Southern Living

by Ad Hudler

  “… and give them the strength to put out that fire and come on home safe and sound to their families … and close ones.… Amen.”

  “Amen,” Margaret whispered.

  “And what’s all this about?”

  They whipped around in surprise and saw Randy leaning against a desk with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Just givin’ some support to those men out there,” Harriet said.

  “They’re gonna need a helluva lot more than that,” he replied. “They just called in some backups from Peachtree City.”

  “You don’t need to sound so excited about it, Randy,” Margaret said. “It’s a horrible fire. That was a lovely, historic building.”

  “There’s nothin’ wrong with a little prayer, Mr. Randy,” Harriet said. “It all helps.”

  “Harriet, do you really think God has anything to do with that fire?” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t understand you people. Is this fallout from the Civil War or something? Is there some inferiority complex in the culture here? Do you guys attribute everything bad and good to God because you feel you have no control over your own destinies? Is that it, Harriet?”

  “I guess I don’t know what you’re sayin’,” Harriet answered.

  “No,” he replied. “I’m sure you don’t … because it would involve deep, secular introspection.”

  “That’s enough, Randy!” Margaret yelled. “Or shall we deconstruct your tortured soul to discover the true roots of your blatant assholeishness?”

  “God, what bug bit your butt?”

  “Reserve some dignity for people, Randy, would you?”

  “Boy, you’ve been pissed at me lately. Are you still weirded out over that kiss?”

  “No. I’ve got other things to think about.”

  “I know you think I was rushing things.”

  “Please. Your brilliance is blinding me now.”

  “Let’s go grab a bite to eat and talk about it.”

  “No. I’m tired. I’m fixin’ to go home and go to bed.”

  “Fixin’ to!… Margaret! God!”

  Margaret pulled the sticks from the bun on the back of her head and let her hair cascade over her shoulders.

  “You need to relax a little bit more, Randy,” she said.

  Just before three A.M., Margaret was awakened by a light knocking on the back door. She knew the knock; Dewayne had refused to accept his own key to the house, thinking it improper.

  Wearing a faded, black SUNY-Buffalo T-shirt over Power Puff Girl panties she’d found on clearance at Belk Lindsay, Margaret ran on her toes into the kitchen and flipped on the light. As she opened the door, she saw a paramedic’s truck pull away from the curb.

  “Oh, my God … Oh, Dewayne.”

  A bandage covered the left side of his forehead, from his hairline to below the eyebrow. His right cheek and chin had large scrapes that looked wet and raw, as if he’d been dragged across a roof of gritty asphalt shingles. His broad shoulders were in a perpetual shrug from the tops of crutches crammed into his armpits.

  The cast ran from mid-thigh to the beginning of his toes. Unable to fit it into his jeans, Dewayne wore a pair of navy blue gym shorts with SFD embroidered on them, perhaps a gift from his mother. This was the first time Margaret had ever seen his bare thighs. They were full and muscular though pale from living beneath the boot-cut Wranglers he always wore.

  “Oh, Dewayne … Oh, God … You must be exhausted.”

  Wanting to hug him but afraid she might hurt or throw him off balance, Margaret reached out, placing her hands on his forearms, and looked into his eyes, which had begun to fill with tears. She gently touched his uninjured cheek with the back of her hand and he leaned into it and closed his eyes, his chin falling, hydraulic-like, until it came to rest on his chest.

  Both of them silent, Margaret led him into the bedroom. As he stood at the side of the futon, she took the crutches from him and leaned them against the wall.

  “Can you put your arms up?” she asked.

  Balancing on his good leg, Dewayne slowly raised them, and Margaret began pulling off his sweatshirt, stepping onto the futon to finish the task because she was so much shorter than he.

  Dewayne sat down, and Margaret removed the one shoe, and then he leaned back, toward the pillows. After lifting and swinging his legs onto the futon, Margaret leaned over him and kissed his cheek, then his nose, then his lips, which were dry and salty. She then lay her head on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart on her ear, looking at the underside of his chin and noting, for the first time ever, blond beard stubble. “Are you okay?” she whispered. He nodded.

