Milicent Le Sueur Read online

  Dick insisted that he had had enough of the road; that was why he had taken the cook job with Compassionate Friends. “Nope, I’ll never wear out shoe leather again. Never worry about the cops clearing out a campsite again. This is the last stop for me—journey’s end.”

  Jean Valjean disagreed. “I’ll keep on going. Down whatever road widens before me,” he said. “I have to admit, it’s easier in Portsmith. They’re more tolerant here as long as you don’t steal from the locals. They don’t care about us ripping off each other. They check us out for stiffs every so often—like we don’t know what to do with a stiff—and they send us down here to get a meal, but mostly they leave us alone. However, when I get the urge, I’ll move on. Gotta keep going. I’ll probably winter here, though. Maybe. Maybe I’ll winter here. Depends.”

  “On what?” I asked. I still didn’t trust Jean Valjean. Didn’t like his dirty disciple look. I had once tried to give him a bar of Lever 2000, but he just looked at it and said, “Can I eat it? Drink it? Sell it? Keep it.”

  It was a lazy end-of-summer day back then, and we had the luxury of being warm and with a good meal in our stomachs. Sitting at the back steps of Compassionate Friends was no different from neighbors gathering on patios across the city, having an after-dinner beer and philosophizing about life. Well, it was a little different; no liquor was allowed at Compassionate Friends, which meant Jean Valjean wouldn’t linger long, and our topic of conversation wasn’t exactly the same as those of the suits and their countersuits up on 24th Street. They worried about mortgages and schools, and we worried about the police and rain.

  Jean Valjean glowered at me. He didn’t know me all that well, and I had the feeling I was not welcome in their chat. Dick, however, had given me a nod to stay seated when the king of the homeless wandered up, so sat I did. “Depends on the climate,” he finally said with a pained look that indicated he was just humoring me, “on the climate, and I don’t mean the weather. Things can look fine on the surface, but in this business, you can never let down your guard. Always got to be thinking ahead. Numero Uno is always having your escape path planned. Some guy next to your box can stick a fellow with a knife, and then all hell breaks loose. The law is all over your site then. Which is what happened to me in Dartstown. Place where I squatted before I came here.”

  I quit watching the fireflies outside the perimeter of the yellow light from the screened-in back porch behind Dick and tried to focus on the king’s words, wondering suddenly if they applied to my situation.

  “And you had an escape route? That’s how you got away from Dartstown without any trouble?”

  “Yes, Miss Nosy, I did. But I’m not telling it to you. Find your own emergency exit.” And he had gotten up and left us sitting there without a nod or a wave.

  I shouted after him, “Whoop-de-do. Bag ladies never get in trouble. I don’t need an emergency exit.”

  Dick and I listened to the king snort in the shadows before the dark ate him up. Dick said, “Milicent, he ain’t all wrong. Anything ever go sour here, I’m off to Cooper. Got some buddies up that way. You oughta think on it.”

  So I thought on it, resentful that this question had raised its ugly head in my life.

  Now, with the second-worst storm of the century winging its way toward the red Nissan and me, I was glad I had.

  Right after my talk with Jean Valjean, I had begun to look at possibilities. Even had fun imagining what I would do in the unlikely event that I would have to get out of town fast and undetected. A fast horse was what appealed to me most. But considering the fact that I had never ridden even a slow horse, I settled on the second-best idea. A horse trailer.

  Some time after I found the junkyard, I noticed that from time to time unjunked, expensive vehicles showed up at the yard. Boats and horse trailers often lined up behind the shack there during the week. The reason I noticed them was that the junkyard was always a busy place on Friday nights or Saturday mornings when the owners of these too-big-to-be-parked-in-the-driveway luxury items showed up to make a lot of noise while they drove them off into the weekend. Sunday nights most showed up again. I figured they paid a fee of some kind to the junkyard to have parking rights during the week.

  The one that caught my eye was a red double-stall horse trailer that had a real regular schedule. Out on Friday nights. In on Sundays. Regular as clockwork. And the best thing was, on close inspection, I could tell that only one stall was ever used. If one had to, if one was desperate, one could get in the unused side and hide there under the fresh straw. Then one could be ridden out of town safely and discreetly.

  I tried to tell Dick about my plan back then, but he held up a warning hand. “Whoa, Milicent. Don’t tell me. Sure and if you are ever in such trouble that someone is looking for you, here is one of the first places they’ll come asking questions. I can’t tell what I don’t know.”

  It was early Friday morning when I made my exit from the hospital. All I had to do was gather my bags and my many-colored afghan and cross over the junkyard about ten feet to where the trailer sat behind the shack. If the weather didn’t keep the owner from heading out of town, I’d be on the road by early evening with Tag as my only witness.

  “Now don’t you go telling on me,” I said to him as I packed up the trailer.

  It took just a few minutes to get everything in place. I knew where the spare key to the padlocks were kept and had practiced locking them back by leaning over the opening at the end of the trailer. Actually, it was my own spare key, which I had had made one week. Fortunately I had kept it in my green bag.

