“Which wasn’t nearly as bad as your bloody nose. Mrs. Fletchall thought you were going to have to get a blood transfusion.”
“Your left eye still looks a little crooked,” Tom observed.
Rick drew back his fist, then pointed up the driveway. “Can you come up to the house?”
“Now? You looked like you were going somewhere in a hurry.”
“Nothing as important as seeing you. And you’d already stopped in the middle of the road. When I saw your BMW, I thought you were another northern carpetbagger wanting to buy my place.”
“Does that happen?”
“Every so often someone rings the doorbell.” Rick grinned. “But there aren’t many people who could afford the house and the twenty-two hundred acres that go with it.”
“You’re up to that much land?”
“Yeah. I’m a bona fide tree farmer. Everything scientific and organized. But enough about me. How are you doing? You seemed okay at the funeral, but I know things like that hit you hard later on.”
“I’m fine most of the time.” Tom paused. “Have you talked to your father recently?”
“Not since last week.”
Tom decided not to mention the loss of his job. “I’m here to wrap up my dad’s affairs,” he said.
“That can wait an hour or two.”
“I’ll be in town for a few weeks. And I don’t want to surprise Tiffany.”
“She’s always ready to see you.”
Rover stuck his head out the passenger window of Tom’s car and barked. Rick leaned to the side to take a look.
“Is that thing yours?”
“Yeah, he’s a beauty, isn’t he?”
“If you say so. Where are you staying?”
“With Elias.”
“Why don’t you camp out with us? We have four empty guest rooms. And your dog could hang out in the kennel beside the horse barn. It’s heated and air-conditioned. After he eats and naps he could romp with my black Labs.”
“No, I need to be with Elias. He’s not doing too well with all that’s happened.”
An older car with a broken muffler and a hood painted a different color than the rest of the vehicle came up beside them. A middle-aged man shut off the engine and rolled down the passenger-side window.
“Need any help, Rick?” the man asked.
“No, Billy. Just talking to an old friend. This is Tom Crane. His father was John Crane, the lawyer.”
The man squinted and looked Tom over. “Yeah, I can see that. Your father sued me once. Dragged me in front of Judge Caldwell over a five-hundred-dollar plumbing job I did out of the goodness of my heart for a woman who complained the whole time.”
“I didn’t know that,” Tom said, glancing sideways at Rick.
“Billy, you probably deserved to get sued,” Rick cut in. “Give me a call tomorrow. I’ve got some work for you to do at one of my rental houses on Beaverdale Road.”
“Sure thing.”
The man started the car and continued on.
“I guess that’s one of the disadvantages a lawyer has practicing in a small town,” Rick said as the car left in a cloud of oily smoke. “Half the people in town like you; the other half hate you because you sued them.”
Two more cars and a pickup truck approached and slowed down so the people in the vehicles could stare at them.
“If we stay here much longer, we’ll have our picture in the paper tomorrow with a silly caption underneath it,” Rick said. “Give me a call so we can set a date for you to come out for supper. And make it soon.”
“Okay,” Tom replied. “It’s good seeing you.”
Rick put his hand on the door handle to his truck, then turned back toward Tom.
“You can run off to Atlanta, but this is the place where you’ll find the people who really care about you.”
Tom nodded. At that moment in his life he didn’t have a reason to disagree.
______
Tom followed Rick for a quarter mile before the truck turned onto a side road. Rick stuck his hand out the window and waved as Tom continued toward town.
Tom and Rick were lifelong friends. Tiffany had come along later. Tom first met her during his sophomore year of high school when Tiffany’s father accepted a management position with Pelham Financial and moved to Bethel from Montgomery, Alabama. Tom spotted the cute brunette with brown eyes the first day of school and made a point to sit beside her during lunch. They walked the halls together for a few weeks, but then she met a guy who shared her love for horses. The combination of man and beast was too much for Tom to overcome.
