Miracles in Maggody

by Joan Hess

  Fratelleon put his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Chastity, I’d like you to meet—”

  She jerked away from him. “Did they tell you about my having to go to some gawdawful little high school? Were you in on this, too?”

  “Malachi and Seraphina only want what’s best for you. You don’t want to put on a tinsel halo and sing to the unwashed for the rest of your life, do you? You need to finish high school so you’ll have some options.”

  “Yeah,” Joey inserted. “I mean, I had to go back to college and get a degree in electrical engineering before I could get any decent gigs. Before that, I was stringing lights in bars for minimum wage.”

  Chastity was not in the mood for career counseling. “Nobody’s gonna make me go to some crappy school where everybody’ll whisper about me behind my back and cut me dead in the halls. And it’s all Seraphina’s fault. Malachi was on my side at first and said something about getting some textbooks so I could study at home, but she dragged him back into their bedroom to talk, and when they came out he said he’d changed his mind. He didn’t change his mind—she changed it for him!”

  As the resident keeper of the peace, I smiled at the girl and said, “I can introduce you to some of the high school kids before school starts. That way you’d have some friends on the first day of class.”

  She glanced at me, then leaned against Joey and said, “Please take me for a bike ride or something. We could grab a blanket and a couple of beers, and find a nice, quiet place where we’d be all alone.” He tried to back away from her, but she stuck to him like a thistle seed. “Come on, Joey. It’ll be fun.”

  “Listen,” he said, shooting a panicky look at Fratelleon, “you can ride into town with me, but all we’re gonna do is get a few things at an electronics store and come right back here. We’re not stopping anywhere else.”

  “We’ll see,” she said, her scowl replaced by a coquettish simper.

  Fratelleon watched the two walk away and then said, “This is not good, but I could see no way to intervene. Despite his penchant for affectation, Joey is a decent young man. Chastity, on the other hand, seems destined for trouble. Seraphina may have erred when she took the child from a foster home and became her legal guardian last year.”

  “Seraphina is Malachi Hope’s wife?” I asked.

  “Yes, and Chastity is her younger sister. Ten years ago the girls were abandoned by their mother and put into foster care. Seraphina was sixteen at the time, and Chastity was only five. As soon as Seraphina felt as though she could offer a home to her sister, she tracked her down and petitioned the state to allow her to assume guardianship. The problem arises from the fact that Chastity deeply resents being taken away from her friends and obliged to participate in our revivals. She’s not yet adjusted to a migratory life in the Bible Belt.”

  “Apparently not,” I said. “Should I go ahead and call a couple of the local high school girls and have them come out to introduce themselves? I can’t promise they’ll keep her out of trouble, but it might help.”

  “She needs more help than any of us can give her,” Fratelleon said, then forced a smile and extended a large, well-manicured hand. “Thank you for dropping by, Miss Hanks. There are countless details awaiting my attention, so if you’ll excuse me, I’d better see to them. Will you be attending the first night of the revival? I’ll gladly arrange front row seats for you and any guests.”

  I hadn’t thought that far ahead, being more intrigued by the dynamics of what sounded like a full-blown family crisis. “Thanks, Mr. Fratelleon, but I wouldn’t want any preferential treatment. If I come, I’m sure I can find a seat somewhere.”

  Such as in the last row, next to an exit.

  Dahlia’s face was blotchy as she trudged across the yard and into the house. She was wheezing something awful, too, which only increased her misery. The nurse at the clinic in Farberville had been right cheerful when she was dishing out the orders, but she wasn’t the one that had to walk a dadburned mile every day—or try to get by on a half cup of boiled this and two ounces of baked that. The “this” and “that” weren’t gravy and scalloped potatoes, neither. They were more like lettuce and brussels sprouts. Dahlia figured she was getting to the point where she was gonna throw up if anyone so much as mentioned yellow squash.

  She wasn’t even sure she believed all this nonsense the doctor had tried to explain about diabetes and how it was caused by having a bun in the warmer. (The doctor hadn’t used that particular phrase, but she herself thought it had a nice ring, being fond of hamburger buns with peanut butter and grape jelly for lunch.) He’d spent a good fifteen minutes telling her how serious it might turn out to be if she didn’t stick to a diet and an exercise program, and then he sent in the nurse to give Dahlia brochures and lecture her like she was back in school.

