Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind

by Ann B. Ross

  I looked at him long and hard, taking in the streaked and splotched face, the crooked bow tie and glasses, the scrawniness of him, and felt my stomach churn.

  “I’ve thought about it,” I said. “And he has some choices. He can stand up for himself and face them down alongside of me. Or he can hide in a closet until his mother comes back. Or maybe he’d prefer to be turned over to the sheriff and social services.” I leaned across the table to catch the child’s eye. “You don’t want to go to an orphanage, do you, boy? Answer me that.”

  “No’m.” His shoulders shook with the effort to keep from crying.

  “See there, he knows what’s good for him,” I said, feeling a sense of triumph now that I’d decided on a course of action.

  “Miss Julia, quit scarin’ that chile,” Lillian rebuked me. “Eat yo’ cake, honey, an’ don’t pay her no mind.”

  “And you quit undermining me,” I told her. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Deputy Bates, you find out everything you can about this boy and his mother, but keep it quiet or some do-gooder official’ll be on my doorstep wanting to take over. Lil lian’ll be helping me here with the child, and Little Lloyd!” He jumped as I turned to him. “You are Mr. Springer’s only surviving child—Lord, I hope—and you’re proud of who you are. You understand that?”

  He nodded his head miserably, but I didn’t have time for pity.

  “I hope you know what you doin’, ’cause you makin’ trouble for yo’self and ever’body else, now,” Lillian accused. “Mr. Springer didn’t have no legal chil’ren, an’ you might be makin’ a bigger mess than you already got.”

  “He didn’t have two legal wives, either,” I snapped back. “But I’m stuck with what he did have, and I have to make what I can of it. This child is Mr. Springer’s son, and sooner or later, credit will come to me for going above and beyond my Christian duty, and a few extra stars in my crown wouldn’t surprise me, either!”

  “Well, maybe,” Lillian allowed, wiping her hands on a dish towel and trying not to roll her eyes. She knows how I feel about that.

  “You’re a pistol, Miss Julia,” Deputy Bates said with a wide grin. “I thought Atlanta was hairy, but this’ll be something to see.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I’D ABOUT PACED a rut in my hardwood floors before I was able to reach Sam that afternoon. I knew where he was, of course, but that didn’t make the wait any easier. Sam had retired not long after Wesley Lloyd passed, right when I needed him the most, to fish! for the Lord’s sake. He’d turned my routine affairs over to Binkie Enloe, so now I had two lawyers, one a young woman whose ability I’d doubted at first and the other that old man who’d rather fish than eat.

  “One more call,” I said to myself, “and if he’s still not home, I’m going over there and sit on his porch till he gets there.”

  I looked out the window and saw Deputy Bates with the boy out in the backyard. He was supposed to be conducting an investigation, questioning the child and trying to get some details as to the Puckett woman’s plans. Looked more like they were playing, though, than treating the situation with the seriousness it warranted.

  As I stood there watching that unlovely child—I declare, only a mother could love him and, Lord, even she had taken off—I felt a twinge of pity for him before I could stop myself. It got even worse when I saw the child bend over in a fit of crying. Deputy Bates pulled him close and let him cry on his shoulder. I gripped the side of the sink and bowed my head, overcome with too many feelings that didn’t make sense. Of course, I am tenderhearted when it comes to children.

  Even though I intended to parade that child before the town, I was glad for the hemlock hedge around the yard that hid him from curious eyes. I knew I had to get myself together before going public with the pretense that he hadn’t been the shock of my life. I looked out the window again and saw him take off those cockeyed glasses and wipe his eyes with the handkerchief Deputy Bates gave him. The child needed distraction and entertainment or he’d be dripping tears all over Main Street and everywhere else. There wasn’t one thing around my house to play with, though, since Wesley Lloyd and I had never been blessed. Well, obviously, Wesley Lloyd had been. I’d just have to write some checks for swings and play toys so everybody would know how happy I was to have the little visitor.

  I turned loose of the sink, sighing, and dialed the phone again.

