The White Widow: A Novel Read online

  Look at me! Look at me, Ava!

  This would be the last time she would be his passenger. The last time he would take, punch and tear her ticket. The last time he would thank her for riding Great Western Trailways.

  The last time he would see her!

  Please look at me. Please look at me.

  She could not hear him and she did not look at him.

  “I must see you again,” he said.

  “What?”

  “This cannot end this way.”

  “What way? What are you talking about?”

  He was blocking her exit from the bus. They were at the Corpus Christi bus depot. It was now or never.

  She tried to step around him but he moved to prevent it. Other passengers coming down out of the bus had to squeeze around them both. They had to find their way to the ground by themselves, without the help of Jack’s hand on an elbow.

  “What is your name?” he asked her. “I call you Ava.”

  “My name? Why do you want to know my name? Did you say Ava? Please. People are waiting for me. I must go.”

  “What people?”

  “Please, Mr.…”

  “Oliver. Jack T. Oliver. You have heard my name four times now. Jack T. Oliver. I am Jack T. Oliver. This is the fourth Friday I have driven you here to Corpus. I was off getting my gold badge last Friday or this would have been the fifth.”

  “Mr. Oliver, please. I do not know what you are talking about. I must go. If you wouldn’t mind moving out of my way now.”

  “I was thinking about you just before it happened.”

  “What happened? Please, now. Move out of my way. I am already very late.”

  “My wife just died. Her name was Loretta.”

  “I am very sorry. Please, now. Let me by.”

  He moved out of the way. And then watched her, as he had three previous times, walk down Schatzel Street and out of his life.

  No. He could not give her up. Not now. Not yet.

  Nobody had seen what happened at Highway 77 and Farm Road 682. Why should he throw away the badge, the job and the woman he loved all because of an accident? It was simply a terrible accident. Telling what happened would not bring those two poor people back to life.

  “It must have been hell out there where you just came from,” said Sweet Jennings, the dispatcher. They called him Sweet because he wasn’t. If he had his way, buses would be still unairconditioned and unheated, drivers and ticket agents would work for nothing, loud children and preachers traveling on buses would be against the law.

  “It was so bad around Refugio I could barely see,” Jack said.

  “You do realize you came in here just now forty-two minutes late?”

  “I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

  “Call for anything over thirty minutes. You know the rules.”

  “Sorry. I got distracted by the storm, I guess.”

  “Bay City’s underwater.”

  “Any other reports?”

  “No. Except for Galveston. I heard a Texas Red Rocket Flxible got knocked loose from the High Island Ferry. Nobody hurt but a lot of people got wet.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You look it.”

  “Thanks.”

  The smell of meat loaf hit him the moment he stepped inside the house. At first he thought he must be imagining it. Then he heard a woman’s voice say, “Jack? Is that you?”

  He did not answer.

  “I was worried sick that you got lost in that Indianola.”

  Loretta came through the kitchen door toward him. He had never been so happy and so sad at the same time in his life.

  “You look a mess,” she said, grabbing him and hugging him to her. “Let’s get you out of that wet uniform and into a hot bath.”

  Loretta was not dead. It was the woman and the girl who were dead back on the highway near Refugio.

  “I thought God was punishing me for what I was thinking about you, Jack, and what I had said to you, Jack. I really did think that was it. God was punishing me by making you die and disappear in an Indianola.”

  It had never occurred to Jack that God had anything to do with anything that had happened, was happening or ever would happen to him.

  CHAPTER 10

  It was almost one o’clock in the morning but Jack was not asleep. He had faked sleep so Loretta would finally quit asking him what was wrong besides his having been in an awful storm, almost an Indianola. So he was sitting in the kitchen when the phone rang. He picked it up before the first ring finished.

  “Jack, is that you?” It was Slick Carlton of the Texas highway patrol.

  “Yeah, Slick,” Jack said.

  “Sorry to call you at home and so late but you know about duty and work and all of that.”

  Jack said he knew about that.

  “We’ve got two hit-and-run victims up on Seventy-seven, one point three miles east of Refugio, Jack. We can’t tell much about them except that they were hit and run over by something, somebody. Adele Lyman, our friend the fool, said you were through there about then. Did you see anything that might help us figure out what happened?”

  “Not a thing, Slick. Not one thing.”

  “We can’t tell much when it might have happened because of the storm. That was a doosey wasn’t it?”

  “Sure was.”

  “Several times I thought I was going to be blown right off the road. I told you an Indianola might get me someday.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “Yeah, right. I was lucky this time. The victims were a mother and her daughter. According to what the mother had on her, they were from Fort Worth. She had a driver’s license and she had a wad of money. I can’t imagine what somebody from Fort Worth would be doing out in the middle of the storm like that with a wad of money.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Well, sorry again to call so late. Thought it was worth a try. You know the names of any of the passengers who were with you?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. There’s always a chance one of them might have seen something you didn’t. Go back to sleep.”

  “Will do, Slick.”

  “I’m not feeling so slick right now, Jack, I can tell you that. I got rainwater up my nose and in my ears and between my toes and up and between every other single part of me. If somebody squeezed me like a sponge I could produce enough water to fill a goodly-sized lake.”

