The old woman stared at the boys as she waited for their response. They nodded their heads in unison and one by one they stood up, stretched their arms and legs and left Mrs. Dick’s place. The next day began like the day before it. The teenagers had finished their homework, a promise they must keep if they were to spend time with the old woman, listening to her stories.

"Where did we stop," the old woman asked the young teenagers as each boys and girls found their way to a space on the floor.  

"We stopped at Mr. Jones telling the Sheriff that he didn't do it."

"Wonderful, Timothy. That was excellent of you to remember." Mrs. Dick's told Timothy, as she tap his head.

"My blood is clean. I wasn't there," Mr. Jones, lamented to the detectives and to the Sheriff who came to question him about the missing little girl from Raymondville.

"Someone said the girl was seen at your mother in-law's store buying candy the day she disappeared,” the detective told Mr. Jones. “And that your truck was packed around there.”

"I didn't see her, Mr. Jones replied the detectives.

"I didn't see her, I have nothing to do with it and I never drove my car there."

So, it was that Mr. Jones was left alone in Dakota, but not for long. He was visited again few weeks later. The same question asked, and the reply this time wasn't what the detectives expected. They thought Mr. Jones would put up a fight and refuse to come with them to Raymondville. But he didn't refuse following them. He told them what they wanted to know. He had to redeem his soul with the truth he had learned.

Shortly before the questioning took place, unbeknown to most people in town, there was an object lying in a dump and obscured by debris. And alongside the object was a white bowl facing up. The detective who found the object immediately recognized the bowl and the object as that of the missing nine-year-old girl, because he had with him a composite drawing of the girl and what the girl had with her the last time she left home. She has been missing for ten days before she was found.

Priscilla’s body was taken out of the dump and to the local morgue, two miles from the trash dump where she was found. When the news got out that the missing girl was found in a trash dump. The town grew silent. Mrs. Grafts lost her mind. Well, she already lost her mind when she reported her granddaughter missing to the local police.

"Who wouldn't lose her mind in a situation like that?" The old woman asked the question after pausing briefly.

They said she screamed continuously the entire day and the day following that, and with the screaming, they said her voice cracked, and the peace that held her intact retreated and left her shattered. Her voice really was silenced when the ambulance came and drove her to the hospital. Everyone thought she died because she laid still, her legs and body stiff and cold. But she didn't die, she just grew norm after the screaming, her eyes searching in the distance for an answer. No one knew what she was looking for, her skirt and shoes in different places. The ambulance driver had to pick them all up one after the other and took them with him in the drive to the hospital. Can one imagine seeing a dignified woman with suit and heels losing what held her bond together because of not knowing what happened to her little grandchild?

After the day her granddaughter was found, she would stare at people's face especially when confronted with the question of finding her granddaughter. Some strangers have gone as far as walking up to her and telling her they saw Prissy at the store. How mean some strangers can be. “Mean, mean," the old woman concurred.

"Do you know that Mrs. Graft would just stare at them and not say a word, like they were all out of their mind for asking her the question about Prissy. When the reporter from the local television station, interviewed her about how she felt towards the brute that killed her grandchild? She responded to the young lady, with the word "something died inside of me," her face all squinted and wrinkled, but with no tears. Some people thought she must be crazy for not crying.

In the town of Raymondville no one was saying who did what. If anyone knew what happened, they were not speaking. The town was silent when the little girl was reported missing, and they were not speaking when she was found. Somebody knew something but no one was speaking, that's for sure, Mrs. Dicks concluded the sentence with a head nod. Mrs. Dick's ended the story that evening and asked the children to go home, because it was getting late and the story would take a different turn. When Mrs. Dick's stopped the story telling, she left it to me to complete. I don't know if I could manage the narration the way she told it. So, occasionally I will purse to seek help from Mrs. Dick’s who isn't too far away. But I will try as much as I can to remember in details how she told it the first time without bordering her with too many questions.

To be continued-

Robot  # 1 | 30.12.2007 19:46

var sbtitle5830=encodeURIComponent(The Long Ro...Read the full article.

ONA  # 2 | 27.02.2009 14:39

Good read!