becoming as much an obsession as the bad dream had
ever been. He was still having that dream, of course, but he knew the dead man
was not calling him and that made a big difference. I suppose, though, that in
my father’s case it took one obsession to break another.
Ben, Johnny, and I and the rest of the childish generation returned to
school. In my class, I discovered we had a new teacher. Her name was Miss
Fontaine, and she was as young and pretty as spring. Beyond the windows,
though, winter was starting to rage.
Every other day, near noon, my father would step outside the gas
station’s office into chilly wind or blowing sleet or cold pale sun. He would
watch the Trailways bus—ol’ number thirty-three with Cornelius McGraw at the
wheel—as it approached, his heart beginning to pound.
But it didn’t stop. Not once. It always kept going, bound for somewhere
else.
Then Dad would return to the office, where he was likely to be playing
dominoes with Mr. White, and he would sit down in a creaky chair and wait for
the next move.
6
The Stranger Among Us
JANUARY ADVANCED, COLD AS THE TOMB.
At eleven o’clock on the morning of Saturday, the sixteenth, I said
good-bye to Mom and left home on Rocket to meet Ben and Johnny at the Lyric.
The sky was plated with clouds, the threat of freezing rain in the air. I was
bundled up like an Eskimo, but I’d soon be shedding my coat and gloves. The
movie for today was called Hell Is for Heroes, the poster of which showed the
sweating faces of American soldiers crouched down behind machine gun and
bazooka, awaiting the enemy attack. To accompany this carnage, there would be
a program of Daffy Duck cartoons and the next chapter of Fighting Men of Mars.
The last chapter had ended with the Fighting Men about to be crushed by a
falling boulder at the bottom of a Martian mine shaft. I’d already plotted out
their escape; they would scramble into a previously hidden tunnel at the very
last second, thus escaping a flattening fate.
On my way to the theater, I myself took a fateful turn.
I pedaled to Dr. Lezander’s house.
I hadn’t seen him at church since Christmas Eve. Since I’d called him
“Birdman,” and looked him in his eyes of stone. I was beginning to wonder if
he and Mrs. Lezander hadn’t flown the coop. Several times I’d started to tell
Dad my suspicions, but he had thirty-three on his mind and I had nothing but a
green feather and two dead parrots. I stopped Rocket at the bottom of the
driveway and sat there watching the house. It was dark. Empty? I wondered. Had
the doctor and his wife cleared out in the dead of night, alerted by whatever
it was I might know? I kept watch; there was no sign of light or life. The
heroes and the fighting men could wait. I had to find out, and I began to
pedal Rocket up the driveway to the house. I went around back. The PLEASE
LEASH YOUR PETS sign was still up. I eased Rocket down on the kickstand and
peered into the nearest window.
Dark upon dark. At first I saw only shapes of furniture, but as my eyes
grew used to the gloom I was able to make out the twelve ceramic birds perched
atop the piano. It was the den where the bird cages were. Dr. Lezander’s
office was below, closer to hell. I couldn’t help but see Mrs. Lezander
sitting at that piano, playing “Beautiful Dreamer” over and over again as the
green and the blue parrots flapped wildly in their cages and shouted curses
came up through the air vent. But why were the curses in German?
Lights hit me. My heart hammered; I felt like a prisoner in a jailbreak
movie, caught by the roaming circle. I twisted around, and there were a car’s
headlights as the car pulled up to the back porch. It was a late-model
steel-gray Buick with a chrome radiator that resembled a grinning mouthful of
silver teeth; the doctor’s work was well paid. I made a move toward Rocket,
