Even though I had skipped lunch, I didn’t think I was hungry, but those sizzling onions gave off an aroma that made my mouth water. I tried to ignore the rumble in my stomach.
“He’s just not hisself these days,” Maidie said, cocking her head at me. She’s only fifteen years older, but her hair had passed the tipping point and was now more gray than black. (Of course, mine may be gray, too. Only my hairdresser knows for sure.)
“Has he been to a doctor?”
“No.”
“Well, if he’s eating good and staying active, what’s got you worried, Maidie?”
She shook her head and didn’t answer. I watched as she poured water in the pan and a cloud of steam boiled up. After stirring until the water and the flour and onions had turned to a smooth gravy, she put the pork chops back in the pan, covered them with a lid and turned the flame to low.
Her face was troubled as she sat down at the table across from me and the cat slid off my lap in one graceful, fluid motion to go sit in hers.
“I don’t want you laughing at me,” she said at last, smoothing an almost nonexistent wrinkle from the red-and-white cloth on the table between us.
I was indignant. “When did I ever laugh at you?”
“Just don’t you be starting now.” She stroked the cat, who began to purr so loudly I could hear him clearly from my side of the table. “All his talk about getting right with the Lord? I’ve seen it before, Deborah. Sometimes old people seem to know when it’s their time. They can be up and doing one day and then tell you they’ll be gone by that time next week. It’s like they feel His hand on their shoulder saying ‘Come on along now, child. Time to go home,’ and they just lean back in their rocking chair or lay down on their bed and they’re gone. Gone home to Jesus.”
Her words chilled me on two levels. One, because she was right. At least twice I’ve seen elderly relatives who had never talked of death suddenly say quite matter-of-factly that their time was up. They said it without drama. No sadness, no anger. They spoke of their imminent death as casually as if they were discussing the weather. Except that in a day or two, they died.
(Of course, I’ve also heard even older relatives claim they were ready to go and then linger on for another five or six years in increasing impatience. As if they’d missed a celestial bus and had to wait till the next one swung past them again.)
But Maidie’s forebodings touched an even deeper, more primal level that my brothers and I won’t even discuss. We know Daddy’s getting old and he’s not as strong as he used to be. But his spine is still straight as a flagpole and his mind is as sharp as it ever was, so we tell ourselves that he’s going to live forever.
Intellectually, we know it isn’t so.
Emotionally?
Once when I was little, I woke up crying in the night because I had suddenly realized that everyone dies—my cats, my chicken, my brothers, my parents—everyone, and it was breaking my heart to think I might be left alone. He had picked me up and carried me out to the porch swing. As I sat on his lap with my head against his chest and we gently swung back and forth in the moonlight, he had solemnly promised me that he would not die till I was an old, old woman.
I remind myself that he’s never yet broken a promise to me.
And thirty-nine isn’t old, old.
“Maidie, are you sure he was asking questions about religion for himself and not so’s he could pass it on to someone else?”
“Now why would he do that? He wants to know about God, all he’s got to do is talk to Herman’s wife. Nadine’s his own daughter-in-law. She’d tell him all about it.”
“Yeah, and then she’d try to haul him off to her church, wouldn’t she?”
Nadine’s one of those straitlaced born-again Blalocks from Black Creek and she’s always trying to get us to go visit her home church. Their preacher’s a male chauvinist whose bark is worse than his bite. I once sat through a sermon that was basically a reminder that a woman’s place is in the home, yet immediately afterward he told me quite sincerely how proud they all were that I was now a judge.
I grinned at Maidie. “Daddy probably feels it’s safe to ask you. He knows you won’t try to get him to Mt. Olive.”
Like it or not, our churches are the last bastion of self-segregation. No white would ever be turned away from a black church; no white church would ever bar its doors to blacks. We’re tolerant as hell and on Sunday morning, we smile when the nursery class sings
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
All the same, our churches still split along racial lines for the most part.
“Daddy may want to get right with the Lord, Maidie, but he also might be up to something. You say you never know when he’s going to be home these days. What’s he doing?”