  At least when she was in school, she could have a couple of pieces of pie and an orange Nehi when she got home. Now, according to the nurse, she was allowed celery sticks and a glass of water.

  To make matters worse, Kevin had alerted everybody in town, so when she’d dropped by Ruby Bee’s for a blue plate special, she’d been served green beans, plain rice, and a sliver of dry turkey. The cocky foreigner that ran the Dairee Dee-Lishus had flat-out refused to serve her a chili dog and offered her a free diet limeade. Even her own mother-in-law had turned on her and served such a dreary mess of vegetables and broiled fish that her father-in-law had jammed on his hat and left the house.

  Of course she realized it was important if she and Kevvie were to be blessed with a bundle of joy with tiny fingers and toes and maybe a dimple. Then again, Dahlia thought as she hauled herself up and headed for the kitchen, it couldn’t be too awful if she had a Twinkie every once in a while. A cookie when she was feeling blue, a little fried pork chop or two on Sunday after church, a scant handful of chips with onion dip while she and kevvie watched television.

  There was nothing in the refrigerator worth bothering to chew, so she went into the bedroom that would be the nursery and tried to distract herself by admiring the lacy nightgowns and crocheted booties all neatly set out in the pine crib that Kevvie’s grandfather had made.

  “Five more months,” she said aloud, having taken to talking to her womb on a regular basis. “I’ll tell you one thing, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon Junior, as soon as I get wheeled out of the delivery room, I’m orderin’ a pizza. It’ll be a supreme with everything but anchovies. They give me gas.”

  There was no response, but the doctor had said it was too early for the baby to start kicking.

  Jim Bob Buchanon was in his office at the Super-Saver, frowning at the unpaid invoices and trying to decide if he could fire a couple of the checkers and one of the girls in the deli. It wasn’t any big deal if the customers had to stand in line for a whole five or ten more minutes, he thought as he ran his fingers across his stubbly hair. It wasn’t like they could go to another supermarket up the street. During the summer and fall, they could buy fresh produce in town, but the closest place to get toilet paper and laundry detergent and Kool-Aid was fifteen miles away.

  Kevin Buchanon entered the cubicle and stopped on account of Jim Bob didn’t like being interrupted when he was doing something important. When Jim Bob didn’t start snarling at him, Kevin cleared his throat and said, “I was wondering if I kin take off tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Sure,” Jim Bob said in a deceptively friendly voice. “’Course I’ll fire your ass before you’re out the door, but other than that, I don’t see any problem.” He went so far as to smile at Kevin, who was as gawky and poorly put together as a widow woman’s scarecrow. Kevin’s membership in the clan was more obvious than some, and his Adam’s apple had an unfortunate tendency to ripple so wildly it looked like it was trying to burst out of his slack mouth and go flying across the room.

  “You’d fire me?” gasped Kevin, horrified. “I can’t lose my job when Dahlia and me is gonna have a baby long about December. We’re saving every penny so we kin pay the clinic and
start paying on the hospital bill. Then there’s groceries and electricity and—”

  “Keep your tail in the water; boy,” Jim Bob said before he was treated to the entire budget. “I haven’t fired you yet. What’s your dumbass reason for wanting the afternoon off when we’ve got a truckload of paper goods to unload?”

  “I’m gonna take Dahlia to her appointment at the clinic, and then I thought I’d treat her to a picture show. She’s plum run out of sap since the doctor put her on a real strict diet. Why, just the other day at supper, she took one look at the string beans and liked to burst into tears and—”

  “Spare me the details. Yeah, I suppose you can take off tomorrow afternoon, but you’ll have to work till midnight the rest of the week—and you ain’t getting any overtime. I am running a business, not a charity. Got that?”

  Kevin shook his head, thought better of it and nodded, then gave up trying to figure out how to respond and hurried out of the office before Jim Bob changed his mind.

