by Rob Riggan
She turned back and was amazed to see that Mary Stacy was somehow looking more attractive, like one of those paper-flower pills you drop in water and it blossoms. The too-pale face had become more animated, like there was almost some kind of pride there. Even the judge appeared to be paying closer attention, waiting to hear what she said next. Without the witness actually looking at the judge, or even making those exaggerated faces anymore, Loretta could sense he was the focus of her entire attention. Then it occurred to Loretta that Mary Stacy was flirting.
Loretta heard the defense attorney say something, then the judge, his voice fatherly. Then she realized the witness had stood and was coming down the steps from the stand, her visage demure, her gait studied and slow with self-conscious pleasure.
After Mary Stacy was dismissed, Pemberton’s lawyer addressed the judge, arguing, “How can a man who can’t identify a woman who admits she was in a car involved in an assault—whoever’s car that might be, and nothing’s been proven, Your Honor—an assault like the one that occurred to the Carvers, though she never said for sure she saw any Carvers, and who just happens to have blond hair like he says—how can a man, Your Honor, be so certain he might have seen the driver of that very same vehicle and can identify him? It’s absurd. Terrible as that event may have been, and no matter how sorry I personally feel for the Carvers and their near-tragedy, there is just no cause to ruin this doctor’s good and honorable reputation by binding him over.”
But suddenly it was the judge himself reminding everyone it was just a preliminary hearing, an attempt to see if there were grounds for charges. No one was being convicted of anything. Any facts would be proved or disproved at a trial.
And in that instant, Loretta knew everything had shifted, and knew Danny felt it, too, and they held their breath, it was that exciting. Dugan was right! All the judge wanted to do now was wash his hands of this one, get it the hell out of his court. He was going to bind Pemberton over to superior court. Pemberton was going to trial!
She leaned forward to look at the doctor, to gloat a bit, though she wasn’t particularly proud of that desire. She saw that his head was bowed slightly, that he was staring somewhere beyond his folded hands, maybe at his knees. He seemed thoughtful and far away, and somewhere through the triumph beginning to roar through her she felt a little pity.
XIX
Winthrop
Stunned, Winthrop Reedy put down the morning’s newspaper. Dr. Pemberton had been bound over for trial in connection with that shooting up in Sentry back in April—damn! Doc always was kind of wild, but aiding and abetting an assault with intent to kill? Hell, Doc had done surgery on Winthrop’s daddy.
And that other front-page headline: “Board Awaits Trial Outcome.” The board of county commissioners had asked Doc, himself a member, to step down until his guilt or innocence was determined. Imagine! Politics was Doc’s blood. Politics was Pembertons in this county—their family pride. Just went to show, when you figured you had it made, things happened, he thought, and was promptly zinged by a deep fear he hadn’t felt in a long, long time, since before he met Lizzie. He found himself staring across the little office at something like a diploma framed and hanging on the simulated pecan paneling:
Winthrop S. Reedy
Businessman of the Year 1970
Damascus Chamber of Commerce
He was also a member of the Lions Club—that emblem was on the wall, too—though not quite as active since a friend, after seeing a TV show, remarked, “From all I can see, Winn, female lions do all the work. Males just piss and roar.”
He was a member of the Rotary as well, and scoutmaster for a local troop of Boy Scouts, and member of both the finance and education committees of the Second Baptist Church. All of which, he reminded himself from time to time, wasn’t bad for the youngest of eight children whose daddy had worked at Trotter Mills all his life and retired on thirty-seven dollars a week, a dollar a week for every year at the mill.
