by Nora Deloach
“I know,” Mama whispered. Her voice was weak but confident.
“We’re here,” Daddy continued. “Me and Simone are here for you.”
Mama nodded.
“Will and Rodney will be here soon,” he whispered.
Mama’s hand moved a little against the sheets. “They don’t have—”
“Hush,” Daddy whispered in a tender voice. “We’re here for you, baby. Just like you’ve always been here for us!”
Mama smiled. Then she closed her eyes.
Daddy’s cousin walked into the room. Gertrude wasn’t dressed in her hospital uniform. She wore a pair of black slacks, a bulky black sweater, and shiny black boots. I wiped the tears from my face and motioned her to follow me out into the hall. “Do you use arsenic in this hospital?” I asked, once we were outside the room.
Gertrude shook her head. “No,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
Cliff, who had followed us, eyed me.
“I thought maybe the person who poisoned Mama got the stuff from the hospital,” I said.
“Simone,” Cliff interjected sternly, “it’s possible that your mother was poisoned somewhere else,”
“It’s ridiculous to think that somebody who works here would want to hurt Candi.” Gertrude sounded angry. “I know practically everybody here—Ain’t nobody got a grudge against Candi!”
“Could you get me a list of the names of everybody who works at the hospital?”
Gertrude seemed personally offended by my request. “For God’s sake, why?”
“Just get me the list,” I insisted.
Gertrude’s eyebrows rose. “It’ll take a while,” she grumbled reluctantly. “But you’re wrong, Simone. Nobody at this hospital has a grudge against Candi.”
Around noon my brothers arrived. Will, the younger, is a tall muscular man. Raised by a military father who made him develop his body, Will envisioned himself like my father. But after a short stint in the military, he got a job driving a UPS truck. He lives in Orlando, and has worked at the same place for the past ten years.
Rodney, my older brother, on the other hand, hated discipline, hated the military, hated predictability. He’s tall, lean, and smooth. What physical acrobatics Will performed, Rodney performed academically. He finished college tops in his class, then set out immediately to New York where he landed a job in advertising sales for a national magazine. I’d never been more glad to see my brothers.
Mama was weak but, with her family gathered around her sickbed, she insisted on telling us how she got poisoned. “Things started going wrong an hour after I arrived at the office,” she said. “First somebody tried to break into my car.”
Daddy was surprised. “You didn’t tell me that when you called,” he said.
Mama pushed herself up on her pillow. “Whoever it was didn’t get inside, but the car alarm got stuck and it took an hour before I finally got it turned off. Around noon, I decided to go get lunch. When I got to my car it had two flat tires—I only had one spare.”
Daddy was anxious now. “Those tires are practically new ones. There’s no reason for them to be flat.”
“Well, they were,” Mama said.
“Where are the tires now?” Daddy asked.
“Jake, at the Exxon, towed the car to his station on Elm Street. I bought two new tires and had them put on the car. I guess Jake has the old ones,” Mama said.
“I want to get those tires to see if they were defective,” Daddy said.
“Good idea,” Will agreed. “You might be able to get some money back from the company that sold them to you.”
“Anyway,” Mama continued, “because of the flat tires, I never did get lunch. Five o’clock, when I was about to walk out of the door, I got a phone call from the hospital.”
“That’s when you first called me?” Daddy asked.
Mama nodded. “I was so tired and hungry but I felt I had no choice, I had to go. After all, there was a hurt child here who needed my help.”
“Martha Furman said you talked to her.”
“Yeah,” Mama said. “When no one knew anything about the child, Martha called the hospital’s social worker, who told her that there was no report of an abused child. That’s when I called you again, James.”
“And the woman in the parking lot?” I asked.
Mama seemed stunned. “How did you know that?” she asked.
“An orderly told us,” Cliff said.
“Did you know the woman?” I asked. “The woman in the parking lot?”
“Yes,” Mama replied. “It was Trudy Paige, Nat’s girlfriend. I’d been trying to get to talk to her and there she was, standing beside my car.”
