“It all has to be done in person,” he said. “And their offices are only open during the day when I can’t drive. Because of my eyes.”
“Oh,” Patricia said.
“If someone could drive me…,” he began.
Instantly, Patricia realized what he wanted, and she felt the jaws of yet another obligation closing around her.
“Normally I’d be happy to,” she said, quickly. “But it’s the last week of school and there’s so much to do…”
“You said it would only take five minutes.”
For a moment, Patricia resented his wheedling tone, and then she felt like a coward. She’d promised to help. She wanted to know more about him. Surely she wasn’t going to quit at the first obstacle.
“You’re right,” she said. “Let me get my car and pull it around. I’ll try to get as close to your front door as I can.”
“Can we take my van?” he asked.
Patricia balked. She couldn’t drive a stranger’s car. Besides, she’d never driven a van before.
“I—” she began.
“The tinted windows,” he said.
Of course. She nodded, not seeing another option.
“And I hate to bother you when you’re doing so much already…” he began.
Her heart sank, and then immediately she felt selfish. This man had come to her home last night and been sassed by her daughter and spat at by her mother-in-law. He was a human being asking for help. Of course she would do her best.
“What is it?” she asked, making her voice sound as warm and genuine as possible.
He stopped rocking.
“My wallet was stolen, and my birth certificate and all those kind of things are in storage back home,” he said. “I don’t know how long it’ll take someone to hunt them down. How can I do any of this without them?”
An image of Ted Bundy with his arm in a fake cast asking Brenda Ball to help him carry his books to his car flashed across Patricia’s mind. She dismissed it as undignified.
“That probate court letter is going to solve the problem of identification,” she said. “That’s all you need for the Waterworks, and when we’re there we’ll get a bill printed with your name and this address on it to show the electric company. Give me the keys and I’ll get your car.”
* * *
—
The tinted windows kept the front seats of his van dim and purple, which wasn’t such a bad thing since they were covered in stains and rips. What Patricia didn’t like was the back. He had screwed wood over the back windows to make it completely dark, and it made her nervous to drive with all that emptiness behind her.
At the Waterworks, they discovered that he had left his wallet at home. He apologized profusely, but she didn’t mind writing the one-hundred-dollar check for the deposit. He promised to pay her back as soon as they got home. At SCE&G they wanted a two-hundred-fifty-dollar deposit, and she hesitated.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to do this,” James Harris said.
She looked at him, his face already reddening with sunburn, cheeks wet with the fluid streaming from beneath his sunglasses. She weighed her sympathy against what Carter would say when he balanced their checkbook. But it was her money, too, wasn’t it? That was what Carter always said when she asked for her own bank account: this money belonged to both of them. She was a grown woman and could use it however she saw fit, even if it was to help another man.
She wrote the second check and tore it off with a brisk flick of her wrist before she could change her mind. She felt efficient. Like she was solving problems and getting things done. She felt like Grace.
Back at his house she wanted to wait on the front porch while he got his wallet, but he hustled her inside. By now it was after two o’clock and the sun pressed down hard.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, leaving her alone in his dark kitchen.
She thought about opening his refrigerator to see what he had inside. Or looking in his cupboards. She still didn’t know anything about him.
The floor cracked and he came back into the kitchen.
“Three hundred fifty dollars,” he said, counting it out on the table in worn twenties and a ten. He beamed at her, even though it looked painful to move his sunburned face. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
“I’m happy to help,” she said.
“You know…,” he said, and trailed off. He looked away, then shook his head briskly. “Never mind.”
“What?” she asked.
“It’s too much,” he told her. “You’ve been wonderful. I don’t know how I can repay you.”
“What is it?” Patricia asked.
“Forget it,” he said. “It’s unfair.”
“What is?” she asked.
He got very still.
“Do you want to see something really cool? Just between the two of us?”
The inside of Patricia’s skull lit up with alarm bells. She’d read enough to know that anyone saying that, especially a stranger, was about to ask you to take a package over the border or park outside a jewelry store and keep the engine running. But when was the last time anyone had even said the word cool to her?
“Of course,” she said, dry-mouthed.
He went away, then returned with a grimy blue gym bag. He swung it onto the table and unzipped it.
The dank stench of compost wafted from the bag’s mouth and Patricia leaned forward and looked inside. It was stuffed with money: fives, twenties, tens, ones. The pain in Patricia’s left ear disappeared. Her breath got high in her chest. Her blood sizzled in her veins. Her mouth got wet.
“Can I touch it?” she asked, quietly.
“Go ahead.”
She reached out for a twenty, thought that looked greedy, and picked up a five. Disappointingly, it felt like any other five-dollar bill. She dipped her hand in again and this time pulled out a thick sheaf of bills. This felt more substantial. James Harris had just gone from a vaguely interesting man to a full-blown mystery.
