“Oh, honey, I wasn’t trying to insult you. I just thought you might want—”
“Ma’am, who the hell are you?”
“Well, there is no need for such language. Your grandmother never would have stood for that kind of language in her house. Not even from Inez.” The woman pursed her lips and glared at Marcus. Slowly she stuck out her hand and said, “My name is Priscilla Ellington. Helen asked me to come get you. She had to pick up Delores Richards and take her on some errands, thanks to your little tangle-up yesterday.”
“Yeah. Miss Inez already got on to me about that. Could you just hang on for one second?” Marcus dropped the sack onto the piano bench and hurried into the bathroom. Closing the door behind him, he rushed to lift the toilet lid and pee. After finishing up, he stared at the bandage on his forehead while he washed his hands. He called out through the closed door, “You’re the preacher’s wife, right? Mrs. Ellington?”
“Yes, but you can call me Priss. Everyone does. I take it my reputation precedes me?”
Marcus stepped back into the room, regret over his foul language making him blush. “Helen and Inez mentioned you last night.”
“Really? Well, don’t believe a word they said. Inez Coffee lets her mouth get going and lord knows what will come out. I try to get her to quit gossiping and clean up her language, but you know those Methodists.” Priscilla threw up her hands and shrugged her shoulders. “I even made her a lovely needlepoint with James three verse six on it. Do you know that one? ‘And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.’ But do you think that did any good? Shoot. I saw that very same gift at Brother Marty’s in the discount bin not two weeks later. And that thing took me at least a week to stitch.”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean to offend—”
“Pfft.” Priscilla waved his words away. “I’ve forgiven and forgotten. Anyway. As for your other mysteries, the woman playing your piano was Annie Gordon. You don’t need to worry about her. She’s harmless, really. She only plays good church music. She used to be the organist at the Methodist Church, but she has a little blood flow problem now,” Priscilla pointed at her temple and winked her eye. “So they replaced her with that prissy Martin Prescott.” Priscilla crossed to the piano and bent toward the book of music resting there, then slid her glasses down her nose so that she could read the title. “The song she was playing was apparently ‘In the Garden,’ which is such a lovely hymn. I think it was your grandmother’s favorite. We don’t sing it at the Baptist church, but that’s neither here nor there. Any song about Jesus is a good song, don’t you think?”
“Um, I don’t really have an opinion on that.”
“You’re not one of those big-city atheists, are you?” She looked at him with a skeptical squint.
“No, ma’am. But I didn’t really grow up going to church. The only gospel music I heard was on the radio in the car sometimes. My mama always had to work on Sundays so—”
“Well, that’ll never do.” Priscilla clicked her tongue and shook her head. “You should come to church with me. Our new preacher isn’t as good as my husband was, but ever since he had his stroke, Frank can’t really preach as good of a sermon as he used to in the old days.”
“We’ll see.” Marcus snatched the sack from the piano bench and pulled the clothes out. “I don’t really plan on being in town very long. I’m going to go put these on, okay?”
Priscilla nodded and sat on the piano bench. Marcus went into the bedroom and removed his blood-stained clothes. As he stepped into the bright plaid pants, he called out, “I still don’t understand why this Annie person was in here playing my grandmother’s piano. And how did she get in? I swear I locked that door last night.” He buttoned the pants, which hung loosely around his narrow hips. He picked up the vibrant floral shirt and winced as he slipped it over his tender arms.
“Oh, she does that to everyone. Well, not everyone. If she thinks your house is dirty she won’t come in. Cleanliness next to godliness and all that.”
“And everyone just lets her?” Marcus asked as he poked his head out of the bedroom doorway.
“Of course. Would you want everyone in town to think your house was so dirty she wouldn’t come in? Shoot, even Cookie Ginsberg lets her come in and play hymns.” Priscilla raised her hand to shield her mouth and whispered, “She’s Jewish!” She prattled on, “One time, Cookie’s husband, Samuel, came home from work and found Annie sitting at the piano and teaching his daughters to sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ He was livid. He stormed into the kitchen and said to Cookie, ‘Do you hear what that woman is teaching your daughters? Jesus loves me!’ Cookie was so worried that people would think she had a dirty house if Annie didn’t come in, she just turned to him and said ‘Samuel, maybe he does!’”
