When Lila mentions Hamp’s idea about involving the F.B.I., Ruth looks up sharply, yanks her cigarette out of her mouth. “The F.B.I.?! Surely, if you can get the Governor, we don’t need the Gestapo!”
“Well, no,” Lila says. “I guess not.”
“Sorry.” Ruth drops her cigarette on the sidewalk, grinds it out deliberately with her foot. “I am not a fan of Mr. Hoover. So . . .”—she looks up, smiles—“you’ll take on Tallahassee and the District Attorney’s office, while I work the court of public opinion?”
Lila chuckles, holds out her hand. “Deal,” she says.
BACK AT THE HOUSE, Lila wheels the truck into the big grove barn. As she crosses the yard to the porch, she sees the small brown figure rise from the kitchen table, grab a tall glass from the cupboard, and turn, calling out, “Glass uh tea?”
“No thanks, Sissy. Sweet tea on top of Jack Daniel’s sounds terrible.” Lila extracts a squat glass from the cupboard, pours herself a nightcap.
“You drink like yo’ daddy,” Sissy pouts, returning to the table. Disapproval puckers her face like a prune.
“Better him than Mamma, huh?” Lila says darkly, sliding into the chair opposite her.
“Since when they serve Jack Daniel’s at a school-board meetin’?” Sissy wants to know.
“Meetin’, my fanny!” Lila huffs. “Kyle back-doored the school board while we were waitin’ out front. We never even got inside.”
“Those chil’ren get to go back t’ they school?”
“Not yet. But I talked to Hamp Berry and he’s goin’ to help.”
“Hamp?” Sissy’s taken aback. “G’wan t’help who do whut?”
“Well, for starters, he helped me kill a bottle of J.D. He’s also lookin’ into takin’ Kyle and the board to court.”
Sissy shakes her head at Lila’s smirk. Her tongue makes soft tut-tut noises against the roof of her mouth. “Shoulda married Hamp Berry when yuh had th’ chance,” she says, mournful.
“Think so? Given up my shot to rub shoulders with the Army’s top brass? Dodge the buzz bombs in Bushey Park? Follow Ike into Paris and Berlin?” Lila’s bristling.
“Ain’t nobody rubbin’ yore shoulders now,” Sissy says slyly, “far as Ah see.”
“Damnit, Sissy. You can’t really see me married, with a husband like Hamp, and a screaming passel of kids, can you?” The old fraud. Everyone knew Sissy’s history with husbands was “three away—run away, put away, and passed away.” It was after Henry, “the good and last one,” died that the Judge added rooms for Sissy to the back of the house, where she received “callers,” but pointedly refused all proposals.
Sissy’s eyes, her whole face, softens with genuine affection. “No, Missy, course not. But I shore would give anythin’ tuh see you happy.”
“Aw, Sissy.” Lila swigs deeply, feeling the whiskey expand her growing sense of melancholy. “Happy stood me up years ago. You know that.”
“Well,” the old woman’s false teeth show abruptly, wide and white. “Ah remember you happy once or twice. When you and Louis wuz little, leapin’ and croakin’ ’round here, like uh couple pond frogs!”
“We drove you crazy, I know.”
“And the night they made you Queen of th’ whole school, and yuh looked like one, too.”
“And Mamma made me wear that ridiculous red dress, and Hamp and Daddy had to hold her up on the sidelines, cause she was so soused she couldn’t climb the steps to the parents’ section?”
Sissy refuses to take the bait. “And the day they named Louis All-American. Yore daddy so proud, he ’bout bust a gut!”
“And the night Louis lit outta here?” Lila says it quietly, staring into her empty glass. “And the day that stranger in a uniform delivered the telegram? ‘We regret to inform you . . . sincere gratitude for your great sacrifice . . .’ ”
“Tha’s th’ Jack talkin’, girl,” Sissy says sharply, rising, clearing the table. “Ain’ no happy there.”
“Or anywhere ’round here, far as I see,” Lila retorts. She stands, refills her glass, and moves toward the door. “G’night, Sissy,” she says without looking back.