  She felt a sudden, compelling need to touch him all over. Outside, the moon was full, and the lunar light coated much of the bedroom in a skim-milk white. Margaret could see herself as she traced her fingers over Dewayne’s smooth shoulder blades, then across the twin mounds of his chest, dropping kisses, tiny like stitches, in the wake of her fingers.

  She dragged her lips down to the rise of his stomach, then let them hop across the warm dense arc, and when she finally reached the end of this smooth beach of skin and the beginning of the undulating waves of his blue, nylon shorts, she lay down her head, floating on top, feeling him swell and stir beneath her cheek.

  He moaned softly, and she leaned forward for a moment to connect with his face. Margaret smiled at what she saw: a look of naive, bewildered ecstasy, much like the expression she remembered from the time he first tasted her flan.

  Twenty-three

  Dear Chatter: In the days past, we kept sweet potatoes and sugarcane in a root cellar to keep them from freezin’ during the winter. Also, when a bad storm came up, we would get in the cellar, and that’s why we call it our ’fraidy hole.

  Dear Chatter: To the person who doesn’t like us blowing our noses at the table: It’s either that or we drown in snot. Shots and pills don’t stop it all the way. It’s the paper mill; get used to it and get a life.

  The UPS man delivered the day’s packages just after three o’clock, and with an eight-inch butcher knife and highball of bourbon and soda Suzanne carried them out to the patio to open them.

  From Ballard Designs, she had a French, fake-weathered, metal bread tin, which Suzanne would place on her kitchen étagère and fill with the faux baguettes she’d found at the Silk Flower Warehouse; from Williams-Sonoma, an eight-inch copper saucepan to add to the collection of matching, unused copper cookware hanging on the pot rack over the island in the kitchen; and from the Solutions catalog, the patented, goldtone-plastic Bracelet Buddy. (An extra hand so you won’t need someone to help fasten a bracelet around your wrist!)

  Anxious to try the latter, Suzanne disappeared into the bedroom and returned with her braided, gold-and-silver David Yurman bracelet and the Paloma Picasso from Tiffany, a circle of expressionistic, alternating, sterling-silver X’s and O’s.

  Suzanne spread the David Yurman on the glass patio table then lay her forearm over it, upside down, as if she were preparing to be punctured for a blood sample. She was trying to attach the end of the bracelet onto the hook of her new tool when the doorbell rang.

  Suzanne looked up, through the open French doors. From this vantage point she could see the foyer, and that someone was waiting on the other side of the narrow, stained-glass windows that flanked the front door. The glass was cloudy, for privacy’s sake, and the person on the other end always looked like a witness on a true-crime show whose appearance is blurred to protect his identity, but Suzanne could tell this was a man by the heft of his belly. He was dressed all in dark green. And on the head, a hat with a wide brim. A service man? Had she made an appointment that she’d forgotten?

  Immersed in her test of the new Bracelet Buddy, Suzanne ignored the door. He rang twice more before she saw him descend the steps of the porch and leave.

  “Ma’am?”

  Suzanne gasped and shot up, dropping the Bracelet Buddy, which fell to the flagstone and rolled towar
d the feet of a black man dressed in an Italian-cut suit, red medallion tie, and militarily polished, black, Cole Haan loafers.

  “Who are you … and what are you doin’ on my property?” Suzanne asked.

  He pulled from his back pocket a brown wallet, well rounded from spending hours every day smooshed against a car seat. Men’s wallets always reminded Suzanne of messy sandwiches, and this was no exception … all those layers of credit-card color and leafy, green notes and unruly, large receipts sneaking out of the side like errant slices of Swiss cheese—all pressed between matching slices of leather that snapped shut like a mousetrap.

  He flipped it open, revealing a gold badge with the seal of Perry County in the middle, a shield of armor divided into quarters that featured a cotton bowl, a magnolia blossom, an Indian headdress, and a pair of peaches.

  “I’m Lieutenant Crawford, Perry County Sheriff’s Department. This here’s Officer Piper,” he said, motioning to the uniformed officer beside him.