“Oh, honey. You asking me where he rambles? That’s like asking me where this cat goes when I put him out for the night.”
“Then tell me this. Did Mother ever have any fancy jewelry?”
“Why sure she did. You remember that pretty ring Mr. Kezzie give her for their anniversary and them sapphire earrings? Didn’t he give them earrings to you? I know he gave the ring to Will when he married Amy. And—”
“No, I’m talking diamond earrings worth thousands.”
Maidie shook her head. “Your mama had some diamond earrings from her mama. You don’t mean them, do you?”
“No.”
Those went to Aunt Zell at Mother’s death, but again, they were simple teardrops, nothing like the glittery splash I had seen Daddy snatch up before I could get a good look.
“Why you asking about her stuff?”
“Just wondering,” I said.
She cut her eyes at me, but Cletus came in then and I quickly stood up to go.
“I thought I saw your car up at the house,” he said. “You ain’t staying for supper?”
“And leave you with only one pork chop?” I teased.
“That what smells so good?”
He insisted on giving me a dozen eggs and some fresh ten-dergreen for a salad and then went into the bathroom to wash up. I hugged Maidie and told her not to worry. “Daddy’s going to be just fine, but you call me if it looks like he’s up to something, okay?”
“If you say so, honey. But you know how he don’t like nobody hound-dogging him, so you can’t tell him I told you.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
I could have checked back by Seth’s again, but it was getting on for dark and besides, I was starting to have second thoughts. What if I’d totally misunderstood? What if that earring had been nice rhinestones instead of diamonds? Good period costume jewelry can fetch decent prices these days and the best seems to come from estate sales.
Instead of “thirty thousand retail,” maybe that jeweler had really said “thirty now at retail,” meaning he could sell it for thirty dollars and would therefore offer Daddy twenty.
So it wasn’t Seth I should talk to. It was Will.
CHAPTER 14
The house is part of the whole
Cohesive world we live in.
—Paul’s Hill, by Shelby Stephenson
Saturday morning is usually the beginning of a peaceful family weekend. Or so we always hope.
Cal rides his bike down to the mailboxes at the end of the lane to pick up the paper for us while Dwight and I take our time with second and third cups of coffee. Reading The News & Observer is a communal activity for us. Cal gives us the long-range weather report and shares the comic strips that make him giggle. I read aloud the human interest stories or the latest outrageous thing our politicians have done. Dwight does the scores of selected sports events and lets us know about any local happenings that might affect us. One of us will explain Dwayne Powell’s political cartoon for Cal if he doesn’t get it, and whoever gets to that page first scans the obituaries for any visitations we might be obligated to attend. (If you have to run
for office, you try not to miss too many funerals for your dearly departed constituents.)
After breakfast, Cal stacks the dishwasher and shakes out the blanket in Bandit’s crate while I straighten up the beds and tidy the house, and Dwight gives the bathrooms the lick and a promise that keep things halfway decent till Rhonda comes.
Dwight and I usually mind Kate and Rob’s older two on Saturdays because the Aussie nursemaid has the weekends off. As we were leaving to go pick them up, Cal asked if we could open one of the bluebird boxes scattered around the property.
“Sure,” I said.
He chose one out by the drive and lightly tapped on the side of the box so any adult birds would fly out, then pulled out the long nail that holds the front in place and tilted up the hinged board. Inside was a shallow plastic box that let him gently slide out the whole nest. There, huddled together in the center, were four tiny bluebirds, so young that we could still see their skin through the downy fuzz. Their eyes were not yet open and their yellow bills looked rubbery and way too big for their marble-sized heads.
“Awwww,” said Cal, and I smiled, too, as he slid them back inside, lowered the board, and put the nail back in its hole.
At Kate’s, I warned her that I might be a little late bringing the children back.
“Will and Amy are coming over and I thought we’d grill some steaks outside since it’s so warm and then let the kids roast marshmallows, if that’s okay?”
