The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop Read online

  Ruthie, who had been standing by her kitchen sink having a last sip of iced tea, suddenly felt weak. She walked over to the table and sat down.

  “Mrs. Caldwell? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m here….Oh my God.”

  “I’m so so sorry.”

  “Oh my God…what happened? I just talked to him last night.”

  “He didn’t say, all I know is Mr. Merris seemed extremely upset and said it happened under very unusual circumstances, and to tell you that he will be calling you within the hour with the exact details.”

  “You don’t know the details?”

  “No, I’m so sorry….I don’t.”

  “Where is my father now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh…well…can’t Mr. Merris come to the phone now?”

  Janice looked out her door and saw that Mr. Merris was still outside on the sidewalk talking to the policeman.

  “He’s still tied up dealing with the authorities right now. But I’m sure he will call just as soon as he can. And again, I am so very sorry….”

  After she hung up, Janice looked out the window again. Something odd was definitely going on. She’d never seen Mr. Merris so upset. And why had he called the police? That was definitely weird. Did he suspect some sort of foul play?

  AFTER SHE HUNG up, Ruthie felt as though she had been hit in the stomach with a shovel. Then when the initial jolt wore off, and the news started to sink in, she began to feel an all-too-familiar numbing sensation. Having been through this situation twice before, she realized that she was probably going into shock. Sadly, she was no stranger to this kind of life-shattering news.

  A few months ago, she had received the same phone call from Mr. Merris, telling her that her mother had suddenly passed away. And three years before that, a mutual friend had called and told her that Brooks, her forty-eight-year-old husband and the love of her life, had just dropped dead on the golf course. And like today, both calls had come from completely out of the blue. Of course, she’d known this call would be coming someday, but no matter what you thought, you were never really prepared.

  Ruthie could feel her heart pounding and her hands were shaky. She glanced up at the clock. It was almost twelve noon. What should she do? Should she call her son and her daughter? Or should she just wait to hear from Mr. Merris? No, she wouldn’t call. She would wait until she had more…information. The girl said it had happened that morning. Then she wondered why they’d waited so long to call her. That didn’t sound like he had died in his sleep. Was he still in his room? Had it been some kind of accident? She wouldn’t doubt it. Lately he had been so stubborn, and refused to wear his new arm except for special occasions, which only made it worse when he fell. He’d fallen and broken his wrist the last time. She sighed. After spending all that money, time, and energy to get the very best prosthetic arm made, why wouldn’t he just wear it? Ruthie was suddenly torn between being mad at him and heartbroken at the same time.

  It had been ten minutes. Should she go ahead and just call Mr. Merris? Or wait for him to call back? Oh Lord…she looked at the clock again. “What’s taking him so long?”

  What had happened? And what authorities was Mr. Merris talking to?

  The more time she had to think about it, the more she was convinced it must have been some kind of accident. A few years ago, a resident at the Manor had walked through a crosswalk without looking, and a truck had backed up and hit him. The poor man was so deaf he hadn’t heard the beeping. But that couldn’t have been the case with her daddy. He could hear, and he could see perfectly fine. He had just had his cataract operation a few years earlier. He’d had a new hip put in four years ago, and a top-of-the-line hearing aid. He’d been patched up as well as one could be at almost eighty-four. And it couldn’t have been a heart attack; they had just put in a pacemaker. Besides, Miss Poole had just said that whatever happened, had happened under “unusual” circumstances. What did she mean by unusual? He must have fallen. But falling wasn’t that unusual for people in their eighties. He fell all the time. Maybe this time he fell and hit his head on something. Oh no. She hoped he hadn’t suffered.

  She looked up at the clock again.

  Why hadn’t she gone out to see him last Wednesday? Why did she go to that stupid beauty makeover that day? Oh God, as usual, no matter how much you’d done for the person when they were alive, you’d forget the good, and the regrets would start marching in.

  What should she do next, she wondered. Thank heavens he had written down his life history for her. She would make copies of it and give it to the kids. At least they would have that….Poor Daddy. He was so good. She had hoped to have more time with him.

  There were so many more things she wished she’d asked him. Now it was too late.

  MR. MERRIS STOOD out on the sidewalk wringing his hands, his dark brown toupee listing a little more toward his left eye than usual.

  He and a few members of his staff were talking to a police officer, who was busy asking questions and taking down notes.

  “Can you tell me what he was wearing when last seen?”

  Mr. Merris turned to the bus driver. “Jerome, you saw him last. Do you remember?”

  “Uh…khaki pants, and some sort of old tweed or plaid wool jacket. Red or green tie, maybe?”

  As the policeman wrote down the description, a breathless young woman ran out of the building and handed him a photograph.

  “This is the most recent one we have on file.”

  The policeman took it and looked at it for a moment, then casually attached it to the top of his clipboard.

  Mr. Merris, who was growing more frantic by the moment said, “Listen, officer…couldn’t you just go and find him? Do we really need to waste all this time filling out a report? I mean, how long does someone have to be missing before they are declared missing? As you can see, he’s a very old man, and I’m extremely concerned about his welfare.”

