Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide Page 15

  “I’m trying to trace a tramp who did odd jobs at the store in the twenties. All I know is that he was called River Pete.”

  “River Pete.” Donna gazed out over the basin. “There used to be tramps from time to time, all right. Even I remember some, from when I was little. They’d stay awhile, then go on. Maybe they were in bad with the law; maybe they drank too much, or gambled too much, or were just down on their luck. Granddaddy believed in giving a helping hand, so he’d let them work in exchange for what they needed— chewing tobacco, grits, beans, or like that.”

  “Did he ever mention one called River Pete?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember the names, really. I ought to write it down.”

  So much for that. The dog’s tail thumped on the rough floorboards.

  “Don’t give up yet,” Donna said, “This doesn’t always work, but we could try asking Daddy. Seems like he’s having a pretty good day.” She seemed to come to a decision. “Come on up to the store. Let’s see what we can do.”

  Isabel followed Donna and the black dog up the bank. In front of the store, another dog, this one yellow, lay sleeping in the sun in front of a Coke machine. Just inside the screen door a shriveled old man, also in overalls, sat watching a rerun of “The Brady Bunch” on a small television set on the counter. On the shelves behind him, cans of vegetables sat beside fishing tackle and shotgun shells. Behind the cash register hung a dingy oil painting of a person in overalls, possibly the same old man, standing in front of a building that was dimly recognizable as the one they had just entered. There was a smell of bug spray.

  Donna touched the old man’s shoulder. “Hey, Daddy?”

  The old man twitched his shoulder, but his eyes didn’t move from the screen.

  Donna raised her voice. “This lady has a question! About when we had the store at Cape St. Elmo!”

  Mr. Pursey seemed unimpressed.

  “Daddy—”

  “Wait for the commercial!” snapped Mr. Pursey in a reedy voice.

  Two commercial breaks came and went before Mr. Pursey consented to give some thought to Donna’s question. “River Pete!” Donna bawled. “A tramp! Do you remember?”

  The old man drew back and glared at Donna. He bared yellow teeth and cried, “You remember him, girl! The twenty dollars!”

  Donna sagged against the counter. “Oh my Lord,” she said to Isabel. “Is he that one? If I’d known, I could’ve told you in the first place.”

  They left Mr. Pursey to the television set. Outside, they sat on a narrow bench beside the Coke machine. The yellow dog continued to sleep. The black one cavorted with delight when Isabel reappeared, jumping up to lick her hand.

  Donna stretched her legs out and leaned back against the wall. “So River Pete is the twenty-dollar one. I wish I’d realized. I must’ve heard the story a hundred times.”

  The concrete wall was warm against Isabel’s back. Down at the landing, a boat putted by. A dragonfly hovered briefly and darted away.

  “That tramp made a big impression on my grandfather,” Donna said. “He did odd jobs all right, but Granddaddy gave him credit, too. He wrote it down in the ledger, and then the tramp— Pete, I guess— would either work the amount off or go fishing and bring in a mess of fish, but some way or other he’d pay his bill. That was kind of unusual in itself, and Pete was so good about it, Granddaddy started trusting him. Then one day he went off, like they always did, and didn’t come back.”

  “When was this?”

  “Heck if I know. Long time ago.” She kicked at a pebble. “Before he left, this Pete character had run up a bill of about twenty dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. Then, all of a sudden, he’s gone. Granddaddy didn’t worry about it much at first, because Pete had gone off before, but after a month passed, then two, and so forth, he commenced to think he’d seen the back of that tramp and lost his twenty dollars.

  “Now, you didn’t know my Granddaddy, but if you had, you’d know how bad that got away with him. He never wiped it off the books, because he wasn’t somebody to forget being done out of twenty dollars— or twenty cents, come to that.” She leaned down to scratch behind the ears of the yellow dog, and the dog heaved a slobbery sigh.

  “So Pete was never heard from again?”

  “Oh, yes he was. This is the good part.” Donna sat up. “Five years went by. Five at least. One day in the mail, Granddaddy gets an envelope postmarked Gilead Springs. You know where that is?”

