Gonna Lay Down My Burdens. Mary Monroe

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СКАЧАТЬ clenched teeth. I put my arm around her shoulder. I didn’t even realize what I was saying. The words slid out of my mouth like a serpent. “I’m going with you.”

      “Wh—what?”

      I sniffed and said firmly, “If you still want to go to California, you can go. But I’m going with you.”

      Desiree pulled away from me and moved back a few steps. “What about your wedding?”

      I shrugged. Marrying Burl Tupper was suddenly the last thing on my mind.

      “If you go, I am going with you,” I said firmly before I let out a breath that was so deep my chest hurt. Staying out of jail was all I could think about now. It even overshadowed Chester’s death. Missing out on my own wedding paled in comparison.

      “Do you realize what you’re saying, girl? When they find Chester, and if we run, it won’t take them but a minute to figure out we had something to do with all this. I told you that already. You’re talking crazy, girl,” Desiree said, shaking two fingers in my face.

      A feeling of extreme anxiety consumed me. I couldn’t tell Desiree then, but Chester’s murder was not the only crime I wanted to put behind me. Running away from the burdens that I had carried like a yoke around my shoulders for so many years seemed like the best way out for me. The only way out for me. A warm feeling crossed my face as my thoughts continued to roam. By running away, I could finally lay all of my burdens to rest at the same time. A wide smile I could not control took over my face.

      Puzzled over my odd behavior, Desiree frowned at me. “Carmen, are you having a nervous breakdown?” she asked gently.

      I shook the smile off my face and gave her a serious look, my lips forming a tight line.

      “I’m all right,” I told her, barely moving my lips.

      Desiree shrugged and cleared her throat. “You’d be willing to leave Burl? Even if they don’t figure out we did this, what about Burl? You’re supposed to marry him tomorrow. Don’t you love Burl?”

      I sighed and bleated like a lamb, “I guess I do. But Burl got along all right before he met me; he’ll get along all right without me,” I said thoughtfully.

      Desiree just stood there staring at me with eyes that had started to swell and darken even more.

      “Say something!” I barked, stomping my foot.

      “We’d better hurry and get up out of here.” Desiree motioned with her hand for me to follow her.

      Once we made it back to the kitchen, she snatched a yellow nylon windbreaker off the back of the chair she had been sitting in when I arrived.

      “Do you have any money?” I asked. “I have about three hundred I pulled from the ATM on my way home from work.”

      “I closed out my savings account yesterday. It wasn’t much. A little over five hundred. I got that, and about a thousand in emergency money we keep in the house,” Desiree announced, buttoning her jacket. “Oh, that nigger was slicker than a politician. I found out he emptied our joint savings account this morning.” I followed Desiree back to the living room where she dropped to the floor and started rooting through Chester’s pants pockets.

      “What are you doing?” I asked, pulling her up.

      “He got paid today. He keeps two, three hundred on him all the time. Besides, he must have some of the money he took from our account on him.”

      “Well, we can’t take his money, too. It…it wouldn’t be right.”

      Desiree gasped in horror and then gave me a look of extreme bewilderment. “Right? Well, it’s a little late for you—us—to be thinking about what’s right.” Desiree slapped my hand and it stung like a bee. I didn’t try to stop her when she squatted over Chester again and removed a wad of bills from his wallet.

      “Only a hundred,” she mumbled, flipping through the bills before stuffing them into her bra.

      With my head bowed I asked, “Other than me, who else knows about your sister Colleen living in San Francisco?”

      “Nobody. As far as I know, she didn’t keep in touch with anybody after she left here.”

      “Who else has a key to this house?”

      “Chester’s mama and daddy, but they don’t come around that much. His mama never did like me. That old heifer! Besides, they went to Birmingham for the weekend.”

      “So nobody would be looking for Chester for a while? What about his boys, Duke and Nick and Perry…and…that detective Clyde?”

      Desiree shrugged her shoulders. She was leaning on the back of the sofa, looking like an old woman. She was only a few months older than me. “Those dogs all went fishing this evening for the whole weekend. Chester stayed behind so he could—go with me to your wedding.”

      “Shit. When he doesn’t show up for work on Monday, his goddamn cop buddies will be snooping around here,” I mumbled. My agitation had doubled, and I could not hide it. I couldn’t stop wringing my hands and shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

      “He had planned to take Monday and Tuesday off to go fishing in Mobile Bay. Nobody will miss him for a while,” Desiree said firmly. “Carmen, I am scared as hell,” Desiree muttered, wringing her hands, too.

      I nodded, again looking at the bloody weight that had slain Chester. It was hard to believe that such a small item was capable of taking a man’s life. Even though it was only a five-pound weight and not a sword or a gun, he was still dead.

      “We have to think this thing through. If we call the cops now, they might buy our story and they might not. Do you want to take that chance?” I said sharply.

      “What are our options?” Desiree asked, her voice hard and demanding.

      “Options? We don’t have any options,” I snarled, giving her the most incredulous look I could manage.

      She dismissed my hot look with a casual wave of her hand, glaring back at me out of the corner of her eye. “Aw, shuck it! If we stay here and call this in and if they don’t buy our story…that he fell…somebody goes to jail.”

      “Yeah. Somebody goes to jail.”

      “But even if we leave, once they do find him, they will come looking for us anyway.”

      I nodded. “They will.”

      I was aching all over. I was tired. All I wanted to do was lie down in my own apartment and take a long nap. And that’s just what I would have been doing if Desiree had not called me to come pick her up. If I had not been stupid enough to go.

      “When they find us, we’ll go to jail anyway,” she mumbled, her voice cracking.

      “If they find us,” I said firmly.

      The thought of never seeing my family again, or at least not seeing them for a very long time, made my head swim. I couldn’t imagine the pain Mama would go through just over my sudden disappearance. She used to cry when I was late getting home from school. Daddy, СКАЧАТЬ