  Locked securely in the trailer, the last of my energy left me. I just cozied down in the straw, wrapped in my afghan, of course, when a noise in the junkyard sent the adrenaline flowing again.

  Tag barked like it was the end of the world, and since I knew he only did that when the police came around, I tensed up, wondering if my plan would work.

  I heard someone yell out that they had found my auburn wig so I must have been there. So much for getting it to Gypsy. Someone else began a search among the other wrecks, but as I had hoped, they totally ignored the padlocked door of my trailer.

  There’s only so much to be seen at a junkyard and soon everything quieted down outside. I ate a granola bar from my striped Miss Vinnie Ledbetter bag and said a silent prayer of thanks to Jean Valjean before I fell into a heavy sleep.

  About four-thirty in the afternoon, the weather was still threatening but hadn’t produced any precipitation. The trailer owner drove it right out of the junkyard without a worry in the world, and I roused only long enough to have two quick thoughts.

  One, I regretted that I hadn’t had time to collect my meds from the hospital pharmacy before I left.

  Two, I sure was glad I wasn’t allergic to straw.

  There is a reason people use clichés and axioms…most have basis in truth and reality. One is—if there is straw in a horse trailer, there is sure to be a horse somewhere. Actually the saying is not about straw, but luckily, the horse that became my stall mate was a gentleman and a scholar and so therefore no manure.

  I don’t know when Dobbin moved in to occupy the other side of the double trailer. I was really out of it. But when I did begin to stir, there he was—staring at me over the metal wall that separated our temporary quarters. “Well, hello,” I said.

  The horse said nothing, which relieved me. The medications I had taken from the hospital were still working.

  But he sure could stare.

  I burrowed deeper into the straw, glad that I had enough to cover me. Obviously the owner hadn’t even looked over into the supposedly empty side of the trailer. “I’m only here for a little while,” I reassured my bewildered roommate. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  I was humming “On the Road Again” to the rhythm of the swaying trailer when I felt a turn and different road surface under the wheels. When I am Pope, I will
make sure there are pads and seat belts in horse trailers. After some tricky turns and twists, the trailer came to a halt.

  After that, it was a piece of cake.

  There was quite a bit of to-do about getting my horse unloaded from his side of the room, but I lay like a mouse, and soon enough I was alone. I stood up and peeked out the back. I am Irish. Well, I’m sure I am. It was with Irish luck that the driver had parked on the outside of a parking lot full of horse trailers and vans and horsy stuff. It was quick work to reach over the stall and unlock the padlock, freeing me and my bags to wander around the stables, which were stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

  Everyone was dressed like me, in sweats and a heavy parka, or they had on these black-and-white formal coats and pants. And I won’t say a word about those hats. Talk about your cross-dressing!

  I still had a plan, so I just smiled and yelled, “Howdy” to everyone as I made myself at home.

  Free food was good.

  I lined up for the barbecue buffet, telling everyone I had brought the green Jell-O salad and not to miss it. I put a little of the portable food aside in my striped bag for contingencies.

  A portable potty was even better than the food.

  “I just love these meets, don’t you?” asked the woman who stood shivering her turn when I exited the Porta-Potty.

  “Oh, my, yes. I live for them,” I told her.

  Riddle me this: Why do people huddle together out in the open to watch someone freezing their eyelashes off on a big, big horse that goes around and around in circles?

  Every so often, there would be applause, and a new horse would enter the open ring to do circles.

  No one ever looked up at the portentous clouds or complained about the bitter wind.

  This was a lifestyle worthy of study by Margaret Mead.

  Full and empty—depending on your point of view—I eventually strolled over to the parking lot and began looking at license plates and bumper stickers. I couldn’t believe the length people would travel to stand around in the cold.

  Eureka!

  I had been looking for some sign that a horse aficionado had traveled from Upston to this lovely pasture in the wilderness and I found a trailer that was stickered with Upston High School. Exactly what I was looking for.

  God bless the Pope who blesses the Irish.

  The high school sticker was on a double-stall trailer that was not only empty on one side, but also wasn’t locked. Why do these people buy double-stall trailers if they only have one horse? I must remember to ask Margaret Mead.

  I had another cup of free coffee and when the crowd looked like they’d had enough fun for the day, I snuck into the empty side of the blue trailer and made a hole in the hay.

  This method of travel was better than Greyhound.

  Upston was where I wanted to go, and Upston was where I was headed.

  It all made sense to me.

  Upston was where Titus and Mrs. Mary Moore lived before they moved to Portsmith. If something was rotten in Titus Moore’s Denmark, I intended to find out.

  How, I didn’t know.

  My plans only go so far.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Some bag lady I was turning out to be.

  I sat in my box in the big city and surveyed my claim to the title. Three measly bags and one of them, the Columbus bag, in serious disrepair. In Upston, I was only a little fish in a big pond. I wanted to go home to Portsmith, but I had to do my duty first. I felt like I was serving my time in the armed services. Only instead of saving my country, I was saving the life of Miss Vinnie Ledbetter.

  There was no doubt in my mind that Titus Moore wouldn’t kill her just to make out like I did it. As long as he didn’t know where I was, she was safe. He wouldn’t risk a killing without blaming it on me, and if I was nowhere to be found, there was no murder to be done.