Upstairs in her room, she resists turning on the light. Too many memories reside in the pink rosebud wallpaper, matching chenille bedspread, her teenage vanity with its pleated satin skirt and twin fitted drawers jammed with prom tickets, play programs, fading photographs and, in the back, the small ribbon-tied stack of college love letters from Hamp. She sets down her drink in the dark, removes her shoes, drapes slacks and shirt on the back of her bedside chair; slips off the sheer French lace and silk underthings that are, since Paris, her private indulgence; and slides into bed. She sips the remaining whiskey, awash tonight in painful wavering images: Louis’s flag-draped coffin with its bayonetted body missing a hand; Hamp’s bloated, unhappy face; and Jazz, candlelit in her apartment, pulling her out of bed to dance with him, naked, to Lady Ella’s smoky “Night and Day.” Jazz, who would soon be all hers forever, but who— for what reason?—had not, for three days now, returned her call. His lack of response means something—all his actions are artfully calculated—but what? That he’s asked for the divorce? Or not? That our own plans are on? Or off? That her private ache for an open, legitimate life, too long delayed, so recently promised, is . . . ? Lila drains her glass, wincing at the Jack’s hot descent down her throat.
She lays back, sinking into the whiskey’s warm embrace. For a few hours at least, it frees her from further thought.
With the loss of but a few of the Old Ones, who spent the last of their lives wisely reminding others that all of life is uncertain, the move is complete.
Once again, by the grace of He Who Provides, food is plentiful. And, with the exception of one startling bit of news, life in the colony returns to normal.
The news, unexpected yet, in retrospect, not surprising, is that He Who Provides appears to have widened his net of care to include a young one of His own kind. In return for the move to a more plentiful dwelling place, the colony is to accord this Young One the same mindful protection provided each of their own.
She Who Decides has decreed it. The Young One has been marked with His scent, as surely as She has marked each of them with Hers. Despite his size, the Young One remains a sentient child. And children, of all kinds, are to be protected, at all cost.
24
Daniel sits on the porch with Pap watching Uncle Will cross the twilit clearing ’twixt his cabin and theirs. Midpoint, in front of the big woodpile, Uncle Will stops, scoops up a small chunk of pine, and, turning it in his hand as if it were a tender robin’s egg or a sparkling piece of feldspar, seats himself in the empty rocker next to Pap.
The boy watches as Uncle Will, without a word, unfolds his pocketknife and peels back the rough bark to reveal the pearly white pinewood with a knotty streak of red running through it.
Pap draws on his pipe. And Daniel waits for Uncle Will to tell how Aunt Lu’s faring with Minna and SaraFaye. The girls, after hearing they, too, were barred from school, had howled broken-hearted all the way home from the Courthouse. And how was silent ’Becca, who’d hidden her face and darkened the front of her dress with fat tears rolling like raindrops off her cheeks?
Years before Daniel was born, the old men up home, who spent half of any given day warming their backsides at the potbelly stove in Hart’s General Store, had nicknamed Will “The Puzzler.” “Give ol’ Will enough time and he’ll puzzle his way outta jus’ ’bout anythin’,” they’d tell Daniel and his cousins, voicing grudging respect for the man who’d been unbeatable at sodapop-top checkers since he was six years old.
“Ol’ Will’s a puzzler all right,” they’d say, tossing back another piece of root-beer candy. “Steady and slow like that-air turtle in the tale, ‘Th’ Tortoise ’n’ th’ Hare.’ Not atall like his brother Franklin, who’s as hare-headed as can be,” they’d add, squinting their eyes at some recalled instance that proved, to them at least, that Pap and his brother were as differen
t as night and day.
Slowly, Uncle Will slices off the wood’s odd corners, its sharp edges, till it’s the size and shape of a large potato. Then, turning the streak of red topside, he begins to carve.
“Minna ’n’ SaraFaye are sleepin’,” he says without looking up. “Pore ’Becca’s jus’ sittin’, woe-eyed, by the fire.”
“That blamed Sheriff!” Pap jerks his pipe out of his mouth and stabs the stem into the air. “I shore God should a-laid him out, the day this trouble first come up.”
“Now, Linny . . .” Uncle Will, the only person in the world ’lowed to call Pap that, gives his brother a black look. “That-air Sheriff’s like a wild b’ar hog. It ’ud take a whole huntin’ party, an’ a pack of prime dogs, to lay that man out. And, I reckon yer ’ware, we’s slap outta good dogs.”
