Читать книгу Buried Memories - Irene Pence - Страница 14

EIGHT

At five in the morning, Betty called Jerry Kuykendall. It was the time he’d be expecting her to deliver her husband for his ride to work, as she had five mornings every week.

When Kuykendall answered the phone, Betty said, “Wayne’s run off.”

The man gasped. “Run off?”

“Unh-huh. We had a little fight last night and he stomped out. Said he needed to buy some cigarettes, but I haven’t seen him since.”

“This is so hard to believe,” Kuykendall said. “Guys like Wayne don’t just leave. I’ve got him in charge of a big crew we have going this morning. Talked to him just last night and he sounded fine. He even asked my boy to spend the night.”

“Well he’s gone. It doesn’t make any sense to me either.”

“Did he say where he was going? There must be some way I can get hold of him.”

“I have no idea. If he knew where he’d be, he didn’t tell me.”

Kuykendall pondered Wayne’s disappearance for three days. How could a man be such a contradiction—dependable at work and a flake at home?

After finishing his third day of work without his best employee, he drove by the Barker home to see if he could learn any more about Wayne’s abrupt departure.

Kuykendall remembered all the good times he and his wife had with Wayne and Betty—spending the day fishing, or going to McClain’s and eating fried catfish. He pulled up to the trailer and relief flooded through him when he saw Barker’s truck parked in the driveway. “Thank God,” he said as he turned into the driveway and pulled behind the truck.

He strolled to the familiar porch, swathed in flowers, and rang the doorbell. But something about the blond woman who answered the door wasn’t familiar at all.

“Sure glad Wayne’s changed his mind,” he said, nodding toward the truck.

“What the hell you talking about?”

“Well, obviously Wayne’s come back. You said he’d run off.”

“He did leave,” Betty replied, acting more antagonistic than emotional over Wayne’s sudden departure. She secured the lock on the screen door.

“I never heard of a man leaving without taking his truck,” Kuykendall said.

Betty flashed him a hostile stare. She didn’t invite him in, nor did she appear interested in talking. “I’ve told you all I know. Wayne got mad and left. He hasn’t called me or anything since.”

“Well, shoot. I sure need him back on the job. If you hear from him, please let him know his job’s waiting.”

“All right,” Betty replied, almost shutting the door in Kuykendall’s face.

He stood staring at the closed door knowing something was wrong. What happened to the friendly Betty who had spent so much time with him and his wife? Where was the woman who frequently invited his son to spend the night with Bobby, then fixed pancakes for the boys the next morning?

As he went back to his car, he looked again at Wayne’s truck. A man just doesn’t leave his new pickup and go away willingly.

Kuykendall was still questioning Wayne’s disappearance when Betty showed up the following Friday at his office to collect Wayne’s paycheck.

Betty needed a man like people need air to breathe. Her job at the Cedar Club fulfilled that need perfectly, as it allowed her to meet dozens of men.

Located on Seven Points’s Highway 274, the club could easily be found as the highway crossed the only intersection in town that had traffic lights. The wheels of customers’ cars had to crunch over a gravel parking lot that separated the club from the highway. Housed in a sterile-looking, concrete-block structure that had been painted numerous times, the club’s current color was gray. The window glass, also coated with gray paint, kept out sunshine and prying eyes.

Inside the place, a customer had to take a moment for his eyes to adjust to the cave-dark interior. Once adapted, customers could see a U-shaped bar in the middle of the large room, with dozens of glasses hanging upside down from an overhead wooden rack. Four pool tables sat to the left of the bar, and several dart boards were bolted on walls to the right.

By the time people stepped onto the charcoal-color tile floors, no one sensed they were drinking in the middle of the day. Nor in the early morning for that matter. Like other bars in Seven Points, it opened early for business and Happy Hour ran from seven to eleven in the morning. For some, drinking their breakfast was a way of life.

The selection of men varied. Hard-working cowboys breathed the same smoky air as retired oldsters, and having a full set of teeth was not a customer requirement. But every now and then someone attractive with a decent job dropped by. Betty kept her antennae up for them. Her caustic wit and salty tongue fit in perfectly with the bar crowd, and the majority of patrons loved her.

Tonight she dressed in a conservative gray blouse tucked into a gathered gray-and-coral print skirt. The hem of her skirt flared out as she spun away from the bar with a tray of four draft Coors, taking them to a table where one of her customers had just sneezed. “Whew, I’ve got a cold,” the man drawled in his slow colloquial twang.

“No shit. Now we all have a cold,” Betty said, not looking up as she placed a beer in front of each patron.

“I covered my mouth with my hand,” her customer protested.

“That’s a hell of a big job for one hand,” Betty said, and turned on her heel.

Waves of laughter erupted behind her, but she ignored those people when she caught the eye of a handsome new customer. He sat watching her, and also laughed. She stepped over to his table, and said, “What would you like, sir?”

“You,” he said. “Why don’t you come sit down here?” He patted the Naugahyde seat of the chair next to him.

“As much as I’d like to, I’m afraid fraternizing is against the rules. Besides, you look like you wouldn’t have any trouble finding company,” she said with a wink.

“This place has rules?” he asked, sincerely surprised.

“What’s your name?”

“My friends call me Jimmy Don.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Don.”

He smiled. “Do you have an answer for everything?”

“I wish.”

“When do you get off work?”

“Late. Those big brown eyes of yours would be pretty sleepy if you waited for me. I go home sometime between one-thirty and two.”

“That’s past my bedtime. I’ll need to catch you when I don’t have an early shift the next day.”

“Shift?”

“I’m with the Dallas Fire Department.”

“What did you do before that?”

“I was in the army during the Korean War.”

“Korean War? That was a hundred years ago,” Betty said.

“I’ve been with the fire department for twenty-six years. Four more and I get to retire.”

“Lucky you. Then what are you going to do, sit on your dock and fish?”