  “Sam!” I said when he finally answered. “Get yourself over here. I need to talk to you.”

  “Nice to hear from you, Julia,” Sam Murdoch said in that smiling way of his that I didn’t appreciate much at any time, and certainly not at this one. He’d gotten worse about it since Wesley Lloyd had passed. “What’s got you so stirred up?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here, so put up that fishing rod or whatever you’re piddling with, and get over here. I’ve got more trouble than I can handle.”

  “Then it must be a doozy. I’m on my way.”

  I sat down on my Duncan Phyfe sofa in the living room to wait for Sam, who in spite of laughing at me half the time was a man I trusted. I used to think he’d been Wesley Lloyd’s closest friend, but I was beginning to think that my husband hadn’t had any close friends. Wesley Lloyd had played everything close to his chest, an admirable quality in a sharp businessman but likely to cause unexpected heart attacks, as he’d found out to his sorrow.

  I’d known Sam Murdoch ever since I’d come to Abbotsville as a bride, and considered him and Mildred my friends. They used to come by on Sunday afternoons and we’d go for a drive together, Sam and Wesley Lloyd in the front seat, and Mildred and me in the back. That was before Mildred went to her reward some years back. The men had talked business and church—they were both elders—and we’d talked housekeeping and church, with a little whispered gossip to spice things up. Wesley Lloyd didn’t approve of gossip.

  Sam always ended the drive with a stop at the Dairy Queen for a chocolate-dipped vanilla soft cone. We all got one, except Wesley Lloyd, who had his in a cup with a spoon. Didn’t want to drip on his three-piece suit. He was careful in everything he did, and at the time I took quiet pride in all his neat peculiarities. Like, for instance, he always stirred his iced tea seventeen exact times—I counted—each time with seventeen little tinks on the bottom of the glass.

  The thing you had to know about Sam Murdoch, though, was not to trust his rumpled appearance and slow-moving ways. There were stories about him around town, like how he’d tell other attorneys from over in Charlotte or Raleigh, “I’m just a country lawyer up here in a country town,” he’d say. And they’d come to Abbotsville for a court case, all patronizing and sure of themselves, until Sam took them on in open court. They’d leave town not knowing what hit them.

  When Sam showed up at my door, his sweat-stained panama in his hands, I knew he’d walked the four blocks from his house. And in August heat, too.

  “Get in here and cool off, Sam,” I said, opening the screen for him. “I declare, it’s foolish to be walking in this heat. It must be ninety degrees out there.”

  “Pretty warm, Julia,” he said, coming into the living room. “Reckon Lillian’s got any ice tea around?”

  “Yes, and chocolate cake, too, which I don’t suppose you’d refuse. Come on back to the kitchen; I want you to see something out there, anyway.”

  He followed me down the hall and out into the kitchen, settling himself at the table where Lillian and I’d had many a cup of coffee together. It struck me how natural it seemed to ask Sam back there, when it had never occurred to me to sit at that table with Wesley Lloyd. Wesley Lloyd had not been a kitchen kind of man. He’d had his meals in the dining room—“A place for everything, Julia,” he used to tell me, “and everything in its place.”

  Since Lillian was nowhere around, I glanced out the window and saw her outside with Deputy Bates and that child. So I got Sam his iced tea and a slice of cake. Then I sat down across from him and told him about the heavy burden that had been laid upon me that morning.


  He ate and nodded, frowned a few times, and then said, “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Julia.”

  That took the wind out of my sails. Any lingering hope that Wesley Lloyd’s nefarious activities weren’t widely known went with that wind.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, wavering between screaming my head off and crying myself sick.

  “That’s not exactly the kind of story to take to a wife,” he said. The pity I heard in his voice nearly broke me in two. “And besides,” he went on, “I didn’t know it for a fact; I just strongly suspected it. Nobody with any sense would come to you with a story based on rumor.”

  “There’re a lot of people in this town without much sense,” I said. “That’s why I’m surprised no one told me, or even hinted at it.”

  “People’re afraid of you, Julia,” he said, his eyes beginning to smile again.