Pap jabs his pipe back into his mouth and sucks hard. Daniel sees the tobac in the bowl glow like a piece of coal, coloring the tip of Pap’s hawk nose an angry red.
“Ain’t the crook of it,” Uncle Will asks quietly, shaving wood, “that this-here Sheriff’s the king of Clark County?” He’s rounded the red part and, eyeing it carefully, begins to shape the white wood on either side. “And, over there,”—he points casually with his knife blade to the tidy rows of Aunt Lu’s vegetable patch—“somewheres ’twixt Lu’s taters and the scarlet runner beans is ’nuther county altogether. Reckon they got schools over there, free as water? And a Sheriff who ain’t K. A. DeLuth?”
Pap leans forward, peering through the haze of smoke, his pipe clamped tight on one side of his mouth. “Tangerine County,” Pap whispers, as if somethin’s suddenly risen up yonder, out of the corn rows, beyant the beanpoles.
“How ’bout you ’n’ me take off work early tomorr’, go on down there to Opalakee, get these kids back in school where they b’long?” Will asks softly.
Daniel rocks back, caught between the seeping dread of another new school, another passel of squinty-eyed strangers, and the rushing joy of recognizing the cock of head, the slant of tail of a robin redbreast, ’Becca’s favorite bird, taking shape in Uncle Will’s patient hands.
“Tomorr’, then,” Pap says, settling back in his rocker.
“Tomorr’.” Uncle Will nods, adding delicate detail to the robin’s beak, using the blade tip to tenderly outline a round, expectant eye.
25
It’s past nine-thirty, the back of the newspaper office entirely dark except for the night-light on the loading dock, when Ruth opens the gate and wheels into her parking spot.
Beside her car window, Gordon, the black-and-tan Doberman that is their office watchdog, wags his nub of a tail in welcome. Gordon and the gate became necessary last year when local teenagers adopted the paper’s hidden-from-the-street parking area as a late-night party spot. The gate is a nuisance, but, like Hugh says, “less trouble than picking up broken beer bottles every morning.”
“Good dog.” Ruth pats Gordon’s silky black head, and allows him to follow her up onto the dock, through the silent press and production rooms and into her office in the front.
Her first call is to Hugh at home. “How’d the hearing go?” he asks. When she gives him the update, his response is a soft, round whistle of disbelief.
“I know I promised you I’d never say this, Hugh. But, God, I wish we were a daily!”
“Yeh, with daily ad, editorial, and delivery headaches?” he slings back.
“It’s just that today’s paper’s already trash and Saturday’s edition—”
“—goes to bed in forty-eight hours,” he chides her. “If you’re hot to get the word out, you could try the wire to St. Pete. But you’ll have to hurry. Clint calls the ball on the morning edition at eleven-fifteen.”
“Okay—” Ruth’s eyes fly to the clock. Hour and a half. No problem.
“While you’re at it, call Charlie in New York. He’s got till midnight. This thing is right up his alley.”
Ruth hesitates. Their old friend Charlie runs the national desk at Time magazine. For the past three years, since their “retirement” to Florida, she and Hugh had kept a deliberately local profile.
As if reading her mind, he says, “Use your old byline. Charlie will be fine.”
“But, Hugh—”
“Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Who watches the watch-man? Hugh considered it the Reporter’s Creed.
“All right. If you’re sure—”
“And don’t forget to padlock the back gate,” he tells her by way of good-bye.
“Aye-aye,” she replies and turns, smiling, to light a cigarette, look up Charlie’s number, and jam paper into her Underwood all at once.
CHARLIE SAID, “Send me four good graphs, op-ed—quick.” And Clint had promised to “squeeze ’em in somewhere.” So the race was on.
She slaps the return twice and begins:
IF you’re a parent, look no farther than the face of your own child to feel the horror of what’s happening in Lake Esther, Florida. Pick out a familiar feature on that face—the curl of his hair, the curve of her nose—and imagine a six-foot, six-inch Sheriff arriving at their school and pronouncing his hair or her nose unacceptable.