  Jim Bob went back to scowling at the figures and wondering how much longer he could get by with not paying the wholesale grocer, who had sent a pissy letter that very day implying he might turn the account over to a collection agency. When the phone rang, he gazed at it uncertainly. Most of the calls these days didn’t end on a friendly note.

  Finally he picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”

  After listening for a minute, he said, “No, I didn’t know you all were already here, Mr. Fratelleon. As soon as I can hunt down my good-for-nuthin’ assistant manager, I’ll hustle my butt right out there so we can talk about this deal you’re offering. I got to warn you, though—property values have been going up since you wrote me back whenever it was. You and me may be in for some dickering before we make a deal.”

  He was grinning like a possum as he left the store. The two checkers abandoned their counters to watch him through the plate glass window, asking each other what in tarnation could have caused this minor miracle. Over by the door, Kevin leaned on the mop handle and imagined himself and Junior fishing at some secret spot on Boone Creek. He didn’t even notice when the bucket tipped over and scummy gray water spread across the linoleum.

  Back at the Maggody High School gymnasium, Cory Jenks sat in the dim locker room, thinking about how twelve years ago the team had cinched the conference title and had exploded through the door like a pack of coyotes. There’d been so much hooting and towel-snapping and ass-grabbing that Coach Grapper had cussed up a storm. Later they’d rounded up their girlfriends, a dozen six-packs of beer, a couple of jars of hooch, and gone down to a clearing next to Boone Creek to build a bonfire and do some serious celebrating.

  Cory had been the high scorer in the game, and scored pretty damn well on an old quilt off in the bushes. He’d been a handsome kid, tall and muscular, with regular features, blond hair, clear skin with a few freckles. It was hard to recall the details, but he knew he’d made it with two of the cheerleaders and somebody’s cousin from Mississippi. It’d been the first time he’d ever screwed a girl from out of state.

  He was trying to remember what she’d looked like as he went back to the office, dropped the leather thong with a whistle on his desk, and picked up his keys. Not that the girl mattered, he thought with a smile. His nearly flawless performance during the game is what had really mattered, since it had earned him a scholarship at a junior college down by the Louisiana border. After two years, he’d been picked up by a second-rate college team and been able to hang on to the scholarship until he’d eked out a degree in physical education.

  It’d been rocky after that. The coaching job at a junior high had ended when he was accused of seducing a girl in his driver’s ed class, although everybody knew she was sleeping with every jock, even the sissies on the soccer team. Finding a job with that on his résumé was like trying to slam-dunk a bowling ball. After a couple of wretched years selling used cars and cemetery plots, he’d come home for his mother’s funeral and found himself begging Grapper to hire him as assistant coach.

  Now it was possible Cory might find himself head coach of the Maggody Marauders, what with Amos in a body cast (on account of not noticing his grandson’s skateboard on the porch steps) and liable to retire. The other assistant coach had an edge, being Amos’s nephew, but there were ways to make sure that didn’t happen (like another skateboard). And Norma Kay kept swearing she put in a good word with her husband every chance she got. Bur was retired, but he’d reigned over the basketball program so long his opinion would matter when it came time for contracts in the spring.

  Cory parked his truck in front of his house and switched off the headlights. From where he stood, he could see Norma Kay’s car in her driveway alongside Bur’s ancient truck. Light shone from behind drawn shades, but the porch lights weren’t on to welcome unexpected guests.

  His social life was no more exciting than theirs, he thought as he went inside. He’d learned his lesson and steered clear of the local girls—despite their provocative looks and wiggly bottoms as they cut through the gym between classes. There were damn few single women in Maggody, except for spinsters like Edwina Spitz and withered-up widows like Bethesda Buchanon, who was rumored to fry up one of her cats when she ran low on grocery money. Arly Hanks was always crumpy when he ran into her, leaving him to wonder if she remembered his reputation in high school. He cruised the bars in Farberville every once in a while, but the college girls didn’t seem all that interested in his team’s chances for a conference title—and he wasn’t about to gabble about rock concerts or foreign films.