Lizzie had been so proud of that award she’d had it framed, and not just in some off-the-shelf dollar frame from the five-and-dime, but custom-made at Hetty’s Framery on South Charlotte Street. Cost over fifty dollars, and though he tried he couldn’t see the money in it. It made Lizzie happy, though. Hell, they were still probably paying it off, like their new dining-room suite, which he, like everybody else he knew, pronounced “suit,” just like the people in the ads on TV did, because it was stupid to think you could spell “sweet” with a u, no matter what his tenth-grade teacher had told him. He was also worried about some charge-account bills at Norman’s Department Store up along the courthouse square. And then there was the Master Charge bill on which they were carrying their washer and dryer and the dirt bike Lizzie had bought him for his birthday, and they were still paying off a slick vacation to Bermuda, not to mention the monthly installments on their new Firebird and payments on their new brick house in Tara Woods. Also, he and Lizzie had just been nominated for membership in the Damascus Country Club, and if it wasn’t the Creek River Club, where the likes of the Trotters and Pembertons went, Lizzie thought the nomination the nuts. Winthrop could play golf all he wanted, and dues, only a thousand a year, could be written off as a business expense.
Winthrop, who was twenty-seven, worked hard, often putting in twelve- and fourteen-hour days in the little hut with aluminum siding and black shutters located in the middle of the lot on which he generally kept eight to ten mobile homes, anything from twenty-six- to sixty-footers. But July had been slow. He had three more units coming down from Tennessee in the next couple of weeks, and he needed space, as well as an additional loan.
Not that the loan would be a problem. He had great credit at both banks in town and controlling interest in a new mobile-home park called Willow Run—Lizzie had named it—that had been bulldozed on some grown-over farmland in Little Zion, west of Damascus. But because he needed to make some sales, he had that very morning tied a huge, hand-painted banner across the high gateposts in the split-rail fence where his driveway came off the bypass.
Reedy’s Banner Days
Anything down and a HOME is yours!!
Lo monthly payments!
His first customer had appeared only moments after he climbed down off the ladder, washed his hands and slipped back into his suit jacket. Winthrop never minded getting his hands dirty if there was a reason.
The customer had been a rough-looking, darkly tanned man Winthrop judged to be a little older than himself. The man was wearing dirty tan chinos, a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, a red bandanna around his neck and high work boots with oil stains on the toes. Stringy blond hair like a hippie’s hanging down to his shoulders, he’d thundered in on a black Harley-Davidson. Scarcely ten o’clock in the morning, it was already painful to look at the sunlight bouncing off the cars speeding along the bypass, but especially the chrome on that Harley. The smells of burned gasoline and French fries from a nearby Hardee’s hung in the heat and dust.
“That’s a fine-looking motor you’re driving, mister,” Winthrop had said as the man shoved the stand down with his heel and leaned the bike onto it.
The man squinted up at Winthrop, who was standing on the steps to his office with his thumbs hooked over the belt of his soft-blue suit pants, his elbows pushing the matching double-breasted jacket out to the sides, exposing a yellow shirt and a wide tie that looked as though it might have been ripped out of Grandma’s brocaded sofa. Without a word, the man dismounted and walked right past him and the office into the back lot, glancing here and there like he knew what he was looking for.
“We got a lovely model, the Adobe, right over here, sir,” Winthrop gasped as he trotted to catch up. He steered the man toward a tan fiftyfooter with thunderbirds painted in a soft red on each side of an arched hacienda-type main door. Black carriage lamps were mounted on each side. “Southwestern decor. Three picture windows, built-in dinette. Fully furnished. You tell Winthrop Reedy what you want, and because it’s Banner Days, it will mean a rea
l bargain for you, Mr.… What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. Grady Snipes. I want that one.” The man pointed to the rear of the lot at a spare white box on wheels with small horizontal jalousie windows just below the roof. “How much?”
“Thirty-eight hundred dollars cash, delivered. We can arrange an easy five-year installment plan for only $144.50 a month. For an additional $20 a month, we’ll furnish it.”
“With what?”
“Why, with our Delacourte furniture suite. It’s an excellent buy.” Winthrop smiled. He felt sweat break out on his forehead. This boy certainly wasn’t your ordinary hippie, judging by the First Cavalry Division tattoo on his left arm. Somehow, this didn’t feel like a great way to begin a day. “And I’ll throw in a free TV and antenna. For just a little more, you can have a lovely lot—”
“That’s damn near five thousand dollars for a free TV and antenna, without the furniture.” The man reached into a front pocket and pulled out the biggest roll of money Winthrop had ever seen and started peeling off battered twenty-dollar bills. “You know where they’re building that new power station below Sentry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“About a mile past the gate, same side of the road, an unpaved road runs off down in the woods a bit.”