“What did she say to you?” Cliff asked.
“For one thing, she told me that she hadn’t quit her job here at the hospital. And she told me that she had seen a child who showed signs of abuse in the hospital less than an hour earlier.”
“Go on,” I urged her.
“Trudy told me that the little boy belonged to one of the doctors. That the doctor’s wife was an alcoholic and that during her binges she put matches to the child’s body. She said that she thought that the reason nobody wanted to tell me about the boy was because they liked the doctor. They didn’t want to cause him any trouble.”
“And you fell for that?” I exclaimed. My voice was a bit louder than I wanted it to be. Mama frowned at me.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized quickly. “Go on with your story.”
“At the time, I was interested in talking to Trudy about Nat. I suggested to her that we go to get something to eat. I told her I had skipped lunch and that I needed a cup of coffee and a sandwich to pull me through. Trudy agreed. I got into my car, she got into hers and promised to meet me at the Country Café. When I got to the café, I ordered a hamburger and coffee and waited. When the waitress set my food in front of me, Trudy still hadn’t arrived. My first thought was to go home to my own supper. After all, the hospital staff was probably right. Maybe somebody was playing a prank on me and there was no abused child. I was about to leave when the waitress came over and said I had a phone call. The woman on the phone told me that she was calling for Trudy because she had gotten held up at the hospital. She said Trudy wanted me to wait for her, she was on her way.”
“And you waited?” I asked.
“I went back to the table, drank my coffee, and ate that hamburger,” Mama said. “Trudy still didn’t show.”
“So why did you go back to the hospital?” Daddy demanded.
“I got another phone call. This time, the same woman told me that the child had been located and that I was needed at the hospital right away. She sounded panicky, very convincing. I went back to the hospital, talked to Martha again. Then I headed for the Emergency Room, thinking the child might be there and Martha hadn’t gotten word about it yet. I hadn’t been there but a few minutes when I started feeling dizzy.”
“We know the rest.” Daddy’s face showed signs of the battle he’d just gone through trying to deal with the possibility of Mama’s death.
The words weren’t out of his mouth when Cousin Agatha wheeled Uncle Chester into the room. Uncle Chester himself had been discharged from the hospital a couple of weeks earlier. He was in a wheelchair now, his bony frame tucked under mounds of blankets, a huggy cap pulled down to his shiny eyes.
“Uncle Chester, you didn’t have to come to see me,” Mama said, startled that the old man would allow Agatha to take him out of his beloved house. He hated the hospital.
Uncle Chester’s eyes burned. “I know I didn’t have to come,” he snapped. “Don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do!”
Mama smiled. “Well, I’m glad to see you, glad you thought enough of me to visit.”
“Agatha tried to stop me, but she knows better than to hinder me from what I want to do,” growled the old man. “Listen, Candi, I come here to tell you, just like I told Agatha, you best be careful whose pot you dip into from now on. I don’t expect to be
eating from many of the pots that get sent to my house anymore myself.” He said it very firmly, like all of Otis was out to get him.
Cliff, my father and brothers laughed, but I knew better than to give Uncle Chester cause for scolding me. “What’s ailing you all?” he snapped, his eyes coldly staring at my father. “James boy, I done told you, God don’t bless you when you laugh at old people.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Chester,” Daddy said.
“I ain’t looking for sorry. Don’t do it again!”
“Yes, sir,” Daddy said, respectfully.
Mama decided to come to Daddy’s rescue. “Uncle Chester,” she said, “did you recognize the place in the picture I sent to you?” she asked.
“Candi, what are you talking about?” Uncle Chester growled.
“I sent a piece of paper with a drawing of a barn and maybe a shed to you by James. Attached to it was a picture of an old house, remember?”
Uncle Chester looked puzzled.
Cousin Agatha put her hand over her mouth and spoke down toward her father’s right ear. “You and I talked about the picture,” she reminded her father. “You said it was the Gordon place.”
Uncle Chester made a short sound that I assume was a snort of recognition. “When I was a young man, a woman named Stella Gordon was born and raised at that place,” he said. He snorted again. Then he coughed.
