Mystery

She looked over to see if he were serious, and Tom pointed to the back of the store. Sarah jerked the car into low and stepped hard on the accelerator. The Mercedes flew over the mud and stones of the road, and skidded to a stop behind the store. It seemed to Tom that only a second had passed since he had spoken. His stomach was still back on the road.

“That fast enough for you?” Sarah said.

The face of a little girl with braids and an open mouth popped into a window at the back of the building.

“Yep.”

“Now will you tell me what’s going on?”

“Listen,” he said.

In a few seconds they heard the clopping of hooves and the creaking of leather.

“Now watch the road,” Tom said, and nodded back toward the way they had come. For a long time, the sound of the horse and its carriage came nearer the shop; then the sound subtly changed, and began going away from them. After a minute or two, a pony trap appeared retreating down the track, driven by a man in a black coat and black Homburg hat.

“That’s Dr. Milton!” Sarah said. “What would he—”

A small scurrying shape hurtled around the side of the building and jumped into Sarah’s arms. When it stopped whirling and began licking Sarah’s face, Tom saw that it was Bingo.

She held the dog in both her arms and looked at Tom, amazed.

“I think Dr. Milton must have seen him somewhere near the hospital, recognized him, and decided to take him on his errand before bringing him back,” he said.

“His errand? In the old slave quarter?” Sarah lifted her chin away from Bingo’s tongue.

“He decided that he told me too much,” Tom said. “But now I know where Hattie Bascombe lives.”

Sarah deposited Bingo in the well behind the seats. “You mean, he came out here to tell her not to talk to you? To threaten her or something?”

“If I remember Hattie Bascombe right,” Tom said, “it’s not going to work.”

Sarah parked behind a pile of fresh horse droppings, and Tom got out of the car. “What if he was just calling on a patient?” she said. “Isn’t that at least a little bit possible?”

“Do you want to come with me and find out?”

Sarah gave him another long look, then patted Bingo on the head and said, “Stay here,” and got out of the car. She looked around at the rows of shacks, at the chain-link fence and the long expanse of garbage. Gulls circled and dove; a faint but definite odor of human excrement and rot came to them.

“Maybe I should have brought my gat after all,” Sarah said. “I’m afraid the rats will come out to get Bingo.” But she came around the front of the car to join him, and together they walked up on the porch. Tom knocked twice.

“Get away from here,” said a voice from within the shack. “Git! Had enough—don’t want any more of you.”

Sarah backed down off the porch and looked toward her car.

“Hattie—”

“You said it all! Now you want to say it all again?” They heard her moving slowly toward the door. In a quieter voice: “I looked at you thirty years, Boney, I don’t have to see you one day more.”

“Hattie, it’s not Boney,” Tom said.

“No? Then I guess it must be Santa Claus.”

“Open the door and find out.”

She cracked the door and peered out. Alert black eyes in a suspicious face took in Tom’s tall figure, then moved to Sarah. She opened the door a notch wider. Her white hair was skimmed back from her forehead, and the lines on her face that had seemed bitter now expressed a surprisingly youthful curiosity. “Well, you’re a big one anyhow, aren’t you? You people lost? How you know my name?” She looked hard at Tom, and her whole face softened. “Oh, my goodness.”

“I was hoping you would recognize me,” Tom said.

“If you hadn’t turned into a giant, I would’ve recognized you right away.”

Tom turned and introduced Sarah, who was lingering awkwardly in the little yard, her hands in the pockets of her shorts.

“Sarah Spence?” Hattie said. “Didn’t I hear from Nancy Vetiver, all that time ago, that you visited our boy here in the hospital?”

Tom laughed at her perfect recall, and Sarah said, “I guess you did. But how could you remember …?”

“I remember about everybody came to visit Tom Pasmore. I believe he was the most left-alone little boy I ever saw, all the time I worked at Shady Mount—you were, you know,” she said directly to Tom. “I hope you two fine young people didn’t plan on spending your whole visit here standing on my porch. You’ll come in, won’t you?”

Hattie smiled and stepped out to hold her door open, and Tom and Sarah went into the little interior.