The summer before their senior year Tom and Tiffany’s romance rekindled. This time it burned hot. From the start of school they were inseparable, but two weeks before the homecoming game they got into an argument. Tom couldn’t remember what it was about, but he was willing to put it behind him and ask Tiffany to the big dance. The day before he popped the question, Rick pulled him aside and told him he had a major crush on Tiffany but had kept quiet because Tom was dating her. If Tom didn’t object, Rick wanted to ask Tiffany to the dance. Tom told him to go ahead. His friendship with Rick was stronger than any feelings he had for a girl who’d made him mad.
For Rick and Tiffany the homecoming dance was the beginning of a relationship that culminated in marriage four years later. The couple didn’t have any children, but Tiffany had a barn full of champion American Saddlebred horses and a wood-paneled room in her home crammed with blue ribbons and three-foot-high trophies.
Tom reached the city limits of Bethel, a line marked by a simple metal sign that read “Bethel Town Limit—Speed Limit 35 MPH Unless Otherwise Posted.” Beyond the sign was another that read “Bird Sanctuary.” The residential area on the east side of town contained modest wooden homes built during the heyday of the textile era. The condition of the homes varied greatly. Some were neat and tidy with well-kept yards and carefully trimmed bushes; others looked neglected and rundown with patchy grass and peeling paint.
Near the center of town Tom passed a church whose educational wing was named in memory of Arthur Pelham’s mother. Just beyond the church was the Etowah County courthouse, a two-story redbrick building with an entrance framed by a pair of white columns. The courtroom in the Etowah County courthouse was the place where Tom decided to become a lawyer.
As a boy, Tom loved visiting the empty courtroom with its dark wood floors, high ceiling, and ornate judicial bench. Tom would rock back and forth in the jury box chairs and swear himself in using a Bible whose cracked cover looked like it’d never been opened. Then he’d hop down and sit on the smooth wooden bench where prisoners waited to hear their fates. The only place off-limits was the judge’s chair. However, his heart pounding in his chest, Tom occasionally slipped into the high-backed black leather chair and surveyed the room. It was a view comparable to that of Zeus from Olympus. And in a town like Bethel, there was no greater power than a superior court judge seated on the bench. His judgments were thunderbolts, his orders sharp-tipped spears.
The lawyers of Etowah County clustered around the courthouse like grapes on a vine. For years Tom’s father had rented an office in a one-story brick building a block away. Tom pulled into an empty parking space in front of the glass door with his father’s name stenciled on it. The black lettering was chipped around the edges. There were two sheets of paper stuck to the door. One gave the date, time, and place of his father’s funeral service. The other announced “All Clients Call the Office on Wednesday or Saturday between 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.” It was signed “Mrs. Bernice Lawson,” his father’s longtime secretary.
Through the glass door Tom could see the simple reception area with its cracked leather sofa to the left and three mismatched leather side chairs facing it. Bernice’s desk divided the room in half. The door to his father’s office was directly behind her desk.
Tom had a key to the office, but he didn’t go inside. There would be plenty of time later to determine what needed to be done.
He’d asked Bernice to contact as many of his father’s clients as she could and tell them they needed to hire another lawyer. Many of the files had already been copied and picked up. Rover barked. It had been a long ride for the dog. Tom returned to the car.
“This isn’t the place for you to get out,” he said. “There are better trees for you to sniff at Elias’s house.”
chapter
FOUR
Elias Crane lived three miles north of town in a 125-year-old white frame house. Tom passed fields filled with stubby brown stalks left after the year’s soybean harvest. It was hard to see Elias’s house from the road but easy to tell where it stood. A grove of massive trees surrounded the homeplace. The Crane family farm had shrunk over the years to a few acres around the house and a perpetual easement for the dirt driveway that led to it. Tom turned onto the driveway. A cloud of red dust followed him. It would be impossible to keep his car clean during his time in Bethel. He parked beneath a large oak tree in the front yard. There was a detached garage to the right of the house, but it was filled with an old tractor and boxes of junk.