“Yessir, used to be a CCC camp out there. I’m a scoutmaster, you see.”
“I’ll be waiting there at nine next Thursday morning. Bring some blocks.”
“Sewer hookup?”
“Hundred more for incidentals. Count it.”
A few minutes later, the man, hands on the handlebars of the Harley, came flying down on the kick start, his long hair sailing down after him, then thundered off. Winthrop was feeling dissatisfied; he’d sold something, sure, but he hadn’t done any selling. He started to turn back into the office when a ratty-looking hearse swung off the bypass and pitched under the sales banner with a clunk.
Oh, sweet Jesus, Winthrop thought as he watched a scruffy-looking little man with a beret and a ponytail climb out. Just what else I goddamn need. Then he remembered the fair. “Why, it’s the Living Dead!” Winthrop said, grinning, hand extended as he strode across the yard to greet the newcomer. “I was at the fair three nights running on account of your burial, and Puma and old Red.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yessir, but I sure am sorry to say I missed the resurrection. How’d that boy come out? I heard he was positively blue.”
“He’s right happy now,” L. D. said, looking past Winthrop at the mobile homes gleaming in the morning light. Some had little portable picket fences in front of them that Winthrop liked to unroll, along with placing a flowerpot or two.
“I imagine! Two hundred whole dollars.” Winthrop laughed. “What can I do for you, Mr.…”
“They call me L. D. Last name’s Skinner. Was that Grady Snipes I saw?”
“Yessir. You know Mr. Snipes?”
“We go way back. Went in the army together, but I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Well, he just bought himself a nice home. You looking to buy one, too?”
“Thinking about it, if there’s someplace to park it around Damascus. I’m thinking about putting down some roots.”
“Well, you couldn’t pick a nicer place on God’s green earth. What do you have in mind?”
“Something nice,” L. D. said.
Winthrop folded his arms across his chest and studied his customer gravely. “You married?”
“What’s that have to do with it?”
“No, no,” Winthrop laughed, holding up both hands. “But if you like the bachelor life, I got just the thing.” With a wink, he gestured for L. D. to follow him. They stopped before a big mobile home with a double main door and sidelights and two bay windows, one at the front end, the other at the back end, the front one almost floor-to-ceiling. Winthrop slapped the metal. “The Raconda!” he said.
Inside, L. D. found himself facing a solid mirror wall, his and Winthrop’s images darkened by the blaze of the sun behind them. Gold filigree framed the giant mirror and two archways, one on either side of them. Heavy velvetlike curtains hung in both archways. Grinning, Winthrop threw one aside, revealing an enormous round sofa perhaps ten feet in diameter, piled high with pillows and sunk a foot into the floor. The floor was covered with thick wine-red shag carpet. Reaching around the corner, Winthrop turned a knob. Lights hidden behind boards near the ceiling began to glow, growing brighter and brighter as he turned the knob farther. “The Relaxation Nest,” he said.
“Damn!” L. D. said. Then he spotted the bar, all dark wood and black leather-looking vinyl, complete with three matching barstools and a brass foot railing. Winthrop opened the doors of a tall cabinet beside the bar, revealing a big television, a stereo set and speakers. “Is this a color TV?” L. D. asked.
“You bet,” Winthrop said, then flipped a switch. A humming sound filled the room. With a velvety swish, the curtains surrounding the back half of the couch began to move, disclosing a bay window and the glare of the sun bouncing off the next trailer. “Imagine looking out on your own swimming pool and barbecue pit,” Winthrop whispered, taking L. D. by the shoulders and turning him toward the window.
“But before we go any further, maybe we should remove our shoes,” Winthrop suggested. L. D. looked down at the scuffed boots he was wearing, then watched Winthrop remove some snappy brown shoes with pointy toes and leather flaps instead of laces.