“Oh my god! That is hysterical.” Marcus turned back into the bedroom and glanced at himself in the full-length mirror in the corner. His close-cropped red hair was mussed, and his blue eyes were bloodshot from his fitful sleep. He couldn’t decide if it was the clashing colors or the cut over his brow that was making his eyes water. I look like I escaped from a loony bin. As he buttoned the shirt, the fading bruise around his eye caught his attention. Guess I did in a way.
He turned to one side and inspected himself in the mirror. The clothes hung from his trim frame and made him seem thinner than he was. Marcus frowned. Besides the garish patterns, he hated the bagginess, preferring to show off the lean body he had worked so hard to maintain despite Robert’s insistence that they eat incredibly fattening food. Robert had liked him in the tight clothes too; he considered Marcus’s lithe, young frame a trophy to be displayed. After shaking his head to clear the thought of Robert, Marcus snagged a corner of the tape that held the bandage on his forehead. The tape yanked at his skin as he tried to pull it off. “Ouch!”
“You okay in there?”
“Yes.” Marcus dropped his arms to his side. As he looked around the floor for his shoes and belt, he mumbled, “My bandage.”
“I can say a prayer on that if you want.”
“That’s okay.” He stepped back into the other room to find Priscilla staring at a framed photograph she had retrieved from the back of the piano. “You know, Miss Annie played real good but she didn’t say a word to me.”
With her eyes locked on the photograph, Priscilla replied, “She never does. Well, not for nearly forty years. Oh, that is a sad, sad tale.” Priscilla closed her eyes and thought. “I probably shouldn’t…well, I guess it isn’t gossip if it’s the truth. See, Annie and her little sister used to run around with all of us girls, even though her family was much poorer than ours. But we didn’t care about that. While the rest of us got married and had families, Annie and her sister were poised to be old maids. But the railroad transferred this young fella here, and he took a shine to Annie. I was shocked because her sister was really the pretty one. But he up and asked Annie to marry him. The Do-Nothings helped her plan the ceremony, though we weren’t the Do-Nothings back then, just a bunch of silly girls. We wanted to make the day special for her, so I helped with the flowers. Inez made the cake, and Helen planned all the songs. Your grandmother, she had just moved here and barely knew Annie, but she made the prettiest dresses for her and her sister. Your grandmother was always doing kind things like that. Look,” Priscilla said as she handed the photograph to Marcus. “Inez took that picture the morning of the wedding.”
In the picture, several young women in frilly dresses posed with their arms around each other’s waists. Marcus could barely make the young grinning faces in the faded picture favor the older women he had met. His grandmother, apparently determined to remain a mystery to him even in photographs, had her head lowered, and her hair fell across her face so that he could barely make out her features. He traced the outline of her face with his finger and smiled.
“Anyway, the day of the wedding came, and the whole town was at the church. But that young man an
d the sister never showed up. Turns out, they’d done run off together. We were all in a state of shock, I tell you.” Priscilla took a deep breath and sighed. “Poor Annie was so heartbroken, she walked over to the piano at the front of the church, sat, and started to cry. We all rushed over to comfort her, but she just pushed us away. She threw her shoulders back, wiped away the tears, and started playing the piano. Well, since then she hasn’t said a word to a soul. All she does is wander around town and play people’s pianos.” Priscilla heaved another deep sigh. She stepped to Marcus’s side and looked over his shoulder at the picture. “It’s all sad but, you know, all those years of playing really did improve her piano skills.”
“Is that you?” Marcus pointed at a pregnant woman in the picture.
“Used to be.” Priscilla chuckled. “Look how happy Annie looks there. Marcus, don’t ever break some girl’s heart like that.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Look at how pretty your grandmother was,” Priscilla said in barely a whisper as she pointed at the picture. “Lord, I miss her. She was so pretty right up to the end. We made sure she looked real pretty in her casket.” Priscilla stroked Marcus’s arm. “Her illness made her lose a lot of weight, but, you know, when people die, they sometimes swell up a little, and it really made her look more like her old self.”
