Devil on My Heels Read online

  I get up to pour us some coffee just as my dad comes through the door. Jacob Tully is with him. He must have seen the fire from his place and come to help.

  Dad stares down at Chase’s bandage. “How’s your hand, son? You want me to take you to the emergency room?”

  “Doc Alderman here fixed me up just fine.” Chase grins at me.

  Jacob Tully stands there digging his finger in one ear. He is almost a full head taller than my dad, thin, but broad in the shoulders. His thick hair is streaked with white. He has on a pair of khakis and a light blue shirt.

  Chase’s dad has this long face with deep gouges running on either side of his nose down to his chin. He looks almost angry. But then, for long as I can remember, Jacob Tully has never looked any other way.

  “Spudder says he’d appreciate any information you can give Moss and Jimmy for their report,” Jacob tells Chase.

  Chase doesn’t so much as glance his dad’s way. His hands are in front of him on the kitchen table. He’s got his eyes glued on those hands.

  The look on Jacob Tully’s face makes me think he’s about to lunge across the room and grab Chase by the shoulder to get his attention. But right about then my dad says, “It’s almost eleven o’clock.” He points to the clock above the sink. “You probably got homework to do.”

  Chase nods, somehow managing to keep a straight face. As far as I know, he hasn’t opened a book since fifth grade. But he always seems to get by.

  Dad walks Chase to the door and thanks him again.

  Jacob nods our way as he turns to leave, but doesn’t say another word. Seems like he’s got something weighing on his mind too.

  After Chase leaves, I pour my dad a cup of coffee and sit across from him at the table. It about breaks my heart losing our barn. But we still have a roof over our heads. And Dad and I still have each other.

  9

  Word about our barn spreads almost as fast as the flames had. At school I have a swarm of kids buzzing around me in the hall, wanting to know about the fire. I am practically a celebrity. I tell them every little detail, including how Chase tried to beat out the flames with his jacket.

  Rayanne’s tweezed eyebrows shoot clear up to her scalp. “You mean the black leather one?”

  Everybody in Benevolence knows how important that jacket is to Chase. Beating out the flames with it to save our barn is the ultimate sacrifice.

  Rayanne frowns. “It’s the middle of April, for heaven’s sake. Is he still wearing that thing?”

  “Yeah, he is. And he’d like ‘that thing’ back.” It is Chase himself.

  The kids part like the Red Sea, letting him through just as the bell rings for homeroom.

  I run to my locker to get my books. Chase is right behind me. “I meant it about my jacket.”

  I shrug. “I’ll bring it tomorrow. It’s still on the back porch. What’s left of it, anyway.” The words are barely out of my mouth before I start to feel guilty. Chase really loves that jacket. “My dad’ll get you a new one,” I tell him.

  “Nah, he doesn’t have to do that. I’ll wear my old one. It’ll look broke in, like it’s seen real action.”

  I nod a few times, not sure what to say, then grab my books and head off to homeroom. Chase stays right by my side. He walks me all the way to the door, then stands there while I go in and take my seat. I don’t quite know what to make of that, seeing as how he’s never done this before.

  Rayanne is filing her nails. I slide into my seat across from her.

  The hand holding the nail file pauses in midair. “What’s with you and Chase?” Rayanne has this little blue scarf tied around her ponytail that matches her blue blouse and pleated blue-plaid skirt. Everything perfectly color coordinated. For some reason that gets on my nerves today.

  “Nothing,” I tell her.

  “Doesn’t look like ‘nothing’ to me.” She tosses the nail file into her purse and pulls out her compact to check her lipstick. “I don’t know what your problem is. If Chase Tully was after me the way he’s been after you lately, I’d fall right down at his feet and wait for him to carry me off.”

  “Well, fine. You go out with him, then.”

  Rayanne snaps her compact shut. “You’re joking, right?” She frowns at me, then slumps down in her seat. “Who am I kidding? Chase would never be interested in me. You’re the only person he cares about. Everybody in this school knows that.”

  My heart does a little flip when she says this.

  “So, did they catch who did it?” Rayanne asks out of the blue.

