When Will the Dead Lady Sing? Read Free

in the woods after school yesterday.”
    “Where could Tad get cigarettes?” I was thinking aloud, but Martha answered anyway.
    “He said a friend swiped them from his parents’ stash while they were at work. Tad swears this is the first time he’s tried it, but Bethany says he looked pretty experienced. I don’t know whether to tell Walker and Cindy, or hope his little chat with Ridd will do the trick. Why do these things always happen when a kid’s parents are away?”
    “It’s a law of the universe, honey, just like the law that says toilets will overflow and furnaces break when your husband leaves town. It was part of Eve’s curse in the Garden of Eden. Somebody just omitted it from the text.”
    As I had hoped, a gurgle of laughter rolled over the line. I love Martha’s laugh. It reminds me of a stream running over rocks. “Oh, well, I guess we’ll get through this. It’s just one more of life’s little stretching experiences. Are you still planning on walking with me tonight?”
    Martha and I both tend to be a little rounder than we’d like to be, so we’d decided to begin walking around the high-school track each evening.
    “Yeah, I’ll be there. But I called to ask you a question. What would you do if you had a buffalo in your yard?”
    “Call a cowboy?” From the tentative way she said it, I knew she was waiting for a punch line. After all, she did live with a four-year-old who loved silly riddles. Before I could say anything else, she returned to her own problem. “I guess I’ll have to tell Cindy and Walker, but do you think I ought to call them in New York, or just wait until they get home?”
    I peered around the door as I thought that over. My problem had abandoned the grass and was now moseying across the yard toward Joe Riddley’s new silver Town Car. “Wait until they get home. I gotta go. Call you later.”
    I announced loudly from the safety of the kitchen door, “That two-ton horned dog is about to test-drive your new car.”
    That got Joe Riddley’s attention. He’d bought the car in August to celebrate the anniversary of the day he’d gotten shot and survived to tell the story. 3 He would scarcely let me ride in it, he was so scared I’d leave a scratch on the finish.
    Joe Riddley heaved the sigh men reserve for times when they think a woman who expects equality in other areas ought to be able to cope with the present situation—a dead rat in the pantry, a flat tire in the rain, a buffalo on the front lawn. He shoved back his chair, strode to the front door, threw it wide open, and stopped dead. “By golly, it is a buffalo. Hi-ya! Get away from that car!” Waving his arms, he dashed into the yard.
    The animal had been ambling peacefully across the grass, but he stopped, turned, and lowered his head. I could see the headline in next week’s Hopemore Statesman : “Former Judge Trampled to Death.”
    I might get mad at the old coot from time to time, but I didn’t want him flattened by a buffalo. I ran after him in my red-striped coffee coat and red slippers. “Get back in here!” I grabbed his arm and tugged.
    The buffalo headed toward the excitement.
    Do you know how fast a buffalo can run?
    I never found out. Joe Riddley grabbed me around the waist, lifted me from the ground, and hightailed it to the porch. “That red must be making him mad,” he gasped as he slammed the front door behind us.
    Trust him to blame me. I’d have pointed out that he was the fool who went outside in the first place, but I was too busy trying to breathe. Besides, some of the best advice Mama ever gave me was, “Honey, you’ll stay married a lot longer if you don’t make a war out of every arrow aimed in your direction.”
    We leaned against the door panting for breath, our two hearts thundering as one. I didn’t hear a thundering buffalo on the front stoop, though, so I dared to look out the front window. The buffalo had stopped about ten feet from our front step and was looking at