  Instead of starting supper, he took a scrapbook off the mantel and lay down on the couch. Maggody was in the AA conference and therefore rarely warranted more than a paragraph or two in the newspaper. The year they’d won the conference was different: There’d been a long story and a photograph of Cory as he leapt into the air, the ball clutched next to his chest, his face contorted with concentration. At that moment, all he’d wanted was to make that one particular shot.

  Now all he wanted was to be head coach.

  It had been quite a day in Maggody, but by midnight everything had settled down. Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill had been the site of a lot of conversation about the Hope Is Here caravan, but all of it had been speculative at best, and now the pink concrete-block building was locked up tighter than bark on a tree. Ruby Bee was sound asleep out back in #1 of the Flamingo Motel, her alarm clock set to rouse her in plenty of time to get the biscuits started for breakfast. If her clock failed to go off, there were plenty of roosters to do the job.

  Kevin Buchanon was snuggled in bed, snoring steadily as he dreamed of fatherhood. Dahlia tiptoed into the kitchen, peered wistfully into the refrigerator, and then found consolation of a sort in a late-night movie in which trustworthy American soldiers were bombing the wicked Japs into oblivion. Dahlia was mimicking the explosions, but real quietly so’s not to disturb kevvie.

  Over in the rectory, Brother Verber was sitting at the dinette, working on a second bottle of sacramental wine while he considered how he was going to defend his flock against this slick-talking serpent with his cotton-candy machines and promises of milk and honey.

  Out on Finger Lane, in the finest house in Maggody, Mrs. Jim Bob was staring at the shadows on the bedroom ceiling as she visualized how her position in the community would dwindle into nothingness if the members of the Missionary Society defected. She’d campaigned too long and hard to let that happen. Rather than count sheep, she began a mental list of Jim Bob’s latest batch of transgressions. By the time she got to fifty (tracking mud on the living room carpet), she was fast asleep.

  Jim Bob was across the hall, thinking of what he could do with the money from the sale of the acreage. None of his X-rated fantasies included his wife.

  Earlier, Estelle had been hunting through her supply closet in hopes of finding a product to salvage her hair, but she’d given up and gone to bed. Sleeping on bristly hair rollers was a challenge she could meet with ease, having done so f
or forty-odd years.

  In the field beyond the Grappers’ farmhouse, the RV was dark and still. A few spotlights had been left on in strategic corners of the vast tent, but the two occupants were used to them, as well as to the cots and the persistent presence of hungry mosquitoes.

  Dressed in a tired cotton robe and worn slippers, Norma Kay stood at the living room window, gazing at the top of the hill. In the back of the house, Bur was making his usual disgusting noises as he slept, but she’d long since given up hope she’d find his dead body in the morning (although she had a black dress in reserve in the coat closet). If she strained, she could hear the gentle hum of a generator behind the RV. It had been painfully tempting to rush up the hill to see Malachi, but she’d prayed for strength to wait for him to come to her. She was certain that he would.

  A man of the Lord always kept his word.

  3

  “Guess who called this morning,” Darla Jean McIlhaney said as Heather Reilly got in on the passenger’s side of the station wagon. Both of them wore shorts and blouses that subtly complemented each other’s, having worked it out beforehand on the phone. As soon-to-be seniors, they had an obligation to the sophomores and juniors to provide leadership in such matters.

  “Elvis?”

  “No, seriously.”

  Heather waited until they were out of the driveway, then took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her purse. “Brother Verber, because he wants you to play the Virgin Mary in the Sunday school pageant this year?”

  Darla Jean did not appreciate the implication that she wasn’t qualified for the role, even though she wasn’t. “Arly Hanks called me,” she said huffily. “She was all sugary on account of wanting us to do a favor for her.”

  “Us? You’d better not have—”

  “I already did, so there’s no point in having a hissy fit. Besides, it might turn out to be interesting, and I don’t seem to recall you having anything better to do. Just last night you were whining about how you were ready to dye your hair green out of boredom.” She glanced at Heather, who didn’t look convinced, and continued in a brighter voice. “There’s a new girl in town named Chastity. She came with that preacher and his trucks, and she’s all upset about having to go to high school here.”