  “Afraid, my foot. How can anybody be afraid of me?”

  “You’re a woman with a strong sense of right and wrong, and you don’t mind telling the difference to anybody who’ll listen.”

  “It’s all a sham,” I whispered, digging out my damp handkerchief. “All I’ve ever done was parrot Wesley Lloyd. I’ve never had a thought or opinion of my own, I realize that now. Maybe if I’d had enough sense to think for myself, I’d have found out about him long before this.

  “I need to know something, Sam. Why in the world didn’t he provide for that woman and her child in some way before he passed? Didn’t he care about them? How did he think she was going to get along, raising the child by herself? It’s just not like him to be unprepared for a contingency.”

  “I tried, Julia,” he said. “I kept after him for years to get his affairs in order. I don’t mean specifically for the woman, although like most everybody I’d heard the stories. But all he had was that standard will that you and he made out, what, twenty years or so ago. Remember that? He came in wanting a will for himself and one for you, each leaving the other everything. Just your basic kind of will until, he told me, he could plan one out in detail.”

  I could feel my face turning white and my eyes getting bigger. “Do I remember it? Like it was yesterday! That was right after Papa died and left me twenty-five thousand dollars, my share from the sale of the home place. Sam,” I said, as a hot pain shot through me, “those wills were for his benefit! He wanted to make sure he got everything I had if I went before he did. That’s the truth, isn’t it? He didn’t count on dying first, did he? And, Lord help me, I didn’t think twice about signing whatever he put in front of me.” The pain in my chest stopped the flow of angry words. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I know he didn’t intend for it all to come to me. He never trusted me with anything financial, so I don’t understand why he didn’t change his will later on.”

  “I don’t understand it either, Julia. When I stopped practicing law, that was one of the things I told Binkie to get on to. See if she’d have more luck in getting old W.L. to update his will.”

  “W.L.,” I said with a rueful smile. “He never did appreciate you calling him that.”

  “Too uptight for his own good. You know, it’s crossed my mind that one reason he kept putting off making another will was that he’d have to admit to this woman. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to tell me why he would include her and the child. That’s why I thought Binkie might be able to do it.”

  “Binkie’d never have had a chance with Wesley Lloyd,” I said, waving that consideration away. “He wouldn’t’ve confided in anybody who, in his opinion, was untried, much less a woman, no matter how capable. But, Sam, he wouldn’t have had to admit to anything if he’d made some provision for them outside of a will. You know, bought her a house and set up some kind of fund for the child. Why couldn’t he have done that?”

  “Julia,” Sam sighed, “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but here’s my opinion. I think W.L. just couldn’t turn it loose. He had to control it all, and that’s a failing of a lot of successful men. But,” he went on, “tell me this. Why’re you so worried about them? You aren’t feeling guilty about it all coming to you, are you? Or feeling sorry for that litte boy out there?”

  “Neither one!” I said, pushing back my chair and getting to my feet. “The idea! I’m not feeling guilty about the one nor sorry for the other. No, I’m just mad as thunder, because if he’d provided for them outside of the will, I’d never have known about them. Since I never knew how much he had in the first place, I wouldn’t’ve missed what he did for them. I tell you, Sam, if he had to get involved with that woman, it seems the least he could’ve done was to’ve kept them out of my life. Now here I am stuck with that illegitimate, illegal, and…and unwanted child out there!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I PACED BACK and forth, wringing my handkerchief until I calmed myself enough to sit back down. Sam put his hand over mine, but I was too exercised to be so easily comforted.

  “And here’s another thing, Sam,” I said, intent on learning as much as I could about the man I’d spent forty-some-odd years with. “Do you know anything about him planning to leave anything to the church?”

  Sam put both hands on the edge of the table and leaned back in his chair, tipping it off the floor. He smiled and shook his head. “Not from him. Never a word of any intention like that. But I heard plenty about it while I was on the session. Seems W.L. hinted around about it to Larry Ledbetter, and Ledbetter took it to heart. He’s been planning how to spend that windfall for years and, since W.L.’s death, the whole session’s been discussing new building plans. That’s one reason I resigned.”

