There at the stadium, surrounded by people having a good time, she wondered if she could forgive him for nearly getting her killed with his devil dummy. In fact—
With a start, Faye took another look at the opposing team—on the backs of their jerseys were written the words, “Blue Devils.” She realized, with some relief, that Jimmie’s stunt the day before had nothing to do with her; it was nothing more than a high school prank gone wrong. She looked back at Jimmie. The protective look in his lovely eyes showed that he returned Irene’s love. For that, Faye was willing to cut him some slack.
But apparently someone else wasn’t. Ronya Smiley was heading toward Jimmie and Irene, and she was wasting no time. Her long sturdy legs took the stadium stairs two at a time, and her voice boomed out over the stands.
“I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius.” She dropped a heavy hand on Jimmie’s shoulder. “But now I see you’re just an ignorant kid.”
Irene started to speak, but Ronya silenced her by placing her other hand on Irene’s shoulder. It was as large as the one restraining Jimmie, but a lot gentler.
“You say you want to take care of Irene. Well, how do you plan to do that when you don’t appear to have good sense? Let me explain to you how this world works.” Releasing Irene, she grabbed Jimmie’s other shoulder and put her mouth right next to his ear.
Jimmie’s air of teenage superiority evaporated, replaced by the vulnerable innocence of a young child shocked to learn that his actions have not pleased. When Ronya released him, he looked at her with turquoise eyes full of abject apology and muttered something inaudible.
“You want some more popcorn?” Brent asked.
Faye gave up trying to eavesdrop on Ronya’s efforts to jerk a knot in Jimmie’s youthful cockiness. It wasn’t nice to ignore one’s date by indulging one’s snoopier instincts. Still, she wished she could have heard Ronya’s explanation of how the world worked. She suspected the woman could offer an original perspective on most issues.
***
It spoke well for Brent that the Alcaskaki team’s ignominious loss to the Blue Devils passed quickly for Faye. He seemed to know everybody in the grandstand—whites, blacks, and Sujosa alike—and if he didn’t introduce her to every last one of them, it wasn’t because he didn’t try. Early in the evening, she’d mentioned that the soaring, spinning trajectories of a flying football took her back to physics class, and his eyes had lit up in recognition of another science geek. Brent’s observations on a perfectly thrown football, spiraling along its parabolic path, were particularly cogent, considering that he’d been a good physics student and a quarterback.
All in all, it was hard to find fault with a handsome, friendly, smart date who seemed to like her very much.
On the twenty-minute ride home, Brent provided an explanation of the mechanical advantage of tackling low, well beneath the other guy’s center-of-gravity, so that the longer lever arm could help you knock him off his feet, at which point Faye realized she’d been had.
“You’re making fun of me,” she said, twisting against her seatbelt to get a good look at his face.
Brent grinned. “I knew an evening watching small-town football wouldn’t change your life. You’re more the foreign-films-with-tiny-subtitles type, but we’re a hundred miles away from that kind of entertainment. Going to the game is like—well, it’s like being in high school again. You go to see people and catch up with old friends. If you’re a woman, you check out what the other women are wearing, so you’ll have something to talk to your friends about all week. If you’re a man, you check out the other guys’ dates, so—”
“So you’ll have something to talk to your friends about all week. Just like high school.”
“Well, yeah.” He reached for her hand. “Thanks for coming tonight. My social status is hugely enhanced because the pretty new archaeologist came to the game with me.”
“Really?” Faye thought of the crowd in the football stadium. Sitting with Brent among his fellow Alcaskaki townspeople, she had felt like a dark smudge on a broad canvas of white faces. “Are you sure your Alcaskaki friends weren’t wishing you’d picked a white girl for your date?”
“The twentieth century’s dead, Faye, and good riddance. Nobody here cares what color you are. Although I’ll admit, the grandstand did look a little segregated.” He spoke as if he’d never noticed that his neighbors still maintained a color line, even while watching the big game. “I guess people just sit where they’ve always sat, but that doesn’t make them bigots. I mean, did you get the impression from anybody that you weren’t welcome?”
“No, I didn’t,” Faye said. She tactfully failed to mention the background reading she’d done while preparing for this project. She doubted that the citizens of Alcaskaki and the Sujosa settlement had dropped centuries of racial conflict merely because the millennium had changed. The fact that she thought her date was naive did not, however, dim her growing respect for his apparent color-blindness. She decided to put some effort into learning to enjoy football. Enjoying Brent’s company required no effort at all.
“Do you think the Sujosa will lose themselves, now that the rest of the world knows they’re here?” she said. “I mean, they’ve obviously mingled with the white folks from Alcaskaki for years, but the Rural Assistance Project should open up a million opportunities for them.”
“You think so?” He shook his head. “I cannot believe they’re still calling themselves that. The Rural Assistance Project. There’s the government for you.”
“Why shouldn’t we call the project that? It’s paying for a lot more than the historical research I’m doing. It’s funding home repairs. It’s brought jobs—”
“Just some piddling low-paid temporary jobs. Jobs that will help put food on the table for a few months, then disappear.”