  Suzanne leaned forward to get a closer look. “What do you mean scarin’ me like that?”

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you, ma’am.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what you did. You scared the daylights outta me.”

  He bent down and picked up the Bracelet Buddy, which he handed to her. “When you didn’t answer the door I was just guessin’ that you were in the backyard gardenin’.”

  “Well I wasn’t,” she said. “I pay someone to do that for me. What is so important that you just about had to kill me like that? I’m not parked in the street. It’s not the sprinklers, is it? I asked Virgil to fix the timer on those sprinklers.”

  The accompanying deputy’s gold name tag said S. Piper. He looked to be about forty, with freckles, a thick head of red hair, and a Teddy Roosevelt mustache. He was close enough, just on the other side of the table, that Suzanne could hear the fizzing and gurgling sounds of blossoming hunger emanating from his stomach. “Do you mind if we sit down?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his shiny forehead with a white handkerchief. The detective turned and frowned at him.

  “How long’s this gonna take?” Suzanne asked. “What’s this all about?”

  “Do y’all have a dog?” asked the detective.

  Suzanne rolled her eyes and exhaled in impatience. “What does this have to do with anything?” she said. “No, we don’t have a dog. I hate dogs.”

  Eyes only, with chin locked in place, he looked at the deputy, then again at Suzanne.

  “You know about the problems with the dogs in the neighborhood …”

  “You’d have to be livin’ in a cave not to know about it. Why?”

  The detective bit his lower lip and brought his hands to his hips, drawing back the lapel of his dress coat and revealing a gun in a black-leather shoulder holster. “Have you seen anything unusual in your yard?”

  “Like what?” Suzanne asked.

  “Well … any signs of somethin’ that might be hurtin’ those dogs.”

  “Now how would I know what’s killin’ those dogs?”

  He looked away from Suzanne for a moment, at a mockingbird warbling atop the gable of the garage. “Miz Parley—It is Miz Parley, right?—I’ll just be real straight with you, Miz Parley. There’s folks who say they’ve seen you shootin’ at dogs with a squirt gun at night.”

  Instantly, a picture of Jodi Armbuster came to mind, peeking from the plantation shutters in that side bedroom that faced Suzanne’s house. If not her, then who? Suzanne had been so careful, shooting only after dark, always carrying a stack of envelopes with her so she could pretend to be scanning that day’s mail when cars passed, their headlights illuminating her in her floral Christian Dior bathrobe.

  “Is there any law against a little squirt gun?” Suzanne asked. “No, ma’am.”

  “Well then …” Suzanne began to gather and crumple into a ball the brown paper from the UPS package. “It’s no secret that the dogs of Red Hill Plantation are turnin’ my front yard into a toxic waste dump,” she said. “I’ve got a right to protect my property just like anybody else does. At least I’m not shootin’ ’em with a real gun.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And my husband knows I’m doin’ this. Dr. Boone Parley, the neurosurgeon? Have y’all heard of Parley Road? That’s named after Boone’s great-great-granddaddy—he was the mayor of Selby.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Suddenly Suzanne remembered that she had not left the house that day, and she had no makeup on. She stood with the wad of paper beneath her arm, the bracelets and Bracelet Buddy in hand. “So if y’all don’t mind, I’ve gotta go inside now and get dinner goin’.”

  The detective looked at the butcher knife and the untouched Waterford tumbler of whiskey and soda, which had started to sweat on the sides. “Yes, ma’am. Do you mind if we take a look around the yard?”

  “What for?” she asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know—anything. You never know what you’ll find. Me and Sergeant Piper been lookin’ in everybody’s yard.”

  “Well don’t be trampin’ in my pansy beds.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  From the windows upstairs, racing from room to room, Suzanne followed their progress around the house as they poked in the mature boxwood and holly bushes along the foundation. Luck was with her that day; just one hour earlier, Suzanne had retrieved the green, plastic dog dish and brought it inside to refill it with the Alpo and antifreeze. It was now soaking in the stainless-steel sink in her utility room, the flecks of deadly, stinky food loosening and rising to the surface of the sudsy water.

