Shepherds Abiding In Dry Creek, page 11
“Becky’s only four. She needs someone to watch her,” Marla said as she walked over to where they sat. “You’re going along so Becky doesn’t feel alone. And to help Mrs. Hargrove with Becky.”
Sammy rolled his eyes. “I don’t think that lady needs any help. You should see her with those Sunday-school kids. They don’t even want to get into trouble.”
Marla put her hand on Sammy’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you for helping in that Sunday-school class.”
Sammy didn’t shrug off her hand. Instead, he looked up at her. “Is this something you’re going to be doing a lot? This going out with the deputy sheriff?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say we’re going out,” Marla protested. “We’re just getting together to have dinner. And it’s only this one time.”
Marla remembered now that this had all started because she had some questions she wanted to ask about the Dry Creek church. She should have put a stop to this dinner before it went this far. She could have just gone over to Mrs. Hargrove’s house with the kids and asked the older woman her questions. She’d rather talk to Mrs. Hargrove than Les any day. That is, if Les was going to be all stiff around her as he had been today. She had liked talking to him on Monday; he’d been friendly then.
“The sheriff’s not so bad,” Sammy said as he looked back down at the Bird cards he held in his hands. “At least, he knows how to do lots of stuff.”
“Is he going to be our new daddy?” Becky looked up as she asked.
Marla flushed. She supposed her children weren’t any more comfortable with her going on a date than she was. “We’re just going to dinner. It’s barely a date. People don’t get married after just one date.”
“How many dates did you have with Dad?” Sammy asked. “Before you got married?”
“I don’t remember.”
“More than ten?”
Marla nodded. “Many more than ten. So you don’t need to worry about the sheriff.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
“Well, good, because you don’t need to be.”
There was a minute of silence.
“He walks you home, though, doesn’t he?” Sammy asked suddenly. He glanced up at Marla and then back at his cards.
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think it particularly matters.”
“You don’t want to come home alone when the house is all dark,” Sammy said emphatically. “It could be creepy then. You need to ask him to walk you home.”
“Well, if we do anything, we’ll probably just walk over to Mrs. Hargrove’s and then walk back from there,” Marla said. “It’s not far.”
“Then he could walk us all home,” Sammy said with satisfaction. “We should leave some lights on in the house, too. So when we get home, it’s not dark.”
Marla looked at her son. She still had her hand resting on his shoulder and she gave him a squeeze. Something was going on. Maybe it was the move itself that was making him feel so vulnerable. He’d never given this much thought to darkness in his whole life. “Are you worried about something?”
Sammy shook his head.
Marla looked at him some more. “They don’t have many streetlights in Dry Creek, do they? Not like they have in Los Angeles.”
Marla had never seen darkness as deep as the nights she’d spent in Montana. She liked it because she could see the stars, but she could understand how a child might not find the night comforting.
“I’m not afraid of the dark,” Sammy muttered as he stared at his cards.
“Well, we’ll talk about it later if you want.”
“Isn’t it time for us to go over to Mrs. Hargrove’s?” Sammy asked as he folded his hand of cards.
Marla supposed that, whatever Sammy’s problems were, they could wait until the morning. The best time to talk to Sammy was at breakfast. Maybe she’d make them pancakes tomorrow and spend some extra time just sitting with him. Sammy was never one to confide his problems easily. In the meantime, he was right. It was time to get everyone ready to go over to Mrs. Hargrove’s house.
Les had known his dinner date would cause a little gossip in Dry Creek. Any date seemed to be prime news, and he hadn’t asked a woman out in over a year. He’d expected Mrs. Hargrove to tell Linda, and maybe Charley, that she was babysitting the children so he and Marla could have dinner together.
But even knowing all that, Les was surprised at how much work Linda had done. Usually, if Linda suspected a couple was on a date, she put a candle on their table. When he and Marla stepped into the café, however, they stepped into a Christmas fantasyland. There were twinkling Christmas lights everywhere. Since Elmer had worried about the electricity the church was using, Les hoped the older man didn’t see this.
“Oh,” Marla said with pleasure in her voice. “I like Christmas lights.”
Les liked Christmas lights, too. He just wasn’t sure he wanted a thousand of them shining down on him while he ate his steak.
Linda had draped strands of blinking white lights from the pipe that hung down in the middle of the room and they spread out to hit every corner. They were hooked to every side of the room, too. And a dozen places in between.
“It’s beautiful,” Marla said.
Les nodded. The lights throbbed. He wondered how much wattage was in the room. Fortunately, the lights were all white, so at least the glare was even.
Les took another step into the café so the door could swing closed behind them. “It’s warm.”
It was cold outside and Les felt the air inside the café take away the slight chill that had come from walking the children over to Mrs. Hargrove’s place and then walking Marla back to the café. He had parked his pickup at Marla’s. It seemed pointless to drive when everything was so close.
“Does she do this every Christmas?” Marla whispered as she slowly twirled around to see all the lights.
“No, she doesn’t.”