Tom opened the car door, and Rover bounded out. The dog wouldn’t wander far. There was plenty to occupy his nose within a few hundred feet of the house, and he always came when Tom called. Leaving his luggage in the trunk, Tom walked up three broad steps to a wooden front porch that stretched the length of the house. He opened the screen door and knocked. He banged louder. No answer. He turned the knob. It wasn’t locked. He entered the front room of the musty old house.
“Elias!” he called out. “It’s Tom!”
After a few seconds a door on the opposite side of the room opened and Elias shuffled out. The slender elderly man was the younger brother of Tom’s deceased grandfather. He squinted through rimless glasses and ran his fingers through a thick head of white hair.
“Didn’t hear you knock,” the old man said, gesturing with his hand over his shoulder.
Tom knew the room on the opposite side of the front room was his uncle’s study, a place devoted to the preparation of sermons during the years the older man served as a pastor. It was as off-limits to children as the judge’s chair in the courtroom.
“You’re not preaching anywhere, are you?” Tom asked in surprise.
“No, it’s secret work.”
Elias could be more obscure in his speech than Tom’s father. It was a family trait Tom hoped had skipped his generation. Elias blinked his eyes, then took out a wrinkled handkerchief and wiped away a tear.
“There’s no use damming up sorrow,” he said. “Seeing him in you set it off. The river of grief has its own course and takes its own pace.”
Tom’s father had lived with Elias for five years and taken care of the old man after Elias suffered a heart attack. John Crane’s untimely death had been a sharp blow. Elias returned the handkerchief to his pocket.
“It’s not right that he’s gone and I’m still here.”
Tom touched the older man on the shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do about that.”
Elias reached up and grabbed Tom’s hand in a surprisingly strong grip. Rover barked. Elias looked toward the open front door.
“Is that the dog you told me about?”
“Yes.”
The men stepped onto the porch. Elias held out his hand so Rover could sniff it. A glob of drool dripped from the dog’s mouth onto the porch.
“I’ll understand if you want him to sleep out here or in the garage,” Tom said. “He’s housebroken, but as you can see, he slobbers a lot.”
“This house has seen worse. You remember Uncle Albert? He’d cram a big wad of tobacco into his cheek but never could get the hang of keeping the spit from dripping down his chin and onto the floor.”
Elias held the door open for Rover, who sauntered in, sniffed a few objects in the front room, then headed directly for the study.
“Is that okay?” Tom asked.
The older man nodded. “Sometimes animals can tell the anointing.”
“What?” Tom asked before he could catch himself.
“They’re not limited in what they see by what they don’t believe,” Elias replied. “Do you remember the story of Balaam’s donkey?”
“No,” Tom admitted ruefully.
“The donkey saw what the prophet couldn’t. I’ll show it to you later. Do you want to stay in your father’s room?”
When John Crane lived with Elias he slept in a downstairs bedroom across the hall from the room where Elias slept.
“Will the upstairs blue bedroom be okay?”
“Yes, Amanda Burk’s daughter cleaned it the other day. I don’t often go up there, but everything you need should be there.”
“I’ll get my luggage.”
Tom unloaded the car and carried his suitcases up a narrow flight of stairs. The floors creaked with each step he took. There were three large bedrooms on the upper level of the house and a spacious bathroom built into a space that once served as a summer sleeping porch. The bathroom had a sloping roof that required Tom to stoop when he took a shower and a bank of windows that offered a nice view of the trees on the west side of the property. Unless someone was walking in the yard, it wasn’t necessary to close the curtains. There wasn’t another house within two hundred yards.
As a child, Tom always stayed in the blue bedroom when the Crane family gathered for biannual reunions. The boy cousins slept in the high poster bed and spilled over into sleeping bags on the floor. While Tom was unpacking his suitcases, Rover joined him. The dog walked into the bedroom, thoroughly sniffed it from one end to the other, then plopped down in a spot near the foot of the bed.
