Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind

by Ann B. Ross

  CHAPTER NINE

  I DON’T KNOW how I managed to walk across the parking lot and then the street and up the steps to my front porch with my limbs trembling like they were. Somewhere in one part of my mind I was aware of the way the hot asphalt sucked at my shoes with each step I took. And I knew I waited on the curb for a UPS truck to pass before crossing the street, but the roaring in my head kept me from concentrating on anything but getting to the wicker rocking chair on the porch.

  I sank down in it, thankful for the wisteria vine that covered one end of the porch. Nobody could see me there, and maybe a few minutes of privacy would settle me down.

  My preacher! A man of God saying the things he did. And comparing Wesley Lloyd to David, of all people, who, as everybody knows, had dabbled in somebody else’s bed, too. But that didn’t excuse Wesley Lloyd. And if it did, then everything I’d ever heard from a pulpit, read in the Bible, and believed in all my life meant absolutely nothing.

  I curled my hands on the arms of the rocker and pushed off with a foot. I rocked and thought, and rocked and thought some more, taking stock of my situation. It had never entered my mind that my pastor wouldn’t support me in this trying situation. How many times had I heard him preach on how hard it is to do the right thing? Doing the right thing, he’d preached many a time, goes against the natural grain of the sinful heart. So I knew that acknowledging the child was the right thing to do because it was the hardest thing to do. And Pastor Ledbetter should’ve seen that and encouraged me in it.

  That’s all right, I told myself, rocking faster. I knew that most of the church members would take whatever position Pastor Ledbetter did. A congregation wasn’t called a flock for nothing. So I was going to have to gird my loins to walk into that building for the worship service with Little Lloyd. I had a few more days before Sunday, and I determined to prepare myself for it and not shirk my duty to raise up a child in the way he should go, even if I had only a little while to do it in. The church might abandon me, but it was my church and I’d not abandon it. Preachers came and preachers went, but we Presbyterians continued on.

  I got up finally and, with knees still atremble, walked back to the kitchen. Lillian took one look at me and reached for the coffeepot.

  “That preacher wadn’t no help, was he?” she said, pouring two cups and bringing them to the table.

  “Not only no help,” I said, easing myself into a chair, “he just made things worse.” I told her the gist of the conversation in the preacher’s office. “And he had the gall to tell me it was the Lord’s will to take his advice!”

  “Law, law,” Lillian commiserated. “Preachers is sometimes the worst ones for knowing the Lord’s will. Seems like they’s bad about mixing up their ownselves’ will with the good Lord’s. I seen it many a time. You ’member me tellin’ you about that preacher we had at the Shiloh AME Zion Church? The one what got mixed up with the lead singer in the choir? It was a mess ’fore we got rid of both of them, what with the lead singer’s husband wantin’ to shoot the preacher, and the preacher sayin’ he was bein’ led by the Lord.” She leaned back and laughed. “All us knowed what he was bein’ led by, and it sure wadn’t the Lord!”

  I smiled, wrapping my hands around the coffee cup. “I’m beginning to think that that’s what a lot of men are led by,” I said, somewhat embarrassed at talking about such earthy matters.

  “Where’s that child?” I suddenly asked, not yet used to having another person in the house to account for.

  “I sent him upstairs to rest awhile,” she said. “He kinda droopy, seem like. I hope he’s not gettin’ sick on us.”

  “Oh, me,” I said, hanging my head at the thought of another complication in my life. “I’ll go call the drugstore right now and have them deliver a tonic. I meant to do it before this, and while I’m at it I might as well call the Western Auto and see if they have a swing set they could put up out in the back.”

  “That boy too big for a swing set,” Lillian informed me. “Besides, Deputy Bates say this morning when he come home that he gonna put a tire swing on that big tree out there, if you don’t mind.”

  “Why, no, I guess I don’t,” I said, though a few days ago the thought of a tacky tire swing in one of my trees would’ve struck me as the equivalent of a whitewall planted with red salvia in my front yard. “A tire swing would be fine, if he wants to do it. Lillian, I think I’ll go up and lie down for a little. This day’s worn me out.”