Marla had a look of such childish wonder on her face that in an instant Les forgave everyone for meddling in his date. It was almost impossible to look at Marla’s face and reconcile her with the picture of a drug-dealing female gang member that had been bothering him all day.
“Linda did it for us,” Les said softly as he motioned Marla forward.
There was only one choice for a table. Sitting in the middle of the café, there was a table draped in a white tablecloth, with a vase holding a long-stemmed red rose in the center. The table was sitting under the pipe that came down from the ceiling, so all the lights gathered to that one point. It was like sitting in the middle of a huge circus tent.
“I’ve never had anyone do something like this for me,” Marla said as she stepped toward the table.
Les swallowed. Marla was the kind of woman men should have slain dragons for. What kind of man had her husband been that she had never felt special like this before? Even if he was into drugs and crime, couldn’t the man have put some effort into letting his wife know that she was beautiful?
“You look nice tonight,” Les said as he held out a chair for Marla.
Les had barely sat down himself when he heard the music start. At first he assumed it was a CD playing on the stereo system Linda had in the kitchen. On other special occasions in the past, she had turned up the volume and cranked out everything from romantic waltz music to Christmas carols. There was a roughness to the quality of the music, though, that made him wonder.
When Les turned around, he was shocked. There was Elmer, wearing a suit and playing a harp. Les recognized the suit; Elmer wore it to funerals. He didn’t usually wear a tie, though, and tonight the older man was cinched tight with a black tie.
The harp looked like the secondhand instrument Mrs. Hargrove had asked the church to buy for a past Christmas program. No one had played the thing in the program. Elmer was making a valiant attempt to play it now. He gave Les a smile and a brief thumbs-up sign between strums.
When Linda came out wearing her chef’s hat, Les wasn’t even surprised. Nothing was normal tonight.
“I didn’t know we still had that harp,” Les said when Linda handed him a menu.
“Oh, yes,” Linda said as she handed another menu to Marla.
Les thought Linda might elaborate, but she didn’t. The café owner just stood there with a proud smile on her face as though she had single-handedly wrought a miracle.
“New menu?” Les guessed.
“I thought you might like the Asian pork loin.”
Les nodded. No one got away with ordering a hamburger when they were having a date at Linda’s café. “Sounds good to me.”
“I have a gallon of spiced apple cider chilling in the back, too. Just in case you’d like to make a toast.”
Les looked at Marla. She was pink with pleasure. “How about it? Do you want to try the cider? Linda gets it in specially from Washington.”
“Yes, please. It all sounds wonderful.”
Linda smiled. “I want this to be a night you both remember.”
Les figured he, for one, wasn’t likely to forget it.
“I just wanted some information about the church,” Marla said.
Linda smiled even wider. “Mrs. Hargrove will know all that. She does the flower arrangements when we have them in front of the altar.”
Les was starting to think things weren’t adding up right.
“I’m surprised you don’t do the flowers,” Marla said. “You’ve decorated your café beautifully. It looks like we’re sitting here under a chandelier.”
“Or a diamond,” Linda agreed as she started to turn to walk back to the kitchen. Before she made her full turn, though, she stopped for a second and winked at Les.
It suddenly all came together in Les’s mind. He’d given Mrs. Hargrove that cryptic prayer request this morning. He hadn’t said much except he had an important decision to make today and it could have life-altering consequences, so he wanted to be sure he was on solid ground before he took any steps.
He wanted the people of Dry Creek to pray about whether or not he should get a search warrant for Marla’s house to see if she was hiding any drugs. Instead, they had put it together with his date tonight and thought he was going to propose here and now. The toast. The harp. Elmer’s suit. It all added up. No wonder Elmer was sitting over there grinning at him.
“The church is made up of God’s people,” Les said to Marla as he moved the candle so he could lean closer. “Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s a real pain. But if you want to know about the church, all you have to do is ask.”
Then he reached over and took her hand in his.
All the butterflies in Marla’s stomach relaxed when Les took her hand. She was worried that the people here tonight were trying to make more of the dinner she and Les were having than Les was comfortable with. But when he took her hand, she knew he was okay with it all. However it had happened, they were on a date that wasn’t just a dinner. And the man in question was fine with it.
“I don’t know much about church,” Marla began, then took a deep breath. “But my husband had this cross. When he was sick, he used to look at it.”
Marla told Les everything. She hadn’t planned to tell him it all. She thought she’d just ask about why her husband had been able to wring meaning from that wooden cross and she hadn’t been able to get so much as a warm feeling from it.
Instead, one question led to another, and she told him about her husband’s confession to her before he died. She told him about the anger she felt because she’d had no time to even ask her husband any questions about his confession. She didn’t know why he’d been unfaithful. She stopped short of asking him if he thought there was something wrong with her as a woman. Maybe her anguish showed in her eyes, though.
“Your husband was a fool,” Les said. They’d both received their plates some time ago and the food was growing cold. Les didn’t seem to care. “He didn’t deserve a woman like you.”
Marla blinked back a tear. “Thank you.”
Les felt a tear in his own eye. He knew God was merciful. Somehow, no matter what this woman in front of him had done, she had a sweetness that a man could put his faith in. She still hadn’t told him anything about why her family was involved with this gang, but he was sure there was a good reason.