  “Not far from Tallahassee?”

  “Right. A hundred miles away from here, more or less. No return address on the envelope. Inside it is a twenty-dollar bill and a note— ‘Thanks from Pete,’ or some such. ’Course, Granddaddy always said he figured after all that time Pete should’ve paid interest, too, but that was Granddaddy.”

  “You never found out what happened to Pete?”

  “Not that I know of. That was the end of it. I don’t know if it helps you any. Maybe Pete ended up in Gilead Springs, or maybe he just mailed the money from there.”

  “It would help a lot if I knew his last name.”

  “Shoot. I hadn’t thought of that. Come with me.”

  Isabel followed her into the store. The television chattered on. Donna said, “I bet we can find that name. Let’s go look at the old books. They’re back there in the office.”

  “The old books?”

  “The records. We’ve got them back to 1907, when Granddaddy first opened up a store.”

  Donna led the way past her father, down the aisle to a door at the back. The office was dusty and disordered, the window glass smeared and the sills piled high with papers. Donna opened a closet door, pulled the chain on a light inside, and said, “I won’t let them throw these away. I say, ‘This is history, right here.’”

  Isabel looked in. The floor and shelves were piled with ledger books. “I pretty much know where everything is,” Donna said. “What year do you want to try?”

  “Nineteen twenty-two.”

  “All righty. Sit down for a minute or two, why don’t you?”

  Isabel settled in the desk chair and Donna disappeared into the closet. Moments later, Isabel heard several thuds, and Donna said, “Damnation!”

  “Can I help?”

  “Nope, just give me a minute. Nineteen twenty-two. Nineteen twenty-two. It’s here somewhere, you can take my word on that.”

  Eventually, Donna emerged, looking cobwebby, with a ledger book under her arm. She dusted the book with the rag from her pocket, shoved some of the clutter on the desk aside, and put it down in front of Isabel. “When I was a little girl, I’d look at these books for hours,” she said. “It was as good as TV. There was a whole lot you could figure out from these books.”

  She opened the ledger. The entries were written in fading brown ink in a fastidious copperplate hand. Donna turned the pages slowly, running her finger down the columns. She tapped the page. “There’s your grandma, isn’t it? Polly Anders, ten pounds of cornmeal?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And here she bought some lye. See? People made their own soap. Boiled the clothes out in the backyard.”

  Yes, they had boiled the clothes. Isabel remembered the iron wash pot that had disappeared in the storm.

  “Where are you, Pete?” Donna said. She turned a page. “Here we go. Granddaddy gave him five cents worth of tobacco on credit.”

  The notation was: “River Pete A.— tobacco— 5 cnts.” “It doesn’t show his last name,” Isabel said, disappointed.

  “Don’t you worry. My Granddaddy never gave anybody twenty dollars’ worth of credit without knowing his last name. We’ll find it.” The pages crackled. “Here’s one for a sack of grits, but he just says, ‘River Pete.’”

  They continued through the pages. River Pete’s name appeared often. Sometimes he was River Pete, sometimes River Pete A., sometimes Pete A. The last name was not noted.

  “I’ll tell you what let’s do,” Donna said. “Let’s look at the la
st page. Maybe he made a notation at the end of the year.” She turned the remaining pages over. On the inside back cover, they found it—an underlined notation in the copperplate hand: “River Pete Addison took off owing $20.00. No Further Credit.”

  Isabel borrowed a piece of paper and wrote down, “Pete Addison, Gilead Springs.”

  “If you go there, you might track him down, I reckon,” said Donna. She sounded doubtful.

  Isabel put the paper in her handbag. At least she had a name, if she decided to pursue it. She thanked Donna and bid farewell to the black dog. Before returning to her car, she stood under the oak canopy and looked back at the landing. Donna Pursey was in her boat, working on the motor. The black dog sat on the bank, watching Donna. In the shadow of the Coke machine, the yellow dog slept.