With a small gasp, Marcus jerked his head to stare at Priscilla.
Priscilla didn’t move her gaze from the photo. “I could take you out to her grave sometime if you want.”
“Ooo-kay.” Marcus screwed up his face and gestured toward the front door with his shoulder. “So maybe we should get going? I’m supposed to go to see about my car and my duffel bag. I think it’s at some garage?”
“I know. Helen told me. I’m supposed to drop you off there.” She took the photograph from Marcus and sat it back on the piano. “Let’s go. I better not be late. The last thing I need today is Helen Warner giving me grief.” She turned from the photograph and looked Marcus up and down again. “You look real handsome in the Reverend’s old clothes.”
Chapter Four
“So that’s the historic district. The town council decided to call it that, and now you have to get their approval on paint colors or anything else you want to do with your house.”
Priscilla gestured wildly with one hand and held the steering wheel in a death grip with the other. With each motion of her free hand, her other hand jerked the wheel and made the car swerve slightly to the left or right. During the five-mile drive into the town, Marcus was beginning to feel seasick from the wild rocking of the car. He had been a bit concerned for his safety when he first saw Priscilla’s car, which had several large dents scattered along the passenger side, but she had assured him those were from a previous run-in with Delores Richards. His fears were not eased, however, when he climbed inside and realized that Priss sat on two thick Sears catalogs to help her see over the steering wheel.
“They really are beautiful homes,” Marcus agreed as he turned away from the woman and closed his eyes tight.
“Inez and her husband used to live down there but she didn’t take too kindly to being told that she had to get rid of the cement deer she had in her front yard, so she moved out to the houses near Eloise and Helen, which I will never understand. It was such a lovely old house that had been in her family for years. Also, those deer are just plain tacky. I’d have given anything to live in one of those old houses, but we always lived in that gloomy little rectory that the church provides. We didn’t move out to Crepe Myrtle Manor until just a year or two ago, after Frank’s stroke. Anyway, we are entering downtown now.”
Marcus watched the town roll by, reminded of every other small town he and his mother had passed through. The usual tree-lined streets of cracker-box homes gave way eventually to a quaint downtown. Without looking closely, he could guess the businesses he would find. He knew there would be a pharmacy, a jewelry store, and a dress shop with a name intended to sound classy and possibly French, probably next to a hardware store with a family’s name painted across the windows. However, Priss parked before they had driven far enough into downtown for him to see much.
“So, here you go. Hank Hudson’s garage.” Priss gestured out the window.
Marcus looked at the building and knitted his eyebrows in confusion. “The sign says Murphy’s?”
“Well, it used to be Jessie Murphy’s, but he retired and sold it to Hank Hudson.”
“So, I should ask for Hank?”
“Honey, it’s a one-man shop. You can ask, but you’ll be asking him. Now, Helen said to remind you to come on over to the Tammy when you get things settled here. It’s just a couple of blocks that way, so you can find it again, right? It’s just past The Chic Petite dress shop and Dobbins Feed Store. It’s got a big old neon sign, so you can’t miss it.”
“Yes, ma’am. I should be fine. Thanks again for the ride.” Marcus hopped out of the car onto the sidewalk and shut the car door. He patted the roof of the car and bent over to wave to the woman inside. He stood with his hand still poised in the air as Priscilla’s Buick swerved its way down the road before making a U-turn in the middle of the next intersection and speeding past him toward the diner. Marcus sighed in relief to feel the solid ground of the sidewalk beneath his feet. His stomach rumbled as he thought about the food that would be available at the diner. “No,” he chastised himself, “take care of the car and get some decent clothes. Then you can eat.”
Marcus turned to face the two-story building behind him. To the left of the building, a chain-link fence blocked off a parking lot with several old cars scattered about, some missing doors and tires or with crinkled bumpers. Just inside the fence sat a lawn chair. A piece of cardboard with the words “Skeet’s Carwash. Skeet’ll be back later.” scrawled on it in black marker sat in the chair.