“I found it in the crawl space,” he said. “It’s eighty-five thousand dollars. I think it’s Auntie’s life savings.”
It felt dangerous. It felt illegal. She wanted to ask him to put it away. She wanted to keep fondling it.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I wanted to ask you,” he said.
“Put it in the bank.”
“Can you imagine me showing up at First Federal with no ID and a bag of cash?” he said. “They’d be on the phone to the police before I could sit down.”
“You can’t keep it here,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I can’t sleep with it in the house. For the past week, I’ve been terrified someone’s going to break in.”
The solutions to so many mysteries began to reveal themselves to Patricia. He wasn’t just sick with the sun, he was sick with stress. Ann Savage had been unfriendly because she wanted to keep people away from the house where she’d hidden her life savings. Of course she hadn’t trusted banks.
“We have to open an account for you,” Patricia said.
“How?” he asked.
“Leave that to me,” she said, a plan already forming in her mind. “And put on a dry shirt.”
* * *
—
They stood at the counter of First Federal on Coleman Boulevard half an hour later, James Harris already sweating through his fresh shirt.
“May I speak with Doug Mackey?” Patricia asked the girl across the counter. She thought it was Sarah Shandy’s daughter but she couldn’t be sure so she didn’t say anything.
“Patricia,” a voice called from across the floor. Patricia turned and saw Doug, thick-necked and red-faced, with his belly straining the bottom three buttons of his shirt, coming at them with his arms spread wide. “They say every
dog has its day, and today’s mine.”
“I’m trying to help my neighbor, James Harris,” Patricia said, shaking his hand, making introductions. “This is my friend from high school, Doug Mackey.”
“Welcome, stranger,” Doug Mackey said. “You couldn’t have a better guide to Mt. Pleasant than Patricia Campbell.”
“We have a slightly delicate situation,” Patricia said, lowering her voice.
“That’s why they let me have a door on my office,” Doug said.
He led them into his office decorated in Lowcountry sportsman. His windows looked out over Shem Creek; his chairs were made of burgundy leather. The framed prints were of things you could eat: birds, fish, deer.
“James needs to open a bank account, but his ID has been stolen,” Patricia said. “What are his options? He’d like to get it done today.”
Doug leaned forward, pressing his belly into the edge of the desk, and grinned.
“Darlin’, that’s no problem a’tall. You can be the cosigner. You’d be responsible for any overdrafts and have full access, but it’s a good way to start while he waits for his license. Those people at the DMV move like they get paid by the hour.”
“Does it show up on our statement at all?” Patricia asked, thinking about how she’d explain this to Carter.
“Nah,” Doug said. “I mean, not unless he starts writing bad checks all over town.”
They all looked at each other for a moment, then laughed nervously.
“Let me get those forms,” Doug said, leaving the room.
Patricia couldn’t believe she’d solved this problem so easily. She felt relaxed and complacent, like she’d eaten a huge meal. Doug came back in and bent over the paperwork.
“Where are you from?” Doug asked, not looking up from his forms.
“Vermont,” James Harris said.
“And what kind of initial deposit will you be making?” Doug asked.
Patricia hesitated, then said, “This.”
She unfolded a two-thousand-dollar check and pushed it across Doug’s desk. They’d decided depositing cash right away was a bad idea, especially given how seedy James Harris looked today. He’d already reimbursed her in cash, and it burned inside her purse. Her face burned, too. Her lips felt numb. She’d never written a check this big before.
“Excellent,” Doug said, not hesitating for a second.
“Excuse me,” James said. “How do you feel about cash deposits?”
“I feel good about them,” Doug said, not looking up as he exhaled on a notary’s stamp and smacked it across the bottom of the paperwork.
“I do a fair amount of landscaping,” James Harris said, and Patricia almost gasped. He couldn’t even go outside. “And a lot of my clients like to pay in cash.”
“As long as it’s under ten thousand we don’t bat an eye,” Doug said. “We like money around here. It’s not like you’re used to up north where they make you jump through hoops while singing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ to do with what’s yours.”
“That sounds fine,” James Harris said with a smile.
Patricia looked at his strong white teeth, gleaming and wet. The ease with which he’d lied made her doubt everything she’d done for him that morning and, for the briefest of moments, she felt like she’d gotten in over her head. On the ride home, James Harris’s gratitude and praise came nonstop, even as he got weaker, and she ultimately had to let him lean on her to walk from the van to his front door. She helped him onto his bed, helped him take off his boots, and then he took her hand.
“I have never had someone help me like this,” he said. “In my entire life, you are the kindest person I’ve ever met. You’re an angel sent to me in my time of need.”
He reminded her of Carter when they’d first gotten married, back when the slightest effort on her part—making coffee in the morning, baking a pecan pie for dessert—had elicited endless hymns of praise. His enthusiasm disarmed her so much that when he asked her what they were reading for book club that month, well, she couldn’t help it: she invited him to join.
THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY
June 1993
CHAPTER 9
May had spun faster and faster, racing toward the finish line of school being out, and final exams, and report cards, and Korey was always studying at someone’s house, getting picked up, dropped off, sleeping over, and Patricia had to fix snacks for Blue’s homeroom end-of-the-year party, and teacher evaluations were due, and library fines had to be paid before report cards would be issued, and then on May 28 it all slammed to a stop. The kids were given summer reading lists, Albemarle Academy locked its doors, and June settled over the Old Village.
The days dawned noonday hot, and gas tanks hissed when you took off their caps. The sunlight fell hard and sharp, and insects roared in the bushes, only taking a break in the dead hour between three and four in the morning. Windows came down and doors shut tight. Every house became a hermetically sealed space station, central air hovering around a chilly sixty-eight, the ice maker rattling all day until around seven o’clock in the evening when it started making a grinding sound and just spat a few chips of watery ice into glasses, and physical exertion seemed like too much effort, and even thinking hard became exhausting.
Patricia really and truly meant to tell the book club that she’d invited James Harris to their next meeting, but the heat sucked the determination from her bones, and by the time the sun went down every day she barely had enough willpower left to cook supper, and she kept putting it off and putting it off, and finally it was the day of book club and she thought, Well, maybe it’s better this way.
Everyone settled into her living room with their glasses of wine, and water, and iced tea, blotting the backs of their necks with Kleenex, fanning their faces, slowly reviving in the air conditioning, and Patricia thought this would be the perfect time to say something.
“Are you all right?” Grace asked. “You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin.”
“I just remembered the cheese tray,” Patricia said, and went to the kitchen.
Mrs. Greene stood by the sink washing Miss Mary’s supper dishes.
“I’m going to give Miss Mary a bath before bed,” she said. “Just to cool her down some.”
“Of course,” Patricia said, taking her cheese tray out of the fridge and stripping the Saran Wrap from it. She balled it up and then stopped, wondering if she could use it again. She decided she could and left it beside the sink.
She took the cheese tray back into the living room and had just set it down on the wooden crate they used as a coffee table when the doorbell rang.
“Oh,” Patricia said in the tone of someone who’d forgotten to buy half-and-half. “I forgot to mention that James Harris wanted to stop by and join us tonight. I hope no one minds.”
“Who?” Grace asked, sitting bolt upright, neck stiff.
“He’s here?” Kitty asked, flailing to sit up straighter.
“Great,” Maryellen moaned. “Another man with his opinions.”
Slick looked around wildly at everyone, trying to figure out how she should feel as Patricia scurried from the room.
“I’m so glad you could come,” she said to James Harris, opening the front door.
He wore a plaid shirt tucked into blue jeans, white tennis shoes, and a braided leather belt. She wished he hadn’t worn tennis shoes. It would bother Grace.
“Thank you so much for the invitation,” he said, then stepped over her threshold and stopped. He made his voice so low she barely heard it over the screaming insects behind him in the yard. “I have over half in the bank. A little each week. Thank you.”
It was more than she could bear to hear him talk about their shared secret with people right in the next room. Her arms prickled with goose bumps and her head felt light. She hadn’t even deposited the two thousand th
ree hundred and fifty dollars he’d given her into her and Carter’s bank account. She knew she should have but instead it sat in her closet, tucked inside a pair of white gloves. She liked having it in her hands too much to let it go.
“Don’t let the air conditioning out,” she said.
She led James Harris into the living room and when she saw everyone’s faces she realized she really should have made those phone calls and prepared them.
“Everyone, this is James Harris,” Patricia said, putting on a smile. “I hope y’all don’t mind if our new neighbor sits in tonight.”
The room got quiet.
“Thank you all so much for letting me join you,” James Harris said.
Grace coughed softly into a Kleenex.
“Well,” Kitty said. “Having a man around will certainly liven things up. Welcome, tall dark stranger.”
James Harris sat down on the sofa beside Maryellen, across from Kitty and Grace, and everyone pulled their legs together, tucked their skirts beneath their thighs, and straightened their spines. Kitty reached for the cheese tray, then pulled her hand back and held it in her lap. James Harris cleared his throat.
“Did you read this month’s book, James?” Slick asked. She showed him the cover of her copy of The Bridges of Madison County. “We read Helter Skelter last month, and we’re reading Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me next month, so this felt like a nice break.”
“You ladies read a strange assortment of books,” James Harris said.
“We’re a strange assortment of broads,” Kitty replied. “Patricia says you’ve decided to live here even after what your aunt did to her.”
Patricia brushed her hair over her left ear and opened her mouth to say something nice.
“Great-aunt,” James Harris said before Patricia could speak.
“That’s cutting it a bit fine,” Maryellen said.
“I’m surprised you don’t mind the notoriety,” Kitty said.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Page 8