“Are you sure that’s the place you want?” Tom asked him. “That’s where my cousin Rudy used to put his sleeping bag. Rudy hated taking baths.”
The dog rested his large head on his paws and watched with bloodshot eyes as Tom finished putting away his clothes. Tom glanced at the clock. It was 6:00 p.m. There was no sight or smell of supper when he arrived. He went downstairs to grab a bag of dog food from the car. Rover, an expectant expression on his face, followed. Elias was sitting in his chair in the front room with his eyes closed and didn’t stir as they passed through the room.
The large country kitchen was at the rear of the house. Tom poured a generous helping of dog food into a large bowl, then checked the refrigerator. It contained a hodgepodge of leftovers. Elias had served as pastor of three different churches in the northwestern Georgia area, with stints in between as a quality-control supervisor in textile mills when no church was available. Tom recognized the names of former church members on some of the plastic and glass containers.
It was a relief that folks were stepping up to take care of Elias now that Tom’s father was gone. Rummaging through the containers, Tom selected meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, and something that looked like a corn soufflé. He stuck his head into the front room. Elias, his eyes open, was reading a book.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Not really, but there’s plenty in the refrigerator,” Elias answered with a wave of his hand. “Whatever you want is fine with me.”
Tom added a wedge of corn bread from a pan on the kitchen counter to each plate and warmed up the food. The kitchen was designed to serve crews of farmworkers, and the long table against the wall could seat twelve people. At reunion time family members ate in the kitchen and spilled over into the front room, where they gathered around makeshift tables made of broad boards set on sawhorses and covered with white sheets. Tonight the two plates at the end of the big table seemed overwhelmed.
“Supper’s ready!” Tom called out.
Elias shuffled into the kitchen. “I see you found the meat loaf. Velma Higgins from Rocky River brought that. She made it using grocery-store beef and pork from hogs raised on their place.”
“Homegrown pork is hard to find in Atlanta,” Tom said. “What do you want to drink?”
“I’ll have water, but there’s tea in the refrigerator.”
Tom poured two glasses of water. The deep well that supplied the house contained just the right touch of iron to make the water sweet. Tom waited for Elias to sit at the head of the table, but the older man moved to the side.
“Don’t you want to sit at the head of the table?” Tom asked.
“No. You need to get used to it.”
Tom sat down and waited for Elias to pray. The old man kept his hands folded in his lap and did nothing.
“Are you going to say the blessing?” Tom asked.
Elias leveled his gaze at Tom. “You do it.”
“No, sir.” Tom shook his head. “You’re the praying person in this family. This food will get cold before I talk to God about it.”
Elias leaned over and inhaled the aroma of the plate in front of him. “Ignoring this corn bread isn’t God’s will. I’ll pray.”
Elias closed his eyes and began to pray. Tom kept his eyes open and watched. There was no denying the existence of something special about the old man. Even though there were a few small holes in his flannel shirt, he looked noble.
“Amen,” Elias said.
Tom dived into the meal and cleaned his plate. Elias ate the corn bread but picked at the rest of his food.
“If you had food like this as rarely as I do, you’d appreciate it more,” Tom said between bites.
“I appreciate it. Fix yourself a second plate.”
Tom loaded up and put his plate in the microwave. “Is that a coconut cream pie on the top shelf in the refrigerator?” he asked.
“Yes. Baked by Bobby Joe Hargrove,” Elias answered, brightening up. “Do you remember him? He drives a logging truck. Years ago his father spent time in jail for moonshining but got saved before he died.”
Elias’s memory for remote events was crystal clear. His mention of Mr. Hargrove uncorked a series of stories about the Mount Pisgah Church, a stone building beside one of the main highways west of Bethel, and the people who worshipped there. Finally, Elias stopped. He stared at Tom for a moment, then looked out a window.
“Are we still on daylight savings time?” he asked.
Water's Edge Page 4