“Stella was an only child,” he continued. “Her Mama and Daddy died of the Spanish flu back in ’18. They owned two hundred and fifty acres of land. The Gordons left all that land to Stella.”
Mama shifted in her bed, but she did not interrupt Uncle Chester.
“The man who married Stella was named Mixon,” Uncle Chester told us. “Leroy Mixon. He farmed Stella’s land and he did pretty good with it, too. But Leroy was mean and he didn’t love Stella or their only child, a real sickly boy named Reeves.”
When Uncle Chester stopped to catch his breath, nobody spoke. But I could see that Mama’s eyes were bright with curiosity.
Finally, he started talking again. “When Reeves was about ten, talk was that Leroy came home from the fields and started beating up on Stella. He hit her so hard she fell and hit her head on the corner of the table. Stella died; Leroy buried her in the Cypress Creek Cemetery. A week after he buried Stella, Leroy married a widow, a woman who had a son.”
“Hannah Mixon?” I asked.
“I reckon,” Uncle Chester said. “My eyes ain’t much what it use to be, but I’ll swear that picture is of Stella Gordon’s house.”
“Hannah Mixon, Leroy Mixon,” Mama murmured, as if talking to herself.
“Mind you, Candi, that land got blood on it,” Uncle Chester declared sourly. “Tainted land ain’t good for nothing, not even burying. Do you know that when Leroy died, he didn’t even leave the land to his own boy, he and Stella’s son. Good-for-nothing Leroy left the whole thing to Hannah Mixon and her boy.”
It was ill-timed but when I realized it, it was too late—I had already spoken. “That’s why it makes sense to form the Covington Land Company and incorporate it.”
“Ain’t no law going to take over the Covington land!” Uncle Chester squawked. His beady eyes bulged. “I done told Agatha, and I—”
“Uncle Chester,” Mama interrupted smoothly. “Simone’s right. At least hear me out before you close your mind.”
“My mind ain’t never been closed. I ain’t signing no papers,” he muttered.
“Do you want the Covington land to end up like Leroy Mixon’s land?” she asked. “Do you want people that ain’t no kin to the Covingtons to get our land?”
“Ain’t nobody but Covingtons are going to profit from that land.” Uncle Chester said it fiercely.
Cousin Agatha spoke up. “When you’re dead and gone,” she told her father, “you won’t have nothing to say about the Covington land. Now, while you’re alive and able, you need to make provision for it.”
Uncle Chester didn’t say anything for a full minute. We were all smart enough to stay silent. Then he said, “I’m tired. Candi, when you get back home, fix me some of your lamb stew and don’t let nobody get near the pot until you get it to me.” He cut his eyes toward Agatha. “Take me home,” he ordered. “My bed is calling for me.”
After Uncle Chester and Cousin Agatha had gone, Mama closed her eyes. I was about to suggest that we all go out into the lobby while Mama rested, when Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls sashayed into the room. The women clustered beside Mama’s bed, looking on with pitying eyes. “I declare,” Annie Mae Gregory said, “I never thought there was so much spitefulness in this town.”
Mama opened her eyes and rested them on the women’s faces. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.
Annie Mae Gregory must have thought what she had said was worth repeating because she said it again. “I never thought there was so much spitefulness in this town.”
Carrie Smalls nodded her head.
“There is spitefulness everywhere,” Mama said.
Sarah Jenkins tightened the thick woolen scarf wrapped several times around her neck. “Now, Candi, you know what Annie Mae is talking about. There is a pretty mean person in town that is poisoning folks. And if Abe can’t find him, I say he ought to call in the State Law Enforcement people to help him out.”
My father, Cliff, and my brothers, who had already endured Uncle Chester’s visit, looked at one another. With their signals on target, the men marched in single file out into the hallway. They knew better than to get involved with An- nie Mae, Sarah, and Carrie. Cliff muttered something about getting more coffee.