  The officer looked at the photograph once again. “You say he has an arm missing?”

  Mr. Merris nodded. “Yes…Well, sometimes.”

  The officer looked up at him quizzically.

  “He has a prosthesis.”

  “A what?” asked the officer.

  “An artificial arm.”

  “Ahh…I see. Left or right?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Left or right arm?”

  “Oh.”

  Mr. Merris was unsure and turned to the nurse, who answered “Left.”

  Mr. Merris repeated, “Left. Only sometimes he doesn’t wear it.”

  The nurse added, “He always wears it on special occasions, though.”

  The officer wrote on his report May or may not have a left arm. “So…would you say he is in ill health? Frail?”

  “No, no. Not frail,” Mr. Merris said. “But he’s still an at-risk senior, missing for over six hours now. Not to mention that Mr. Threadgoode is also a member of a very prominent family.”

  The officer looked up from his pad unfazed. “Is he an Alzheimer’s patient?”

  Mr. Merris shook his head. “No, a little dementia perhaps.” The nurse nodded in agreement. “Maybe, just a little, but he’s certainly able to function.”

  “Has he been depressed lately…any threats of suicide?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that,” said Mr. Merris. “Mr. Threadgoode is more”—he turned to the activities director for help—“what would you say, Hattie? Upbeat?”

  “Yes, he’s kind of a jokester, really. He’s very funny. Just last week he—”

  Mr. Merris interrupted, “I just don’t understand how this could have happened, Officer. All the shuttle bus drivers at Briarwood are highly trained. They have strict rules to never, ever leave the parking lot until all the residents on the bus have been accounted for. But as I said before
, the minute we realized Mr. Threadgoode was missing, Jerome immediately turned around and drove back to the church, but he was gone.”

  Jerome confirmed. “I looked everywhere…checked the bathrooms and everything.”

  The policeman flipped his pad shut and said, “Okeydokey, I think I have enough, so I’ll go ahead and issue a BOLO on him.”

  “A what?” asked Mr. Merris, somewhat alarmed.

  “Be on the Lookout alert.”

  “Oh…well, good….And then what?”

  “Then we hope we find him.”

  RUTHIE LOOKED AT the clock. It had been over twenty-five minutes. Why wasn’t he calling? Should she just get in the car and go over there? What should she do? She felt so helpless. She had assumed that when this day did come, Brooks would be there by her side helping her, taking care of everything like he always did. Then it suddenly hit her. Now that Brooks and Daddy were both gone, she didn’t have anybody to turn to for help. She’d never felt so alone in her life.

  A few years ago, the family lawyer had said that all of her father’s papers were in order, but she didn’t know any of the particulars. The only thing her father had told her was that when he passed away, she had a surprise coming. Lord only knows what it was. He was so silly. Always doing silly things, just to make you laugh.

  At this point, she wasn’t sure how much money her father had left. She knew before her parents moved to Briarwood, he had spent a fortune on doctors and caregivers for her mother. But she really didn’t care. It was his to do with whatever he liked. He had worked hard all his life and had earned every penny.

  She looked at the clock again.

  Oh God. If she had it to do over, after her mother died, she would have insisted that he move in with her where she could have kept an eye on him. But on the other hand, he’d seemed to like it at the Manor. And he had made a lot of friends. If she had moved him in with her, her mother-in-law wouldn’t have been very nice to him.

  She looked at the clock again. Why wasn’t Mr. Merris calling?

  She dreaded telling the kids. She knew they would both be upset. She wondered if she should plan some service, or something.

  She did know that he wanted to be buried in Whistle Stop in the Threadgoode family plot. She knew that. But she didn’t really know where the Whistle Stop cemetery was, or if it was even still there anymore. Then something else occurred to her. With Daddy gone, she was the last living Threadgoode.

  BUD THREADGOODE HAD had a hunch the new bus driver was not very sharp. And since he was now seven miles away from Briarwood Manor, sitting in the Waffle House across the street from the Atlanta train station, he figured his assessment had been correct.

  Earlier that morning, after the small white bus with BRIARWOOD MANOR DISTINCTIVE SENIOR LIVING written on the side pulled out of the Baptist church parking lot, Bud had come out of the church bathroom where he had been hiding. He’d looked out and saw that the bus was not coming back looking for him, and hightailed it over to the big Catholic church a few blocks away. He needed to find someone who would call a cab to pick him up and take him to the train station. Ruthie had just bought him a new Jitterbug cellphone, and Bud’s one big slipup was that he had been in such a hurry this morning, he’d left it on his dresser. But luckily, when he got there, people were still milling around the Catholic church parking lot. He asked a nice Mexican family who were just leaving if they would call him a cab, and the father said they would be happy to drive him. When they let him out across the street from the train station, he tried to pay them for the ride, but they wouldn’t take it. Instead, the tiny little grandmother in the back seat handed him an “Our Lady of Guadalupe” holy card, and he was glad to have it. With what he had planned to do, he needed all the help he could get.