  “You what?” I couldn’t believe I’d heard right. “You can’t resign from the session! You were elected, Sam. How could you resign?”

  “Easy,” he said. “I just did it. I thought things would change when the church began to rotate elders, but they haven’t. Bunch of old coots on there now who haven’t had an idea of their own since nineteen-fifty. I got tired of fightin’ ’em.”

  “Well,” I said, not quite able to take it in. I’d never heard of anybody resigning from the session except for a terminal disease or a move out of town. “Well,” I said again, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at anything you do, Sam Murdoch.”

  I got up and walked to the window, maybe hoping my problem out there had disappeared. But there he was, sitting on a garden bench with his head down and that grocery sack hugged to his chest. Deputy Bates was leaning over, his elbows on his knees, talking to him. I watched as the boy shook his head, then a bit later nodded at something Deputy Bates said. The child hadn’t been raised right, which didn’t come as any surprise.

  “What am I going to do, Sam?” I turned away from the window as I realized how much I wanted Sam to approve any course of action I took.

  “I take it you’re planning to keep the boy?”

  “I don’t have much choice, though Deputy Bates is going to do everything he can to find that woman.” I fumbled for my handkerchief as the injustice of it all flew through me again. “I ought to sue her! And I just may do it, if he ever finds her.”

  “Careful with that kind of talk, Julia,” Sam said, very carefully himself. “The last session meeting I attended, there was some discussion of suing you.”

  “Me! What on earth for?”

  “Money. Some on the session, a good many, in fact, think there’s a better than even chance of laying claim to some of W.L.’s estate, based on what Larry Ledbetter calls verbal commitments to him. He seems to think that a promise made to a member of the clergy ought to carry more weight than a twenty-year-old will.” Sam paused, studied his empty plate, then looked me straight in the eye. “I’ll tell you this, Julia, when a preacher and his session decide the Lord needs a new building, there’s very little that can stop them. Except how to pay for it, and that’s where they figure you come in. So I want you to watch yourself. Don’t imply anything, don’t promise anything, and, above all, don’t sign anything.”

  Well, that r
eally took my breath away, but at the same time a reassuring thought entered my mind. “That’s why you resigned, Sam, isn’t it?”

  “Since I’m the executor of the will, I couldn’t very well be party to an effort to have it set aside. I won’t deny that money’s important, but the idea of a church suing one of its own members to get it is more than I can stomach. Especially if that member is a helpless widow woman.” He grinned until I had to smile back.

  “Huh,” I snorted, “I’ll show them a helpless widow woman, and I’ll show them a few Scripture verses, too. ‘Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child,’ Exodus twenty-two, twenty-two, and that’s just one. So with you and Binkie Enloe on my side, to say nothing of the Lord, I’m surprised they’d even consider such a thing.”

  “Oh, they’ll try to get some big firm out of Raleigh or Atlanta, but they won’t have any luck. The only way they could overturn that will is to come up with a later one.”

  “They’re a bunch of fools,” I pronounced, “and I can’t worry about them now. I’ve got too much else on my mind.”

  “I know you have, Julia, and I’m sorry for it. I don’t want to add to your worries, but it does surprise me a little that this Puckett woman hasn’t thought of suing. She’d have a better chance than the church at a share of the estate. If she can document what she claims.”

  “She told me she’d talked to Binkie, so maybe she has thought of it.”

  “Well, you’d better talk to Binkie, too, and let her know what’s going on. For all we know, she’s not left town to study nails but to consult an attorney. Leaving the boy with you might be her way of getting on your soft side, make you recognize him or feel sorry for him. In case the suit doesn’t turn out so well for her.”

  “That’s the most foolish thing I ever heard,” I said. “How in the world could anybody think I’d give a flip for a child like that? That’s beyond my comprehension. No. No danger of that, but, Sam, this whole situation’s a pure tribulation to me. Tell me what I ought to do.”