  “Yeah.”

  Then just after two o’clock that afternoon Sweet Jennings called from the dispatcher’s office. Loretta was at work because one of her weekend ad takers quit and another was down with a bad cold. Jack was in the bathroom fooling with the bathtub faucets. Both were leaking and he was hoping all that was needed was new washers.

  “Mr. Glisan called from Houston just now,” Sweet said to Jack. “He said he and Pharmacy were about to get in a car to drive to Corpus. They want to see you when they get here. Should be tonight about seven or eight.”

  “Tonight? They want to see me tonight?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “What about?”

  “That’s what I asked. ‘What about?’ He wouldn’t say. He talked like you would know, though. Guess not, huh? That figures.”

  Jack went back to the bathtub. The washer on the hot-water faucet had melted almost away. He started scraping off its remains.

  Mr. Glisan and Pharmacy do not get into a car on a Saturday afternoon to drive to Corpus unless it is important and serious. Obviously it has to do with the two dead Tamales. He hated himself for thinking of them as Tamales. And colored people as Blues. He hated Adele Lyman for doing that to him, although it was probably better than calling them wetbacks and niggers like everybody else did.

  What do Pharmacy and Mr. Glisan know? How could they know what happened? They don’t know what happened? If they didn’t know what happened why would they jump in a car on a Saturday afternoon and drive five hours or more to talk to him? Could there have been somebody off in the
field watching the whole thing? Could the dead woman’s husband, the dead girl’s father, have been watching? No? Not him, not anyone? They would have come running out to see about it all?

  What were two people from Fort Worth doing out there on that highway in that storm? They must have been driving a car and it broke down. Or got washed out in the storm. Sure. That is what happened. Why didn’t Slick Carlton and his people think of that? Obviously, that is what happened. The Tamale woman and her daughter were driving from Fort Worth to Corpus and the storm got in the way and caused them to stop. So here comes a bus, let’s flag it down. Thank God, one of them probably said. Here comes a bus!

  Here comes a bus.

  Pharmacy and Mr. Glisan could be coming about something else.

  Don’t be stupid, Jack. What else could it be?

  Woodsboro. The Woodsboro agent could have reported him for not stopping. Yes, that is it!

  Oh, come on, Jack. Would the head of operators and the division superintendent drive all the way from Houston to Corpus to chew out a driver who missed a stop in a storm, almost an Indianola?

  I guess not.

  He told Loretta he had to go to the depot to finish some paperwork from the Friday storm. A tree limb on the road near El Campo had punctured a tire, he said. There were some questions about it, he said.

  It was clear to Jack that Loretta did not believe him. It was clear she thought he was going out to meet his girlfriend, whoever and wherever she was. For reasons he could not understand, she was very peaceful about it at first. Maybe thinking he had died in the storm had changed her. Whatever, she was peaceful about his leaving the house this Saturday night, something he had seldom done except to drive a run.

  Her peacefulness ended at the front door. “What’s her name, Jack?” she said in a voice full of war.

  “Ava Gardner,” he replied.

  “That’s not funny, Jack.” Loretta was not a violent person but he knew that if she had been, he would have been hit over the head with a lamp or a skillet or a hatchet or some other heavy or sharp object.

  He drove the Dodge first to the Tarpon Inn. He didn’t want a beer or some peanuts or anything in particular. His only thought was about College. Maybe he would be there; maybe he really was smarter than every other bus driver. Maybe they would have something to say to each other that would matter. Something that would help. Maybe he could be his Kenny of Kingsville.

  College was there, all right. So was Senator, the local drivers’ union president, and Jack walked into the middle of a discussion at the bar about politics, the single most boring subject there was to Jack. Put Senator with Willow and a few drunk bus drivers and shrimpers and words flew. It took a few minutes for Jack to catch up to the fact that somebody, probably Willow, had started naming names of people at the Corpus Christi city hall, the state capitol in Austin, as well as with President Eisenhower and the Congress in Washington, who were Reds. Senator was hot.

  “You are slandering good people, that is what you are doing,” he was saying when Jack took his place on a stool next to College, who seemed, as usual, to be listening but not participating, because all of these people were beneath him in some other world.

  “They’re out to take over the schools and the water,” said a guy at the bar Jack did not recognize.

  “That is absolute grease-monkey shit!” screamed Senator.

  “That’s not what I heard on the radio!” Willow screamed back.

  “The people on the radio wouldn’t know grease-monkey shit if they stepped in a barrel of it,” said Senator.

  “They know a lot more than some damned stupid bus driver!”

  Jack motioned at College to join him somewhere else. Jack took his Lone Star and went over to a table in a corner as far away from the bar as he could get. And in a minute or two, College, his beer in hand, sat down across from him.

  “I’m not even sure I know what a Red is,” Jack said to College.

  “That makes you even with every one of those people yelling about them over there,” said College. He made no effort to hide his disgust.

  “What are they?”

  “What?”

  “Reds … Communists.”