  I tiptoed up the stairs, not wanting to disturb the rest of Deputy Bates, who’d worked all night. I got to the head of the stairs and noticed that the guest room door was ajar. Without thinking, I pushed it open, not really intending to check on the boy, because I didn’t much care it he was resting or not.

  His bed was empty, and my first shocked thought was that he’d run off to find his mother. My second thought was that I’d had about as much trouble from that boy as I could tolerate, and to call the sheriff to start a search for him was more than I could face.

  I headed toward the back hall to Deputy Bates’s room, not at all reluctant now to wake him again. But there, right outside Deputy Bates’s door, was Little Lloyd, sound asleep on the floor, his knees curled up around that Winn-Dixie sack. I reached down to wake him but turned around instead and brought a pillow and a summer blanket from his room. I put the pillow under his head and spread the blanket over him, and he hardly stirred. Then I went to my bedroom and closed the door. He could sleep wherever he wanted to. His daddy certainly had.

  But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even rest my eyes. Every time I closed them, I pictured myself walking into church, come Sunday, with that stray child while everybody craned their necks and whispered behind their hands. I knew what they’d be saying. They’d be saying that Julia Springer was finally getting her comeuppance, and they’d be happy about it. I cringed at the thought, even though I hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of. The Bible says that children suffer for the sins of their fathers, but it doesn’t say a thing about wives suffering for the sins of their husbands, more’s the pity. I lay there, getting more and more nervous and edgy. So I got up and went back downstairs.

  “I’m going out for a while,” I told Lillian. “I just have to get out of this house and do some thinking.”

  “Well, you be careful,” she said. “You ain’t that good a driver to be goin’ here, there, and everywhere.”

  That didn’t deserve an answer, so it didn’t get one. I took my new car out of the garage and just started driving. It was a new experience for me to drive with no destination in mind and no need to be back before Wesley Lloyd got home. So I drove out of town, taking the two-lane roads throughout the county, searching for those with little traffic. I drove slowly, looking at fields and orchards, finding packinghouses and neat farmhouses along the rolling hills. I drove into areas I’d never been in, discovering small communities along the French Broad River and Briar Creek, inching along behind farm trucks and seeing tractors trailing plumes of red dust out in the fields. I circled the county, avoiding the interstate because in my state of mind I might get on it and never come back. Of course, I hadn’t done too much driving on the interstate, since whenever we’d gone anywhere, Wesley Lloyd had always taken the wheel. That was his job. Mine was folding maps.

  But that’s what I felt like doing now, just getting on that fast track and driving and driving until I’d outrun all my troubles.

  I’d not been paying much attention to the details around me, just automatically registering the rows of apple trees, loaded with fruit, and the few cars and trucks that passed me. My mind was heavy with grief and busy weighing the options, the possibilities, the “what-ifs” of the unthinkable mess Wesley Lloyd had left me.

  I stopped at a crossroads, where Craven Gap Road intersected with Jessup and, since there was no traffic, let the car idle for a few minutes while I decided which way to go. The sun was edging down behind the mountains in the west, turning them purple and lengthening the shadows of the tre
es along the road, and I began to feel a little anxious about the lonely countryside. I needed to head toward home.

  A deep, rumbling noise suddenly filled my little car, scaring and confusing me. All I could think of was a crop-dusting airplane about to land on the road, with me in the way.

  I looked from one side to the other, trying to determine where it was coming from. Then I glanced in the rearview mirror and nearly had a heart attack. The chrome grill of a huge truck was right behind me, right on my bumper, towering with growling menace over my little car. I stretched to see better, and could hardly see a thing through its darkened windshield. Two figures, maybe. I couldn’t be sure, but since I was blocking the road, I quickly pulled out into the intersection, took a right, and headed toward town. The truck followed, staying a few yards behind, where I was able to get a better look at it. It was black with a row of yellow lights on a bar across the cab, but the unnerving thing about it was the oversize wheels that jacked the body of the truck up above everything else on the road. Why in the world would anybody want a thing like that?