“Great,” she said. “Miss Emily’s going to sit with R.W. this afternoon so that Rob and I can go to a kiln opening at Jugtown.”
“Say hey to the Owenses for me,” I told her, turning the key in the ignition.
At home, as we drove back into the yard, Dwight was in front of the garage with a hose, washing his truck, with Bandit supervising. The little terrier danced toward us as we got near. Suddenly, Cal started yelling and opened the door before I’d come to a full stop.
“Dad! Dad!”
“Cal, wait!” I cried, but he was already out of his seat belt and there was no stopping him.
“Snake!” he screamed, pointing to a birdhouse out in the middle of an azalea bed.
At that instant, a slender black snake no thicker than my thumb gained the top of the box and inserted its head into the hole. The adult birds were dive-bombing it in a brave, if hopeless, frenzy.
Dwight instantly realized what was happening and almost without thinking, he jumped over the low stone wall and in two strides reached the box, yanked on the snake’s tail, and sent it flying across the yard.
Bandit rushed back and forth between Dwight and Cal, but he hadn’t seen the snake and didn’t seem to understand what all the ruckus was about. Unfortunately, the rest of us saw a baby bird lodged in the snake’s mouth as it disappeared under a pink azalea bush.
Cal and Mary Pat were almost crying. Jake, who was still too young to comprehend the finality of death, was in awe that Dwight had actually grabbed a snake barehanded.
Truth be told, I was, too, even though I know that black snakes are harmless to humans. I was never one of those kids who stroked a snake at petting zoos.
Still don’t.
“Sorry,” Dwight told me. “I knew I should have put collars around the poles before now.”
“Can’t you just kill that mean ol’ snake?” Mary Pat asked, tears streaking down her pretty little face.
“Yeah, Dad,” said Cal, who stood on the wall and looked fearfully over at the bushes where the snake had gone to earth.
“He’s not mean, honey,” he told Mary Pat. “Black snakes eat a lot of mice and rats and other pests so we can’t blame them if they get a bird now and then. That’s just their nature. What we can do is fix it so they can’t get at any more nests. I think I saw some tin under Uncle Robert’s shelter the other day. Y’all help me finish washing the truck and we’ll go borrow some.”
After Cal came to live with us, all three of the kids began to call my brothers and their wives Uncle and Aunt. From the way they immediately tackled the dirty rims on Dwight’s pickup, I’m sure they were imagining dozens of snakes slithering around, just waiting a chance to snack on baby bluebirds.
I drove my car into the garage and remembered the boxes Will had put in the trunk on Wednesday. I suddenly itched to dive into Linsey Thomas’s files and learn just how much he’d known about my appointment, but there were steaks to marinade, potatoes to scrub, the fixings of a salad to assemble, so I carried them into the house and stuck them in the third bedroom, which we use as an office.
By the time I had finished in the kitchen, the others were back with the tin and it was time for lunch. Afterward, I helped cut and shape collars to go around the cedar poles of the half-dozen bluebird houses. The downward slope of the tin, plus its wide circumference, would baffle any snake that next tried to climb up. Naturally, the children wanted to see every nest as Dwight nailed the collars in place. One box had a clutch of unhatched eggs, one was empty, the other four had young birds that ranged from just hatched to nearly fledged.
“There,” Dwight said as we adjusted the last collar, “that should do it.”
We showered and changed into fresh jeans, then I put the potatoes in the oven to bake and he started the charcoal.
Will and Amy got there as he was taking a steak off the grill and I let the children go ahead and eat early at the table on the back porch while the adults had drinks out on the grass overlooking grill and pond. I had also invited my nephew Stevie and his girlfriend to join us. They were seniors over at Carolina, but Gayle had a major paper due, so she had stayed in Chapel Hill and Stevie brought his sister instead. Jane Ann was finishing up her first year at UNC-G in Greensboro and they had both come home for a friend’s wedding this morning.