Imagine your children enduring the curious stares of their classmates as he carts them away in his squad car. Imagine him publicly accusing them of being something they’re not. As parents who know better, would you not be outraged? Would you not demand an official hearing to clear things up?
Now, imagine that the school board, having promised you a hearing, denies it; and, having considered only the Sheriff’s unsubstantiated opinions, votes to bar your children from their constitutionally guaranteed public schooling. Imagine the shock of a unanimous vote. Surely there would be one rational person among the seven who would care to at least question the Sheriff’s stance?
Parents, look to the face of your own child and imagine that face falsely accused and punished in a town where nobody, not one person, cares. Not for Franklin Dare and his children, curly-haired Daniel and sweet-faced Rebecca. Not this week in Lake Esther, Florida.
Ruth rocks back in her chair, ponders suggesting the headline— “Nobody Cares”—adds it quickly above the byline: Ruth Cooper. Jerking the text from her typewriter, she moves to the wire desk keyboard in the production room. As she completes both transmissions, just under their joint deadlines, the phone rings on Hugh’s desk.
Expecting it’s him, she answers, “Just finished!”
“Hardly,” the man’s voice on the other end drawls. “This Miz Ruth Cooper Barrows?”
“Yes?” she says, puzzled. The voice has a familiar twang.
“Miz Ruth Cooper Barrows, you got a big fat mouth.”
“Who is this?”
“This, Miz Ruth, is the man you chose to defame in your newspaper today.”
Of course. “Why, Billy Hathaway. You in town?”
“No, ma’am, but I’ll be dropping by soon to accept your retraction of this piss-poor pack of lies.”
“I check my facts extremely carefully, Mr. Hathaway.”
“How dare you defame me, a decorated veteran with a war injury!”
“Come off it, Billy. Shall I publish my interview with Beale Street Bubba? He’s got a very clear memory of how you earned your ‘war injury.’ And his bartender, as I recall, has pictures. What do they call it over there—Bubba’s Wall of Shame?”
She can hear Hathaway sucking air between his teeth. “Lady, you’re picking on the wrong guy. I have powerful friends in your town.”
“Do tell, Mr. Hathaway.” Damn, she thinks, wish I had this on tape!
“Your Sheriff’s on the board of directors of my organization. When you insult me, you’re insultin’ him.”
“If you checked your facts, Mr. Hathaway . . . if you read the entire paper, you’d see I consider it my journalistic duty to insult Sheriff DeLuth.”
“Sheriff ain’t the only one around to help me settle your hash!”
“May I quote you on that, Mr. Hathaway?” Ru
th asks, with a bravado that feels, suddenly, more than a little false.
“Lady, you’ve pissed off the wrong guy,” Hathaway hisses and breaks their connection.
Ruth stands frozen, then, pursing her lips, returns Hugh’s receiver to its cradle.
“Here, boy,” she calls to Gordon, who pads in obediently from the lobby, panting. She pats her pockets for her cigarettes, lights up, and draws comfort from the dog’s confident lope around the room. “Let’s lock up, shall we?”
The Doberman trails her as she double-checks the locks on the front door and several windows, turns out lights, and dead-bolts the back door on the loading dock. She stands on the top stair watching him. In the dim light, she sees the dog run his usual route along the perimeter of the back lot, long nose sniffing, head oscillating, all senses alert to any intrusion upon his territory. When he returns to the steps, wagging his stub with a happy all-clear, she makes her way quickly to the car.
At the gate, she secures the padlock, reaches in to pat him good-bye, then watches him disappear, his shiny coat shimmering silver like a fish swimming off out of the shallows. The drive home to Hugh is brief—it’s a mere two miles to their subdivision—but this close to midnight, with the menace of Billy Hathaway’s threats scrolling through her inner ear, it feels infinitely longer.
26
“Sheriff DeLuth?”
“You got ’im, who’s callin’?”
“Sheriff, this is Clint Patterson from the St. Petersburg Times. I’m calling about your barring of the Dare children from Lake Esther Elementary?”
These damn reporters, always talkin’ in a rush. “If you’re lookin’ for a quote I ain’t givin’ you one.”
“Why’s that, Sheriff?”
True Fires Page 11