Liar's Bench Read Free Page A

she’s busy fussin’ about them florescent lights hurting her eyes an’ making her head pound. . . .” He clucked his tongue and sighed. “Lil Ella couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds soaked, him, damn near two hundred. Damn pillhead!” Jingles turned and spat. He handed the clipboard to the trooper.
    â€œYour desk clerk talked to Whitlock at about ten this morning?” The trooper looked over the notes.
    â€œYeah, ’bout an hour ago. Hettie had called to see why Ella’d missed her shift,” Jingles said, and pointed to the house. “If ya need to talk to her, she’s in there taking care of the baby until Child Welfare gets here.”
    I looked at Mama’s home—the bare windows curtained with nothing more than bird droppings splattered down the panes. It was hard to believe that a banker’s daughter and a once-prominent member of the Peckinpaw community lived in this rundown old clapboard, held together by peeling paint and thick moss layered over shadowed boards. That she’d been living her life just pennies shy from collecting a government draw check.
    I silently prayed that she’d walk out arms wide, ready to cradle me and make this nightmare go away. I’d sent up the same prayer the day she went off to the big city with Tommy and left me here in Peckinpaw with Daddy. That bright summer day right before my ninth birthday, when I’d felt my childhood halved like an onion, leaving me trapped between the tear-stained slices of Before and After. That split, that cold gloom cast across my heart, always dogged me, forever measured into my past and present.
    My legs wobbled, a darkness threatened. Then rage filled my core, swelled and bruised, bringing back function. I was shocked by my sudden anger toward Mama and her death, and at everyone I felt was responsible.
    Daddy must have sensed it, too. He grasped my elbow and urged me to sit down on the grass. Intent on unlatching my hurt and finding a target, I jerked away. “You! It’s your fault! You drove her away with all your lying, your cheatin’. You. You and this Podunk town!” I waved my arm. “The founding fathers got it right when they named it Peckinpaw. No wonder Mama couldn’t stand living here. Nothing more than a place where chickens peck and horses paw!”
    Wounded, Daddy took a step back. “Muddy, you’re . . . you’re having a nervous spell. You go wait in the car and I’ll be along after—”
    Before I could collect myself, clanging bells and cheerful music toppled his words and my regret. We both turned and watched a Mister Softee ice-cream truck—painted with candy-colored cartoons and treats—grind its gears and come to a halt alongside the police cruisers.
    For a moment, a glint of my long-ago summers, chocolate-kissed smiles and cotton-candy scents, crowded out the dark. I’d loved Mister Softee’s jaunty carnival song even more than his confections: It had lassoed the nights, matching my delighted squeals and proving a balm for the bruises of childhood, both the kind you could see and the sort you could only feel deep underneath your skin.
    The Mister Softee driver, Joey Sims, a boy from my biology class, slid back the large square window of the truck. His dark eyes popped out like buckeyes in buttermilk as he craned his head out to study the scene.
    Baby Genevieve’s screams drifted outside again, jolting me back to the present. Sims turned his head, and his neck stretched toward the house like a snapping turtle targeting a minnow. I took a step back, trying to hide behind Daddy before Sims’s eyes could grab hold of me.
    Jingles hollered across the road, “Move along, Sims.” He waved his arms in the air. “This here is a police investigation. That truck ain’t due to sell treats ’til after supper, son.”
    Sims ducked back in, slammed the window shut, and took off. I