  At first I’m not sure what she is talking about. “Did what?”

  “Well, set your barn on fire, for heaven’s sake.”

  I stare at her. “Nobody set our barn on fire,” I say. “It was lightning.”

  Rayanne stares right back at me. “Well that’s not what everybody else is saying. According to Willy Podd, Chase saw some colored person taking off for the groves right about the time he drove up to your house.”

  “Since when do you listen to anything Willy says?”

  Rayanne shrugs. “Well, it’s not just him. It’s like I said, everybody’s talking about it.” She takes a piece of Bazooka bubble gum from her purse, unwraps it, and pops it into her mouth. “It makes sense, don’t you think? Considering all the fires we’ve had around here lately.”

  “It doesn’t make sense at all,” I say. “And for your information, I saw the lightning strike our barn. Nobody set it on fire.”

  Rayanne snaps her gum a few times. She looks as if she’s about to say something, but then Mrs. Hatch starts taking attendance. After her name is called, Rayanne leans over and whispers, “Why don’t you just ask Chase for yourself?”

  Later, on my way to the cafeteria, I catch up with Chase in front of his locker. “Have you been going around telling folks you saw somebody set fire to our barn last night?”

  Chase jams a book into his locker, closing the door fast before a ton of junk comes tumbling out and buries us alive. He doesn’t seem all that surprised by my question. He takes a step closer. My back is flat up against somebody’s locker. I feel the heat from Chase’s body. I press the palm of one hand on the metal behind me to remind myself of what something cool feels like.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been listening to those rumors too,” he says.

  “Somebody had to start them,” I say.

  He leans forward, putting both hands on the locker, one on each side above my head, to balance his weight. His face is only inches from mine. I smell his Doublemint gum. His ice blue eyes send a little shiver through me, and my heart does a drumroll. “It wasn’t me,” he says.

  “Who, then?” My voice sounds wobbly. Not at all like me. I can’t stop looking at his mouth. It’s only a few inches from my own. My body tips toward him. I have no idea where Rayanne got the idea that Chase likes me, but for once in my life I’m hoping she’s right about something. I’m pondering this interesting new development when the bell rings, and I realize I’ve made Chase late for class.

  “Later,” he says. Then he is gone, heading down the hall with his slow, easy strut. From the back, he sort of reminds me of Gator.

  I make a dash for the cafeteria. We get only twenty minutes for lunch. Half of that time we spend in line. I’m almost to the door when I hear somebody say, “You’re Dove Alderman, right?”

  I look over to see Rosemary, the girl from Luellen’s, coming up beside me. I’m wondering how she found out my name. From Luellen or Nona, maybe.

  Kids bump past us on their rush to the food troughs. I step away from the doorway, not sure what Rosemary is doing here.

  “I heard about your barn,” she says. “I’m real sorry. It was an accident, right?”

  “Lightning,” I tell her.

  Rosemary takes a deep breath, as if she’s relieved to hear this. She stands there, picking at the frayed corner of her three-ring binder. “I’m Rosemary Howell. Luellen’s cousin.” She pulls at a loose thread and the corner of the binder u
nravels a little bit more.

  “Uh-huh. . . .” I wait to see if there’s more information coming. There is.

  “I just started school here a few weeks ago.”

  I nod. Rosemary makes me nervous. No, it’s more than that. She makes me feel guilty. I don’t much like being reminded of last Saturday, me being one of the gawking crowd and all, and not lifting a finger to stop what was going on. I’m waiting for her to point this out to me, but all she says is, “I’m a junior.”

  “Well, that’s real nice,” I say, inching my way toward the cafeteria. I’m hoping she’ll take the hint.

  Rosemary is right behind me as I head through the open doors. “Is this your lunch period?” she asks.

  Since I am now standing in line—the very end of the line—I don’t feel I have to answer this.

  “Mine too,” she says, even though I haven’t said anything.

  “When did you start working for Luellen?” I ask, trying to be polite.

  “Well . . .” She gives this question far more thought than it deserves. “It’s been about five weeks, I guess.”