L. D. soon found himself looking at a kitchen with a dishwasher, a stove and a linoleum floor, all in matching white. He’d never seen anything so clean looking and shiny. “Alabama Flash,” Winthrop said, lightly tapping the glossy paneling that lined all the rooms except the kitchen. Winthrop had once heard a state fire marshal use the term on the Charlotte TV news to describe highly flammable pressed wallboard that burned with such speed and ferocity that the cotton curtains hanging in the windows of a gutted trailer were barely scorched. But such a great product name! “Dark cherry.” Then, with the twist of a knob, a brass chandelier burst into dazzling light. “Twenty bulbs in that chandelier. Isn’t it just beautiful?”
L. D. nodded, feeling that to utter a word at that moment would be blasphemy.
Starting down a narrow hallway on one side of the trailer, Winthrop threw another door open and flipped another switch. “The powder room,” he said as L.D. thrust his head in and saw a narrow room done in striped pink wallpaper, a white counter running its entire length and a huge mirror covering the wall above the counter, except for some big globes with lights in them attached to the mirror, just like in a Hollywood movie. Two metal chairs, their backs in the shape of hearts, stood in front of the counter. Two of them! L. D. thought, struck by the import.
The next door had a porthole in it. “Push,” Winthrop commanded, and the door swung away into the biggest bathroom L. D. had ever seen, all carpeted and with mirrors on every wall. He could feel his toes sink into the soft shag as he took in the pink commode and matching sink with gold-colored fixtures, the square bathtub that needed a little wooden ladder to get up into it and could hold maybe three people.
“That tub come with a diving board?” L. D. asked as he let himself be guided to the end of the hallway.
“Ha-ha,” Winthrop chortled as he slowly turned the knob of a louvered door. “I saved the best for last.”
All L. D. could see at first was darkness. Then Winthrop pointed to a knob on the wall. “Push and turn slowly, L. D.,” he whispered. L. D. did. Like the dawn of creation, a red glow began to fill the room, growing brighter as he turned the knob.
“Damn!” L. D. whispered as a huge, round bed covered in a dark red satiny fabric materialized like an altar in the center of the room. “Where’d they get a round mattress?” he asked, amazed.
“Custom, L. D. This home is totally custom.”
“This Alabama Flash, too?” L. D. asked, tapping the woodwork, which was interrupted every few feet by floor-to-ceiling mirrors.
“Old English burl walnut. Now, hold this down.” Winthrop pointed to a switch beside the knob L. D. was turning. L. D. obeyed. Once again, he heard a soft swish, as the curtains at the back of the room parted, revealing a partial bay window and the overflowing trash bins of the restaurant next door. “Duplicate switches on a control panel here,” Winthrop said, reaching down beside the bed.
“You have a place where I can park her?” L. D. asked as they made their way back to the office. He felt a little dizzy.
“Willow Run in Little Zion. Up by the Ebenezer Pentecostal Church. Individual concrete pads for the homes, trees, lawns, mailboxes, your own parking place. The rent, including all hookups, is only ninety dollars a month. I could have you set up tomorrow.”
L. D. stopped, reached in his shirt pocket, pulled out a bag of Bull Durham and began to roll a cigarette. “Must be a chunk of money,” he said finally.
“Just $14,987, complete as you see her. I repeat, $14,987, or $257.50 a month for ten years, not including rent at Willow Run, which if you were to sign today, I’d let you have for the first six months at $42.50, or just $300 a month total for everything.
“It’s a real investment,” Winthrop added after a few minutes’ silence. “Why, in three or four years, you can probably sell her for twice again what you paid. These are homes, L. D. Homes appreciate. Oh, and all aluminum wiring, too.”
“That’s good?”
“You bet.”
“I guess I do have a little to invest,” L. D. mused as he turned to follow Winthrop toward his office.
“I imagine,” Winthrop said. “Funeral expenses being what they are.”
“Says here ‘References,’ ” L. D. said a few minutes later, looking up at Winthrop, who was filling out papers on his side of the big metal desk.