The left side of the building was dominated by two plate glass windows with the words Murphy’s Auto and Body. Est: 1957 painted on them in red, white, and blue lettering. Under these words, in what appeared to be a fresher coat of paint, someone had added, Yes, I can fix it. To the right of the windows, a glass and metal door led into the room beyond. A sign listing the hours of business hung on the inside of the door below another that stated, “In God We Trust. All others pay up front.”
Marcus cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the window. He could see mismatched chairs lining the walls of a waiting area around a coffee table covered with magazines. The red and white reflection of a soda machine in the corner flickered across the gray tile floor and cast a murky hue across the room. Marcus looked to the right of the door. Two large garage doors stood open and the sounds of loud music and someone banging on metal clanged out into the street. The back end of a massive, red Ford LTD poked out of the farthest garage door and blocked part of the sidewalk.
Marcus pulled the door open, stepped into the waiting area, and crossed to the counter. He noticed a sign next to a beat-up, old cash register that read: “You can have it done quick or you can have it done right. Your choice.” He snickered and hit the silvery bell next to the sign. The ding of the bell echoed off the bare walls and tile floor of the room and made Marcus tense at the harsh sound. Marcus drummed his fingers on the counter and waited. He glanced up at a black and white television that was suspended over the counter and flickered and rolled with a pattern of static and the occasional flash of an image from a television show.
“Hello?” He leaned over the counter to try to see into the small rear office. He could see a metal desk covered with catalogs, papers, and, sitting on an old newspaper, a greasy car part. Behind the desk, an archway revealed the first few steps of a staircase leading to the floor above. “Anybody?”
With a frustrated grunt, he wandered back to the sidewalk and walked to the tall garage doors. As he stepped into the garage, the smell of motor oil and gasoline made his nose crinkle and his empty
stomach churn. The music he had heard on the street grew louder and made his ears ring. To his right, he could see the crumpled front bumper of the red Ford. He stared at it, trying to place why it looked familiar. Oh my god, that’s the car that hit me. He took a step closer to look at the minor damage on the front end of the car, but his attention was grabbed by a loud clang of metal followed by a string of curse words from under the hood of a green car that sat in front of him.
“Come off of there, you little sonofagun.”
Marcus saw a man bent over the car with his head under the hood. His dark blue work-shirt rode up in the back, exposing a swath of tan skin above a thick leather belt. His faded jeans fit snuggly over his well-formed backside; the lighter patches of fabric worn by years of wear defined his ass and thigh muscles and the white outline of a wallet on the right back pocket. A clip of keys dangling from a belt loop on his left side clanged against the metal of the car as he moved. He wore heavy leather work boots, and his heels rose slightly from the floor as he strained to reach into the chassis of the car. Marcus watched the man’s back muscles flex as he wrestled with something under the hood. Only a glimpse of his hairy forearm appeared for a second as he worked his arm back and forth. “Well, God bless Levi Strauss,” Marcus whispered before raising his voice and calling out, “Excuse me?”
The man took no notice of Marcus’s call but let out another string of foul language.
Marcus tapped the man on his shoulder.
The man jolted up and hit his head on the hood of the car overhead. “Goddangit,” he yelled and rubbed the top of his head. He staggered and then turned to face Marcus with a look of confusion. He ran his greasy fingers through his sandy brown hair, which was parted to one side, and then slid his hand across his cheek to scratch his full but neatly trimmed beard. A long trail of grime streaked from his left ear across his cheek and nose. His broad shoulders flexed under his shirt as he rubbed his head, and Marcus could just barely make out the faded name Hank embroidered over the right pocket of the shirt. The top few buttons of his shirt were open, and thick, brown chest hair glistened with sweat underneath. In his other, grimy hand he held a wrench. Marcus stepped back, fearing the man might swing the wrench at him. The edges of the man’s brown eyes crinkled as he began to laugh. “Christ, you scared the crap out of me.”
Lunch with the Do-Nothings at the Tammy Dinette Page 5