  I don’t remember much of the time after the blue horse trailer arrived in Upston. The owners kept it at their home, a five-car garage in a very posh neighborhood. It took perfect timing to get out of that garage when no one was looking and that took most of the first day. I finally had to get the garage door opener from the Lincoln parked in the garage to make my exit. After I left the garage, I didn’t know what to do with the remote control, so I put it in my striped bag.

  What took me forever and forever was to find downtown and my kind of people. I almost hugged the first homeless person I saw. After that, it was a matter of establishing turf and just staying alive.

  Now I’ll say this about Upston bag ladies.

  They have no independence. No color.

  Bottom line is that they are toadies.

  When I first yelled, “Whatcha lookin’ at?” to a group of suits walking on the downtown streets, one of the Upston bag ladies, whose name turned out to be Cherries, came over and told me, “Shh, don’t make trouble. They’ll call the cops in an Upston minute.”

  Cherries gave me the quick skinny on Upston rules and even helped me find an empty box to sleep in. I seemed to need a lot of sleep.

  Bottom line is that within a week I was dirty, almost broke, and no further ahead in my plan.

  “Focus, Milicent,” I finally told myself. “Look at your shoes.”

  “Whatcha lookin’ at, Milicent?” asked Cherries, who had a box next to mine. I had taught her something during the week. We just needed to work on her hostility a bit.

  “It’s a trick they taught me at the state hospital. If I look at my Day-Glo shoelaces long enough, I can make a plan. I just forgot to do it before this.”

  “Get outta here. That’s stupid.”

  “No, it really works. Or it used to. Maybe the magic is gone.”

  “Maybe in the city, it takes two. I’ll help you.” And Cherries sat outside my box on the ground and stared at my shoelaces.

  We sat there like that a bit, and finally I asked her, “Cherries, where would I find a telephone book for six years ago?”

  “At the Upston Public Library.”

  “And where is that?”

  “I’ll show you. Are we through with shoe-looking, yet?”

  “Yes, I told you it worked, but I am sure it was your extra looking that helped. I need to go to the library.”

  Cherries looked at me instead of my shoes and said, “They won’t let you in like that. People used to hide in the library to get out of the cold, so they check you out real close when you go in, and you are dirty and smelly.”

  “I know. I am so glad Wade Tate isn’t here to see me,” I told her. “Let’s look another minute at my shoelaces, and maybe I’ll figure out what to do.”

  Which is how I came to spend the last of my rock money on a very cheap motel room with running water. I washed everything I owned in the bathtub after I had used half of my Lever 2000 bar on myself. It took right up to checkout time for most of it to dry, and I still had to leave wearing damp green sweats, but I managed to look presentable enough to pass inspection at the Upston Public Library.

  With the help of a very nice clerk, I found a six-year-old telephone directory and the Upston address and phone number of Titus and Mary Moore. I didn’t think there would be any use calling them, so I got directions from the same helpful clerk and hightailed it right back to the same suburb I arrived at a week ago via horse trailer.

  What goes around comes around.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Yes, can I help you?”

  “This is very embarrassing, but I think I have something that belongs to you.”

  The woman at the door of the big colonial house looked suspicious but was gracious enough to ask, “What is it?”

  “My name is Madeline Peas, and I just moved in the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, where are you living?” she asked, a bit more friendly.

  “Two blocks over on Avondale. Next to the Archers. The people with the dou
ble-wide horse trailer and the Lincoln town car.”

  The woman laughed. “Oh, yes, I know Tom Archer. He’s a trial lawyer downtown. His wife June is out of town right now. What do you have that you think is mine?”

  “Well, this is the embarrassing part. I was walking my dog this morning. Early. He’s an English sheepdog, and I am trying to get him familiar with our new neighborhood. While we were out, he accidentally knocked over your trash, and I picked it up for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “I found this little box, and I’m afraid I opened it. I just couldn’t believe you would be throwing away something so valuable, so I took a chance and brought it back after I took Sir Valentine back to the house. That’s the name of my English sheepdog.”

  The woman undid the safety lock on her door and came outside where I stood. “My name is Sandi Swanson. Welcome to the neighborhood, Madeline. And did you say your last name is Peace?”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, my Lord, would you look at this? This is my missing diamond earring. Oh, Lord, I have torn up the house looking for it. And you found it in the trash? I’ll kill someone around here. Come on in the house, Maddie. Do people call you Maddie? I just have to phone my husband at the office. He gave these earrings to me on our last anniversary.”

  And she opened the door, and Maddie Peace walked right in saying Thank you, Jesus in her head.

  I looked around the house while Sandi called her husband. Whew, talk about fancy.

  “He was beside himself,” she said when she hung up the phone. “How can we ever thank you? May I get you some coffee?”

  “Oh, I look a sight,” I declared. “All my things are in a jumble. Still in bags. I mean boxes. I’m a sight for sore eyes to go visiting and having coffee.”

  “You look like an angel to me, Maddie. And I’ve moved before and know how awful the first days are.”

  “Well, you have a lovely home. Have you lived here long?”