The café had remained empty except for the two of them. Les knew Linda was turning away customers, because several times the door had opened and she had stepped over to have muted conversations with whoever it was. Finally Elmer had given up on playing the harp and moved out to the porch to stall any hungry people.
Les should have cared about how much inconvenience he was causing his neighbors. But he knew Linda was giving people take-out containers from the back door, so at least no one was starving. And for tonight, he liked having the privacy. Marla had shown him her grief. He’d answered with emotions he hadn’t even known he had.
He knew he should ask her about the gang symbols her son was leaving everywhere. He probably should even ask her if she did drugs herself. But tonight he didn’t want to be Les Wilkerson, Reserve Deputy Sheriff. He didn’t even want to be Les Wilkerson, upright citizen. He just wanted to be a man telling a woman she was beautiful in his eyes.
“You should eat,” Marla finally said to him. “Your dinner’s getting cold.”
Les smiled. “Linda buys to-go containers by the boxful. But you should eat.”
Neither one of them seemed ready to take up a fork, so Les reached over and took Marla’s hand again.
Linda had either unplugged some of the Christmas lights or half the strands had burned out. Whatever the reason, he and Marla no longer sat under a spotlight. In fact, the twinkling lights overhead were quite romantic.
“You know I wrote a poem,” Les said. “About your hair.”
Marla reached up with her free hand and touched her hair. “I don’t have enough highlights.”
“Your hair is beautiful.”
Marla smiled.
Les breathed deeply. All was well with the world.
Then he heard some loud muttering out on the porch. It had been going on for the past minute or two, but Les had figured it was just one of the ranch hands who wanted to come inside to eat and didn’t want to go around back for a takeout.
It couldn’t be that, though. He frowned, then turned to face the door. He recognized Mrs. Hargrove’s voice.
“It’s Sammy,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she finally opened the door. The older woman and Becky walked into the café and Mrs. Hargrove didn’t even turn around to close the door. A cold wind blew inside. In the time Les and Marla had been sitting there, the sky had turned to deep night. It must be almost eight o’clock.
Marla stood up. “What?”
“I can’t find him,” Mrs. Hargrove said. The scarf was off her head and she looked distraught. “I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Well, he has to be around here,” Marla said. She stepped away from the table and walked toward the café door. “Did you look at our house?”
Les stood and followed Marla.
Mrs. Hargrove nodded. “It’s all dark there.”
“But we left the lights on,” Marla protested. “Surely he’s not sitting by himself in the dark.”
Les walked over to the coatrack and got Marla’s coat. He picked up his own while he was there.
“Wherever he’s gone to, we’ll find him,” Les said as he held Marla’s coat for her to put on. There were not many places to hide in Dry Creek, not even for an eleven-year-old boy.
Linda came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel. “Maybe he’s visiting with those friends of his. The two guys that stopped to give him back his baseball.”
“His baseball!” Marla said, and Les saw her face go white.
In that word, Marla had gone from worried to terrified. Les wished for the first time tonight that he hadn’t let Marla’s eyes distract him from what he needed to do. He had to ask her about her past.
“Are they from the 19th Street gang?”
Marla stared at him. “You know?”
Any hope Les had that Marla had no connection with the gang died. He nodded. “I know.”
“We have to find Sammy,” Marla said as she turned to the door. “I don’t know if that’s where they’re from or not.”
Elmer came inside and looked at Les. “What’s wrong?”
“Mrs. Hargrove. You and Becky stay here.” Les turned to Elmer. “Get everyone inside and lock the doors. And turn out those Christmas tree lights. People are in a fishbowl in here if someone looks in the windows.”
Elmer nodded.
“And pray,” Les asked. He looked at Mrs. Hargrove, Elmer, Linda and Becky all huddled together by now in the middle of the room. “Pray and pray.”
“I’ll go with you,” Marla said as Les walked to the door.
Les hesitated. “Do you know these guys?”
“They’re with my son,” Marla said. “I have to go.”
Les nodded. He didn’t know if it was better to have her with him or not. The only thing he knew for sure was that he could watch her better if he had her with him. He had no idea what the guys really brought to Dry Creek. If the “baseball” was code for a drug shipment, he might have to confront Marla before the night was out. It was highly unlikely two guys would be bringing a drug shipment to an eleven-year-old boy unless the boy’s parent was also part of the deal.
Chapter Eleven
It took them an hour to work their way through Dry Creek. Les knocked at the door of each house and asked if anyone had seen any strangers. At each place, the people inside said no. Les cautioned everyone to lock their doors and stay inside tonight. Then he searched the church and the hardware store.
“He’s got to be here. Someone’s lying,” Marla finally said.
They had come back to the middle of the street in front of the café. The ground was frozen, but there was no new snow, so it was impossible to tell if any unknown vehicles had come through town.
There had been no other conversation between them since they had started looking. Once, when he saw that Marla’s fingers were getting cold, Les had taken off his gloves and given them to her, but neither one of them had spoken.