  He wasn’t trying to upset anybody or disappear for good. All he wanted to do was take a ride on the train. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. He had been planning today’s little caper for quite a while. For the last few months, he had been taking different church shuttle buses every other Sunday just to confuse the Briarwood staff.

  He had managed to look up the train schedule, and last Friday, he had slipped into the new assistant’s office while she was at lunch and printed out a round-trip ticket. He was taking the Amtrak train from Atlanta to Birmingham, then coming back to Atlanta on the same day. Hopefully, he’d be back at the Manor in time for dinner. If all went well, they wouldn’t even know he was gone. He certainly didn’t want to upset Ruthie; she had enough troubles without worrying about him.

  He had been looking so forward to making this trip again. When he was a kid, Aunt Idgie had been friends with all the railroad men in Whistle Stop, and knowing how much he loved trains, the engineers used to let him ride with them over to Atlanta and back. His mother was not too happy about it, but had let him go, as long as he was home by dark. What fun those trips were. The engineers let him blow the whistle at all the crossings. And on the way back home, the Pullman porter on the Crescent always brought him a ham and cheese sandwich and a big silver bowl of vanilla ice cream from the dining car. How lucky can a kid get?

  All he wanted to do was ride the train past Whistle Stop one more time. He had heard there was really nothing much left. But he still wanted to see it.

  AS BUD FOUND his platform and waited for the train, he felt sad and happy at the same time. He’d wanted to make this trip while he was still in his right mind and in fairly good physical health. He was slipping just a bit, and he knew it. Just this morning he had walked out and forgotten his phone. This could be his last trip back to Alabama for all he knew.

  For years, Bud had sworn up and down that he would never be one of those old codgers sitting around all day talking about the past. But lately, God help him, the past had been on his mind a lot. He had to admit he was now a card-carrying member of the “Back when I was a boy” club.

  After he boarded the long Amtrak train to Birmingham, Bud made his way down the aisle and noticed an empty seat next to a nice-looking young person. He had to look twice because the person had their hair pulled back in some kind of bun. But as he got closer, he saw it was a boy.

  “Pardon me, son, is this seat taken?” he asked.

  “No sir, please sit down.”

  “Thank you.”

  After he sat down, Bud asked him, “Where are you traveling today? Going down to New Orleans?”

  “No sir. Going home to Birmingham.”

  “Ah…me too.”

  “Oh are you from Birmingham, too?”

  “No, but close. I’m from a little place right outside you’ve probably never heard of called Whistle Stop.”

  The young man said, “Whistle Stop? Gosh, I think I remember my grandmother saying something about riding through a town called Whistle Stop.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes sir. My grandparents used to take the train to New York every year to do Christmas shopping.”

  “Well, Whistle Stop’s the place where I grew up, but like a lot of things, it’s not there anymore. Things change, time marches on.”

  The boy looked sympathetic. “I know just how you feel. My old neighborhood has changed a lot since I was young.”

  “I see….If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you, son?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Lucky you. Twenty-two is a great age.” Then Bud laughed. “Come to think of it, every age is a great age. At least that’s been my experience. Some are better than others, but every year has something good to offer. What’s your name?”

  “William Hornbeck, Jr. But people call me Billy.”

  “Well, happy to meet you, Billy. My name is Bud Threadgoode. I’m going to be eighty-four years old next week.”

  “Wow. What’s that like, to be eighty-four?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I can tell you what the best part of being eig
hty-three is.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “No more peer pressure.” Buddy looked over at him and grinned, and the young man laughed.

  “I guess that would be great, all right. I’m in grad school over at Emory. It’s a lot of pressure.”

  “Is that so? What are you studying?”

  “Applied sociology.”

  Bud nodded. “Well, I don’t have any idea what that is, but it sounds like you must be a pretty smart fellow. I’m a retired person myself.”

  Bud pulled out his old brown leather wallet and opened it up.

  “Here’s a picture of my daughter, Ruthie, when she was six…and this one is when she was homecoming queen.”

  “Wow, she was a beauty.”

  Bud smiled. “Thank you. She still is. Here she is with my two grandchildren. She lost her husband a few years ago. It was hard but she picked up the ball and went on. I’m so proud of her, I don’t know what I’d do without her. Best daughter in the world. Calls me every day. I just talked to her this morning….Of course, I didn’t tell where I was headed today.”

  “Is she your only child?”

  “Yep, and I sure hit the jackpot with her.”

  Billy said, “I’m an only child.”

  “Well, I’ll be dogged. Here we’ve just met and already we have something in common. I am, too. I kinda liked being the only one, but it can be hard on some folks. Ruthie’s husband was an only child, and it came with an awful lot of responsibility. Too much, if you ask me. That’s why I don’t tell Ruthie a lot of things. Don’t want to worry her too much.”

  “By the way, that’s a very cool jacket you have on.”

  “Why, thank you. My wife bought it for me. I’ve had it since 1959, but it’s still good as new, don’t you think?”

  “Yes sir. If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Threadgoode, what was your line of business?”

  “Not at all. I was a doctor of veterinary medicine.”