  I thought the driver would want to pass, so I slowed down. So did he. Then I went a little faster, but still within the speed limit because I didn’t want him to think I was afraid. And I wasn’t, I just didn’t understand the menace I was feeling from him. Night was quickly coming on, so I switched on the headlights. So did he, only his were all yellow, the ones over the cab and the fog lights on the front.

  As it got darker, the truck blended into the night and all I could see in the rearview mirrow were those strange yellow lights floating above the road. I didn’t like it at all. I felt lonely and scared, although the truck had done nothing but stay right with me at every turn I made.

  And it stayed with me until I reached the highway leading into Abbotsville. I pulled into light traffic, relieved to be among other cars on the streets and by gas pumps and at drive-up windows at Hardee’s and pulling into Wal-Mart’s. I looked back several times, but the truck was gone. I’d been foolish to worry. It had probably been a young man and his date heading for the movie theater, with no thought of me at all. We’d both just been going in the same direction.

  Still, I was glad when I finally pulled into the driveway at home. Welcoming light from the windows spilled out onto the yard, and before I could help it, I felt a lifting of my spirits. There was more than a lonely and empty house waiting for me.

  Lillian had already fed Deputy Bates and Little Lloyd their suppers, so I had to endure her fussing and complaining while I fixed a plate for myself. She’d been worried about me, which, though aggravating to listen to, gave me comfort that somebody cared.

  “I was ’bout to get Deputy Bates to put out one of them pointed bulletums on you,” she told me.

  “You’ve been watching too much television, Lillian. Now, where is Deputy Bates? I want to know what he’s found out.”

  “That chile don’t need to hear you two talk about his fam’ly like I know you gonna do,” she said, taking a carton of ice cream out of the icebox. “He like this chocolate swirl kind.” She dipped a hefty spoonful into a bowl and took it to the living room where little Lloyd and Deputy Bates were watching a rerun of Baywatch. I would’ve put a stop to that, for fear those half-naked young women would inflame the boy’s senses, but I just couldn’t summon the energy.

  Deputy Bates came into the kitchen and sat down across from me. “Well, Miss Julia,” he said, “I’m not sure I’ve got anything for you, but I have been asking around. There’s nothing on a Hazel Marie Puckett in anything I ran. But a good bit on Pucketts in general. I asked my lieutenant if he knew any Pucketts, and he said everybody in the department knows several of them. Seems they’re one of those families that are in and out of trouble all the time. At least, some of them are.”

  “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”

  “Domestic disturbances is a big one. Drunk and disorderlies, DWIs, fights, disturbing the peace, you name it. Years ago, they were into bootlegging, now they’re growing marijuana. They all come from down around Benson’s Gap in the southwestern part of the county. There’re several families down there, all kin to each other, and if they’re not fighting with their neighbors, they’re beating up on each other. My lieutenant said that if I haven’t been called down there yet, I soon will be.”

  “Lord,” I said, “it’s worse than I thought.”

  “Not necessarily,” he said, shaking his head. “Remember, I didn’t find anything on this woman. There’re always some few in families like that who break out of the pattern. And she has no arrest record, at least not in this county.”

  “I just can’t imagine Wesley Lloyd going to the end of the county into a group of people like that every Thursday night. You didn’t know him, but I’ll tell you that doesn’t sound like something he’d do.” Even as I said it, I realized that nothing I’d learned that he had done sounded like something he would do. So much for knowing someone.

  “Didn’t you tell me the Puckett woman mentioned a house she’d been living in?”

  “That’s right!” I said. “She said he’d not even left her the house she’d been living in for ten years or more. Now, if we could find that, maybe a neighbor or somebody could tell us more.”

  “Call your lawyer,” he said. “If everything came to you, then it should be on a list somewhere. We ought to be able to figure out which property it is with Bud’s help. I couldn’t get much out of him, though I tried. He just said they lived out in the country and he rode a bus to school. But he ought to be able to identify the house if we get him in the right area.”