  Still, the men seemed to linger somewhere on the southeast side, and Suzanne could not see what they were doing; her vision was blocked by the magnolia at the corner of the house.

  She could not see Detective Andy Crawford on his hands and knees, pointing a powerful, yellow flashlight into the undergrowth of the shrubs. She could not see him reaching in, up to his armpit, firmly yanking as if to snag something free, then pulling out a small twig of holly. Suzanne could not see him hold it in the sun for a better look, smell it, raise his eyebrows and nod at his partner, then pull out a Ziploc sandwich bag and stow the small branch safely in his breast pocket.

  “Suzanne, honey, pass me that red.”

  “What’s gonna be red?”

  “This here’s a woodpecker. His little crown’s gonna be red.”

  “I haven’t seen you do this one before.”

  “I haven’t. It’s my first time.”

  Known simply as “the cake lady,” Carol O’Neal was one of the few reasons north Selby women ventured south of Truman Parkway. There was nothing on this planet she could not replicate in the form of a cake, and for years Suzanne had watched and helped her mother as she painted with frosting, tiny squirt after squirt, works of art that were nothing short of pointillism. She could create images of roses and magnolias and dogs, babies and pheasants and deer and lovers sitting arm in arm on docks. Once she’d been asked by the Perry County Commission to do a portrait of Madeline VanDermeter, the executive director of the International Dogwood Festival, and though up close it appeared to be a yellow-dominant piece of abstract art the cake did take on a striking resemblance of the woman when seen from across a room.

  This time, on a huge, rectangular sheet cake covered in white frosting she had sketched out with eyeliner and diluted black watercolor a scene of Georgia forest with resident wildlife.

  Once a week, when her father was bass-fishing at Lake Oconee, Suzanne would drive down and work for half a day with her mother.

  “Why don’t I come up there this week and let’s us have lunch together,” her mother had said on the phone that morning.

  “Momma …”

  “There’s a new Italian restaurant on Gibron Road. I saw the ad for it in the Reflector. I don’t think it’s too far from your house.”

  “Really, Momma, I wanna come down there.”

  “I clipped some coupons for it, Suzanne.”

  �
��You know how I like helpin’ you do cakes.”

  “You don’t like helpin’ me with my cakes, Suzanne. You just don’t want me comin’ up there.”

  “Now that’s not true.”

  “I’ve stayed away from your north Selby life like a good girl, Suzanne. All I’m askin’ is for you to have lunch with your momma in your own neighborhood.”

  “But there’s somethin’ I wanna talk to you about, Momma.”

  “We can do it over lunch.”

  “I wanna do it at home.”

  “Oh, Suzanne.”

  “Please, Momma?”

  Carol sighed. “You are the most determined girl on the planet, Suzanne. I swear you would’ve driven me crazy by now. Okay, but you gotta bring us lunch. I do not feel like cookin’ today.”

  After eating the casserole Suzanne had plucked from her freezer in the garage—something called Mexican shepherd’s pie, which was written on the aluminum foil in black marker—they began the long task of filling in the woodsy landscape, creamy dot by dot.

  “You do the trees,” Carol said. “Now be patient, Suzanne. Stay in the lines. Please. This is my first cake for this lady and I want it to be good.”

  “Whose is it?” Suzanne asked.

  “Her name’s Alison Riner. You know her?”

  “I know her. She just painted her foyer the tackiest green I’ve ever seen.”

  “Is she nice to you?”

  “She’s not ugly to me. How much you chargin’ her for this cake, Momma?”

  “Seventy-five.”

  “Seventy-five! They’d pay a hundred and seventy-five in Atlanta. You gotta charge more.”

  “How much do you think?”

  “Charge ’em two hundred. Alison would pay that.”

  “No, no,” her mother said, lightly swatting Suzanne’s wrist. “That part’s not supposed to be brown. That part’s black. Here. Here’s the black. Two hundred? Who’d pay two hundred dollars for a cake?”

  “Any lady in north Selby would pay two hundred for your cakes, Momma. No one does ’em like you.”

  Unaccustomed to such praise, Carol smiled. “Now what was it you wanted to talk about?” she asked.