Mama pushed herself up onto her pillow as if she was prepared to defend the sheriff’s crime-solving efforts. I have to confess I too had wondered what Sheriff Abe Stanley had been doing to track down the killer who had struck twice—and nearly three times—in Otis.
“Abe’s doing all he can,” Mama said, confidently. “These things take time to work out.”
Annie Mae Gregory had by now walked over to a nearby chair and flopped her large body down into it. She sighed. “Well, I for one say that if Abe had caught the person when poor Hannah was killed, Nat would be alive today and you, well, you—”
Sarah Jenkins interrupted Annie Mae like she hadn’t been listening to her. “Hannah didn’t deserve to die like that, I don’t care what people are saying.”
Carrie Smalls, who had also made claim to a chair on the other side of the empty bed, scolded, “Now, Sarah, Hannah had her faults, we all know that!”
“Hannah had more than faults.” I remembered my earlier thought that she might have known that somebody would kill for her land. “She had an enemy, big time!”
Annie Mae Gregory looked at Mama as if to suggest that even the good Candi Covington had an enemy that she had pushed so hard he had finally tried to kill her. “Doesn’t matter what you do to a person, there’s no reason to kill, now is there, Candi?” Annie Mae asked.
Whatever Mama’s thoughts on the subject, she ignored Annie Mae’s question. Instead, she asked, “Do either of you ladies remember Leroy Mixon’s son?”
“Of course we do,” Carrie Smalls answered. “He was kind of sickly like his Mama.”
“Reeves kept stowed up with a cold like I do,” Sarah Jenkins said, feigning a cough. She fished around in her enormous purse for a cough drop, pulled out two boxes, chose the cherry-flavored.
“Stella always had to purge that boy,” Annie Mae added.
“Is the boy still around these parts?” Mama asked.
The three women looked at each other and laughed. “Child, Reeves has been gone from home for years,” Sarah Jenkins told Mama.
“That boy was one of those people who leave home and never look back,” Carrie Smalls said firmly.
“Didn’t even come to his Daddy’s funeral,” Sarah Jenkins said as she pulled a handkerchief out of her purse.
Annie Mae Gregory shook her head. “Leroy Mixon wasn’t exactly the kind of daddy you’d care much
about.”
I cleared my throat. “Have any of you seen Reeves Mixon lately?” I asked.
Nobody answered my question. The three women were silent. All three stared at me, without a word.
I tried another direction. “Have you heard that anybody has seen him?” I asked them.
Annie Mae Gregory shook her head. So did Carrie and Sarah. “Reeves was fifteen, sixteen when he left home,” Annie Mae said. “That was over twenty years ago. I reckon that’ll make him …”
“Thirty-five,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to know which direction Reeves took when he left the area, would you?”
The women laughed. “Course we do,” Carrie Smalls said.
“He’s somewhere in Florida,” Sarah Jenkins said.
“My sister’s boy said he ran into Reeves a few years back,” Annie Mae Gregory told us. “It was in Daytona. Or was it that place where the mouse is at?”
“Orlando?” I asked.
“Someplace in Florida.” Sarah Jenkins said it firmly. “Reeves’s down around there someplace.”
Mama yawned, this time closing her eyes and letting them stay closed. Carrie Smalls rolled her eyes and sighed hard, but then she stood and walked toward the door. “It’s late,” she announced. Sarah Jenkins and Annie Mae Gregory promptly fell in behind her. “I guess people will be glad to know you’re all right, Candi,” Carrie told Mama. “Glad to know that you know who tried to poison you.”
Mama opened her eyes. “No, I don’t,” she said, knowing that nothing she could say would stop this trio from spreading untruthful information throughout the county.
“Course you do,” Carrie Smalls said as she passed across the threshold into the corridor.
Annie Mae Gregory didn’t speak, she just nodded her head knowingly, her chins wobbling.
“I don’t understand you,” I said to Mama in exasperation after the women had gone. “They talked about you behind your back, practically accusing you of murder, and you treat them like they’re diplomats.”
“That’s a good analogy,” Mama said.