  “You’d think a child would know where he lives,” I said.

  “I got the feeling that she kept him pretty close to home,” Deputy Bates told me. He picked up the salt shaker and turned it around, thinking over the problem. “Seems his mother did most of her shopping over in Delmont, and of course he went to one of the county schools. Looks as if she made an effort to stay out of Abbotsville.”

  “I just wish Wesley Lloyd had made an effort to stay in it.” I stirred lima beans around on my plate, not at all hungry, but needing something to occupy my hands. It was humiliating to talk to Deputy Bates, or anybody, about what my husband had done, and how he’d gone to such lengths to keep me from knowing about it. But of course it wasn’t just me he’d wanted to keep in the dark, but everybody who’d thought he was a fine, upstanding man.

  “I’ll get up early tomorrow afternoon,” Deputy Bates said, “so if you’ll call your lawyer and get a list of the county properties Mr. Springer owned, we’ll take Bud and look for the house.”

  “All right,” I said. “I don’t know what good it’ll do me to find where she lived, but I’ll at least see the scene of the crime.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE LIST I got from Binkie had been winnowed down to residential properties in the county, but it was lengthy enough. Deputy Bates drove my car, with me beside him and Little Lloyd in the backseat with his grocery sack.

  “I can’t wait to get there,” he said, snapping his seat belt on. “You’ll like my house. It’s real nice.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said, and cut my eyes at Deputy Bates, who was intent on his driving. I didn’t want any smirks about who had bought the house, and why. Not that Deputy Bates was given to smirking, but you never know. I craned my neck toward the backseat and asked, “You sure you can’t give us any directions?”

  “No’m, I never been this way before,” Little Lloyd said. He was looking out the window as Deputy Bates drove us first toward Benson’s Gap and the several small communities along the river. I had to do something about that child, and teach him to look at people when he spoke to them. But maybe it was just me he couldn’t face, which was understandable because I could hardly face him.

  From the road, we looked at unpainted or peeling farmhouses, an inordinate number of them with sagging sofas on the porches and rusting farm machinery in the yards. Deputy Bates slowed down as we passed each one so
Little Lloyd could get a good look.

  “That look familiar?” he’d ask, and then, “Think we’re getting close?”

  Each time the boy shook his head, until we came to a cluster of frame houses around a grocery store and a post office with a dusty flag hanging limply on its pole.

  “There it is,” he cried, pointing ahead of us.

  “Which one, Bud?” Deputy Bates asked.

  “There! At the very end. Maybe my mama’s there.” He hiked himself up to lean on the front seat so he could see through the windshield. He was breathing through his mouth in little gasps, fogging up his glasses.

  We turned into a dirt driveway that led to a small white-painted house with a railed front porch. A high hemlock hedge enclosed both the front and back yards, and a huge oak tree shaded most of the house. Right in front of us was a closed two-car garage with a short breezeway connecting it to a side door of the house. Deputy Bates turned off the ignition, and the three of us sat there listening to the tick of the engine as it cooled off. Everything else was quiet, no movement anywhere, no road sounds. My heart hurt as I thought of the many times my husband had pulled into this drive and into that garage, and then slipped, unobserved, into the house where the child who was breathing down my neck was conceived and raised.

  “That’s my house,” he said. “It’s real nice, ain’t it?”

  “Isn’t it,” I corrected.

  “Yessum, it is.”

  I took a rasping breath and said, “Well, let’s see if anybody’s home.”

  We climbed out, Deputy Bates pulling back his seat so Little Lloyd could get out. He ran to the front steps, calling, “Mama, Mama, I’m home!” I hoped she was.

  Little Lloyd opened the front door and walked right in, while we followed behind him. As we crossed the porch to the open door, I could hear his feet running through the house and his voice calling his mama becoming more and more shrill. Desperate, maybe, and I couldn’t blame him. The house was empty, not a stick of furniture, not a piece of clothing. Nothing.