  “Are you staying with her?” Everybody in town knows Luellen lives in the apartment above her beauty shop.

  “Sort of.” Rosemary looks away. Her fingers are still working on that frayed corner. If she’s not careful, the whole cloth cover is going to unravel.

  “Sort of?”

  “I mean, it’s just for now.”

  I notice she’s wearing saddle shoes that are so scuffed and dirty, I doubt they’ve ever been polished. Her dress is a faded plaid and the lace around her Peter Pan collar is hanging loose in two places. If it’s true what Erdine Tucker said, that Rosemary’s folks are pickers, I can’t help but wonder why she’s staying at Luellen’s and not with her family. But I don’t ask.

  We slide our trays along the metal bars. I take the turkey and mashed potatoes platter. Rosemary just keeps shoving her tray along until we get to the desserts. She takes a small square of spice cake. I pay my fifty cents and head off to meet Rayanne and our other friends.

  Rayanne glares at me when I set my tray down.

  “What?” I glare back at her.

  She’s looking past me. I don’t have to turn around to know who she’s staring at. Rosemary comes up beside me with her little square of spice cake in one corner of her tray. The frayed notebook fills the rest of the space.

  There’s not a whole lot a person can do in a situation like this. So I pretend that her joining us has been my idea all along. “Uh . . . everybody,” I say. “This is Rosemary Howell. She, um . . . just started going to school here a few weeks back.”

  Rayanne is looking at me as if I just shot her dog. The others shift their eyes from me, to Rosemary, to each other. Except for Jinny Culpepper, who is nice to everybody. Jinny’s charm bracelet jangles as she gives Rosemary a little wave. “Hey, Rosemary,” she says.

  “She’s a junior,” I tell them. I am hoping this will impress them enough to let Rosemary sit at our table. It never hurts to have an upperclassman eating lunch with you.

  Unfortunately no one is the least bit impressed. I point to the empty seat next to mine. “You can sit here if you want,” I tell Rosemary.

  The relief in her smile only makes me feel worse.

  Everyone goes back to talking. Just not to Rosemary. I shovel food in my mouth at the rate of a forkful per second. We have only three minutes before the bell and my next class. Rayanne is sending me hate messages with her eyes.

  I am so busy concentrating on swallowing without choking that I don’t see Willy and Earl coming across the room until they are right at the end of our table.

  “Well if it ain’t our little nigger lover,” Willy says. He raps his knuckles on the table a few times. It’s as if somebody bumped the arm on a record player—first there’s this sharp scrape, then total silence. Everybody at our table has stopped talking. Their eyes are on Willy and Earl.

  Rosemary hasn’t touched her cake, although she has her fork in her hand and seems to be working up to the part where she actually puts it in the food. Now she lays the fork carefully beside the plate. She stares down at the cake. Her eyes are glued to that white frosting.

  “Drop dead, Willy,” I say.

  He snickers over his shoulder at Earl. “Looks like we got us another one.”

  The only sound I hear, besides the one coming from Willy’s big mouth, is the clanking of dishes and silverware from the kitchen. I never noticed before how much racket the kitchen help makes back there.

  “Maybe we got us a whole table full,” Willy says.

  Rayanne is on her feet so fast she has to grab the back of her chair for balance. She lifts her tray and holds it close to her, as if she’s afraid they might try to snatch it from her. “Jerks!” she mutters, and heads over to the window to drop off the tray.

  “Whoo-eee! The chick’s frosted.” Willy laughs and shakes his hand hard and fast.

  Just then the bell rings and everybody jumps up from their seats at the same time. The moment is so synchronized, you’d have thought they’d rehearsed it.

  “Come on,” I say to Rosemary. I am not about to leave her here with Willy and Earl. Rosemary lifts her notebook and gets up, forgetting her tray, and heads straight for the door. I dump my tray at the window and take off after her.

  “They’re complete morons,” I tell her when I finally catch up. “Together their IQs don’t even add up to a hundred.”

  Rosemary is moving down the hall at record speed, shoving her way past guys on the football team who are twice her size. Too bad we don’t have a women’s track team. We’d be state champs for sure.