Stevie was now almost twenty-two and of legal drinking age, yet, out of deference to Jane Ann, he opted for iced tea, too. Just as I try not to let on that Seth is maybe my favorite brother, I try not to dote on Haywood’s son, but he really is a nice kid.
“Dad tell you about the guy who wanted to join the hunt club day before yesterday?” he asked, a broad smile on his face.
Will laughed out loud and Amy said, “They still doing that?”
The Possum Creek Hunt Club is nothing but a figment of Daddy’s imagination. He learned long ago that simply posting the land won’t keep hunters off. But if the woods are posted with signs that say NO TRESPASSING. LEASED BY THE POSSUM CREEK HUNT CLUB, most people will respect them. They get three or four inquiries a year from newcomers.
“The guy was driving a Humvee and didn’t blink when they told him the initiation fee was a thousand dollars. He even wanted to bribe Dad and Uncle Robert to put him at the top of the waiting list. Dad said his wallet was full of hundred-dollar bills and he was really tempted, but Uncle Robert wouldn’t let him.”
“Hmmm,” said Will, with a faraway speculative look in his eye.
“No,” Amy told him firmly and I added, “It would embarrass Dwight to death to have to arrest you for fraud, wouldn’t it, Dwight?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, reaching for Will’s beer mug. They’ve been friends since grade school and he has no illusions about my brother. “Top anybody else’s glass off?”
It wasn’t long before the children began to clamor for the marshmallows they’d been promised and Jane Ann hopped up to help supervise. The smell of burned sugar was soon rife in the land.
“Toast one for me,” Amy called. She’s Will’s third wife, with short dark hair and dark eyes that she claims come from some Latino blood somewhere in her ancestry. She has a bawdy sense of humor and a fuse as short as Will’s. They blow up at each other at least once a month and we used to hold our collective breaths, fearful that their marriage was going to blow up, too. Over the years, we’ve come to realize that Amy loves drama and Will must as well, because he seems intent on not messing up this time.
Jane Ann brought them both a marshmallow. Dwight, too. I passed. They don’t really go with bou
rbon. The men licked their fingers and Will said, “Reminds me of Daddy’s bonfires.”
I smiled as he and Dwight began to reminisce about roasting marshmallows when we were kids.
Daddy never burned his brushpiles in daylight. He always waited until dark, and a moonless night was his favorite time. He would poke the fire and send geysers of sparks shooting up fifteen or twenty feet into the night sky.
“A poor man’s fireworks,” he’d say.
And Mother would often walk down from the house with a bag of marshmallows for a perfect ending to the day.
Eventually Dwight decreed that the children had eaten enough sugar and shooed them away so he could replenish the bed of coals with more from a starter can.
While Jane Ann and Amy cleared the porch table and reset it with china and tableware, I sent the kids to the showers to get rid of the stickiness that clung to their hands and mouths—Cal and Jake to his bathroom, Mary Pat to the master bath. Kate and I keep changes of clothing in both houses, so I laid out fresh pajamas for them and popped a DVD into the television in our bedroom.
“Mary Pat’s in charge of the remote and no bouncing on the bed,” I warned them as they settled back against the pillows to watch a movie they’d seen at least a dozen times.
It was full dark and the steaks were just coming off the grill when I got back out to the porch. Conversation had turned to Candace Bradshaw’s murder and the names of various prominent builders were being tossed around as suspects. Not her husband though. Dwight had told me that various neighbors had seen him from their windows throughout Tuesday afternoon.
“Her daughter says you’re her alibi,” Dwight said as he split his potato and added a large dollop of butter to the steaming interior.
“She does?” Will cut into one of the steaks on the platter to make sure it was rare enough before transferring it to his plate.
“She says you interviewed her for a job Tuesday evening. You remember the time?”
Will’s eyes narrowed as he visualized the scene. “Yeah. She was the only one who answered my ad. She got there at five on the dot and by five-thirty I had hired her. All I need is someone who can spell and use a computer for a few hours a week. Of course, she was only there for one morning and then Cam Bradshaw called her with the bad news. Guess I’ll have to find someone else now.”
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