  On the way home, Isabel thought about River Pete. He seemed more real to her now, after she had read in the ledger about his tobacco and cornmeal and soda crackers. Pete Addison. What had led him, she wondered, to send twenty dollars to settle his old debt with the Purseys?

  She reached the fire tower and turned toward St. Elmo. It was late afternoon and the atmosphere was hazy gold. Her mind turned once again to the day after the storm. Pete and John James had spent the day sawing up trees that had been blown down. Before John James left, Merriam saw Pete washing at the pump. Soon after that, John James gave Merriam the letter and the bottle.

  The thought came suddenly. Isabel braked, pulled over on the shoulder, and cut the motor off so she could concentrate.

  The bottle. John James found the bottle that day, when he and Pete were clearing the dead trees. The bottle had not been washed up by the storm. The bottle had been buried.

  She heard Clem’s voice, saying the Spanish had often salvaged wrecks themselves. Suppose survivors from the Esperanza had saved some of its cargo and brought it to shore. They might bury it, mightn’t they, on high ground at the base of a tree? With the intention of returning for it once they were out of danger?

  Except they hadn’t come back. Nobody ever came back, and what they had buried was undisturbed until the storm blew a tree down and Isabel’s grandfather John James and River Pete Addison cleared the debris.

  What had they found, besides the lovely Chinese porcelain bottle that John James gave his ten-year-old daughter Merriam?

  Isabel was still holding on to the steering wheel. She forced her fingers to relax. John James had given Merriam the bottle and a letter. The letter was gone. The bottle remained.

  Cows were grazing in a field nearby. Isabel watched them and tried not to succumb to the tantalizing thought that John James and River Pete had uncovered Spanish gold along with the bottle.

  Isabel thought, after all, she would go to Gilead Springs. She would go first thing tomorrow.

  The sun was setting when she reached Cape St. Elmo. She pulled up beside the trailer, parked, got out of the car. Unlocking the trailer door, she went into the semidarkness.

  The toiling of the air conditioner barely moved the tepid air. She dropped her bag on the table, kicked off her sandals, and walked barefoot into the bedroom. She would change into shorts and think about dinner. She turned on the bedroom light.

  In the corner by the closet door, something moved. Before she could focus on it, it began to undulate across the narrow strip of bare floor. She registered that it was a snake, a big one.

  She jumped for the bed, and watched the snake disappear underneath it. It was brownish green, as big around as her arm, and between three and four feet long.

  She tasted blood. She must have bitten her lip or her tongue. Her body was damp, sweat collecting behind her knees, sliding between her breasts. She heard a whisper of sound as the snake rubbed past her suitcase, then nothing.

  The telephone was in the living room, out of reach. Nobody would hear if she screamed. The window was too small to squeeze through. Sweat ran into her eyes and she wiped it away with her skirt.

  Isabel! Listen to me, young’un! It was Merriam talking. If you’re going to live out here, you got to know a few things.

  Ten-year-old Isabel didn’t want to know about snakes. Sullen and unhappy, she refused to look at Merriam.

  I’m talking to you, Isabel!

  Isabel hadn’t seen the snake’s head clearly, so she didn’t know for sure, but it could’ve been a cottonmouth moccasin. If it was, she was in serious trouble. Cottonmouth will surely bite you if he gets the chance, and he’s full of poison.

  Merriam had killed a rattlesnake in the parlor once, broken its back with a broom handle. They’d had cottonmouths and other water snakes around the shed and even, once or twice, under the house when the weather had been especially wet and the creek rose.

  It was too late to worry about how the snake had gotten in. She had to worry about how to get it out.

  The snake would be afraid, too. It would hide if it could, but would surely attack if it felt threatened. If it stayed where it was, under the bed, Isabel could get across to the top of the dresser without touching the floor. From the dresser top, she could launch herself through the bedroom door into the living room and make it outside to run for help.

  A cottonmouth doesn’t coil to strike like a rattlesnake, Isabel, but it will lunge at you. The trick of it is to keep distance between you and the snake.