  Rosemary screeches to a halt in front of the chemistry lab door. I can’t help her from here on. I’m supposed to be in French in less than a minute. But I don’t want to leave her.

  “The bell’s going to ring any second,” she warns. “You’re gonna be late.” She peeks inside the classroom door and checks out the room. Then she turns back to me. “It’s okay. I can take care of myself.”

  I have serious doubts about this. A picture of Earl grabbing her by the wrist and yanking her away from Gator pops into my head. It gives me the creeps.

  Rosemary slips into the classroom and sits on one of the stools. Before I can turn away, Willy Podd all but knocks me off my feet as he lunges through the door. He takes a seat way in the back of the classroom. He and Earl are both juniors, like Rosemary. The odds are definitely not in Rosemary’s favor.

  10

  “Who is she, anyway? Somebody said she’s one of the pickers.” Rayanne is puffing along like a steam engine, trying to keep up with me on our way to Whelan’s after school. Whelan’s is at the other end of Main Street, clear on the opposite side of town from the high school. I want to get there and leave before it’s mobbed with kids. Seniors, mostly. Very popular seniors. They pretty much take over the place after three o’clock.

  Chase wasn’t around after last period, and his car was gone from the parking lot. I’m almost positive I’ll find him at Whelan’s. I want to know how those stupid rumors about our barn got started and why he didn’t try to stop them.

  “Her parents are pickers,” I tell Rayanne. I see Erdine Tucker’s face leaning into mine, whispering to me about Rosemary. “Actually, that’s just something I heard. Maybe it isn’t even true.”

  “Well, then? So she is a picker. Her folks are, anyway.”

  “Are you listening to me, Rayanne? I said I’m not even sure it’s true. She’s here, isn’t she? She’s in school like the rest of us. She is not up on a ladder in the groves. She is not hunched over a row of bush beans.”

  Rayanne starts chewing on her lower lip. “You shouldn’t have asked her to sit with us.”

  “Why not?” I already know the answer to this. I just want to make her say it.

  “Well, Dove, for heaven’s sake, you know why.”

  “Why?”

  Rayanne starts working on that lower lip again. Chewing like there�
��s no tomorrow. “You heard what Willy called her.”

  “Since when do you side with the likes of Willy Podd?”

  “I’m not! But you’ve got to think of our reputations. She’s a migrant worker—or her folks are, anyway. And she was talking to that colored boy who works for your daddy.”

  It’s starting to bother me the way Rayanne always refers to Gator as “that colored boy.” She knows darn good and well what his name is. “That colored boy has a name,” I say.

  “Well for heaven’s sake, I know that! It’s Gator, right? That’s not the point, Dove. We’re talking about that girl, Rosemary.”

  When I don’t say anything, Rayanne grabs my arm to stop me from taking another step until she can unload what’s on her mind. She doesn’t waste any words making her point this time. “We can’t have trash sitting at our table at lunch. It makes us look bad.”

  We’ve reached the parking lot at Whelan’s. I’m not about to get into a scene with Rayanne in front of all these people. The truth is, I can’t pretend these exact same thoughts didn’t go through my head earlier that day, because they did. More than once.

  Whelan’s is already packed with cars. Kids are sitting on the hoods or leaning against car doors, which usually means there’s no place to sit inside. And there isn’t. All the counter seats are taken and the booths are bulging with kids. Some are even sitting on each other’s laps because there’s not enough room. The seatless masses stand around clutching their glasses of Coke so they won’t get them knocked out of their hands. “Stagger Lee” is playing on the jukebox, not that you can hear much of the song above all the noise.

  From the outside Whelan’s smells like hamburgers frying. Inside the only smell is cigarette smoke. It’s so thick I can hardly see to the other end of the room.

  I order two cherry Cokes and hand one to Rayanne. We head back out to the parking lot.

  Rayanne spots Chase before I do. I think she has some sort of special homing device that zeros in on him just about anywhere. He’s sitting in his T-bird with the top down, surrounded by a bunch of other seniors. Some are sitting on the hood, some in the backseat.