Daddy Joe's car was not parked in the driveway when they arrived at the house so they assumed he was not home. Before Rita went into the house she made sure Billy was in place up in the willow tree. Only then did she go about her business.
The place looked like a pigsty, with beer bottles scattered all over the floor, some being half full. There were stains on the wall where it looked like someone smashed a beer bottle against it. A smelly, stinking mess, just like Daddy Joe. The whole scene made Rita shiver at its familiarity. She walked up the stairs being careful not to step on the broken glass that lay scattered on the steps. There was a creak in the floor that sounded unmistakably like someone was walking down the hall upstairs.
Rita ducked at the sound, then slowly retreated back down the steps, scarcely breathing. She kept her eyes peeled to the top of the stairs, but saw nothing. As she approached the bottom step, she turned her gaze away from the top of the stairs to search for an escape.
"I see you sneakin' around, you dirty rotten—" Daddy Joe's slurred speech came from the top of the stairs.
Sheer terror paralyzed her as she recognized who spoke the almost inaudible words. So slurred was his speech from being drunk, that it sounded as if he were speaking in a foreign language. Then he fell. His twisted body made gruesome thumping sounds as it hit each step, until finally he came to a halt right beside her.
He lay there, at the foot of the stairs, unmoving. Except for the labored rise and fall of his chest, he looked as though he were dead. She watched him carefully for a moment, and contemplated whether to flee or resume her original plan. When Daddy Joe began to snore, the decision was made easy for her.
Slowly, she climbed over him and continued quietly up the steps. When she reached the room Mama and Daddy Joe had shared, she searched frantically for anything that might give her a clue to Papa's whereabouts.
Throughout the time she lived in Daddy Joe's run-down hundred-year-old farmhouse, rarely had she attempted to step foot inside the bedroom he and Mama had shared. The children were not supposed to enter under any circumstances. However, when she reached the corner of the room where the red velvet drapes hung, and pulled them back to see the telephone, it reminded her of one time when she braved the threats and entered the forbidden tomb.
Daddy Joe and Mama had gone out that night with Sheriff Vanderpool and his wife; they were going to celebrate Daddy Joe's birthday by having a surprise party for him at Millie's restaurant. Rick was living at home at the time, so automatically he became the sitter for the night.
Basically they could do whatever they wanted to when Rick was in charge, under the condition that Daddy Joe would not find out about it. Many times when Mama and Daddy Joe were out, Bobby and Timmy Bishop would cruise over on their mini-bikes and let everyone take turns riding them down by old Mister Zeeb's gravel pit.
The night of Daddy Joe's birthday, however, Rita was not up to the usual. She had decided to stay in the house. She had an uneasy feeling something bad was going to happen and could not shake it.
The tube was tuned to the Lawrence Welk Show as she situated herself on the davenport, trying to get comfortable, when the faint sound of the telephone ringing upstairs caught her attention.
She ran up the stairs to answer it, but stopped short of the room. She knew she was not supposed to touch the phone, it had been instilled in them from the moment Daddy Joe allowed Mama to bring the 'the damn contraption' into his house—but it kept ringing. Overcoming her fear, she opened the door and peeked inside. The light from the hall cascaded through the room and came to rest on the red velvet drapes. From behind those drapes the ringing continued, seeming to be more urgent. She ran to the drapes and pulled them back, and there on the lonely bay window seat was the urgently ringing telephone. Rita picked it up.