  Isabel would be happy to keep distance between herself and the snake. It was her dearest wish.

  If you got to hurt it, throw something and smash the head. Or use a pole to hit it with.

  She scanned the room. The bulkiest items in her reach were a hairbrush on the dresser and a flashlight on the bedside table. As for poles, the closest one was a broom hanging on a hook on the kitchen wall. The crowbar she’d used to get into the house was in the cabinet under the sink.

  Getting from the bed to the dresser would be easy. The room was so small, there was very little space between them. The bed springs creaked as she eased her body toward the foot of the bed.

  Suddenly, the snake shot from beneath the bed and slithered through the door into the darkening living room. This time, she had a better view of it. She couldn’t be positive, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t seen its eyes. A harmless snake— you look down, you can see its eyes. A cottonmouth, you can’t. That’s one way to know.

  Blood was beating in her neck and temples. The living room was a pool of shadow, the snake nowhere in sight. After catching her breath, she eased herself to the head of the bed and got the flashlight from the bedside table. She returned to the foot and switched the light on.

  The faint beam didn’t illuminate much. She could see a stretch of bare floor, the end of the sofa. No snake.

  Hoping for a better view, she climbed from the foot of the bed to the dresser top and shone the beam through the door again. She could see more of the sofa this time, but still no sign of the snake.

  Did snakes like to hide in dark places? She wasn’t sure whether Merriam had expounded on that subject. If it wanted darkness, it could have gone behind the counter dividing the living-dining room from the darker kitchen.

  Her sneakers were on the floor at the foot of the bed. They wouldn’t deflect a cottonmouth’s fangs, but she’d feel better wearing them. She bent down and fished them up. Still sitting on the dresser, she put them on and double-tied them. This was no time to be stumbling over loose shoelaces.

  The shoes made her feel safer and able to think more clearly. The overhead light in the living room could be controlled from two switches— one just inside the front door, one next to the bedroom door. Turning it on had to be the next step. That meant getting down from her perch and walking across the floor.

  Once more, she raked the flashlight beam over the portion of the living room she could see. She slid her legs around and put her feet on the floor. Breathed. Took a step. The floor seemed flimsy, creaky. She sensed that the snake, wherever it was, could feel her every move vibrating against its body.

  Another step and she was in the doorway. She reached around the corne
r, felt for the light switch, and turned it on. She tensed herself to jump back.

  Now, she saw it. It was in a corner again, this time across the room, on the far side of the front door. If she could get the door open, it might be persuaded to leave. The door was opposite the end of the kitchen counter. She would have to get up on the counter and reach across to the doorknob. It would be a stretch, but she thought she could do it.

  The snake was a still, dark form in the shadows. Her eyes on it, Isabel moved through the doorway. In another couple of steps, she had reached the sofa. She stepped up on it and walked across the sagging cushions to the end nearest the counter. From there, she snagged a dining chair and stepped on it, then moved from the chair to the counter.

  Her activity had disturbed the snake again. It was sliding up and down the floor of the kitchen, seeming to search for a way out. Isabel crawled to the end of the counter. She reached but couldn’t touch the doorknob.

  Her fear, while real, seemed remote. She didn’t have time for it. She eased herself onto her stomach on the counter and inched forward, her outstretched fingers reaching for the doorknob and the latch beneath it. Her arm, shoulder, and the tendons in her neck ached with the effort. If she overbalanced, she would land on the floor. With her left hand, she clung to the edge of the counter.

  At last, her groping fingers touched the lock, gripped it, turned it. Her fingertips slid on the smooth surface of the doorknob, but after a couple of tries she managed to turn it and pull the door open.

  The agitated snake remained in the kitchen. It showed no inclination to make for the door.

  There was still the broom.

  The broom was hanging on the opposite wall of the kitchen, but the kitchen was only a few feet wide. Isabel got to her feet. She leaned forward until she overbalanced, then caught herself against the opposite wall. She retrieved the broom from its hook and heaved herself back to the counter.