Faye frowned. “That can’t be right. I read—”
“I know what you read. But I’m telling you it’s not happening. The Sujosa are getting shafted.” Brent looked like he could taste his bitter words.
“What do you mean?”
“The draft budget I worked on had line items for Sujosa-owned businesses. There was money to help capitalize new firms. There were funds to train people to run their own businesses, but when the project was finally approved, all that money got slashed. Elliott Young has top-notch construction skills, and he’s worked as a roofer. There is absolutely no reason for this project to hire outside roofing companies to repair the Sujosa’s houses. Elliott could do it, and he could create jobs for a few other Sujosa while he was at it, but he doesn’t have money for equipment and he doesn’t know a thing about starting a company. So now he’s going to get a new roof, built by somebody from outside the settlement. He’s going to hate himself for accepting charity, and he’s being robbed of a real chance to make a real livelihood.”
Brent’s eyes were on the road. His grim expression made him look less like a good ol’ boy, and more like a man who’d left his small-town roots and made good, then found the guts to come back home.
Faye stated the obvious. “You’re not happy with how the project is being handled.”
“Hell, no. I don’t care about all the high-and-mighty research being done at the Sujosa’s expense. Well, that’s not true. Some far-off day, we’ll find a cure for AIDS, and I like the idea of being part of that, so I stick around, but there are days I think it would’ve been better if I’d never published that paper. It’s just that some people don’t think the Sujosa are capable of taking care of themselves.”
“People like Raleigh?”
“Raleigh, Bingham, Amory—they haven’t given the Sujosa a thought, one way or another. They’re just after a high-profile publication or two. But they don’t harm the situation—not like some people.”
Faye knew from his tone that Brent had someone specific in mind. He couldn’t possibly be talking about Laurel, and she herself had only just arrived. Who was left?
“You mean Carmen?”
“Yes, Carmen. If you could hear the patronizing tone she uses in her talks and in her papers. As if she’s talking about some other species—a lesser species. It’s no wonder the bean-counters think the Sujosa needed to be treated like children; the government has no concept of giving them any real control over a project that is supposed to be to their benefit.”
Brent’s antagonism toward Carmen bothered Faye, because she liked Carmen. It wasn’t the first time she’d found herself in this position; academia was rife with intriguing, intelligent people who couldn’t stand half the other intriguing, intelligent people surrounding them. Faye generally chose to fly under the radar by being cordial to everybody and refusing to participate in the backbiting. Perhaps sensing her discomfort, Brent fell silent. Faye did too, for she was no good at small talk.
Brent, who was the world champion of small talk, managed to wrestle the conversation into submission, and Faye was glad. It wasn’t good for a date to end on a downer.
“Maybe the Sujosa don’t need anybody’s help after all,” he said, forcing a smile. “Has anybody told you about Jimmie Lavelle’s college plans?”
Faye shook her head.
“He’ll start college next fall, and he’s had multiple offers of full academic scholarships. His mama’s so proud she can’t see straight.”
Faye thought of Irene’s soft brown eyes gazing up at Jimmie. How would the young couple fare when he was a college graduate and she was a high school dropout with a dead-end job bagging up other people’s dry-cleaning? She said only, “I hope Jimmie gets everything he wants.”
“He’s a good kid. He deserves it.”
Irene’s a good kid, Faye thought. I hope she gets everything she wants, too.
When they drove up to Faye’s quarters, Brent’s headlights raked across the front porch. There was no mistaking the big, lanky form of the man asleep in one of the rockers.
“Oh, I should have told Joe not to wait up,” Faye said. “He worries. Especially since last year when I had a date that…um, didn’t go well at all.” She spared Brent the details of being chased with a gun after having half the life choked out of her.
“What is he to you, anyway? Your bodyguard?”
“No,” Faye said, looking at the dark porch where Joe sat. “He’s my very good friend, and everybody needs one of those. However,” she said, and even she could hear the mischief in her own voice, “he did kill the last man I dated.”
She leaned over and kissed him, lightly and just long enough to leave him thinking, then hopped out of the car. She would wait until he was safely out of sight before she woke Joe up and sent him home.
***
Faye entered the parlor to find Carmen sitting at the table, reading the paper. She sat down opposite her.
Carmen nodded at the window, where Joe could be seen ambling away. “There aren’t many women lucky enough to have one good-looking man to take her out and show her a good time, and another one waiting at home to make sure her date brings her back safe.”
“Did he sit out there all this time?”
“Do you think Laurel and I would let your studly friend sit alone on our porch? Oh, no. We invited him in. It was such a sacrifice on our part.” Carmen laid the back of her hand across her forehead, trying for the dramatic pose of a silent-movie damsel. The winged pigs flying across the chest of her pajamas detracted from the effect.
“Did he talk?” Faye asked. “Joe can get a little tongue-tied around strangers.”
“Did the man talk? Our friend Laurel could talk to a brick wall and get it to answer back. First, she told him she just loved his shoes. I’ve only seen him in his work boots, but he comes in here in these cute little leather shoes—”
“They’re moccasins. He makes them himself.”
“That’s what he said. And leather pants—”
“He makes them, too.”