  College, for the second time in Jack’s presence, smiled. “They are people who think people like you should run things.”

  “Bus drivers?”

  “Yep. And carpenters and plumbers and salesclerks and ditchdiggers and steelworkers and roughnecks.”

  “I can barely run a bus.”

  “I thought you were one of our elite.”

  “Our what?”

  “Our best.” And College smiled again, but this time Jack realized there was no difference between his smile and his frown. They both expressed disgust.

  “You ever been in serious trouble before, College?” Jack asked.

  “None of your business, Jack.”

  “I’m not prying.”

  “You’re prying.”

  “I think I’m in trouble and I want to talk about it.”

  “Not to me, Jack. Not to me.” College grabbed his bottle of beer and stood up. “I can’t help you.”

  “You’re smarter than me.”

  College leaned down right into Jack’s face. “If I was smarter than you, then I wouldn’t be driving a bus with you and Sunshine and all the rest.”

  He straightened up and headed back to the bar.

  Clearly Jack had not found his Kenny of Kingsville.

  “Sunshine?” Jacked yelled after College. “What about him?”

  “I hear he’s in trouble, too.”

  Jack arrived at the bus depot just after seven. Mr. Glisan and Pharmacy were already there, sitting in the district passenger agent’s empty office upstairs. They were waiting for him.

  “You-all made good time,” Jack said when he walked in.

  “Pharmacy did the driving,” Mr. Glisan said. “As they say, he never met a floorboard he didn’t like.”

  Mr. Glisan was behind the small desk in the room. Pharmacy pulled up two wooden chairs for him and Jack. The chairs were brown and looked like they had come from a drugstore. A Rexall pharmacy? The Corpus DPA was named Bill Tillman. His job was to keep the commissioned agents happy and serviced with tickets, express waybills, posters, tariffs and small porcelain bus depot signs to hang outside. There were stacks and boxes and envelopes of all of these kinds of things all over the office. It was a messy place. Tillman had started as a Dallas–San Angelo driver many years ago.

  What if I became a DPA, Ava dear? Would you tell me your name and love me then?

  We’ll just have to see, Jack dear.

  It was clear from the second he walked in what Mr. Glisan and Pharmacy had come to talk about.

  “There’s a problem, Jack,” Mr. Glisan said. “We’ve come to talk to you about a problem.”

  “Have you got an idea of what it might be?” Pharmacy asked. “Any idea at all?”

  “No,” Jack said. “Not at all. None.”

  “We lost two checkers last night outside Refugio,” Glisan said.

  “Checkers?”

  “They were contract employees of Schoellkopf-Greene, a detective agency out of Fort Worth. We hired them.”

  The faces of those two people came again to Jack. That woman and that girl were checkers? He thought he might not be able to breathe.

  “What’s wrong there, fella?” Pharmacy asked. “You look kind of strange. Or are you sick?”

  “I’m fine,” Jack said. What had he done or shown on his face to make Pharmacy say that? “What do you mean you lost ’em?”

  “They’re dead, Jack. That’s really losing ’em, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Jack said he would so agree.

  Mr. Glisan said: “It happened during that storm yesterday afternoon. They were put out there to hop your schedule to Corpus and then come back on the five-thirty. They were found dead along the side of the highway last night. The highway patrol said there were tire marks all over one of them.”
/>   “Heavy tire marks,” Pharmacy said. “From a truck or maybe even a bus. The rain washed most of it away, so they can’t tell for sure.”

  “Did the highway patrol call you, Jack?” asked Mr. Glisan. “They said they were going to.”

  “Yes, sir. They called me.”

  “What in the hell did you tell them?” Pharmacy said.

  Mr. Glisan and Rex Al Barney were famous in the company for their one-two. Pop, goes Glisan, pow, goes Pharmacy. Take that, Operator Smith. Take that, Operator Jones.

  “I told them I didn’t see a thing. I could barely see the highway, if the truth was known.”

  “The truth is what this is all about, Jack.”

  Take that, Master Operator Jack T. Oliver.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you see them out there on the highway, Jack?” Mr. Glisan asked. He said it quietly, as if he were asking directions to the First State Bank of Wharton.

  “No, sir,” Jack said, just as quietly.

  “Dead or alive,” Pharmacy said. “Never mind what you might have told the highway patrol, did you see them, dead or alive?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “They would have been trying to wave you down,” Glisan said.

  “There was nobody out on the highway in the kind of weather we had out there yesterday. It was about as close to being an Indianola as it gets without being one, you know.”

  “I know, I know. It must have been hard to see,” said Pharmacy.

  “It was.”

  Glisan said, “Looking at your trip report, Jack, it would seem as if you came by where these two people died at about five-ten or so. You were running late into and out of Victoria but you lost a lot more time after that.”

  “Fridays. You’d already been having a problem with Fridays,” Pharmacy said.

  “Nobody could have driven a schedule on time in that yesterday,” Jack said.

  Glisan again: “They must have died just about the time you drove by. The highway patrol figures it happened between five and five-thirty. Are you sure you didn’t see anybody out there trying to flag you down?”