“Well, neither of us wanted to talk about the pants, because he looked just a little too damn good in them, so Laurel asked him about the leather pouch hanging off his belt—”
Faye opened her mouth to speak, but Carmen waved the interruption away. “I know. He made that, too. And it was full of the coolest things. Arrowheads and stuff. Before I knew it, he’d spent two hours helping Laurel chip a little lopsided pointy thing. It doesn’t look much like an arrowhead, but she’s real proud of it.”
“She should be,” Faye said. “Flintknapping isn’t easy.”
“He was in the middle of telling us how he lived on an island with you—but not with you—when he realized how late it was. He got all flustered and said he had to hurry home, because Laurel needed to rest so her leg could heal. And he pretended to go, but I saw him sneak back to the porch so he could wait up for you.”
Faye knew Carmen was hoping she’d confess to being the apex of a budding romantic triangle with Joe and Brent at the other two corners. The truth was so prosaic—Joe had never been more nor less than her friend and, counting this evening with Brent, she’d had exactly three dates since Christmas. Christmas of 1997. Changing the subject was less humiliating than telling the truth.
“I believe I’m ready for bed,” she said, retreating in the direction of her bedroom.
“Take an extra blanket,” Carmen said, following her. “It’s supposed to get cold tonight.”
Faye, who’d been cold since she’d arrived, said, “I don’t suppose there’s central heating.”
“Nope. Only the kerosene space heater here in the parlor. I’m sure it works fine, but I hate the smell of kerosene, so I’ve put off lighting it till I just couldn’t stand the cold.”
“That’s okay. Blankets will do.” Faye was freezing, but she was too proud to be the first one who lit the bad-smelling heater. Maybe her Florida-bred bones would be warmer once she got in bed.
Soon enough, Faye decided that maybe it wasn’t all that cold. She curled up under thick blankets that smelled like they had been dried in the sun, and her sleep was full of gentle seaside winds and blood-warm gulf waters. For a few hours, she was home.
***
It was hot. Faye rolled over, throwing off her blankets and letting them slide to the floor. That was better; she’d be able to get back to sleep if she could just cool off a little, but shedding the blankets hadn’t helped. She was still too hot. There was a ceiling fan in the room, but starting it would have required her to find the cord and yank it. And that would have meant opening her eyes and getting up.
The word “help” cut through her drowsiness.
A voice that wasn’t Carmen’s called out again. “Help! Wake up, somebody! The house is on fire!”
Laurel. The house was on fire and Laurel could barely walk.
Faye opened her eyes to find the room flickering with a light that had nothing to do with dawn. The air above her was a smoky haze that reflected the light in a dark, ruddy glow. She rolled off the bed onto the floor, hoping to find some cooler, cleaner air that her lungs could tolerate. Where to go? There were two doors to her room and two windows. One of the doors led to the house’s central hall, but it was part of a wall that was already on fire, so it was best to leave it closed. The windows appealed to her as the quickest and easiest way out, and Faye instinctively wanted to jump out the window and run, but she couldn’t leave Laurel.
“Somebody help me! I can’t reach my crutches.”
On all fours, Faye lunged across the floor and reached up for the old-fashioned iron doorknob of the door that connected her room to Laurel’s. It was hot, but not so hot that she couldn’t turn it. The opening door revealed Laurel, cowering on the floor against the room’s outside wall. Her crutches were propped against the wall on the far side of her bed, and that wall was on fire. Flames licked at the crutches and reached out for the bed where Laurel had been sleeping. The younger woman’s hands scrabbled at the wall, trying to find something sturdy enough to help her pull herself onto her feet.
Faye
crawled to the window nearest Laurel and tried to lift it. It was locked, and the locks were four feet above her head. She didn’t dare stand up into the toxic smoke that might blind her or scald her lungs. Instead, she grabbed the bedside table with one hand, slinging a lamp and a paperback book to the floor. The table was old and crafted of solid walnut, so it had a satisfying heft as Faye hurled it at the window. It crashed easily through the old, rippled glass.
Using the base of the lamp, she knocked the broken glass out of the window frame, then dragged in a lungful of decent air and closed her eyes. Raising herself just enough to sit, crouched over, in the open window, she grasped Laurel under both armpits and lifted the younger woman to her lap. Then she let herself fall backward, and the two women toppled out.
Faye’s head hit the ground with far more force than she would have preferred. The impact drove the air from her lungs and, as she struggled for breath, her field of vision collapsed into a narrow tunnel focused only on the hypnotic dance of the uncontrolled fire. It frightened her to watch the tunnel narrow, snuffing the orange and red flames, bit by bit. She needed to get them further away, but she was losing consciousness and there was nothing she could do about it.
Where was Carmen? Why wasn’t she screaming for help? Had she escaped? Faye did her best to fight off the encroaching darkness, but she failed.
***
Faye felt two small hands grasp her under the arms, then pull her a yard or so in the proper direction, which was away from the burning house. She opened her eyes to see Laurel crawl another few feet, grab Faye under her arms, and pull her again. Laurel might not have the full use of her legs, but she was doggedly stubborn. While Faye was unconscious, Laurel had managed to drag her a safe distance from the house.
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